JOHN CHINAMAN'S WHEELBARROW
Allen, George Hoyt
John Chinaman's Wheelbarrow By GEORGE HOYT ALLEN (Copyrighted 1910, The Robert M. La Follette Co.) AS YOU near the China coast the mighty Yangtsze mingles its waters with the sea and for...
...On each junk, large or small, at each side of its yawning, mouth-shaped bow, is a large bulging eye...
...Certainly...
...It isn't a buggy, nor a wagon, nor a gig, nor a chaise, nor a truck, nor an automobile, nor a bicycle...
...They resigned...
...I had it boxed and shipped home...
...Not because I have a snobbish disposition and would say to one of goodly raiment and fair fame, "Sit thou here on my front porch while I have brought forth and show to thee, in motion, my Shanghai wheelbarrow," and to another of shabby clothes and lowly walk, "Co thou in to my parlor and look at and play with my rare satsuma"—I hope I am not that kind of a man...
...Add 35 per cent, ad valorem duty on its original cost of three dollars and the ready one at figures will at once gather that it cost me $29.05 landed at Clinton...
...1 used to sit on my front porch among my guests and give orders for the Shanghai wheelbarrow to be wheeled out from the barn onto the driveway for exhibition...
...A Strange and Fearsome Thing IT IS worth the money...
...only wheel out the empty barrow, push it around, and wheel it back into the barn...
...Not on your life...
...I didn't ask them to put so much as an empty basket on it...
...There is something funny about a normal wheelbarrow when you stop to analyze it...
...I had a disappointment for a few minutes after landing...
...NOW a Shanghai wheelbarrow's wheel reaches up heavenward...
...Its handles extend east and west and stretch away to the south...
...Just above Woo Seung, the Wong Poo enters the Yangtsze, and twenty miles up the Wong Poo is Shanghai...
...The Shanghai wheelbarrow with its chauffeur is the most ambitious thing that ever rolled or walked...
...He was said to be ambitious...
...But if the owner of all these goods and chattels had suggested it, the Chinaman would have said, "Maskee, all same same, put her on...
...I had set my heart—I didn't know how much till 1 got there—on seeing monster Shanghai roosters, a few at least on every street...
...The box cost me ten dollars, the freight fifteen...
...These boys were ambitious only in a way when you know the Chink with his Shanghai wheelbarrow...
...Any one who comes to my house is privileged to look at the curious things I have gathered from the ends of the earth...
...If the Czar of Russia and the Kaiser Wilhelm and King George get off their thrones and journey over seas to come to my humble home to see my Shanghai wheelbarrow I'll take a chance on losing the excellent man (Mr...
...NOW the Shanghai wheelbarrow is not a normal wheelbarrow, not by any means...
...No have eye, how can see...
...I only ask that they be kept in their class and not mentioned in connection with the Shanghai wheelbarrow and the Chinese boy who runs it...
...The thing that made me forget my bitter disappointment and turned the winter of my discontent into a rollicking summer of riotous mirth was the Shanghai wheelbarrows with their loads of passengers and loads of merchandise...
...And Xerxes and Hannibal, and Alexander and Napoleon...
...It cost me only three gold dollars...
...Alas...
...The one in particular that turned my mourning into laughter had on it a bed spring, a kitchen stove, a parlor suite, a bale of hay, a refrigerator, a parrot in a cage, a roll of carpet, four large dry goods boxes full of things, three bags full of more things, a feather bed, a barrel of crockery, a tun of wine, a keg of beer, a pitch fork, a garden rake, a coil of hose, a saw buck, a buck saw, a box of kindling wood, a rolling pin, a kitchen table, a side board, ten dining chairs, a chinese gong, a sewing machine, some barbed wive, a cradle, a—no, I will not tell a lie, there was not a piano on that load,—and a brave, noble, courageous, dauntless, enduring, patient, valiant, ambitious chink was pushing it along...
...He'd reach up and pluck a comet and use its tail for a binder...
...I've made some foolish investments in my time, but never for a moment have I felt that way about my Shanghai wheelbarrow...
