Twain, Mark

Mark Twain and China : general 1852-2000
1987
Liu Haiming : Mark Twain's first appearance on the Chinese literary scene was not in the role of humorist. The style of his humor was not easy for literate Chinese, with their different cultural traditions, to understand and appreciate. The purpose of many translations of the late Qing was to introduce the social systems and customs of other countries to the Chinese people. Twain is usually termed a humorous satirist' in Chinese literary circles. He was a great literary pioneer and the first writer successfully to express American life using the language of the American people. Twain's humor was a unification, continuation and development of the traditional language, form and content of the American west.
2010
Ou Hsin-yun : Although the actual presence of the Chinese was rare on the American East Coast in the nineteenth century, frontier writings and dramas with Chinese characters were popular, because the readers and audiences were curious about the American West. Twain exhibited his fascination with and sympathy for the Chinese through his attack on the racist practices against the Chinese in his 'Disgraceful persecution of a boy', 'John Chinaman in New York', 'Goldsmith's friend abroad again', his novel 'Roughing it,' and the play 'Ah Sin'. Twain's writings demonstrate American Orientalism as influenced not only by the American's relations with the Orient, but also by their different social ideologies and self-identification of nationality. Since Twain endeavored to understand the Chinese and protest against Western imperialism, his writings offer different perspectives on Asian people.
2010
Martin Zehr : The conclusion that Twain's observations of the Chinese, direct and otherwise, influences his writings, especially in terms of his acute awareness of the roles of race, class, and ethnicity in his characters, is inescapable. One of the less controversial statements one can make regarding his personal and literary evolution is that a change did in fact take place in his personal attitudes with respect to each of these factors, even acknowledging, that Twain is still the subject of occasional charges of racism. A review of his writings on the Chinese reveals the importance of his observations in this regard, even though they rarely constitute a prominent role in his work. Nevertheless, from the time of his first focused writings on the Chinese, during his journalistic apprenticeships in the West, it is apparent that Twain is closely noting and, unlike many of his contemporaries, choosing not to ignore the fate of these immigrants.
During Twain's lifetime, it is doubtful that his attitudes toward the Chinese ever represented anything more than a distinctly minority opinion in the United States, where the fears of 'yellow peril' or the protectionist proclivities of organized labor were continually leveraged by clever politicians into support for the official exclusionary policies against Chinese immigration beginning in 1882.

Letter from Mark Twain to Jane Lampton Clemens ; Aug. 31 (1853).
About appalled by the “mass of human vermin”, including niggers, mulattoes, quadroons, Chinese, to wade through this mass of human vermin, would raise the ire of the most patient person that ever lived.
Mark Twain probably met Chinese immigrants for the first time during his first trip to New York.

Twain, Mark. China at the fair [ID D29364].
Chy Lung, of Dupont street, near Washington, has deposited at the Fair Pavilion, a hideous carved image of a Chinese lion, for exhibition. It is embellished with all the ghastly-painted deviltry so pleasing to the Chinese taste and so grateful to his eye. It will be well for the prudent Christian to treat the monster with respect, for it may, possibly, be a Pagan god in disguise.

Twain, Mark. The battered Chinaman case [ID D29365].
Andrew Benson and Wm. Silk, two of the triad who were charged with having pounded a Chinaman to pieces in a slaughter house, a few days since, were examined yesterday in the Police Court. Benson was discharged and Silk sent up to the County Court.

Twain, Mark. Opium smugglers [ID D29360].
The ingenuity of the Chinese is beyond calculation. It is asserted that they have no words or expressions signifying abstract right or wrong. They appreciate "good" and "bad," but it is only in reference to business, to finance, to trade, etc. Whatever is successful is good; whatever fails is bad. So they are not conscience-bound in planning and perfecting ingenious contrivances for avoiding the tariff on opium, which is pretty heavy. The attempted swindles appear to have been mostly, or altogether, attempted by the Coolie passengers - the Chinese merchants, either from honorable motives or from policy, having dealt honestly with the Government. But the passengers have reached the brains of rascality itself, to find means for importing their delicious drug without paying the duties. To do this has called into action the inventive genius of brains equal in this respect to any that ever lodged on the top end of humanity. They have, doubtless, for years smuggled opium into this port continuously. The officers of Customs at length got on their track, and the traffic has become unprofitable to the Coolies, however well it has been paying the officials through the seizures made. The opium has been found concealed in double jars and brass eggs, as heretofore described, brought ashore in bands around the body, and by various other modes.

Twain, Mark. Chinese banquet [ID D29366].
The President and officers of the Ning Yong Company request the pleasure of our company to a Chinese banquet to be given to-morrow at three o'clock. So reads the handsomely printed card of invitation, issued and signed by "Ah Wee, Inspector." We shall do ourselves the honor, and the Company the happiness, to save up a desolating appetite for the occasion.

Twain, Mark. The new Chinese temple [ID D29361].
Being duly provided with passes, through the courtesy of our cultivated barbaric friend, Ah Wae, out side business-agent of the Ning Yong Company, we visited the new Chinese Temple again yesterday, in company with several friends. After suffocating in the smoke of burning punk and josh lights, and the infernal odors of opium and all kinds of edibles cooked in an unchristian manner, until we were becoming imbued with Buddhism and beginning to lose our nationality, and imbibe, unasked, Chinese instincts, we finally found Ah Wae, who roused us from our lethargy and saved us to our religion and our country by merely breathing the old, touching words, so simple and yet so impressive, and withal so familiar to those whose blessed privilege it has been to be reared in the midst of a lofty and humanizing civilization: "How do, gentlemen - take a drink ?" By the magic of that one phrase, our noble American instincts were spirited back to us again, in all their pristine beauty and glory. The polished cabinet of wines and liquors stood on a table in one of the gorgeous halls of the temple, and behold, an American, with those same noble instincts of his race, had been worshipping there before us - Mr. Stiggers, of the Alta. His photograph lay there, the countenance subdued by accustomed wine, and reposing upon it appeared that same old smile of serene and ineffable imbecility which has so endeared it to all whose happiness it has been to look upon it. That apparition filled us with forebodings. They proved to be well founded. A sad Chinaman - the sanctified bar-keeper of the temple - threw open the cabinet with a sigh, exposed the array of empty decanters, sighed again, murmured "Bymbye, Stiggins been here," and burst into tears. No one with any feeling would have tortured the poor pagan for further explanations when manifestly none were needed, and we turned away in silence, and dropped a sympathetic tear in a fragrant rat-pie which had just been brought in to be set before the great god Josh. The temple is thoroughly fitted up now, and is resplendent with tinsel and all descriptions of finery. The house and its embellishments cost about eighty thousand dollars. About the 5th of September it will be thrown open for public inspection, and will be well worth visiting. There is a band of tapestry extending around a council-room in the second story, which is beautifully embroidered in a variety of intricate designs wrought in bird's feathers, and gold and silver thread and silk fibres of all colors. It cost a hundred and fifty dollars a yard, and was made by hand. The temple was dedicated last Friday night, and since then priests and musicians have kept up the ceremonies with noisy and unflagging zeal. The priests march backward and forward, reciting prayers or something in a droning, sing-song way, varied by discordant screeches somewhat like the cawing of crows, and they kneel down, and get up and spin around, and march again, and still the infernal racket of gongs, drums and fiddles, goes on with its hideous accompaniment, and still the spectator grows more and more smothered and dizzy in the close atmosphere of punk-smoke and opium-fumes. On a divan in one hall, two priests, clad in royal robes of figured blue silk, and crimson skull caps, lay smoking opium, and had kept it up until they looked as drunk and spongy as the photograph of the mild and beneficent Stiggers. One of them was a high aristocrat and a distinguished man among the Chinamen, being no less a personage than the chief priest of the temple, and "Sing-Song" or President of the great Ning-Yong Company. His finger-nails are actually longer than the fingers they adorn, and one of them is twisted in spirals like a cork screw. There was one room half full of priests, all fine, dignified, intelligent looking men like Ah Wae, and all dressed in long blue silk robes, and blue and red topped skull caps, with broad brims turned up all round like wash-basins. The new temple is ablaze with gilded ornamentation, and those who are fond of that sort of thing would do well to stand ready to accept the forthcoming public invitation.

Twain, Mark. Chinese railroad obstructions [ID D29362].
The Chinese in this State are becoming civilized to a fearful extent. One of them was arrested the other day, in the act of preparing for a grand railroad disaster on the Sacramento Valley Railroad. If these people continue to imbibe American ideas of progress, they will be turning their attention to highway robbery, and other enlightened pursuits. They are industrious.

Twain, Mark. The Chinese temple [ID D29363].
The New Chinese Temple in Broadway - the "Ning Yong Wae Quong" of the Ning Yong Company, was dedicated to the mighty Josh night before last, with a general looseness in the way of beating of drums, clanging of gongs and burn ing of yellow paper, commensurate with the high importance of the occasion. In the presence of the great idol, the other day, our cultivated friend, Ah Wae, informed us that the old original Josh (of whom the image was only an imitation, a substitute vested with power to act for the absent God, and bless Chinamen or damn them, according to the best of his judgment,) lived in ancient times on the Mountain of Wong Chu, was seventeen feet high, and wielded a club that weighed two tons; that he died two thousand five hundred years ago, but that he is all right yet in the Celestial Kingdom, and can come on earth, or appear anywhere he pleases, at a moment's notice, and that he could come down here and cave our head in with his club if he wanted to. We hope he don't want to. Ah Wae told us all that, and we deliver it to the public just as we got it, advising all to receive it with caution and not bet on its truthfulness until after mature reflection and deliberation. As far as we are concerned, we don't believe it, for all it sounds so plausible.

Twain, Mark. Chinese slaves [ID D29353].
Captain Douglass and Watchman Hager boarded the ship Clara Morse, on Sunday morning, the moment she arrived, and captured nineteen Chinese girls, who had been stolen and brought from Hongkong to San Francisco to be sold. They were a choice lot, and estimated to be worth from one hundred and fifty to four hundred dollars apiece in this market. They are shut up for safe-keeping for the present, and we went and took a look at them yesterday; some of them are almost good-looking, and none of them are pitted with small pox - a circumstance which we have observed is very rare among China women. There were even small children among them - one or two not two years old, perhaps, but the ages of the majority ranged from four teen to twenty. We would suggest, just here that the room where these unfortunates are confined is rather too close for good health - and besides, the more fresh air that blows on a Chinaman, the better he smells. The heads of the various Chinese Companies here have entered into a combination to break up this importation of Chinese prostitutes, and they are countenanced and supported in their work by Chief Burke and Judge Shepheard. Now-a-days, before a ship gets her cables out, the Police board her, seize the girls and shut them up, under guard, and they are sent back to China as soon as opportunity offers, at the expense of the Chinese Companies, who also send an agent along to hunt up the families from whom the poor creatures have been stolen, and restore to them their lost darlings again. Our Chinese fellow citizens seem to be acquiring a few good Christian instincts, at any rate.

Mark Twain and Steve Gillis worked for the San Francisco Morning Call and were living on California Street. Their window looked down on a lot of Chinese houses, small wooden shanties covered with beatenout cans. Steve and Mark would look down on these houses, waiting until all Chinamen were inside ; one of them would grab an empty beer-bottle, throw it down on those tin roofs, and dodge behind the blinds. The Chinamen would swarm out and look up and pour out Chinese vituperation. By and by, when they had retired and everything was quiet again, their tormentors would throw another bottle. This was their Sunday amusement.

Twain, Mark. Our active police [ID D29367].
The Call gives an account of an unoffending Chinese rag-picker being set upon by a gang of boys and nearly stoned to death. It concludes the paragraph thus: "He was carried to the City and County Hospital in an insensible condition; his head haying been split open and his body badly bruised. The young ruffians scattered, and it is doubtful if any of them will be recognized and punished." If that unoffending man dies, and a murder has consequently been committed, it is doubtful whether his murderers will be recognized and punished, is it? And yet if a Chinaman steals a chicken he is sure to be recognized and punished, through the efforts of one of our active police force. If our active police force are not too busily engaged in putting a stop to petty thieving by Chinamen, and fraternizing with newspaper reporters, who hold up their wonderful deeds to the admiration of the community, let it be looked to that the boys who were guilty of this murderous assault on an industrious and unoffending man are recognized and punished. The Call says "some philanthropic gentlemen dispersed the miscreants;" these philanthropic gentlemen, if the police do their duty and arrest the culprits, can probably recognize them.

