ILIZATION 93

V
MISUNDERSTANDING 121

VI
PRISONERS 141

VII
CANTERBURY CHIMES 177

VIII
UNDER A WINEGLASS 217

IX
CHOLERA 235

X
COSMIC JUSTICE 247

THE YELLOW STREAK

I

THE YELLOW STREAK

He came out to Shanghai a generation ago, in those days when Shanghai
was not as respectable as it is now--whatever that says to you. It
was, of course, a great change from Home, and its crude pleasures and
crude companions gave him somewhat of a shock. For he was of decent
stock, with a certain sense of the fitness of things, and the
beach-combers, adventurers, rough traders and general riff-raff of the
China Coast, gathered in Shanghai, did not offer him the society he
desired. He was often obliged to associate with them, however, more or
less, in a business way, for his humble position as minor clerk in a
big corporation entailed certain responsibilities out of hours, and
this responsibility he could not shirk, for fear of losing his
position. Thus, by these acts of civility, more or less enforced, he
was often led into a loose sort of intimacy, into companionship with
people who were distasteful to his rather fastidious nature. But what
can you expect on the China Coast? He was rather an upright sort of
young man, delicate and abstemious, and the East being new to him,
shocked him. He took pleasure in walking along the Bund, marvelling at
the great river full of the ships of the world, marvelling at the
crowds from the four corners of the world who disembarked from these
ships and scattered along the broad and sunny thoroughfare, seeking
amusements of a primitive sort. But in these amusements he took no
part. For himself, a gentleman, they did not attract. Not for long.
The sing-song girls and the "American girls" were coarse, vulgar
creatures and he did not like them. It was no better in the back
streets--bars and saloons, gaming houses and opium divans, all the
coarse paraphernalia of pleasure, as the China Coast understood the
word, left him unmoved. These things had little influence upon him,
and the men who liked them overmuch, who chaffed him because of his
squeamishness and distaste of them, were