Ere we are five miles from the sampan these festive mariners of the
Kan-kiang have developed into shuffling, shirking gormandizers, who peer
longingly into every eating-house we pass by and evince a decided
tendency to convert their task into a picnic. Finding me uncomplaining in
footing their respective "bills of lading" at the frequent places where
they rest and indulge their appetites for tid-bits, they advance, in the
brief space of four hours, from a simple diet of peanuts and bubbles of
greasy pastry to such epicurean dishes as pickled duck, salted eggs, and
fricasseed kitten!
Fricasseed kitten is all very well for people who have been reared in the
lap of luxury, and tenderly nurtured; but neither of these half-clad
Kan-kiang navigators was born with the traditional silver spoon. From
infancy they have had to thrive the best way they could on rice,
turnip-tops, peanuts, and delusive expectations of pork and fish; their
assumption of the delicacies above mentioned betrays the possession of
bumps of assurance bigger than goose-eggs. It is equivalent to a
moneyless New York guttersnipe sailing airily into Delmonico's and
ordering porter-house steak and terrapin, because some benevolent person
volunteered to feed him for a day or two at his expense.
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