Curious Meals in Curious Places

‘VERY well,’ said my sensible Quaker mother, when I made clear my determination to study medicine, ‘thee may go to the medical school, but first thee must learn to cook well and to care for a home.’ Incidentally, no modern institute of domestic science could have provided a finer teacher than my mother; like many other unsung mothers of the older generation, she not only knew how to prepare delicious and wholesome food, but she gave her family a well-balanced ration, even though she did n’t tabulate the vitamins, proteins, and calories. She gave us other valuable lessons, in resourcefulness, endurance, and selfcontrol, and years later I found her philosophy of getting along with people well expressed in an old Chinese maxim, ‘Be square inside and round outside.’

In the beginning my practice often blended domestic and professional details in amusing ways, as when I had to operate in immigrants’ rooms, where the one cooking utensil served for surgical purposes as well. A knowledge of cooking never came amiss, even when my practice improved and stylish cooks had to be instructed tactfully what to make for patients; sometimes I had to turn to and prepare the things myself. And when, still later, work in the Orient began, I was especially thankful for my home training. In long journeys by chair, boat, litter, or cart, in wild mountain regions, in camps, missions, or hospitals, there was use for every bit of knowledge and experience. My own housekeeping days heightened my interest in the household ways of Oriental women; as a woman doctor I was privileged to go behind the scenes, and sometimes to partake of hospitality in an intimate way. I learned also to take meals as they came, to make the best of it when they did n’t come, and to eat strange things in strange surroundings.

I

In China the New Year is a time for ceremonious observance as well as feasting. The kitchen god must be well smeared with a sticky confection known as New Year taffy, to sweeten his temper, so that when he goes up in flames immediately after the treat he may report kindly of the family to the God of Heaven. The new kitchen god is not set up for some days, and with neither old nor new on duty there is an opportunity to do many gay, reckless things which the gods might not approve, but which they can never know! I have attended New Year celebrations which were festive, but one New Year in western Shantung, northern China, was more like a fast than a feast. The doctor at the mission had decided that she must take the holiday time to go to Tientsin for some dental work. As I was due there for an operation, we planned to take the two-day trip by mule cart together to the railroad, in spite of the Chinese proverb, ‘Never travel in the first month of the New Year.’ In view of this journey we had had to decline an invitation to a feast given by the wife of the mandarin of the district, whose baby I had been taken to see. Before we left she sent bearers with holiday food — literally a movable feast — and her regrets that we could not stay to eat at her home. There were many good things, chicken and meats served in various styles, fruits and sweets. We ate some of these, and I packed some to take with us to vary our roadside meals. This proved to be a fortunate inspiration.

’Little parcels’ for us to carry and deliver began to arrive the night before we started, for all through China, as a matter of course, travelers are friendly about carrying things to people along the route. We decided to take a ’big cart’ so that we might ride together and talk on the journey, in spite of the fact that big carts have very inadequate bamboo mats as covering, and are open at the front and back and practically open at the sides. When I saw the cart I wondered where the passengers were to be stored, for our ’little parcels’ included about a hundred pounds of meat, packages of money, a hamper of lamp chimneys to be exchanged, and a ten-year-old Chinese girl, large for her age, who was to be left with her mother for the holidays, at a hospital near the railroad. The housekeeper at the mission was ill that morning, and the servants, unsupervised, packed the food cabinet and strapped it on somewhere. It was bitter cold and beginning to snow, but our head carter, as usual, wore his mouth so wide open that I feared his front teeth would freeze. The doctor and I crouched down among our own belongings, and the Chinese child sat on our feet or any other handy portions of our anatomy, and got under our covers for warmth.

When the noon stop was made, we found that the servants had left out an important half of the provisions, as well as all the cooking utensils and the dishes. Our only hope for anything hot lay in the little spirit lamp, with its tiny tin, which I always carried. The inn where we had halted would supply nothing because of the beginning of the New Year season. ‘No fire this day; no food this day,’ was the innkeeper’s ultimatum. We sat down to luncheon in an open shed, with the thermometer at zero, heated an odd blend of bran, coffee, and sugar mixed by a blundering packer, and ate some cold bits of the mandarin lady’s feast. Then we heated some water for our bags and went on.

