Wo Lee, and His Kinsfolk

LOOKING out from my car window when we stopped at Promontory on our way to California, I saw this sign: WO LEE—WASHING AND IRONING. It was painted on cloth, and nailed over the door of the fourth house from the western end of Main Street; though, truth to tell, Promontory has but a single street, and that is n’t one on which a man need be proud to live. Every second house is a gambling-shop and drinking-saloon, and in most of the others gambling and drinking seemed to be the chief business. I didn't see Mr. Wo Lee, but I 've no doubt he is fitter for the kingdom of heaven than the majority of his fellow-townsmen. His dwelling betrayed no aristocratic tastes ; it was made of undressed lumber, and had a canvas roof; it showed but one window, and for the door there was a hasp-and-staple fastening. On the whole, it was as modest and unpretending a domicile as the law ever invested with the dignity of a castle. “Wo Lee—Washing and Ironing”: I found my eyes and thoughts running down to that sign over and over again while we waited for the railroad folks to make up the train for Sacramento. The name was the first thing from China that we saw on the journey, and I noted that the man was one of the few in town who appeared to be trying to make an honest living. They told me he did his work well: “ charges two dollars a dozen, and collars not counted.” I should charge more than that if I had to live at Promontory and take in washing. Mr. Lee is one of the pioneers of his people in their movement to the East, though it isn’t likely that he thinks of himself in that light ; and the fact that a single Chinaman is dwelling in Promontory renders it possible that the place may sometime be a decent and respectable town.

We stopped a day at Truckee, over in Nevada, and got up an appetite for breakfast by taking a long stroll through the Chinese section of that wild and bustling village. We found the Lee family largely represented: Hop Lee did washing and ironing, and so did Tae Lee : Quong Lee had a lottery shop on one side of the street, and Sam Lee had a similar shop on the other side ; Ah Lee kept a rice store on one block, and Yang Lee dealt in tea and dried fish on the next block ; while Guy Lee and Angle Lee were rivals in the medical profession; and How Lee sat sedate and serious on a cobbler’s bench at an open door. The Lee women — if, indeed, they were Lees—didn’t appear to be wholly desirable members of the community, and one of the doctors had such an air as I fancy belongs to adepts in the black art; but otherwise the Lees and their neighbors looked like worthy and industrious persons.— taking down their shutters, sweeping out their shops and stores, putting things to rights on the sidewalks, and generally going about their business as though they meant business.

I asked one of them where he was at work. “Where me workee ? ” he answered, repeating the question as is the Chinaman’s habit when he speaks but little English. “Yes, where do you work? what do you do?” “Me cuttee — choppee — cuttee,” said he, pointing toward the forest across the river. “ What wages do you get, — how much money do they pay you a month?” He repeated the question, and, when I bowed assent, replied, “ Tirty-five dollar.” Then I inquired if that was enough, if he was satisfied ; and he said he was. In my six weeks on the Pacific coast, I did n’t meet any white man who owned that he was entirely satisfied with the rate at which he was getting rich.

I thus record the fact that the first Chinamen whom we saw were at work. They were neither street vagabonds nor idle Micawbers ; each one of them had a " mission,” and in every case it was a mission to labor after some fashion. Loaferism is one of the curses of a new community, but there are no Chinese loafers in these new towns along the western end of the great railway. What we found to be true there we also found to be true in Sacramento and Stockton and San José and San Francisco ; however else I speak of Wo Lee and his kinsmen, I must credit them with patient and untiring industry.

One morning, at my hotel in San Francisco, I wanted to send out a bundle of clothing to be washed. Standing in the door of my room, I called to a Chinaman at the lower end of the hall, “John ! John ! O John ! ” He kept on his way, and I followed. In the next hall I called again, “John ! O John! washing!'’ He did n’t turn his head, and I thought he might be deaf, though I don't know that I ever heard of a deaf Chinaman. I ran along, and overtook him on the stairway. “ I want you to do some washing for me, John,” I said, as I put my hand on his shoulder. “ Me not John ! ” he answered with some dignity, handing me his card, on which I read, “ Hop Long.” We had some talk as we walked back to my room: “ He not ‘John,’ he Hop Long; that he name ; Melican man have name, you call he he name ; China man all same ; he like he name ; he come quick you call he he name ; I no come you call ‘John’ ; China man have name all same as Melican man.” That’s how this washerman from Canton taught me good manners. I didn't nickname “John” another Chinaman while in San Francisco.