Mark Twain and Anson Burlingame.
Mark Twain's interest in China had been aroused and partially influenced by Anson Burlingame. Twain met Burlingame when he was working as a correspondent for the 'Sacramento Union' in Sandwich Islands, Hawaii.
Letter from Mark Twain to Jane Lampton Clemens and Pamela A. Moffett ; Honolulu, Sandwich Islands, 21 June 1866.
Hon. Anson Burlingame, U.S. Minister to China, & Gen. Van Valkenburgh, Minister to Japan, with their families & suits, have just arrived here en route. They were going to do me the honor to call on me this morning, & that accounts for my being out of bed now. You know what condition my room is always in when you are not around—so I climbed out of bed & dressed & shaved pretty quick & went up to the residence of the American Minister & called on them. Mr. Burlingame told me a good deal about Hon. Jere Clemens & that Virginia Clemens who was wounded in a duel. He was in Congress years together with both of them. Mr. B. sent for his son, to introduce him—said he could tell that frog story of mine as well as anybody. I told him I was glad to hear it, for I never tried to tell it myself, without making a botch of it. At his request I have loaned Mr Burlingame pretty much everything I ever wrote. I guess he will be an almighty wise man if by the time he wades through that lot.
Letter from Mark Twain to Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett ; Honolulu, June 27 (1866).
Mr. Burlingame went with me all the time, and helped me question the men—throwing away invitations to dinner with the princes and foreign dignitaries, and neglecting all sorts of things to accommodate me. You know how I appreciate that kind of thing—especially from such a man, who is acknowledged to have no superior in the diplomatic circles of the world, and obtained from China concessions in favor of America which were refused to Sir Frederick Bruce and Envoys of France and Russia until procured for them by Burlingame himself—which service was duly acknowledged by those dignitaries. He hunted me up as soon as he came here, and has done me a hundred favors since, and says if I will come to China in the first trip of the great mail steamer next January and make his house in Pekin my home, he will afford me facilities that few men can have there for seeing and learning. He will give me letters to the chiefs of the great Mail Steamship Company which will be of service to me in this matter. I expect to do all this, but I expect to go to the States first—and from China to the Paris World's Fair.
Letter from Mark Twain to Mrs. Jane Clemens and family ; San F., Dec. 4 (1866).
The China Mail Steamer is getting ready and everybody says I am throwing away a fortune in not going in her. I firmly believe it myself.

Twain, Mark. Labor ; Coolies for California [ID D29368].
LABOR
The principal labor used on the plantations is that of Kanaka men and women - six dollars to eight dollars a month and find them, or eight to ten dollars and let them find themselves. The contract with the laborer is in writing, and the law rigidly compels compliance with it; if the man shirks a day's work and absents himself, he has to work two days for it when his time is out. If he gets unmanageable and disobedient, he is condemned to work on the reef for a season, at twenty-five cents a day. If he is in debt to the planter for such purchases as clothing and provisions, however, when his time expires, the obligation is canceled - the planter has no recourse at law.
The sugar product is rapidly augmenting every year, and day by day the Kanaka race is passing away. Cheap labor had to be procured by some means or other, and so the Government sends to China for Coolies and farms them out to the planters at $5 a month each for five years, the planter to feed them and furnish them with clothing. The Hawaiian agent fell into the hands of Chinese sharpers, who showed him some superb Coolie samples and then loaded his ships with the scurviest lot of pirates that ever went unhung. Some of them were cripples, some were lunatics, some afflicted with incurable diseases and nearly all were intractable, full of fight and animated by the spirit of the very devil. However, the planters managed to tone them down and now they like them very well. Their former trade of cutting throats on the China seas has made them uncommonly handy at cutting cane. They are steady, industrious workers when properly watched. If the Hawaiian agent had been possessed of a reasonable amount of business tact he could have got experienced rice and sugar cultivators - peaceable, obedient men and women - for the same salaries that must be paid to these villains, and done them a real service by giving them good homes and kind treatment in place of the wretchedness and brutality they experience in their native land. Some of the women are being educated as house servants, and I observe that they do not put on airs, and "sass" their masters and mistresses, and give daily notice to quit, and try to boss the whole concern, as the tribe do in California.

COOLIES FOR CALIFORNIA
You will have Coolie labor in California some day. It is already forcing its superior claims upon the attention of your great mining, manufacturing and public improvement corporations. You will not always go on paying $80 and $100 a month for labor which you can hire for $5. The sooner California adopts Coolie labor the better it will be for her. It cheapens no labor of men's hands save the hardest and most exhausting drudgery - drudgery which neither intelligence nor education are required to fit a man for - drudgery which all white men abhor and are glad to escape from. You may take note of the fact that to adopt Coolie labor could work small hardship to the men who now do the drudgery, for every ship-load of Coolies received there and put to work would so create labor - would permit men to open so many mines they cannot afford to work now, and begin so many improvements they dare not think of at present - that all the best class of the working population who might be emancipated from the pick and shovel by that ship-load would find easier and more profitable employment in superintending and overseeing the Coolies. It would be mote profitable, as you will readily admit, to the great mining companies of California and Nevada to pay 300 Chinamen an aggregate of $1,500 a month - or five times the amount, if you think it mote just - than to pay 300 white men $30, 000 a month. Especially when the white men would desert in a body every time a new mining region was discovered, but the Chinamen would have to stay until their contracts were worked out.
People are always hatching fine schemes for inducing Eastern capital to the Pacific coast. Yonder in China are the capitalists you want - and under your own soil is a bank that will not dishonor their checks. The mine purchased for a song by Eastern capital would pour its stream of wealth past your door and empty it in New York. You would be little the richer for that. There are hundreds of men in California who are sitting on their quartz leads, watching them year after year, and hoping for the day when they will pay - and growing gray all the time - hoping for a cheapening of labor that will enable them to work the mine or warrant another man in buying it - who would soon be capitalists if Coolie labor were adopted.
The Mission Woolen Mill Company take California wool and weave from it fabrics of all descriptions, which they challenge all America to surpass, and sell at prices which defy all foreign competition. The secret is in their cheap Chinese labor. With white labor substituted the mills would have to stop.
The Pacific Railroad Company employ a few thousand Chinamen at about $30 a month, and have white men to oversee them. They pronounce it the cheapest, the best, and most quiet, peaceable and faithful labor they have tried.
Some of the heaviest mining corporations in the State have it in contemplation to employ Chinese labor. Give this labor to California for a few years and she would have fifty mines opened where she has one now - a dozen factories in operation where there is one now - a thousand tons of farm produce raised where there are a hundred now - leagues of railroad where she has miles to-day, and a population commensurate with her high and advancing prosperity.
With the Pacific Railroad creeping slowly but surely toward her over mountain and desert and preparing to link her with the East, and with the China mail steamers about to throw open to her the vast trade of our opulent coast line stretching from the Amoor river to the equator, what State in the Union has so splendid a future before her as California? Not one, perhaps. She should awake and be ready to join her home prosperity to these tides of commerce that are so soon to sweep toward her from the east and the west.
To America it has been vouchsafed to materialize the vision, and realize the dream of centuries, of the enthusiasts of the old world. We have found the true Northwest Passage - we have found the true and only direct route to the bursting coffers of "Ormus and of Ind" - to the enchanted land whose mere drippings, in the ages that are gone, enriched and aggrandized ancient Venice, first, then Portugal, Holland, and in our own time, England - and each in succession they longed and sought for the fountain head of this vast Oriental wealth, and sought in vain. The path was hidden to them, but we have found it over the waves of the Pacific, and American enterprise will penetrate to the heart and center of its hoarded treasures, its imperial affluence. The gateway of this path is the Golden Gate of San Francisco; its depot, its distributing house, is California - her customers are the nations of the earth; her transportation wagons will be the freight cars of the Pacific Railroad, and they will take up these Indian treasures at San Francisco and flash them across the continent and the vessels of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company will deliver them in Europe fifteen days sooner than Europe could convey them thither by any route of her own she could devise.
California has got the world where it must pay tribute to her. She is about to be appointed to preside over almost the exclusive trade of 450,000,000 people - the almost exclusive trade of the most opulent land on earth. It is the land where the fabled Aladdin's lamp lies buried - and she is the new Aladdin who shall seize it from its obscurity and summon the geni and command him to crown her with power and greatness, and bring to her feet the hoarded treasures of the earth!
I may have wandered away from my original subject a little, but it is no matter - I keep thinking about the new subject, and I must have wandered into it eventually anyhow.

Twain, Mark. The treaty with China [ID D29324].
ARTICLE I.
His Majesty, the Emperor of China, being of the opinion that in making concessions to the citizens or subjects of foreign Powers of the privilege of residing on certain tracts of land, or resorting to certain waters of that Empire for the purposes of trade, he has by no means relinquished his right of eminent domain or dominion over the said land and waters, hereby agrees that no such concession or grant shall be construed to give to any Power or party which may be at war with or hostile to the United States the right to attack the citizens of the United States or their property within the said lands or waters; and the United States, for themselves, hereby agree to abstain from offensively attacking the citizens or subjects of any Power or party or their property with which they may be at war on any such tract of land or waters of the said Empire; but nothing in this article shall be construed to prevent the United States from resisting an attack by any hostile Power or party upon their citizens or their property. It is further agreed that if any right or interest in any tract of land in China has been or shall hereafter be granted by the Government of China to the United States or their citizens for purposes of trade or commerce, that grant shall in no event be construed to divest the Chinese authorities of their right of jurisdiction over persons and property within said tract of land, except so far as that right may have been expressly relinquished by treaty.
In or near one or two of the cities of China the Emperor has set apart certain tracts of land for occupation by foreigners. The foreigners residing upon these tracts create courts of justice, organize police forces, and govern themselves by laws of their own framing. They levy and collect taxes, they pave their streets, they light them with gas. These communities, through liberality of China, are so independent and so unshackled that they have all the seeming of colonies—insomuch that the jurisdiction of China over them was in time lost sight of and disregarded—at least, questioned. The English communities came to be looked upon as a part of England, and the American colonies as part of America; and so, after the Trent affair, it was seriously held by many that the Confederate ships of war would be as justifiable in making attacks upon the American communities in China as they would be in attacking New York or Boston. This doctrine was really held, notwithstanding the supremacy of China over these tracts of land was recognized at regular intervals in the most substantial way, viz., by way of payment to the Government of a stipulated rental. Again, these foreign communities took it upon themselves to levy taxes upon Chinamen residing upon their so-called "concessions," and enforce their collection. Perhaps those Chinamen were as well governed as they have been anywhere in China, perhaps it was entirely just that they should pay for good government—but the principle was wrong; it was an encroachment upon the rights of the crown, and caused the Government uneasiness; the boundary thus passed there was no telling how far the encroachment might be pushed. The municipal council which taxed these Chinamen was composed altogether of foreigners, so there was taxation without representation—a policy which we fought seven years to overthrow. The French have persistently claimed the right to exercise untrammeled jurisdiction over both natives and foreigners residing within their "concessions," but the present Minister, Monsieur Moustier, has yielded this position in favor of the anti-concession doctrine, and thus have ignored the "eminent dominion" of the Chinese Government. Under Article 1 of the new treaty, the question of whether an enemy of America can attack an American colony in China is answered in the negative. Under it the right of the Chinese Government to regulate the governing, taxing, and trying of its subjects resident within American "concessions" is recognized—in a word, its supreme control over its own people is recognized. Also (in the final sentence) its control over scattering foreigners (of nationalities not in treaty relations with China) not enrolled the regular concessions is "granted." During a war between Russia and Denmark, a Prussian man-of-war captured two Danish vessels lying at harbor in a Chinese harbor or roadstead, and carried them off. Article 1 of this treaty pledges that like offenses shall not be committed in Chinese waters by American cruisers, and looks to Chinese protection of American ships against such outrages.

