English, which Hip Tee does not understand;
and Hip Tee talks a great deal of Chinese, and perhaps strong Chinese,
which you do not understand. You commence sentences in broken Chinese
and terminate them in unbroken English. Hip Tee commences sentences
in broken English and terminates them in pure Chinese, from a like
inability to express his indignation in a foreign tongue. "What for
you no go oder man? No my ticket--tung sung lung, ya hip kee--_ping!"_
he cries; and all this time the assistants are industriously ironing
and spouting mist, and leisurely making remarks in their sing-song
unintelligibility which you feel have uncomplimentary reference to
yourself. Suddenly a light breaks upon you. This is not Hip Tee's
cellar, this is not Hip Tee. It is the establishment of Hi Sing. This
is Hi Sing himself who for the last half hour has been endeavoring
with his stock of fifteen English words to make you understand that
you are in the wrong house. But these Chinese, as to faces and their
wash-houses, and all the paraphernalia of their wash-houses, are so
much alike that this is an easy mistake to make. You find the lavatory
of Hip Tee, who pronounces the hieroglyphics all correct, and delivers
you your lost and found shirts clean, with half the buttons broken,
and the bosoms pounded, scrubbed and frayed into an irregular sort of
embroidery.

"He can only dig, cook and wash," said the American miner
contemptuously years ago: "he can't work rock." To work rock in mining
parlance is to be skillful in boring Earth's stony husk after mineral.
It is to be proficient in sledging, drilling and blasting. The
Chinaman seemed to have no aptitude for this labor. He was content to
use his pick and shovel in the gravel-banks: metallic veins of gold,
silver or copper he left entirely to the white man.

Yet it was a great mistake to suppose he could not "work rock," or
do anything else required of him. John is a most apt and intelligent
labor-machine. Show him once your tactics in any operation, and ever
after he imitates them as accurately as does the parrot its memorized
sentences. So when the Pacific Railroad was being bored through the
hard granite of the Sierras it was John who handled the drill and
sledge as well as the white laborer. He was hurled by thousands on
that immense work, and it was the tawny hand of China that hewed out
hundreds of miles for the transcontinental pathway. Nor is this
all. He is crowding into one aven