The San Francisco Chinese are not all mere theater-goers, loafers, gamblers; as a body they are frugal, industrious, contented men. I soon grew to think it a pleasure to meet a Chinese-American, so clean and happy is his look: not a speck is to be seen upon the blue cloth of his long coat or baggy trowsers. His hair is combed with care; the bamboo on which he and his mate together carry their enormous load seems as though cleansed a dozen times a day. It is said to be a peculiarity of the Chinese that they are all alike: no European can, without he has dealings with them, distinguish one Celestial from another. The same, however, may be said of the Sikhs, the Australian natives, of most colored races, in short. The points of difference which distinguish the yellow men, the red men, the black men with straight hair, the negroes, from any other race whatever, are so much more prominent than the minor distinctions between Ah Sing and Chi Long, or between Uncle Ned and Uncle Tom, that the individual are sunk and lost in the national distinctions. To the Chinese in turn all Europeans are alike; but beneath these obvious facts there lies a grain of solid truth that is worth the hunting out, and which is connected with the change-of-type question in America and Australasia. Men of similar habits of mind and body are alike among ourselves in Europe; noted instances are the close resemblance of Père Enfantin, the St. Simonian chief, to the busts of Epicurus; of Bismarck to Cardinal Ximenes. Irish laborers--men who for the most part work hard, feed little, and leave their minds entirely unplowed--are all alike; Chinamen, who all work hard, and work alike, who live alike, and who go further, and all think alike, are, by a mere law of nature, indistinguishable one from the other. In the course of my wanderings in the Golden City, I lighted on the house of the Canton Company, one of the Chinese benevolent societies, the others being those of Hong Kong, Macao, and Amoy. They are like the New York Immigration Commission, and the London “Société Française de Bienfaisance,” combined; added to a theater and joss-house, or temple, and governed on the principles of such clubs as those of the “whites” or “greens” at Heidelberg, they are, in short, Chinese trades unions, sheltering the sick, succoring the distressed, finding work for the unemployed, receiving the immigrants from China when they land, and shipping their bones back to China, ticketed with name and address, when they die. “Hong Kong, with dead Chinamen,” is said to be a common answer from outward-bounders to a hail from the guard-ship at the Golden Gate. Some of the Chinese are wealthy: Tung Yu & Co., Chi Sing Tong & Co., Wing Wo Lang & Co., Chy Lung & Co., stand high among the merchants of the Golden City. Honest and wealthy as these men are allowed to be, they are despised by every white Californian, from the governor of the State to the Mexican boy who cleans his shoes.