ARTICLE 2.
The United States of America and His Majesty the Emperor of China, believing that the safety and prosperity of commerce will thereby best be promoted, agree that any privilege or immunity in respect to trade or navigation within the Chinese dominions which may not have been stipulated for by treaty, shall be subject to the discretion of the Chinese Government, and may be regulated by it accordingly, but not in a manner or spirit incompatible with the treaty stipulations of the parties.
At a first glance, this clause would seem unnecessary—unnecessary because the granting of any privilege not stipulated in a treaty with China, must of course be a matter entirely subject to the pleasure of the Chinese Government. Yet the clause has its significance. There is in China a class of foreigners who demand privileges, concessions and immunities, instead of asking for them—a class who look upon the Chinese as degraded barbarians, and not entitled to charity—as helpless, and therefore to be trodden underfoot—a tyrannical class who say openly that the Chinese should be forced to do thus and so; that foreigners know what is best for them, better than they do themselves, and therefore it would be but a Christian kindness to take them by the throat and compel them to see their real interests as the enlightened foreigners see them. These people harass and distress the Government by constantly dictating to it and meddling with its affairs. They beget and keep alive a "distrust" of foreigners among the Chinese people. It will surprise many among us to know that the Chinese are eminently hospitable, by nature, toward strangers. It will surprise many whose notion of Chinamen is that they are a race who formerly manifested their interest in shipwrecked strangers by exhibiting them in iron cages in public, in a half-starved condition, as rare and curious monsters, to know that a few hundred years ago they welcomed adventurous Jesuit priests, who struggled to their shores, with great cordiality, and gave to them the fullest liberty in the dissemination of their doctrines. I have seen at St. Peter's, in Rome, a picture of certain restive Chinamen barbecuing some 80 Romish priests. This was an uncalled for stretch of hospitality—if it be proposed to call it hospitality at all. But the caging and barbecuing of strangers were disagreeable attentions which were secured to those strangers by their predecessors. As I have said, the Chinese were exceedingly hospitable and kind toward the first foreigners who came among them, 200 or 300 years ago. They listened to their preachings, they joined their Church. They saw the doctrines of Christianity spreading far and wide over the land, yet nobody murmured against these things. The Jesuit priests were elevated to high offices in the Government. China's confidence in the foreigners was not betrayed. In time, had the Jesuits been let alone, they would have completely Christianized China, no doubt; that is, they would have made of the Chinese, Christians according to their moral, physical, and intellectual strength, and then given Nature a few generations in which to shed the Pagan skin, and sap the Pagan blood, and so perfect the work. For, be it known, one Jesuit missionary is equal to an army of any other denomination where there is actual work to be done, and solid, unsentimental wisdom to be exercised. However, to pursue my narrative, some priests of the Dominican order arrived, and very shortly began to make trouble. They began to cramp the privileges of converts; they flouted the system of persuasion of the Jesuits, and adopted that of driving; they meddled in politics, they became arrogant and dictatorial, they fomented discords everywhere—in a word, they utterly destroyed Chinese confidence in foreigners, and raised up Chinese hatred and distrust against them. For these things they were driven out of the country. When strangers came, after that, the Chinese, with that calm wisdom which comes only through bitter experience, caged them, or hanged them. I spoke, a while ago, of a domineering, hectoring class of foreigners in China who are always interfering with the Government's business, and thus keeping alive the distrust and dislike engendered by their kindred spirits, the Dominicans, an age ago. They clog progress. Article 2 of the treaty is intended to discountenance all officious intermeddling with the Government's business by Americans, and so move a step toward the restoration of that Chinese confidence in strangers which was annihilated so long ago.

ARTICLE 3.
The Emperor of China shall have the right to appoint consuls at ports of the United States, who shall enjoy the same privileges and immunities as those which are enjoyed by public law and treaty in the United States by the Consuls of Great Britain and Russia, or either of them.
And soon—perhaps within a year or two—there will doubtless be a Chinese Envoy located permanently at Washington. The Consuls referred to above will be appointed with all convenient dispatch. They will be Americans, but will in all cases be men who are capable of feeling pity for persecuted Chinamen, and will call to a strict account all who wrong them. It affords me infinite satisfaction to call particular attention to this Consul clause, and think of the howl that will go up from the cooks, the railroad graders, and the cobble-stone artists of California, when they read it. They can never beat and bang and set the dogs on the Chinamen any more. These pastimes are lost to them forever. In San Francisco, a large part of the most interesting local news in the daily papers consists of gorgeous compliments to the "able and efficient" Officer This and That for arresting Ah Foo, or Ching Wang, or Song Hi for stealing a chicken; but when some white brute breaks an unoffending Chinaman's head with a brick, the paper does not compliment any officer for arresting the assaulter, for the simple reason that the officer does not make the arrest; the shedding of Chinese blood only makes him laugh; he considers it fun of the most entertaining description. I have seen dogs almost tear helpless Chinamen to pieces in broad daylight in San Francisco, and I have seen hod-carriers who help to make Presidents stand around and enjoy the sport. I have seen troops of boys assault a Chinaman with stones when he was walking quietly along about his business, and send him bruised and bleeding home. I have seen Chinamen abused and maltreated in all the mean, cowardly ways possible to the invention of a degraded nature, but I never saw a policeman interfere in the matter and I never saw a Chinaman righted in a court of justice for wrongs thus done him. The California laws do not allow Chinamen to testify against white men. California is one of the most liberal and progressive States in the Union, and the best and worthiest of her citizens will be glad to know that the days of persecuting Chinamen are over, in California. It will be observed by Article 3 that the Chinese consuls will be placed upon the same footing as those from Russia and Great Britain, and that no mention is made of France. The authorities got into trouble with a French consul in San Francisco, once, and, in order to pacify Napoleon, the United States enlarged the privileges of French consuls beyond those enjoyed by the consuls of all other countries.

ARTICLE 4.
The twenty-ninth article of the treaty of the 18th of June, 1858, having stipulated for the exemption of Christian citizens of the United States and Chinese converts from persecution in China on account of their faith, it is further agreed that citizens of the United States in China, of every religious persuasion, and Chinese subjects in the United States shall enjoy entire liberty of conscience, and shall be exempt from all disability or persecution on account of their religious faith or worship in either country. Cemeteries for sepulture of the dead of whatever nativity or nationality shall be held in respect and free from disturbance or profanation.
The old treaty protected "Christian" citizens of the United States from persecution. The new one is broader. It protects our citizens "of every religious persuasion"—Jews, Mormons, and all. It also protects Chinamen in this country in the worship of their own gods after their own fashions, and also relieves them of all "disabilities" suffered by them heretofore on account of their religion. This protection of Christians in China is hardly necessary now-a-days, for the Chinamen have about fallen back to their ancient ample spirit of toleration again as regards religion. Anybody can preach in China who chooses to do it. He will not be disturbed. The former persecution of Christians in China, which was brought about by the Dominicans, seldom extended to the maiming or killing of converts anyhow. They generally invited the convert to trample upon a cross. If he refused, he was proven a Christian, and so was shunned and disgraced. This diminished the list of Chinese Christians very much, but did not root out that religion by any means. Religious books have been written, and translations made, by Chinese Christians, and there are as many as a million converts in China at the present time. There are many families who have inherited their Christianity by direct descent through six generations. In fact, it is believed that Christianity existed in China 1,100 years ago. For many years the missionaries heard vaguely, from time to time, of a monument of the seventh century which was reported to be still standing over the grave of some forgotten Christian far out in the interior of China. Two of these missionaries, the Revs. Messrs. Lees and Williams, traveled west 1,000 miles and found it. This brings me back to the fact, before stated, that the religious toleration and protection guaranteed by Article 4, are needed more by Chinamen here than by Americans in China. Those two missionaries traveled away out into the heart of China, preaching the Gospel of Christ every day, always being listened to attentively by large assemblages, and always kindly and hospitably treated. Moreover, these missionaries sold—mind you, sold, for cash, to these assemblages—20,000 copies of religious books, thus wisely and pleasantly combining salvation with business. If a Chinese missionary were to come disseminating his eternal truths among us, we would laugh at him first and bombard him with cabbages afterward. We would do this because we are civilized and enlightened. We would make him understand that he couldn't peddle his eternal truths in this market. China is one of the few countries where perfect religious freedom prevails. It is one of the few countries where no disabilities are inflicted on a man for his religion's sake, in the matter of holding office and embezzling the public funds. A Jesuit priest was formerly the Vice-President of the Board of Public Works, an exceedingly high position, and the present Viceroy of two important provinces is a Mohammedan. There are a great many Mohammedans in China. The last clause of article 4 was not absolutely necessary, perhaps. Still, it was well enough to have it in. When the lower classes in California learn that they are forever debarred from mutilating living Chinamen, their first impulse will naturally be to "take it out" of the dead ones. But disappointment shall be their portion. A Chinaman's "tail" is protected by law in California; for if he lost his queue he would be a dishonored Chinaman forever, and would forever be an exile. He could not think of returning to his native land to offer his countrymen the absurd spectacle of a man without a tail to his head. The Chinese regard their dead with a reverence which amounts to worship. All Chinamen who die in foreign lands are shipped home to China for permanent burial. Even the contracts which consign the wretched Coolies to slavery at $5 a month salary and two suits of clothes a year stipulate that if he dies in Cuba, the Sandwich Islands, or any other foreign land, his body must be sent home. There are vast vaults in San Francisco where hundreds of dead Chinamen have been salted away by gentle hands for shipment. The heads of the great Chinese Companies keep a record of the names of their thousands of members, and every individual is strictly accounted for to the home office. Every now and then a vessel is chartered and sent to China freighted with corpses.

ARTICLE 5.
The United States of America and the Emperor of China cordially recognize the inherent and inalienable right of man to change his home and his allegiance, and also the mutual advantages of the free migration and immigration of their citizens and subjects respectively from the one country to the other for purposes of curiosity, trade, or as permanent residents. The high contracting parties, therefore, join in reprobating any other than an entirely voluntary immigration for these purposes. They consequently agree to pass laws making it a penal offense for a citizen of the United States or a Chinese subject to take Chinese subjects either to the United States or to any other foreign country, or for a Chinese subject or a citizen of the United States to take citizens of the United States to China or any other foreign country without their free and voluntary consent respectively.
Article 5 aims at two objects, viz.: The spreading of the naturalization doctrine (Mr. Seward could not give his assent to a treaty which did not have that in it) and the breaking up of the infamous Coolie trade. It is popularly believed that the Emperor of China sells Coolies himself, by the shipload, and even at retail, but such is not the case. He is known to be exceedingly anxious to destroy the Coolie trade. The "voluntary" emigration of Chinamen to California already amounts to a thousand a month, and this treaty will greatly increase it. It will not only increase it, but will bring over a better class of Chinamen-men of means, character, and standing in their own country. The present Chinese immigration, however, is the best class of people—in some respects, though not in all—that comes to us from foreign lands. They are the best railroad hands we have by far. They are the most faithful, the most temperate, the most peaceable, the most industrious. The Pacific Railroad Company employs them almost exclusively, and by thousands. When a chicken roost or a sluice-box is robbed in California, some Chinaman is almost sure to suffer for it—yet these dreadful people are trusted in the most reckless manner by the railroad people. The Chinese railroad hands go down in numbers to Sacramento and often spend their last cent. Then they simply go to the Superintendent, state their case, write their names on a card, together with a promise to refund out of the first wages coming to them, and with no other security than this, railroad tickets are sold to them on credit. Mr. Crocker and his subordinates have done this time and again, and have yet to lose the first cent by it. In the towns and cities the Chinamen are cooks, chambermaids, washerwomen, nurses, merchants, butchers, gardeners, interpreters in banks and business houses, etc. They are willing to do anything that will afford them a living.

