Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 23, February, 1873Various
Science
Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 23, February, 1873
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- Periodicals
The Chinaman has bitter enemies in San Francisco: they thirst to
annihilate him. He is accustomed to blows and brickbats; he is
legitimate game for rowdies, both grown and juvenile; and children
supposed to be better trained can scarce resist the temptation of
snatching at his pig-tail as he passes through their groups in front
of the public schools. Even on Sundays nice little boys coming from
Sabbath-school, with their catechisms tucked under their jackets,
and texts enjoining mercy and gentleness fresh upon their lips, will
sometimes salute the benighted heathen as he passes by with a volley
of stones. If he turns on his small assailants, he is apt to meet
larger ones. Men are not wanting, ready and panting, to take up the
quarrel thus wantonly commenced by the offspring of the "superior
race." There are hundreds of families, who came over the sea to seek
in America the comfort and prosperity denied them in the land of their
birth, whose children from earliest infancy are inculcated with the
sentiment that the Chinaman is a dog, a pest and a curse. On the
occasion of William H. Seward's visit to a San Francisco theatre, two
Chinese merchants were hissed and hooted by the gallery mob from a
box which they had ventured to occupy. This assumption of style and
exclusiveness proved very offensive to the shirt-sleeved, upper-tier
representatives of the "superior race," who had assembled in large
numbers to catch a glimpse of one of the black man's great champions.
Ethiopia could have sat in that box in perfect safety, but China in
such a place was the red rag rousing the ire of the Democratic bull.
John has a story of his own to carry back home from a Christian land.
For this prejudice and hostility there are provocative causes,
although they may not be urged in extenuation. The Chinaman is a
dangerous competitor for the white laborer; and when the latter, with
other and smaller mouths to feed, once gets the idea implanted in
his mind that the bread is being taken from them by what he deems a
semi-human heathen, whose beliefs, habits, appearance and customs are
distasteful to him, there are all the conditions ready for a state
of mind toward the almond-eyed Oriental which leans far away from
brotherly love.
Brotherly love sometimes depends on circumstances. "Am I not a man and
brother?" cries John from his native shore. "Certainly," we respond.
Pass round the hat--let us take up a contribution for the conversion
of the poor heathen. The coins clink thickly in the bottom of the
charitable chapeau. We return home, feeling ourselves raised an inch
higher heavenward.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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