e, that laundering,
thereafter, would be cheaply done. This hope, however, was soon
dispelled. For, shortly after his arrival, as Fong Wu asked at the
grocery store for mail, he met Radigan's inquiry of "You do my washee,
John?" with a grave shake of the head. Similar questions from others
were met, later, in a similar way. Soon it became generally known that
the "monkey at Sam Kennedy's" did not do washing; so he was troubled no
further.

Yet if Fong Wu did not work for the people of Whiskeytown, he was not,
therefore, idle. Many a sunrise found him wandering through the
chaparral thickets back of his house, digging here and there in the red
soil for roots and herbs. These he took home, washed, tasted, and,
perhaps, dried. His mornings were mainly spent in cooking for his
abundantly supplied table, in tending his fowls and house, and in making
spotless and ironing smooth various undergarments--generous of sleeve
and leg.

But of an afternoon, all petty duties were laid aside, and he sorted
carefully into place upon his shelves numerous little bunches and boxes
of dried herbs and numerous tiny phials of pungent liquid that had come
to him by post; he filled wide sheets of foolscap with vertical lines of
queer characters and consigned them to big, plainly addressed,
well-stamped envelopes; he scanned closely the last newspapers from San
Francisco, and read from volumes in divers tongues, and he poured over
the treasured Taoist book, "The Road to Virtue."

Sunday was his one break in the week's routine. Then, the coolies who
panned or cradled for gold in tailings of near-by abandoned mines,
gathered at Fong Wu's. On such occasions, there was endless, lively
chatter, a steady exchange of barbering--one man scraping another clean,
to be, in turn, made hairless in a broad band about the poll and on
cheek and chin--and much consuming of tasty chicken, dried fish, pork,
rice, and melon seeds. To supplement all this, Fong Wu recounted the
news: the arrival of a consul in San Francisco, the raid on a slave--or
gambling-den, the progress of a tong war under the very noses of the
baffled police, and the growth of Coast feeling against the continued,
quiet immigration of Chinese. But of the social or political affairs of
the Flowery Kingdom--of his own land beyond the sea--Fong Wu was
consistently silent.

Added to his Sunday responsibilities as host and purveyor of news, Fong
Wu had others. An ailing countryman, whether seize