ARTICLE 6.
Citizens of the United States visiting or residing in China shall enjoy the same privileges, immunities, or exemptions in respect to travel or residence as may there be enjoyed by the citizens or subjects of the most favored nation; and, reciprocally, Chinese subjects visiting or residing in the United States shall enjoy the same privileges, immunities and exemptions in respect to travel or residence as may be enjoyed by the citizens or subjects of the most favored nation; but nothing herein contained shall be held to confer naturalization upon the citizens of the United States in China, nor upon the subjects of China in the United States.
There will be weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth on the Pacific coast when Article 6 is read. For, at one sweep, all the crippling, intolerant, and unconstitutional laws framed by California against Chinamen pass away, and discover (in stage parlance) 20,000 prospective Hong Kong and Suchow voters and office-holders! Tableau. I am not fond of Chinamen, but I am still less fond of seeing them wronged and abused. If the reader has not lived in San Francisco, he can have only a very faint conception of the tremendous significance of this mild-looking, unpretentious Article 6. It lifts a degraded, snubbed, vilified, and hated race of men out of the mud and invests them with the purple of American sovereignty. It makes men out of beasts of burden. The first iniquity it strikes at is that same revolutionary one of taxation without representation. In California the law imposes a burdensome mining tax upon Chinamen—a tax which is peculiar in its nature and is not imposed upon any other miners, either native or foreign—and the legislature that created this rascality knew the law was in flagrant violation of the constitution when they passed it. Mr. Cushing, a great lawyer, and formerly minister to China, says that nearly all the Pacific coast laws relating to Chinamen are unconstitutional and could not stand in a court at all. The Chinese mining tax has been collected with merciless faithfulness for many years—often two or three times, instead of once—but its collection will have to be discontinued now. Treaties of the United States override the handiwork of even the most gifted of State legislatures. In San Francisco if a Chinaman enters a street car to ride with the Negroes and the Indians and the other gentlemen and ladies, the magnificent conductor instantly ejects him, with all the insolence that $75 a month and official importance of microscopic dimensions confer upon small people. The Chinaman may ride on the front platform, but not elsewhere. Hereafter, under the ample shadow of Article 6, he may ride where he pleases. Chinamen, the best gardeners in America, own no gardens. The laws of California do not allow them to acquire property in real estate. Article 6 does, though. Formerly, in the police court, they swore Chinamen according to the usual form, and sometimes, where the magistrate was particularly anxious to come at the truth, a chicken was beheaded in open court and some yellow paper burned with awful solemnity while the oath was administered—but the Chinaman testified only against his own countrymen. Things are changed now, however, and he may testify against whom he pleases. No one ever saw a Chinaman on a jury on the Pacific coast. Hereafter they will be seen on juries, sitting in judgment upon the crimes of men of all nationalities. Chinamen have taken no part in elections, heretofore, further than to sweep out the balloting stations, but the time is near at hand when they will vote themselves; when they will be clerks and judges of election, and receive and account for the votes of white men; when they will be eligible to office and may run for Congress, if such be the will of God. We have seen caricatures in San Francisco representing a white man asking a Chinaman for his vote. It was fine irony then, but in a very little while the same old lithograph, resurrected, will have as much point as it ever had, only the subject of it will have become a solemn reality instead of an ingenious flight of fancy. In that day, candidates will have to possess other accomplishments besides being able to drink lager beer and twirl a shillalah. They will have to smoke opium and eat with chop-sticks. Influential additions will have to be made to election tickets and transparencies, thus: "THE COUNTRY'S HOPE, THE PEOPLE'S CHOICE—DONNERWETTER, O'SHAUGHNESSY, AND CHING-FOO" The children of Chinese citizens will have the entry of the public schools on the same footing as white children. Any one who is not blind, can see that the first ninety words of Article 6 work a miracle which shames the most dazzling achievements of him of the wonderful lamp. I am speaking as if I believed the Chinamen would hasten to take out naturalization papers under this treaty and become citizens. I do believe it. They are shrewd and smart, and quick to see an advantage; that is one argument. If they have any scruples about becoming citizens, the politicians who need their votes will soon change their opinions. Article 6 does not confer citizenship upon Chinamen—we have other laws which regulate that matter. It simply gives them the privileges and immunities pertaining to "residence," in the same degree as they are enjoyed by the "subjects of the most favored nation." One of the chief privileges pertaining to "residence" among us is that of taking the oath and becoming full citizens after that residence has been extended to the legal and customary period. Mr. Cushing says the Chinamen had a right to become citizens before Article 6 was framed. They certainly have it now. Prominent senators refused to touch the treaty or have anything to do with it unless it threw the doors of citizenship open as freely to Chinamen as to other foreigners. The entire Senate knew the broadest meaning of Article 6—and voted for it. The closing sentence of it was added to please a certain Senator, and then he was satisfied and supported the treaty with all his might. It was a gratification to him to have that sentence added; and inasmuch as the sentence could do no harm, since it don't mean anything whatever under the sun, it was gratefully and cheerfully added. It could not have been added to please a worthier man. It sets off the treaty, too, because it is so gracefully worded and is so essentially and particularly ornamental. It embellishes and supports the grand edifice of the Chinese treaty, even as a wealth of stucco embellishes and supports a stately temple. It would hardly be worth while for a treaty to confer naturalization in the last clause of an article wherein it had already provided for the acquirement of naturalization by the proper and usual course. The idea of making negroes citizens of the United States was startling and disagreeable to me, but I have become reconciled to it; and being reconciled to it, and the ice being broken and the principle established, I am now ready for all comers. The idea of seeing a Chinaman a citizen of the United States would have been almost appalling to me a few years ago, but I suppose I can live through it now. Maybe it will be well to say what sort of people these prospective voters are. There are 50,000 of them on the Pacific coast at large, and 15,000 or 20,000 in San Francisco. They occupy a quarter just out of the business center of the city. They worship a hideous idol in a gorgeous temple. They have a theater, where the orchestra sit on the stage (drinking tea occasionally,) and deafening the public with a ceaseless din of gongs, cymbals, and fiddles with two strings, whose harmonies are capable of inflicting exquisite torture. Their theatrical dresses are much finer and more costly than those in the Black Crook, and the immorality of their plays is fully up to the Black Crook standard. Consequently they are ruined people. Their prominent instinct being just like ours, let us extend the right-hand of fellowship to them across the sea. Some of the men gamble, and the standing of the women is not good. The Chinese streets of San Francisco are crowded with shops and stalls mostly, but there are many Chinese merchant princes who do business on a large scale. The remittances of coin to China amount to half a million a month. Chinamen work hard and with tireless perseverance; other foreigners get out of work, and labor exchanges must look out for them. Chinamen look out for themselves, and are never idle a week at a time; they make excellent cooks, washers, ironers, and house servants; they are never seen drunk; they are quiet, orderly, and peaceable, by nature; they possess the rare and probably peculiarly barbarous faculty of minding their own business. They are as thrifty as Holland Dutch. They permit nothing to go to waste. When they kill an animal for food, they find use for its hoofs, hide, bones, entrails—everything. When other people throw away fruit cans they pick them up, heat them, and secure the melted tin and solder. They do not scorn refuse rags, paper, and broken glass. They can make a blooming garden out of a sand-pile, for they seem to know how to make manure out of everything which other people waste. As I have said before, they are remarkably quick and intelligent, and they can all read, write, and cipher. They are of an exceedingly observant and inquiring disposition. I have been describing the lowest class of Chinamen. Do not they compare favorably with the mass of other immigrants? Will they not make good citizens? Are they not able to confer a sound and solid prosperity upon a State? What makes a sounder prosperity or invites and unshackles capital more surely than good, cheap, reliable labor? California and Oregon are vast, uncultivated grain fields. I am enabled to state this in the face of the fact that California yields twenty million bushels of wheat this year! California and Oregon will fill up with Chinamen, and these grain fields will be cultivated up to their highest capacity. In time, some of them will be owned by Chinamen, inasmuch as the treaty gives them the right to own real estate. The very men on the Pacific coast who will be loudest in their abuse of the treaty will be among those most benefited by it—the day-laborers. The Chinamen, able to work for half wages, will take their rough manual labor off the hands of these white men, and then the whites will rise to the worthier and more lucrative employment of superintending the Chinamen, and doing various other kinds of brain-work demanded of them by the new order of things. Through the operation of this notable Article 6, America becomes at once as liberal and as free a country as England—therefore let me rejoice. Singapore is a British colony. There are 16,000 Chinese there, and they are all British subjects—British citizens in the widest meaning of the term. They have all the rights and privileges enjoyed by Englishmen. They hold office. One Chinaman there is a magistrate, and administers British law for British subjects. A Chinaman resident for three or four years in England, and possessing a certain amount of property, can become naturalized and vote, hold office, and exercise all the functions and enjoy all the privileges of citizens by birth.

ARTICLE 7.
Citizens of the United States shall enjoy all the privileges of the public educational institutions under the control of the Government of China, and reciprocally Chinese subjects shall enjoy all the privileges of the public educational institutions under the control of the Government of the United States which are enjoyed in the respective countries by the citizens or subjects of the most favored nations. The citizens of the United States may freely establish and maintain schools within the Empire of China at those places where foreigners are by treaty permitted to reside, and reciprocally Chinese subjects may enjoy the same privileges and immunities in the United States.
Article 7 explains itself.

ARTICLE 8.
The United States, always disclaiming and discouraging all practices of unnecessary dictation and intervention by one nation in the affairs or domestic administration of another, do hereby freely disclaim any intention or right to intervene in the domestic administration of China in regard to the construction of railroads, telegraphs, or other material internal improvements. On the other hand, His majesty and the Emperor of China reserves to himself the right to decide the time, and manner, and circumstances of introducing such improvements within his dominions. With this mutual understanding it is agreed by the contracting parties that if at any time hereafter His Imperial Majesty shall determine to construct or cause to be constructed works of the character mentioned within the Empire, and shall make application to the United States or any other Western power for facilities to carry out that policy, the United States will, in that case, designate and authorize suitable engineers to be employed by the Chinese Government, and will recommend to other nations an equal compliance with such application, the Chinese Government in that case protecting such engineers in their persons and property, and paying them a reasonable compensation for their service.
Article 8 looks entirely unnecessary at a first glance. Yet to China—and afterward to the world at large—it is perhaps the most important article in the whole treaty. It aims at restoring Chinese confidence in foreigners, and will go far toward accomplishing it. Until that is done, only the drippings (they amount to millions annually) of the vast fountains of Eastern wealth can be caught by the Western nations. I have before spoken of an arrogant class of foreigners in China who demand of the Government the building of railways and telegraphs, and who assume to regulate and give law to the customs of trade, almost in open defiance of the constituted authorities. Their menacing attitude and their threatening language frighten the Chinese, who know so well the resistless power of the Western nations. They look upon these things with suspicion. They want railways and telegraphs, but they fear to put these engines of power into the hands of strangers without a guaranty that they will not be used for their own oppression, possibly their destruction. Even as it is now, foreigners can go into the interior and commit wrongs upon the people with impunity, for their "extra territorial" privileges leave them answerable only to their own laws, administered upon their own domain or "concessions." These "concessions" being far from the scene of the crime, it does not pay to send witnesses such distances, and so the wrong goes untried and unpunished. There are other obstacles to the immediate construction of the demanded internal improvements—among them the inherent prejudice of the untaught mass of the common people against innovation. It is sad to reflect that in this respect the ignorant Chinese are strangely like ourselves and other civilized peoples. Unfortunately, the very day that the first message passed over the first telegraph erected in China, a man died of cholera at one end of the line. The superstitious people cried out that the white man's mysterious machine had destroyed the "good luck" of the district. The telegraph had to be taken down, otherwise the exasperated people would have done it themselves. How precisely like our civilized, Christianized, enlightened selves these Chinese "men and brethren" are! The farmers of great Massachusetts turned out en masse, armed with axes, and resisted the laying of the first railroad track in that State. Thirty years ago, the concentrated wisdom of France, in National Assembly convened, gravely pronounced railroads a "foolish, unrealizable toy." In Tuscany, the people rose in their might and swore there should be bloodshed before a railroad track should be laid on their soil. Their reason was exactly the same as that offered by the Chinese—they said it would destroy the "good luck" of the country. Let us be lenient with the little absurd peculiarities of the Chinese, for manifestly these people are our own blood relations. Let us look charitably now upon a certain very serious obstacle which lies in the way of their sudden acceptance of a great railroad system. Let us remember that China is one colossal graveyard—a mighty empire so knobbed all over with graves that the level spaces left are hardly more than alleys and avenues among the clustering death-mounds. Animals graze upon the grass-clad graves (for all things are made useful in China), and the spaces between are carefully and industriously cultivated. These graves are as precious as their own blood to the Chinese, for they worship their dead as ancestors. The first railroad that plows its pitiless way through these myriads of sacred hillocks will carry dismay and distress into countless households. The railways must be built, though. We respect the griefs of the poor country people, but still the railways must be built. They will tear heartstrings out by the roots, but they lead to the sources of unimaginable wealth, and they must be built. These old prejudices must and can be eradicated—just as they were in Massachusetts. With such encouragement from foreigners, and such guaranties of good will and just intent as Article 8 offers by simply agreeing that China may transact her own private business unmolested by meddlesome interference, the Emperor will cheerfully begin to open up his country with roads and telegraphs. It seems a simple thing and an easy one to accord to a man such manifest and indisputable rights, but beyond all doubt this assurance is what China craves most. Article 8, indorsed by all the Western powers, would unlock the riches of 400,000,000 of Chinese subjects to the world. Hence, to all parties concerned, it is perhaps, the important clause of the treaty. That China is anxious to build railways is shown in the fact that by the latest news from there, just officially enunciated to our State Department, it appears that the Viceroy of the three chief provinces of the Empire is about to begin a railroad from Suchow to Shanghai—80 miles—or, at least, has the project under serious consideration. The new treaty with America will tend to strengthen and encourage him in his design.
This is the broadest, most unselfish, and most catholic treaty yet framed by man, perhaps. There is nothing mean, or exacting, or unworthy in any of its provisions. It freely offers every privilege, every benefit, and every concession the most grasping suitor could demand, to a nation accustomed for generations to understand a "treaty" as being a contrivance whose province was to extort as many "advantages" as possible and give as few as possible in return. The only "advantage" to the United States perceptible on the face of the document, perhaps, is the advantage of having dealt justly and generously by a neighbor and done it in a cordial spirit. It is something to have done right—a species of sentiment seldom considered in treaties. In ratifying this treaty the Senate of the United States did themselves high credit, and all the more so that they did it with such alacrity and such heartiness. This is a treaty with no specific advantages noted in it; it is simply the first great step toward throwing all China open to the world, by showing toward her a spirit which invites her esteem and her confidence instead of her customary curses. There is nothing in it about China ceding to us the navigation of an ocean in return for the navigation of a creek; nor the monopoly of silk for a monopoly of beeswax; nor a whaling-ground in return for a sardine-fishery. Yet it is a treaty which is full of "advantages." It is more full of them than is any other treaty, but they are meted out with an even hand to all—to China upon the one hand, and to the world upon the other. It looks to the opening up, in China, of a vast and lucrative commerce with the world, and of which America will have only her just share, nothing more. It looks to the lifting up of a mighty nation and conferring upon it the boon of a purer religion and of a higher and better civilization than it has known before. It is a treaty made in the broad interests of justice, enlightenment, and progress, and therefore it must stand. It bridges the Pacific, it breaks down the Tartar wall, it inspires with fresh young blood the energies of the most venerable of the nations. It acquires a grand field for capital, labor, research, enterprise—confers science, mechanics, social and political advancement, Christianity. Is it not enough?
Mark Twain.