The night was to have been spent in a little mission chapel, but long before we reached it the men pulled up at another inn and refused to proceed; they were cold, it was snowing, and the wind was high. Such an inn! The carters said that there was ‘a warm place’ we could have, and we were deposited in a mud-walled shed. It had a door, to be sure, but there were four inches of open space all around it and it had to be propped shut with a big stone. There was a mud kang, or bed platform. I made a bit of tea on the spirit lamp — by the time I rinsed the pot the lid had frozen on and the tea leaves were frozen inside. Having eaten a little cold meat and bread, we went to bed on the kang, in our clothes and wrapped in all available coverings, but we did not sleep comfortably or late.

The next morning at four, in a blinding blizzard, we sallied forth to coax the carters out of the shed which they shared with the mules; they were in no hurry, and merely grunted and sat closer to the warm animals. Before they stirred we had finished our modest allowance of coffee bran, and the grounds were frozen in the pot. Public activities were still suspended, for ‘No fire this day’ was the motto of the innkeeper, and we began to realize the wisdom of the native proverb about traveling too early in the New Year. It was snowing and blowing harder than ever when we got off, with a pint of hot water in my bottle, the vapor frozen on its spout. About ten we reached the chapel village where we should have spent the night. There we got some hot water for our bags. As we left, the men stopped at a fair to eat bowls of mush, a mixture of gauliang, sesame, and millet, seasoned with ginger root instead of salt. I clamored for some, and insisted, though the doctor thought we could get a better meal farther on. We could get but two bowls, and shared with the little Chinese girl, who recovered quickly from her cart sickness when she smelled the hot porridge. It was well that we ate something hot when we could get it!

At one o’clock we stopped again — the carters had discovered another inn! This time, however, there was flat rebellion on the part of the passengers; we insisted firmly that we must reach our destination that night, in order to take the train to Tientsin in the morning. The argument lasted all that long, bitter afternoon; though the carters yielded they were far from happy and wanted to stop at any shelter that offered. For a while it looked as though they knew best, for we struck a sunken road full of drifts, which the three mules refused to pass, dashing first up one side, then the other, until one of the men had to walk ahead and drag them. Had we chosen two of the little single carts, our case would have been hopeless. When the pangs of hunger became violent we did some New Year feasting in the cart, and ate fragments of chicken, frozen stiff in watery gravy and pried loose from the pan with difficulty and a spoon handle; this we varied with salted peanuts and, oh, such cold bread! At one stop, late in the afternoon, the men did get us a bowl of tiny meat dumplings, an atrocious mess, with which I tried to warm up the frozen chicken. Finally the wind went down a bit, and our relief may be imagined when, at about eight o’clock, we saw the lights of the hospital which was our goal. Before long we were crouched around a redhot stove in one of the new wards, wondering whether we should ever be really warm again. We slept on a bed pulled close to the same fire. We were well cared for by the hospital people, and made our train the next morning, luckily none the worse for all the exposure. The operation went through successfully, even though the surgeon had celebrated the New Year neither wisely nor well.

II

During my school and hospital work in India I partook of some meals that were strange even in that strange land, and one of these was a feast given by a begum, a Moslem lady of high degree. Her daughter, the younger begum, and her granddaughter, the youngest begum, or ’Bee-Bee,’ were at the hospital awaiting the advent of a baby begum, and, in Indian fashion, Grandmother Begum thought to ensure the special favor of gods and men by means of gifts. Her mother was a Persian, and she regarded me with especial favor because I had been in Persia. She was a determined old lady, and one day when I went to midday breakfast I wore two beautiful sapphire rings. The head of the hospital was a doctor who had been in India for many years, and she was shocked and scandalized.

