not such friends as he needed
in his life. However, there were few alternatives. There was almost
nothing else for it. Companionship of this kind, or the absolute
loneliness of a hotel bedroom were the alternatives which confronted
him. He had very little money,--just a modest salary--therefore the
excitement of trading, of big, shady deals, said nothing to him. He
went to the races, a shy onlooker. He could not afford to risk his
little salary in betting. Above all things, he was cautious.
Consequently life did not offer him much outside of office hours, and
in office hours it offered him nothing at all. You will see from this
that he was a very limited person, incapable of expansion. Now as a
rule, life in the Far East does not have this effect upon young men.
It is generally stimulating and exciting, even to the most
unimaginative, while the novelty of it, the utter freedom and lack of
restraint and absence of conventional public opinion is such that
usually, within a very short time, one becomes unfitted to return to a
more formal society. In the old days of a generation ago, life on the
China Coast was probably much more exciting and inciting than it is
to-day, although to-day, in all conscience, the checks are off. But
our young man was rather fine, rather extraordinarily fastidious, and
moreover, he had a very healthy young appetite for the normal. The
offscourings of the world and of society rolled into Shanghai with the
inflow of each yellow tide of the Yangtzse, and somehow, he resented
that deposit. He resented it, because from that deposit he must pick
out his friends. Therefore instead of accepting the situation, instead
of drinking himself into acquiescence, or drugging himself into
acquiescence, he found himself quite resolved to remain firmly and
consciously outside of it. In consequence of which decision he
remained homesick and lonely, and his presence in the community was
soon forgotten or overlooked. Shy and priggish, he continued to lead
his lonely life. In his solitary walks along the Bund, there was no
one to take his arm and snigger suggestions into his ear, and lead him
into an open doorway where the suggestions could be carried out. He
had come out to the East for a long term of years, and the prospect of
these interminable years made his position worse. Not that it shook
his decision to remain aloof and detached from the call of the
East--his decision was not shaken in the slightest, which seem