Twain, Mark. John Chinaman in New York [ID D29336].
A correspondent (whose signature, "Lang Bemis," is more or less familiar to the public) contributes the following:
As I passed along by one of those monster American tea stores in New York, I found a Chinaman sitting before it acting in the capacity of a sign. Everybody that passed by gave him a steady stare as long as their heads would twist over their shoulders without dislocating their necks, and a large group had stopped to stare deliberately.
Is it not a shame that we who prate so much about civilization and humanity are content to degrade a fellow-being to such an office as this? Is it not time for reflection when we find ourselves willing to see in such a being, in such a situation, matter merely for frivolous curiosity instead of regret and grave reflection? Here was a poor creature whom hard fortune had exiled from his natural home beyond the seas, and whose troubles ought to have touched these idle strangers that thronged about him; but did it? Apparently not. Men calling themselves the superior race, the race of culture and of gentle blood, scanned his quaint Chinese hat, with peaked roof and ball on top; and his long queue dangling down his back; his short silken blouse, curiously frogged and figured (and, like the rest of his raiment, rusty, dilapidated, and awkwardly put on); his blue cotton, tight-legged pants tied close around the ankles, and his clumsy, blunt-toed shoes with thick cork soles; and having so scanned him from head to foot, cracked some unseemly joke about his outlandish attire or his melancholy face, and passed on. In my heart I pitied the friendless Mongol. I wondered what was passing behind his sad face, and what distant scene his vacant eye was dreaming of. Were his thoughts with his heart, ten thousand miles away, beyond the billowy wastes of the Pacific? among the rice-fields and the plumy palms of China? under the shadows of remembered mountain-peaks, or in groves of bloomy shrubs and strange forest trees unknown to climes like ours? and now and then, rippling among his visions and his dreams did he hear familiar laughter and half-forgotten voices, and did he catch fitful glimpses of the friendly faces of a by-gone time? A cruel fate it is, I said, that is befallen this bronzed wanderer; a cheerless destiny enough. In order that the group of idlers might be touched at least by the words of the poor fellow, since the appeal of his pauper dress and his dreary exile was lost upon them, I touched him on the shoulder and said:
"Cheer up -- don't be down-hearted. It is not America that treats you in this way -- it is merely one citizen, whose greed of gain has eaten the humanity out of his heart. America has a broader hospitality for the exiled and oppressed. America and Americans are always ready to help the unfortunate. Money shall be raised -- you shall go back to China --you shall see your friends again. What wages do they pay you here?"
"Divil a cint but four dollars a week and find meself; but it's aisy, barrin' the bloody furrin clothes that's so expinsive."
The exile remains at his post. The New York tea merchants who need picturesque signs are not likely to run out of Chinamen.

Sekundärliteratur
Ou Hsin-yun : It describes a man dressed like a Chinese man standing in front of a New York tea store 'acting in the capacity of a sign', scolded by passersby, and paid only four dollars a weed. The narrator initially objects to the use of a living man as an advertisement for 'one of those monster American tea stores' and expresses compassion toward the unfortunate Chinese man who suffered from ill treatment at the hands of white American. Astonished by the insult to the Chinese man's humanity, the narrator envisions himself in the role of a benevolent citizen, and delivers a self-righteous critique of white civilization. The narrator sees the Chinese as humans with a history and culture. His genteel humanism becomes a satirical target because of his inability to visualize the Chinese except through a set of ethnic stereotypes. Later in the sketch, sympathy for Chinese is further satirized when the 'poor Chinaman' turns out to be an Irishman in disguise.

Twain, Mark. Goldsmith's friend abroad again [ID D29337].
LETTER I
SHANGHAI, 18—.
DEAR CHING-FOO: It is all settled, and I am to leave my oppressed and overburdened native land and cross the sea to that noble realm where all are free and all equal, and none reviled or abused—America! America, whose precious privilege it is to call herself the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. We and all that are about us here look over the waves longingly, contrasting the privations of this our birthplace with the opulent comfort of that happy refuge. We know how America has welcomed the Germans and the Frenchmen and the stricken and sorrowing Irish, and we know how she has given them bread and work, and liberty, and how grateful they are. And we know that America stands ready to welcome all other oppressed peoples and offer her abundance to all that come, without asking what their nationality is, or their creed or color. And, without being told it, we know that the foreign sufferers she has rescued from oppression and starvation are the most eager of her children to welcome us, because, having suffered themselves, they know what suffering is, and having been generously succored, they long to be generous to other unfortunates and thus show that magnanimity is not wasted upon
AH SONG HI.

LETTER II
AT SEA, 18—.
DEAR CHING-FOO: We are far away at sea now; on our way to the beautiful Land of the Free and Home of the Brave. We shall soon be where all men are alike, and where sorrow is not known.
The good American who hired me to go to his country is to pay me $12 a month, which is immense wages, you know—twenty times as much as one gets in China. My passage in the ship is a very large sum—indeed, it is a fortune—and this I must pay myself eventually, but I am allowed ample time to make it good to my employer in, he advancing it now. For a mere form, I have turned over my wife, my boy, and my two daughters to my employer's partner for security for the payment of the ship fare. But my employer says they are in no danger of being sold, for he knows I will be faithful to him, and that is the main security.
I thought I would have twelve dollars to begin life with in America, but the American Consul took two of them for making a certificate that I was shipped on the steamer. He has no right to do more than charge the ship two dollars for one certificate for the ship, with the number of her Chinese passengers set down in it; but he chooses to force a certificate upon each and every Chinaman and put the two dollars in his pocket. As 1,300 of my countrymen are in this vessel, the Consul received $2,600 for certificates. My employer tells me that the Government at Washington know of this fraud, and are so bitterly opposed to the existence of such a wrong that they tried hard to have the extor—the fee, I mean, legalised by the last Congress;—[Pacific and Mediterranean steamship bills.(Ed. Mem.)]—but as the bill did not pass, the Consul will have to take the fee dishonestly until next Congress makes it legitimate. It is a great and good and noble country, and hates all forms of vice and chicanery.
We are in that part of the vessel always reserved for my countrymen. It is called the steerage. It is kept for us, my employer says, because it is not subject to changes of temperature and dangerous drafts of air. It is only another instance of the loving unselfishness of the Americans for all unfortunate foreigners. The steerage is a little crowded, and rather warm and close, but no doubt it is best for us that it should be so.
Yesterday our people got to quarrelling among themselves, and the captain turned a volume of hot steam upon a mass of them and scalded eighty or ninety of them more or less severely. Flakes and ribbons of skin came off some of them. There was wild shrieking and struggling while the vapour enveloped the great throng, and so some who were not scalded got trampled upon and hurt. We do not complain, for my employer says this is the usual way of quieting disturbances on board the ship, and that it is done in the cabins among the Americans every day or two.
Congratulate me, Ching-Foo In ten days more I shall step upon the shore of America, and be received by her great-hearted people; and I shall straighten myself up and feel that I am a free man among freemen.
AH SONG HI.

LETTER III
SAN FRANCISCO, 18—.
DEAR CHING-FOO: I stepped ashore jubilant! I wanted to dance, shout, sing, worship the generous Land of the Free and Home of the Brave. But as I walked from the gangplank a man in a gray uniform—[Policeman] —kicked me violently behind and told me to look out—so my employer translated it. As I turned, another officer of the same kind struck me with a short club and also instructed me to look out. I was about to take hold of my end of the pole which had mine and Hong-Wo's basket and things suspended from it, when a third officer hit me with his club to signify that I was to drop it, and then kicked me to signify that he was satisfied with my promptness. Another person came now, and searched all through our basket and bundles, emptying everything out on the dirty wharf. Then this person and another searched us all over. They found a little package of opium sewed into the artificial part of Hong-Wo's queue, and they took that, and also they made him prisoner and handed him over to an officer, who marched him away. They took his luggage, too, because of his crime, and as our luggage was so mixed together that they could not tell mine from his, they took it all. When I offered to help divide it, they kicked me and desired me to look out.
Having now no baggage and no companion, I told my employer that if he was willing, I would walk about a little and see the city and the people until he needed me. I did not like to seem disappointed with my reception in the good land of refuge for the oppressed, and so I looked and spoke as cheerily as I could. But he said, wait a minute—I must be vaccinated to prevent my taking the small-pox. I smiled and said I had already had the small-pox, as he could see by the marks, and so I need not wait to be "vaccinated," as he called it. But he said it was the law, and I must be vaccinated anyhow. The doctor would never let me pass, for the law obliged him to vaccinate all Chinamen and charge them ten dollars apiece for it, and I might be sure that no doctor who would be the servant of that law would let a fee slip through his fingers to accommodate any absurd fool who had seen fit to have the disease in some other country. And presently the doctor came and did his work and took my last penny—my ten dollars which were the hard savings of nearly a year and a half of labour and privation. Ah, if the law-makers had only known there were plenty of doctors in the city glad of a chance to vaccinate people for a dollar or two, they would never have put the price up so high against a poor friendless Irish, or Italian, or Chinese pauper fleeing to the good land to escape hunger and hard times.
AH SONG HI.

