Chapter IX: Will the Architect Have Employment? (4)

In the passion of blind destruction that followed and attended the breaking out of hostilities between the North and the South, as a child breaks his rival's playthings, the barbarism of war destroyed the useful improvements of civilization. Among the things destroyed by this iconoclastic fury was the valuable dry-dock in Pensacola Bay. It was burned to the water's edge, and sunk. A company was subsequently organized to rescue the wreck, and in the course of the submarine labor occurred the incident to which I refer.

The dry-dock was built in compartments, to ensure it against sinking, but the ingenuity which was to keep it above water now served effectually to keep it down. Each one of these small water-tight compartments held the vessel fast to the bottom, as Gulliver was bound by innumerable threads to the ground of Lilliput. It was necessary to break severally into the lower side of each of these chambers, and allow the water to flow evenly in all. The interior of the hull was checkered by these boxes. Huge beams and cross-ties intersected each other at right angles, forming the frame for this honeycombed interior, pigeon-holed like a merchant's desk. It was necessary to tear off the skin and penetrate from one to the other in order to effect this.

It was a difficult and tedious job under water. The net of intersecting beams lay so close together that the passage between was exceedingly narrow and compressed, barely admitting the diver's body. The pens, so framed by intersecting beams, were narrowed and straitened, embarrassing attempts at labor in them, which the cold, slippery, serpent-like touch of the sea-water was not likely to make pleasanter. It folded the shuddering body in its coils, and a most ancient and fish-like smell did not improve the situation. The toil was multiplied by the innumerable pigeon-holes, as if they fitted into one another like a Chinese puzzle, with the unlucky diver in the middle box. It was a nightmare of the sea, the furniture of a dream solidified in woody fibre.

Into one of these crowding holes the diver crawled. There was the tedious work of tearing off the casing to occupy an hour or more, and when it was accomplished he endeavored to back out of his situation. He was stopped fast and tight in his regression. The arrangement of the armor about the head and shoulders, making a cone whose apex was the helmet, prevented his exit. It was like the barb of a harpoon, and caught him fast in the wood. Such a danger is not sudden in its revelation. There is at first only a feeling of impatience at the embarrassment, a disposition to "tear things." In vain attempts at doubling and other gymnastic feats the diver wasted several hours, until his companions above became alarmed at the delay. They renewed and increased their labors at the force-pump, and the impetuous torrent came surging about the diver's ears. It served to complete his danger. It sprung the trap in which he lay enclosed. The inflated armor swelled and filled up the crowded spaces. It stiffened out the casing of the helmet to equal the burden of fifty pounds to the square inch, and made it as hard as iron. He was caught like the gluttonous fox. The bulky volume of included air made exit impossible. It was no longer a labyrinth as before, where freedom of motion incited courage: he was in the fetters of wind and water, bound fast to the floor of his dungeon den. He signaled for the pump to stop. It was the only alternative. He might die without that life-giving air, but he would certainly die if its volume was not reduced. The cock at the back of the helmet for discharging the vessel was out of his reach. The invention never contemplated a case in which the diver would perish from the presence of air.

As the armor worn was made tight at the sleeves with elastic wristbands, his remedy was to insert his fingers under it, and slowly and tediously allow the bubbling air to escape. In this he persevered steadily, encouraged by the prospect of escape. The way was long and difficult, but release certain with the reduction of that huge bulk.

But a new and subtler danger attacked him--the very wit of Nature brought to bear upon his force and ingenuity. It was as if the mysterious sirens of the sea saw in that intellectual force the real strength of their prisoner, and sought to steal it from him while they lulled him to indifference. Inhaling and reinhaling the reduced volume of air, it became carbonized and foul, not with the warning of sudden oppression, but

Sly as April melts to May,
And May slips into June.

The senses, intoxicated by the new companion sent them by the lungs, began to sport with it, as ignorant children with a loaded shell, forgetful of duty and the critical condition of the man. They began to wander in vagaries and delusions. A soft chime of distant bells rang in his ears with the sweet sleepy service of a Sabbath afternoon; the sound of hymns and the organ mingled with the melody and the chant of the sirens of the sea.

There is sweet music here that softer falls
Than petals from blown roses on the grass,
Or night-dew on still waters, between walls
Of shadowy granite in a gleaming pass--
Music that gentler on the spirit lies
Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes.
Here are cool mosses deep,
And through the moss the ivies creep,
And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep,
And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep.

