Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 23, February, 1873

When he buries a countryman he throws from the hearse into the air handfuls of brown tissue-paper slips, punctured with Chinese characters. Sometimes, at his burial-processions, he gives a small piece of money to every person met on the road. Over the grave he beats gongs and sets off packs of fire-crackers. On it he leaves cooked meats, drink, delicacies and lighted wax tapers. Eventually the bones are disinterred and shipped to his native land. In the remotest mining-districts of California are found Chinese graves thus opened and emptied of their inmates. I have in one instance seen him, so far as he was permitted, render some of these funeral honors to an American. The deceased had gained this honor by treating the Chinese as though they were partners in our common humanity. "Missa Tom," as he was termed by them, they knew they could trust. He acquired among them a reputation as the one righteous American in their California Gomorrah. Chinamen would come to him from distant localities, that he might overlook their bills of sale and other documents used in business intercourse with the white man. Their need of such, an honest adviser was great. The descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers often took advantage of their ignorance of the English language, written or spoken. "Missa Tom" suddenly died. I had occasion to visit his farm a few days after his death, and on the first night of my stay there saw the array of meats, fruit, wine and burning tapers on a table in front of the house, which his Chinese friends told me was intended as an offering to "Missa Tom's" spirit.

We will dive for a moment into a Chinese wash-cellar. "John" does three-fourths of the washing of California. His lavatories are on every street. "Hip Tee, Washing and Ironing," says the sign, evidently the first production of an amateur in lettering. Two doors above is the establishment of Tong Wash—two below, that of Hi Sing. Hip Tee and five assistants are busy ironing. The odor is a trinity of steam, damp clothes and opium. More Mongolian tongues are heard from smoky recesses in the rear. As we enter, Hip Tee is blowing a shower of moisture from his mouth, "very like a whale." This is his method of dampening the linen preparatory to ironing. It is a skilled performance. The fluid leaves his lips as fine as mist. If we are on business we leave our bundles, and in return receive a ticket covered with hieroglyphics. These indicate the kind and number of the garments left to be cleansed, and some distinguishing mark (supposing this to be our first patronage of Hip Tee) by which we may be again identified. It may be by a pug nose, a hare lip, red hair, no hair or squint eyes. They never ask one's name, for they can neither pronounce nor write it when it is given. The ticket is an unintelligible tracery of lines, curves, dots and dashes, made by a brush dipped in India ink on a shred of flimsy Chinese paper. It may teem with abuse and ridicule, but you must pocket all that, and produce it on calling again, or your shirts and collars go into the Chinese Circumlocution Wash-house Office. It is very difficult getting one's clothes back if the ticket be lost—very. Hip Tee now dabs a duplicate of your ticket in a long book, and all is over. You will call on Saturday night for your linen. You do so. There is apparently the same cellar, the same smell of steam, damp clothes and opium, the same sputter of sprinkling water, and apparently the same Hip Tee and assistants with brown shaven foreheads and long cues hanging straight down behind or coiled in snake-like fashion about their craniums. You present your ticket. Hip Tee examines it and shakes his head. "No good—oder man," he says, and points up the street. You are now perplexed and somewhat alarmed. You say: "John, I want my clothes. I left them here last Monday. You gave me that ticket." "No," replies Hip Tee very decidedly, "oder man;" and again he waves his arm upward. Then you are wroth. You abuse, expostulate, entreat, and talk a great deal of English, and some of it very strong English, which Hip Tee does not understand; and Hip Tee talks a great deal of Chinese, and perhaps strong Chinese, which you do not understand. You commence sentences in broken Chinese and terminate them in unbroken English. Hip Tee commences sentences in broken English and terminates them in pure Chinese, from a like inability to express his indignation in a foreign tongue. "What for you no go oder man? No my ticket—tung sung lung, ya hip kee—ping!" he cries; and all this time the assistants are industriously ironing and spouting mist, and leisurely making remarks in their sing-song unintelligibility which you feel have uncomplimentary reference to yourself. Suddenly a light breaks upon you. This is not Hip Tee's cellar, this is not Hip Tee. It is the establishment of Hi Sing. This is Hi Sing himself who for the last half hour has been endeavoring with his stock of fifteen English words to make you understand that you are in the wrong house. But these Chinese, as to faces and their wash-houses, and all the paraphernalia of their wash-houses, are so much alike that this is an easy mistake to make. You find the lavatory of Hip Tee, who pronounces the hieroglyphics all correct, and delivers you your lost and found shirts clean, with half the buttons broken, and the bosoms pounded, scrubbed and frayed into an irregular sort of embroidery.

"He can only dig, cook and wash," said the American miner contemptuously years ago: "he can't work rock." To work rock in mining parlance is to be skillful in boring Earth's stony husk after mineral. It is to be proficient in sledging, drilling and blasting. The Chinaman seemed to have no aptitude for this labor. He was content to use his pick and shovel in the gravel-banks: metallic veins of gold, silver or copper he left entirely to the white man.