LETTER IV
SAN FRANCISCO, 18—.
DEAR CHING-FOO: I have been here about a month now, and am learning a little of the language every day. My employer was disappointed in the matter of hiring us out to service to the plantations in the far eastern portion of this continent. His enterprise was a failure, and so he set us all free, merely taking measures to secure to himself the repayment of the passage money which he paid for us. We are to make this good to him out of the first moneys we earn here. He says it is sixty dollars apiece.
We were thus set free about two weeks after we reached here. We had been massed together in some small houses up to that time, waiting. I walked forth to seek my fortune. I was to begin life a stranger in a strange land, without a friend, or a penny, or any clothes but those I had on my back. I had not any advantage on my side in the world—not one, except good health and the lack of any necessity to waste any time or anxiety on the watching of my baggage. No, I forget. I reflected that I had one prodigious advantage over paupers in other lands—I was in America! I was in the heaven-provided refuge of the oppressed and the forsaken!
Just as that comforting thought passed through my mind, some young men set a fierce dog on me. I tried to defend myself, but could do nothing. I retreated to the recess of a closed doorway, and there the dog had me at his mercy, flying at my throat and face or any part of my body that presented itself. I shrieked for help, but the young men only jeered and laughed. Two men in gray uniforms (policemen is their official title) looked on for a minute and then walked leisurely away. But a man stopped them and brought them back and told them it was a shame to leave me in such distress. Then the two policemen beat off the dog with small clubs, and a comfort it was to be rid of him, though I was just rags and blood from head to foot. The man who brought the policemen asked the young men why they abused me in that way, and they said they didn't want any of his meddling. And they said to him:
"This Ching divil comes till Ameriky to take the bread out o' dacent intilligent white men's mouths, and whir they try to defind their rights there's a dale o' fuss made about it."
They began to threaten my benefactor, and as he saw no friendliness in the faces that had gathered meanwhile, he went on his way. He got many a curse when he was gone. The policemen now told me I was under arrest and must go with them. I asked one of them what wrong I had done to any one that I should be arrested, and he only struck me with his club and ordered me to "hold my yap." With a jeering crowd of street boys and loafers at my heels, I was taken up an alley and into a stone-paved dungeon which had large cells all down one side of it, with iron gates to them. I stood up by a desk while a man behind it wrote down certain things about me on a slate. One of my captors said:
"Enter a charge against this Chinaman of being disorderly and disturbing the peace."
I attempted to say a word, but he said:
"Silence! Now ye had better go slow, my good fellow. This is two or three times you've tried to get off some of your d—-d insolence. Lip won't do here. You've got to simmer down, and if you don't take to it paceable we'll see if we can't make you. Fat's your name?"
"Ah Song Hi."
"Alias what?"
I said I did not understand, and he said what he wanted was my true name, for he guessed I picked up this one since I stole my last chickens. They all laughed loudly at that.
Then they searched me. They found nothing, of course. They seemed very angry and asked who I supposed would "go my bail or pay my fine." When they explained these things to me, I said I had done nobody any harm, and why should I need to have bail or pay a fine? Both of them kicked me and warned me that I would find it to my advantage to try and be as civil as convenient. I protested that I had not meant anything disrespectful. Then one of them took me to one side and said:
"Now look here, Johnny, it's no use you playing softly wid us. We mane business, ye know; and the sooner ye put us on the scent of a V, the asier yell save yerself from a dale of trouble. Ye can't get out o' this for anny less. Who's your frinds?"
I told him I had not a single friend in all the land of America, and that I was far from home and help, and very poor. And I begged him to let me go.
He gathered the slack of my blouse collar in his grip and jerked and shoved and hauled at me across the dungeon, and then unlocking an iron cell-gate thrust me in with a kick and said:
"Rot there, ye furrin spawn, till ye lairn that there's no room in America for the likes of ye or your nation."
AH SONG HI.

LETTER V
SAN FRANCISCO, 18—.
DEAR CHING-FOO: You will remember that I had just been thrust violently into a cell in the city prison when I wrote last. I stumbled and fell on some one. I got a blow and a curse; and on top of these a kick or two and a shove. In a second or two it was plain that I was in a nest of prisoners and was being "passed around"—for the instant I was knocked out of the way of one I fell on the head or heels of another and was promptly ejected, only to land on a third prisoner and get a new contribution of kicks and curses and a new destination. I brought up at last in an unoccupied corner, very much battered and bruised and sore, but glad enough to be let alone for a little while. I was on the flag-stones, for there was no furniture in the den except a long, broad board, or combination of boards, like a barn-door, and this bed was accommodating five or six persons, and that was its full capacity. They lay stretched side by side, snoring—when not fighting. One end of the board was four inches higher than the other, and so the slant answered for a pillow. There were no blankets, and the night was a little chilly; the nights are always a little chilly in San Francisco, though never severely cold. The board was a deal more comfortable than the stones, and occasionally some flag-stone plebeian like me would try to creep to a place on it; and then the aristocrats would hammer him good and make him think a flag pavement was a nice enough place after all.
I lay quiet in my corner, stroking my bruises, and listening to the revelations the prisoners made to each other—and to me for some that were near me talked to me a good deal. I had long had an idea that Americans, being free, had no need of prisons, which are a contrivance of despots for keeping restless patriots out of mischief. So I was considerably surprised to find out my mistake.
Ours was a big general cell, it seemed, for the temporary accommodation of all comers whose crimes were trifling. Among us there were two Americans, two "Greasers" (Mexicans), a Frenchman, a German, four Irishmen, a Chilenean (and, in the next cell, only separated from us by a grating, two women), all drunk, and all more or less noisy; and as night fell and advanced, they grew more and more discontented and disorderly, occasionally; shaking the prison bars and glaring through them at the slowly pacing officer, and cursing him with all their hearts. The two women were nearly middle-aged, and they had only had enough liquor to stimulate instead of stupefy them. Consequently they would fondle and kiss each other for some minutes, and then fall to fighting and keep it up till they were just two grotesque tangles of rags and blood and tumbled hair. Then they would rest awhile and pant and swear. While they were affectionate they always spoke of each other as "ladies," but while they were fighting "strumpet" was the mildest name they could think of—and they could only make that do by tacking some sounding profanity to it. In their last fight, which was toward midnight, one of them bit off the other's finger, and then the officer interfered and put the "Greaser" into the "dark cell" to answer for it because the woman that did it laid it on him, and the other woman did not deny it because, as she said afterward, she "wanted another crack at the huzzy when her finger quit hurting," and so she did not want her removed. By this time those two women had mutilated each other's clothes to that extent that there was not sufficient left to cover their nakedness. I found that one of these creatures had spent nine years in the county jail, and that the other one had spent about four or five years in the same place. They had done it from choice. As soon as they were discharged from captivity they would go straight and get drunk, and then steal some trifling thing while an officer was observing them. That would entitle them to another two months in jail, and there they would occupy clean, airy apartments, and have good food in plenty, and being at no expense at all, they could make shirts for the clothiers at half a dollar apiece and thus keep themselves in smoking tobacco and such other luxuries as they wanted. When the two months were up they would go just as straight as they could walk to Mother Leonard's and get drunk; and from there to Kearney street and steal something; and thence to this city prison, and next day back to the old quarters in the county jail again. One of them had really kept this up for nine years and the other four or five, and both said they meant to end their days in that prison. **—[**The former of the two did.—Ed. Mem.]—Finally, both these creatures fell upon me while I was dozing with my head against their grating, and battered me considerably, because they discovered that I was a Chinaman, and they said I was "a bloody interlopin' loafer come from the devil's own country to take the bread out of dacent people's mouths and put down the wages for work whin it was all a Christian could do to kape body and sowl together as it was." "Loafer" means one who will not work.
AH SONG HI.

LETTER VI
SAN FRANCISCO, 18—.
DEAR CHING-FOO: To continue—the two women became reconciled to each other again through the common bond of interest and sympathy created between them by pounding me in partnership, and when they had finished me they fell to embracing each other again and swearing more eternal affection like that which had subsisted between them all the evening, barring occasional interruptions. They agreed to swear the finger-biting on the Greaser in open court, and get him sent to the penitentiary for the crime of mayhem.
Another of our company was a boy of fourteen who had been watched for some time by officers and teachers, and repeatedly detected in enticing young girls from the public schools to the lodgings of gentlemen down town. He had been furnished with lures in the form of pictures and books of a peculiar kind, and these he had distributed among his clients. There were likenesses of fifteen of these young girls on exhibition (only to prominent citizens and persons in authority, it was said, though most people came to get a sight) at the police headquarters, but no punishment at all was to be inflicted on the poor little misses. The boy was afterward sent into captivity at the House of Correction for some months, and there was a strong disposition to punish the gentlemen who had employed the boy to entice the girls, but as that could not be done without making public the names of those gentlemen and thus injuring them socially, the idea was finally given up.
There was also in our cell that night a photographer (a kind of artist who makes likenesses of people with a machine), who had been for some time patching the pictured heads of well-known and respectable young ladies to the nude, pictured bodies of another class of women; then from this patched creation he would make photographs and sell them privately at high prices to rowdies and blackguards, averring that these, the best young ladies of the city, had hired him to take their likenesses in that unclad condition. What a lecture the police judge read that photographer when he was convicted! He told him his crime was little less than an outrage. He abused that photographer till he almost made him sink through the floor, and then he fined him a hundred dollars. And he told him he might consider himself lucky that he didn't fine him a hundred and twenty-five dollars. They are awfully severe on crime here.
About two or two and a half hours after midnight, of that first experience of mine in the city prison, such of us as were dozing were awakened by a noise of beating and dragging and groaning, and in a little while a man was pushed into our den with a "There, d—-n you, soak there a spell!"—and then the gate was closed and the officers went away again. The man who was thrust among us fell limp and helpless by the grating, but as nobody could reach him with a kick without the trouble of hitching along toward him or getting fairly up to deliver it, our people only grumbled at him, and cursed him, and called him insulting names—for misery and hardship do not make their victims gentle or charitable toward each other. But as he neither tried humbly to conciliate our people nor swore back at them, his unnatural conduct created surprise, and several of the party crawled to him where he lay in the dim light that came through the grating, and examined into his case. His head was very bloody and his wits were gone. After about an hour, he sat up and stared around; then his eyes grew more natural and he began to tell how that he was going along with a bag on his shoulder and a brace of policemen ordered him to stop, which he did not do—was chased and caught, beaten ferociously about the head on the way to the prison and after arrival there, and finally thrown into our den like a dog.
And in a few seconds he sank down again and grew flighty of speech. One of our people was at last penetrated with something vaguely akin to compassion, may be, for he looked out through the gratings at the guardian officer, pacing to and fro, and said:
"Say, Mickey, this shrimp's goin' to die."
"Stop your noise!" was all the answer he got. But presently our man tried it again. He drew himself to the gratings, grasping them with his hands, and looking out through them, sat waiting till the officer was passing once more, and then said:
"Sweetness, you'd better mind your eye, now, because you beats have killed this cuss. You've busted his head and he'll pass in his checks before sun-up. You better go for a doctor, now, you bet you had."
The officer delivered a sudden rap on our man's knuckles with his club, that sent him scampering and howling among the sleeping forms on the flag-stones, and an answering burst of laughter came from the half dozen policemen idling about the railed desk in the middle of the dungeon.
But there was a putting of heads together out there presently, and a conversing in low voices, which seemed to show that our man's talk had made an impression; and presently an officer went away in a hurry, and shortly came back with a person who entered our cell and felt the bruised man's pulse and threw the glare of a lantern on his drawn face, striped with blood, and his glassy eyes, fixed and vacant. The doctor examined the man's broken head also, and presently said:
"If you'd called me an hour ago I might have saved this man, may be too late now."
Then he walked out into the dungeon and the officers surrounded him, and they kept up a low and earnest buzzing of conversation for fifteen minutes, I should think, and then the doctor took his departure from the prison. Several of the officers now came in and worked a little with the wounded man, but toward daylight he died.
It was the longest, longest night! And when the daylight came filtering reluctantly into the dungeon at last, it was the grayest, dreariest, saddest daylight! And yet, when an officer by and by turned off the sickly yellow gas flame, and immediately the gray of dawn became fresh and white, there was a lifting of my spirits that acknowledged and believed that the night was gone, and straightway I fell to stretching my sore limbs, and looking about me with a grateful sense of relief and a returning interest in life. About me lay the evidences that what seemed now a feverish dream and a nightmare was the memory of a reality instead. For on the boards lay four frowsy, ragged, bearded vagabonds, snoring—one turned end-for-end and resting an unclean foot, in a ruined stocking, on the hairy breast of a neighbour; the young boy was uneasy, and lay moaning in his sleep; other forms lay half revealed and half concealed about the floor; in the furthest corner the gray light fell upon a sheet, whose elevations and depressions indicated the places of the dead man's face and feet and folded hands; and through the dividing bars one could discern the almost nude forms of the two exiles from the county jail twined together in a drunken embrace, and sodden with sleep.
By and by all the animals in all the cages awoke, and stretched themselves, and exchanged a few cuffs and curses, and then began to clamour for breakfast. Breakfast was brought in at last—bread and beefsteak on tin plates, and black coffee in tin cups, and no grabbing allowed. And after several dreary hours of waiting, after this, we were all marched out into the dungeon and joined there by all manner of vagrants and vagabonds, of all shades and colours and nationalities, from the other cells and cages of the place; and pretty soon our whole menagerie was marched up-stairs and locked fast behind a high railing in a dirty room with a dirty audience in it. And this audience stared at us, and at a man seated on high behind what they call a pulpit in this country, and at some clerks and other officials seated below him—and waited. This was the police court.
The court opened. Pretty soon I was compelled to notice that a culprit's nationality made for or against him in this court. Overwhelming proofs were necessary to convict an Irishman of crime, and even then his punishment amounted to little; Frenchmen, Spaniards, and Italians had strict and unprejudiced justice meted out to them, in exact accordance with the evidence; negroes were promptly punished, when there was the slightest preponderance of testimony against them; but Chinamen were punished always, apparently. Now this gave me some uneasiness, I confess. I knew that this state of things must of necessity be accidental, because in this country all men were free and equal, and one person could not take to himself an advantage not accorded to all other individuals. I knew that, and yet in spite of it I was uneasy.
And I grew still more uneasy, when I found that any succored and befriended refugee from Ireland or elsewhere could stand up before that judge and swear away the life or liberty or character of a refugee from China; but that by the law of the land the Chinaman could not testify against the Irishman. I was really and truly uneasy, but still my faith in the universal liberty that America accords and defends, and my deep veneration for the land that offered all distressed outcasts a home and protection, was strong within me, and I said to myself that it would all come out right yet.
AH SONG HI.