The sensuous beauty, the infinite luxury of repose sung by the poet, filled and steeped his senses. The desire to sleep was intoxicating, delicious, irresistible; and with it ran delicious, restful thrills through all his limbs, the narcotism of the blood. It was partly, no doubt, the effect of inhaling that pernicious air; partly that hibernation of the bear which in the freezing man precedes dissolution; and possibly more than that, something more than any mere physical cause--life perhaps preparing to lay this tired body down, its future usefulness destroyed.

This delicious enervation had to be constantly resisted and dominated by a superior will. One more strenuous effort to relieve that straitened garrison, to release that imprisoned and fettered body, and then, if that failed, an unconditional surrender to the armies of eternal steep. But it did not fail. That constant, persevering tugging of the fingers at the wristbands, pursued mechanically in that strange condition of pleasing stupor, had reduced the exaggerated distensions of the bulbous head-gear. A stout, energetic push set the diver free, and he was drawn to the surface dazed, drowsy, and only half conscious of the peril undergone. But with the rush of fresh, untainted air to the lungs came an emotion of gratitude to the Giver of life and the full consciousness of escape.

And this sums up my sketch illustrative of the peculiar character of marine life, and the hazards of submarine adventure, hitherto known to few, for--well, for _divers_ reasons.

WILL WALLACE HARNEY.

CONFIDENTIAL.

My ear has ever been considered public property for private usage. I cannot call to mind the time when I was not somebody's confidante, the business beginning as far back as the winter I ran down to Aunt Rally's to receive my birthday-party of sweet or bitter sixteen, as will appear.

Ralph Romer was the first to spread the news of my arrival in the village among the girls of my own age. Ralph Romer it was who had braved the dangers of "brier and brake" to find the bright holly berries with which Aunt Hally had decorated the cheery little parlor for the occasion; and it was with Ralph Romer I danced the oftenest on that famous night.

"Wouldn't I just step out on the porch a short little minute," he whispered as he came around in the rear of Aunt Hally to bid me good-night, ending the whisper, according to the style of all boy-lovers, "I've got something to tell you."

The door stood open and conveniently near, and I suppose I wanted to see how high the snow had drifted since dark; and, a better reason still, I couldn't afford to let Ralph take my hand off with him; and so I had to go out on the porch just long enough to get it back, while he said: "Ettie Moore says she loves me, and we are going to correspond when I go back to college; and as you know all lovers and their sweethearts must have a confidante to smuggle letters and valentines across the lines, we have both chosen you for ours. Oh, I was so afraid you wouldn't come!"

I found the snow had drifted--well, I don't believe I knew how many inches.

I have not promised a recital of all my auricular experiences. Enough to say, that in time I settled down into the conviction that it was my special mission to be the receptacle of other people's secrets; and they seemed determined to convince me that they thought so too.

So, when Mr. Tennent Tremont happened along and became a candidate for auricular favors, like a tradesman who has gained the self-sustaining ground which has made him indifferent as to custom-seeking, I could afford to be entirely independent about giving a previous promise to keep his secrets for him; and so, dear reader, they are as much yours as mine.

When my brother introduced him into our family circle we took him to be a Northern college-chum, met with during his just-returned-from-trip to Washington; for it was in those days when Southern hospitality was as much appreciated as it was liberally bestowed. It was a good time for a modest stranger to come among new faces. We were in the flutter and bustle which a wedding in the family makes, and it gave him an opportunity to get used to us, and left us none to observe him unpleasantly much.

But when the wedding was over, and I had made up my week of lost sleep, and he and my brother had kept themselves out of the way on a camp-hunt, for my mother to do up her week of house-cleaning,--it is here that our story proper begins.

As we were leaving the breakfast-table one morning my brother caught my dress-sleeve, and, dropping in the rear of Mr. Tennent Tremont, allowed him to find the verandah: "Really, sis, I don't think you are doing the clever thing, quite."

"How?"

"Why, in not helping me to entertain my friend."

"Getting tired of him?"

"No, he isn't one of that kind; but, to tell the truth, I am too busy just now to give him the whole of my time."

"Too busy turning your own cakes. Yes, I see."

