 | The luck of Roaring Camp, and other sketches |  |
BOHEMIAN PAPERS.
THE MISSION DOLORES.
THE Mission Dolores is destined to be “The
Last Sigh” of the native Californian. When
the last “Greaser” shall indolently give way to
the bustling Yankee, I can imagine he will, like
the Moorish King, ascend one of the Mission hills
to take his last lingering look at the hilled city.
For a long time he will cling tenaciously to Pacific
Street. He will delve in the rocky fastnesses of
Telegraph Hill until progress shall remove it. He
will haunt Vallejo Street, and those back slums
which so vividly typify the degradation of a people;
but he will eventually make way for improvement.
The Mission will be last to drop from his
nerveless fingers.
As I stand here this pleasant afternoon, looking
up at the old chapel, — its ragged senility contrasting
with the smart spring sunshine, its two
gouty pillars with the plaster dropping away like
tattered bandages, its rayless windows, its crumbling
entrances, the leper spots on its whitewashed
wall eating through the dark adobe, — I give the
poor old mendicant but a few years longer to sit
by the highway and ask alms in the names of the
the shadow of its dissolution. The shriek of the
locomotive discords with the Angelus bell. An
Episcopal church, of a green Gothic type, with massive
buttresses of Oregon pine, even now mocks its
hoary age with imitation and supplants it with a
sham. Vain, alas! were those rural accessories, the
nurseries and market-gardens, that once gathered
about its walls and resisted civic encroachment.
They, too, are passing away. Even those queer little
adobe buildings with tiled roofs like longitudinal
slips of cinnamon, and walled enclosures sacredly
guarding a few bullock horns and strips of
hide. I look in vain for the half-reclaimed Mexican,
whose respectability stopped at his waist, and
whose red sash under his vest was the utter undoing
of his black broadcloth. I miss, too, those
black-haired women, with swaying unstable busts,
whose dresses were always unseasonable in texture
and pattern; whose wearing of a shawl was a terrible
awakening from the poetic dream of the
Spanish mantilla. Traces of another nationality
are visible. The railroad “navvy” has builded his
shanty near the chapel, and smokes his pipe in the
Posada. Gutturals have taken the place of linguals
and sibilants; I miss the half-chanted, half-drawled
cadences that used to mingle with the cheery “All
aboard” of the stage-driver, in those good old days
when the stages ran hourly to the Mission, and a
of the temple, in the place of those “who sell
doves for sacrifice,” a vender of mechanical
spiders has halted with his unhallowed wares.
Even the old Padre — last type of the Missionary,
and descendant of the good Junipero — I cannot
find to-day; in his stead a light-haired Celt is
reading a lesson from a Vulgate that is wonderfully
replete with double r's. Gentle priest, in thy Risons,
let the stranger and heretic be remembered.
I open a little gate and enter the Mission Churchyard.
There is no change here, though perhaps
the graves lie closer together. A willow-tree,
growing beside the deep, brown wall, has burst
into tufted plumes in the fulness of spring. The
tall grass-blades over each mound show a strange
quickening of the soil below. It is pleasanter
here than on the bleak mountain seaward, where
distracting winds continually bring the strife and
turmoil of the ocean. The Mission hills lovingly
embrace the little cemetery, whose decorative taste
is less ostentatious. The foreign flavor is strong;
here are never-failing garlands of immortelles, with
their sepulchral spicery; here are little cheap
medallions of pewter, with the adornment of three
black tears, that would look like the three of clubs,
but that the simple humility of the inscription
counterbalances all sense of the ridiculous. Here
are children's graves with guardian angels of great
toys in a glass case beside them. Here is the average
quantity of execrable original verses; but
one stanza — over a sailor's grave — is striking,
for it expresses a hope of salvation through the
“Lord High Admiral Christ”! Over the foreign
graves there is a notable lack of scriptural quotation,
and an increase, if I may say it, of humanity
and tenderness. I cannot help thinking that too
many of my countrymen are influenced by a morbid
desire to make a practical point of this occasion,
and are too apt hastily to crowd a whole life
of omission into the culminating act. But when
I see the gray immortelles crowning a tombstone, I
know I shall find the mysteries of the resurrection
shown rather in symbols, and only the love
taught in His new commandment left for the
graphic touch. But “they manage these things
better in France.”
