happily less tragic in sequel. I was in the restaurant one morning
talking to my cousin when a man entered hastily and said something to
him in a hurried whisper. My cousin contracted his eyebrows and uttered
a suppressed oath. Then with a gesture of warning to the man he crossed
the room quietly to a table where a regular habitue of the restaurant
was lazily finishing his breakfast. A large silver coffee-pot with a
stiff wooden handle stood on the table before him. My cousin leaned over
the guest familiarly and apparently made some hospitable inquiry as
to his wants, with his hand resting lightly on the coffee-pot handle.
Then--possibly because, my curiosity having been excited, I was watching
him more intently than the others--I saw what probably no one else
saw--that he deliberately upset the coffee-pot and its contents over
the guest's shirt and waistcoat. As the victim sprang up with
an exclamation, my cousin overwhelmed him with apologies for his
carelessness, and, with protestations of sorrow for the accident,
actually insisted upon dragging the man upstairs into his own private
room, where he furnished him with a shirt and waistcoat of his own. The
side door had scarcely closed upon them, and I was still lost in wonder
at what I had seen, when a man entered from the street. He was one of
the desperate set I have already spoken of, and thoroughly well known to
those present. He cast a glance around the room, nodded to one or two of
the guests, and then walked to a side table and took up a newspaper. I
was conscious at once that a singular constraint had come over the other
guests--a nervous awkwardness that at last seemed to make itself known
to the man himself, who, after an affected yawn or two, laid down the
paper and walked out.
“That was a mighty close call,” said one of the guests with a sigh of
relief.
“You bet! And that coffee-pot spill was the luckiest kind of accident
for Peters,” returned another.
“For both,” added the first speaker, “for Peters was armed too, and
would have seen him come in!”
A word or two explained all. Peters and the last comer had quarreled
a day or two before, and had separated with the intention to “shoot
on sight,” that is, wherever they met,--a form of duel common to those
days. The accidental meeting in the restaurant would have been the
occasion, with the usual sanguinary consequence, but for the word
of warning given to my cousin by a passer-by who knew that Peters'
antagonist was coming to the restaurant to look at the papers. Had
my cousin repeated the warning to Peters himself he would only have
prepared him for the conflict--which he would not have shirked--and so
precipitated the affray.
The ruse of upsetting the coffee-pot, which everybody but myself thought
an accident, was to get him out of the room before the other entered. I
was too young then to venture to intrude upon my cousin's secrets, but
two or three years afterwards I taxed him with the trick and he admitted
it regretfully. I believe that a strict interpretation of the “code”
would have condemned his act as unsportsmanlike, if not UNFAIR!
I recall another incident connected with the building equally
characteristic of the period. The United States Branch Mint stood very
near it, and its tall, factory-like chimneys overshadowed my cousin's
roof. Some scandal had arisen from an alleged leakage of gold in the
manipulation of that metal during the various processes of smelting
and refining. One of the excuses offered was the volatilization of the
precious metal and its escape through the draft of the tall chimneys.
All San Francisco laughed at this explanation until it learned that a
corroboration of the theory had been established by an assay of the dust
and grime of the roofs in the vicinity of the Mint. These had yielded
distinct traces of gold. San Francisco stopped laughing, and that
portion of it which had roofs in the neighborhood at once began
prospecting. Claims were staked out on these airy placers, and my
cousin's roof, being the very next one to the chimney, and presumably
“in the lead,” was disposed of to a speculative company for a
considerable sum. I remember my cousin telling me the story--for the
occurrence was quite recent--and taking me with him to the roof to
explain it, but I am afraid I was more attracted by the mystery of the
closely guarded building, and the strangely tinted smoke which arose
from this temple where money was actually being “made,” than by anything
else. Nor did I dream as I stood there--a very lanky, open-mouthed
youth--that only three or four years later I should be the secretary of
its superintendent. In my more adventurous ambition I am afraid I would
have accepted the suggestion half-heartedly. Merely to have helped to
stamp the gold which other people had adventurously found was by no
means a part of my youthful dreams.
