ey did not
wear scalloped drawers and hats with jingling bells on their points, nor
did I ever see them dance with their forefingers vertically extended.
They were always neatly dressed, even the commonest of coolies, and
their festive dresses were marvels. As traders they were grave and
patient; as servants they were sad and civil, and all were singularly
infantine in their natural simplicity. The living representatives of the
oldest civilization in the world, they seemed like children. Yet they
kept their beliefs and sympathies to themselves, never fraternizing with
the fanqui, or foreign devil, or losing their singular racial qualities.
They indulged in their own peculiar habits; of their social and inner
life, San Francisco knew but little and cared less. Even at this early
period, and before I came to know them more intimately, I remember
an incident of their daring fidelity to their own customs that was
accidentally revealed to me. I had become acquainted with a Chinese
youth of about my own age, as I imagined,--although from mere outward
appearance it was generally impossible to judge of a Chinaman's age
between the limits of seventeen and forty years,--and he had, in a burst
of confidence, taken me to see some characteristic sights in a Chinese
warehouse within a stone's throw of the Plaza. I was struck by the
singular circumstance that while the warehouse was an erection of wood
in the ordinary hasty Californian style, there were certain brick and
stone divisions in its interior, like small rooms or closets, evidently
added by the Chinamen tenants. My companion stopped before a long, very
narrow entrance, a mere longitudinal slit in the brick wall, and with a
wink of infantine deviltry motioned me to look inside. I did so, and saw
a room, really a cell, of fair height but scarcely six feet square,
and barely able to contain a rude, slanting couch of stone covered with
matting, on which lay, at a painful angle, a richly dressed Chinaman.
A single glance at his dull, staring, abstracted eyes and half-opened
mouth showed me he was in an opium trance. This was not in itself a
novel sight, and I was moving away when I was suddenly startled by the
appearance of his hands, which were stretched helplessly before him on
his body, and at first sight seemed to be in a kind of wicker cage.

I then saw that his finger-nails were seven or eight inches long, and
were supported by bamboo splints. Indeed, they were no longer hum