During my purposeless ramble the sun has been
steadily climbing the brown wall of the church,
and the air seems to grow cold and raw. The
bright green dies out of the grass, and the rich
bronze comes down from the wall. The willow-tree
seems half inclined to doff its plumes, and
wears the dejected air of a broken faith and violated
trust. The spice of the immortelles mixes
with the incense that steals through the open window.
cold and cheap in this searching air; by this light
the church certainly is old and ugly. I cannot
help wondering whether the old Fathers, if they
ever revisit the scene of their former labors, in their
larger comprehensions, view with regret the impending
change, or mourn over the day when the
Mission Dolores shall appropriately come to grief.
JOHN CHINAMAN.
THE expression of the Chinese face in the
aggregate is neither cheerful nor happy. In
an acquaintance of half a dozen years, I can
only recall one or two exceptions to this rule.
There is an abiding consciousness of degradation,
— a secret pain or self-humiliation visible in the
lines of the mouth and eye. Whether it is only
a modification of Turkish gravity, or whether it
is the dread Valley of the Shadow of the Drug
through which they are continually straying, I
cannot say. They seldom smile, and their laughter
is of such an extraordinary and sardonic nature
— so purely a mechanical spasm, quite independent
of any mirthful attribute — that to this
day I am doubtful whether I ever saw a Chinaman
laugh. A theatrical representation by natives,
one might think, would have set my mind at ease
on this point; but it did not. Indeed, a new difficulty
presented itself, — the impossibility of determining
whether the performance was a tragedy
or farce. I thought I detected the low comedian
in an active youth who turned two somersaults,
and knocked everybody down on entering the
to the legitimate farce of our civilization
was deceptive. Another brocaded actor, who represented
the hero of the play, turned three somersaults,
and not only upset my theory and his fellow-actors
at the same time, but apparently run
a-muck behind the scenes for some time afterward.
I looked around at the glinting white
teeth to observe the effect of these two palpable
hits. They were received with equal acclamation,
and apparently equal facial spasms. One or two
beheadings which enlivened the play produced
the same sardonic effect, and left upon my mind
a painful anxiety to know what was the serious
business of life in China. It was noticeable, however,
that my unrestrained laughter had a discordant
effect, and that triangular eyes sometimes
turned ominously toward the “Fanqui devil”;
but as I retired discreetly before the play was
finished, there were no serious results. I have
only given the above as an instance of the impossibility
of deciding upon the outward and superficial
expression of Chinese mirth. Of its inner
and deeper existence I have some private doubts.
An audience that will view with a serious aspect
the hero, after a frightful and agonizing death,
get up and quietly walk off the stage, cannot be
said to have remarkable perceptions of the ludicrous.
I have often been struck with the delicate pliability
of the Chinese expression and taste, that
might suggest a broader and deeper criticism than
is becoming these pages. A Chinaman will adopt
the American costume, and wear it with a taste of
color and detail that will surpass those “native,
and to the manner born.” To look at a Chinese
slipper, one might imagine it impossible to shape
the original foot to anything less cumbrous and
roomy, yet a neater-fitting boot than that belonging
to the Americanized Chinaman is rarely seen
on this side of the Continent. When the loose
sack or paletot takes the place of his brocade
blouse, it is worn with a refinement and grace that
might bring a jealous pang to the exquisite of our
more refined civilization. Pantaloons fall easily
and naturally over legs that have known unlimited
freedom and bagginess, and even garrote collars
meet correctly around sun-tanned throats. The
new expression seldom overflows in gaudy cravats.
