THE KING’S BUSINESS
441
was no sound but the groans of the sufferer and the patter of the rain on the room. As I lookjed about the room now, I saw the family, and no longer the furnishings. Standing near the doctor as he worked were three younger brothers of the one in pain. All were grown men but still living in their childhood home. The oldest of the three was the spokesman and in case his brother died he would become the head of the house. All three of them at first watched the doc tor with suspicion, but as they saw his sympathetic face and heard his occa sional quiet word of assurance, the suspicion vanished from their faces. Sitting upon the bed holding the sick man’s head on her knee was his wife, tender, and showing a remarkable de gree of cool common sense as she now and then spoke to hef husband, telling him not to fear, for the doctor could help him. This reminds us that if the man suffered terribly from pain, he suffered still more from the horri ble haunting superstitions that filled his thoughts as he lay there. This woman, his wife, undoubtedly shared his fears, but was bravely trying to quiet them. Now and then she would have to reach behind her to pat her tiny baby that was strapped to her back and covered with the cloth sling that held it. Further in the shadows beyond the foot o f the bed stood the old mother and grandmother of the household. In her eyes there was a different look, suspicion and even hatred of those foreign' devils whose coming to the house she had doubtless tried to prevent. Her mind, bound and fettered by fears of evil spirits and steeped in superstition which she had breathed from her infancy, could not believe that the foreigner was not a devil, worse indeed than the thunder devil. Her hope for her son’s recovery rested solely in the incense burning at the little family shrine by the door,
but of a man who would correspond to the working man in America. I do not know but I judge the head of the house had been a member of the car penters’ or masons’ guild. The floor was of dirt, the walls of the house were of one thickness of board un finished. It would be considered a very cold arid ramshackle barn in America. There was a ladder leading to a loft where I did not go but where we can safely say at least 4 or 5 of the household slept. This loft cov ered only half of the entire floor space, leaving the front part of the room hign with the roof for a ceiling. There were no chairs such as we have, only a few stools made of bamboo made in a style used by the Chinese for cen turies. There were two plain tables that served as dining tables and catch alls for pipes, books and junk of all kinds. There were three large beds in this room, where at least five of the family slept. The beds, of course, are plain boards covered with a piece of matting. All this interior was visible by the dim light of two small peanut-oil lamps. As we went in, the whole household rose and came to meet us, with the exception only of the stricken man and the two sleeping children. There were the customary polite sal utations consisting chiefly of grunts which one soon learns to understand and to answer with similar grunts throwing in one of his few new words with more or less discretion. Then the family resumed their positions about the sick man, the doctor sat down at one of the tables after exam ining the man who was moaning with pain and fear. The doctor’s helper was tending his alcohol lamp while the doctor prepared his hypodermic needle and I stood near by although I had been urged to sit down, pre ferring to stand rather than lose any of this picture. For some time there
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