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Cousin Peregrine’s Wonder Stories: The Chinese Jugglers, and the Englishman’s Hands

(Founded on Fact.)

Cousin Peregrine had never been away quite so long before. He had been in the East, and the latter part of his absence from home had been spent not only in a foreign country, but in parts of it where Englishmen had seldom been before, and amid the miserable scenes of war.

However, he was at home at last, very much to the satisfaction of his young cousins, and also to his own. They had been assured by him, in a highly illustrated letter, that his arms were safe and sound in his coat-sleeves, that he had no wooden legs, and that they might feel him all over for wounds as hard as they liked. Only Maggie, the eldest, could even fancy she remembered Cousin Peregrine, but they all seemed to know him by his letters, even before he arrived. At last he came.

Cousin Peregrine was dressed like other people, much to the disappointment of his young relatives, who when they burst (with more or less attention to etiquette) into the dining-room with the dessert, were in full expectation of seeing him in his uniform, or at least with his latest medal pinned to his dress-coat.

Perhaps it was because Cousin Peregrine was so very seldom troubled by chubby English children with a claim on his good nature that he was particularly indulgent to his young cousins. However this may be, they soon stood in no awe of him, and a chorus cried around him–

“Where’s your new medal, Cousin? What’s it about? What’s on it?”

“Taku Forts,” said Cousin Peregrine, smiling grimly.

“What’s Tar–Koo?” inquired the young people.

“Taku is the name of a place in China, and you know I’ve just come from China,” said Cousin Peregrine.

On which six voices cried–

“Did you drink nothing but tea?”

“Did you buy lots of old China dragons?”

“Did you see any ladies with half their feet cut off?”

“Did you live in a house with bells hanging from the roof?”

“Are the Chinese like the people on Mamma’s fan?”

“Did you wear a pigtail?”

Cousin Peregrine’s hair was so very short that the last question raised a roar of laughter, after which the chorus spoke with one voice–

“Do tell us all about China!”

At which he put on a serio-comic countenance, and answered with much gravity–

“Oh, certainly, with all my heart. It will be rather a long story, but never mind. By the way, I am afraid I can hardly begin much before the birth of Confucius, but as that happened in or about the year 550 B.C., you will still have to hear about two thousand four hundred years of its history or so, which will keep us going for a few months”.

“Confucius–whose real name was Kwang-Foo-Tsz (and if you can pronounce that last word properly you can do more than many eminent Chinese scholars can)–was born in the province of Kan Tang —-.

“Oh, not about Confuse-us!” pleaded a little maid on Cousin Peregrine’s knee. “Tell us what you did.”

“But tell us wonderful things,” stipulated a young gentleman, fresh from The Boy Hunters and kindred works.

If young bachelors have a weak point when they are kind to children, it is that they are apt to puzzle them with paradoxes. Even Cousin Peregrine did “sometimes tease,” so his cousins said.

On this occasion he began a long rambling speech, in which he pretended not to know what things are and what are not wonderful. The Boy Hunters young gentleman fell headlong into the quagmire of definitions, but the oldest sister, who had her own ideas about things, said firmly–

“Wonderful things are things which surprise you very much, and which you never saw before, and which you don’t understand. Like as if you saw a lot of giants coming out of a hole in the road. At least that’s what we mean by wonderful.”