Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1894-11-30
HOW THE BABY QUELLED THE RIOT

This realistic story, its scene laid in the Chinese
village of hading, has lively interest of its
own. but 1t also possesses an element of tmeH-
ness while the papers are filed with accounts of
the war between China and Japan. 1t is taken
from Romance the popular and excellent mag
azine of short stories
1t was hot September noon. as only in
China it knows how to be hot. There was
an insistence in it, a reiteration, as if the
weather were trying to make quite sure
that you understood II was hot yes, deadly
hot. You seemed to be in the grip of
some horrid, intangible monster holding
you down closer closer, as a cat does a
mouse. and all the time warmer and warm
er growing the fierce presence. 1t was so
very still that the air was like white glass
all the blue went out except under the
mimOsa trees of the compound There
the light was filtered into a vivid green, so
bright that it seemed almost like the flame
from some incandescent metal Outside
of the high compound wall on one side
was the canal with its bottle-green waters,
so still now that the shadows of the poles
where the boats were moored scarcely
flickered.
This was in Kading, the water-town,
where in old times a band of river pirates
had left the women and children in little
temporary homes built for safety on piles
driven in the river. They had fallen in
with their fate, as pirates and other misdo-
ers usually do in the end, and they never
returned to Kading-at least as they left
1t, In the meantime the pile-built houses
caught the tlotsam brought down by the
spring floods in the river, and slowly they
became islands where many willows and
mimosa tiOurshed But the children who
grew up no longer followed the river after
the impTudent fashion of their fathers
They have savage ways OF emphasizing a
lesson in China. These little urchins had
seen coming down the river a tlotilla of
baskets, willow-woven ones, made so wa
ter-tight that they are used for buckets at
the well-sweeps They padded, swan,
sculled out on anything they could find, il
hot haste TO secure each OF them prize
But the baskets were fastened down. and
so they had taken them home, and while
all the mothers and grandfathers looked on
in wild excitement, they opened them and
saw such CHASTITY things that the star of pi-
racy set for that clan forever.
They had seen too much blood on that
fearful day ever to wish to follow their
fathers ill-s;arred profession. So they
grew up TO be fishermen, taking out their
cormorants and making them dive for the
bright fish. As one advanced up the river
he would come upon whole fleets of RATS, on
which rows of fierce black birds with bright
brass rings at their necks would be perch
ed watching for their prey.
Many generations had come and gone
through the waterways of that quiet, will
low haunted river-V enice. Yet though
they had been for so long engaged in so
pacific a calling, at times the Old pirate
blood would assert itself, and they would
catch the fire of some ungovernable, IN
reas enable fury, and woe betde those who
fell in with them then,
Here in that warm September dav we
were living, the only foreigners in the place.
and had been living as far back as / could
remember There were the father and We
four boys and the baby, "Bran-New-Man'
the boys had dubbed him. so that he bare
~ felt the weight of his baptismal ST..
George Nicholas Parmenter. Blas-N goo
Mang. the old Chinese nurse pronounced
it. She said he was a hero in the old DAYS,
before the long-haired Tartars came, and it
would be a lucky name, but / forget what
he dad. She was very old, and was shown
great respect by the people. She was like
those ornaments carved out of old ivory,
yellowed by age, which had traced a thous-
and lines all over her brow and cheeks
Blu, We all loved her, and thought her
beautiful. She had nursed each of US sue
cessiyrly; it was her stories that made her
seem the weakened little fairy godmother
she was, If we were good, had behaved
like mandarlns, as she would say, she
would gather us around her under the old
mimOsa in the twilight and tell in her low
tones, which went somehow with the thrill
ing boom of the Monastery drum, of the
Dragon who lost his eye, and the boy who
found il; and the Turtle that saved the
Country from the Flood; and the Stone
Horses that wept tears of blood; and the
city that was swallowed up
She had very strict notions of correct
behavior, and instiled them vigor-
Ously into all of US, Bran NEWMAN includ-
ed Bless her dear old heather heart.
think she would have liked TO make
Buddhsts of all of us, but among her
ideas OF prOpriety was that every people
had its own gods and should keep to them
Sui, she thought it would not hurt us, and
might be highly beneficial, to put us to
sleep 10 the sing-song chant, "Omi-da-
Fob while she told OFF her beads.
1t was here we lived then, in old Kading
most of the time during the summer in