# Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook/Chapter 17

CHAPTER XVII.
FEATHER-BRUSHES.
There is, perhaps, nothing for which an educated Chinese feels such keen appreciation as what is called a kû-tien, or historical allusion, wherever or in whatever shape it may present itself. It would be a mistake to suppose that the kû-tien is only found in literary compositions, although the more elegant and accomplished the writer the more fully adorned will be his essay with references to the events of old as found in the early essayists and poets of China. There are such things as what may be called, without violence to language, embodied kû-tiens—customs, and even common objects of every-day use or ornament, around which gather literary and historical associations of the highest interest to the scholar. Just as the naturalist may see in the fully developed organ of an animal the evolutionary product of the embryo which existed in that animal's remote ancestor thousands of years ago, so will the Chinese scholar recognise in a fan or trinket the descendant, degenerate enough, perhaps, but still legitimate, of some forgotten progenitor of the past. It needs no unusual erudition even in Western life, for instance, to see in our modern habit of nodding to an acquaintance a relic of the complete prostrations that were performed in ancient times, or ​in the gold-topped cane a civilised form of the ponderous bludgeon once wielded by our forefathers in Scandinavia.
Now there is no commoner object in any house in China, foreign or native, than the feather-brush. It is not very ornamental, nor is it so practically useful, perhaps, as the homely cotton duster used by the ingenuous housemaids of England. Its principal value to the Chinese "boy" lies in the fact of its being a regular and unfailing means of squeezing his master to the extent of at least half a dollar or so a month. That, however, by the way. Even when not thus misused, it occupies what may be called a subordinate, if not menial, position in the household. But it has a history—an ancestry. There was a time when the feather-brush—or its remote progenitor, to speak more accurately—had not been put to the base use of dusting furniture in the remarkably imperfect manner practised by the A-choys and A-lings of modern days. It bore a part, and a very honourable part, in the ancient chivalry of China, being no less than a recognised standard for the mustering of soldiers to battle. An allusion is made to it by Chuang-tzŭ, the St. Paul of Taoism, two hundred years before Christ, who tells us that when the great military leader Sûn, standing on an eminence which overlooked the plain, waved on high his plume of feathers, the men of the State of Ying rushed with one accord into the field and put themselves in battle array. It was, in fact, an ancient military signal, and used, perhaps, much as a flag is used to-day, as a sign for mustering; a bell being struck where now we brandish the flag of truce. There is something strange in the fact of an instrument so honourable being degraded from the battle-field to the ​boudoir; but the poets of China view the matter in a vastly different light. It appears to have been a certain Empress who first laid her fair hand upon this old emblem of chivalry, and appropriated it to the use of the "inner chambers;" and high compliments were paid Her Majesty on the occasion by the carpet-knights and versifiers of the Court. But the task of doing so must have taxed the poetic resources of these gentlemen to no ordinary degree. Truth must out; and we are bound to confess that this pretty little bit of history is somewhat tarnished by the reason assigned for the imperial depredation. The fact seems to be, that the Empress wanted something to switch away the insects which infested her apartments. We must not be too severe upon Her Majesty. Our own kings and archbishops swarmed with vermin centuries after the Chinese Empress, in desperation, apparently, at the lively condition of her floors, laid hands upon the martial semaphore and turned it into a weapon of defence against the hopping hosts by which the palace was invaded. Then it became a fashionable article of use and ornament, and a lively trade in the feather-brush sprang up, ably fostered by the Government. It was made generally of actual feathers, and this kind was, and is now, used for dusting furniture. Other sorts, however, were made of horsehair, and these were often placed in the hands of sick persons to wave about and prevent gnats and mosquitoes from annoying them as they lay in bed. It is even possible to see people at the present day walking about and laying about them right and left at their minute assailants. The writer once spent some weeks in the monastery of a certain Buddhist priest, a portly, ​full-fed abbot, who was never seen without a bright-green horse-tail, which he used constantly to keep his saintly person free from flies. Indeed, the graceful waving and manipulation of a feather-brush or horsetail is cultivated as an art, and forms part of the stock-in-trade of many a Chinese petit maître. But the ramifications of this subject are too numerous to be followed out in detail on the present occasion. We might describe the use to which the instrument is put as a head-dress; for there are pictures to be seen in which an actual feather-brush is represented as worn on the top of the head, very much in the same way as a soldier wears a plume. The digression, however, would lead to others, and we must forego it. We will only add that the feather-duster has been made of use on several occasions to point a moral, if not adorn a tale, by Chinese moralists, imperial and other. "The superior man renews himself day by day;" "The sage incessantly shakes the dust of the world from off him;" "The purity of the soul can only be preserved by perpetual care;" such are some of the virtuous if somewhat platitudinarian aphorisms which have been taken from the writings of the ancients, and playfully used by modern essayists to reflect on brooms and feather-brushes all the grace and dignity which cluster round the pages of classic lore.