sils will bear
inspection. When the smallpox raged so severely in San Francisco a few
years since, there were very few deaths among his race. But John
_is_ not nice about his house. He seems to have none of our ideas
concerning home comfort. Smoke has no terror for him; soap he keeps
entirely for his clothes and person; floor-and wall-washing are things
never hinted at; and the refuse of his table is scarcely thrown out
of doors. Privacy is not one of his luxuries--he wants a house full:
where there is room for a bunk, there is room for a man. An anthill,
a beehive, a rabbit-warren are his models of domestic comfort: what is
stinted room for two Americans is spaciousness for a dozen Chinese.
Go into one of their cabins at night, and you are in an oven full of
opium- and lamp-smoke. Recumbent forms are dimly seen lying on bunks
above and below. The chattering is incessant. Stay there ten minutes,
and as your eye becomes accustomed to the smoke you will dimly see
blue bundles lying on shelves aloft. Anon the bundles stir, talk and
puff smoke. Above is a loft six feet square: a ladder brings it in
communication with the ground floor. Mongolians are ever coming down,
but the gabble of tongues above shows that a host is still left. Like
an omnibus, a Chinese house is never full. Nor is it ever quiet. At
all hours of the night may be heard their talk and the clatter of
their wooden shoes. A Chinaman does not retire like an American,
intending to make a serious business of his night's sleeping. He
merely "lops down" half dressed, and is ready to arise at the least
call of business or pleasure.

While at work in his claim his fire is always kindled near by, and
over it a tea-pot. This is his beverage every half hour. His tea must
be hot, strong and without milk or sugar. He also consumes a terrible
mixture sold him by white traders, called indiscriminately brandy, gin
or whisky, yet an intoxicated Chinaman is the rarest of rare sights.
Rice he can cook elegantly, every grain being steamed to its utmost
degree of distension. Soup he makes of no other meat than pork. The
poorest among his hordes must have a chicken or duck for his holiday.
He eats it merely parboiled. He will eat dog also, providing it is not
long past maturity.

The Chinese grocery-stores are museums to the American. There are
strange dried roots, strange dried fish, strange dried land and marine
plants, ducks and chickens, split, pressed thin and smoked; drie