ASA (MIAMI
THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES
IN MEMORY OF
CARROLL ALCOTT
PRESENTED BY
CARROLL ALCOTT MEMORIAL
LIBRARY FUND COMMITTEE
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
A CHINESE BOOK COVER DECORATION
Made when the Anglo-Saxon people were
living in caves
;<-;
, " |.;j./. J> fi.f-Jjn,) ,
AS A CHINAMAN
SAW US
PASSAGES FROiM HIS LETTERS
TO A FRIEND AT HOME
NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1904
.I i:.
Wiww
COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
Published June,
PREFACE
SINCE the publication in 1832 of that
classic of cynicism, The Domestic Man-
ners of the Americans, by Mrs. Trol-
lope, perhaps nothing has appeared that
is more caustic or amusing in its treat-
ment of America and the Americans
than the following passages from the let-
ters of a cultivated and educated China-
man. The selections have been made
from a series of letters covering a decade
spent in America, and were addressed to
a friend in China who had seen few for-
eigners. The writer was graduated from
a well-known college, after he had at-
tended an English school, and later took
special studies at a German university.
Americans have been informed of the im-
v
1429071
PREFACE
pressions they make on the French, Eng-
lish, and other people, but doubtless this
is the first unreserved and weighty ex-
pression of opinion on a multiplicity of
American topics by a Chinaman of cul-
tivation and grasp of mind.
It will be difficult for the average
American to conceive it possible that a
cultivated Chinaman, of all persons,
should have been honestly amused at our
civilization ; that he should have consid-
ered what Mrs. Trollope called "our
great experiment" in republics a failure,
and our institutions, fashions, literary
methods, customs and manners, sports
and pastimes as legitimate fields for wit
and unrepressed jollity. Yet in the un-
bosoming of this cultivated "heathen"
we see our fads and foibles held up as
strange gods, and must confess some of
them to be grotesque when seen in this
yellow light,
vi
PREFACE
It is doubtless true that the masses of
Americans do not take the Chinaman se-
riously, and an interesting feature of this
correspondence is the attitude of the
Chinaman on this very point and his
clever satire on our assumption of per-
fection and superiority over a nation, the
habits of which have been fixed and set-
tled for many centuries. The writer's
experiences in society, his acquaintance
with American women of fashion and
their husbands, all ingeniously set forth,
have the hall-mark of actual novelty,
while his loyalty to the traditions of his
country and his egotism, even after the
Americanizing process had exercised its
influence over him for years, add to the
interest of the recital.
In revising the correspondence and re-
arranging it under general heads, the
editor has preserved the salient features
of it, with but little essential change and
vii
PREFACE
practically in its original shape. If the
reader misses the peculiar idioms, or the
pigeon-English that is usually placed in
the mouth of the Chinaman of the novel
or story, he or she should remember that
the writer of the letters, while a "heathen
Chinee," was an educated gentleman in
the American sense of the term. This
fact should always be kept in mind be-
cause, as the author remarks, to many
Americans whom he met, it was "incom-
prehensible that a Chinaman can be edu-
cated, refined, and cultivated according
to their own standards."
With pardonable pride he tells how,
on one occasion, when a woman in New
York told him she knew her ancestral
line as far back as 1200 A. D., he replied
that he himself had "a tree without a
break for thirty-two hundred years." He
was sure she did not believe him, but he
found her "indeed!" delightful. The au-
viii
PREFACE
thor's name has been withheld for per-
sonal reasons that will be sufficiently
obvious to those who read the letters.
The period during which he wrote them
is embraced in the ten years from 1892
to 1902.
HENRY PEARSON GRATTON.
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA,
May loth, 1904.
IX
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE AMERICAN, WHO HE is . . . i
II. THE AMERICAN MAN 16
III. AMERICAN CUSTOMS 40
IV. THE AMERICAN WOMAN 63
V. THE SUPERSTITIONS OF THE AMERICAN . 92
VI. THE AMERICAN PRESS 99
VII. THE AMERICAN DOCTOR 106
VIII. PECULIARITIES AND MANNERISMS . . .118
IX. LIFE IN WASHINGTON 131
X. THE AMERICAN IN LITERATURE . . .164
XI. THE POLITICAL Boss . . . .185
XII. EDUCATION IN AMERICA .... 200
XIII. THE ARMY AND NAVY . . . . . 212
XIV. ART IN AMERICA . . . : . . . 229
XV. THE DARK SIDE OF REPUBLICANISM . . 237
XVI. SPORTS AND PASTIMES .... 261
XVII. THE CHINAMAN IN AMERICA .... 279
XVIII. THE RELIGIONS OF THE AMERICANS . . 303
XI
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
c
CHAPTER I
THE AMERICAN WHO HE IS
MANY of the great powers believe
themselves to be passing through an evo-
lutionary period leading to civic and
national perfection. America, or the
United States, has already reached this
state; it is complete and finished. I have
this from the Americans themselves, so
there can be no question about it; hence
it requires no little temerity to discuss,
let alone criticize, therm)
Yet I am going to ask you to behold
the American as he is, as I honestly
found him great, small, good, bad, self-
i
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
glorious, egotistical, intellectual, super-
cilious, ignorant, superstitious, vain, and
bombastic. In truth, so very remarkable,
so contradictory, so incongruous have I
found the American that I hesitate.
Shall I give you a satire ; shall I devote
myself to eulogy; shall I tear what they
call the "whitewash" aside and expose
them to the winds of excoriation; or
shall I devote myself to an introspective,
analytical divertissement? But I do not
wish to educate you on the Americans,
but to entertain, to make you laugh by
the recital of comical truths; so with-
out system I am going to tell you of these
Americans as I found them, day by day,
month by month, officially, socially; in
their homes, in politics, trade, sorrow,
despair, and in their pleasures.
You will remember when the Evil
Spirit is asked by the modest Spirit of
Good to indicate his possessions he tucks
THE AMERICAN WHO HE IS
the earth under one arm, drops the sun
into one pocket, the moon into another,
and the stars into the folds of his gar-
ment. In a word, to use the saying of
my friends, he "claims everything in
sight"; and this is certainly a character-
istic of the American: he is all-perspec-
tive, he claims to have all the virtues,
and in his ancestry embraces the entire
world. At a dinner at the in Wash-
ington during the egg stage of my expe-
rience I sat next to a charming lady; and
having been told that it was a custom of
the French to compliment women, I re-
marked that her cheeks bloomed like our
poppy of the Orient. She laughed, and
responded, "Yes, I get that from my
English grandfather." "But your eyes
are like black pearls," I continued, see-
ing that I was on what a general on my
right called the "right trail." "I got
them from my Italian grandmother," she
3
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
replied. "And your hair?" I pressed.
"Must be Irish," was the answer, "for
my paternal grandmother was Irish and
her husband Scotch." It is true that this
charmingly beautiful and composite god-
dess (at least she would have been one
had she not been naked like a geisha at
a men's dinner) was the product of a
dozen nations, and a typical American.
The original Americans appear to
have been English, despite the fact that
the Spaniards discovered the country,
though a high official, a Yankee whom
I met at a reception, told me that this was
untrue. His ancestor had discovered
North America, and I believe he had
written a book to prove it. (En passant,
all Americans write books; those who
have not, fully intend to write one.) I
listened complacently, then said, "My
dear , if I am not mistaken the Chi-
nese discovered America." I recalled
THE AMERICAN WHO HE IS
the fact to his mind that the northwest-
ern Eskimos and the Indians were essen-
tially Asiatic in type; and it is true that
he had never heard of the ethnologic
map at his National Museum, which
shows the location of Chinese junks
blown to American shores within a pe-
riod of three hundred years. I explained
that junks had been blown over to Amer-
ica for the last three thousand years, and
that in my country there were many
records of voyages to the Western land,
ages before 1492.
You see I soon began to be American-
ized and to claim things. China discov-
ered America and gave her the compass
as well as gunpowder. The first Amer-
icans were in the nature of emigrants;
men and women who did not succeed
well in their own country and so sought
new fields, just as people are doing to-
day. They came over in a ship called
2 5
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
the "Mayflower," and were remarkably
prolific, as I have met thousands who
hail from this stock. At one time Eng-
land sent her criminals to Virginia one
of the United States and many of the
refuse of the home country were sent to
other parts of America in the early days.
Younger sons of good families were also
sent over for various reasons. Women
of all classes were sent by the ship-load,
and sold for wives. I reminded a lady
of this, who was lamenting the fact that
in China some women are sold for wives.
She was absolutely ignorant of this well-
known fact in American history, and for-
got the selling of black women. Among
the men were many representatives of old
and noble families; but the bulk, I judge
from their colonial histories, were peo-
ple of low degree. Very soon other coun-
tries began to ship people to America.
Italy, Germany, Russia, Norway, Swe-
6
THE AMERICAN WHO HE IS
den, and other lands were drawn upon
for constantly increasing numbers as
years went by. All tumbled into the
American hopper. Imagine a coffee-
grinder into which have been thrown
Greek, Roman, Jew, Gentile, and all the
rest, and then let what they call Uncle
Sam a heroic, paternal, and comical
figure, representing the government
turn the handle and grind out the Amer-
ican who is neither Jew, Gentile, Greek,
Roman, Russe, or Swede, but a new
product, sui generis, and mostly Metho-
dist.
