Adeline Margaret Teskey

 

THE YELLOW PEARL : A Story of the East and the West

Here I am in this strange country about which I have learned in the geography and history, and about which I heard my father talk. The daughter of an American man and a Chinese woman, I suppose I am what is called a mongrel. My father was a Commissioner of Customs in China, and living for years in that country he fell in love with my mother and married her—as was natural. Who could help falling in love with my dear, yellow, winsome, little mother? My name is Margaret, called after my father's mother; my father said that the word Margaret means a pearl, so he gave me the pet name "Pearl." Dear father!

"It was a monstrous thing for Brother George to marry away there," I overheard my Aunt Gwendolin remark a short time after my arrival. "Why could he not have come back home to his own country and found a wife?—And above all to have married a heathen Chinese!"