At the time of these earlier impressions the Chinese had not yet become
the recognized factors in the domestic and business economy of the city
which they had come to be when I returned from the mines three years
later. Yet they were even then a more remarkable and picturesque
contrast to the bustling, breathless, and brand-new life of San
Francisco than the Spaniard. The latter seldom flaunted his faded
dignity in the principal thoroughfares. “John” was to be met everywhere.
It was a common thing to see a long file of sampan coolies carrying
their baskets slung between them, on poles, jostling a modern,
well-dressed crowd in Montgomery Street, or to get a whiff of their
burned punk in the side streets; while the road leading to their
temporary burial-ground at Lone Mountain was littered with slips of
colored paper scattered from their funerals. They brought an atmosphere
of the Arabian Nights into the hard, modern civilization; their
shops--not always confined at that time to a Chinese quarter--were
replicas of the bazaars of Canton and Peking, with their quaint display
of little dishes on which tidbits of food delicacies were exposed for
sale, all of the dimensions and unreality of a doll's kitchen or a
child's housekeeping.
They were a revelation to the Eastern immigrant, whose preconceived
ideas of them were borrowed from the ballet or pantomime; they did not
wear scalloped drawers and hats with jingling bells on their points, nor
did I ever see them dance with their forefingers vertically extended.
They were always neatly dressed, even the commonest of coolies, and
their festive dresses were marvels. As traders they were grave and
patient; as servants they were sad and civil, and all were singularly
infantine in their natural simplicity. The living representatives of the
oldest civilization in the world, they seemed like children. Yet they
kept their beliefs and sympathies to themselves, never fraternizing with
the fanqui, or foreign devil, or losing their singular racial qualities.
They indulged in their own peculiar habits; of their social and inner
life, San Francisco knew but little and cared less. Even at this early
period, and before I came to know them more intimately, I remember
an incident of their daring fidelity to their own customs that was
accidentally revealed to me. I had become acquainted with a Chinese
youth of about my own age, as I imagined,--although from mere outward
appearance it was generally impossible to judge of a Chinaman's age
between the limits of seventeen and forty years,--and he had, in a burst
of confidence, taken me to see some characteristic sights in a Chinese
warehouse within a stone's throw of the Plaza. I was struck by the
singular circumstance that while the warehouse was an erection of wood
in the ordinary hasty Californian style, there were certain brick and
stone divisions in its interior, like small rooms or closets, evidently
added by the Chinamen tenants. My companion stopped before a long, very
narrow entrance, a mere longitudinal slit in the brick wall, and with a
wink of infantine deviltry motioned me to look inside. I did so, and saw
a room, really a cell, of fair height but scarcely six feet square,
and barely able to contain a rude, slanting couch of stone covered with
matting, on which lay, at a painful angle, a richly dressed Chinaman.
A single glance at his dull, staring, abstracted eyes and half-opened
mouth showed me he was in an opium trance. This was not in itself a
novel sight, and I was moving away when I was suddenly startled by the
appearance of his hands, which were stretched helplessly before him on
his body, and at first sight seemed to be in a kind of wicker cage.
I then saw that his finger-nails were seven or eight inches long, and
were supported by bamboo splints. Indeed, they were no longer human
nails, but twisted and distorted quills, giving him the appearance
of having gigantic claws. “Velly big Chinaman,” whispered my cheerful
friend; “first-chop man--high classee--no can washee--no can eat--no
dlinke, no catchee him own glub allee same nothee man--China boy must
catchee glub for him, allee time! Oh, him first-chop man--you bettee!”
I had heard of this singular custom of indicating caste before, and
was amazed and disgusted, but I was not prepared for what followed. My
companion, evidently thinking he had impressed me, grew more reckless
as showman, and saying to me, “Now me showee you one funny thing--heap
makee you laugh,” led me hurriedly across a little courtyard swarming
with chickens and rabbits, when he stopped before another inclosure.
