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. Day after day for six weeks
this eunuch visited me, and would never leave until I had found
some new book for His Majesty. They might be literary, scientific
or religious works, and he made no distinction between the books
of any sect or society, institution or body, but with an equal
zeal he sought them all. I was sometimes reduced to a sheet
tract, and finally I was forced to take my wife's Chinese medical
books out of her private library and send them in to the Emperor.
I learned that other eunuchs were visiting other persons in
charge of other books, and that at this time Kuang Hsu bought
every book that had been translated from any European language
and published in the Chinese.
One day the eunuch saw my wife's bicycle standing on the veranda
and said:
"What kind of a cart is that?"
"That is a self-moving cart," I answered.
"How do you ride it?" he inquired.
I took the bicycle off the veranda, rode about the court a time
or two, while he gazed at me with open mouth, and when I stopped
he ejaculated:
"That's queer; why doesn't it fall down?"
"When a thing's moving," I answered, "it can't fall down," which
might apply to other things than bicycles.
The next day when he called he said:
"The Emperor would like that bicycle," and my wife allowed him to
take it in to Kuang Hsu, and it was not long thereafter until it
was reported that the Emperor had been trying to ride the
bicycle, that his queue had become entangled in the rear wheel,
and that he had had a not very royal tumble, and had given it
up,--as many another one has done
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