LETTER VII
SAN FRANCISCO, 18—.
DEAR CHING FOO: I was glad enough when my case came up. An hour's experience had made me as tired of the police court as of the dungeon. I was not uneasy about the result of the trial, but on the contrary felt that as soon as the large auditory of Americans present should hear how that the rowdies had set the dogs on me when I was going peacefully along the street, and how, when I was all torn and bleeding, the officers arrested me and put me in jail and let the rowdies go free, the gallant hatred of oppression which is part of the very flesh and blood of every American would be stirred to its utmost, and I should be instantly set at liberty. In truth I began to fear for the other side. There in full view stood the ruffians who had misused me, and I began to fear that in the first burst of generous anger occasioned by the revealment of what they had done, they might be harshly handled, and possibly even banished the country as having dishonoured her and being no longer worthy to remain upon her sacred soil.
The official interpreter of the court asked my name, and then spoke it aloud so that all could hear. Supposing that all was now ready, I cleared my throat and began—in Chinese, because of my imperfect English:
"Hear, O high and mighty mandarin, and believe! As I went about my peaceful business in the street, behold certain men set a dog on me, and—
"Silence!"
It was the judge that spoke. The interpreter whispered to me that I must keep perfectly still. He said that no statement would be received from me—I must only talk through my lawyer.
I had no lawyer. In the early morning a police court lawyer (termed, in the higher circles of society, a "shyster") had come into our den in the prison and offered his services to me, but I had been obliged to go without them because I could not pay in advance or give security. I told the interpreter how the matter stood. He said I must take my chances on the witnesses then. I glanced around, and my failing confidence revived.
"Call those four Chinamen yonder," I said. "They saw it all. I remember their faces perfectly. They will prove that the white men set the dog on me when I was not harming them."
"That won't work," said he. "In this country white men can testify against Chinamen all they want to, but Chinamen ain't allowed to testify against white men!"
What a chill went through me! And then I felt the indignant blood rise to my cheek at this libel upon the Home of the Oppressed, where all men are free and equal—perfectly equal—perfectly free and perfectly equal. I despised this Chinese-speaking Spaniard for his mean slander of the land that was sheltering and feeding him. I sorely wanted to sear his eyes with that sentence from the great and good American Declaration of Independence which we have copied in letters of gold in China and keep hung up over our family altars and in our temples—I mean the one about all men being created free and equal.
But woe is me, Ching Foo, the man was right. He was right, after all. There were my witnesses, but I could not use them. But now came a new hope. I saw my white friend come in, and I felt that he had come there purposely to help me. I may almost say I knew it. So I grew easier. He passed near enough to me to say under his breath, "Don't be afraid," and then I had no more fear. But presently the rowdies recognised him and began to scowl at him in no friendly way, and to make threatening signs at him. The two officers that arrested me fixed their eyes steadily on his; he bore it well, but gave in presently, and dropped his eyes. They still gazed at his eyebrows, and every time he raised his eyes he encountered their winkless stare—until after a minute or two he ceased to lift his head at all. The judge had been giving some instructions privately to some one for a little while, but now he was ready to resume business. Then the trial so unspeakably important to me, and freighted with such prodigious consequence to my wife and children, began, progressed, ended, was recorded in the books, noted down by the newspaper reporters, and forgotten by everybody but me—all in the little space of two minutes!
"Ah Song Hi, Chinaman. Officers O'Flannigan and O'Flaherty, witnesses. Come forward, Officer O'Flannigan."
OFFICER—"He was making a disturbance in Kearny street."
JUDGE—"Any witnesses on the other side?" No response. The white friend raised his eyes—encountered Officer O'Flaherty's—blushed a little—got up and left the courtroom, avoiding all glances and not taking his own from the floor.
JUDGE—"Give him five dollars or ten days."
In my desolation there was a glad surprise in the words; but it passed away when I found that he only meant that I was to be fined five dollars or imprisoned ten days longer in default of it.
There were twelve or fifteen Chinamen in our crowd of prisoners, charged with all manner of little thefts and misdemeanors, and their cases were quickly disposed of, as a general thing. When the charge came from a policeman or other white man, he made his statement and that was the end of it, unless the Chinaman's lawyer could find some white person to testify in his client's behalf, for, neither the accused Chinaman nor his countrymen being allowed to say anything, the statement of the officers or other white person was amply sufficient to convict. So, as I said, the Chinamen's cases were quickly disposed of, and fines and imprisonment promptly distributed among them. In one or two of the cases the charges against Chinamen were brought by Chinamen themselves, and in those cases Chinamen testified against Chinamen, through the interpreter; but the fixed rule of the court being that the preponderance of testimony in such cases should determine the prisoner's guilt or innocence, and there being nothing very binding about an oath administered to the lower orders of our people without the ancient solemnity of cutting off a chicken's head and burning some yellow paper at the same time, the interested parties naturally drum up a cloud of witnesses who are cheerfully willing to give evidence without ever knowing anything about the matter in hand. The judge has a custom of rattling through with as much of this testimony as his patience will stand, and then shutting off the rest and striking an average.
By noon all the business of the court was finished, and then several of us who had not fared well were remanded to prison; the judge went home; the lawyers, and officers, and spectators departed their several ways, and left the uncomely court-room to silence, solitude, and Stiggers, the newspaper reporter, which latter would now write up his items (said an ancient Chinaman to me), in the which he would praise all the policemen indiscriminately and abuse the Chinamen and dead people.
AH SONG HI.

Sekundärliteratur
Ou Hsin-yun : The satire is a vigorous attack on discriminatory practices against the Chinese in California. In this letters, a candid Chinese immigrant Ah Song-Hi writes to his friend Ching-Foo back in China about his excitement while leaving for America, about his ill reception in this country, and his confusion about American values. Twain's tale of black humor employs and ironic approach to unveil the dark side of America as a land of corruption and oppression, rather than a heaven with equal rights. These letters depict the Chinese as individuals with human rights by relating them to their history. Twain's tale alludes to the historical fact that the California gold rush fueled impoverished Chinese immigrants to America. Twain modeled on the epistolary device and self-criticism in Citizen of the world by Oliver Goldsmith. He employs a Chinese persona to satirize American racism and violence and he emphasizes that his narrative of the mistreatment of the Chinese was based on his observations of real American life. The story realistically represents white American's attitude toward the Chinese during the late nineteenth century. Thinking of the U.S. as the land of freedom and opportunity, many Chinese willingly left their families and made the long trip, hardly knowing that they would be facing a life filled with discrimination and injustice. Through the portrayal of the Chinese narrator who suffers from unfair treatments on the street, in the prison, and even in the court, Twain indicates his sympathy for the victims of racism.

