"The civilization of China had been as perfect as it now is for two thousand years when our forefathers were still barbarians. While our race has been subduing itself and at the same time learning the lessons which lead up to submission to order and to law; while, moreover, it has been bringing under the ægis of freedom a savage continent, the Mongolian has remained stationary. To assert that we should now turn over this inheritance (of which we are but the trustees for the future), or any part of it, to 'the little brown men,' is to forget that a nation's first duty is like a father's, who, by instinct, watches over his own child with more solicitude than over the child of a stranger, and who, above all things, will not place his child under the influence of anything that will at once contaminate and despoil him. "Finally, by excluding these people no principle of our Government is set aside, and no vital practice which has grown up under our form of government. Ours is a land of perfect freedom, but we arrest robbers and close our doors to lewd women. While these precautions are right and necessary it is necessary and right to turn back from our shores the sinister hosts of the Orient." With this the whole Club except Brewster heartily agreed. Brewster merely said: "Maybe you are right, but your argument ignores the saving grace of Christianity, and maybe conflicts with God's plans." Then the good-nights were said. CHAPTER XV. The next evening when supper was prepared, Harding was not present. He had bruised one hand so badly in the mine the previous day, that he was forced to have it bound up and treated with liniments and had not worked that day. Thinking he would be home soon the rest ate their suppers, but it was an hour before he came. When he arrived he had a troubled look, and being pressed to tell what had gone wrong, he stated that he had met a group of five miners from the Sierra Nevada day shift, men whom they all knew, who, without provocation, had commenced abusing him; jeering him about joining with six or seven more miners, hiring a house and a cook, and putting on airs; that finally they dared him to fight, and when he offered to fight any one of them, they said it was a mere "bluff," that he would not fight a woman unless she were sick, and further declared their purpose at some future time to go up and "clean out" the whole outfit. Harding was the younger member of the Club; the rest knew about his former life; how his father, joining the reckless throng of the early days, lived fast, and suddenly died, just as the boy came from school; how the young man had put aside his hopes, learned mining, and with a brave purpose was working hard and dreaming of the time when he would wipe away every reproach which rested on his father's memory.