The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-12-04
THE DOOM OF SING LOW.

Twenty years ago Sing Low had been
 thin, meek Chinese coolie, toiling in
 the rice fields of the Soo-C Province.
 Insufficently clad and insufficiently fed,
 he had many times been weary of life,
 and but for the VOWS of his secret so- ciety forbidding would have put a sum- mary end to it--a double quantity of opium in the pipe is an easy way! But Sing Low had persevered and starved
 until one day there was an exodus of many of his own society (now renamed Sons of the Silver Land") to the west
 ern coast of Mexico. With them jour
 neyed Sing Low and his newly married
 wife, Fay Lee, for there was q demand
 for Chinese colonists, and the promoters
 told it loudly that there was plenty of
 money to be made in the silver land"
 For once the truth had been spoken by
 a promoter! Had you ten years after
 the exodus known the Chinatown of
 Madre de Dios, and the restaurant and
 ''tea place" of Sing Low you would bet
 ter appreciate the fact, For the Chinese
 colonists had made unto themselves a
 place of their own in the western part
 of the city, out beyond the marshes;
 many narrow streets were filled with
 the shops of the Chinese, who were no longer coonists, but full fledged citi- zens
 In the very centre of the Chinese civi- lization and fronting view of hot, blue gulf water, Sing Lows name was blaz- oned in gaudy Chinese script over a tea shop and opium den, while uptown, where Mexican and mining men most did congregate, another building, made of yellow adobe and pine boards, bore the legend Chinese Restaurant of Sing Low: American Pies.' In front of this restaurant generally sat Sing Low, but not the Sing Low of the Soo- Chow rice fields-far from it. This was a very fat and important Sing Low, in full and flowing Chinese garments, pig tail neatly wound about sleek and shining head, and silkshod feet thrust into Tapping embroidered slippers A large gold American watch dangled from his sash, and yellow Mexican dia- monds glittered on his pudgy fingers. truly had Sing Low, head of the Sons of the Silver Land" prospered and waxed fat in far land.
 Inside of the restaurant many Chinese walters and cooks rushed about, serving all sorts and conditions of men at the manta covered tables For Madre de Dios was steamer town, whence hides and silver and bullion were shipped to Lower California and even San Fran cisco, and many men of many sorts ate chili con carne, and tortillas, and American pies,' in the restaurant of Sing Low. There were dirty greasers and swaggering bearmed Mexicans, drank bottles upon bottles of fiery mes cal, and calm, deliberate, mining Ameri- cans, who consumed untold numbers of pies and American canned beans, while Sing Low smiled from afar, with keen eye upon collections. For twenty years had he saved and toiled, but another year would see the end. Then, with Fay Lee, who was now old and fat, and the twenty thousand Mexican dollars that they had made would go to San Francisco. Back to China? No! Fay Lee had once timidly proposed it-for she had no children, and her heart was sick for her native land-but Sing Low said a decided "No." He had not for gotten the rice fields And, besides, in these American lands even coolie of low birth could be as mighty as a man. darin; he, Sing Low, had been of no import in China. nor would even his $20,000 make him mighty man there. In other words, better to reign in hell