I will back my Americanized Chinaman against
any neophyte of European birth in the choice of
that article. While in our own State, the Greaser
resists one by one the garments of the Northern
invader, and even wears the livery of his conqueror
with a wild and buttonless freedom, the Chinaman,
abused and degraded as he is, changes
by correctly graded transition to the garments of
Christian civilization. There is but one article of
eyes have never yet been pained by the spectacle
of a tall hat on the head of an intelligent Chinaman.
My acquaintance with John has been made up
of weekly interviews, involving the adjustment of
the washing accounts, so that I have not been able
to study his character from a social view-point or
observe him in the privacy of the domestic circle.
I have gathered enough to justify me in believing
him to be generally honest, faithful, simple, and
painstaking. Of his simplicity let me record an
instance where a sad and civil young Chinaman
brought me certain shirts with most of the buttons
missing and others hanging on delusively by
a single thread. In a moment of unguarded irony
I informed him that unity would at least have
been preserved if the buttons were removed altogether.
He smiled sadly and went away. I
thought I had hurt his feelings, until the next
week when he brought me my shirts with a look of
intelligence, and the buttons carefully and totally
erased. At another time, to guard against his
general disposition to carry off anything as soiled
clothes that he thought could hold water, I requested
him to always wait until he saw me.
Coming home late one evening, I found the household
in great consternation, over an immovable
Celestial who had remained seated on the front
but also patient, and only betraying any animation
or token of his mission when he saw me coming.
This same Chinaman evinced some evidences of
regard for a little girl in the family, who in her
turn reposed such faith in his intellectual qualities
as to present him with a preternaturally uninteresting
Sunday-school book, her own property.
This book John made a point of carrying ostentatiously
with him in his weekly visits. It appeared
usually on the top of the clean clothes,
and was sometimes painfully clasped outside of
the big bundle of solid linen. Whether John believed
he unconsciously imbibed some spiritual
life through its pasteboard cover, as the Prince in
the Arabian Nights imbibed the medicine through
the handle of the mallet, or whether he wished to
exhibit a due sense of gratitude, or whether he
had n't any pockets, I have never been able to
ascertain. In his turn he would sometimes cut
marvellous imitation roses from carrots for his little
friend. I am inclined to think that the few
roses strewn in John's path were such scentless
imitations. The thorns only were real. From the
persecutions of the young and old of a certain
class, his life was a torment. I don't know what
was the exact philosophy that Confucius taught,
but it is to be hoped that poor John in his persecution
is still able to detect the conscious hate
possibility of even-handed justice, and which is
the key-note to the vulgar clamor about servile
and degraded races.
FROM A BACK WINDOW.
I REMEMBER that long ago, as a sanguine and
trustful child, I became possessed of a highly
colored lithograph, representing a fair Circassian
sitting by a window. The price I paid for this
work of art may have been extravagant, even in
youth's fluctuating slate-pencil currency; but the
secret joy I felt in its possession knew no pecuniary
equivalent. It was not alone that Nature in
Circassia lavished alike upon the cheek of beauty
and the vegetable kingdom that most expensive of
colors, — Lake; nor was it that the rose which
bloomed beside the fair Circassian's window had no
visible stem, and was directly grafted upon a marble
balcony; but it was because it embodied an
idea. That idea was a hinting of my Fate. I felt
that somewhere a young and fair Circassian was
sitting by a window looking out for me. The
idea of resisting such an array of charms and
color never occurred to me, and to my honor be it
recorded, that during the feverish period of adolescence
I never thought of averting my destiny.
But as vacation and holiday came and went, and
as my picture at first grew blurred, and then faded
in my atlas, so its charm seemed mysteriously
to pass away. When I became convinced
that few females, of Circassian or other origin, sat
pensively resting their chins on their henna-tinged
nails, at their parlor windows, I turned my attention
to back windows. Although the fair Circassian
has not yet burst upon me with open shutters,
some peculiarities not unworthy of note have
fallen under my observation. This knowledge has
not been gained without sacrifice. I have made
myself familiar with back windows and their
prospects, in the weak disguise of seeking lodgings,
heedless of the suspicious glances of land-ladies
and their evident reluctance to show them.
