The boy travellers in the Far East : adventures of two youths ... - Library

MELON-SEEDS AND TEA. 323
when I told the guide to ask the man to show his goods, tliey had a long
talk in Chinese, and the gnide said that the man refused to show anything
unless we should agree to buy. Of course we would not agree to this, and
we did nothing more than to ask the price of sometliing we could see in a
show-case. He wanted about ten times tlie value of the article ; and tlien
we saw why it was he wanted ns to agree beforehand to buy what we
looked at. Every time we stopped at a shop the people gathered around
lis, and they were not half so polite as the Japanese under the same cir-
cumstances. They made remarks about us, which of course we did not
understand ;
but from the way thej' laughed when the remarks were made,
we could see that they were the reverse of comjjlimentary.
" We went along the street, stopping now and then to look at some-
thing, and in a little M'hile we came to a tea-house which stood in the
middle of a pond of water. The house was rather pretty, and the balco-
nies around it were nice, but you should have seen the water. It was cov-
ered with a green scum, such as you may see on a stagnant pool anywhere
in the world, and the odor from it was anything but sweet. Fred said it
was the same water that was let into the pool when they first made it.
The guide says the house is a liundred years old, and I should think the
water was quite as old as the house ; or perhaps it is some second-hand
water that they bought cheap, and if so it may be very ancient. We went
into the house and sat down to take some tea. They gave us some tea-
leaves, on which they poured liot water, and then covered the cup over for
a minute or two. Each of us had his portion of tea separate from all the
others. The tea was stee^^ed in the cup, and when we wanted more M'e
poured hot water on again. Then they brought little cakes and melon-
seeds, wnth salt to eat with the seeds. Our guide took some of the seeds,
and we ate one or two each to see how they tasted. I can't recommend
them, and don't think there is any danger they will ever be introduced
into the United States as a regular article of diet.
" When we rose to go, and asked how much we owed, we were aston-
ished at the price. The proprietor demanded a dollar for what we had
had, when, as we afterwards learned, twenty-five cents would have been
more than enough. We had some words with him through our interpre-
ter, and finally paid the bill wliich we had found so outrageous. We told
him we should not come there again ;
and he said he did not expect us to,
as strangers rarely came more tlian once into the Chinese part of Shanghai.
He M-as a nice specimen of a Chinese rascal ; and Doctor Bronson says he
must have taken lessons of some of the American swindlers at Niagara
Falls and other popular resorts. What a pity it is that whenever yon find