That Heathen Chinee by Clara Marshall

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 23, 1883

That Heathen Chinee.

By Clara Marshall

MY DEAR NELLIE: "Alice Raymond, the new girl, is as nice as she can be, and so free from vanity of any kind that I tell her she really does not think enough of herself."

I quote this from your last letter; and now, to show you I am a prophet, I shall quote from one written, say a month hence:—

"Alice Raymond is the most tiresome girl in the world! Always angling for compliments, and vexed if she doesn't get them."

You have read, I have no doubt, that it is considered the correct thing in China to continually disparage one's self and one's surroundings. The elite of that country always speak of their mansions as "miserable hovels," their wives as "the wretched creatures in the inner apartments," etc.; but we outside barbarians soon become excessively tired of this "pride that apes humility," and that is the reason why my school-mates and I lost all patience with Hattie Morant, and some of us, when particularly annoyed with her counterfeit humility, dubbed her "that heathen Chinee."

"Why do you call her so?" asked a new girl of Mollie Archer, on hearing this epithet applied to her for the first time. "Her feet are not so wonderfully small."

"No, her feet are not Chinese, but her manners are," returned Mollie. "She is always running herself down, and there is only one way to stop her."

"What way is that?" asked the new girl.

"By agreeing with her," was the reply.

This seemed like a very harsh censure, but to be convinced of the truth of the assertion one had only to bring Hattie Morant and Nannie Burt together. Poor Nannie, who always imagined that her companions meant what they said, and who herself had a perfect gift for saying, in the most innocent way in the world, the very thing she ought not to say, never comforted persons in their humility, whether that humility were genuine or feigned. For instance:—

"I wish, Nannie," said Hattie Morant one day, "that I had your brilliant color instead of my pasty complexion."

"You are dreadfully sallow, that's a fact," returned Nannie. "But then I suppose you are not so sickly as you look."

Hattie, who had possibly expected to receive some such soothing reply as "Don't envy me my red face—lilies are prettier than peonies," was somewhat taken aback by this rejoinder, and soon afterwards rather pointedly remarked, "My face may be pale, but, thank heaven, it isn't always covered with pimples."

Nannie, although she had two tiny pimples on her chin, was quite unconscious of this retort, and good naturedly observed:—

"I had a room-mate last year that looked like a ghost. She was almost as pale as you are, and the doctor gave her some preparation of arsenic, which did her ever so much good. If you would take something of the kind I am sure you wouldn't look so cadaverous as you do now."

"That Nannie Burt is the greatest idiot I ever saw in my life," exclaimed Miss Morant as soon as Nannie had left the room; "and quite as ill-bred as she is idiotic," added she, further exasperated by the smiles of those around her.

"So you didn't find her remarks agreeable, although she agreed with what you yourself said about your pasty complexion," observed Mollie Archer. "It is dreadfully difficult to please some people."

On another occasion Hattie remarked in Nannie's hearing:—

"I may as well give up music; I haven't ear enough for it."

As she played rather well, she probably expected a shower of complimentary protestations from her companions; but if such were the case she was disappointed. The other girls kept quiet, and let Nannie take the floor.

"Oh, I should persevere if I were you," remarked that young lady encouragingly. "You can make up for your want of ear by paying more attention to your notes."

"I have as good an ear for music as any girl in this school," exclaimed Hattie, provoked, for once, into frankness.

"Well, then," asked Nannie in amazement, "why did you give us to understand that you hadn't?"

"Because she hoped to hook a real big compliment," replied Mollie Archer, for Hattie, instead of answering, flounced out of the room.

"I don't believe I have mind enough for mathematics," said Hattie, as she was coming out of Mrs. Southgate's class-room the next day. She made this remark to some of her class-mates who had been inclined to praise her for her quickness at figures, but now, instead of paying her any additional compliment, they kept quiet, for they saw that Nannie Burt was standing by, and they waited, with expectant smiles, to hear what she had to say on the subject.

"Poor child," observed Nannie kindly, "if you would bring your arithmetic to me some time, perhaps I could help you out of your difficulties. I always get a good mark on arithmetic."

"Thank you very much indeed, Miss Burt," returned Hattie scornfully, "but it would be something new under the sun for a girl in the first class in arithmetic to go for help to one in the second class."

"In the first class," exclaimed Nannie, "I thought from the way you talked that you were with the little girls in the third class."

"It doesn't matter in the least to me what you thought," said Hattie as she walked away with her chin in the air.

"Hattie Morant reminds me of one of papa's patients," observed Mollie Archer. "She was an old woman who lived among the sand-hills, in a little one-room log cabin that she prided herself on keeping in apple-pie order. She was taken sick one day and sent for papa, who lost no time in going to see her. 'Come in, doctor,' said she, when she caught sight of him at the door; 'come in, if you can get in for the dirt.'"

"'I don't know that I can madam,' replied he, 'but I'll try.'"

"So he went on taking long strides and tiptoeing, at the same time assuming such a disgusted expression of countenance that the old woman flew into a rage and ordered him to 'get out,' saying she could cure herself with yarb teas, and she 'never did believe he was no great shakes of a doctor, no way.' I remember mamma's saying afterwards, when they were speaking of this case, that it was quite as ill-bred to disparage as to praise one's self; and I am sure, according to my experience, it is ever so much more tiresome to those who have to listen, because when people praise themselves you can give them credit for telling what they believe to be true, while, in the other case, one cannot help having one's doubts." —Clara Marshall, in Christian at Work.