"Which is no more than my sister is doing; which reminds me to say that J.B. will call this morning, he desired me to inform you. But, dear sis, we must not be so absorbed in our own love-matters as to give my friend only a moiety of our attention, for, poor fellow! he has one of his own."

"So I am to bore him for the sake of relieving you? Is that my role?"

"Now stop! He simply wants a lady confidante."

I broke away from my brother's hold, and ran up to my room to see if all was right for my expected caller, giving my right ear a pull, by way of saying to that victimized organ, "You are needed."

And what think you I did next? Got out my embroidery-material bag, and put it in order for action at a moment's warning. I was prepared for a reasonable amount of martyrdom pertaining to my profession, but I was always an economist of time, and not another unemployed hour would I yield to the selfish demands of my forthcoming job.

The next day was one of November drizzle, the house confinement of which, my adroit brother declared, could only be mitigated by my presence in the sitting-room until the improved state of the weather allowed their escape from it.

I was in the habit of appropriating such weather to my piano, and I had not touched it for a month. Whether Mr. Tennent Tremont's nerves were in a sound state or not, I was determined to practice until twelve. But when he came in from the library and assisted me in opening the instrument, I was obliged to ask him what he would have. They were my first direct words to him, our three weeks' guest.

"Oh, 'Summer Night' is a favorite," he said.

I gave him the song, and then executed the long variations; then, dropping my tired hands in my lap, inquired whether he liked vocal or instrumental best.

"Not any more of either, just now, thanking you kindly for what you have given me," he said. "Have you ever been a confidante, Miss ----?"

"That is my vocation, Mr. Tremont," I replied, grasping my bag.

"Which? your embroidery or--"

"Both combined," I tried to say pleasantly, "as on this occasion. I am at Mr. Tremont's service;" and I threaded my tapestry-needle.

Without a prefatory word he began: "Years before your young heart was awakened to 'the sweetest joy, the wildest woe,' I loved."

"And single yet!" I exclaimed as I let my hands drop and glanced up at his brown hair, to see if all those years had left their silver footprints there.

"And single yet," he repeated slowly, "and still worshiping at the same shrine; and to no other will I ever bow until this head is silvered o'er, and this strong arm palsied with the infirmities of age--if a long life is indeed to be mine."

His ardor startled me, but I managed to stitch away composedly, and he went on:

"I know it is in the highest degree selfish to inflict on you a recital of what may not interest you; but I have tried to keep my secret buried from human eyes, from all but _hers_, and you are now the only being on earth to whom I have ever _said_, 'I love.' As intimate as I have been with your brother, if he knows it, it is by his penetration, for no word of acknowledgment has ever passed my lips before. May I go on?" he asked.

"Oh yes," I answered, taken by surprise. "I suppose so. It is a relief to talk, and to listen, I have told you, is my vocation."

"How long can you listen?" he questioned in delighted eagerness.

I fancied he would have to be allowanced, and I held up my paper pattern before me: "This bouquet of flowers is to be transferred. I will give you all the time it will take to do it. Remember, the catastrophe must be reached by that time. Some one else will probably want my ear."

"But," said he, "listening is not the only duty of a confidante: you must aid me by your counsel. Only a woman may say how a woman may be won."

"You have my sympathies, Mr. Tremont, on the score of your being a very dear brother's friend. I know nothing of her--next to nothing of you. I can neither counsel nor aid you."

"That brother is familiar with every page of my outward life-history. It was in our family he spent his vacation, while you and your father were traveling in Europe."

"Well, then, that will do about yourself. Now about her?"

The door-bell was rung: the waiter announced--well, my obliging brother has already given enough of his name--"Mr. J.B." My confessor withdrew.

The next morning, as I was bringing the freshened flower-vases into the sitting-room, he brought me my bag, saying, "Now about her."

I opened the piano, repeated his favorite, kept my seat and cultivated my roses vigorously.

"Miss ----," he began, "I would not knowingly give pain to a human creature. Yesterday, when your visitor found me by your side, I observed a frown on his face. I detest obtrusiveness, but if there is anything in the relation in which you stand to each other which will make my attentions objectionable to either of you, they shall cease this moment. You are at perfect liberty to repeat to him every word I have said to you."

"I thank you sincerely for your considerateness," I said. "I am under no obligations of the kind to him or any other gentleman."