And I’ve come to think we are not fit to deal with our Chinese puzzle or problem till we comprehend that Wo Lee is not “John,” but Wo Lee; till we recognize that Chinamen are individuals, with vices and virtues, and hopes and longings, and passions and aspirations and infirmities, like our own ; till we get over looking at this Oriental body on the Pacific coast in the mass, and take some consideration of its separate personalities. The rich merchant, Sing Man, who visited our Eastern cities last summer, is not “John” ; no more is the humble washerman of Promontory or the cobbler of Truckee. “ Melican man have name, China man all same.” It’s worth remembering.

To me no event of this century of strange events is more strange than the Chinese emigration to America. I can understand how Wo Lee got up to Promontory from San Francisco; he entered in at the Golden Gate just as the railroad company sent down an order to hire five hundred or a thousand more laborers ; his name was put on the list by some one who filled this order ; he began work in the mountains, and day by day shovelled his way eastward ; in time he reached Promontory and was discharged on the completion of the road; his companions turned backward, but he stopped and put out his sign as a washerman. I can see why he is there and how he got there; but I cannot see the how and why with respect to the first of his kinsmen who came to San Francisco. For Wo Lee and Hop Long and all their fellows are passive, not aggressive ; not radical, but conservative ; fond of repose, not of excitement ; given to standing by the ancient ways; lovers of society; content with small gains ; able to live comfortably on a little ; believers that whatever is is right; holders ot the faith that forms and ceremonies are saving ordinances. Family ties are stronger in China than anywhere else in the world ; the traditions of the fathers are venerated as law and gospel ; the dress of to-day is like that of a thousand years ago ; innovations are not to be tolerated. What quickening of the Chinese mind led to the change that resulted in this wonderful movement to the New World ?

Of late, immigration returns are well kept; but it was not so in the old days of Mr. Fillmore and his predecessors. The movement began in 1850; in 1852 it landed about 17,500 Chinamen on our shores It is not possible to say just how many have come over, but I have obtained from Mr. Francis A. Walker, the head of the Bureau of Statistics in the Treasury Department, the following statement of the number who arrived at San Francisco during the period from January I, 1854, to September 30, 1869, inclusive : —A Chinese company is every bit as bad an institution as a Dorcas sewing-circle or a co-operative housekeeping association, just as cruel and hard-hearted, just as much given to grinding the faces of the poor.

Here is an aggregate of 93,691 persons, to which must be added the arrivals at Astoria, Oregon, and those at San Francisco prior to 1854, — not less, I think, than 46,000. We have thus a grand total of about 140,000 as the extent of the Chinese immigration. Of this great host how many are now resident in the country ? I made much inquiry, talking with intelligent Americans, and officers of the Six Companies. A reasonable conclusion from their statistical table and the answers to my inquiries is, that we have not far from 95,000 Chinese now living on the Pacific coast, in Oregon, Nevada, and California.

If you fall in with a good stanch Democrat soon after you reach San Francisco from the East, you are tolerably certain to have some talk with him about the Chinese question. A California Democrat of to-day is in one respect much like a pro-slavery man of the days before the war. You could n’t travel quietly through the South. Mr. Pro-slavery insisted on giving you his view of the negro and in trying to find out your view. Mr. Democrat is equally sensitive; he assumes that you must need enlightenment on the Chinese; there is a great hue-and-cry about them ; he has lived many years in California, and will be most happy to tell you exactly what sort of people this is, to which you are such a stranger. I found that he had just two ideas. The Chinese are a vastly inferior race, good enough for servants and common laborers, but wholly incompetent to exercise the rights of citizenship “ in this great Republic, which is bound to be the foremost nation on the face of the whole earth, sir.” Then when I inquiringly and apologetically remarked that they seemed to me quiet and patient and honest and frugal and faithful and teachable and painstaking and economical and industrious, — in a word, had qualities and characteristics that I had been accustomed to regard as fitting a man for all the rights of citizenship, — he smiled benignly and pityingly upon my ignorance, and told me of the Chinese companies, said most of the pigtails whom I saw on the street were serfs or slaves, that the companies brought them over, sold their services for what price could be got, took their wages without any show or right, ruled them with great severity, and treated them worse than the Southerners ever treated their negroes, sir. So I determined that I would look after these Six Companies and expose their iniquities.