Suddenly brushing past an astonished Chinaman who seemed to be standing
guard, he thrust me into the inclosure in front of a most extraordinary
object. It was a Chinaman, wearing a huge, square, wooden frame fastened
around his neck like a collar, and fitting so tightly and rigidly that
the flesh rose in puffy weals around his cheeks. He was chained to a
post, although it was as impossible for him to have escaped with his
wooden cage through the narrow doorway as it was for him to lie down
and rest in it. Yet I am bound to say that his eyes and face expressed
nothing but apathy, and there was no appeal to the sympathy of the
stranger. My companion said hurriedly,--
“Velly bad man; stealee heap from Chinamen,” and then, apparently
alarmed at his own indiscreet intrusion, hustled me away as quickly as
possible amid a shrill cackling of protestation from a few of his own
countrymen who had joined the one who was keeping guard. In another
moment we were in the street again--scarce a step from the Plaza, in the
full light of Western civilization--not a stone's throw from the courts
of justice.
My companion took to his heels and left me standing there bewildered
and indignant. I could not rest until I had told my story, but without
betraying my companion, to an elder acquaintance, who laid the
facts before the police authorities. I had expected to be closely
cross-examined--to be doubted--to be disbelieved. To my surprise, I was
told that the police had already cognizance of similar cases of illegal
and barbarous punishments, but that the victims themselves refused to
testify against their countrymen--and it was impossible to convict or
even to identify them. “A white man can't tell one Chinese from another,
and there are always a dozen of 'em ready to swear that the man you've
got isn't the one.” I was startled to reflect that I, too, could not
have conscientiously sworn to either jailor or the tortured prisoner--or
perhaps even to my cheerful companion. The police, on some pretext, made
a raid upon the premises a day or two afterwards, but without result.
I wondered if they had caught sight of the high-class, first-chop
individual, with the helplessly outstretched fingers, as that story I
had kept to myself.
But these barbaric vestiges in John Chinaman's habits did not affect his
relations with the San Franciscans. He was singularly peaceful, docile,
and harmless as a servant, and, with rare exceptions, honest and
temperate. If he sometimes matched cunning with cunning, it was the
flattery of imitation. He did most of the menial work of San Francisco,
and did it cleanly. Except that he exhaled a peculiar druglike odor, he
was not personally offensive in domestic contact, and by virtue of being
the recognized laundryman of the whole community his own blouses were
always freshly washed and ironed. His conversational reserve arose, not
from his having to deal with an unfamiliar language,--for he had picked
up a picturesque and varied vocabulary with ease,--but from his natural
temperament. He was devoid of curiosity, and utterly unimpressed by
anything but the purely business concerns of those he served. Domestic
secrets were safe with him; his indifference to your thoughts, actions,
and feelings had all the contempt which his three thousand years of
history and his innate belief in your inferiority seemed to justify. He
was blind and deaf in your household because you didn't interest him
in the least. It was said that a gentleman, who wished to test his
impassiveness, arranged with his wife to come home one day and, in the
hearing of his Chinese waiter who was more than usually intelligent--to
disclose with well-simulated emotion the details of a murder he had just
committed. He did so. The Chinaman heard it without a sign of horror
or attention even to the lifting of an eyelid, but continued his duties
unconcerned. Unfortunately, the gentleman, in order to increase the
horror of the situation, added that now there was nothing left for him
but to cut his throat. At this John quietly left the room. The gentleman
was delighted at the success of his ruse until the door reopened and
John reappeared with his master's razor, which he quietly slipped--as
if it had been a forgotten fork--beside his master's plate, and calmly
resumed his serving. I have always considered this story to be quite as
improbable as it was inartistic, from its tacit admission of a certain
interest on the part of the Chinaman. I never knew one who would have
been sufficiently concerned to go for the razor.