He introduced his topic by saying: "I am glad that I shall have to say little more of myself. Oh, what a strange joy it is to be able to speak unreservedly of her, and of the long pent-up hopes and fears of the past years! And now, if you will assist me in interpreting her conduct toward me--if you will inspire me with even faint hope of success--if you will advise me as you would a brother how to proceed,--gratitude will be too weak a word for my feeling toward you for the remainder of my life."

"I have not yet sufficient light on her part of the affair to aid you by advice," I answered. "In these slowly-developing love-affairs there is usually but one great hindering cause. Do you know," I said, laughing as much as I dared, looking into his woebegone face, "that you have not told me what has passed between you?"

His moment or two of death silence made me almost regret my last words.

"In the first of our acquaintance I was ever tortured by her indifference. My first attentions were quietly received, never encouraged. Then came the still more torturing fear--agony let me call it--lest she was pre-engaged. Thank God! that burden was lifted from my poor heart, but only, it seemed, to make room for the very one of all in the catalogue of causes by which a lover's hope dies beyond the possibility of a resurrection. It is the rock--no, I fear the placid waters of friendship into which my freighted bark is now drifting--which may lie between it and the bright isle of love, the safe harbor" (he shuddered), "not the blissful possession."

Reader, the roses were not growing under my needle: my sympathies were at last fully enlisted.

"You have well said," I answered. "Friendship is the 'nine notch' in which a lover makes 'no count' in the game of hearts. But steer bravely past these dark gulfs of despair. Have you ever had recourse to jealousy in your desperation?" I queried.

"I scorn such a base ally. Your brother can tell you I am here partly because I would avoid increasing an affection in another which I cannot return."

"Does she know of that?" I asked, not at all prepared in my own mind to yield the potency of the ally in my sincere desire to aid him by this test of a woman's affection.

"Yes: I have no reason, however, for thinking that the fact has raised her estimate of the article," he said, making a poor attempt to smile.

I felt ashamed of my suggestion, and said quickly, "You correspond, of course: how are her letters?" Now I was sure of my safest clue in finding her out.

"It was through the medium of her letters that I first obtained my knowledge of her mind, her temperament, her disposition, her admirable domestic virtues; for they were written without reserve. They excited my highest admiration; they stimulated my desire to know more of her; but they contain no word of love for me."

His want of boldness almost excited my contempt. My skill was baffled on every side, and, not caring much to conceal my impatience, I said, "You have asked me to advise you as I would my brother. She is cold and selfish: give her up."

"Give her up!" he said with measured and emphatic slowness--"give her up, when I have sought her beneath every clime on which the sun shines--not for months, but for years? Give her up, when her presence gives me all I have ever known of happiness? Give her up!" and he leaned his head on the back of his chair and closed his eyes.

I had imagined him gifted with wonderful self-control, but when I looked up from my work all color had faded from his cheeks, the lips seemed ready to yield the little blood left there by the clinch of the white-teeth upon them, while every muscle of the face quivered with spasmodic effort to control emotion. When the eyes were opened and fixed on the ceiling, I saw no trace in them of anger, revenge, or even of wounded pride. They were full of tears, ready to gush in one last flood-tide of feeling over a subdued, chastened, but breaking heart.

It was very evident that my treatment was not adding much comfort to my patient, however salutary it might prove in the end. I knew of his intention to leave the next day: there was little time left me to aid him, and I had come to regard the unknown woman's mysterious nature or strategic warfare as pitted against my superior penetration. That he might be victorious she must be vanquished. _She_ was, then, my antagonist.

The deepening twilight was producing chilliness. I flooded the room with brilliant light, stirred the grate into glowing warmth, and invited him to a seat near the fire.

"You will not leave me, will you? This may be--_it will be_--my last demand on you as a confidante. How is the bouquet progressing?" he asked.

"See," I said, holding my embroidery up before me: "we must hurry. I have but one more tendril to add."

"Tendrils are clinging things, like hope, are they not?" he said pensively.

But sentimentalizing was not the business of the hour, and I intimated as much to him. "Yes," I replied, "but hope must now give place to effort. I see you are not going to take my 'give-her-up' advice."

"No--only from her who has the right to give it."

I now considered my patient out of danger.