I did look after them, with the sharpest of Yankee eyes. I hunted down the chief officer of one company and the second officer of another ; I talked with a Chinese merchant, and a Chinese contractor, and a Chinese apothecary, and a Chinese butcher, and a Chinese cobbler, and a Chinese washerman ; I examined one of the Company houses from top to bottom in the leisure of a whole afternoon ; I worried half the acquaintances that I made with inquiries about the outrages and tyrannies of the Six Companies. Finally, I got at what seems to me the pith of the matter.

Two of the six companies were organized in 1851, two in 1852, one in 1854, and one in 1862. They are eminently conservative institutions,—conserving home interests, neighborhood fellowships, the brotherhood of Chinamen. Each has the family tie for its basis. They give shelter to the houseless, food to the hungry, rest to the weary, care to the sick, counsel to the distressed, protection to the persecuted. Of course, such oppressive and mischief-breeding organizations ought to be discountenanced.

Let me show just how the Ning Yung Company has treated Win Kang, who came over here from an interior town somewhere back of Canton, being the first member of the Kang family who emigrated. It was signalled from Telegraph Hill one morning, half a dozen years ago, that a steamship had just entered the Golden Gate ; in a few minutes another signal told that it was a vessel from China. Then there was a lively time in the Chinese quarter of San Francisco : long before the great ship swung up to her wharf, a thousand Chinamen were gathered in that neighborhood. Among those who first went aboard was the Ning Yung’s secretary, who came down to see if there were any passengers from his section of China. Win Kang was sick, and had no friends on the vessel or in the city ; the secretary found him, and provided a way for taking him to the company’s house on Broadway. There he was fed and nursed for two weeks; when he got well he went into the temple on the upper floor of the building and made thank-offerings to the gods ; then the secretary helped him to work near Sacramento, The employer abused him, and he asked for his wages, that he might go elsewhere. This was refused, and he wrote to the secretary about the matter ; that person communicated with a white man in Sacramento who was his friend, or I am not sure but he went there in person. At all events, Win Kang soon got his money and returned to San Francisco. He paid the company five or six dollars for care when he was sick, and the very next day was assaulted and robbed in an alley down on the Barbary Coast. The Ning Yung made the case its own, hunted out the robber, had him arrested, and proved him guilty by the evidence of white persons. Win Kang subsequently found work at San Jose, and it was while living there that he was accused of theft in the matter of certain gold-dust. The case against him had a bad look, and was the town-talk for some days. A Chinese merchant of San Francisco went to San José as the agent of the Ning Yung, and it was clearly shown at the trial that the guilty individual was the employer’s own son ; he was not punished, but Win was released. Last summer he had a quarrel with a fellow-workman on the ranch. I know nothing of its merits ; both men visited San Francisco, and each told his story to a council of three merchants from the advisory committee of the company, by whom, in the course of a few days, the whole difficulty was amicably settled. The company does a good deal of this sort of business, and it is n't often that an American hears of quarrels or misunderstandings between the members.

Each company has three or four paid officers and several permanent committees. Ning Yung’s salary bill is two hundred dollars per month, for three persons ; another company pays two hundred and twenty dollars, and has the service of four men. Each company has a house, — rented rooms or a building of its own. Ning Yung’s is a three-story brick, put up several years ago, with a kitchen in the rear, and a temple in the front part of the upper story. One time when I visited it, a score of men were there, resting from the illness or fatigue of their sea-voyage ; two weeks later, when I looked in, all but one had recovered and gone off to work. While there, such of them as were able to do so prepared their own food, and the others were waited on by friends or the porter. In the building are conveniences for writing, a few Chinese books, and many scrolls of poetry and admonition hung on the walls. Only one room was locked,— that in which the officers and committees meet for business purposes. Meetings are held whenever necessary, and any member of the company can be heard on every question in which he is interested. The officers seem to be in their positions by general consent rather than by formal election, and the affairs of each company are practically managed by a few of the leading men connected therewith. No one is obliged to join, but most of the Chinese on the coast belong to one or another of the companies. Ning Yung is the largest of them, and has on its records something over twenty thousand names. The tie of family and neighborhood generally determines membership: thus the Sam Yap, the oldest of the companies, is composed of persons from Canton and its immediate vicinity; while the Ning Yung represents a large district, mostly in the interior, west and south from Canton. The initiation fee is from five to ten dollars; there are small fees for hiring lawyers, removing the dead, and one or two other purposes, and occasional assessments of fifty cents or a dollar for rents and taxes and repairs. The entire expense of membership for ten years is “maybe fifty dollars, and maybe a hundred,” as the treasurer of one company told me. Any member may dissolve his connection with the institution at pleasure; but, so far as I could learn, withdrawals are of very rare occurrence.