‘You must take them back now, at once!’ she exclaimed. ‘Gifts make a great deal of trouble, and they are never allowed.’ After breakfast I gave the rings to my stern senior, saying that I had tried to refuse them, and that it was up to her to succeed. She did, but the begum was resentful and determined to gain her end in some other way. This she did by sending to me each day at breakfast elaborate special foods, prepared by herself and her daughter.

After the littlest ‘Bee-Bee’ came, the proud great-grandmother gave a treat to the entire hospital, except the Hindu caste people, and great was the day in the hospital annals! A date was fixed when a noted Moslem cook could be engaged, and a giant pilau was prepared, for which three sheep were sacrificed. The meal was cooked at noon in huge cauldrons swung over small fires, out in the blazing sunshine of the compound — hot enough, it seemed, to do the cooking without the little fires of twigs and straw continually fed by one of the attendants. The meat was thoroughly cooked, with special rice sent from Nisan, mixed with raisins and nuts, and yellow with saffron from Kashmir.

We sat in long rows, cross-legged, on the floor of the surgical ward verandah — doctors, nurses, attendants, and patients. For plates we used the customary banana leaves, and we were served with brass shovels from the great pans loaded with pilau. Around the edges of our heaps of pilau were many varieties of chutney, in little dabs of different colors, and each, it seemed, a little hotter than the last. We ate with our fingers, of course, which is quite an accomplishment, especially in southwestern India where, with a certain curry, the way to eat a banana is to squash it between the fingers. The Indians could do it without soiling their fingers above the second joint, but I always got my whole hand messy before I was through. Later, in the same banana leaf, we all had curds and whey, after a special recipe known to the begum and her family. The old lady was the life of the party, directing the feast and absorbing the glory which was due her as its giver.

Meanwhile, out in the compound the servants and pariahs were served. After the feast the big cauldrons were carried away, doubtless with much useful food adhering to their sides, which would not be overlooked by the famous cook and his attendants. The begum must have felt that she had ‘got even’ with the hospital rules, for the feast doubtless cost more than the rings and reflected more public credit upon the giver. By late afternoon the hospital had returned to its routine, and the matron sat on the verandah of the children’s ward as usual, to watch the milkman milk the cows for us, and to see that either the heads or the tails were turned toward her, so that an accomplice could not put in water from the other side.

This was a Moslem feast, but I partook also of meals in high-caste Hindu houses, where during a vacation another woman and I were entertained by two of our girl students from the medical school. We were met at the station by a manservant who was placed at our disposal, and who by some subtle adjustment had broken caste enough to cook for us, but not too much to go on cooking in the family utensils. We were escorted to the house in the local tonga, which looked like a little Swiss chalet on wheels, even to window curtains with frills, and we were graciously received by our student, her mother, and her grandmother. We were ushered into one of the two rooms that had been furnished especially for us in European style, to make us feel more at home, and also to lessen the difficulties of caste observance. Left alone, we sat upon one of the red plush sofas, with our bedding rolls and suitcases on the other, and marveled at the vivid chenille tablecover with its made-inGermany travesty of Oriental hues. Only Grandmother was in sight, as at her day-and-night vantage point by the front door she cut and pounded and mixed and chewed her betel nut. We felt out of place and uncertain as to what would come next; but the thing to do in the East is to wait, and we waited.

Finally the partly ‘un-caste’ servant appeared, and we followed him into the next room, where, lo, ‘eats’ awaited us! Sweets and tea were plentifully provided, but our hostesses could not join us, — according to caste rule they must eat in the dark, that no alien shadow might fall upon their caste food, — so the tea party was a bit onesided.

Later the other medical student came to call with her father, a native Indian doctor, who in a spirit of fraternal courtesy insisted that we move to his house. Our hostesses would not consent, but it was arranged that we should take breakfast with the doctor’s family the next morning. Then we went for a wonderful ride in the Swiss chalet, along the rocky ledge above the Arabian Gulf, and returned for a dinner for two, served in our little special room; as we ate we wondered how it must feel to dine in the dark as our hostesses did. We slept in a room furnished with two beds and a locked wardrobe, and, having no light and no mirror, dressed and combed our hair by the touch system. Then we had chota hasri, or little breakfast: syrupy-sweet coffee, many sweets, and oppems, great cakes of rice with crisp brown edges — very good.

