One little anecdote, and the Chinese must be left to their fate. It happened in 1869. Two Chinese merchants had been invited by one of the heads of a leading steamship company to visit the theatre, where they had taken a box. The merchants, men of high standing among their countrymen, accepted. Their appearance in front of it was the signal for an outburst of ruffianism on the part of the gallery; it was the “gods” _versus_ the celestials, and for a time the former had it all their own way. In vain Lawrence Barrett, the actor, came forward on the stage to try and appease them. He is supposed to have said that any well-conducted person had a right to his seat in the house. An excited gentleman in the dress-circle reiterated the same ideas, and was rewarded by a torrent of hisses and caterwauling. The Chinamen, alarmed that it might result in violence to them, would have retired, but a dozen gentlemen from the dress-circle and orchestra seats requested them to stay, promising them protection, and the merchants remained. They could see that all the better and more respectable part of the house wished them to remain. After twenty or more minutes of interruption, the gallery was nearly cleared by the police, and the performance allowed to proceed. And yet the very class who are so opposed to the Caucasian complain that he does not spend his money in the country where he makes it, but hoards it up for China. The story explains the actual position of the Chinaman in America to-day. The upper and middle classes, ay, and the honest mechanics who require their assistance, support their claims; the lowest scum of the population persecute, injure, and not unfrequently murder them. Many a poor John Chinaman has, as they say in America, been “found missing.” The sailor ashore in San Francisco may likely enough have an opportunity of feeling the tremor of an earthquake. As a rule, they have been exceedingly slight, but that of the 21st October, 1868, was a serious affair. Towers and steeples swayed to and fro: tall houses trembled, badly-built wooden houses became disjointed; walls fell. Many buildings, for some time afterwards, showed the effects in cracked walls and plastering, dislocated doors and window-frames. A writer in the _Overland Monthly_, soon after the event, put the matter forcibly when recalling the great earthquake of Lisbon. He said, “Over the parts of the city where ships anchored twenty years ago, they may anchor again,” for the worst effects were confined to the “made” ground—_i.e._, land reclaimed from the Bay. Dwellings on the rocky hills were scarcely injured at all, reminding us of the relative fates of the man “who built his house upon a rock” and of him who placed it on the sand. Four persons only were killed on that occasion, all of them from the fall of badly-constructed walls, loose parapets, &c. The alarm in the city was great; excited people rushing wildly through the streets, and frightened horses running through the crowds.