I have caught cold by long exposure to draughts.
I have become estranged from friends by unconsciously
walking to their back windows during a
visit, when the weekly linen hung upon the line,
or where Miss Fanny (ostensibly indisposed) actually
assisted in the laundry, and Master Bobby, in
scant attire, disported himself on the area railings.
But I have thought of Galileo, and the invariable
experience of all seekers and discoverers of truth
has sustained me.
Show me the back windows of a man's dwelling,
and I will tell you his character. The rear of a
house only is sincere. The attitude of deception
kept up at the front windows leaves the back area
but nature comes out at the back passage. That
glossy, well-brushed individual, who lets himself
in with a latch-key at the front door at night, is a
very different being from the slipshod wretch who
growls of mornings for hot water at the door of the
kitchen. The same with Madame, whose contour
of figure grows angular, whose face grows pallid,
whose hair comes down, and who looks some ten
years older through the sincere medium of a back
window. No wonder that intimate friends fail to
recognize each other in this dos à dos position.
You may imagine yourself familiar with the silver
door-plate and bow-windows of the mansion where
dwells your Saccharissa; you may even fancy you
recognize her graceful figure between the lace curtains
of the upper chamber which you fondly
imagine to be hers; but you shall dwell for months
in the rear of her dwelling and within whispering
distance of her bower, and never know it. You
shall see her with a handkerchief tied round her
head in confidential discussion with the butcher,
and know her not. You shall hear her voice in
shrill expostulation with her younger brother, and
it shall awaken no familiar response.
I am writing at a back window. As I prefer
the warmth of my coal-fire to the foggy freshness
of the afternoon breeze that rattles the leafless
shrubs in the garden below me, I have my window-sash
shrilly altercation that has been going on in the
kitchen of No. 7 just opposite. I have heard fragments
of an entertaining style of dialogue usually
known as “chaffing,” which has just taken place
between Biddy in No. 9 and the butcher who
brings the dinner. I have been pitying the chilled
aspect of a poor canary, put out to taste the fresh
air, from the window of No. 5. I have been watching
— and envying, I fear — the real enjoyment of
two children raking over an old dust-heap in the
alley, containing the waste and débris of all the
back yards in the neighborhood. What a wealth
of soda-water bottles and old iron they have acquired!
But I am waiting for an even more familiar
prospect from my back window. I know
that later in the afternoon, when the evening paper
comes, a thickset, gray-haired man will appear in
his shirt-sleeves at the back door of No. 9, and,
seating himself on the door-step, begin to read.
He lives in a pretentious house, and I hear he is a
rich man. But there is such humility in his attitude,
and such evidence of gratitude at being allowed
to sit outside of his own house and read his
paper in his shirt-sleeves, that I can picture his
domestic history pretty clearly. Perhaps he is following
some old habit of humbler days. Perhaps
he has entered into an agreement with his wife not
to indulge his disgraceful habit in-doors. He does
dressing-gown. In front of his own palatial residence,
I know him to be a quiet and respectable
middle-aged business-man, but it is from my back
window that my heart warms toward him in his
shirt-sleeved simplicity. So I sit and watch him
in the twilight as he reads gravely, and wonder
sometimes, when he looks up, squares his chest, and
folds his paper thoughtfully over his knee, whether
he does n't fancy he hears the letting down of bars,
or the tinkling of bells, as the cows come home
and stand lowing for him at the gate.
BOONDER.
