dom, the Chinaman, abused and degraded as he
is, changes by correctly graded transition to the garments of
Christian civilization. There is but one article of European wear that
he avoids. These Bohemian eyes have never yet been pained by the
spectacle of a tall hat on the head of an intelligent Chinaman.

My acquaintance with John has been made up of weekly interviews,
involving the adjustment of the washing accounts, so that I have not
been able to study his character from a social viewpoint or observe
him in the privacy of the domestic circle. I have gathered enough to
justify me in believing him to be generally honest, faithful, simple,
and painstaking. Of his simplicity let me record an instance where a
sad and civil young Chinaman brought me certain shirts with most of
the buttons missing and others hanging on delusively by a single
thread. In a moment of unguarded irony I informed him that unity would
at least have been preserved if the buttons were removed altogether.
He smiled sadly and went away. I thought I had hurt his feelings,
until the next week, when he brought me my shirts with a look of
intelligence, and the buttons carefully and totally erased. At another
time, to guard against his general disposition to carry off anything
as soiled clothes that he thought could hold water, I requested him to
always wait until he saw me. Coming home late one evening, I found the
household in great consternation over an immovable Celestial who had
remained seated on the front door-step during the day, sad and
submissive, firm but also patient, and only betraying any animation or
token of his mission when he saw me coming. This same Chinaman evinced
some evidences of regard for a little girl in the family, who in her
turn reposed such faith in his intellectual qualities as to present
him with a preternaturally uninteresting Sunday-school book, her own
property. This book John made a point of carrying ostentatiously with
him in his weekly visits. It appeared usually on the top of the clean
clothes, and was sometimes painfully clasped outside of the big bundle
of soiled linen. Whether John believed he unconsciously imbibed some
spiritual life through its pasteboard cover, as the Prince in the
"Arabian Nights" imbibed the medicine through the handle of the
mallet, or whether he wished to exhibit a due sense of gratitude, or
whether he hadn't any pockets, I have never been able to ascertain. In
his turn he would sometimes c