This process has never ceased for an
hour. America has been from 1492 to
the present time, in the language of
the American "press," the "dumping-
ground" of the nations of the world, the
real open door; yet this grinding assimi-
lation has gone on. It is, perhaps, due
to the climate, perhaps the water, or the
7
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
air; but the product of these people born
on the soil is described by no other word
than American. It may be Irish-Amer-
ican, very offensive; Dutch- American,
very strenuous, like the Vice-President; *
Jewish-American, very commercial ; Ital-
ian-American, very dirty and reeking
with garlic; but it is American, totally
unlike its progenitor, a something into
which is blown a tremendous energy, that
is very wearisome, a bombast which is the
sum of that of all nations, and a conceit
like that possessed by alone. You
see it is incurable, also offensive at least
to the Oriental mind. Yet I grant you
the American is great; I have it from
him and from her; it must be so.
You have the spectacle here of the na-
tions of the world pouring a stream, that
is not pactolean, and not perfumed with
* This passage was written just before the assassination of President
McKinley.
8
THE AMERICAN WHO HE IS
the gums of Araby, flowing in and peo-
pling the country. In time they had
grievances more fancied than real, yet
grievances. They rose against the home
government, threw off the English yoke,
and became a republic with a division
into States, which I will write of when
I tell you of the American politician.
This was the first trust what they call
a merger but it occurred in politics.
(They have killed off a fair percentage
of the actual owners of the soil, the In-
dians, swindling them out of the balance,
and driving them back to a sort of ever-
changing dead-line. Without delay they
assumed the form of a dominant nation,
and announced theVnselves the greatest
nation on the earthy
Immigration was resumed, and all na-
tions again sent their refuse population
to America. I have facts showing that
for years English poorhouses and hos-
9
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
pitals were emptied of their inmates and
shipped to America. It was a distinct
policy of the anti-home-rule party in Ire-
land to encourage the poor Irish to go to
America; and now when there are more
Irish in America than in Ireland the fate
of Ireland is assured. Yet the American
air takes the fight out of the Irishman,
the rose from his cheek, and makes a
natural-born politician out of him.
America still continued to receive immi-
grants, and not satisfied with the natural
flow of the human current, began to im-
port African slaves to a country founded
for the benefit of those who desired an
asylum where they could enjoy religious
and political freedom. The Africans
were sold in the cotton belt, their exist-
ence virtually creating two distinct po-
litical parties. America long remained
a dumping-ground for nearly all the na-
tions of the world having an excess of
10
THE AMERICAN WHO HE IS
population. Great navigation companies
were built up, to a large extent, on this
trade. They sent agents to every foreign
country, issued pamphlets in every Eu-
ropean language, and uncounted thou-
sands were brought over the scum of
the earth in many instances. There was
no restriction to immigration until the
Chinese were barred out. After accept-
ing the outlaws of every European state,
the poor of all lands, they shut the door
on our "coolie" countrymen.
In this way, briefly, America has
grown to her present population of 80,-
000,000. The remarkable growth and
assimilation is still going on a menace
to the world, but in a constantly decreas-
ing ratio, which has become so marked
that the leading Americans, the class
which corresponds to our scholars, are
aghast at the singular conditions which
exist. Non-assimilation shows itself in
ii
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
labor riots, in the murder of two Presi-
dents Garfield and Lincoln in social-
istic outbreaks in every quarter, and in
signal outbreaks in various sections, at
lynchings, and other unlawful perform-
ances. I am attempting to give you an
idea of the constituents of America to-
day; but so interesting is the subject, so
prolific in its warnings and possibilities,
that I find myself wandering.
To glance at conditions at the present
time, about 600,000 aliens are coming to
America yearly. What is the result? I
was invited to meet a distinguished Ger-
man visiting in New York last month,
and at the dinner a young lady who sat
by my side said to me, "I wish I could
puzzle him." "Why?" I asked, in amaze-
ment. "Oh," was her reply, "he looks
so cram full of knowledge; I would like
to take him down." "Ah," I said. "Ask
him which is the third largest German
12
THE AMERICAN WHO HE IS
city in the world. It is New York; he
will never guess it." She did so, and I
assure you he was "puzzled," and would
scarcely believe it until a well-known
man assured him it was true. There are
more Germans in Chicago than in Leip-
sic, Cologne, Dresden, Munich, or a
dozen small towns joined in one. Half
of the Chicago Germans speak their
own tongue. This city is the third
Swedish city of the world in population.
It is the fourth Polish city and the sec-
ond Bohemian city. I was informed by
a professor in the University of Chicago
that, in that strange city, the number of
people who speak the language of the
Bohemians equaled the combined in-
habitants of Richmond, Atlanta, Port-
land, and Nashville all large cities.
"What do you think of it?" I asked.
"We are up against it," was the reply. I
can not explain this retort so that you
13
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
would understand it, but it had great sig-
nificance. The professor, a distinguished
philologist, was worried, and he looked
it. A lady who was a club woman and
by this I do not mean that she was armed
with a club, but merely a member of
clubs or societies for educational advance-
ment and social aggrandizement said it
was merely his digestion.
I learned from my friend, the dys-
peptic professor, that over forty dialects
are spoken in Chicago. About one-half
only of the total population speak or un-
derstand English. There are 500,000
Germans, 125,000 Poles, 100,000 Swedes,
90,000 Bohemians, 50,000 Yiddish, 25,-
ooo Dutch, 25,000 Italians, 15,000
French, 10,000 Irish, 10,000 Servians,
10,000 Lutherans, 7,000 Russians, and
5,000 Hungarians in Chicago. You will
be surprised to learn that numbers do
not count. The 500,000 Germans are
14
THE AMERICAN WHO HE IS
not the dominating power, nor are the
100,000 Swedes. The 10,000 Irish are
said absolutely to control the political sit-
uation. You will ask if I believe that
this monster foreign element can be re-
duced to a homogeneous unit. I reply,
yes. Fifty years from to-day they will all
be Americans, and a majority will, doubt-
less, show you their family tree, tracing
their ancestry back to the Mayflower.
CHAPTER II
THE AMERICAN MAN
HASH and I do not mean by this
word a corruption of hasheesh is a term
indicating in America a food formed of
more than one article chopped and
cooked together. I was told by a very
witty and charming lady that hash was a
synonym for E pJuribus unum (one from
many) , the motto of the Government, but
I did not find it on the American arms.
This was an American "dinner joke," of
which more anon ; nevertheless, hash rep-
resents the American people of to-day.
The millions of all nations, which have
swarmed here since 1492, may be repre-
sented by this delectable dish, which,
after all, has a certain homogeneity. Eng-
lishmen are at once recognized here, and
16
THE AMERICAN MAN
so are Chinamen. You would never mis-
take one of our people for a Japanese;
an Italian you would know across the
way; but an American not always in
America. He may be a Swede, a Ger-
man, or a Canadian; he is not an Amer-
ican until he opens his mouth. Then
there is no mistake as to what he is. He
has a nasal tone that is purely American.
All the old cities, as Boston, New
York, Richmond, and Philadelphia, have
certain nasal peculiarities or variants.
The Bostonian affects the English. The
New Englander, especially in the north,
has a comical twang, which you can pro-
duce by holding the nose tightly and at-
tempting to speak. When he says down
it sounds like daoun. It is impossible
for him not to overvowel his words, and
nothing is more amusing than to hear
the true Yankee countryman talk. The
Philadelphian is quite as marked in tone
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
and enunciation. A well-educated Phil-
adelphian will say where is me wife for
my. I have also been asked by a Phila-
delphian, "Where are you going at?" It
would be impossible to mistake the in-
tonation of a Philadelphian, even though
you met him in the wilds of Manchuria
in the depths of night.
Among the most charming and de-
lightfully cultured people I met in
America were Philadelphians of old
families. The New Yorker is more cos-
mopolitan, while the Southern men, to a
certain extent, have caught the inflection
of the negro, who is the nurse in the
South for all white children. The Amer-
icans are taught that the principal and
chief end of man is to make a fortune
and get married; but to accomplish this
it is necessary first to "sow wild oats," be-
come familiar with the vices of drink,
smoking, and other forms of dissipation,
18
THE AMERICAN MAN
a sort of test of endurance possibly, such
as is found among many native races ; yet
one scarcely expects to find it among the
latest and highest exponents of perfection
in the human race.
The American pretends to be demo-
cratic; scoffs at England and other Eu-
ropean lands, but at heart he is an aris-
tocrat. His tastes are only limited by his
means, and not always then. Any Amer-
ican, especially a politician, will tell you
that there is but one class the people,
and that all are born equal. In point of
fact, there are as many classes as there are
grades of pronounced individuality, and
all are very unequal, as every one knows.
They are included in a general way in
three classes: the upper class (the refined
and cultivated) ; the middle class (repre-
sented by the retail shop-keepers) ; and
last, the rest. The cream of society will
be found in all the cities to be among the
19
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
professional men, clergymen, presidents
of colleges, long-rich wholesale mer-
chants, judges, authors, etc.