The ceremonial breakfast given by the native doctor’s family was served in a hired room reserved for illustrious visitors. By such an arrangement the host does not lose caste or have to pay for purification, as he must do if his own house is used. As a compliment to us, foreign food was served at this meal. We ate, while an ever-swelling procession of townsmen and women strolled by and peeped, to see American women eating in a high-caste place. The family stood by to make sure that we were enjoying the meal, and then considerately retired to allow us to take naps. Tea, at this house, had to be early, and we were served with nine different varieties of sweets, composed of coconut, sugar, and ghi, or buffalo butter, variously flavored, and we ate these nine rich sweets to music, as two noted Malayalam singers had been brought to entertain us. Then, after a drive, our hospitable friends tried to make us feel an appetite for dinner. They were all very kind and courteous, and when we left we felt remorseful to think that in spite of all the special arrangements many purification ceremonies must have been necessary after our visit.

Among the characteristic refreshments in India, available on journeys or at almost any time, were shoots of the palmyra tree, cooked in their husks, pithy but good, and young or ‘tender’ coconuts, which were delicious eaten or drunk from the shells, satisfying both hunger and thirst. It was curious to note the distinctions drawn between the different varieties of the ubiquitous banana. Those of one region were practically tabu in another, though the foreigner could see little difference.

III

Another breakfast I remember was eaten at dawn in the Mesopotamian desert during the winter season. On the previous evening the Fords of the Relief Expedition had refused to go, and we had made camp near an English military encampment. The kindly British officers had supplied the elderly woman of the party with a tent, while the men of the Expedition slept in the open, though chilly weather and uneasy consciences may have marred their slumber. Clinging to the obsession that woman was created to cook and minister to man’s comfort, they had from the start protested against hiring a Persian man cook for the journey; since I was there, why should I not do the cooking and dishwashing, in addition to buying supplies and doing medical and surgical work at the relief stations? I had been firm, but here was a chance to force the situation. Two of the men had serenely sent the servant ahead on some errand, and the stage was set.

‘Where’s the lady doctor? The lady doctor who slept here last night? I want the lady doctor who slept here last night!’ It was cold and dark and dreary, and the voice crying in the wilderness waked the lady doctor at six, in her borrowed tent in the English camp. She had an invitation to breakfast there at eight, but she emerged to see what was the matter.

‘Breakfast is all ready and we are just waiting for you; please come at once,’ said the man from the Relief Expedition. Rather puzzled, I went to the camp in the open, and found that ‘breakfast is all ready’ meant that a little cocoa had been made, and that the rest of the job had been saved for me. I decided that it was time to settle this much-debated question, so, sweetly ignoring the display of uncooked food, bacon, eggs, and so forth, I munched dry bread contentedly and was about to help myself to cocoa when I was told that it must be shared with a number of other members of our caravan, and that the pot was small. Knowing the appetites of the men, I thought I could stand what was coming as well as apyone, so I made myself a little coffee from my own basket and finished my bread. Then I gazed on the sunrise, and on the dreary waste of desert, Ford cars, bread and cheese, and baffled conservatism, and observed cheerfully that when they had finished breakfast and washed the dishes I should be glad to show them how to pack.

Yes, they found the cook before time for the noon stop, and I saw to it that a good meal for all was promptly prepared. It was eaten with zest. After that there was a clear understanding that the cook should not be sent away without my leave, and that I was perfectly willing to go on taking charge of supplies. It is strange how some men still feel that woman is a rib — useful, so to speak, in keeping man inflated. Weeks later, when we settled down in Persia to do relief work, there was another rosy plan: to take a vacant house and have me keep house for the men, in spite of the fact that the work for which I had been sent — operations, dispensary duty, and so forth — filled my days. The resident woman doctor at the mission hospital insisted upon having me live with her, and I felt no compunction about accepting the invitation. It was really funny, and the seriousness with which these plans for comfort were made rendered it all the funnier.

