LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 236, 12 March 1875, Page 3

LITERATURE.

NAVVIES' TALES. THE PINK HEATH. ( Concluded) Where she lay ? Did she lie beneath the moon-brightened creek ? Was that shadowy form standing down at the edge of the bush with white garments, and stony eyes glaring at him—was not that Minnie Edgar, the murdered girl ? Was it not her hand that, outstretched, pointed to that hideous thing looming up darkly against the sky in the broad paddock, the thing that, when he stared at it, took the form of a gibbet—the gibbet where he was to die ? So die! Oh, heaven be merciful! To have the terrible rope round his neck, tightening and tightening, until the veins swelled up on his temples, and his eyes saw red, red, red, as the brain was smothering in blood ! See ! hundreds of shadows were flitting round and round the gibbet, jeering and laughing at the murderer's fate, and he was choking, smothering, dying. But not by the rope. The moon crept up and up, higher and higher, until the shadow of the verandah was thrown down upon Frederick Booth's face. Still he moved not, nor spoke. Over the house, it stole, and hour by hour, down to the big hill behind it, but hour after hour, Frederick Booth's eyes glared icily out of the window. The trooper slept, and Dan slept, keeping watch alternately ; and once, Towzer lifted up his head from between his paws and howled piteously, but Frederick Booth did not hear him. At last it was grey dawn, and at last it was broad daylight, and Dan, rousing himself from a long nap, got up and shook himself together. What a long night it had been ! he was so glad it was past. In the very same position still sat the .miserable murderer, his stony face turned to the window, his rigid hands, with the steel fetters glittering on them, crossed on his knee; and when Dan hurried to the window, and bent down to look into his face, he saw that Frederick Booth was dead. Better so. Better that the very thought of a felon's death and the sight of an imaginary gibbet, had frightened him to death, than he should have lived to face the terrible reality. Better indeed for the wretched nimderer that he was dead. Little remains to be told. Dan Scully took the old dog to the bush with him, and step by step he crawled on his unhappy young mistress's track until she met her death blow. At the bush of pink health, he lay down on his paws, and howled so piteously that the forest rang with the lonely echoes; and there he stayed, for the bush bore no further footstep of Minnie Edgar. They found the corpse in the creek, just in the deep shadow of the bank where Fred had stood to see if the water had given up its dead. The murder had been premeditated, for the body was attached to a heavy piece of iron, doubtless provided for the purpose $ and in the damp chilly fingers was still held, with the death-grip, a spray of the pink heath. WAN LEE, THE PAGAN. . By Bret Harte. As I opened Hop Sing's letter, there fluttered to the ground a square strip of yellow paper, covered with hieroglyphics, which, at first glance, I innocently took to be the label from a packet of Chinese fire-crackers. But the same envelope also contained a smaller strip of rice paper, with two Chinese characters traced in India ink, that I at once knew to be Hop Sing's visiting card. The whole, afterwards literally translated, ran as follows : To the stranger the gates of my house are not closed ; the rice-jar is on the left, and the sweetmeats on the right as you enter. Two sayings of the Master : Hospitality is the virtue of the son and the wisdom of the ancestor. The Superior man is light-hearted after the crop-gathering ; he makes a festival. When the stranger is in your melon-patch observe him not too closely; inattention is often the highest form of civility. Happiness, Peace, and Prosperity. Hop Sing. Admirable, certainly, as was this morality and proverbial wisdom, and although tins last axiom was very characteristic of my friend, Hop Sing, who was that most sombre of all humourists, a Chinese philosoper, I mixst confess that, even after a very free translation, I was at a loss to make any immediate application of the message. Luckily I discovered a third enclosure in the shape of a little note in • English, and Hop Sing's own commercial hand. It ran thus—- " The pleasure of your company is requested at No —, Sacramento street, on Friday evening at S o'clock. A cup of tea at nine sharp. "Hop Sing." This explained all. It meant a visit to Hop Sing's warehouse, the opening and exhibition of some rare Chinese novelties and curios, a chat in the back office, a cup of tea of a perfection unknown beyond those sacred pi'ecincts, cigars, and a visit to the Chinese theatre or temple. This was, in fact, the favorite programme of Hop Sing when he exercised his functions of hospitality as chief factor or superintendent of the Niug Foo Company. At eight o'clock on Friday evening I entered the warehouse of Hop Sing. There was that deliciously commingled mysterious foreign odour that I had so often noticed ; there was the old array of uncouth-looking objects, the long procession of jars and crockery, the same singular blending of the grotesque and the mathematically neat and exact, the same endless suggestions of frivolity aud fragility, the same want of harmony in colors that were each in themselves beautiful and rare. Kites in the shape of enormous dragons and gigantic butterflies; kites so ingeniously arranged as to utter at intervals, when facing the wind, the cry of a hawk : kites so large as to be beyond any boy's power of restraint—so large that you understood why kite-flying in China was an amusement for adults; gods of china and bronze so gratuitously ugly as to be beyond any human interest or sympathy from their impossibility; jars of sweetmeats covered, all over with moral sentiments from Confuoius; hats that looked liko baskets, and baskets that looked like hats, silk so light that I hesitate to record the incredible number of square yards that you might pasa through

