over the
scratched surface. To my surprise, See Yup triumphantly produced HIS
copy with the erasion itself carefully imitated, and, in fact, much more
neatly done than mine.

In our confidential intercourse, I never seemed to really get nearer
to him. His sympathy and simplicity appeared like his flowers--to be a
good-humored imitation of my own. I am satisfied that his particularly
soulless laugh was not derived from any amusement he actually felt, yet
I could not say it was forced. In his accurate imitations, I fancied he
was only trying to evade any responsibility of his own. THAT devolved
upon his taskmaster! In the attention he displayed when new ideas
were presented to him, there was a slight condescension, as if he were
looking down upon them from his three thousand years of history.

"Don't you think the electric telegraph wonderful?" I asked one day.

"Very good for Mellican man," he said, with his aimless laugh; "plenty
makee him jump!"

I never could tell whether he had confounded it with electro-galvanism,
or was only satirizing our American haste and feverishness. He was
capable of either. For that matter, we knew that the Chinese themselves
possessed some means of secretly and quickly communicating with one
another. Any news of good or ill import to their race was quickly
disseminated through the settlement before WE knew anything about it. An
innocent basket of clothes from the wash, sent up from the river-bank,
became in some way a library of information; a single slip of
rice-paper, aimlessly fluttering in the dust of the road, had the
mysterious effect of diverging a whole gang of coolie tramps away from
our settlement.

When See Yup was not subject to the persecutions of the more ignorant
and brutal he was always a source of amusement to all, and I cannot
recall an instance when he was ever taken seriously. The miners found
diversions even in his alleged frauds and trickeries, whether innocent
or retaliatory, and were fond of relating with great gusto his evasion
of the Foreign Miners' Tax. This was an oppressive measure aimed
principally at the Chinese, who humbly worked the worn-out "tailings" of
their Christian fellow miners. It was stated that See Yup, knowing the
difficulty--already alluded to--of identifying any particular Chinaman
by NAME, conceived the additional idea of confusing recognition by
intensifying the monotonous facial expression. Having paid his tax
himself to the collector,