The distinctions in society are so sin-
gular that it is almost impossible for a
foreigner to understand them. There
are persons who make it a life study to
prepare books and papers on the subject,
and whose opinions are readily accepted ;
yet such a person might not be accepted
in the best society. What constitutes
American society and its divisions is a
mystery. In a general sense a retail mer-
chant, a man who sold shoes or clothes,
a tailor, would under no circumstances
find a place in the first social circles; yet
if these same tradesmen should change
to wholesalers and give up selling one
article at a time, they would become
eligible to the best society. They do not
always get in, however. At a dinner my
neighbor, an attractive matron, was much
20
THE AMERICAN MAN
dismayed by my asking if she knew a
certain Mr. , a well-known grocer.
"I believe our supplies (groceries) come
from him," was her chilly reply. "But,"
I ventured, "he is now a wholesaler."
"Indeed!" said madam; "I had not heard
of it." The point, very inconceivable to
you, perhaps, was that the grocer,
whether wholesale or retail, was not
readily accepted; yet the man in the
wholesale business in drugs, books, wine,
stores, fruit, or almost anything else,
had the entree, if he was a gentleman.
The druggist, the hardware man, the
furniture dealer, the grocer, the re-
tailer would constitute a class by them-
selves, though of course there are other
subtle divisions completely beyond my
comprehension.
At some of the homes of the first peo-
ple I would meet a president of a uni-
versity, an author of note, an Episcopal
3 21
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
bishop, a general of the regular army
(preferably a graduate of the West Point
Academy), several retired merchants of
the highest standing, bankers, lawyers,
a judge or two of the Supreme Bench, an
admiral of good family and connections.
I have good reason to think that a Meth-
odist bishop would not be present at such
a meeting unless he was a remarkable
man. There were always a dozen men
of well-known lineage; men who knew
their family history as far back as their
great-grandparents, and whose ancestors
were associated with the history of the
country and its development. The men
were all in business or the professions.
They went to their offices at nine or ten
o'clock and remained until twelve;
lunched at their clubs or at a restaurant,
returned at one, and many remained un-
til six before going to their homes. The
work is intense. A dominating factor or
22
THE AMERICAN' MAN
characteristic in the American man is his
pursuit of the dollar. That he secures it
is manifest from the miles of beautiful
residences, the show of costly equipages
and plate, the unlimited range of "stores"
or shops one sees in large cities. The
millionaire is a very ordinary individual
in America; it is only the billionaire who
now really attracts attention. The wealth
and splendors of the homes, the mag-
nificent tout ensemble of these establish-
ments, suggests the possibility of degen-
eracy, an appearance of demoralization;
but I am assured that this is not apparent
in very wealthy families.
It is not to be understood that wealth
always gives social position in America.
By reading the American papers you
might believe that this is all that is nec-
essary. Some wealth is of course req-
uisite to enable a family to hold its own,
to give the social retort courteous, to live
23
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
according to the mode of others; yet
mere wealth will not buy the entree to
the very best society, even in villages.
Culture, refinement, education, and, most
important, savoir faire, constitute the
"open sesame." I know a billionaire, at
least this is his reputation, who has no
standing merely because he is vulgar
that is, ill-bred. I have met another man,
a great financier, who would give a
million to have the entree to the very best
houses. Instances could be cited without
end.
Such men and women generally have
their standing in Europe; in a word, go
abroad for the position they can not se-
cure at home. A family now allied to
one of the proudest families in Europe
had absolutely no position in America
previous to the alliance, and doubtless
would not now be taken up by some.
You will understand that I am speaking
24
THE AMERICAN MAN
now of the most exclusive American so-
ciety, formed of families who have age,
historical associations, breeding, educa-
tion, great-grandparents, and always have
had "manners." There are other social
sets which pass as representative society,
into which all the ill-mannered nouveau
riche can climb by the golden stairs; but
this is not real society. The richest man
in America, Rockefeller, quoted at over
a billion, is a religious worker, and his
indulgences consist in gifts to universi-
ties. Another billionaire, Mr. Carnegie,
gives his millions to found libraries. Mr.
Morgan, the millionaire banker, attends
church conventions as an antipodal diver-
sion. There is no conspicuous million-
aire before the American public who has
earned a reputation for extreme prof-
ligacy.
There is a leisure class, the sons of
wealthy men, who devote their time to
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
hunting and other sports; but in the re-
cent war this class surged to the front as
private soldiers and fought the country's
battlesjJ I admire the American gentle-
man of the select society class I have
described. He is modest, intelligent,
learned in the best sense, magnanimous,
a type of chivalry, bold, vigorous, charm-
ing as a host, and the soul of honor. It
is a regret that this is not the dominating
and best-known class in America, but it
is not; and the alien, the stranger coming
without letters of Introduction, would
fall into other hands) A man might live
a lifetime in Philadelphia or Boston and
never meet these people, unless he had
been introduced by some one who was of
the same class in some other city. Such
strange social customs make strange bed-
fellows. Thus, if you came to America
to-day and had letters to the Vice-Presi-
dent, you would, without doubt, if prop-
26
THE AMERICAN MAN
erly accredited, see the very best society.
If, on the other hand, you had letters to
the President at his home in the State of
Ohio you would doubtless meet an en-
tirely different class, eminently respect-
able, yet not the same. It would be im-
possible to ignore the inference from this.
The Vice-President is in society (the
best) ; the President is not. Where else
could this hold? Nowhere but in
America.
The Americans affect to scorn caste
and sect, yet no nation has more of them.
Sets or classes, even among men, are
found in all towns where there is any
display of wealth. The best society of a
small town consists of its bank presidents,
its clergymen, its physicians, its authors,
its lawyers. No matter how educated the
grocer may be, he will not be received,
nor the retail shoe dealer, though the
shoe manufacturer, the dealer in many
27
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
shoes, may be the virtual leader, at least
among the men. Each town will have
its clubs, the members ranging according
to their class; and while it seems a para-
dox, it is true that this classification is
mainly based upon the refinement, cul-
ture, and family of the man. A well-
known man once engaged me in conver-
sation with a view to finding out some
facts regarding our social customs, and I
learned from him that a dentist in Amer-
ica would scarcely be received in the
best society. He argued, that to a man
of refinement and culture, such a profes-
sion, which included the cleaning of
teeth, would be impossible; consequently,
you would not be likely to find a really
cultivated man who was a dentist. On
the same grounds an undertaker would
not be admitted to the first society.
With us a gentleman is born; with
Americans it is possible to create one,
28
THE AMERICAN MAN
though rarely. An American gentleman
is described as a product of two genera-
tions of college men who have always
had association with gentlemen and the
advantages of family standing. Political
elevation can not affect a man's status as
a gentleman. I heard a lady of unques-
tioned position say that she admired
President McKinley, but regretted that
he was not a gentleman. She meant that
he was not an aristocrat, and did not pos-
sess the savoir faire, or the family asso-
ciations, that completely round out the
American or English gentleman. I
asked this lady to indicate the gentlemen
Presidents of the country. There were
very few that I recall. There were Wash-
ington, Harrison, Adams, and Arthur.
Doubtless there were others, which have
escaped me. Lincoln, the strongest
American type, she did not consider in
the gentlemen class, and General Grant,
29
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
the nation's especial pride, did not fulfil
her ideas of what a gentleman should be.
You will perceive, then, that what some
American people consider a gentleman
and what its most exclusive society ac-
cepts for one, comprise two entirely dif-
ferent personages. I found this empha-
sized especially in the old society of
Washington, which takes its traditions
from Washington's time or even the pre-
Revolutionary period. For such society
a self-made man was impossible. Such
are the remarkable, indeed astounding,
ramifications of the social system of a
people who cry to heaven of their de-
mocracy. "Americans are all equal this
is one of the gems in our diadem." This
epigram I heard drop from the lips of a
senator who was the recognized aristo-
crat of the chamber; yet a man of pecul-
iar social reserve, who would have noth-
ing to do with the other "equals." In a
30
THE AMERICAN MAN
word, all the talk of equality is an absurd
figure of speech. America is at heart as
much an aristocracy as England, and the
social divisions are much the same under
the surface.
You will understand that social rules
and customs are all laid down and ex-
acted by women and from women. From
them I obtained all my information. No
American gentleman would talk (to me
at least) on the subject. Ask one of them
if there is an American aristocracy, and
he will pass over the question in an en-
gaging manner, and tell you that his gov-
ernment is based on the principle of
perfect equality one of the most trans-
parent farces to be found in this interest-
ing country. I have outlined to you
what I conceived to be the best society in
each city, and in the various sections of
the country. In morality and probity I
believe them to stand very high; lapses
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
there may be, but the general tone is
good. The women are charming and re-
fined; the men chivalrous, brave, well-
poised, and highly educated. Unfortu-
nately, the Americans who compose this
"set" are numerically weak. They are
not represented to the extent of being a
dominating body, and oddly enough, the
common people, the shopkeepers, the
people in the retail trades, do not under-
stand them as leaders from the fact that
they are so completely aloof that they
never meet them. A sort of inner "holy
of holies" is the real aristocracy of Amer-
ica. What goes for society among the
people, the mob, and the press is the set
(and a set means a faction, a clique)
known as the Four Hundred, so named
because it was supposed to represent the
"blue blood" of New York ten years ago
in its perfection. This Four Hundred
has its prototype in all cities, and in some
32
THE AMERICAN MAN
cities is known as the "fast set." In New
York it is made up often of the descend-
ants of old families, the heads of whom
in many instances were retail traders
within one hundred and fifty years ago;
but the modern wealthy representatives
endeavor to forget this or skip over it.