"Then why do you torture yourself longer with doubts? Perhaps your irresolution has caused a want of confidence in the strength of your affection. At least give her an opportunity to define her true position toward you. Beard the lions of indifference and friendship in their dens, and do not yield to unmanly cowardice. Strange that I have given you the counsel last which should have been given first! But do not, I beseech you, lose any time in seeking her. Assure her of your long and unwavering devotion. Constancy is the most valued word in a true woman's vocabulary. You have staked too much happiness to lose: you _must_ win."

"And if I lose," he said--holding up something before him which I took to be a picture, though it was in the shape of a heart--"and if I lose, then perish all of earth to me. But leave me only this, and should I hold you thus, and gaze on what I have first and last and only loved until this perishable material on which I have placed you turn to dust, still will you be graven on a heart whose deathless love can know no death; for a thing so holy as the love I bear you was not made to die."

My work--now my completed work--dropped beneath my fingers, for the last stitch was taken.

If I could not prevent his self-torture, he should not, at least, torture me longer; and snatching the thing from his grasp, I exclaimed as I closed my hands over it, "Now, before I return it, you must, you _shall_, promise me that you will take the last advice I gave you; or will you allow me to look at it, and then unseal the silent lips and give you the prophetic little 'yes' or 'no' which a professed physiognomist like your confidante can always read in the eye?"

"I would rather you did the last," he said; and I rose, leaned my elbow on the corner of the mantel nearest the gaslight, rested my head on my empty hand, so as to shade my eyes from the intensity of the brilliant burner near me, and with the awe creeping over me with which the old astrologers read the horoscope of the midnight stars, I looked, and saw--only a wonderfully faithful copy of the portrait hanging just over me, of which Mr. Tennent Tremont's confidante was the original. I threw it from me, and burst into tears. He stood quite near me. I thought I hated him, but my obtuse, blundering, idiotic self more than him. I waved my hand in token either of his silence or withdrawal, for in all my life long I, with a whole dictionary in my mind of abusive epithets, was never more at a loss for a word. My token was unheeded.

He only murmured softly,

I had never seen thee weeping:
I cannot leave thee now.

When you snatched my picture from me a moment ago I saw a glistening tear of sympathy in your eye; but what are these?"

"So cruel! so ungenerous! so unfair!" I said, still pressing my hands tightly over my eyes. "How can I ever forgive you?"

With softer murmur than the last he repeated the words,

"'Tis sweet to let the pardoned in."

"Astounding presumption that!" I said, now giving him the benefit of my full gaze--"to speak of pardon before making a confession of your guilt! But before I give you time even for that, the remaining mysteries which still hang around your tale of woe shall be cleared up. Please to inform the court how the original of your purloined sketch could have been the object of years of devotion, when it has been only four weeks to-day since you laid your mortal eyes on her?"

"Ah! you may well say mortal; but you know the soul too has its visual organs. I saw and loved and worshiped my ideal in those years, and sought her too--how unceasingly!--and I said,

Only for the real will I with the ideal part:
Another shall not even tempt my heart.

When I saw her just four weeks since, I knew her,

And my heart responded as, with unseen wings,
An angel touched its unswept strings,
And whispers in its song,
Where hast thou strayed so long?"

But the avenging demon of curiosity was not to be exorcised by sentimental evasion: "Those letters, sir, of which you spoke, _they_ must have been of a real, tangible form--not a part of the mythical phantasmagoria of your idealistic vision."

He laughed as a light-hearted child would, but knitted his brow with a perplexed air as he said, "Why don't the British government send a woman to find the source of the Nile? I must thank your unsophisticated brother's pride in his sister's epistolary accomplishments for my privilege of perusal. What next?"

I thought a moment. Before, I had fifty other queries to propound, but now as I looked into the glowing anthracite before me which gave us those pleasant Reveries, they very naturally all resolved themselves into explained mysteries without his aid.

He insists that the "prophetic little yes or no" never came.

Upon my honor, dear reader, as a confidante, I still think it the most unfair procedure which ever "disgraced the annals of civilized warfare;" but I shall have abundant opportunity for revenge, for we are to make the journey of life together.

GLIMPSES OF JOHN CHINAMAN.

When John Marshall picked up the first golden nugget in California, a call was sounded for the gathering of an immense gold-seeking army made up of many nationalities; and among the rest China sent a battalion some fifty thousand strong.

