Part 23 (2/2)

Yet within the last few years public markets have sprung into vogue in j.a.pan, and I look toward a revolution in the relations of the s.e.xes, for no woman who goes to market remains long an obedient and submissive little soul. This is obvious to any one who wanders into the market of Shanghai. There one can see the status of the various women who replenish their household supplies and the most humble, it seemed to me, was the woman of j.a.pan. She moved about like _Priscilla_ suddenly brought back to life and sent to compete with the modern American woman.

5

In ancient Greece, of course, no woman of refinement went marketing herself. She sent her slaves. But in modern New Zealand not only are there no slaves, but there is no one to do any personal service of that nature. In the old days, in Europe, the market was the general rendezvous where life played its pranks at all levels. The religious festivals also afforded dramatic pageantry, and sometimes the two interplayed with each other. But in our modern times, when the public market is largely supplanted by the great department store, s.h.i.+elded, protected, organized into a minimum of human interest and a maximum of efficiency, the charm of the market is no more. So, too, our festivals have surrendered much of their artistry. This was somewhat revived during the war. New Zealand, because of the still evident atmosphere of pioneer life, the lack of interlocking systems of communication, and its distance from the most advanced places in the world, still affords some of that simple charm of a life one reads about. The streets of the main cities nightly resemble something one has dimly heard of and never hoped to see. The people have laid aside all thought of business or barter. There is in their att.i.tude something of that suppressed amazement that revealed the thoughts of the South-Sea islanders when asked to thrill to an alien band conducted by the Catholic priest. Both the whites and the primitives seemed to recall that once they knew how to celebrate.

Queens Street of Auckland was decorated one day, and booths were erected on which simple products were offered for sale. A parade of two fire-department machines, a number of men in Chinese costumes, others painted and foolscapped, boys with enormous masks, and girls in dominoes, marched through the city, and in their wake was a rush of just plain pedestrians. Other than that nothing happened. From five to ten thousand people jammed the street. The crowd was essentially like every other crowd in the world,--the same in gregariousness, the same in hunting after pleasure that abideth but a moment.

One evening the events were more thrilling. Sulky races, men driven by girls, and May-pole dances round the street lamps that stand between the tram-lines gave a suggestion of antiquity to the city. The only difference between these performances and those in the upper regions of the tropics was in the absence of palms and green arbors. In place of wide s.p.a.ces were narrow streets, lined with brick buildings and studded with iron poles whose only blossoms were glowing electric lights, and whose only branches were pairs of stiff arms holding the trolley wires.

So, too, the market side of this carnival was a sharp contrast to the fairs and markets in more modernized communities. Britons are essentially traders, but they trade by rule. Even when they play trading, as at this carnival, they are more constrained. What little was done to allay the sober spirit was revived by the element of barter. The gambling spirit, checked in normal times, was stimulated. Raffles, wheels, and rings were employed to extract coins from the under-zealous.

The only abandon was in the confetti, which was scattered generously about in the throngs.

In the booths conservation was the key-note. Everything, from motor-cars to potatoes, was auctioned and raffled. A man from Coney Island, accustomed to that hysterical release of emotion, would have felt that he was attending not a carnival, but an open market in which only the basic necessities of life were in demand.

Not so in Napier, New Zealand, or in Sydney, Australia. There they seem as different from their British ancestry as Hottentots are from Polynesians. There men and women know how to make merry in ways almost unforgettable, and to ripple the smooth surface of sedate civilization with lovely flirtations that would weaken the most stoic of mortals and paragons of propriety.

Otherwise, in all New Zealand, life goes along in its leisurely, businesslike way. Men attend horse-sales with great zest; salesmen rush across the country in their little motor-cars, bringing the wares of the world's elaborate markets to the doors of stations or ranches; auctioneers dash hither and thither to confuse, if they can, farmers into the exchange of sheep or cattle.

While tramping along the road to Wellington, I was overtaken by a touring-car.

”Want a ride?” asked the driver. And when I mounted, he asked: ”Seeing our little country, are you? Nothing like it in the world. Ever been to a sheep auction? Want to come along?” And the next thing I knew we were rus.h.i.+ng over the dirt road toward Onga Onga. We drew up at the accommodation house with a sudden jolt.

The guest-room was filled with farmers. Sallow, hollow-cheeked, with voices that seemed to plow through their brains for thoughts, their conversation was labored. Dinner was devoured in semi-silence.

But when they got to the stockyards, they became more alert. The auctioneer mounted the fence like an orator. He began cackling like a bewitched hen. The farmers moved about, feeling sheep offered for sale, the more expert glancing at them with pride in judgment. One sleek farmer, whose elaborate motor-car stood by the roadside, scrutinized the yards as one who might buy the entire lot as a whim.

The psychology of the auction-sale crowd is distinct from that of the bargain-hunter. The latter believes himself to be the winner because of the confessed misjudgment of the trader. But the auction-buyer moves about quietly, makes his own judgments of values, exchanges opinions only with his a.s.sociates, and waits his chances. At a bargain-counter every one rushes for the thing he wants; here the very thing most wanted is ignored, as though to lead other hunters off the scent. As soon as the sale was over, men fell apart, like boiling rice in a pot when suddenly douched with cold water.

So far has civilized man made certain the processes by which he secures the satisfaction of his wants that one begins to wonder why men like to buy and sell at all. They are like the artisans and the mechanists who have become specialized and divorced from contact with the living, finished product. So much so is this true that much of New Zealand's real marketing is done in London. Once the manager of a station wired his London princ.i.p.als:

SNOWING DURING LAMBING

The princ.i.p.als, according to New Zealand's version, replied:

STOP LAMBING AT ONCE

6

Wander where one may this wide world over, one finds that the places to which tourists are drawn mostly are the markets. There one finds the richest reward for curiosity. The traveler in foreign lands, especially if he is alone and somewhat homesick, knows no pleasanter thrill than the sight upon the pier, amid cargoes from every known quarter of the globe, of a box of canned goods stamped in black-stenciled letters with the seven signs of bliss, ”NEW YORK.”

When lost in that good old town, it had never occurred to him that s.h.i.+ps trail the seven seas carrying canned soups and fruits and vegetables to black-faced, sprawling-toed savages. But out there in the wide s.p.a.ces of the globe he realizes how strikingly alike are the alimentary failings of mankind. Lost in reminiscences, when on Broadway again, he thinks himself forever cut off from romance, until he happens to turn into a side street, a public market, or even a small chain-store grocery. There he finds that in a way romance is not dead. The sedate housewife permits herself on occasion to flirt with the butcher or the baker; incidents the on-looker has not thought possible prevail here as well as in the markets of the Orient. And packages with the imprint of j.a.pan, of China, coffee from South America, awaken in him memories irresistible. He goes away wis.h.i.+ng he were again off there where New York seems like romance to him. The day will never come when silks and spices and marts will not conjure up in the minds of the most prosaic the very essence of romance.

BOOK THREE

DISCUSSION OF THE POLITICAL PROBLEMS INVOLVING AUSTRALASIA, ASIA AND AMERICA

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