Aside from high prices and the poor quality of the food, it was hard to do marketing in Persia, one complication being that on Fridays the shops of the Mohammedans were closed, on Saturdays those of the Jews, and on Sundays those of the Armenian Christians. The Persians use the fat of the fat-tailed sheep in nearly all their cooking; it is sold in the bazaars in goatskins with the hair inside, and is not at all appetizing.

We did have one feast at the Teheran hospital, a gift to the resident doctor. This was Persian lamb, not for outside adornment, but roasted whole, with stuffing of rice, raisins, and nuts — meat, vegetable, and dessert, all in one!

At Armenian meals we had various pilaus, rather greasy rice, sometimes with a little curry, then grape leaves or cabbage leaves or quinces stuffed with forcemeat, and rather good. We had also white grapes that had been hung up in a cold, dry room until they were shriveled, but very sweet, and there were pomegranate seeds in quantity. At all meals thick sour milk was served, also cheese. The tiny grapes known as dried currants, which are also made into jam, grow about Hamadan, the Ecbatana of ancient history. The Armenians bake in the earth. After the hole is heated well, the fire is taken out and great circles of thin dough are baked on the sides. This bread, hot from the charcoal fire, is very good; it is like big crackers, about eighteen inches across, and it keeps indefinitely.

One day, in Teheran, I was walking with a nurse from the dispensary, and we smelled fresh bread. I had always wanted to see how Persian bread was baked, so I said, ‘Let’s go in.’ We found the bakery very entertaining. There is a book called Hadji Baba of Ispahan which speaks of ‘flaps of bread,’ and that is a good description. The oddly shaped loaves are almost a foot wide and nearly three feet long, flat and somewhat irregular. The bread is also called ‘stone bread,’ and it is baked on the small gray stones of tHe oven floor, under which is the fire. Often there are little stones embedded in the bread, which make it hard on the teeth. There was no door to the oven we saw, and a man was spreading flaps of soft pasty dough on a longhandled spade which was propped on a frame. Another man, using a sort of pitchfork, was taking out the flaps already baked on the hot stone floor. The man with the spade then pushed it into the oven and gave it a sort of flip and fling which sent the pieces of dough to the oven floor in the proper shape and size. The bakers laughed to think that foreigners should want to see such a simple thing, but we found the skill of the man with the spade quite wonderful.

Persian bread is useful as well as filling. Men and women carry it rolled up on their heads, in wet weather spread out to keep off the rain, in sunny weather to protect them from the sun; they hang it over the arm or the shoulder, or roll it in a bundle under the arm. It is hung up at home, to be eaten later, plain or toasted. At the hospital the servants used to spread their Sunday supply to dry on the quilts of unused beds, first making sure that the doctor’s rounds had been made.

My experience in Teheran was not wholly confined to relief camps and plain food, for I had a taste of social grandeur and the food and service that went with it. I was there during the No Ruz or New Year celebration, March 22, when festivities of various kinds were in order. The servants gave gifts and expected to be remembered in return. One day I found on my table a gorgeous plate of apples, oranges, and pomegranates, with gold-paper characters, expressing good wishes, pasted all over them. One night is known as ‘ fruit night,’ when all good Mussulmans eat fruit. Donkeys heavily laden with bright-colored fruit were a pleasing sight at this season. One very gay celebration was held in a palace room which had been fitted up for the Parliament that never met; the band played, and we were served with cakes and tea. The mullahs had to go out of hearing, for, like the Scottish Kirk folk, they do not consider instrumental music properly worshipful.