Yet it was a great mistake to suppose he could not "work rock," or do anything else required of him. John is a most apt and intelligent labor-machine. Show him once your tactics in any operation, and ever after he imitates them as accurately as does the parrot its memorized sentences. So when the Pacific Railroad was being bored through the hard granite of the Sierras it was John who handled the drill and sledge as well as the white laborer. He was hurled by thousands on that immense work, and it was the tawny hand of China that hewed out hundreds of miles for the transcontinental pathway. Nor is this all. He is crowding into one avenue of employment after another in California. He fills our woolen- and silk-mills; he makes slippers and binds shoes; he is skilled in the use of the sewing-machine; cellar after cellar in San Francisco is filled with these Celestial brownies rolling cigars; his fishing-nets are in every bay and inlet; he is employed in scores of the lesser establishments for preserving fruit, grinding salt, making matches, etc. He would quickly jump into the places of the carpenter, mason and blacksmith were he allowed, for there are numbers of them whose knowledge of these and other trades is sufficient at least to render them useful as assistants. He is handy on shipboard: the Panama steamers carry Chinese foremast hands. He is preferred as a house-servant: the Chinese boy of fourteen or sixteen learns quickly to cook and wash in American fashion. He is neat in person, can be easily ruled, does not set up an independent sovereignty in the kitchen, has no followers, will not outshine his mistress in attire; and, although not perfect, yet affords a refreshing change from our Milesian tyrants of the roast and wash-tub. But when you catch this Celestial domestic treasure, be sure that the first culinary operations performed for his instruction are correctly manipulated, for his imitativeness is of a cast-iron rigidity. Once in the mould, it can only with great difficulty be altered. Burn your toast or your pudding, and he is apt to regard the accident as the rule.

The young Chinese, especially in San Francisco, are anxious to acquire an English education. They may not attend the public schools. A few years since certain Chinese mission-schools were established by the joint efforts of several religious denominations. Young ladies and gentlemen volunteered their services on Sunday to teach these Chinese children to read. They make eager, apt and docile pupils. Great is their pride on mastering a few lines of English text. They become much attached to their teachers, and it is possible, if the vote of the latter were taken, it would evidence more liking for their yellow, long-cued pupils than for any class of white children. But while so assiduous to learn, it is rather doubtful whether much real religious impression is made upon them. It is possible that their home-training negatives that.

We have spoken entirely of the Chinaman. What of the Chinawoman in America? In California the word "Chinawoman" is synonymous with what is most vile and disgusting. Few, very few, of a respectable class are in the State. The slums of London and New York are as respectable thoroughfares compared with the rows of "China alleys" in the heart of San Francisco. These can hardly be termed "abandoned women." They have had no sense of virtue, propriety or decency to abandon. They are ignorant of the disgrace of their calling: if the term may be allowed, they pursue it innocently. Many are scarcely more than children. They are mere commodities, being by their own countrymen bought in China, shipped and consigned to factors in California, and there sold for a term of years.

The Chinaman has bitter enemies in San Francisco: they thirst to annihilate him. He is accustomed to blows and brickbats; he is legitimate game for rowdies, both grown and juvenile; and children supposed to be better trained can scarce resist the temptation of snatching at his pig-tail as he passes through their groups in front of the public schools. Even on Sundays nice little boys coming from Sabbath-school, with their catechisms tucked under their jackets, and texts enjoining mercy and gentleness fresh upon their lips, will sometimes salute the benighted heathen as he passes by with a volley of stones. If he turns on his small assailants, he is apt to meet larger ones. Men are not wanting, ready and panting, to take up the quarrel thus wantonly commenced by the offspring of the "superior race." There are hundreds of families, who came over the sea to seek in America the comfort and prosperity denied them in the land of their birth, whose children from earliest infancy are inculcated with the sentiment that the Chinaman is a dog, a pest and a curse. On the occasion of William H. Seward's visit to a San Francisco theatre, two Chinese merchants were hissed and hooted by the gallery mob from a box which they had ventured to occupy. This assumption of style and exclusiveness proved very offensive to the shirt-sleeved, upper-tier representatives of the "superior race," who had assembled in large numbers to catch a glimpse of one of the black man's great champions. Ethiopia could have sat in that box in perfect safety, but China in such a place was the red rag rousing the ire of the Democratic bull. John has a story of his own to carry back home from a Christian land.

For this prejudice and hostility there are provocative causes, although they may not be urged in extenuation. The Chinaman is a dangerous competitor for the white laborer; and when the latter, with other and smaller mouths to feed, once gets the idea implanted in his mind that the bread is being taken from them by what he deems a semi-human heathen, whose beliefs, habits, appearance and customs are distasteful to him, there are all the conditions ready for a state of mind toward the almond-eyed Oriental which leans far away from brotherly love.

Brotherly love sometimes depends on circumstances. "Am I not a man and brother?" cries John from his native shore. "Certainly," we respond. Pass round the hat—let us take up a contribution for the conversion of the poor heathen. The coins clink thickly in the bottom of the charitable chapeau. We return home, feeling ourselves raised an inch higher heavenward.