His taciturnity and reticence may have been confounded with rudeness of
address, although he was always civil enough. “I see you have listened
to me and done exactly what I told you,” said a lady, commending some
performance of her servant after a previous lengthy lecture; “that's
very nice.” “Yes,” said John calmly, “you talkee allee time; talkee
allee too much.” “I always find Ling very polite,” said another
lady, speaking of her cook, “but I wish he did not always say to me,
'Goodnight, John,' in a high falsetto voice.” She had not recognized the
fact that he was simply repeating her own salutation with his marvelous
instinct of relentless imitation, even as to voice. I hesitate to record
the endless stories of his misapplication of that faculty which were
then current, from the one of the laundryman who removed the buttons
from the shirts that were sent to him to wash that they might agree with
the condition of the one offered him as a pattern for “doing up,” to
that of the unfortunate employer who, while showing John how to handle
valuable china carefully, had the misfortune to drop a plate himself--an
accident which was followed by the prompt breaking of another by the
neophyte, with the addition of “Oh, hellee!” in humble imitation of his
master.
I have spoken of his general cleanliness; I am reminded of one or two
exceptions, which I think, however, were errors of zeal. His manner of
sprinkling clothes in preparing them for ironing was peculiar. He would
fill his mouth with perfectly pure water from a glass beside him, and
then, by one dexterous movement of his lips in a prolonged expiration,
squirt the water in an almost invisible misty shower on the article
before him. Shocking as this was at first to the sensibilities of many
American employers, it was finally accepted, and even commended. It was
some time after this that the mistress of a household, admiring the deft
way in which her cook had spread a white sauce on certain dishes, was
cheerfully informed that the method was “allee same.”
His recreations at that time were chiefly gambling, for the Chinese
theatre wherein the latter produced his plays (which lasted for several
months and comprised the events of a whole dynasty) was not yet built.
But he had one or two companies of jugglers who occasionally performed
also at American theatres. I remember a singular incident which attended
the debut of a newly arrived company. It seemed that the company had
been taken on their Chinese reputation solely, and there had been no
previous rehearsal before the American stage manager. The theatre was
filled with an audience of decorous and respectable San Franciscans of
both sexes. It was suddenly emptied in the middle of the performance;
the curtain came down with an alarmed and blushing manager apologizing
to deserted benches, and the show abruptly terminated. Exactly WHAT
had happened never appeared in the public papers, nor in the published
apology of the manager. It afforded a few days' mirth for wicked San
Francisco, and it was epigrammatically summed up in the remark that “no
woman could be found in San Francisco who was at that performance, and
no man who was not.” Yet it was alleged even by John's worst detractors
that he was innocent of any intended offense. Equally innocent, but
perhaps more morally instructive, was an incident that brought his
career as a singularly successful physician to a disastrous close.
An ordinary native Chinese doctor, practicing entirely among his own
countrymen, was reputed to have made extraordinary cures with two
or three American patients. With no other advertising than this, and
apparently no other inducement offered to the public than what their
curiosity suggested, he was presently besieged by hopeful and eager
sufferers. Hundreds of patients were turned away from his crowded doors.
Two interpreters sat, day and night, translating the ills of ailing
San Francisco to this medical oracle, and dispensing his
prescriptions--usually small powders--in exchange for current coin. In
vain the regular practitioners pointed out that the Chinese possessed
no superior medical knowledge, and that their religion, which proscribed
dissection and autopsies, naturally limited their understanding of the
body into which they put their drugs. Finally they prevailed upon an
eminent Chinese authority to give them a list of the remedies generally
used in the Chinese pharmacopoeia, and this was privately circulated.
For obvious reasons I may not repeat it here. But it was summed
up--again after the usual Californian epigrammatic style--by the remark
that “whatever were the comparative merits of Chinese and American
practice, a simple perusal of the list would prove that the Chinese were
capable of producing the most powerful emetic known.” The craze subsided
in a single day; the interpreters and their oracle vanished; the Chinese
doctors' signs, which had multiplied, disappeared, and San Francisco
awoke cured of its madness, at the cost of some thousand dollars.
