table and talked unendingly while she poured, cheerful chatter as guiltless of wit and wisdom as any charwoman’s, but amusing and kind, for all of that. And this good English tea was prepared in a dark little English kitchen by a thin Chinese man of years, who survived the harrying scolding of his foreign mistress and consoled himself by cheating her richly when he shopped, and learning meanwhile to cook so well that when the white folk departed, forever so far as he was concerned, he found a job as head cook for a famous war lord who had a fancy for foreign food. And we were served at table by a table boy who afterwards burned down the house in which we sat. But how were we to know such effects, when we did not know the causes that we made?
Rapid City, South Dakota
If this state were anywhere else in the world, it would be such a wonder that people would be streaming here to see it by land and air and sea. As it is only where it is, today when we drove through it slowly—trying to assimilate its miracles—we saw few cars and those all American. It was a fearfully hot day, so hot that the air conditioning in our car promptly broke down in the devilish way that machinery does when it is most needed. This peculiarity is nothing new to me. We had no machinery in our Chinese bungalow, only the reliability of human hands and feet. Therefore the oil lamps always shone every night and no thunderstorm or even typhoon could put us into darkness, as any slight storm can do with electricity in our Pennsylvania house.
I had an exaggerated idea of machinery before I knew anything about it, and finding reliable human hands and feet very rare, after I left China, and frighteningly expensive when and if found, impulsively I set up a way of life upon our American farm entirely entrusted to electricity and machines. The years have taught me that nothing is less reliable than these can be at times, singly or in combination. Electric current can stop and render useless an otherwise perfect machine. Or the electric current may flow full and free and be repulsed by the indifference of a machine made idle by some cog or contact which will not work. Such accidents, if they are accidents, almost invariably take place on weekends when we have guests or when the entire family is home for holidays and a large turkey is roasting in the electric oven. I have never known the electric dishwasher to stop except when it was full of silver, china and glass, and another lot waiting, necessitating the removal of everything and washing and drying all by hand. This, too, happens only on Sundays or important holidays when essential experts cannot be found, because they have prudently learned to spend their own holidays far from home. The machine must therefore stand idle, perhaps for days, a hideous monument to its own power and the helplessness of men.
For the first few years I was innocent enough to think this perfect timing was pure accident, but I know better now. It is some devilish coincidence of which no scientist has dared to tell us. If, as one reads, the human being is merely a handful of minerals and a gallon or two of water, the only magic in us to make us think and dream must be the combination of these simple elements. And I read, moreover, that the secret of the atomic bomb itself is not in its materials, which are fairly common knowledge, but in the combination of those materials. It is the formula, so to speak, which compels being. This being so, it is not difficult to wonder whether that combination of elements which produces a machine for labor does not create also a soul of sorts, a dull resentful metallic will, which can rebel at times.
It must be so, it may be so, for why should our otherwise obedient car decide to cease its cooling upon a summer afternoon in South Dakota, when the temperature under nonexistent shade was said to be ninety-eight degrees and in the Badlands, so burning and so beautiful, was at least ten degrees more hot?
Rapid City, South Dakota
If this state were anywhere else in the world, it would be such a wonder that people would be streaming here to see it by land and air and sea. As it is only where it is, today when we drove through it slowly—trying to assimilate its miracles—we saw few cars and those all American. It was a fearfully hot day, so hot that the air conditioning in our car promptly broke down in the devilish way that machinery does when it is most needed. This peculiarity is nothing new to me. We had no machinery in our Chinese bungalow, only the reliability of human hands and feet. Therefore the oil lamps always shone every night and no thunderstorm or even typhoon could put us into darkness, as any slight storm can do with electricity in our Pennsylvania house.
I had an exaggerated idea of machinery before I knew anything about it, and finding reliable human hands and feet very rare, after I left China, and frighteningly expensive when and if found, impulsively I set up a way of life upon our American farm entirely entrusted to electricity and machines. The years have taught me that nothing is less reliable than these can be at times, singly or in combination. Electric current can stop and render useless an otherwise perfect machine. Or the electric current may flow full and free and be repulsed by the indifference of a machine made idle by some cog or contact which will not work. Such accidents, if they are accidents, almost invariably take place on weekends when we have guests or when the entire family is home for holidays and a large turkey is roasting in the electric oven. I have never known the electric dishwasher to stop except when it was full of silver, china and glass, and another lot waiting, necessitating the removal of everything and washing and drying all by hand. This, too, happens only on Sundays or important holidays when essential experts cannot be found, because they have prudently learned to spend their own holidays far from home. The machine must therefore stand idle, perhaps for days, a hideous monument to its own power and the helplessness of men.
For the first few years I was innocent enough to think this perfect timing was pure accident, but I know better now. It is some devilish coincidence of which no scientist has dared to tell us. If, as one reads, the human being is merely a handful of minerals and a gallon or two of water, the only magic in us to make us think and dream must be the combination of these simple elements. And I read, moreover, that the secret of the atomic bomb itself is not in its materials, which are fairly common knowledge, but in the combination of those materials. It is the formula, so to speak, which compels being. This being so, it is not difficult to wonder whether that combination of elements which produces a machine for labor does not create also a soul of sorts, a dull resentful metallic will, which can rebel at times.
It must be so, it may be so, for why should our otherwise obedient car decide to cease its cooling upon a summer afternoon in South Dakota, when the temperature under nonexistent shade was said to be ninety-eight degrees and in the Badlands, so burning and so beautiful, was at least ten degrees more hot?
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