John Chinaman has remained with us ever since, despised and abused, being neither a co-worshiper nor a co-sympathizer in aught save the getting of gold. In dress, custom and language his is still a nationality as distinct from ours as are the waters of the Gulf Stream from those of the ocean.

It is possible that this may be but the second migration of Tartars to the American shore. It is possible that the North American Indian and the Chinaman may be identical in origin and race. Close observers find among the aboriginal tribes resident far up on the north-west American coast peculiar habits and customs, having closely-allied types among the Chinese. The features of the Aleuts, the natives of the Aleutian Islands, are said to approximate closely to those of the Mongolians. The unvarying long black hair, variously-shaded brown skin, beardless face and shaven head are points, natural and artificial, common to the Indian and Mongolian. There is a hint of common custom between the Indian scalplock and Chinese cue.

"John" has been a thorough gleaner of the mines. The "superior race" allowed him to make no valuable discoveries. He could buy their half-worked-out placers. The "river-bed" they sold him when its chances of yielding were deemed desperate. When the golden fruitage of the banks was reduced to a dollar per day, they became "China diggings." But wherever "John" settled he worked steadily, patiently and systematically, no matter whether his ten or twelve hours' labor brought fifty cents or fifty dollars; for his industry is of an untiring mechanical character. In the earlier and flusher days of California's gold-harvest the white man worked spasmodically. He was ever leaving the five-dollar diggings in hand for the fifty- or hundred-dollar-per-day claims afar off in some imaginary bush. These golden rumors were always on the wing. The country was but half explored, and many localities were rich in mystery. The white vanguard pushed north, south and east, frequently enduring privation and suffering. "John," in comparative comfort, trotted patiently after, carrying his snugly made-up bundle of provisions and blankets at one end of a bamboo pole, his pick, shovel, pan and rocker at the other, to work over the leavings. The leavings sometimes turned out more gold than "new ground," much to the chagrin of the impatient Caucasian. But John, according to his own testimony, never owned a rich claim. Ask him how much it yielded per day, and he would tell you, "sometimes four, sometimes six bittee" (four or six shillings). He had many inducements for prevarication. Nearly every white man's hand was against him. If he found a bit of rich ground, "jumpers" were ready to drive him from it: Mexicans waylaid him and robbed him of his dust. In remote localities he enclosed his camp by strong stockades: even these were sometimes forced and carried at night by bands of desperadoes. Lastly came the foreign miner's tax-collector, with his demand of four dollars monthly per man for the privilege of digging gold. There were hundreds and thousands of other foreign laborers in the mines--English, German, French, Italian and Portuguese--but they paid little or none of this tax, for they might soon be entitled to a vote, and the tax-collector was appointed by the sheriff of the county, and the sheriff, like other officials, craved a re-election. But John was never to be a voter, and so he shouldered the whole of this load, and when he could not pay, the official beat him and took away his tools. John often fought this persecutor by strategy. In localities where no white men would betray him he signalized his coming from afar. From the crags of Red Mountain on the Tuolumne River I have often seen the white flag waved as the dreaded collector came down the steep trail to collect his monthly dues. That signal or a puff of smoke told the Chinese for miles along the river-valley to conceal themselves from the "license-man." Rockers, picks and shovels were hastily thrust into clumps of chapparal, and their owners clambered up the hillsides into artificial caves or leafy coverts. Out of companies of fifty the collector finds but twenty men at work. These pay their tax, the official rides on down the river, the hidden thirty Mongolians emerge from cover; and more than once has a keen collector "doubled on them" by coming back unexpectedly and detecting the entire gang on their claim.