the" "ring oh your little finger—these and a great many other incredible objects were all familiar to me. I pushed my way through the dimly-lighted warehouse until I reached the back office or parlor, where I found Hop Sing waiting to receive me. Before I describe him I want the average reader to discharge from his mind any idea of a Chinaman that he may have gathered from the pantomime. He did not wear beautifully scalloped drawers fringed with little bells—l never met a Chinaman who did; he did not habitually carry his forefinger extended before him at right angles with his body, nor did I ever hear him utter the mysterious sentence, ' Ching-a-ring-a-ring-chaw,' nor dance under any provocation. He was, on the whole, a rather grave, decorous, handsome gentleman. His complexion, which extended all over his head except where his long pigtail grew, was like a very nice piece of glazed brown-paper muslin. His eyes were black and bright, and his eyelids set at an angle of fifteen degrees; his nose straight and delicately formed, his mouth small, and his teeth white and clean. He wore a dark blue silk blouse ; and in the streets, on cold days, a short jacket of Astrakhan fur. He wore also a pair of drawers of blue brocade gathered tightly over his calves and ankles, offering a general sort of suggestion that he had forgotten his trousers that morning, but that, so gentlemanly were his manners, his friends had forborne to mention the fact to him. His manner was urbane, though quite serious. He spoke French and English fluently. In brief I doubt if you could have found the equal of this Pagan shopkeeper among the Christian traders of San Francisco. There were a few others present —a Judge of the Federal Court, an editor, a high Government official, and a prominent merchant. After we had drunk our tea, and tasted a few sweetmeats from a mysterious jar, that looked as if it might contain a preserved mouse among its other nondescript treasures, Hop Sing arose, and gravely beckoning us to follow him, began to descend to the basement. When we got there, we were amazed at finding it brilliantly lighted, and that a number of chairs were arranged in a half-circle on the asphalte pavement. When he had courteously seated us, he said—'l have invited you to witness a performance which I can at least promise you no other foreigners but yourselves have ever seen. Wang, the court juggler, arrived here yesterday morning. He has never given a performance outside of the palace efore. I have asked him to entertain my friends this evening. He requires no theatre, stage accessories, nor any confederate—nothing more than you see here. Will you be pleased to examine the ground yourselves, gentlemen ?' Of course we examined the premises. It was the ordinary basement or cellar of the San Francisco storehouse, cemented to keep out the damp. We poked our sticks into the pavement, and rapped on the wall to satisfy our polite host, but for no other purpose. We were quite content to be the victims of any clever deception. For myself, I know I was ready to be deluded to any extent, and if I had been offered an explanation of what followed, I should have probably declined it. Although I am satisfied that Wang's general performance was the first of that kind ever given on American soil, it has probably since become so familiar to many of my readers that I shall not bore them with it here. He began by setting to flight, with the aid of his fan, the usual number of butterflies made before our eyes of little bits of tissue paper, and kept them in the air during the remainder of the performance. I have a vivid recollection of the judge trying to catch one that had lit on his knee, and of its evading him with the pertinacity of a living insect. And even at this Wang, still plying his fan, was taking chickens out of hats, making oranges disappear, pulling endless yards of silk from his sleeve, apparently filling the whole area of the basement with goods that appeared mysteriously from the Sound, from his own sleeves, from nowhere ! e swallowed knives to the ruin of his digestion for years to come, he dislocated every limb of his body, he reclined in the air, apparently upon nothing; but his crowning performance, which I have never yet seen repeated, was the most weird, mysterious, and astounding. It is my apology for this long introduction, my sole excuse for writing this article, the genesis of this veracious history. He cleared the ground of its encumbering articles for a space of about fifteen feet square, and then invited us to walk forward and again examine it. We did so gravely : there was nothing but the cemented pavement below to be seen or felt. He then asked for the loan of a handkerchief, and, as I chanced to be nearest him, I offered mine. He took it, and spread it on the floor. Over this he spread a large square of silk, and over this again a large shawl nearly covering the space he had cleared. He then took a position at one of the points of this rectangle, and began a monotonous chant, rocking his body to and fro in time with the somewhat lugubrious air. (To be continued.)