i have been so happy, and life has been so satisfactory that i have not written in my diary for many months. i believe it is only when one's heart is so sorrowful and distracted that it must overflow somewhere, that one pours it into a diary. i have so much to say now that i scarcely know where to begin.
well, to begin at the beginning, one night uncle theodore asked doctor graham to dinner, along with professor ballington, and another gentleman. after that doctor graham began to call quite frequently evenings—he seemed to enjoy grandmother's company so much, and i am sure she enjoyed his.
well—oh, i never can tell how it all came about, but i have promised to go to china with dr. graham, to help him learn the chinese language. it is an awful language for a foreigner to learn, and i just could not bear the thought of the poor fellow having to wrestle with it alone.
it was one evening we were alone in the drawing-room, grandmother having been unable to appear owing to a headache, that we came to the final arrangement.
but suddenly i thought of something that was going to upset it all, i believed,—he didn't know who i was!
"oh!" i cried, "i cannot go with you—you will not want me—you do not know—that—i—am the yellow peril!"
he smiled down at me, and raised my chin in the palm of his left hand—for he had not let me go from his right,[pg 206] although i had tried to get away—and said, "i expect to be very proud of my yellow pearl."
now i am receiving congratulations which are making me feel very happy and proud, with the exception of professor ballington's. i cannot help feeling sorry for that poor old bachelor. he came up to me and said:
"my dear miss pearl, i had been vain enough to hope once that i might sometime call this pearl mine, but if i cannot do so, i do not know of any one that i would sooner see claim it than doctor graham. and so i say, god bless you! god bless you! you shall always have the love of an old bachelor. and in this world, obsessed with fever and noise, with the sham and superficial, may you always remain the genuine pearl you are."
there were tears in his voice. why must every rose have a thorn?
we are going to china, doctor graham and i, my native land; the land of flashing poppy-blossoms, red azaleas, purple wistarias, blue larkspur, yellow jasmine, oleanders, begonias, and flowering bamboos—the flowery kingdom. dr. graham is going to establish a hospital, to set broken legs and bind up broken heads; and i am going to try and prevent any more of those little chinese babies from being thrown out on the hillsides to die.
grandmother says if we go to china it ought to be to tell the confucionists and buddhists about the great christ. but i believe if he went there himself he would be mending broken legs, binding up broken heads and hearts, and saving the little babies from being thrown out on the hillsides to die. dear grandmother is a standing proof to me that the christ means much more to the world than china's confucius or buddha. one day when she was seated in her rocking-chair i threw my arm around her and told her so. the dear old lady never seemed to accept my words as a personal compliment at all, but began, as once before, to sing in a low, quavering voice:
"let every kindred every tribe
on this terrestrial ball,
to him all majesty ascribe,
and crown him lord of all."
