“What did you say?”
“Me say, 'Chy Lee.'”
“Well?” I said impatiently.
“You sabe, 'How do, John?'”
“Yes.”
“You sabe, 'So long, John'?”
“Yes.”
“Well, 'Chy Lee' allee same!”
I understood him quite plainly. It appeared that “Chy Lee” was a form of
“good-night,” and that Wan Lee was anxious to go home. But an instinct
of mischief, which, I fear, I possessed in common with him, impelled
me to act as if oblivious of the hint. I muttered something about not
understanding him, and again bent over my work. In a few minutes I heard
his wooden shoes pattering pathetically over the floor. I looked up. He
was standing near the door.
“You no sabe, 'Chy Lee'?”
“No,” I said sternly.
“You sabe muchee big foolee! allee same!”
And, with this audacity upon his lips, he fled. The next morning,
however, he was as meek and patient as before, and I did not recall his
offence. As a probable peace-offering, he blacked all my boots,--a duty
never required of him,--including a pair of buff deer-skin slippers
and an immense pair of horseman's jack-boots, on which he indulged his
remorse for two hours.
I have spoken of his honesty as being a quality of his intellect rather
than his principle, but I recall about this time two exceptions to the
rule. I was anxious to get some fresh eggs as a change to the heavy
diet of a mining-town; and, knowing that Wan Lee's countrymen were great
poultry-raisers, I applied to him. He furnished me with them regularly
every morning, but refused to take any pay, saying that the man did not
sell them,--a remarkable instance of self-abnegation, as eggs were then
worth half a dollar apiece. One morning my neighbor Forster dropped in
upon me at breakfast, and took occasion to bewail his own ill fortune,
as his hens had lately stopped laying, or wandered off in the bush. Wan
Lee, who was present during our colloquy, preserved his characteristic
sad taciturnity. When my neighbor had gone, he turned to me with a
slight chuckle: “Flostel's hens--Wan Lee's hens allee same!” His
other offence was more serious and ambitious. It was a season of great
irregularities in the mails, and Wan Lee had heard me deplore the delay
in the delivery of my letters and newspapers. On arriving at my office
one day, I was amazed to find my table covered with letters, evidently
just from the post-office, but, unfortunately, not one addressed to me.
I turned to Wan Lee, who was surveying them with a calm satisfaction,
and demanded an explanation. To my horror he pointed to an empty
mail-bag in the corner, and said, “Postman he say, 'No lettee, John; no
lettee, John.' Postman plentee lie! Postman no good. Me catchee lettee
last night allee same!” Luckily it was still early: the mails had not
been distributed. I had a hurried interview with the postmaster; and
Wan Lee's bold attempt at robbing the United States mail was finally
condoned by the purchase of a new mail-bag, and the whole affair thus
kept a secret.
If my liking for my little Pagan page had not been sufficient, my duty
to Hop Sing was enough, to cause me to take Wan Lee with me when I
returned to San Francisco after my two years' experience with “The
Northern Star.” I do not think he contemplated the change with pleasure.
I attributed his feelings to a nervous dread of crowded public streets
(when he had to go across town for me on an errand, he always made a
circuit of the outskirts), to his dislike for the discipline of the
Chinese and English school to which I proposed to send him, to his
fondness for the free, vagrant life of the mines, to sheer wilfulness.
That it might have been a superstitious premonition did not occur to me
until long after.
Nevertheless it really seemed as if the opportunity I had long looked
for and confidently expected had come,--the opportunity of placing Wan
Lee under gently restraining influences, of subjecting him to a life and
experience that would draw out of him what good my superficial care and
ill-regulated kindness could not reach. Wan Lee was placed at the school
of a Chinese missionary,--an intelligent and kind-hearted clergyman,
who had shown great interest in the boy, and who, better than all, had
a wonderful faith in him. A home was found for him in the family of a
widow, who had a bright and interesting daughter about two years younger
than Wan Lee. It was this bright, cheery, innocent, and artless child
that touched and reached a depth in the boy's nature that hitherto had
been unsuspected; that awakened a moral susceptibility which had lain
for years insensible alike to the teachings of society, or the ethics of
the theologian.
These few brief months--bright with a promise that we never saw
fulfilled--must have been happy ones to Wan Lee. He worshipped his
little friend with something of the same superstition, but without any
of the caprice, that he bestowed upon his porcelain Pagan god. It was
his delight to walk behind her to school, carrying her books--a service
always fraught with danger to him from the little hands of his Caucasian
Christian brothers. He made her the most marvellous toys; he would cut
out of carrots and turnips the most astonishing roses and tulips; he
made life-like chickens out of melon-seeds; he constructed fans and
kites, and was singularly proficient in the making of dolls' paper
dresses. On the other hand, she played and sang to him, taught him a
thousand little prettinesses and refinements only known to girls, gave
him a yellow ribbon for his pig-tail, as best suiting his complexion,
read to him, showed him wherein he was original and valuable, took him
to Sunday school with her, against the precedents of the school, and,
small-woman-like, triumphed. I wish I could add here, that she effected
his conversion, and made him give up his porcelain idol. But I am
telling a true story; and this little girl was quite content to fill him
with her own Christian goodness, without letting him know that he was
changed. So they got along very well together,--this little Christian
girl with her shining cross hanging around her plump, white little neck;
and this dark little Pagan, with his hideous porcelain god hidden away
in his blouse.
There were two days of that eventful year which will long be remembered
in San Francisco,--two days when a mob of her citizens set upon and
killed unarmed, defenceless foreigners because they were foreigners,
and of another race, religion, and color, and worked for what wages they
could get. There were some public men so timid, that, seeing this, they
thought that the end of the world had come. There were some eminent
statesmen, whose names I am ashamed to write here, who began to
think that the passage in the Constitution which guarantees civil and
religious liberty to every citizen or foreigner was a mistake. But
there were, also, some men who were not so easily frightened; and in
twenty-four hours we had things so arranged, that the timid men could
wring their hands in safety, and the eminent statesmen utter their
doubts without hurting any body or any thing. And in the midst of this I
got a note from Hop Sing, asking me to come to him immediately.
I found his warehouse closed, and strongly guarded by the police against
any possible attack of the rioters. Hop Sing admitted me through a
barred grating with his usual imperturbable calm, but, as it seemed to
me, with more than his usual seriousness. Without a word, he took my
hand, and led me to the rear of the room, and thence down stairs into
the basement. It was dimly lighted; but there was something lying on the
floor covered by a shawl. As I approached he drew the shawl away with a
sudden gesture, and revealed Wan Lee, the Pagan, lying there dead.
Dead, my reverend friends, dead,--stoned to death in the streets of San
Francisco, in the year of grace 1869, by a mob of half-grown boys and
Christian school-children!
As I put my hand reverently upon his breast, I felt something crumbling
beneath his blouse. I looked inquiringly at Hop Sing. He put his hand
between the folds of silk, and drew out something with the first bitter
smile I had ever seen on the face of that Pagan gentleman.
It was Wan Lee's porcelain god, crushed by a stone from the hands of
those Christian iconoclasts!