It is, however, constantly kept alive by
what is termed the "yellow press," which
delights in picturing the ancestor of one
family as a pedler and an itinerant
trader, and the head of another family as
a vegetable vender, and so on, literally
venting its spleen upon them.
In my studies in American sociology
I asked many questions, and obtained the
most piquant replies from women. One
lady, a leader in New York in what I
have termed the exclusive set, informed
me with a laugh that the ancestor of a
well-known family of to-day, one which
cuts a commanding figure in society, was
33
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
an ordinary laborer in the employ of her
grandfather. "Yet you receive them?"
I suggested. The reply was a shrug of
charming shoulders, which, translated,
meant that great wealth had here enabled
them to "bore" into the exclusive circle.
I found that even among these people,
the creme de la creme in the eyes of the
people, there were inner circles, and
these were not on intimate terms with the
others. Here I met a member of the
Washington and Lee family, a descend-
ant of Bishop Provoost, the first Epis-
copal bishop of New York, and friend
of Washington and Hamilton. This lat-
ter family is notable for an ancestry run-
ning back to the massacre of St. Bar-
tholomew and even beyond. I astonished
its charming descendant, who very deli-
cately informed me that she knew her
ancestry as far back as 1200 A. D., when
I told her that I had my "family tree,"
34
THE AMERICAN MAN
as they call it, without a break for thirty-
two hundred years. I am confident she
did not believe me, but her "Indeed!"
was delightful. In fact, I assure you I
have lost my heart to these American
women. I met representatives of the
Adams, Dana, Madison, Lee, and other
families identified with American history
in a most honorable way.
The continuity of the Four Hundred
idea as a logical system was broken by
the quality of some of its members. Com-
pared to the society I have previously
mentioned it was as chaff. There was a
total lack of intellectuality. Degeneracy
marked some of their acts; divorce black-
ened their records, and shameless affairs
marked them. In this "set," and particu-
larly its imitators throughout the United
States, the divorce rate is appalling.
Men leave their wives and obtain a di-
vorce for no other reason than that a
35
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
woman falls in love with another
woman's husband. On a yacht we will
say there is some scandal. A divorce
ensues, and afterward the parties are re-
married. Or we will say a wife succumbs
to the blandishments of another man.
The conjugal arrangements are rear-
ranged, so that, as a very merry New
York club man told me, "It is difficult
to tell where you are at." In a word,
the morale of the men of this set is low,
their standard high, but not always lived
up to. I believe that I am not doing the
American of the middle class wrong and
the ultra-fashionable class an injustice in
saying that it is as a class immoral.
Americans make great parade of their
churches. Spires rise like the pikes of
an army in every town, yet the morality
of the men is low. There are in this land
600,000 prostitutes ruined women. But
this is not due entirely to the Four Hun-
36
THE AMERICAN MAN
dred, whose irregularities appear to be
confined to inroads upon their own set.
Nearly all these men are club men ; two-
thirds are in business as brokers, bankers,
or professional men; and there is a large
percentage of men of leisure and vast
wealth. They affect English methods,
and are, as a rule, not highly intelligent,
but blase, often effeminate, an interesting
spectacle to the student, showing that
the downfall of the American Republic
would come sooner than that of Rome if
the "fast set" were a dominating force,
which it is not.
In the great middle class of the Amer-
ican men I find much to admire; half
educated, despite their boasted school
system, they put up, to quote one of them,
"a splendid bluff" of respectability and
morality, yet their statistics give the lie
to it. Their divorces are phenomenal,
and they are obtained on the slightest
4 37
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
cause. If a man or woman becomes
weary of the other they are divorced on
the ground of incompatibility of temper.
A lady, a descendant of one of the old-
est families, desired to marry her friend's
husband. He charged his wife with va-
rious vague acts, one of which, according
to the press, was that she did not wear
"corsets" a sort of steel frame which
the American women wear to compress
the waist. This was not accepted by the
learned judge, and the wife then left her
husband and went away on a six or eight
months' visit. This enabled the husband
to put in a claim of desertion, and the de-
cree of divorce was granted. A quicker
method is to pretend to throw the break-
fast dishes at your wife, who makes a
charge of "extreme incompatibility,"
and a divorce is at once obtained. Cer-
tain Territories bank on their divorce
laws, and the mismated have but to go
38
THE AMERICAN MAN
there and live a few months to obtain a
separation on almost any claim. Many
of the most distinguished statesmen have
been charged with certain moral lapses
in the heat of political fights, which, in
almost every instance, are ignored by the
victims, their silence being significant to
some, illogical to others; yet the fact re-
mains that the press goes to the greatest
extremes. No family secret is consid-
ered sacred to the American politician
in the heat of a campaign; to win,
he would sacrifice the husband, father,
mother, and children of his enemy. So
remarkable is the rage for divorce that
many of the great religious denomina-
tions have taken up arms against it.
Catholics forbid it. Episcopalians re-
sent it by ostracism if the cause is trivial,
and a "separation" is denounced in the
pulpit.
39
CHAPTER III
AMERICAN CUSTOMS
/THE American is an interesting,
though not always pleasant, study. His
perfect equipoise, his independence, his
assumption that he is the best product of
the best soil in the world, comes first as
a shock; but when you find this but one
of the many national characteristics it
merely amuses you/(pne of the extraordi-
nary features of the American is his atti-
tude toward the Chinese, who are taken
on sufferance. The lower classes abso-
lutely can conceive of no difference
between me and the "coolie." As an
example, a boy on the street accosts me
with "Hi, John, you washee, washeePy
Even a representative in Congress in-
sisted on calling me "John." On pro-
40
AMERICAN CUSTOMS
testing to another man, he laughed, and
said, "Oh, the man don't know any
better." "But," I replied, "if he does
not know any better, how is it he is a
lawmaker in your lower house?" "I
give it up," was his answer, and he or-
dered what they term a "high-ball."
After we had tried several, he laughed
and asked, "Shall we consider the matter
a closed incident?" Many diplomatic,
social, and political questions are often
?tled with a "high-ball."
It is inconceivable to the average
American that there can be an educated
Chinese gentleman, a man of real refine-
ment. They know us by the Cantonese
laundrymen, the class which ranks with
their lowest classes.) At dinners and re-
ceptions I was asked the most atrocious
questions by men and women. One
charming young girl, who I was in-
formed was the relative of a Cabinet
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
officer, asked me if I would not some-
time put up my "pig-tail," as she wished
to photograph me. Another asked if it
was really true that we privately consid-
ered all Americans as "white devils."
All had an inordinate curiosity to know
my "point of view"; what I thought of
them, how their customs differed from
my own. Of course, replies were man-
ifestly impossible. At a dinner a young
man, who, I learned, was a sort of pro-
fessional diner-out, remarked to a lady:
"None of the American girls will have
me for a husband; do you not think that
if I should go to China some pretty
Chinese girl would have me?" This was
said before all the company. Every one
was silent, waiting for the response.
Looking up, she replied, with charming
naivete, "No, I do not think so," which
produced much laughter. Now you
would have thought the young man
42
AMERICAN CUSTOMS
would have been slightly discomfited,
but not at all; he laughed heartily, and
plumed himself upon the fact that he had
succeeded in bringing out a reply.
American men have a variety of cos-
tumes for as many occasions. They have
one for the morning, which is called a
sack-coat, that is, tailless, and is of mixed
colors. With this they wear a low hat,
an abomination called the derby. After
twelve o'clock the frock-coat is used,
having long tails reaching to the knees.
Senators often wear this costume in the
morning why I could not learn, though
I imagine they think it is more dignified
than the sack. With the afternoon suit
goes a high silk hat, called a "plug" by
the lower classes, who never wear them.
After dark two suits of black are worn:
one a sack, being informal, the other with
tails, very formal. They also have a suit
for the bath a robe and a sleeping-cos-
43
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
tume, like a huge bag, with sleeves and
neck-hole. This is the night-shirt, and
formerly a "nightcap" was used by
some. There is also a hat to go with the
evening costume a high hat, which
crushes in. You may sit on it without in-
jury to yourself or hat. I know this by
a harrowing experience.
Many of the customs of the Americans
are strange. Their social life consists of
dinners, receptions, balls, card-parties,
teas, and smokers. At all but the last
women are present. At the dinner every
one is in evening dress; the men wear
black swallowtail coats, following the
English in every way, low white vest,
white starched shirt, white collar and
necktie, and black trousers. If the din-
ner does not include women the coat-tails
are eliminated, and the vest and necktie
are black. Exactly why this is I do not
understand, nor do the Americans. The
44
AMERICAN CUSTOMS
dinner is begun with the national drink,
the "cocktail"; then follow oysters on
the half-shell, which you eat with an ob-
ject resembling the trident carried in the
ceremony of Ah Dieu at the Triennial.
Each course of the dinner is accompa-
nied by a different wine, an agreeable
but exhilarating custom. The knife and
fork are used, the latter to go into the
mouth, the former not, and here you see
a singular ethnologic feature. Class dis-
tinctions may at times be recognized by
the knife or fork. Thus I was informed
that you could at once recognize a per-
son of the gentleman class by his use of
the knife and fork. "This is infallible,"
said my young lady companion. If he
is a commoner, he eats with his knife ; if
a gentleman, with his fork. This was a
very nice distinction, and I looked care-
fully for a knife eater, but never saw one.