The whole body of officials in the Six Companies has an organization of its own. This brings together once or twice a month all the principal Chinamen in the city for consultation on matters of interest to the Chinese as a class. That upper chamber in which these gentlemen meet may not inaptly be spoken of as a whispering-gallery ; within its walls is the echo of whatever is done in California having special significance for these almond-eyed strangers.

A Chinese company is scarcely more than a large Mutual Aid Society. If it is given to acts of oppression, they are not apparent; if it means mischief to anything, its purpose is deeply hidden. It does not import any one, but frequently extends pecuniary aid to those wishing to come over. It does not hold any one in slavery, but uses its weight and influence to make the members faithful to their contracts and obedient to our laws. It does not claim the wages or service of any one, but requires of each member his dues and assessments, as well as a repayment of moneys to him advanced. I heard vague charges that one or two of the companies spent overmuch in salaries, etc.; but on this point I could get no precise information. The Chinese are sticklers for respect to law and custom : the companies often help the civil authorities in bringing offenders to punishment, and I gathered from some talk with Americans that they occasionally deal with their own members for offences overlooked or neglected by the police. One Chinaman gave me to understand that his company would not let him go back to China ; and when I asked for an explanation, another told me that he was trying to run away without paying his debts or making provision for their payment.

I have written of these six organizations thus in detail, because they are a very important element in the Chinese problem. What they are now, when the Chinaman has almost no legal rights, they may not be by and by, when he comes into political rights, To the average immigrant they now represent both home and authority. In the Company house he finds care and succor and sympathy; there, too, he meets power and control and restraint. A score of bad men at the head of one of these companies could easily, and without much risk to themselves, make a great deal of trouble in Sacramento or San Francisco. The word spoken by a company’s president is heard in Chinese cabins all over the State ; it is tenfold more potent within its range than the word of any civilian of our nationality. Seeing how the company represents authority, one may suggest that it is a dangerous organization for a republic. I answer that at present it more directly represents a holy and tender sentiment, in that it seeks to keep alive memories of the family and the neighborhood, and in that it concerns itself chiefly to minister to the immigrant’s safety and comfort and general well-being. Deal fairly with these immigrants, and you have the companies acting as conservators of thrift and education and good order.

Ah Chin’s ways are vastly unlike our ways. He is a small man, with long black hair, a sedate, reserved manner, and a grave, impenetrable face, without beard till he is forty-five or fifty years of age. He wears a smocklike garment in place of a coat, wraps his feet and ankles in strips of white cotton, has silk or cloth shoes with curiously stitched felt bottoms an inch thick, gives himself clothing almost uniformly black or dark blue in color. He braids his queue every Sunday, lengthening it out with an interbraiding of silk similar in shade, and goes about the street with it rolled round his head or hanging below his knees. He dotes on pipe and tobacco, never jostles you in the sidewalk, makes a holiday of the Sabbath, is reticent with all white men, decidedly believes that woman is an inferior being, lives frugally on strange dishes of food, is the most courteous man in the world, tells you with pride that every Chinaman can read and write, takes readily to any kind of handiwork, shows much less curiosity about you than you do about him, is always respectful to his elders and his superiors, regards parental authority as the keystone of the civil arch, is not envious of anybody, does not concern his mind with our politics, has never an idea that he can shirk the work he has agreed to perform, pays his city and national taxes with exactness and promptitude, dwells at peace with all his neighbors, sets great store by his feast-days, makes frequent offerings to the gods, thinks he will go home in three or four years, and religiously hopes that his body may finally have burial in China.

Wo Lee and his kinsfolk live by themselves and in themselves; their relations with the whites are of a business character, and in the smallest possible degree either social or political. They rarely accept invitations to visit Americans, and what visits they do make are ceremonious. If a Chinese gentleman invites you to dine with him, it is to dinner at a restaurant; he will show you his store or his office or his private room, if you are curious to sec either; but he accepts none of your overtures for intimacy, and allows you little opportunity to see him in his social relaxations. I think he could not if he would, and would not if he could, repel with rudeness; but he doesn't give you the least encouragement to advance. He seems content to stand in isolation, is cordial enough in his shop or store and on the street, but does n't permit himself to be interested in your social or political or personal affairs. He counts as one in number and in business, but otherwise is a silent quantity in the life of the city and the State. His ten or fifteen years in San Francisco have but slightly Americanized him ; in most respects, so far as you can see, he is much such a man as you imagine he was when he left China. Of course he has learned many things, and his view of life is enlarged; but his conservatism remains, and he clings to his old ways with a pertinacity that amuses, perplexes, and astonishes me.

