and travel for themselves.

DESPISED RACES

Of all stupid ill-feelings, the sentiment of my fellow-Caucasians
towards our companions in the Chinese car was the most stupid and the
worst. They seemed never to have looked at them, listened to them, or
thought of them, but hated them _a priori_. The Mongols were their
enemies in that cruel and treacherous battlefield of money. They could
work better and cheaper in half a hundred industries, and hence there
was no calumny too idle for the Caucasians to repeat and even to
believe. They declared them hideous vermin, and affected a kind of
choking in the throat when they beheld them. Now, as a matter of fact,
the young Chinese man is so like a large class of European women, that
on raising my head and suddenly catching sight of one at a considerable
distance, I have for an instant been deceived by the resemblance. I do
not say it is the most attractive class of our women, but for all that
many a man's wife is less pleasantly favoured. Again, my emigrants
declared that the Chinese were dirty. I cannot say they were clean, for
that was impossible upon the journey; but in their efforts after
cleanliness they put the rest of us to shame. We all pigged and stewed
in one infamy, wet our hands and faces for half a minute daily on the
platform, and were unashamed. But the Chinese never lost an opportunity,
and you would see them washing their feet--an act not dreamed of among
ourselves--and going as far as decency permitted to wash their whole
bodies. I may remark by the way that the dirtier people are in their
persons the more delicate is their sense of modesty. A clean man strips
in a crowded boathouse; but he who is unwashed slinks in and out of bed
without uncovering an inch of skin. Lastly, these very foul and
malodorous Caucasians entertained the surprising illusion that it was
the Chinese waggon, and that alone, which stank. I have said already
that it was the exception, and notably the freshest of the three.

These judgments are typical of the feeling in all Western America. The
Chinese are considered stupid because they are imperfectly acquainted
with English. They are held to be base because their dexterity and
frugality enable them to underbid the lazy, luxurious Caucasian. They
are said to be thieves; I am sure they have no monopoly of that. They
are called cruel; the Anglo-Saxon and the cheerful Irishman may each
reflect before he bea