No, his sons did not begrudge the silver, for Wang Lung took a vast comfort in this fine coffin of his, and every now and then, when he felt able, he stretched out his feeble yellow hand to feel the black, polished wood. Inside there was an inner coffin also, planed to smoothness like yellow satin, and the two fitted into each other like a man’s soul into his body. It was a coffin to comfort any man.
Pearl S. Buck, Sons. Kindle Edition. loc. 37-39. Accessed: 12/27/2017
“There will come the priests also, who shall chant your soul into paradise, and there will come all the hired mourners and the bearers in red and yellow robes who shall carry the things we have prepared for you to use when you are a shade. We have two paper and reed houses standing ready in the great hall, and one house is like this and one like the town house, and they are filled with furniture and with servants and slaves and a sedan chair and a horse, and all you need. They are so well made and so made of paper of every hue that when we have burnt them at your grave and sent them after you, I swear I believe there will be no other shade so fine as yours, and all these things are to be carried in the procession for everyone to see, and we pray for a fair day for the funeral!”
Pearl S. Buck, Sons. Kindle Edition. loc. 54-59. Accessed: 12/27/2017
Now it has been said from ancient times that all women who weep may be divided into three sorts. There are those who lift up their voices and their tears flow and this may be called crying; there are those who utter loud lamentations but whose tears do not flow and this may be called howling; there are those whose tears flow but who utter no sound and this may be called weeping. Of all those women who followed Wang Lung in his coffin, his wives and his sons’ wives and his maid servants and his slaves and his hired mourners, there was only one who wept and it was Pear Blossom.
Pearl S. Buck, Sons. Kindle Edition. loc. 262-266. Accessed: 12/28/2017
She sat in her sedan and she pulled the curtain down so no one could see her, and there she wept silently and without a sound. Even when the mighty funeral was over and Wang Lung was in his land and covered with it, when the houses and servants and beasts of paper and reed had been burned to ashes, when the incense was lit and smouldering and his sons had made their obeisances and the mourners had howled their due time out and been paid, when all was finished and the earth heaped high over the new grave, then when no one wept because it was over and there was no use in any more weeping, even then Pear Blossom wept on in her silent way.
Pearl S. Buck, Sons. Kindle Edition. loc. 266-271. Accessed: 12/28/2017
Thus were the fields upon which Wang Lung had spent his whole life divided and the land belonged now to his sons and no more to him, except that small part where he lay, and this was all he owned. Yet out of this small secret place the clay of his blood and bones melted and flowed out to join with all the depths of the land; his sons did as they pleased with the surface of the earth but he lay deep within it and he had his portion still and no one could take it from him.
Pearl S. Buck, Sons. Kindle Edition. loc. 451-454. Accessed: 1/3/2018
Wang the Second sat and listened and at last he fidgeted in his seat and was in an agony for he did not know whether or not he would have to pay his share of all this and at last he called out sharply, “If all these meats and foods are for me, Brother, then I will not have them, because I am an abstemious man and my appetite is small and especially in the morning.” But Wang the Eldest said largely, “You are my guest for today and you need not mind for I will pay.” So he set his brother at rest, and when the meats were come, Wang the Second did his best to eat all he could, seeing he was a guest, for it was a trick of his he could not keep from, that although he had plenty of money he could not keep from saving all he could and especially if it was something for which he had not paid anything.
Pearl S. Buck, Sons. Kindle Edition. loc. 858-865. Accessed: 1/4/2018
“If that is so, Sister-in-law, then I am sorry for my brother and you. He is the timidest, weakest lad I ever did see and his gall is no larger than the gall in a white hen. I wish you could have given me your eldest son. He is a good willful lad and I could break him and make him into something of a good willful man, obedient to me and none other. But this second son of yours is always weeping and it is like carrying a leaking dipper with me everywhere. There is no breaking him for he has nothing in him and so no making him, either. No, both my brothers’ lads disappoint me, for your lad is so soft and timid his brains are washed out in tears, and the other one is good and lusty and rough enough for the life but he is thoughtless and he loves his laughter and he is a clown, and I do not know how high a clown can go. It is an evil thing for me that I have no son of my own to use now when I need him.” Now what the lady might have said
Pearl S. Buck, Sons. Kindle Edition. loc. 1829-1835. Accessed: 1/11/2018
And as he went he was sadder than he had been and he was compelled to harden himself and to remember again and again how he had never beaten the lad or treated him ill in any way and none could have known he had this despair in him to take his own life, and Wang the Tiger told himself it was so destined by heaven and not any man could have averted this thing, for so the life of everyone is wholly with heaven. Thus he forced himself to forget the pale lad and how he had looked when his head lay over his father’s arm, and Wang the Tiger said to himself, “Even sons are not all blessing, it may be.”
