E-text prepared by Mary Glenn Krause, Martin Pettit,
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
()
from page images generously made available by
Internet Archive
(https://archive.org)
| Note: | Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/yellowpearlstory00tesk |
THE YELLOW
PEARL
A STORY OF THE EAST AND
THE WEST
BY
ADELINE M. TESKEY
Author of "Where the Sugar Maple
Grows," etc.
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
Copyright, 1911,
By George H. Doran Company
THE
YELLOW
PEARL
——
ADELINE
M. TESKEY
THE YELLOW PEARL
March 1st, 1——
Here I am in this strange country about which I have learned in thegeography and history, and about which I heard my father talk. Thedaughter of an American man and a Chinese woman, I suppose I am what iscalled a mongrel. My father was a Commissioner of Customs in China, andliving for years in that country he fell in love with my mother andmarried her—as was natural. Who could help falling in love with mydear, yellow, winsome, little mother? My name is Margaret, called aftermy father's mother; my father said that the word Margaret means a pearl,so he gave me the pet name "Pearl." Dear father!
"It was a monstrous thing for Brother George to marry away there," Ioverheard my Aunt Gwendolin remark a short time after my arrival. "Whycould he not have come back home to his own country and found awife?—And above all to have married a heathen Chinese!"
"Not a heathen," said my grandmother, reproachfully, "she had previouslyembraced the faith of Europeans; so my dear George wrote me from thatfar-away country."
"Oh, they are all heathens in my estimation," cried my Aunt Gwendolin,scornfully; "what faith they embrace does not change the fact that theybelong to the yellow people."
My mother died while I was yet a child, and my father has died and leftme alone in the world within the last year. Grandmother, my father'smother,[Pg 5] when she learned about her son's death, sent at once for me.
"I cannot leave a granddaughter of mine in that country, and among thatheathen, if not barbarous, people," she wrote to the American consul,"and I ask your services