After the New Year it was the proper thing to call on the wives of some of the high officials. One ex-Shah, by the way, had thirty wives, who had presented him with thirty sons. The gardens of the palaces belonging to government officials were charming, and everywhere we were served with tea, cakes, pistachio nuts fried in butter, roasted hazel nuts, pomegranate seeds, and almonds. In one anderun, or harem, we sat on the floor with our feet under a long, low table with a velvet cover, where a charcoal brazier kept us too warm, and a former Turkish ‘beauty,’ with fine eyes but coarse features, sang to us in a voice that must have been audible throughout the palace. Before refreshments water from a silver ewer was poured over our hands. Among the delicacies served were rather good filigree rice cakes, fine-spun like a loose bunch of wire. We walked on such rugs as are never seen out of Persia; even there some of the most beautiful are hung on the walls. Among the guests were two old princesses, and after they had had their tea the long hubblebubble, or standing water pipe, was brought in, with its silver cup at the top filled with tobacco and charcoal, and each took a pull at it. I never in my life saw so many diamonds, emeralds, and pearls in active service as at such gatherings. One young girl wore on her fingers two diamonds that looked as big as the Koh-i-nur. Ropes of pearls adorned her mother and sisters, to say nothing of brooches and pendants of emeralds set in diamonds.

The serving of the tea was always an impressive rite. At one palace our first cups were poured from a silver service, the second ones from a gold service, into exquisite Sèvres cups. One of our calls was made at the palace of the Minister of Finance; when our party left, the hostess took from a beautiful Shiraz silver half-moon box a little net bag for each of us, containing Persian gold and silver coins. According to ancient custom, this is a select and fitting New Year gift; the position of our host made it seem particularly appropriate! It was like living a scene from the Arabian Nights, and I felt almost too set up and haughty to return to an everyday existence.

IV

Perhaps the most unusual meal of all was eaten about five years ago, away up on the northern edge of India, on the southern slope of the Himalayas. I had been staying at Darjeeling, and the expedition, a vacation trip ‘for to admire an’ for to see,’ started from the school for Eurasian boys and girls at Kalimpong. We were a party of five women, journeying on horseback in Sikkim, which lies between Nepal and Bhutan. Our way lay through the most marvelous mountain gorges; on clear days we could see the magnificent peaks of Kinchinjunga and Kinchinjau, and look into Tibet, the ‘forbidden land’ stretching away to the north, with its glorious snow peaks and glaciers. We had the necessary syces, or grooms, and coolies with pack mules to carry bedding, mosquito nets, and food.

It was a wonderful jaunt, lasting for three weeks, and at Lachung, one of the highest and remotest spots, two of us visited a mission station carried on by two plucky Scandinavian women, who were very friendly and who gave us much information about that strange region, with its Tibetan people and villages. No doctor had visited the region for years, and we held quite a reception in the tiny dispensary, with its meagre supply of drugs, for patients crowded in steadily until long after dark. It was a gala occasion and the people looked happy and smiling as they described their ailments and begged me to feel their pulse in both wrists. Among my patients was a red lama, or high priest, a big, gray-haired, sunny-faced man, who consented, after his treatment and some persuasion, to explain the use of the rosary he carried and to let me examine it. A doctor is highly honored in that region, and during the three days of my stay in Lachung every coolie we met on the road laid down his load to salaam with both hands, and stuck his tongue out as far as possible, to show his respect.

As a mark of appreciation, the headman of the village invited the foreign doctor and her friend and the two mission ladies to breakfast at his house. We went through the irregular streets to reach the conspicuous wooden house with very steep steps at each side of the end. Mounting these, we climbed over the threshold, which was two feet high to keep out marauding animals, and entered the main living room. On one side was a large stone inset in the wooden floor, and on this were several small fireplaces of loose bricks or stones, on one of which a large kettle was boiling. Around this place were square cushions, where the family usually sat to eat, and as there was no chimney a huge yak skin was hung above the stone fireplace, fat side down, to absorb the smoke. At night the family slept about the stone inset, wrapped in their red and blue and brown striped blankets. At one side were the bamboo churns, beautifully laced with reed, in which the tea was churned; for Tibetan tea is a mixture of tea leaves, butter, salt, and boiling water, churned to a perfectly smooth consistency. Our tea was all made and ready to serve, in great black clay jars.

