The Treaty With China, its Provisions Explained: New York Tribune, Tuesday, August 28, 1868Twain, Mark
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The Treaty With China, its Provisions Explained: New York Tribune, Tuesday, August 28, 1868
Twain, Mark
China -- Foreign relations -- United States; United States -- Foreign relations -- China
meaning of Article 6--and voted for it. The closing sentence of it
was added to please a certain Senator, and then he was satisfied and
supported the treaty with all his might. It was a gratification to him
to have that sentence added; and inasmuch as the sentence could do
no harm, since it don't mean anything whatever under the sun, it was
gratefully and cheerfully added. It could not have been added to please
a worthier man. It sets off the treaty, too, because it is so gracefully
worded and is so essentially and particularly ornamental. It embellishes
and supports the grand edifice of the Chinese treaty, even as a wealth
of stucco embellishes and supports a stately temple. It would hardly be
worth while for a treaty to confer naturalization in the last clause
of an article wherein it had already provided for the acquirement
of naturalization by the proper and usual course. The idea of making
negroes citizens of the United States was startling and disagreeable to
me, but I have become reconciled to it; and being reconciled to it, and
the ice being broken and the principle established, I am now ready for
all comers. The idea of seeing a Chinaman a citizen of the United States
would have been almost appalling to me a few years ago, but I suppose
I can live through it now. Maybe it will be well to say what sort of
people these prospective voters are. There are 50,000 of them on the
Pacific coast at large, and 15,000 or 20,000 in San Francisco. They
occupy a quarter just out of the business center of the city. They
worship a hideous idol in a gorgeous temple. They have a theater,
where the orchestra sit on the stage (drinking tea occasionally,)
and deafening the public with a ceaseless din of gongs, cymbals, and
fiddles with two strings, whose harmonies are capable of inflicting
exquisite torture. Their theatrical dresses are much finer and more
costly than those in the Black Crook, and the immorality of their plays
is fully up to the Black Crook standard. Consequently they are ruined
people. Their prominent instinct being just like ours, let us extend the
right-hand of fellowship to them across the sea. Some of the men gamble,
and the standing of the women is not good. The Chinese streets of San
Francisco are crowded with shops and stalls mostly, but there are
many Chinese merchant princes who do business on a large scale. The
remittances of coin to China amount to half a million a month. Chinamen
work hard and with tireless perseverance; other foreigners get out of
work, and labor exchanges must look out for them. Chinamen look out for
themselves, and are never idle a week at a time; they make excellent
cooks, washers, ironers, and house servants; they are never seen drunk;
they are quiet, orderly, and peaceable, by nature; they possess the rare
and probably peculiarly barbarous faculty of minding their own business.
They are as thrifty as Holland Dutch. They permit nothing to go to
waste.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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