There would not be enough
for everybody. And so we do not count by days and hours, but always by
moons and watches."
"Which is more poetical than practical," I remark.
"Practical, Mr. Reporter? You Westerners are never without that word in
your mouth. To be practical is to be the slave of time, work, money,
business, the world, everybody else, and one's self included. I confess
that during my stay in Europe--you can ask Doctor Tio-King--I have not
been very practical, and now I return to Asia I shall be less so. I
shall let myself live, that is all, as the cloud floats in the breeze,
the straw on the stream, as the thought is borne away by the
imagination."
"I see," said I, "we must take China as it is."
"And as it will probably always be, Monsieur Bombarnac. Ah! if you knew
how easy the life is--an adorable _dolce far niente_ between folding
screens in the quietude of the yamens. The cares of business trouble us
little; the cares of politics trouble us less. Think! Since Fou Hi, the
first emperor in 2950, a contemporary of Noah, we are in the
twenty-third dynasty. Now it is Manchoo; what it is to be next what
matters? Either we have a government or we have not; and which of its
sons Heaven has chosen for the happiness of four hundred million
subjects we hardly know, and we hardly care to know.
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