John has been invaluable to the California demagogue, furnishing for him a sop of hatred and prejudice to throw before "enlightened constituencies." It needs but to mention the "filthy Chinaman" to provoke an angry roar from the mass-meeting. Yet the Chinaman is not entirely filthy. He washes his entire person every day when practicable; he loves clean clothes; his kitchen-utensils will bear inspection. When the smallpox raged so severely in San Francisco a few years since, there were very few deaths among his race. But John _is_ not nice about his house. He seems to have none of our ideas concerning home comfort. Smoke has no terror for him; soap he keeps entirely for his clothes and person; floor-and wall-washing are things never hinted at; and the refuse of his table is scarcely thrown out of doors. Privacy is not one of his luxuries--he wants a house full: where there is room for a bunk, there is room for a man. An anthill, a beehive, a rabbit-warren are his models of domestic comfort: what is stinted room for two Americans is spaciousness for a dozen Chinese. Go into one of their cabins at night, and you are in an oven full of opium- and lamp-smoke. Recumbent forms are dimly seen lying on bunks above and below. The chattering is incessant. Stay there ten minutes, and as your eye becomes accustomed to the smoke you will dimly see blue bundles lying on shelves aloft. Anon the bundles stir, talk and puff smoke. Above is a loft six feet square: a ladder brings it in communication with the ground floor. Mongolians are ever coming down, but the gabble of tongues above shows that a host is still left. Like an omnibus, a Chinese house is never full. Nor is it ever quiet. At all hours of the night may be heard their talk and the clatter of their wooden shoes. A Chinaman does not retire like an American, intending to make a serious business of his night's sleeping. He merely "lops down" half dressed, and is ready to arise at the least call of business or pleasure.

While at work in his claim his fire is always kindled near by, and over it a tea-pot. This is his beverage every half hour. His tea must be hot, strong and without milk or sugar. He also consumes a terrible mixture sold him by white traders, called indiscriminately brandy, gin or whisky, yet an intoxicated Chinaman is the rarest of rare sights. Rice he can cook elegantly, every grain being steamed to its utmost degree of distension. Soup he makes of no other meat than pork. The poorest among his hordes must have a chicken or duck for his holiday. He eats it merely parboiled. He will eat dog also, providing it is not long past maturity.

The Chinese grocery-stores are museums to the American. There are strange dried roots, strange dried fish, strange dried land and marine plants, ducks and chickens, split, pressed thin and smoked; dried shellfish; cakes newly made, yellow, glutinous and fatty, stamped with tea-box characters; and great earthen jars filled with rottenness. I speak correctly if perhaps too forcibly, for when those imposing jars are opened to serve a customer with some manner of vegetable cut in long strips, the native-born American finds it expedient to hold his nose. American storekeepers in the mines deal largely in Chinese goods. They know the Mongolian names of the articles inquired for, but of their character, their composition, how they are cooked or how eaten, they can give no information. It is heathenish "truck," by whose sale they make a profit. Only that and nothing more.

A Chinese miner's house is generally a conglomeration of old boards, mats, brush, canvas and stones. Rusty sheets of tin sometimes help to form the edifice. Anything lying about loose in the neighborhood is certain in time to form a part of the Mongolian mansion.

When the white man abandons mining-ground he often leaves behind very serviceable frame houses. John comes along to glean the gold left by the Caucasian. He builds a cluster of shapeless huts. The deserted white man's house gradually disappears. A clapboard is gone, and then another, and finally all. The skeleton of the frame remains: months pass away; piece by piece the joists disappear; some morning they are found tumbled in a heap, and at last nothing is left save the cellar and chimneys. Meantime, John's clusters of huts swell their rude proportions, but you must examine them narrowly to detect any traces of your vanished house, for he revels in smoke, and everything about him is soon colored to a hue much resembling his own brownish-yellow countenance. Thus he picks the domiciliary skeleton bare, and then carries off the bones. He is a quiet but skillful plunderer. John No. 1 on his way home from his mining-claim rips off a board; John No. 2 next day drags it a few yards from the house. John No. 3 a week afterward drags it home. In this manner the dissolution of your house is protracted for months. In this manner he distributes the responsibility of the theft over his entire community. I have seen a large boarding-house disappear in this way, and when the owner, after a year's absence, revisited the spot to look after his property, he found his real estate reduced to a cellar.

John himself is a sort of museum in his character and habits. We must be pardoned for giving details of these, mingled promiscuously, rather after the museum style. His New Year comes in February. For the Chinaman of limited means it lasts a week, for the wealthy it may endure three. His consumption of fire-crackers during that period is immense. He burns strings a yard in length suspended from poles over his balconies. The uproar and sputtering consequent on this festivity in the Chinese quarter at San Francisco is tremendous. The city authorities limit this Celestial Pandemonium to a week.

