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Show THE MANCHUS. Peculiarities of the Hace That Has Long Governed China. The Manchus, as a body, really do not care two straws about Confucius, though it is part of their policy to make a great fuss, just as Napoleon found it paid best to humor the popes. Of course, I am speaking of the genuine gen-uine typical Manchus, who are fast dying dy-ing out and become petticoated prigs of Chinamen, but without a Chinaman's China-man's suppleness and brains. The true Manchu has an honest contempt for "writing fellows;" he has long since forgotten his own language, and now speaks a rough, energetic, bastard Chinese, Chi-nese, called Pekingese, with a good, honest country burr. It bears much the same relation to "literary Chinese" Chi-nese" that Hindustani does to Sanskrit; Sans-krit; or, better still, that the Viennese dialect does to German. The emperor emper-or of China on formal occasions, descanting de-scanting on funerals, Confucius, filial piety, and so on, is like E. J. Dillon's French president, descanting on "right civilization and justice." The real human Manchu emperor making broad jokes in the coarse Peking brogue, cracking melon seeds and puffing at his water pipe withal, may be compared com-pared with his majesty, the Emperor Francis Joseph with a feather in his billycock and a pot of Pilsener beer before him, smoking a long, coarse, Italian Avana da quindici with a straw run through it, and exchanging repartees re-partees with his private cronies in piquant Viennese. The Manchus like sport, good living and fresh air; they neither care nor profess to care one little bit about the Chinese empire, except in so far as it is a big elastic sponge out of which can he squeezed at suitable intervals a rich nutriment. The one exception is, or was, the emperor, em-peror, who during the first f jtir reigns took a keen pleasure, as well as a pride, in running the vast machine as economically and as uprightly as possible, pos-sible, and even now there is a considerable consid-erable quantity of good manly leaven in Manchu mankind, just as there is in any other mankind, and it is thi' minority of good men which keeps things going, not to speak of the leaven leav-en of good in the Chinese or Confucian Confu-cian element, which combines with the excellence on the Manchu side, even as in the United States the under stratum of solid worth in party life keeps things sufficiently afloat in the Serbonian bogs of populism and Tammany Tam-many hall. Gentlemen's Magazine |