Twain, Mark. A tribute to Anson Burlingame [ID D29342].
On Wednesday, in St. Petersburg, Mr. Burlingame died after a short illness. It is not easy to comprehend, at an instant's warning, the exceeding magnitude of the loss which mankind sustains in this death—the loss which all nations and all peoples sustain in it. For he had outgrown the narrow citizenship of a state and become a citizen of the world; and his charity was large enough and his great heart warm enough to feel for all its races and to labor for them. He was a true man, a brave man, an earnest man, a liberal man, a just man, a generous man, in all his ways and by all his instincts a noble man; he was a man of education and culture, a finished conversationalist, a ready, able, and graceful speaker, a man of great brain, a broad and deep and weighty thinker. He was a great man—a very, very great man. He was imperially endowed by nature; he was faithfully befriended by circumstances, and he wrought gallantly always, in whatever station he found himself.
He was a large, handsome man, with such a face as children instinctively trust in, and homeless and friendless creatures appeal to without fear. He was courteous at all times and to all people, and he had the rare and winning faculty of being always interested in what-ever aman had to say—a faculty which he possessed simply because nothing was trivial to him which any man or woman or child had at heart. When others said harsh things about even unconscionable and intrusive bores after they had retired from his presence, Mr. Burlingame often said a generous word in their favor, but never an unkind one.
Achivalrous generosity was his most marked characteristic—alargecharity,anoble kindliness that could not comprehend narrowness or meanness. It is this that shows out in his fervent abolitionism, manifested at atime when it was neither very creditable nor very safe to hold such a creed; it was this that prompted him to hurl his famous Brooks-and-Sumner speech in the face of an astonished South at atime when all the North was smarting under the sneers and taunts and material aggressions of admired and applauded Southerners. It was this that made him so warmly espouse the cause of Italian liberty—an espousal sopointed and sovigorous as to attract the attention of Austria, which empire afterward declined to receive him when he was appointed Austrian envoy by Mr. Lincoln. It was this trait which prompted him to punish Americans in China when they imposed upon the Chinese. It was this trait which moved him, in framing treaties, to frame them in the broad interest of the world, instead of selfishly seeking to acquire advantages for his own country alone and at the expense of the other party to the treaty, as had always before been the recognized "diplomacy."It was this trait which was and is the soul of the crowning achievements of his career, the treaties with America and England in behalf of China. In every labor of this man's life there was present a good and noble motive; and in nothing that he ever did or said was there anything small or base. In real greatness, ability, grandeur of character, and achievement, he stood head and shoulders above all the Americans of to-day, save one or two.
Without any noise, or any show, or any flourish, Mr. Burlingame did ascore of things of shining mark during his official residence in China. They were hardly heard of away here in America. When he first went to China, he found that with all their kingly powers, American envoys were still not of much consequence in the eyes of their countrymen of either civil or official position. But he was a man who was always "posted." He knew all about the state of things he would find in China before he sailed from America. And so he took care to demand and receive additional powers before he turned his back upon Washington. When the customary consular irregularities placidly continued and he notified those officials that such irregularities must instantly cease, and they inquired with insolent flippancy what the consequence might be in case they did not cease, he answered blandly that he would dismiss them, from the highest to the lowest! (He had quietly come armed with absolute authority over their official lives.) The consular irregularities ceased. A far healthier condition of American commercial interests ensued there.
To punish a foreigner in China was an unheard-of thing. There was no way of accomplishing it. Each Embassy had its own private district or grounds, forced from the imperial government, and into that sacred district Chinese law officers could not intrude. All foreigners guilty of offenses against Chinamen were tried by their own country-men, in these holy places, and as no Chinese testimony was admitted, the culprit almost always went free. One of the very first things Mr. Burlingame did was to make a Chinaman's oath as good as a foreigner's; and in his ministerial court, through Chinese and American testi-mony combined, he very shortly convicted a noted American ruffian of murdering a Chinaman. And now a community accustomed to light sentences were naturally startled when, under Mr. Burlingame'shand, and bearing the broad seal of the American Embassy, came an order to take him out and hang him!
Mr. Burlingame broke up the "extraterritorial" privileges (as they were called), as far as our country was concerned, and made justice as free to all and as untrammeled in the metes and bounds of its jurisdiction, in China, as ever it was in any land.
Mr. Burlingame was the leading spirit in the co-operative policy. He got the Imperial College established. He procured permission for an American to open the coal mines of China. Through his efforts China was the first country to close her ports against the war vessels of the Southern Confederacy; and Prince Kung's order, in this matter, was singularly energetic, comprehensive, and in earnest. The ports were closed then, and never opened to a Southern warship afterward.
Mr. Burlingame "construed" the treaties existing between China and the other nations. For many years the ablest diplomatists had vainly tried to come to a satisfactory understanding of certain obscure clauses of these treaties, and more than once powder had been burned in consequences of failure to come to such understandings. But the clear and comprehensive intellect of the American envoy reduced the wordy tangle of diplomatic phrases to a plain and honest handful of paragraphs, and these were unanimously and thankfully accepted by the other foreign envoys, and officially declared by them to be a thorough and satisfactory elucidation of all the uncertain clauses in the treaties.
Mr. Burlingame did a mighty work, and made official intercourse with China lucid, simple, and systematic, thenceforth for all time, when he persuaded that government to adopt and accept the code of international law by which the civilized nations of the earth are guided and controlled.
It is not possible to specify all the acts by which Mr. Burlingame made himself largely useful to the world during his official residence in China. At least it would not be possible to do it without making this sketch too lengthy and pretentious for a newspaper article.
Mr. Burlingame's short history—for he was only forty-seven—reads like a fairy tale. Its successes, its surprises, its happy situations, occur all along, and each new episode is always an improvement upon the one which went before it.
He begins life an assistant in a surveying party away out on the Western frontier; then enters a branch of a Western college; then passes through Harvard with the honors; becomes a Boston lawyer and looks back complacently from his high perch upon the old days when he was a surveyor nobody in the woods; becomes a state senator, and makes laws; still advancing, goes to the Constitutional Convention and makes regulations wherewith to rule the makers of laws; enters Congress and smiles back upon the Legislature and the Boston lawyer, and from these smiles still back upon the country surveyor, recognizes that he is known to fame in Massachusetts; challenges Brooks and is known to the nation; next, with a long stride upward, he is clothed with ministerial dignity and journeys to the under side of the world to represent the youngest in the court of the oldest of the nations; and finally, after years go by, we see him moving serenely among the crowned heads of the Old World, a magnate with secretaries and under secretaries about him, a retinue of quaint, outlandish Orientals in his wake, and a long following of servants—and the world is aware that his salary is unbelievably enormous, not to say imperial, and like-wise knows that he is invested with power to make treaties with all the chief nations of the earth, and that he bears the stately title of Ambassador, and in his person represents the, mysterious and awful grandeur of that vague colossus, the Emperor of China, his mighty empire and his four hundred millions of subjects! Down what a dreamy vista his backward glance must stretch, now, to reach the insignificant surveyor in the Western woods!
He was a good man, and a very, very great man. America lost a son, and all the world a servant, when he died.

Twain, Mark. Disgraceful persecution of a boy [ID D29335].
In San Francisco, the other day, "a well-dressed boy, on his way to Sunday school, was arrested and thrown into the city prison for stoning Chinamen." What a commentary is this upon human justice! What sad prominence it gives to our human disposition to tyrannize over the weak! San Francisco has little right to take credit to herself for her treatment of this poor boy. What had the child's education been? How should he suppose it was wrong to stone a Chinaman? Before we side against him, along with outraged San Francisco, let us give him a chance -- let us hear the testimony for the defence. He was a "well-dressed" boy, and a Sunday-school scholar, and, therefore, the chances are that his parents were intelligent, well-to-do people, with just enough natural villany in their compositions to make them yearn after the daily papers, and enjoy them; and so this boy had opportunities to learn all through the week how to do right, as well as on Sunday. It was in this way that he found out that the great commonwealth of California imposes an unlawful mining tax upon John the foreigner, and allows Patrick the foreigner to dig gold for nothing -- probably because the degraded Mongol is at no expense for whiskey, and the refined Celt cannot exist without it. It was in this way that he found out that a respectable number of the tax-gatherers -- it would be unkind to say all of them -- collect the tax twice, instead of once; and that, inasmuch as they do it solely to discourage Chinese immigration into the mines, it is a thing that is much applauded, and likewise regarded as being singularly facetious. It was in this way that he found out that when a white man robs a sluice-box (by the term white man is meant Spaniards, Mexicans, Portuguese, Irish, Hondurans, Peruvians, Chileans, etc., etc.), they make him leave the camp; and when a Chinaman does that thing, they hang him. It was in this way that he found out that in many districts of the vast Pacific coast, so strong is the wild, free love of justice in the hearts of the people, that whenever any secret and mysterious crime is committed, they say, "Let justice be done, though the heavens fall," and go straightway and swing a Chinaman. It was in this way that he found out that by studying one half of each day's "local items" it would appear that the police of San Francisco were either asleep or dead, and by studying the other half it would seem that the reporters were gone mad with admiration of the energy, the virtue, the high effectiveness, and the dare-devil intrepidity of that very police making exultant mention of how "the Argus-eyed officer So and-so" captured a wretched knave of a Chinaman who was stealing chickens, and brought him gloriously to the city prison; and how "the gallant officer Such-and-such-a-one" quietly kept an eye on the movements of an "unsuspecting almond-eyed son of Confucius" (your reporter is nothing if not facetious), following him around with that far-off look of vacancy and unconsciousness always so finely affected by that inscrutable being, the forty-dollar policeman, during a waking interval, and captured him at last in the very act of placing his hands in a suspicious manner upon a paper of tacks left by the owner in an exposed situation; and how one officer performed this prodigious thing, and another officer that, and another the other -- and pretty much every one of these performances having for a dazzling central incident a Chinaman guilty of a shilling's worth of crime, an unfortunate whose misdemeanor must be hurrahed into something enormous in order to keep the public from noticing how many really important rascals went uncaptured in the mean time, and how overrated those glorified policemen actually are. It was in this way that the boy found out that the Legislature, being aware that the Constitution has made America an asylum for the poor and the oppressed of all nations, and that therefore the poor and oppressed who fly to our shelter must not be charged a disabling admission fee, made a law that every Chinaman, upon landing, must be vaccinated upon the wharf, and pay to the State's appointed officer ten dollars for the service, when there are plenty of doctors in San Francisco who would be glad enough to do it for him for fifty cents. It was in this way that the boy found out that a Chinaman had no rights that any man was bound to respect; that he had no sorrows that any man was bound to pity; that neither his life nor his liberty was worth the purchase of a penny when a white man needed a scapegoat; that nobody loved Chinamen, nobody befriended them, nobody spared them suffering when it was convenient to inflict it; everybody, individuals, communities, the majesty of the State itself, joined in hating, abusing, and persecuting these humble strangers. And, therefore, what could have been more natural than for this sunny-hearted boy, tripping along to Sunday school, with his mind teeming with freshly-learned incentives to high and virtuous action, to say to himself:
"Ah, there goes a Chinaman! God will not love me if I do not stone him."
And for this he was arrested and put in the city jail. Everything conspired to teach him that it was a high and holy thing to stone a Chinaman, and yet he no sooner attempts to do his duty than he is punished for it -- he, poor chap, who has been aware all his life that one of the principal recreations of the police, out toward the Gold Refinery, was to look on with tranquil enjoyment while the butchers of Brannan street set their dogs on unoffending Chinamen, and make them flee for their lives.*
Keeping in mind the tuition in the humanities which the entire "Pacific coast" gives its youth, there is a very sublimity of grotesqueness in the virtuous flourish with which the good city fathers of San Francisco proclaim (as they have lately done) that "The police are positively ordered to arrest all boys, of every description and wherever found, who engage in assaulting Chinamen."
Still, let us be truly glad they have made the order, notwithstanding its prominent inconsistency; and let us rest perfectly confident the police are glad, too. Because there is no personal peril in arresting boys, provided they be of the small kind, and the reporters will have to laud their performances just as loyally as ever, or go without items. The new form for local items in San Francisco will now be: "The ever vigilant and efficient officer So-and-So succeeded, yesterday afternoon, in arresting Master Tommy Jones, after a determined resistance," etc., etc., followed by the customary statistics and final hurrah, with its unconscious sarcasm: "We are happy in being able to state that this is the forty-seventh boy arrested by this gallant officer since the new ordinance went into effect. The most extraordinary activity prevails in the police department. Nothing like it has been seen since we can remember."

Sekundärliteratur
Ou Hsin-yun : The writing is a sarcastic exposition of the arrest of a well-dressed boy in San Francisco, who 'on his way to Sunday-school was arrested and thrown into the city prison for stoning a Chinaman'. Twain condemns the injustice of the arrest, because the boy has been taught by his elders that it was 'a high and holy thing' to abuse the Chinese, and yet the boy 'no sooner attempts to do his duty than he is punished for it'. Twain's sympathy for the Chinese receives its angry expression, particularly because the San Francisco community collected unlawful mining taxes and various charges from the Chinese white police stood idly by when the Chinese were attached by white gangs.

Twain, Mark ; Harte, Bret. Ah Sin. (1877). [Uraufführung Fifth Avenue Theatre, New York, 31 July 1877]. = Ah Sin : a dramatic work. Ed. by Frederick Anderson. (San Francisco : The Book Club of California, 1961).

Twain, Mark. I am a Boxer. Public Education Association Address at a Meeting of the Berkeley Lyceum, New York, November 23, 1900. In : Twain, Mark. Mark Twain's speeches. (New York, N.Y. : Harper and Brothers, 1910).
chinapage.com.

Zeng, Xubai. Meiguo wen xue ABC. (Shanghai : ABC cong chu she, 1929). (ABC cong shu). [Geschichte der amerikanischen Literatur]. [Enthält Mark Twain, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, James Fenimore Cooper].
美國文學

Zhao, Jiabi. Xin chuan tong. (Shanghai : Liang you tu shu yin shua gong si, 1936). (Liang you wen xue cong shu ; 30). [Geschichte der amerikanischen Romane : "The new tradition" ; enthält Kapitel über Mark Twain, William Faulkner].
新傳統

[Paine, Albert Bigelow]. Make Tuwen xiao zhuan. Tang Xinmei yi. (Xianggang : Gao yuan chu ban she, 1958). Übersetzung von Paine, Albert Bigelow. Mark Twain : a biography : the personal and literary life of Samuel Langhorne Clemens. (New York, N.Y. : Harper, 1912).
馬克吐溫小傳

Shi jie ming ren xie gei mu qin di xin. Suoluo deng zhuan ; Wang Hongren yi. (Taibei : Zhong hua ri bao, 1976). (Zhong hua ri bao jia zhong cong shu ; 25). [ Briefe an die Mutter, Sammlung berühmter westlicher Autoren. Enthält : Henry David Thoreau, Mark Twain].
世界名人寫給母親的信

Dong, Hengxun. Meiguo wen xue jian shi. Dong Hengxun [et al.] bian zhu. Vol. 1-2. (Beijing : Ren min wen xue chu ban she, 1978 / 1986). [A concise history of American literature ; enthält ein Kapitel über Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck ; Erwähnung von Henry David Thoreau, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Herman Melville].
美国文学简史