Page:Frank Owen - The Wind That Tramps the World (1929).djvu/66



The house of Yuan Shi Kai in Canton was perhaps one of the quaintest, queerest houses that China has ever known. It stood surrounded by a great garden near the Pearl River. There was nothing distinctive about the garden. It was cultivated in the most sketchy manner. At times the coolies of Yuan Shi Kai worked impressively to make it beautiful. Other times there were when during the course of many moons it was utterly neglected.

The house itself was even less imposing than the garden. It was built only one story above the ground, a gray and white house with a cherry-red roof. But below the ground it went many stories. Yuan Shi Kai believed that men should look to the earth for strength even as trees and flowers and vines wend their creeping roots through the lush warm soil.

"Man was created from dust," he meditated, "therefore all strength comes from the dust."

In Canton little was known about Yuan Shi Kai. He was wealthy apparently for there were many men in his employ, yet of his actual business interests no one could find a trace. He was not a rice or tea merchant, nor was he a shopkeeper, nor did he deal in