Page:Tom Beauling (1901).pdf/98

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functions of their various callings between nine o'clock of one morning and eleven-thirty of the same. The week went on with a night trip through darkest Canton, where a million people live in boats in a river, and push into the water between them the people they do not like. There were rickshaw and horseback rides in the moonlight. A dinner for the Chamber of Commerce, at which the English merchants opened their mouths to talk and said nothing, and Chinese merchants opened their mouths to eat and spoke volumes. It was a whirl of a week, out of which incidents stood only by recollection. Wareing remembered shops where the sunlight struck on old bronze; dark alleys that closed suddenly with gates of yellow, grim faces; temples full of bestialized devils, and little children who embroidered like angels. But what stood forever vividest in Wareing's mind was the recollection of a gentle, towering man, with a big, sweet mouth, who went through it all at his side—a man who laughed