There is a vast amount of ceremony
45
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
and etiquette about a dinner and various
rules for eating, to break which is a social
offense. I heard that a certain Madam
gave lessons in "good form" after
the American fashion, so that one could
learn what was expected, and at my first
dinner I regretted that I had not availed
myself of the services of the lady, as at
each plate there were nearly a dozen
solid silver articles to be used in the dif-
ferent courses, but I endeavored to es-
cape by watching my companion and
following her example. But here the
impossibility of an American girl resist-
ing a joke caused my downfall. She at
once saw my dilemma, and would take
up the wrong implement, and when I
followed suit she dropped it and took
another, laughing in her eyes in a way in
which the American girl is a prodigious
adept; but completely deceived by her
nearly every time, knowing that she was
46
AMERICAN CUSTOMS
amusing herself at my expense, I said
nothing. The Americans have a peculiar
term for the mental attitude I had during
this trial. I "sawed wood." The saying
was particularly applicable to my situa-
tion. My young companion was most
engaging, and presently began to talk of
the superiority of America, her inven-
tions, etc., mentioning the telephone,
printing, and others. "Yes, wonderful,"
I replied; "but the Chinese had the tele-
phone ages ago. They invented printing,
gunpowder, the mariner's compass, and
it would be difficult," I said, "for you to
mention an object which China has not
had for ages." She was amazed that I, a
Chinaman, should "claim everything in
sight."
There is a peculiar etiquette relating
to every course in a dinner. The soup is
eaten with a bowl-like spoon, and it is
the grossest breach to place this in your
47
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
mouth, or approach it, endwise. You ap-
proach the side and suck the soup from
it. To make a noise would attract atten-
tion. The etiquette of the fish is to eat it
with a fork; to use the knife even to cut
the fish would be unpardonable, or to
touch it to take out the bones; the fork
alone must be used. The punch course
is often an embarrassment to the previous
wines, and is followed by what the
French call the entree. In fact, while
the Americans boast that everything
American is the best, French customs are
followed at banquets invariably, this be-
ing one of the strange inconsistencies of
the Americans. Their clothes are copied
from the English, though they will claim
in the same breath that their tailors are the
best in the world. For wines they claim
to be unsurpassed, producing the finest;
yet the wines on their tables are French
or bear French labels. Game is served
48
AMERICAN CUSTOMS
a grouse or perhaps a hare, and then a
vast roast, possibly venison, or beef, and
there are vegetables, followed by a salad
of some kind. Then comes the dessert
an iced cream, cakes, nuts, raisins, cheese,
and coffee with brandy, and then cigars
and vermuth or some cordial. After
such a dinner of three hours a Southern
gentleman clapped me on the back and
said, "Great dinner, that; but let's go and
get a drink of something solid," and I
saw him take what he termed "two fin-
gers" of Kentucky Bourbon whisky a
very stiff drink. I often wondered how
the guests could stand so much.
The dinner has no attendant amuse-
ment, no dancing, no professional enter-
tainers, and rarely lasts over two hours.
Some houses have stringed bands con-
cealed behind barriers of flowers playing
soft music, but in the main the dinner is
a jollification, a symposium of stories,
49
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
where the guests take a turn at telling
tales. Story-tellers can not be hired, and
the guest at the proper moment says
(after having prepared himself before-
hand), "That reminds me of a story,"
and he relates what he has learned with
great eclat and applause, as every Amer-
ican will applaud a good story, even if
he has heard it time and again. At
one dinner which I attended in New
York story-telling had been going on for
some time when a well-known man came
in late. He was received with applause,
and when called on for a speech told ex-
actly the same story, by a strange coinci-
dence, that had been told by the last
speaker. Not a guest interfered; he was
allowed to proceed, and at the end the
point was greeted with a roar of laugh-
ter. This appeared to me to be an ex-
cellent quality in the American charac-
ter. I was informed that these stories,
50
AMERICAN CUSTOMS
forming so important a feature of Amer-
ican dinners, are the product mainly of
drummers and certain prominent men;
but why men that drum are more skilful
in story inventing I failed to learn.
President Lincoln and a lawyer named
Daniel Webster originated a large per-
centage of the current stories. It is dif-
ficult to understand exactly what the
Americans mean.
The American story is incomprehen-
sible to the average foreigner, but it is
good form to laugh. I will relate sev-
eral as illustrative of American wit, and
I might add that many of these have
been published in books for the benefit of
the diner-out. A Cabinet minister told
of a prisoner who was called to the bar
and asked his name. The man had some
impediment in his speech, one of the
hundred complaints of the tongue, and
began to hiss, uttering a strange stutter-
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
ing sound like escaping steam. The
judge listened a few moments, then turn-
ing to the guard said, "Officer, what is
this man charged with?" "Soda-water,
I think, your honor," was the reply.
This was unintelligible to me until my
companion explained it. You must un-
derstand that soda-water is a drink that
is charged with gas and makes a hissing,
spluttering noise when opened. Hence
when the judge asked what the prisoner
was charged with the policeman, an
Irishman, retorted with a joke, the story-
teller disregarding the fact that it was
an impertinence.
A distinguished New York judge told
the following: Two tenement harridans
look out of their windows simultaneously.
"Good-morning, Mrs. Moriarity," says
one. "Good-morning, Mrs. Gilfillan,"
says the other, adding, "not that I care
a d , but just to make conversation."
52
AMERICAN CUSTOMS
This was considered wit of the sharpest
kind, and was received with applause.
In their stories the Americans spare
neither age, sex, nor relatives. The fol-
lowing was related by a general of the
army. He said he took a friend home to
spend the night with him, the guest occu-
pying the best room. When he came
down in the morning he turned to the
hostess and said, "Mrs. , that was ex-
cellent tooth-powder you placed at my
disposal; can you give me the name
of the maker?" The hostess fairly
screamed. "What," she exclaimed, "the
powder in the urn?" "Yes," replied
the officer, startled; "was it poison?"
"Worse, worse," said she; "you swal-
lowed Aunt Janel" Conceive of this
wretched taste. The guest had actual-
ly cleaned his teeth with the cremated
dust of the general's aunt; yet he told
the story before a dinner assemblage,
s 53
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
and it was received with shouts of
laughter.
I did not hear the intellectual conver-
sation at dinner I had expected. Art,
science, literature, were rarely touched
upon, although I invariably met artists,
litterateurs, and scientific men at these
dinners. They all talked small talk or
"told stories." I was informed that if I
wished to hear the weighty questions of
the day discussed I must go to the wom-
en's clubs, or to Madam - 's Current
Topics Society. The latter is an extraor-
dinary affair, where society women who
have no time to read the news of the day
listen to short lectures on the news of the
preceding week, discussed pro and con,
giving these women in a nutshell material
for intelligent conversation when they
meet senators and other men at the va-
rious receptions before which they wish
to make an agreeable impression.
54
AMERICAN CUSTOMS
The American has many clubs, but is
not entirely at home in them. He uses
them as places in which to play poker or
whist, to dine his men friends, and in a
great measure because it is the "proper
thing." At many a room is set apart for
the national game of poker a fascina-
ting game to the player who wins. Poker
was never mentioned in my presence that
some did not make a joke on a supposed
Chinaman named Ah Sin; but the ob-
scurity of the joke and my lack of
knowledge regarding American litera-
ture caused the point to elude me at first,
which was true of many jokes. The
Americans are preeminently practical
jokers, and the ends to which they go is
beyond belief. I heard of jokes which,
if perpetrated in China, would have re-
sulted in the loss of some one's head. To
illustrate this, in the Spanish-American
War the camps at Tampa were besieged
55
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
with newspaper reporters, and one from
a large journal was constantly trying to
secure secret news by entertaining cer-
tain officers with wine and cigars ; so they
determined to get rid of his importuni-
ties, and what is known as a "job" in
America was "put up" on him. He was
told that Colonel had a detailed
map of the forthcoming battle, and if he
could get the officer intoxicated he doubt-
less could secure the map. This looked
very easy to the correspondent, so the
story goes, and he dropped into the colo-
nel's tent one night with a basket of
wine, and began to celebrate its arrival
from some friends. Soon the colonel
pretended to become communicative,
and the map was brought out and finally
loaned to the correspondent under the
promise that it would not be used. This
was sufficient. The correspondent hied
him to his tent, wrote an article and sent
56
AMERICAN CUSTOMS
the map to his paper in one of the large
cities, where it was duly published. It
proved to be what dressmakers call a
"Butterick pattern," a maze of lines for
cutting out dresses for women. The lines
looked like roads, and the practical
jokers had merely added towns and forts
and bridges here and there.
The Americans are excellent parents,
though small families are general. The
domestic life is charming. The family
is denied nothing needed, the only limit
being the purse of the head of the fam-
ily, so called, the real head in many cases
being the wife, who does not fail to assert
herself if the proper occasion opens.
Well-to-do families have every luxury,
and no nation is apparently so well off,
so completely supplied with the necessi-
ties of life as the American. One is
impressed by their business sagacity,
their cleverness in finance, their complete
57
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
grasp of all questions, yet no people are
easier gulled or more readily victimized.
