When two Races Mingle.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume III, Issue 145, 24 December 1901, Page 1

When two Races Mingle.

A slender little" fisirfe clad in bin* cotton—a shaven head with the long pigtuiJ—nxked brown feet, beating with** movement that was not Oriental, upon the muddy'ricefleld—4 human leaf torn *" at; random from the book of life's 6malfer lrasf' , d'fifl. ■ ' ••■

•Bota sbnrV/half hour'V«ifdre he h«A been one oraigroup of children playing together in the dirty village street. A

■oob'!i*v who bad,'.over-weighted hfs bamboo and trap carrier, U;>set the, load of bricks amongst them, and the children had b-eu oil more or lass scratched and bruised Ache v, standing apart, had watched tile mothers i»f his companion console them with those peculiar caresses which seem tc white folk so cold and unsnrisfactnty, but which represent to the n-itive baby all that he ever knows of petting. Then when the other boys had bwn carried in to receive corafirt from the rifw sweetmeat* so dear to the youth; ful Chinese heart, Achew bid suddenly raced away as fast *» bis short leg* would cany 'him—away to the lonely" rc« field. Ofseii had the vil agera sooffed at this, h's favorite manner of easinc any pain; but Achew raiely found it fail to bring a measure of relief* Flinging hims If face downwards on the ground he eohlvd in (be vernacular, a pief that waM not new: "Why can Achew call no one A-mah ?" Amah—the word lisped by 3n many white baby lips throughout China—to grown white folks means only " nurse," but it is really the native namo for mother. Achew—child with the carnage of a ruling race, with the AngloSaxon instinct fur rapid motion, with the Violet evos, 'hat contracted §n oddly with the shaven crown—Achew had no moth<r.

Arrows the blue the southward, in the slums of a Queens* land town, a white woman stiiVing by what means God—or, mayhap,' the Davil—krteW to fl.d bread for her helpless half caste girl children, for whom civilisation had no place, wept wi'h that bitterer weeping, which knows no tears t for her only toy. It was a commonplace incident, too trivial for notice. The Ohine>e brute to whon she had a white slave fo<- five years had deserted her one night, carrying with hirn the boy, and returned to his own land. But Achew, ho of the strange " furcign ways, lay on his face by the ricfiVM nobbing:''''Arnahj Amah." He had no mO her.

In the early dawn of art aututnh morn» ing, hte iu the year 1900, a Chinese youth labored at the digging of a grave a yard or so in front of a wall, while two Sikhs, with loaded rifles, mounted guard. He was a murderer, this lad of perhaps sixteen summers, positively identified t% one of that gang of human fiends who had tortured to death an unresisting missionary. H* had nob disputed the accusation, nor denied one of the hideous details related by the interpreter to the horrified B.itish officer by whom the trial was conducted. And when they told him he was to die, he had greatly marvellpd—it was Bitch a little thing to die. Yet it was not of this that he was thinking as he toiled to deepen that grim hole, as hisjask grew nearer to the close* He was remembering, with vague sati*» faction how, a few months before, he had carried a cup of water to the lips of a white wom*n, dying in fearful agony" upon the open road, whe--e his own people had left htr after they had" beaten her out of the semblanca of human form, He had stopped beside her and driven ' oi the cruel flirts and ants, aud h-dd his big coolie hat over her itncovered head. Ha remembered her bruised lips had formed strange words before the end had dome *• '•God bless vou." "God"— that was the white man's joss; but what vrai " bless."

And ho Achew, one time angel, artel withal boxer, and torturer, and murderer! stood up in the lifeht of a gold and crimson dawn, fauing half a dozen levelled ritles, at twelve paces. The years of hia life seemed to fall away from him t and the memory of a face arose indistinctly b :fore his eyes, vague and very far off, the face of a white Amahj Amah."

In an opium den of the Queenfiartd town that which had been a womarf drained the cup of inf,*my. With a glass of raw spirits in one hand «he Bang the vile songs of the Chinese quarter, amid surroundings welloigb unspeakable. Ah the night reeled on she fiu»g herself on one of the dirty coaches, aad nlepfi the slomber ot' ber kind. It was still dark when, with a cold ihudder, «hd staggered to her feet, aroused by thd aorindof a Jiflo voll-y. For ono brief instant her mothrr's instinct awoke ag«io and, by a subtle gift of nature, «b$ touched the bedrock of that sordid, tragedy.