 | Mark Twain's sketches, new and old |  |
JOHN CHINAMAN IN NEW
YORK.
AS I passed along by one of
those monster American teastores
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 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, matter for frivolous curiosity instead of regret and grave reflection?
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 bygone time? A cruel fate it is, I said, that is befallen this
bronzed wanderer. 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
troublesome 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.
| Mark Twain's sketches, new and old | |