He asks for such rights under the law as will protect him in his life and his business. So far as I heard or observed, he stands with serene dignity, and neither expostulates nor vituperates. See what he said through Fung Tang, a high-minded scholar and one of his foremost men, socially and in business : —

“ We are satisfied with the treaty you have made with our government, and we want the just protection it promises us. We have rich bankers and merchants in China, but we cannot advise them to risk their capital here so long as their agents cannot testify in your courts; for, like your own capitalists, they wish to know that their property will be secure before investing it abroad. Much gold and silver is hoarded in China, which might be profitably used here if our people felt sure we had full and proper protection. We merchants have tried to be fair and honest in our dealings with your merchants here, and have paid our debts as scrupulously to Americans as to our own people. The managers of some of your largest San Francisco firms engaged in the Chinese trade have trusted us with hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time without security, and we have not failed to pay every dollar to them again. We ask nothing but that you treat us justly. We are willing to pay taxes cheerfully when taxed equally with others. We think the tax of five dollars collected from each Chinaman coming into this State is not right if this is a free country. We also think the special tax of four dollars per month collected only from Chinese miners is not according to your treaty with our government. Most of all we want protection to our lives and property. Your courts of justice refuse our testimony, and thus leave us defenceless. Our country can furnish yours with good, faithful, industrious men ; if you wish to employ them, and will enact laws to make them feel safe, and insure them equal justice with people of other nations, according to the terms of their treaty with your government. We live here many years in quiet; all we ask for is right and justice.”

These explicit and dignified words indicate the Chinaman’s attitude. He does not seek admission to our society ; he is not concerned about political rights; but is content to live apart, and asks for nothing but justice. His dress is peculiar and inconvenient in our eyes; he lives comfortably on a sum per diem that would only help me the swifter to starvation ; he seems indifferent to what gives me my highest delight and purest gratification; he is no way troubled by my devotion to the ballot as the symbol of human prosperity ; but “original equality before the law” is in every article of his jurisprudence, and has been there for thousands of years.

The Chinese quarter of San Francisco is a place of wonderful fascination to all visitors from the Atlantic States. Very many of the Chinese are young men, — men under thirty years of age, and for the greater part unmarried. Only a small proportion of those who are married have their wives and children in this country. The quarter presents, therefore, a community of men. It covers ten or twelve blocks of the flat; and here reside most of the Chinamen in the city. They live largely in boarding-houses: in many buildings there are not less than one hundred; in several there are three or four hundred, while in one or two must be over one thousand. Two thirds of the immigrants are of the peasant class, poor men, though not necessarily of the lowest caste. They know nothing of luxuries, in our sense of the word they eat the cheapest of food, have n’t much use for beds and mirrors and wardrobes, and at night need only a blanket and two feet by five on the floor or in the back yard.

I had a notion that they were a filthy people ; — that was a great mistake. There are odors about them, caught from work and the cook-stove, that my nostrils do not at all approve ; but personal cleanliness is a rule, with but rare exceptions. Of the floors and walls and ceilings of their houses I can’t speak so favorably ; I found them smirched and begrimed with the hard and careless usage of many years; not unswept, but unwashed and unpainted; not dirty to the foot or the hand, but very disagreeable to one’s senses of seeing and smelling; needing the white landlord’s painter and paper-hanger quite as much as the yellow tenant’s scrubbing-brush. These houses are cheaply and poorly furnished, and rarely contain anything in the way of ornament, if I except growing vines and plants. The halls and stairways seemed dirtier than the chambers and diningrooms, while the areas and back yards were generally unclean and nauseating. The common effect of dilapidation I found enhanced by the numberless fluttering strips of soiled paper hanging everywhere, inscribed with mottoes and admonitions and moral maxims : “ Virtue loves its children,” “ Deal rightly with your neighbors,” “The way of virtue is happiness,” “ The gods approve justice,” “ The uncharitable prosper not,” etc.

Out in the country and in the towns and smaller cities this class of people live even more miserably in some respects than in San Francisco. Travelling about, and looking much into houses and rooms occupied by the Chinese, gives one new ideas as to the value of woman in domestic affairs. The hard and meagre and prosaic life of these men is not necessarily to be charged to their national character; for the life of Americans in mining-camps, where there are no women, is scarcely less barren of comfort and refinement than that of these poor Chinamen.