My Bohemian wanderings were confined to the limits of the city, for the
very good reason that there was little elsewhere to go. San Francisco
was then bounded on one side by the monotonously restless waters of the
bay, and on the other by a stretch of equally restless and monotonously
shifting sand dunes as far as the Pacific shore. Two roads penetrated
this waste: one to Lone Mountain--the cemetery; the other to the Cliff
House--happily described as “an eight-mile drive with a cocktail at
the end of it.” Nor was the humor entirely confined to this felicitous
description. The Cliff House itself, half restaurant, half drinking
saloon, fronting the ocean and the Seal Rock, where disporting seals
were the chief object of interest, had its own peculiar symbol. The
decanters, wine-glasses, and tumblers at the bar were all engraved
in old English script with the legal initials “L. S.” (Locus
Sigilli),--“the place of the seal.”
On the other hand, Lone Mountain, a dreary promontory giving upon the
Golden Gate and its striking sunsets, had little to soften its weird
suggestiveness. As the common goal of the successful and unsuccessful,
the carved and lettered shaft of the man who had made a name, and the
staring blank headboard of the man who had none, climbed the sandy
slopes together. I have seen the funerals of the respectable citizen who
had died peacefully in his bed, and the notorious desperado who had
died “with his boots on,” followed by an equally impressive cortege of
sorrowing friends, and often the self-same priest. But more awful than
its barren loneliness was the utter absence of peacefulness and rest
in this dismal promontory. By some wicked irony of its situation and
climate it was the personification of unrest and change. The incessant
trade winds carried its loose sands hither and thither, uncovering the
decaying coffins of early pioneers, to bury the wreaths and flowers,
laid on a grave of to-day, under their obliterating waves. No tree to
shade them from the glaring sky above could live in those winds, no
turf would lie there to resist the encroaching sand below. The dead
were harried and hustled even in their graves by the persistent sun, the
unremitting wind, and the unceasing sea. The departing mourner saw the
contour of the very mountain itself change with the shifting dunes as
he passed, and his last look beyond rested on the hurrying, eager waves
forever hastening to the Golden Gate.
If I were asked to say what one thing impressed me as the dominant and
characteristic note of San Francisco, I should say it was this untiring
presence of sun and wind and sea. They typified, even if they were not,
as I sometimes fancied, the actual incentive to the fierce, restless
life of the city. I could not think of San Francisco without the trade
winds; I could not imagine its strange, incongruous, multigenerous
procession marching to any other music. They were always there in my
youthful recollections; they were there in my more youthful dreams of
the past as the mysterious vientes generales that blew the Philippine
galleons home.
For six months they blew from the northwest, for six months from the
southwest, with unvarying persistency. They were there every morning,
glittering in the equally persistent sunlight, to chase the San
Franciscan from his slumber; they were there at midday, to stir his
pulses with their beat; they were there again at night, to hurry him
through the bleak and flaring gas-lit streets to bed. They left their
mark on every windward street or fence or gable, on the outlying sand
dunes; they lashed the slow coasters home, and hurried them to sea
again; they whipped the bay into turbulence on their way to Contra
Costa, whose level shoreland oaks they had trimmed to windward as
cleanly and sharply as with a pruning-shears. Untiring themselves, they
allowed no laggards; they drove the San Franciscan from the wall against
which he would have leaned, from the scant shade in which at noontide he
might have rested. They turned his smallest fires into conflagrations,
and kept him ever alert, watchful, and eager. In return, they scavenged
his city and held it clean and wholesome; in summer they brought him the
soft sea-fog for a few hours to soothe his abraded surfaces; in winter
they brought the rains and dashed the whole coast-line with flowers, and
the staring sky above it with soft, unwonted clouds. They were always
there--strong, vigilant, relentless, material, unyielding, triumphant.