Part 11 (1/2)
He paused and blew smoke. Maya Dala and Irish were gone. I asked, ”Are you learning Burmese off Maya Dala?” and he nodded.
”Now,” I says, ”what I don't see is this temple business. Where was the profit? Don't temples belong to the priests?”
”Seems not always,” he says. ”They're a kind of monks, anyway. It's where old Lo Tsin Shan was original to begin with and mysterious afterward. Suppose a Siamese prince brings a pound of gold leaf to gild things with, and some Ceylon pilgrims leave a few dozen little bronze images with a ruby in each eye. They've 'acquired merit,' so they say.
It goes to their credit on some celestial record. Their next existence will be the better to that extent anyway, now. Suppose the temple's gilded all over, and lumber rooms packed to the roof with bronze images already. Do they care what becomes of these things? Don't seem to. Why should they? They're credited on one ledger. You credit the same to the business on another. Economic, ain't it? That was the old man's perception, to begin with. But afterwards,--maybe his joss house got to be a hobby with him. Oh, I don't know! Nor I don't care. Fu Shan says it's good property. What he says is generally so. Profits! I don't care about profits. What good would they do me? I'm going to run that temple if it ain't too monotonous.”
That was the limit of Sadler's knowledge of this thing. Maya Dala remembered the Shway Dagohn, but as to the other paG.o.das and monasteries,--there were many--he didn't know--he thought they belonged to the monks, or to the caretakers, or to no one at all, or maybe the government. What became of the offerings? He thought they were kept in the paG.o.das. Sometimes they were sold? It might be so. He thought it made no difference, for it was taught in the monastery schools, that the ”Giver acquires merit only by his action and the spirit of his giving, wherefore are the merits of the poor and rich equal.” Why should they care what became of their gifts? From Maya Dala's talk one seemed to catch a glimpse of the idea, which occurred to old Lo Tsin Shan, that fishy Oriental, one day forty years before, and sent him up the river to interview King Tharawady on his gold-lacquer and mosaic throne. Yet he had let the profits lie there, if there were any, maybe thinking all along of the handsome tomb he was putting up for himself, when his time came. You couldn't guess all his Mongolian thoughts, nor those of his son, Fu Shan, of whom Sadler asked medicine for a dyspeptic soul. Fu Shan said, ”Go lun joss house by Langoon.” Sadler didn't seem to care about the business part of it either, though it looked interesting. He only wanted the medicine.
Days and nights we talked it over, and got no further than that, and drew nearer the East. The East is a muddy sea with no bottom, and it swallows a man like a fog bank swallows a s.h.i.+p.
Sadler made some verses that he called his ”Prayer;”--”Sadler's prayer,”
and he told me them one wet day, when a half gale was blowing, and he sat smoking with his feet hitched over the rail. He appeared to be trying to get a bead on infinity across the point of his shoe. It ran this way, beginning, ”Lord G.o.d that o'erulest”:
”Lord G.o.d that o'er-rulest The waters, and coolest The face of the foolish With the touch of thy death, I, Sadler, a Yankee, Lean, leathery, lanky, Red-livered and cranky, And weary of breath,
”That hain't no theology But a sort of doxology, Here's my apology, Maker of me, Here where I'm sittin', Smooth as a kitten, Smokin' and spittin'
Into the sea.
”The storm winds come sweepin', Come widowed and weepin', Come rippin' and reapin', The wheat of the loam, And some says, it's sport, boys, It's timbrels and hautboys, And some is the sort, boys, That's sorry he come.
”Lord G.o.d of the motions Of lumberin' oceans, There's some of your notions Is handsome and free, But what in the brewin'
And sizzlin,' and stewin'
Did you think you was doin'
The time you done me?
”Evil and good Did ye squirt in my blood?
I stand where I stood When my runnin' began; And the start and the goal Were the same in my soul, And the d.a.m.nable whole Was ent.i.tled a man.
”Lord G.o.d that o'er-gazest The waste and wet places, The faint foolish faces Turned upward to Thee, Though Thy sight goeth far O'er our rabble and war Yet remember we are The drift of Thy sea.”
Sadler left the _Good Sister_ at Singapore, and disappeared.
He dropped out of sight. Afterward his name went from the letter heads of ”Sadler and Shan.” They read, ”Shan Brothers, Saleratus, Cal. Fu Shan--Lum Shan.”
He was a singular man was Sadler. He held the opinion that this life was an idea that occurred to somebody, who was tired of it and would like to get it off his mind. I took him for one that had got too much conscience, or too much restlessness, one of the two, and between them they gave him dyspepsia of the soul. Sometimes that dyspepsia took him bad, and when he had one of those spells he'd light out into poetry scandalous. Some folks are built that way, some not. J. R. Craney, for instance, he was a romantic man, and gifted according to his own line, and had airy notions ahead of him that he pretty near caught up to; but as to metres, he couldn't tell metres from cord-wood. Yet the first time I saw him again, after leaving him at Corazon, he heaved some at me, but he didn't know it was poetry. It was some years later. I sailed the _Good Sister_ quite a time, and did pretty well by her.
CHAPTER IX.
KING JULIUS.
It was back in San Francisco and several years after, and I was master of the _Good Sister_ still, but not feeling agreeable at the time, because Fu Shan and the agent at 'Frisco kept me sitting around collecting barnacles. They didn't seem to know what they wanted me to do with her. I guess the business of Sadler and Shan didn't prosper well for a while after Sadler left, on account of sportive Caucasians.
I was leaning over the rail one day, looking across the wharf, and I saw J. R. Craney come strolling down with one hand in his pocket and the other pulling a chin beard. He hadn't changed so much, except that he looked older and had a chin beard and wore a long black coat and plush vest. He looked at the _Good Sister_, and he looked at me, and neither of us said anything for a long time, and his business eye was absent-minded and calm, and the blind one pale and dead-looking. Then I says:
”Why don't you get a gla.s.s eye, Craney?” and he says, ”I wished you'd call me J. R. Phipp. What you doing with that there s.h.i.+p?” which was a promising rhyme, but he didn't know he'd done it. I judged his family name had been collecting barnacles, till it wasn't worth cleaning maybe, or maybe he was a fugitive or exile from Corazon, or maybe he'd speculated in matrimony, and was fleeing from hot water, or maybe kettles, or maybe he'd a.s.sa.s.sinated his great aunt's second cousin's husband, which was no business of mine, any of it.
”Look here,” I says, not feeling agreeable. ”Here's my programme. You go up to 22 Market Street, and ask the agent. Then he'll say he don't know.