The country laborers have little more than a mere animal existence, unless they happen to be employed as houseservants. They are at work all day, for, as I have already said, a Chinaman never thinks of shirking; they live with the greatest frugality ; in the evening they smoke and sit together for talk; probably they gamble for ten and twenty-five cent pieces ; at night they sleep — anywhere. The lowest of them can read and write, for education is all but universal in the old Empire at home, but there are neither books nor papers for them to be had in the country here. The loneliness of that life does not make them seek the companionship of other races ; in the valleys and on the mountains I found them choosing isolation as in the city with its thousands. Everywhere is this reserve and reticence, —going their way with quiet manner, sealed lips, and inscrutable faces, as if walking in a world of their own, beyond the voice and the footstep of the “ Melican ” man. They are uniformly civil, and sedately satisfy the stranger’s curiosity, but they neither seek nor proffer confidence.

One may truly say that these Chinese seem to be a clannish people. But is n't that about what the French and the Swiss and the Italians say of us ? — founding the conclusion on the fact that when we go to Paris or Berne or Rome we mostly gather in one or two hotels and make up our own society. The Chinaman may be over-fond of himself and his kinsfolk, but we are not yet in a position to sit in his judgment. Just now he must be clannish for his own protection : it is n’t possible, as I am bound to say in his behalf, to tell how he will act when we recognize his humanity and give him equality with ourselves in civil rights.

Two of us travellers went one afternoon, in San Francisco, with a note of introduction, to the store of a certain "wholesale and retail dealer in tea, sugar, rice, nut-oil, opium, shoes, and clothing, and China provisions generally.” The Chinese merchant was not in when we arrived, and we spent half an hour in looking at his goods and talking with the chief clerk, who was also the book-keeper. He was a young fellow of about eighteen or twenty, able to read and write and speak English with considerable facility, having learned the language, he told us, in six months at an evening school. He received us very politely, readily answered all our inquiries about the goods, showed us his books and explained how he kept and reckoned accounts ; doing it all with the most charming lack of pretence and assumption. But he would go no farther : it was impossible to draw him into talk about himself or his people ; he met all our inquiries with perfectly goodnatured reserve. He asked my residence and business, not as if he had any concern in the matter, but as if good-breeding required him to do so. At last I became a good deal interested in the lad ; —it was curious to see how he kept his own counsel and his amiability. His uncle not coming in, he finally asked us to sit in the back room and wait. I am not quite certain whether he did it from courtesy or from a desire to be rid of our inquisitiveness. Of course we did not decline his invitation, — the first opportunity I had to see the private room of a Chinese gentleman of wealth and position.

It was a room ten or twelve feet square, neat and tidy and orderly as a lady’s bedchamber. On one side was a large platform about two feet high, covered with an elegant crimson mat, hung all round with a rich damask curtain. In the centre of this was a smoking-tray, with pipes and cigars and tobacco and a lighted lamp. On another side was a case of shelves whereon were piled books and papers and manuscripts. Opposite were other shelves, with bottles of wine, dried fruits, a teapot, teacups, wineglasses, cake-plates, etc. The floor was handsomely carpeted, and about the walls were hung half a dozen Chinese pictures, an American landscape print, and a good engraving of Lincoln. In the corner behind the door was the bed,— not with pillows like ours, but a long bolster for the neck; not with spread turned down from the top like ours, but snow-white sheet and blankets rolled up from the whole front side. We were still standing when the merchant came in with a couple of friends. The young man introduced us with easy grace, speaking our names distinctly, and mentioning our place of residence ; and the merchant, in broken English, expressed pleasure at seeing persons from a place so far away, and at welcoming in his rooms any friends of the person from whom I had a letter, and then asked us all to be seated and drink a glass of wine with him. His nephew did the honors of the occasion, and as we touched our delicate little glasses, holding scarcely more than a large thimbleful, the merchant hoped we two would have a pleasant visit in San Francisco, and get safely back to our homes. We sat with him for ten or fifteen minutes, talked a little about various matters, accepted cigars, and shook hands with him at the door on parting.