We were to have the honor of breakfasting in the ceremonial room, which is always in the headman’s house, and which serves as religious headquarters for the village. Over another high threshold we climbed, into a fair-sized room with several windows; this contained a Buddhist altar, which bore a small Buddha, photographs of the Dalai Lama, a great copper and brass jug, bowls of brass to be filled from the jug with holy water, many offerings, and some foreign gimcracks. Beside the main altar were pigeonholes for the scriptures, on separate leaves, with a satin tab or label at the end. The bell and dorchi, or external clapper, were of fine workmanship, as was the jug. In the background was a big clay fireplace, a sort of oven in the wall, for the cooking of ceremonial food.

It was decidedly impressive to sit down to a meal in the presence of the sacred emblems, while the headman and his four sons stood proudly by. Each of the four guests had a small table or stool, and a cushion or mat upon which to sit cross-legged. Upon each little table were a beautiful Tibetan bowl of wood lined with silver, a finely lacquered box, and a fascinating little pottery jar with a cover. Our bowls were filled with the reddish, salty tea mixture by our silent hostess, a tall, sturdy woman of Mongolian type, and her daughter-in-law, the wife of the four sons — for the Tibetans are polyandrous. After the first sip the bowls were promptly filled to the brim again. Our missionary friends indicated that we were next to stir into the tea some of the contents of the jar.

‘What’s in the jar?’ I whispered to my neighbor, with vivid curiosity.

‘Crushed mice,’ the little Swedish lady murmured back discreetly. Horrified but determined, and outwardly serene, I lifted the lid, and was relieved to find that her mispronunciation of ‘maize,’ boiled, roasted, and crushed, had lent an extra thrill to my meal.

Another sip, and the bowls were filled again. Next we stirred in some of the finely ground barley from the lacquered box; the mixture was rather like Scotch brose, and really very good. We were careful not to offer an insult to our hostess by dropping any grains on the floor. After the tea bowls had been filled for the third time the demands of etiquette were satisfied, and we were at liberty to leave the rest.

The ceremonial meal was over. We expressed our appreciation, and one of the missonaries interpreted our thanks to the hostess, who stood facing the row of little tables. In accordance with the etiquette which forbade her to notice such speeches unless made by members of her family, she looked perfectly blank until the daughter-inlaw repeated the words, after which she beamed upon us, and we took our respectful leave, going back to our regular breakfast and our patients.

Later in the day the weaving class at the mission asked that the visitors might have tea with them in their shed. Here we saw the tea churned and served to forty-six women and innumerable babies. I, as the doctor who had treated most of them, had the cushion of honor at the head of the table, and the three other ladies had mats. The ‘mice’ was popped this time, and very good. The Tibetan women sang hymns. As they loved stories, I told them, through an interpreter, a moral Chinese tale, which they interrupted by appropriate groans and exclamations of horror, astonishment, or joy. Then came salaams, as we had to leave early and they had to travel miles to their homes.

There were other queer meals, too numerous to describe fully, in settings which made a Quaker-bred American woman feel somewhat out of the picture, but their charm lay in their very strangeness. There was a spiritlamp breakfast which I cooked and ale sitting on the floor of a little Chinese ’slipper-boat,’ as it raced down the swift current of the Min River and the rain poured in torrents on the sketchy bamboo covering. There was a tea party given for me by a dear old Chinese lady in Soochow, while I was crippled by a lame knee. After due consideration of our respective ages and the canons of hospitality, the tea was given in my own quarters at the request of my gracious hostess, who sent elaborate refreshments by bearers, and arrived later by sedan chair with her female relatives, all of them gorgeously arrayed. The Chinese are called rigid in regard to social observances, but I always found them courteous and ready to make concessions to foreigners who respected their point of view and met them halfway. There was also a late supper in an upper room of an unspeakable little Chinese mountain inn, in bandit-infested country. We met some of the bandits next day, by the way, and they were very chummy with our soldier escort, inspecting their arms with interest, but giving us no trouble.

Sitting here in my little apartment with all its modern conveniences, eating waffles hot from the electric iron, and recalling those gypsyings in Asia,