"Am I not a man and brother?" cries John in our midst, digging our gold, setting up opposition laundries and wheeling sand at half a dollar per day less wages. "No. Get out, ye long-tailed baste! An' wad ye put me on a livil with that—that baboon?" Pass round the hat. The coins mass themselves more thickly than ever. For what? To buy muskets, powder and ball. Wherefore? Wait! More than once has the demagogue cried, "Drive them into the sea!"

    PRENTICE MULFORD.

A WINTER REVERIE

We stood amid the rustling gloom alone
That night, while from the blue plains overhead,
With golden kisses thickly overblown,
A shooting star into the darkness sped.
"'Twas like Persephone, who ran," we said,
"Away from Love." The grass sprang round our feet,
The purple lilacs in the dusk smelled sweet,
And the black demon of the train sped by,
Rousing the still air with his long, loud cry.

The slender rim of a young rising moon
Hung in the west as you leaned on the bar
And spun a thread of some sweet April tune,
And wished a wish and named the falling star.
We heard a brook trill in the fields afar;
The air wrapped round us that entrancing fold
Of vanishing sweet stuff that mortal hold
Can never grasp—the mist of dreams—as down
The street we went in that fair foreign town.

I might have whispered of my love that night,
But something wrapped you as a shield around,
And held me back: your quiver of affright,
Your startled movement at some sudden sound—
A night-bird rustling on the leafy ground—
Your hushed and tremulous whisper of alarm,
Your beating heart pressed close against my arm,—
All, all were sweet; and yet _my_ heart beat true,
Nor shrined one wish I might not breathe to you.

So when we parted little had been said:
I left you standing just within the door,
With the dim moonlight streaming on your head
And rippling softly on the checkered floor.
I can remember even the dress you wore—
Some dainty white Swiss stuff that floated round
Your supple form and trailed upon the ground,
While bands of coral bound each slender wrist,
Studded with one great purple amethyst.

My story is not much—is it?—to tell:
It seems a wandering line of music, faint,
Whose sweet pathetic measures rise and swell,
Then, strangled, fall with curious restraint.
'Tis like the pictures that the artists paint,
With shadows forward thrown into the light
From the real figures hidden out of sight.
And is not life crossed in this strange, sad way
With dreams whose shadows lengthen day by day?

But you, dear heart—sweet heart loved all these years—
Will recognize the passion of the strain:
Who eats the lotos-flower of Love with tears,
Will know the rapture of that numb, vague pain
Which thrills the heart and stirs the languid brain.
All day amid the toiling throng we strive,
While in our heart these sacred, sweet loves thrive,
And in choice hours we show them, white and cool
Like lilies floating on a troubled pool.

    MILLIE W. CARPENTER.

"PASSPORTS, GENTLEMEN!"

The close of July, 1870, found our party tarrying for a few days at Geneva. We had left home with the intention of "doing" Europe in less than four months. June and July were already gone, but in that time, traveling as only Americans can, Great Britain, Belgium, the Rhine country and portions of Switzerland had been visited and admired. We were now pausing for a few days to take breath and prepare for yet wider flights. Our proposed route from Geneva would lead us through Northern Germany, returning by way of Paris to London and Liverpool.

We had intentionally left Paris for the last, hoping that the Communist disturbances would be completely quieted before September. At this time their forces had been recently routed, and the Versailles troops were occupying the capital. The leaders of the Commune were scattered in every direction, and, if newspaper accounts were to be believed, were being captured in every city of France. Especially was this true of the custom-house upon the Swiss frontier, where report said that more than one leading Communist had been stopped by the lynx-eyed officials, who would accept no substitute for the signed and countersigned passport, and hold no parley until such a passport had been presented.

In view of these facts, the American minister in Paris had issued a circular letter to citizens of the United States traveling abroad, requesting them to see that their passports had the official visé before attempting to enter France, thus saving themselves and friends a large amount of unnecessary trouble and delay. Nothing was said of those who might think proper to attempt an entrance without a passport, such temerity being in official eyes beyond all advice or protection. Influenced by this letter and several facts which had come under our notice proving the uncertainty of all things, and especially of travel in France, we saw that our passports were made officially correct.

While at Geneva our party separated for a few days. My friends proposed making an expedition up the lake, while I arranged to spend a day and night at Aix-les-Bains, a small town in the south of France. My object in visiting it was not to enjoy the sulphur-baths for which it is famous, but to see some friends who were spending the summer there. I had written, telling them to expect me by the five o'clock train on Wednesday afternoon. As my stay was to be so brief, I left my valise at the hotel in Geneva, and found myself now, for the first time, separated from that trusty sable friend which had until this hour been my constant companion by day and night.

The train was just leaving the station when a lady sitting opposite to me, with her back to the locomotive, asked, in French, if I would be willing to change seats. Catching her meaning rather by her gestures than words, I inquired in English if she would like my seat, and found by her reply that I was traveling with an English lady.

I should here explain that although I had studied the French language as part of my education, I found it impossible to speak French with any fluency or understand it when spoken. My newly-made friend, however (for friend she proved herself), spoke French and English with equal fluency.