The moon had appeared in all her full-orbed glory, although it was early twilight, and the professor looked at me so earnestly while quoting those words that I actually believe I blushed.
"'There yet is man-- Man, the divinest of all things, whose heart Hath known the shipwreck of a thousand hopes, Who bears a hundred wrinkled tragedies Upon the parchment of his brow.'
"Ou-Yang Hein penned those lines," he added, raising his hat in adieu. But before we parted I made him promise to write out for me the Chinese verses he had quoted; and it is his beautifully written lines I have copied. I am going to learn them off by heart. How I would love to recite them at one of Aunt Gwendolin's "Drawing-rooms!"
The professor had gone but a few paces when he returned to inquire what hospital poor Lee Yet was in, saying that he would go around and see how he was faring.
"This is such a very selfish world," he added, as if half to himself, "I sometimes fear those poor foreigners that come to our shores get woefully treated."
That was lovely of him! After all, men are brothers under their skin. That was what their great man, Christ, taught--that all men are brothers; he did not except the Chinese, as some Americans want to do.
Almost as soon as Mrs. Yet was pronounced well, and was allowed to go among people again and before Mr. Yet had left the hospital, Baby Yet fell seriously ill--his teeth.
He grew worse, and worse. Yick told me about it one day in a few concise Chinese words, which he snatched an opportunity to drop to me in passing through the dining room. The wily Celestial seems to understand, without being told, that no one is to know that he and I can exchange thoughts in our native tongue.
That afternoon I stole out again, and went down to the little Yet home. It was just as Yick had said, the baby was very ill.
He lay on his little pallet, white and still, almost unconscious, and his mother stood over him wringing her hands, and shedding bitter tears.
"Oh, my baby! My baby! He die and leave me! My heart break!" she cried in Chinese when she saw me. "Precious treasure! Precious treasure!" she continued, bending toward the almost inanimate form on the pallet.
The latter is the almost universal term of endearment in China, and no American mother ever agonised more bitterly than did that Chinese mother over that atom of herself lying before her.