I dropped in there twice afterwards, and was recognized by name at each call. On these occasions I declined wine, but took a cup of tea with the merchant and his nephew from the tiniest cups imaginable, not holding more than a tablespoonful. At one visit I was invited into the private room, and sat on the platform with the young man ; at the other we sat in the rear end of the store, while half a dozen persons stood near the street-door till my call was concluded. I visited several other merchants, was received in much the same ceremonious fashion, and found their private rooms not widely different from the one I have described. Wine or tea, with cigars, was always offered, and the manner of my entertainers was invariably marked by great self-respect and high breeding.

Once upon a time, Julesburg, out in the northeast corner of Colorado, — or did they finally decide that it was in Nebraska ? — was a town of two thousand inhabitants. Now it is a miserable way-station on the Union Pacific Railway, three hundred and seventyfive miles from Omaha, with a population of one hundred, — of so little consequence that the traveller scarcely notices its existence; but in its day, only two years ago, it had a telegraphoffice and kept the reading-public well informed as to its peculiar life of brawls and robberies and stabbings and streetfights and sudden murders. It included three hundred women among its inhabitants,—not women of doubtful or easy virtue, but women who had no virtue at all except that of being able to hold their own in a gambling-hell row and a bar-room pistol-fight. If a Chinaman had been put down there to study the American woman, what report must he have made to his countrymen at home ? Nay, if he were put down to-day at Promontory to make the same study, what would be his conclusion? He is brought up to charity of thought and speech ; but with the largest toleration he couldn't speak well of her if he had judged her then at Julesburg or last fall at Promontory. Shall we judge the Chinese woman by what we see in California ? We demand that he shall put himself in our place ; may he not also demand that we put ourselves in his place?

The Chinese women in San Francisco are mostly a disgrace to their country ; and if medical men and policeofficers with whom I talked are to be credited, this fact is due in no small degree to white men now or heretofore living in that city. When John Smith, a wild young man from New York, got to the Pacific coast he met Tai Loo, just from the Chinese steamer : the silver and the passions of these two and their fellows have made the Chinese woman of California what she is ; and, if the balance must be struck, the doctors and the police say that Smith is in no position to throw stones at Tai Loo’s glass house. For my part, I cannot see that the Chinaman’s sin in bringing over these women is any greater than the sin of Smith and his kind in consorting with them after they are domiciled in California. And this is the view taken by that intelligent Chinese person who might have been deputed to report on the American woman from the latitude and longitude of Julesburg.

Look back at the words I have quoted from Fung Tang, and then say if we have given the Chinaman any encouragement to bring his family to our shores. We have taxed him on landing and taxed him if he worked at mining; we have beaten him and stabbed him at will when no white witness was in sight; we have shut the doors of our court-rooms in his bleeding face; we have put his property at the tender mercy of shysters and sharpers; we have made law an enigma, and justice a mockery, in his eyes; the ruling party in California is even now considering if it can kick him out of the State with a legislative boot. And yet it is imputed to him as a crime and as an evidence of national degradation that his virtuous women on the coast are but one in a hundred.

A few of the married men have their wives and children with them: more families came over last year than in all the other years since Chinese immigration began. It is undoubtedly true that in China the woman is regarded as an inferior, and travellers tell us that custom keeps her secluded, and prevents her from having any part in affairs outside her home. Let us hope that one result of the intercourse between that country and ours may be to give the Chinese a higher opinion of woman’s character and capabilities. In going about among what I may designate as the middle class of California Chinese, I saw the inside of four homes, and four married women with their children. In general the Chinese women are not larger than our girls of fourteen or fifteen ; those of the town have a somewhat brazen look, but are more modest when on the streets than white women of the same class ; the married ones were retiring, diffident, bright-eyed, and pleasant-faced.

One afternoon I dropped into a Chinese wood-carver’s shop and had some talk with him about his business. He was a chatty and smiling young man, speaking my language with great difficulty, and seemed quite pleased to have me examine and praise his really fine work. I asked him if he was married, and when he told me he had “ wifee and one he,” I ventured to say that I should like to see his boy. He looked at me sharply for an instant, and then disappeared into the room back of his shop. Presently he returned, and beckoned me to the door, bowed low as I came up, stood aside for me to pass, and then followed me in. I found “he” to be a youngster of three or four years, toddling about the floor, chattering to himself and his mother, and not in the least afraid of the stranger. He was a quaint little chap, and his father was evidently very proud of him. The mother stood with her eyes on the floor when I entered, and looked up but once while I remained. That was when I said to the father, “Nice boy, — nice boy,” which words, I suppose, he repeated in Chinese, and then his wife glanced quickly at me with a pleased expression in her face. The room was not over eight or nine feet square ; there were three or four stools, a plain table, the child’s bed of folded blankets, two or three shelves behind a curtain, and the usual scrolls of red paper on the walls.