Pearl S. Buck, Sons. Kindle Edition. loc. 1971-1976. Accessed: 1/15/2018
“It is a very evil thing to have no emperor, for this is to have a body without a head and this means wild movements everywhere and none to guide us all. It is an ill thing you have told me, my lord guest, and I wish you had not told me for now I shall not be able to forget it. Humble as I am, I shall not be able to forget it, and however peaceful our village is I shall be afraid every day for the next.”
Pearl S. Buck, Sons. Kindle Edition. loc. 2069-2072. Accessed: 1/17/2018
The priests were overjoyed at such generosity and the old abbot was somewhat ashamed and he said, “You are a good man after all, and I shall pray before the gods for you and how else can I reward you?” To this Wang the Tiger answered, “No, do not trouble yourself with gods, for I have never had faith in them very much. But if in after days you hear of one called the Tiger, men speak well of him and say the Tiger treated you well.”
Pearl S. Buck, Sons. Kindle Edition. loc. 2382-2385. Accessed: 1/20/2018
As for Wang the Tiger, he stood apart and watched it all, and he kept his brother’s son near him and he would not let the lad loot anything. He said, “No, lad, we are not robbers and you are my own blood and we do not rob. These are common, ignorant fellows and I must let them have their way once in a time or they will not serve me loyally, and it is better to let them loose here. I must use them for my tools—they are my means to greatness. But you are not like them.”
Pearl S. Buck, Sons. Kindle Edition. loc. 2546-2549. Accessed: 1/20/2018
But now he sat alone because he was wretched and he did not know why he was except that for the first time it came to him that he was not so young as he was once and his age was creeping on him unawares, and it seemed to him he had not found the good in life he might have found and he was not so great as he should have been.
Pearl S. Buck, Sons. Kindle Edition. loc. 2895-2897. Accessed: 1/22/2018
But Wang Lung had been very wise in his day and he bought far more good land than any other kind, and so when all the business was over Wang the Second had in his own personal possession and for his sons the best and the choicest of all his father’s land, for he had so bought the best of the younger brother’s inheritance also. And with all this land he planned he would supply much of the grain to his own markets and increase his stores of silver and gold, and he grew powerful in the town and in that region, and men called him Wang the Merchant.
Pearl S. Buck, Sons. Kindle Edition. loc. 2995-2998. Accessed: 1/23/2018
Nor would Wang the Merchant let his sons be spendthrift nor idle. No, he planned for each one, and each had a few years of schooling to learn to read and write and to count skillfully upon the abacus. But he would not let them stay long enough to be held scholars in any wise, for scholars will not labor at anything, and he planned apprenticeships for them and they were to come into his business. The pocked one he considered his younger brother’s, and the next one he planned to make his steward on the land, but the others he apprenticed when their time came and when each was twelve years old.
Pearl S. Buck, Sons. Kindle Edition. loc. 3004-3008. Accessed: 1/23/2018
Wang the Landlord had grown afraid sometimes when the people grew bitter, for he knew the rich may well fear the poor, who seem so patient and humble and who can be so bold and ruthless when they turn to rend whom they hate. But Wang the Merchant feared nothing, and it was nothing to him even when one day Pear Blossom saw him pass and she called to him and came out and said, “If so be, sir, my lord’s son, that you can be a little less exact with the people, I should be glad. They labor very hard and they are poor and like children in ignorance, oftentimes. It goes against my heart to hear the cruel things they say, sometimes, about my lord’s sons.” But Wang the Merchant only smiled and went his way. It was nothing to him what any said or did, so long as he had his full profits.
