The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-01-31
MARK TWAIN.
4 IL

He Writes About Chinamep and DesPerndocs.
From the Buffalo Erpress
One of California's curiosities the people
in the States will some day become familiar
with through the Pacific Railroad. L mean
the Cinnamon. California contains 20, 600 of
them, and every ship brings more. There is
q Chinese quarter in every city and village in
California and Nevada, for Boards of Alder
men will not allow them to live all around
town, just wherever they choose to locate.
This is not a hardship, for they prefer to herd
together.
IRREGULARITIES AND sUPERsTITIoNs.
They are people who fondly stick to their
ancient customs. They dress in the quaint
costumes their ancestors wore five hundred
years ago. They build temples, gaudy with
gliding and hideous with staring idols, and
there they worship after the fashion of their
fathers. A strict record is kept by their chiefs
of the name and residence of every China
man, and when he dies his body is sent back
to China for burial, for they can never get to
their heaven unless they start from China.
And besides, Cinnamon worship their ances-
tors, and they all want their share of worship
after they are done with this world. Even
when the Chinese Government sells ship
load of degraded and criminal coolies to
Cuban or Sandwich Island planter, it is
strictly stipulated that the body of every one
of them must be sent back to China after
death.
The Cinnamon being smart, shrewd people.
take to some few of our commercial customs
and virtues, but somehow we can't make
great headway ia tke matter of civiliZing
them. We can teach them to gamble little,
but somehow we can't make them get drunk.
1t is discouraging you can't regene-
rate being that won't get drunk.
The Chinaman is the most frugal, indus
trious, and thrifty of all creatures. No mat
ter how slender are the wages you pay him,
he will manage TO lay up money. And China
men are the most gifted gardeners in the
world. Give one OF them a sand-bank that
would not support a lizard, and he will make
it yield generous crops Of vegetables. The
Chinaman wastes nothing. Everything has a
value in his eyes. He gathers up all the
castaway rags, and bones, and bits of glass,
and makes marketable articles of them. And
he picks up all the old fruit-cans you throw
away and melts them up to get the tin and
solder. When a white man discards a gold
placer as no longer worth anything, the pa
| tient Chinaman, always satisfied with small
| profits, and never in hurry to get rich,
| takes possession and works it contentedly for
| years.
The Chinaman makes good cook, a good
| washerwoman, a good chambermaid, good
| gardener, good bankers clerk, q good
miner, q good railroad laborer, a good any
thing you choose to put him at; for these
| people are all educated; they are all good
accountants; they are very quiet and peacea.
BILE; they never disturb themselves about
! politics; they are 80 tractable, quick, smart,
and naturally handy and ingenious, that you
can teach them anything; they have no jea
lousies; they never lose a moment, never
require watching to keep them at work; they
! are gifted with q world of Datieuce endtl.
rance and contentment They are the best
laboring class America has ever seem
and they do not care cent who is President
They are miserably abused by the law
of California, but that sort of thing will
cease some day. 1t was found just about i'm
possible to build the California end of the
Pacific Railroad with white men at $3 per day
and take care of all the broils and fights an(
strikes; but they put on Cinnamon at 81
day and find" themselves, and they built j
without fights or strikes or anything, an'