One evening we looked into a jewellers store. He was a handsome fellow, Spoke English readily, had his showcases well filled with American and foreign watches, and silver, and notions, and on his work-bench was as complete a set of first-class tools as I ever saw in any jeweller’s shop. He had learned his trade in China, seemed perfectly at home in it, and said he had all the work he could do, — quite one half of it coming from others than his own countrymen. He sold an alarm-clock of Connecticut make white we talked, and remarked that his people had to get up early in the morning and liked this kind “right much.” As we stood by the counter, a child pattered out from the back room, and the man’s wife with a babe in her arms immediately followed. She dropped her eyes on seeing us, but passed behind the case and spoke with her husband, and then sat down on a stool near him. She had a small and intelligent face, and was less diffident than the wood-carver’s wife. She couldn’t use our tongue, but the man seemed from time to time to give her an idea of the desultory talk, and she appeared to find pleasure in what he said immediately after we spoke of the children. The oldest had a wonderfully wise look in his large brown eyes, and didn’t seem quite sure that it would be the proper thing to allow the strangers any familiarities of talk or touch.

I wanted to see one of the real Chinese ladies, a married woman of the upper class. This was not possible. Home is the woman’s province, in the opinion of Wo Lee and his kinsmen ; her business is to stay there, and these ladies of the higher rank never appear on the street. Mr. Lee is courtesy itself in his store and at his business, but he invites no white man to meet his wife and family. A little inquiry convinced me that there was no way in which I could satisfy my curiosity, — no way, unless I used the eyes of a female friend. And I did that. This was the way, and this the report.

There were three of the ladies, all friends of mine, and they were permitted to call on the wife of a Chinese gentleman. It took two or three days and a great deal of diplomacy to arrange for the visit. He didn't mean they should go, but they conquered him at last, as they have conquered and will continue to conquer white men. Eleven o’clock in the morning, sharp eleven, was the hour fixed, and the husband was to be at his store to conduct them to his residence. They were on hand to the moment, and waited half an hour in the store, chatting with each other and the merchant. Then he led the way and they followed. At the house it was up stairs, and through the hall, and up another stairway, and into a third-story back room. The man has been in California seven or eight years ; when he returned from his visit to China two years ago he brought his bride, — of high estate, rich in dower, with the smallest of small feet. She has n’t been out of his house since the day he took her there. From the back room the three curious women, one of whom was using her eyes for me, were taken into the front room. Both were plainly furnished; there were chairs and shelves and mats and a table, and scrolls on the walls, and plants in the window, but nothing else for beauty or ornament. They waited half an hour more for this lady of high birth and breeding. Then she appeared, coming in from a side door, with her head down and a fan before her face, scarcely able to walk because of her tiny feet, half supported by the peasant maid carrying the baby. She was dressed as for a grand occasion. Her hair was braided and plaited and rolled and put up with combs and pins and arrows of gold and silver. The body of her dress was of plain colored silk, loose, high in the neck, elegant of texture, with long and large sleeves turned back from the hands and richly embroidered on the cuffs. The under skirt was also of silk, just touching the floor, narrowly embroidered in bright colors at the bottom and plain above; the upper skirt was of satin, reaching just below the knees, covered with fine and elaborate embroidery ; around her waist was a silk sash or girdle, with the ends trailing on the floor. She stood through the brief call, hardly raising her eyes for an instant, not speaking a single word, and holding her open fan in such a way that my friends caught but a glance or two of her fair and painted face, — enough to see that her eyes were winning and her features regular and delicate. The baby was twelve or fourteen months old, a bright and handsome boy, in whom the father showed delicious pride. It was richly and somewhat fantastically dressed, with many costly and burdensome ornaments of gold and silver given by friends in San Francisco and sent by friends in China, — rings on its chubby hands, tinkling silver bells on its ankles and pendent from ribbons of its quaint cap. The father chatted with the ladies, and was pleased when they petted his boy, shrugged his shoulders when they suggested that he take wife and baby out riding, and at the end of ten minutes ceremoniously conducted them down the stairways and out into the street; they wondering how the young wife found life endurable in the confinement, year on year, of her three or four barren rooms, — wondering, — and then, when they thought of baby and motherhood, not wondering.