Note 30 — Chapter XXIX · CHINA AND HER RULERS.

An ingenious friend, who was kind enough to read this passage in MS., sent me the following suggestive note: "King Solomon was a thorough Chinaman, crafty, gaining the throne although the fourth and youngest son of his mother; killing off the kingdom-maker, Joab, and murdering the lawful heir, Adonijah. His fondness for pomp and joss pidjin, witness the Queen of Sheba and the Temple; love of trade, his ventures with King Hiram to Ophir. His apathy in military affairs, leading to the breaking up of the empire. His love of sententious maxims, Proverbs. His truly Chinese and non-Hebrew syncretism, worshipping Ashtoreth, Moloch, and Chemosh, as well as Jehovah. Now David, judging by the weak characters of his children, was, like many famous men in history, the reverse of prepotent. Solomon was a son of erewhile widow Bathsheba. Uriah being a Hittite, she was presumably one also. So Solomon would be practically a Hittite—i.e., Mongolian or Tartar; a striking example of the newly-named but long-observed phenomenon called telegony or 'throwing back.' Solomon 'threw back' to the first sire, Uriah."