THE ROMANCE OF AH SAM AND HI SING.
The culminating events of the following tale occurred in “Jimtown”
during my pedagogical career, and I was an indefatigable assistant in
the details as below stated.
Ah Sam loved Miss Hi Sing. Ah Sam was by profession a cook in a
California miners’ boarding house and trading post combined, at a little
mining camp on the Tuolumne River. Following minutely the culinary
teachings of his employer, having no conception of cooking, save as a
mere mechanical operation--dead to the pernicious mental and physical
effect which his ill-dressed dishes might have on the minds and stomachs
of those he served--Ah Sam, while dreaming of Hi Sing, fried tough beef
still tougher in hot lard, poisoned flour with saleratus, and boiled
potatoes to the last extreme of soddenness, all of which culinary
outrages promoted indigestion among those who ate; and this indigestion
fomented a general irritability of temper--from whence Swett’s Camp
became noted for its frequent sanguinary moods, its battles by midnight
in street and bar-room, with knife and six-shooter, and, above all, for
its burying ground, of which the inhabitants truthfully boasted that not
an inmate had died a natural death.
Hi Sing was the handmaid of old Ching Loo. Her face was broad, her nose
flat, her girth extensive, her gait a waddle, her attire a blue sacque
reaching from neck to knee, blue trousers, brass rings on wrist and
ankle, and wooden shoes, whose clattering heels betrayed their owner’s
presence, even as the shaken tail of the angry rattlesnake doth his
unpleasant proximity. She had no education, no manners, no
accomplishments, no beauty, no grace, no religion, no morality; and for
this and more Ah Sam loved her. Hi Sing was virtually a slave, having
several years previously, with many other fair and fragile sisters, been
imported to California by Ching Loo; and not until meeting Ah Sam did
she learn that it was her right and privilege in this land of occasional
laws and universal liberty to set up for herself, become her own
mistress and marry and unmarry whenever opportunity offered.
But Ching Loo had noticed, with a suspicious eye, the growing intimacy
between Ah Sam and Hi Sing; and arguing therefrom results unprofitable
to himself, he contrived one night to have the damsel packed off to
another town, which happened at that time to be my place of residence;
and it is for this reason that the woof of my existence temporarily
crossed that of Ah Sam and Hi Sing.
Ah Sam following up his love, and discovering in me an old friend, who
had endured and survived a whole winter of his cookery at Swett’s Bar,
told me his troubles; and I, resolving to repay evil with good,
communicated the distressed Mongolian’s story to my chosen and
particular companion, a lean and cadaverous attorney, with whom fees had
ceased to be angels’ visits, and who was then oscillating and hovering
between two plans--one to run for the next State Legislature; the other
to migrate to Central America, and found a new republic. Attorney, Spoke
on hearing Ah Sam’s case, offered to find the maid, rescue her from her
captors, and marry her to him permanently and forever in consideration
of thirty American dollars; to which terms the Mongolian assenting,
Spoke and myself, buckling on our arms and armor, proceeded to beat up
the filthy purlieus of “Chinatown;” and about midnight we found the
passive Hi Sing hidden away in a hen-coop, whither she had been conveyed
by the confederates of Ching Loo.
We bore Hi Sing--who was considerably alarmed, neither understanding our
language nor our purpose--to Spoke’s office, and then it being necessary
to secure the services of a magistrate in uniting the couple, I departed
to seek the Justice of the Peace, who was still awake--for Justice
rarely slept in camp at that hour, but was commonly engaged at the Bella
Union playing poker, whilst Spoke sought after the groom, Ah Sam, whom
he found in a Chinese den stupidly drunk from smoking opium, having
taken such means to wear the edge off his suspense while we were
rescuing his affianced. Not only was he stupidly but perversely drunk;
but he declared in imperfect English that he had concluded not to marry
that night, to which observation Attorney Spoke, becoming profane,
jerked him from the cot whereon he lay, and grasping him about the neck
with a strangulating hold, bore him into the street and toward his
office, intimating loudly that this business had been proceeded with too
far to be receded from, and that the marriage must be consummated that
night with or without the consent of the principals. Ah Sam resigned
himself to matrimony. The office was reached, the door opened and out in
the darkness bolted the bride, for she knew not what these preparations
meant, or whether she had fallen among friends or enemies. After a
lively chase we cornered and caught her; and having thus at last brought
this refractory couple together we placed them in position, and the
Justice commenced the ceremony by asking Hi Sing if she took that man
for her lawful wedded husband, which interrogatory being Chaldaic to
her, she replied only by an unmeaning and unspeculative stare. Spoke,
who seemed destined to be the soul and mainspring of this whole affair,
now threw light on the Mongolian intellect by bringing into play his
stock of Chinese English, and translating to her the language of the
Justice thus: “You like ’um he, pretty good?” Upon which her face
brightened, and she nodded assent. Then turning to the groom, he called
in a tone fierce and threatening, “You like ’um she?” and Ah Sam--who
was now only a passive object in the hands of Spoke, forced and
galvanized into matrimony--dared not do otherwise than give in his
adhesion, upon which the Justice pronounced them man and wife; whereupon
two Virginians present with their violins (all Virginians fiddle and
shoot well) struck up the “Arkansas Traveller;” and the audience--which
was now large, every bar-room in Jamestown having emptied itself to
witness our Chinese wedding--inspired by one common impulse, arose and
marched seven times about the couple. Ah Sam was now informed that he
was married “American fashion,” and that he was free to depart with his
wedded encumbrance. But Ah Sam, whose intoxication had broken out in
full acquiescence with these proceedings, now insisted on making a
midnight tour of all the saloons in camp, and treating everybody to the
deathly whiskey vended by them, to which the crowd--who never objected
to the driving of this sort of nails in their own coffins--assented, and
the result of it was (Ah Sam spending his money very freely) that when
daylight peeped over the eastern hills the Bella Union saloon was still
in full blast; and while the Justice of the Peace was winning Spoke’s
thirty hard-earned dollars in one corner, and the two Virginians still
kept the “Arkansas Traveller” going on their violins in another, Stephen
Scott (afterward elected to Congress) was weeping profusely over the
bar, and on being interrogated as to the cause of his sadness by General
Wyatt, ex-member of the State Senate, Scott replied that he could never
hear played the air of “Home, Sweet Home” without shedding tears.
Ah Sam departed with his bride in the morning, and never were a man’s
prospects brighter for a happy honeymoon until the succeeding night,
when he was waylaid by a band of disguised white men in the temporary
service and pay of old Ching Loo; and he and Hi Sing were forced so far
apart that they never saw each other again.
Ah Sam returned to the attorney, apparently deeming that some help might
be obtained in that quarter; but Spoke intimated that he could no longer
assist him, since it was every man’s special and particular mission to
keep his own wife after being married; although he added, for Ah Sam’s
comfort, that this was not such an easy matter for the Americans
themselves, especially in California.
Upon this Ah Sam apparently determined to be satisfied with his brief
and turbulent career in matrimony; and betaking himself again to Swett’s
Bar cooked in such a villainous fashion and desperate vigor, finding
thereby a balm for an aching heart, that in a twelvemonth several
stalwart miners gave up their ghosts through indigestion, and the little
graveyard on the red hill thereby lost forever its distinctive character
of affording a final resting place only to those who had died violent
deaths.