Pearl S. Buck, Sons. Kindle Edition. loc. 3024-3030. Accessed: 1/23/2018
He would not game because he did not want his soldiers to see him at it and feel the more free themselves to do it, and he could not read overmuch because novels and tales weaken a man, they are so full of dreams and the stuffs of love, and he was not scholar enough for the old philosophies.
Pearl S. Buck, Sons. Kindle Edition. loc. 3082-3084. Accessed: 1/23/2018
Her greatest prayer was that the fool might die before her so that she need never use the packet of white poison that Wang Lung had left to her to use if she must.
Pearl S. Buck, Sons. Kindle Edition. loc. 3289-3290. Accessed: 1/24/2018
“Cannot any woman have sons, and do I not desire a son more than any mere woman? I will have a son. I will take a woman or two or three until I have a son. I have been a fool that I do always cling so to one woman—first to a woman I never even knew beyond a few scattered words such as a man may speak to a slave in his fathers’ house and I went sore for that woman nearly ten years, and then there was the one I had to kill. Shall I never be rid of her too and shall I go sore for her another ten years and be too old to beget a son then? No, I shall be as other men are and I will see if I cannot make myself free as other men do and take a woman and leave her again when I please.”
Pearl S. Buck, Sons. Kindle Edition. loc. 4045-4049. Accessed: 1/27/2018
From this day on Wang the Tiger saw a new purpose in those two women of his, for from them he saw springing yet more sons, true and loyal sons who would never betray him as might another who had not his own blood in him. No longer did he use those two women to free his own heart and flesh. His heart was freed at the first sight of his son, and of his flesh he hoped for his sons, trusty soldiers to stand beside him and support him when he grew old and weak. So he went regularly to his two wives, and not more to one than the other, for all their secret gentle striving for his favor, and he was very well content with them each in her own way, for he sought from them equally but the one thing, and he did not hope for more from the one than from the other. It troubled him no more that he did not love a woman, now that he had his son.
Pearl S. Buck, Sons. Kindle Edition. loc. 4746-4751. Accessed: 1/28/2018
Wang the Tiger sat silent awhile and he sat and suffered such mortal jealousy as he had never suffered before since that woman whom he had killed came back to torture him because she had loved the dead robber better than him. But now it was jealousy because his son did not love him wholly and longed for others than his father, and Wang the Tiger suffered because while he found his joy and pride in his son, his son was not content with even so great a love, nor did he value it, and for all he was surrounded with his father’s love, he yearned for a woman.
Pearl S. Buck, Sons. Kindle Edition. loc. 5137-5141. Accessed: 1/29/2018
“Even when this son suckled I knew he was no common child, for he did pull so hard and lustily at my breast!”
Pearl S. Buck, Sons. Kindle Edition. loc. 5346-5347. Accessed: 1/31/2018
As for the people, they lived in their homes at first, building up their tables and beds upon boards out of the water. But as the waters rose to the roofs of their houses and the earthen walls crumbled, they lived in boats and in tubs and they clung to such dykes and mounds as still stood above the water, or they climbed into trees and hung there. Nor did people so only, but wild beasts and the snakes of the fields also, and these snakes swarmed up the trees and hung festooned upon the branches and they lost their fear of men and came creeping and crawling to live among them, so that men did not know which was the greater terror, terror of water or terror of the crawling snakes. But as the days went on and the water did not fall, there was yet another terror and it was the terror of starvation.
Pearl S. Buck, Sons. Kindle Edition. loc. 5676-5682. Accessed: 2/1/2018
Wang the Tiger looked sidewise at that own son of his and he muttered behind his hand, as to himself, “—No son of a lord of war!” Suddenly it seemed to Wang the Tiger that even his hand could no longer stay the trembling of his lips. He must weep. And so he must have done except at that instant the door opened and his trusty old harelipped man came in, bearing a jug of wine, and the wine was freshly heated, smoking and fragrant. This old trusty man looked at his master as ever he did when he came into his room, and now he saw that which made him run forward as fast as he was able, and he poured the hot wine into the bowl that stood empty upon the table. Then at last Wang the Tiger took his hand away from his lips and he reached eagerly for the wine and put it to his lips and he drank deeply. It was good—hot, and very good. He held the bowl out again and whispered, “More.” —After all, he would not weep.
Pearl S. Buck, Sons. Kindle Edition. loc. 6346-6354. Accessed: 2/4/2018