Page:Frank Owen - Rare Earth, 1931.djvu/215

 not be out of place in fashionable London, there are streets that could compare favorably with the boulevards of Chicago but these are the result of Western influence. Whether it is for the better or not who can say? Certainly China flourished more gloriously before the influx of over-rated Western civilization. The greatest poets have come from China, the greatest artists, the greatest philosophers and inventors. The world has taken more from China than it has ever given in return. The white man is not nearly so much the hero-god that he would have other races believe. Wherever he has gone, trouble has followed. He has ruined the South Seas. He has left his curse on Tahiti and Papeete.

Canton is a discordant, musical, uncannily beautiful conglomeration of love and death, hatred and perfume. Always in Canton there is darkness and mystery, eyes peering out from behind drawn shutters, softly flickering lights, sinister silhouettes upon a Chinese screen. Yet when one has lived in China for awhile one always goes back. It is like a drug. Now China