The Unexpurgated Diary of a Shanghai Baby by Elsie McCormick Read Free Book Online

green vegetable garden.
    â€œWhy not ask our friends about good places?” asked mama.
    â€œWe might try it, but I’ve noticed that people are always strongest for the resorts they haven’t visited,” papa answered.
    Rather looks at present as if family is going to Tsingtao. Hope so, as might find Jap babies there that haven’t learned to walk. Have decided to save wooden elephant.
May twelfth
    Papa said that tomorrow would be Friday the thirteenth and Auntie asked him if he was superstitious.
    â€œYes,” said papa, “I always used to hate to get thirteen days in jail for speeding and I never do like to pay bills that fall due on Friday.”
    Auntie said she didn’t wish anybody any bad luck, but that she hoped girl from French-town would fall down at tea dance and sprain her costume.

Chapter VIII
    In Which the Baby Decides That the Life of Infant in Shanghai is One Round of Friday, the Thirteenth … New Hope for the Jessfield Monkey-House … The Baby Tries to Help Out a Romantic Situation.
May twelfth
    Porch covered with woolen things being aired for summer. Mama said she was going to put them in moth-proof bags. Papa said that amah-proof box would be more to point. Wish there was such a thing as amah-proof baby.
May thirteenth
    Friday today. Family said day means bad luck. Can’t see that luck is any worse than usual. Stuck by same number of safety-pins and have same funny feeling in mouth where new tooth is coming. Amah very busy telling all other amahs in town about family going to Tsingtao for summer. Papa told mama at tiffin that she must be raising me on cafeteria plan, as there wasn’t anybody to wait on me. Didn’t mindbeing left alone, as was busy upstairs watching new coolie clean bathtub with mama’s crocheted washcloth.
May thirteenth
    Mama asked papa if he had had any bad luck today.
    â€œEvery day is Friday the thirteenth to a married man,” said papa, reading bill for mama’s new dress. Mama said that she could have married half a dozen nice men at home, and papa said it was too bad she didn’t as she needed that many to pay for clothes. Auntie said just then that papa didn’t realise how expensive clothes were, as she had just paid ten dollars a yard for dress to wear to Carlton.
    â€œThat oughtn’t to be too expensive,” said papa. “You don’t need more than a yard.”
    Mama answered that she was not going around town looking like wife of a poor man, and papa replied that poor men’s wives were best-dressed women in Shanghai, as that was why husbands were poor.
May thirteenth
    Had interesting ride in perambulator. Passed Hangkew Market and saw poultry man make dead ducks fat by blowing up at windpipe. Also saw fish-men painting fresh red gills on old-fashioned fish.Later had glimpse of family cook doing shopping. Glad I take my tiffins out of a bottle.
May thirteenth
    Papa come home early and had busy time trying to get number on telephone. Mama told him he should be ashamed to swear in front of baby.
    â€œTurn the baby around,” said papa.
    â€œThese gentlemen hello-girls make all the connections by absent treatment,” papa remarked, after saying prayers. “We’re so used to not getting the number that if all the staff walked out on strike Shanghai people wouldn’t know it until they read it in the paper. You stand about as much chance of getting the right number on a Shanghai telephone as you do in the Sweepstake.”
    Papa remarked later that people who wandered forty years in wilderness were probably trying to get the land of Canaan on the telephone.
    â€œThere weren’t any telephones in Bible times,” said mama.
    â€œOf course there were,” said papa. “Didn’t you ever hear of the Book of Numbers?”
    Central interrupted then to tell papa that line was engaged and also out of order. Amah carried me out in hurry.
May fourteenth
    Pleasant day. Sat