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We have a reverend missionary and wife, with two young lady
missionaries in embryo, who are on their way to begin their labors
among the Chinese. They are busily engaged learning the language.
Poor girls! what a life they have before them! But apart from all
question of its true usefulness, they have the grand thought to
sustain them, and ennoble their lives, that they go at the call of
what seems to them their duty. We watch the Chinese eating and
laugh at their chopsticks, but we forget that one reason why John
Chinaman prides himself upon being at the pinnacle of civilization
is that he uses these very chopsticks. (None of the races of Asia,
and until recently he knew no other, have ever got beyond
chopsticks, the use of which was first taught China, while most
of them don't even have them yet.) Let us not forget that our
ancestors were using their fingers--barbarians that they
were--when the Chinese had risen, centuries before, to the
refinement of these sticks, for the fork is only about three
hundred years old. Shakespeare probably, Spenser certainly, had
only a knife at his girdle to carve the meat he ate, the fingers
being important auxiliaries. We must be modest upon this chopstick
question. It costs the ship eleven cents (5-1/2 d.) per day a head
to feed these people, and this pays for a wholesome diet in great
abundance, much beyond what they are accustomed to.
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