I NEVER knew how the subject of this memoir
came to attach himself so closely to the affections
of my family. He was not a prepossessing
dog. He was not a dog of even average birth and
breeding. His pedigree was involved in the deepest
obscurity. He may have had brothers and
sisters, but in the whole range of my canine acquaintance
(a pretty extensive one), I never detected
any of Boonder's peculiarities in any other
of his species. His body was long, and his forelegs
and hind-legs were very wide apart, as though
Nature originally intended to put an extra pair between
them, but had unwisely allowed herself to
be persuaded out of it. This peculiarity was annoying
on cold nights, as it always prolonged the
interval of keeping the door open for Boonder's
ingress long enough to allow two or three dogs of
a reasonable length to enter. Boonder's feet were
decided; his toes turned out considerably, and in
repose his favorite attitude was the first position
of dancing. Add to a pair of bright eyes ears
that seemed to belong to some other dog, and a
symmetrically pointed nose that fitted all apertures
knew him.
I am inclined to think that his popularity was
mainly owing to his quiet impudence. His advent
in the family was that of an old member,
who had been absent for a short time, but had
returned to familiar haunts and associations. In
a Pythagorean point of view this might have been
the case, but I cannot recall any deceased member
of the family who was in life partial to bone-burying
(though it might be post mortem a consistent
amusement), and this was Boonder's great
weakness. He was at first discovered coiled up
on a rug in an upper chamber, and was the least
disconcerted of the entire household. From that
moment Boonder became one of its recognized
members, and privileges, often denied the most intelligent
and valuable of his species, were quietly
taken by him and submitted to by us. Thus,
if he were found coiled up in a clothes-basket,
or any article of clothing assumed locomotion
on its own account, we only said, “O, it 's Boonder,”
with a feeling of relief that it was nothing
worse.
I have spoken of his fondness for bone-burying.
It could not be called an economical faculty, for he
invariably forgot the locality of his treasure, and
covered the garden with purposeless holes; but
although the violets and daisies were not improved
punishing him. He became a synonyme for Fate;
a Boonder to be grumbled at, to be accepted philosophically,
— but never to be averted. But although
he was not an intelligent dog, nor an ornanamental
dog, he possessed some gentlemanly
instincts. When he performed his only feat, —
begging upon his hind legs (and looking remarkably
like a penguin), — ignorant strangers would
offer him crackers or cake, which he did n't like, as
a reward of merit. Boonder always made a great
show of accepting the proffered dainties, and even
made hypocritical contortions as if swallowing,
but always deposited the morsel when he was
unobserved in the first convenient receptacle, —
usually the visitor's overshoes.
In matters that did not involve courtesy, Boonder
was sincere in his likes and dislikes. He
was instinctively opposed to the railroad. When
the track was laid through our street, Boonder
maintained a defiant attitude toward every
rail as it went down, and resisted the cars shortly
after to the fullest extent of his lungs. I have
a vivid recollection of seeing him, on the day
of the trial trip, come down the street in front
of the car, barking himself out of all shape,
and thrown back several feet by the recoil of
each bark. But Boonder was not the only one
who has resisted innovations, or has lived to see
am anticipating. Boonder and previously resisted
the gas, but although he spent one whole day in
angry altercation with the workmen, — leaving
his bones unburied and bleaching in the sun, —
somehow the gas went in. The Spring Valley
water was likewise unsuccessfully opposed, and
the grading of an adjoining lot was for a long
time a personal matter between Boonder and the
contractor.
These peculiarities seemed to evince some decided
character and embody some idea. A prolonged
debate in the family upon this topic resulted
in an addition to his name, — we called
him “Boonder the Conservative,” with a faint
acknowledgment of his fateful power. But, although
Boonder had his own way, his path was
not entirely of roses. Thorns sometimes pricked
his sensibilities. When certain minor chords were
struck on the piano, Boonder was always painfully
affected and howled a remonstrance. If he were
removed for company's sake to the back yard, at
the recurrence of the provocation, he would go his
whole length (which was something) to improvise
a howl that should reach the performer. But we
got accustomed to Boonder, and as we were fond
of music the playing went on.
One morning Boonder left the house in good
spirits with his regular bone in his mouth, and
next day he was picked up lifeless on the track, —
run over apparently by the first car that went out
of the depot.
| The luck of Roaring Camp, and other sketches | |