He does not forsake the amusement of kite-flying even when arrived at maturity. His artistic imitations of birds and dragons float over our housetops. To these are often affixed contrivances for producing hollow, mournful, buzzing sounds, mystifying whole neighborhoods. His game of shuttlecock is to keep a cork, one end being stuck with feathers, flying in the air as long as possible, the impelling member being the foot, the players standing in a circle and numbering from four to twenty. Some show great dexterity in kicking with the heel. His vocal music to our ears seems a monotonous caterwaul. His violin has but one string: his execution is merely a modified species of saw-filing.

He loves to gamble, especially in lotteries. He is a diligent student of his own comfort. Traveling on foot during a hot day, he protects himself with an umbrella and refreshes himself with a fan. In place of prosaic signs on his store-fronts, he often inscribes quotations from his favorite authors.

He is a lover of flowers. His balconies and window-sills are often thickly packed with shrubs and creepers in pots. He is not a speedy and taciturn eater. His tea-table talks are full of noisy jollity, and are often prolonged far into the night.

He is a lover of the drama. A single play sometimes requires months for representation, being, like a serial story, "continued" night after night. He never dances. There is no melody in the Mongolian foot. Dancing he regards as a species of Caucasian insanity.

To make an oath binding he must swear by the head of a cock cut off before him in open court. Chinese testimony is not admissible in American courts. It is a legal California axiom that a Chinaman cannot speak the truth. But cases have occurred wherein, he being an eye-witness, the desire to hear what he _might_ tell as to what he had seen has proved stronger than the prejudice against him; and the more effectually to clinch the chances of his telling the truth, the above, his national form of oath, has been resorted to. He has among us some secret government of his own. Before his secret tribunals more than one Mongolian has been hurried in Star-Chamber fashion, and never seen afterward. The nature of the offences thus visited by secret and bloody punishment is scarcely known to Americans. He has two chief deities--a god and a devil. Most of his prayers are offered to his devil. His god, he says, being good and well-disposed, it is not necessary to propitiate him. But his devil is ugly, and must be won over by offering and petition. Once a year, wherever collected in any number, he builds a flimsy sort of temple, decorates it with ornaments of tinsel, lays piles of fruit, meats and sugared delicacies on an altar, keeps up night and day a steady crash of gongs, and installs therein some great, uncouth wooden idols. When this period of worship is over the "josh-house" disappears, and the idols are unceremoniously stowed away among other useless lumber.

He shaves with an instrument resembling a butcher's cleaver in miniature. Nature generally denies him beard, so he shaves what a sailor would term the fore and after part of his head. He reaps his hirsute crop dry, using no lather. His cue is pieced out by silken braid, so interwoven as gradually to taper into a slim tassel, something like a Missouri mule-driver's "black snake" whip-lash. To lose this cue is to lose caste and standing among his fellows. No misfortune for him can be greater.

Coarse cowhide boots are the only articles of American wear that he favors. He inclines to buy the largest sizes, thinking he thereby gets the most for his money, and when his No. 7 feet wobble and chafe in No. 12 boots he complains that they "fit too much."

He cultivates the vegetables of his native land in California. They are curiosities like himself. One resembles our string-bean, but is circular in shape and from two to three feet in length. It is not in the least stringy, breaks off short and crisp, boils tender very quickly and affords excellent eating. He is a very careful cultivator, and will spend hours picking off dead leaves and insects from the young plants. When he finds a dead cat, rat, dog or chicken, he throws it into a small vat of water, allows it to decompose, and sprinkles the liquid fertilizer thus obtained over his plantation. Watermelon and pumpkin seeds are for him dessert delicacies. He consumes his garden products about half cooked in an American culinary point of view, merely wilting them by an immersion in boiling water.

There are about fifteen English words to be learned by a Chinaman on arriving in California, and no more. With these he expresses all his wants, and with this limited stock you must learn to convey all that is needful to him. The practice thus forced upon one in employing a Chinese servant is useful in preventing a circumlocutory habit of speech. Many of our letters the Mongolian mouth has no capacity for sounding. _R_ he invariably sounds like _l_, so that the word "rice" he pronounces "lice"--a bit of information which may prevent an unpleasant apprehension when you come to employ a Chinese cook. He rejects the English personal pronoun I, and uses the possessive "my" in its place; thus, "My go home," in place of "I go home."

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

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

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

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

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