An instance will suffice. In making my
investigations regarding methods of man-
aging railroads, I not only obtained in-
formation from the road officials, but
questioned the employees whenever it
happened that I was traveling. One day,
observing that it was the custom to "tip"
the porters (give money), I asked the
conductor what the men were paid. "Lit-
tle or nothing," was the reply; "they get
from seventy-five to one hundred dollars
a month out of the passengers on a long
run." "But the passengers paid the road
for the service?" "Yes, and they pay the
salary of the porter also," said the man.
With that in view the men are poorly
paid, and the railroad knows that the
people will make up their salaries, as
they do. If you refused you would have
no service.
58
AMERICAN CUSTOMS
This rule holds everywhere, in hotels
and restaurants. Servants receive little
pay where the patronage is rich, with the
understanding that they will make it up
out of the customers. Thus if you go to
a hotel you fee the bell-boy for bringing
you a glass of water. If you order one
of the seductive cocktails you fee the
man who brings it; you fee the chamber-
maid who attends to your room. In-
finite are the resources of these servants
who do not receive a fee. You fee the
elevator or lift boy, or he will take the
opportunity to jerk you up as though
shot out of a gun. You fee the porter
for taking up your trunk, and give a spe-
cial fee for unstrapping it. You fee the
head waiter, and when you fee the table
waiter he whispers in your ear that a
slight fee will be acceptable to the cook,
who will see that the Count or the Judge
will be cared for as becomes his station.
59
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
When you leave, the sidewalk porter ex-
pects a fee; if he does not receive it the
door of the carriage may possibly be
slammed on the tail of your coat. Then
you pay the cabman two dollars to carry
you to the station, and fee him. Arriv-
ing at the station, he hands you over to
a red-hatted porter, who carries your
baggage for a fee. He puts you in charge
of the railroad porter, who is feed at the
rate of about fifty cents per diem.
The American submits to this robbery
without a murmur; yet he is sagacious,
prudent. I can only explain his gullibil-
ity on the ground of his innate snobbery;
he thinks it is the "thing to do," and does
it, and for this reason it is carried to
the most merciless lengths. To illustrate.
In the season of 1902, when I was at
Newport, Mr. , a conspicuous mem-
ber of the New York smart set, known as
the "Four Hundred," lost his hat in some
60
AMERICAN CUSTOMS
way and rode to his home without one.
The ubiquitous reporter saw him, and
photographed him, bareheaded, and his
paper, the New York - , gave a col-
umn the following day to a description
of the new fad of going without a hat.
Thus the fashion started, and the amaz-
ing spectacle was seen the summer fol-
lowing of men and women of fashion
riding and walking for miles without
hats. This is beyond belief, yet it attract-
ed no attention from the common people,
who perhaps got the cast-off hats. De-
spite this, the Americans are hard-fisted,
shrewd, and as a nation a match for any
in the field of cunning.
I can explain it in no way than by as-
suming that it is due to overanxiety to
do the correct thing. Their own actors
satirize them, one especially taking them
off in a jingle which read, "It's English,
quite English, you know." It is said of
61
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
the men of the "Four Hundred" that
they turn up their trousers when it rains
in London, special reports of the weather
being sent to the clubs for the purpose;
but I cannot vouch for this. I have seen
the trousers turned up in all weathers,
and found no one who could explain
why he did so. What can you make of
so contradictory a people?
62
CHAPTER IV
THE AMERICAN WOMAN
THE most remarkable feature of
America is the women. Divest your
mind of any woman you know in order
to prepare yourself to receive my impres-
sions. To begin with, the American
woman ranks with her husband; indeed,
she is his superior in that all men ren-
der her homage and deference. It is
accounted a point of chivalry to stand as
the defender of the weaker sex. The
American girl is educated with the boys
in the public school, grows up with them,
and studies their studies, that she may be
their intellectual equal, and there is a
strong party, led by masculine women,
who contend for complete political rights
63
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
for women. In some States they vote,
and in nearly all may be elected to
boards of various kinds and to minor
offices. The Government departments
are rilled with women clerks, and all,
from the lowest to the highest, are equal ;
hence, it is a difficult matter to find a
native-born American who will become
a servant. They all aspire to be ladies,
and even aliens become salesladies, cook
ladies, laundry ladies. They are on their
dignity, and able to protect it from any
point of attack.
The lower classes are particularly un-
interesting, for they have no individual-
ity, and ape the class above them, the re-
sult being a cheap, ludicrous imitation
of a lady an absurd abstraction. The
women of the lower classes who are un-
married work in shops, factories, and res-
taurants, often in situations the reverse
of sanitary; yet prefer this to good situa-
64
THE AMERICAN WOMAN
tions in families as servants, service being
beneath their dignity and tending to dis-
turb the balance of equality. I doubt if
a native-born woman would permit her-
self to be called a servant; indeed, all the
servants are Irish, Swedes, Norwegians,
French, German, or negroes; the Amer-
ican girls fill the factories and the sweat-
shops of the great cities. When I refer
these girls to the lower classes it is
merely to classify them, as morally and
intellectually they are sometimes the
equal of the higher classes. The middle-
class women or girls are an attractive
type, well educated and often beautiful.
You obtain an idea of them in the great
shops and bazaars of the great cities,
where they fill every conceivable posi-
tion and receive from five to six dollars
per week.
But it is with the higher classes that
you will be most interested, and when I
65
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
say that the American girl, the product
of the first families, is at once beautiful,
refined, cultured, charming physically
and mentally, I have but faintly ex-
pressed it; yet the most pronounced char-
acteristic is their "daring," or temerity.
There is no word exactly to coverJt. I
frequently met women at dinners. \With
few exceptions, it appears impossible for
the American girl to take one of our
race, an Oriental, seriously. She can not
conceive that he max be a man of intelli-
gence and education) and I can not bet-
ter describe her than to sketch in its detail
a dinner to which I was invited by the
at Washington. The invitation was
engraved on a small card and read "The
and Mrs. - request the honor of
the presence of the - - at dinner on
Wednesday at eight o'clock, etc." I im-
mediately sent my valet with an accept-
ance and a basket of orchids to the
66
THE AMERICAN WOMAN
hostess, this being the mode among the
men who are au fait.
A week later I went to the dinner, and
was taken up to the dressing-room for
men, where I found a dozen or more, all
in the conventional evening dress I have
described now with tails, it being a
ladies' affair. In a corner was a table,
and by it stood a negro, also in a dress
suit, identical with that of the others. I
was cordially greeted by a guest, who
said, "Let me introduce you to our
American minister to Ijiji and Zanzi-
bar," and he presented me to the tall
negro, who was turning out some bot-
tled "cocktail." I shook hands with
him, and he laughed, showing a set of
teeth like an elephant's tusks, and asked
me "what I would have." He was a
servant dealing out "appetizers," and
this was an American joke. The per-
petrator of this joke was a minor official
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
in the State Department, yet the entire
party apparently considered it a good
joke. Fortunately, I could disguise my
real feeling, and I merely relate the in-
cident to give you an idea of the sense
of the proprieties as entertained by cer-
tain Americans. All that winter the
story of the American minister to Zan-
zibar was told at my expense without
doubt.
Having been "fortified," and some of
the men took two or three "cocktails"
before they became "tuned up," we went
down to the drawing-room, where I paid
my respects to the host and hostess, who
stood at the end of a beautiful room. As
I approached the lady greeted me with
a charming smile, extending her gloved
hand almost on a direct line with her
face, grasping it firmly, not shaking it,
saying, "Very kind of you, - . De-
lighted, I am sure. General" turning
68
THE AMERICAN WOMAN
to her husband "you know the , of
course," and the general shook my hand
as he would a pump-handle, and whis-
pered, "Our minister to Zanzibar treated
you all right, eh?" and with a wink inde-
scribable, closing the right eye for a sec-
ond, passed me on. The story had
got down-stairs before me. Americans
of the official class have, as a rule, an
absolute lack of savoir faire and social
refinement; lack them so utterly as to
become comical.
I now joined other groups of officers
and officials, there being about thirty
guests, half of whom were ladies. The
latter were all in what is termed full
dress. Why "full" I do not know. Here
you see one of the most extraordinary
features of American life the dress of
women. The Americans make claim to
being among the most modest, the most
religious, the most proper people in the
6 69
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
world, yet the appearance of the ladies
at many public functions is beyond be-
lief. All the women in this house were
beautiful and covered with jewels. They
wore gowns in the French court fashion,
with trains a yard or two in length, but
the upper part cut so low that a large
portion of the neck and shoulders was
exposed. I was embarrassed beyond ex-
pression; such an exhibition in China
could only be made by a certain class.
These matrons were of the highest re-
spectability. This remarkable custom of
a strange people, who deluge China
with missionaries from every sect under
the sun and at home commit the grossest
solecisms, is universal, and not thought
of as improper. There was not much
opportunity for introspective analysis,
yet I could not but believe that such a
custom must have its moral effect upon a
nation in the long run.