...I lost Michael and Patrick and Timothy and John and Matthew and Peter,—good fellows, too...
...But I have to handle it with discretion...
...But any one of lesser fame will have to go out to the barn with me where we will look it over and discuss its points...
...I hoped and expected to find Shanghai roosters in Shanghai that could stand on the ground and eat corn off a three-story building...
...But the most delicate of all problems, the labor problem, has to be dealt with...
...I find no fault with speaking of Alexander and those other boys of alleged aspirations as being ambitious...
...Now there was Caesar...
...No, I will not tell a lie,—there was not a piano on that load...
...I fear I am too effervescent, too volatile...
...The Shanghai wheelbarrow did it...
...The prominent eyes give the junk the appearance of a huge, outlandish fish with open mouth, Ask the Chinaman why he puts eyes on his ship and you discover that he possesses a trait usually ascribed only to Scotchmen or Yankees...
...We move on and stop asking foolish questions...
...Of course...
...No Roosters in Shanghai...
...Owing to the elevation of the wheel and the spraddle and length of its handles, it required a box as big as the smoke house, where we used to cure hams back on the farm...
...And They Said Caesar Was Ambitious...
...The sail up the Wong Poo, on the company's tender, through a low, level country, is of no especial interest, aside from its river life...
...I was so impressed with the Shanghai wheelbarrow that I immediately, forthwith, straightway, at once, went out and purchased one...
...Only to personages of the greatest distinction will I exhibit that in the manner of the first class as hereinafter described...
...But the Wheelbarrows...
...Just called out to the man to go and get it and then went back to my guests...
...1CAME first to Shanghai eleven years ago...
...I hadn't been in Shanghai ten minutes before I forgot my disappointment and giggled—think of a full-grown man giggling!—and that too when he should have been mourning over the freshly slaughtered corpse of a childhood's dream...
...That ought to settle any inquisitive Yankee seeking information...
...no can see, how can savvey...
...I not only saw no roosters of that kind running around Shanghai: I saw no roosters of any kind and I was bitterly disappointed...
...It hasn't a relative on earth in the vehicle world, and when one man wheels another down the street on a wheelbarrow, the object of the performance being to pay an election bet, it's a question with the spectators which one the joke is on—the fellow who is pushing the barrow or the one who is getting the ride...
...AS YOU near the China coast the mighty Yangtsze mingles its waters with the sea and for twenty-five miles out turns the ocean to a xanthic hue...
...McCabe) whose services I now enjoy by having it wheeled out while I stand by and explain the thing in motion...
...It has wings but no sides—that is no sides that were made with hands...
...I'll knock off digging potatoes or mowing hay at any time—and glad of the excuse—to show and explain them to anyone—all but that Shanghai wheelbarrow...
...If one of these latter really set out to put on a load after he had piled on to his wheelbarrow everything there is— after everything on earth that's loose, together with everything that's spiked down, was all loaded on to his barrow—do you think he would sit down and cry because there were no more worlds to conquer...
...Small steamers and Chinese junks enliven the scene...
...He answer your question by asking one...
...At fhe mouth of the Yangtsze is Woo Seung, where ships of heavy draught for Shanghai anchor...
...Why surely...
...If a wheelbarrow were not such a distinctive thing,—so indelibly, unalterably, and inalienably a wheelbarrow,—the Shanghai wheelbarrow would not be a wheelbarrow at all...
...it would be something else...
...The only sides recognized by this ambitious combination of wheelbarrow and Chink, when loading, are the boundless west on the left and the limitless east on the right...
...I had seen Shanghai roosters at home that could stand on the ground and eat corn off the top of a barrel...
...I fear I haven't a deep nature...
...Often, when things pile up and life looks hard to me, I go out to the barn, alone, and look at my Shanghai wheelbarrow and think of the wheelbarrow chauffeurs over in Shanghai and I'm ashamed of even thinking of discouragement and I am strengthened and edified and built up...
Vol. 2 • September 1910 • No. 38
