e and disgusting. Few, very few, of a respectable class
are in the State. The slums of London and New York are as respectable
thoroughfares compared with the rows of "China alleys" in the heart of
San Francisco. These can hardly be termed "abandoned women." They
have had no sense of virtue, propriety or decency to abandon. They are
ignorant of the disgrace of their calling: if the term may be allowed,
they pursue it innocently. Many are scarcely more than children. They
are mere commodities, being by their own countrymen bought in China,
shipped and consigned to factors in California, and there sold for a
term of years.

The Chinaman has bitter enemies in San Francisco: they thirst to
annihilate him. He is accustomed to blows and brickbats; he is
legitimate game for rowdies, both grown and juvenile; and children
supposed to be better trained can scarce resist the temptation of
snatching at his pig-tail as he passes through their groups in front
of the public schools. Even on Sundays nice little boys coming from
Sabbath-school, with their catechisms tucked under their jackets,
and texts enjoining mercy and gentleness fresh upon their lips, will
sometimes salute the benighted heathen as he passes by with a volley
of stones. If he turns on his small assailants, he is apt to meet
larger ones. Men are not wanting, ready and panting, to take up the
quarrel thus wantonly commenced by the offspring of the "superior
race." There are hundreds of families, who came over the sea to seek
in America the comfort and prosperity denied them in the land of their
birth, whose children from earliest infancy are inculcated with the
sentiment that the Chinaman is a dog, a pest and a curse. On the
occasion of William H. Seward's visit to a San Francisco theatre, two
Chinese merchants were hissed and hooted by the gallery mob from a
box which they had ventured to occupy. This assumption of style and
exclusiveness proved very offensive to the shirt-sleeved, upper-tier
representatives of the "superior race," who had assembled in large
numbers to catch a glimpse of one of the black man's great champions.
Ethiopia could have sat in that box in perfect safety, but China in
such a place was the red rag rousing the ire of the Democratic bull.
John has a story of his own to carry back home from a Christian land.

For this prejudice and hostility there are provocative causes,
although they may not be urged in extenuation. The Chinaman is a
dangerous