70
THE AMERICAN WOMAN
It was a mystery to me how the upper
part of some of the gowns was sup-
ported. In some instances there was no
strap over the shoulders, the upper third
of these alabaster torsos and arms being
absolutely naked, save for a band of
pearls, diamonds, or other gems, of a size
rarely seen in the Orient; but I learned
later that the bone or steel corset, which
molds the form, constituted the support
of the gown. I gradually became habit-
uated to the custom, and did not notice
it. My friend - , an ajtist of repute,
explained that it all depends on the point
of view. "Our people are essentially
artistic," he said. "There is nothing
more beautiful than the divine female
contour; the American women realize
this, and sacrifice themselves at the altar
of art." Yet the Americans are such
jokers that exactly what my friend had in
mind it was difficult to arrive at.
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
After being presented to these mar-
velously arrayed ladies we passed into
the dining-room, where I found myself
with one of the most charming of divin-
ities, a woman famous for her wit and
literary success. I have described the
typical dinner, so I need not repeat my
words. My companion held the same
extraordinary attitude toward me that
all American women do; amused, half
laughing, refusing absolutely to take me
seriously, and probing me with so many
absurd questions that I was forced to
ask some very pointed ones, which only
succeeded in making her laugh. The
conversation proceeded something as fol-
lows: "I am charmed that I have fallen
to your Highness." "Equally charmed,"
I replied; "but my rank does not admit
the adjective you do me the honor to ap-
ply." "No?" was the answer. "Well,
I'll wager you anything that when the
72
THE AMERICAN WOMAN
butler pours your wine in the first course
he will call you Count, and in the next
Prince. You see, they become exhil-
arated as the dinner progresses. But tell
me, how many wives have you in China,
you look very wicked?" Imagine this!
But I rallied, and replied that I had none
a statement received with incredulity.
Her next question was, "Have you ever
been a highbinder?" Ministers of grace!
and this from a people who profess to
know more than any nation on earth! I
explained that a highbinder ranked with
a professional murderer in this country,
whereupon she again laughed, and, turn-
ing to General - , in a loud voice said,
"General, I have been calling the -
a highbinder," at which the company
laughed at my expense. In China, as
you know, a guest or a host would have
killed himself rather than commit so
gross a solecism ; but this is America.
73
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
The second course was oysters served
in the shell, and my companion, assum-
ing that I had never seen an oyster
[ignorant that our fathers ate oysters
thousands of years before America was
heard of and when the Anglo-Saxon was
living in a cave], in a confidential and
engaging whisper remarked, "This, your
'Highness,' is the only animal we eat
alive." "Why alive?" I asked, looking
as innocent as possible; "why not kill
them?" "Oh, the Society for the Pre-
vention of Cruelty to Animals will not
permit it," was her reply. "You see, if
they are swallowed alive they are imme-
diately suffocated, but if you cut them
up they suffer horribly while the soup is
being served. How large a one do you
think you can swallow?" Fancy the
daring of a young girl to joke with a
man twice her age in this way! I did not
undeceive her, and allowed her to en-
74
THE AMERICAN WOMAN
lighten me on various subjects of con-
temporaneous interest. "It's so strange
that the Chinese never study mathemat-
ics," she next remarked. "Why, all our
public schools demand higher mathe-
matics, and in the fourth grade you could
not find a child but could square the cir-
cle."
In this manner this volatile young
savage entertained me all through the
dinner, utterly superficial herself, yet
possessed of a singular sharpness and wit,
mostly at my expense; yet she was so
charming I forgave her. There is no
denying that you become enraged, in-
sulted, chagrined by these women, who,
however, by a look, dispel your annoy-
ance. I do not understand it. I found
that while an author of a novel she was
grossly ignorant of the literature of her
own country, yet she possessed that con-
summate American froth by which she
75
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
could convince the average person that
she w^is brilliant to the point of scintilla-
tion.^ I fancy that any keen, well-edu-
cated woman must have seen that I was
laughing at her, yet so inborn was her
belief that a Chinaman must be an im-
becile that she was ever joking at my
expense. The last story she told me illus-
trates the peculiar fancy for joking these
women possess. I had been describing
a storm at Manchester-by-the-Sea and the
splendor of the ocean. "Did you see the
tea-leaves?" she asked, solemnly. "No,"
I replied. "That is strange," she said.
"I fear you are not very observing. After
every storm the tea-leaves still wash up
all along Massachusetts Bay," alluding
to the fact that loads of tea on ships were
tossed over by the Americans during the
quarrel with England before the Revo-
lution.
The daring of the American woman
76
THE AMERICAN WOMAN
impressed me. This same lady asked me
not to remain with the men to smoke
but go on the veranda with her, where
tete-a-tete she produced a gold cigarette-
case and offered me a cigarette. This I
found not uncommon. American women
of the fast sets drink at the clubs; an
insidious drink the "high-ball" is a
common one, yet I never saw a woman
under the influence of wine or liquor.
The amount of both consumed in Amer-
ica is amazing. The consumption per
head in the United States for beer alone
is ten and a half gallons for each of the
eighty millions. My friend, a prohi-
bitionist, a member of a political party
whose object is to ruin the wine industry
of the world, put it stronger, and, backed
by facts, said that if the wine, beer,
whisky, gin, and alcoholic drinks of all
kinds and the tea and coffee drank yearly
by the Americans could be collected it
77
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
would make a lake two miles square and
ten feet deep. The alcoholic drinks alone
if collected would fill a canal one hun-
dred miles long, one hundred feet wide,
and ten feet deep. May their saints
propitiate this insatiate thirst!
It would amuse you to hear the Amer-
ican women of literary tendency boast of
their schools, yet when educational facil-
ities are considered the average Amer-
ican is ignorant. They are educated in
lines. Thus a girl graduate will speak
French with a good accent, or she will
converse in Milwaukee German. She
can prove her statement in conic sections
or algebra, but when it comes to actual
knowledge she is deficient. This is due
to the ignorance of the teachers in the
public schools and their lack of inborn
culture. No better test of the futility of
the American public-school education
can be seen than the average girl product
78
THE AMERICAN WOMAN
of the public school of the lower class
in a city like Chicago or New York.
/Americans affect to despise Chinese
methods because the Chinese girl or boy
is not crammed with a thousand thoughts
of no relative value. China has existed
thousands of years ; her people are happy ;
happiness and content are the chief vir-
tues, and if China is ever overthrown it
will be not because, as the Americans
put it, she is behind the times, but be-
cause the fever of unrest and the craze
for riches has become a contagion which
will react upon her. The development
of China is normal, that of America hys-
terical.j Our growth has been along the
line of peace; that of other nations has
been entirely opposed to their own re-
ligious teaching, showing it to be farcical
and pure sophistry.
If I should tell you how many Amer-
ican women asked me why Chinese
79
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
women bandage their feet you would be
amazed; yet every one of these submit-
ted to and practised a deformity that has
seriously affected the growth and devel-
opment of the race. I am no iconoclast,
but listen to the story of the American
woman who, with one hand, deforms her
waist in the most barbarous fashion,
while waving the other in horror at her
Chinese sister with the bound feet.
American women change their fashions
twice a year or more. Fashions are in
the hands of the middle classes, and the
highest lady in the land is completely at
their mercy; to disobey the mandates of
fashion is to become ridiculous. The
fashion is set in Paris and various cities
by men and women who have skilled
artists to draw patterns and paint pic-
tures showing the new mode. These are
published in certain papers and issued by
millions, republished in America, and no
80
THE AMERICAN WOMAN
woman here would have the temerity to
ignore them. The laws of the Medes
and Persians are not more inexorable.
It is not a suggestion but an order, a
fiat, a command, so we see this free na-
tion really truckling to or dominated by
a class of tradesmen. The object of the
change of style is to create a sale for new
goods, give work for laborers, and enable
the producer to reach the pocketbook of
the rich man; but the "fashions" have
become so fixed, so thoroughly a na-
tional feature, that they affect rich and
poor, and we have the spectacle of every
woman studying these guides and con-
forming to them with a servility beyond
belief. I once said to a lady, "The Chi-
nese lady dresses richer than the Amer-
ican, but her styles have been very much
the same for thousands of years," but I
believe she doubted it. It would be
futile, indeed impossible, for me to ex-
Si
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
plain the extravagances of American
fashion. Their own press and stage use
it as a standard butt. At the present time
tablets or plates of fashion insist upon
an outline which shows the form com-
pletely, the antipodes of a Chinese wom-
an; and this is intensified by some of the
women who, when in the street, grasp
the skirt and in an ingenious way wrap
it about so that the outline of the Amer-
ican divinity is sufficiently well defined
to startle one. Such a trick in China
could but originate with the demi-
monde, yet it is taken up by certain of
the Americans who are constantly seek-
ing for variety. There can be no ques-
tion but that the middle-class fashion
designer revenges himself upon the beau
monde. They will not receive him so-
cially, so he forces them to wear his
clothes.
Some years ago women were made to
82
THE AMERICAN WOMAN
wear "hoops," pictures of which I have
seen in old publications. Imagine, if you
can, a bird-cage three feet high and four
feet across, formed of bone of the whale
or some metal. This was worn beneath
the dress, expanding it on either side so
that it was difficult to approach a lady.
A later order was given to wear a camel-
like "hump" at the base of the vertebral
column, which was called the "bustle"
a contrivance calculated to unnerve
the wearer, not to speak of the looker-on ;
yet the American woman adopted it, dis-
torted her body, and aped the gait of the
kangaroo, the form being called the
"Grecian bend." This lasted six months
or more; first adopted by the aristocracy,
then by the common people, and by the
time the latter had it well in hand the
bon ton had cast it aside and were trying
something else.
A close study of this mad dressing
83
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
shows that there is always a "hump." At
one time it went all around; later ap-
peared only behind, like an excrescence
on a bilbol-tree. At the present time the
designer has drawn his picture showing
it as a pendent bag from the "shirt-
waist," like the pouch of the bird pelican.
A few years ago the designer, in a de-
lirium, placed the humps on the tops of
the sleeves, then snatched them away and
tipped them upside down. Finally he
appeared to go utterly mad with the de-
sire to humiliate the woman, and cre-
ated a fashion that entailed dragging the
skirt on the ground from one to two
feet.
Did the American woman resent the
insult; did she refuse to adopt a cus-
tom not only disgusting but really filthy,
one that a Chinese lady would have
died rather than have accepted? By no
means ; she seized upon it with the ardor
84
THE AMERICAN WOMAN
of a child with a new toy, and for a year
the side-paths of the great cities of the
country were swept by women's skirts,
clouds of dust following them. The
press took up the question, but without
effect; the fashion dragged its nause-
ating and frightful course from rich and
poor, and I was told by an official that it
was impossible to stop it or to force a
glimmer of reason into the minds of these
women. Then they gave it up, and
passed a law making it a statutory offense,
with heavy fines, for any one to "ex-
pectorate" on the sidewalk or anywhere
else where the saliva could be swept up
by the trains of the women of nearly all
classes who followed the fashion. The
American woman, as I have said, looks
askance at the footgear of the Chinese
high, warm, dry, sanitary, yet revels in
creations which cramp the feet and dis-
tort the anatomy. The shoes are made
7 8 5
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
of leather, inflexible, pointed; and to
enable them to deceive the men into the
belief that they have high insteps (a sign
of good blood here) the women wear
stilt-like heels, which throw the foot for-
ward and elevate the heel from two to
three inches above the ground.
But all this is but a bagatelle to the
fashions in deformity which we find
among nearly all American women.
There are throughout the country num-
bers of large manufactories which make
"corsets" a peculiar waist and lung
compressor, used by nearly every woman
in America. These men are as dogmatic
as the designers of the fashion-plates.
They also issue plates or guides showing
new changes, and the women, like sheep,
adopt them. The American woman be-
lieves that a narrow waist enhances her
beauty, and the corset-maker works upon
the national weakness and builds crea-
86
THE AMERICAN WOMAN
tjons that put to shame and ridicule the
bound feet of the aristocratic Chinese
woman. The corset is a lace and ribbon-
decorated armor, made either of steel ribs
or whale-bone, which fits the waist and
clings to the hips. It is laced up, and
the degree of tightness depends upon the
will or nerve of the wearer. It com-
presses the heart and lungs, and wearing
it is a most barbarous custom a telling
argument against the assumption of high
intelligence on the part of the Ameri-
cans, who, in this respect, rank with the
flat-headed Indians of the northwest
American coast, whose heads I have seen
in their medical offices side by side with
a diagram showing the abnormal condi-
tions caused by the corset.
A year ago the fiat went forth that
the American woman must have wide
hips. Presto! there appeared especially
devised machinery, advertised in all the
8?
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
journals, accomplishing the condition
for those whom nature had not well
endowed. Now the dressmaker has de-
cided that they must be narrow-hipped,
and half a million dollars in false hips,
rubber pads, and other properties are
cast aside. No extravaganza is too absurd
for these people who are abject slaves to
the whimsicalities of the designer, who
is a wag in his way, as has been well
shown in a story told to me. The de-
signers for a famous man dressmaker in
Paris had a habit of taking sketches of
the latest creations to their club meetings.
One evening a clever caricaturist took a
caricature of a fashion showing a woman
with enormous and outlandish sleeves.
It created a laugh. "As impossible as it
is," said the artist, "I will wager a dinner
that if I present it seriously to a certain
fashion paper they will take it up." This
is said to be the history of the "big-
THE AMERICAN WOMAN
sleeve" fashion that really amazed the
Americans themselves.
The customs of women here are so at
variance with those of China that they
are not readily understood. \ Our ways
are those culled from a civilization of
thousands of years; theirs from one just
beginning; yet they have the temerity to
speal^pf China as effete and behind the
times./ In writing, the women affect the
English round hand and write across
from left to right, and then beginning at
the left of the page again. They are
fond of perfumes, especially the lower
classes, and display a barbaric taste for
jewels. It is not uncommon to see the
wife of a wealthy man wear half a mil-
lion pounds sterling in diamonds or
rubies at the opera. I was told that one
lady wore a $5,000 diamond in her garter.
The utterly strange and contradictory
customs of these women are best observed
89
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
at the beach and bath. In China if a
woman is modest she is so at all times;
but this is not true with some Americans,
who appear to have the desire to attract
attention, especially that of men, by an
appeal to the beautiful in nature and
art; at least this is the impression the
unprejudiced looker-on gains by a so-
journ in the great cities and fashionable
resorts. If you happen to be riding
horseback, or walking in the street with
a lady, and any accident occurs to her
costume whereby her neck, her leg, or
her ankle is exposed, she will be morti-
fied beyond expression; yet the night
previous you might have sat in the box
with her at the opera, when her decollete
gown had made her the mark for hun-
dreds of lorgnettes. Again, this lady the
next morning might bathe with me at
the beach and lie on the sand basking in
the sun like a sireji in a costume that
90
THE AMERICAN WOMAN
would arrest the attention of a St. An-
thony.
Let me describe such a costume: A
pair of skin-tight black stockings, then a
pair of tights of black silk and a flimsy
black skirt that comes just to the knee;
a black silk waist, armless, and as low in
the neck as the moral law permits, be-
neath which, to preserve her contour, is
a water-proof corset. Limbs, to expose
which an inch on the street were a crime,
are blazoned to the world at Newport,
Cape May, Atlantic City, and other re-
sorts, and often photographed and shown
in the papers. To explain this manifest
contradiction would be beyond the pow-
ers of an Oriental, had he the prescience
of the immortal Confucius and the divi-
nation of a Mahomet and Hilliel com-
bined.
CHAPTER V
THE SUPERSTITIONS OF THE AMERICANS
AMONG the many topics I have dis-
cussed with Americans, our alleged su-
perstitions, or our belief in so-called
dragons, genii, ghosts, etc., seem to have
made the deepest impression. A charm-
ing American woman, whom I met at the
Embassy at dinner, told me with se-
riousness that our people may be intelli-
gent, but the fact that in San Francisco
and Los Angeles they at certain times
drag through the streets a dragon five
hundred feet long to exorcise the evil
spirits, showed that the Chinese were
grossly superstitious. If I had told my
companion that she was the victim of a
thousand superstitions, she would have
taken it as an affront, because, according
92
THE SUPERSTITIONS OF THE AMERICANS
to American usage, it is not proper to
dispute with a lady. The Americans are
the most superstitious people in the
world. They will not sit down to a din-
ner-table when there are thirteen per-
sons. No hostess would attempt such a
thing, the belief being general that some
one of the guests would die within a
year. I was a guest at a dinner-party
when a lady suddenly remarked, "We
are thirteen." Several of the guests were
evidently much annoyed, and the hostess,
a most pleasing woman, apologized, and
replied that she had invited fourteen, but
one guest had failed her. It was appar-
ent that something must be done, and
this was cleverly solved by the hostess
sending for her mother, who joined the
party, and the dinner proceeded. I do
not think all the guests believed in this
absurd superstition, but they were all
very uncomfortable. I do not believe I
93
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
met a society woman in Washington or
New York who would walk through
a cemetery or graveyard at midnight
alone. I asked several ladies if they
would do this, and all were horrified at
the idea, though strongly denying any
belief in ghosts or spirits.
In nearly every American city one or
more houses may be found haunted by
ghosts, which Americans believe have
made the places so disagreeable that the
houses have been in consequence de-
serted. So well-defined is the super-
stition, and so recurrent are the beliefs
in ghosts and spirits, that the best-edu-
cated people have found it necessary to
establish a society, called the Society for
Psychical Research, in order to demon-
strate that ghosts are not possible^ I
believe I am not overstepping the bounds
when I say that this yainglorjfuis people,
who claim to have the finest public-
94
THE SUPERSTITIONS OF THE AMERICANS
school system in the world, are, consider-
ing their advantages, the most super-
stitious of all the white racesy^Out of
perhaps thirty men, whom I asked, not
one was willing to say he could pass
through a graveyard at night without
fear at heart, an undefined nervous feel-
ing, due to innate superstitioiy The
middle-class woman who stumbles up-
stairs considers it to mean that she will
not marry. To break a mirror, or receive
as a present a knife, also means bad luck.
Many people wear amulets, safe-guards,
and good-luck stones. Several millions
of the Catholic sect wear a charm, which
they think will save them from sudden
death. All Catholics believe that some
of their churches own the bones of saints,
which have the power to give them
health and other good things. Many
Americans wear the seed of the horse-
chestnut, and many others wear lucky
95
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
coins. Belief in the luck of the four-leaf
clover, instead of that with three leaves,
is so strong that people will spend hours
in hunting for one. They are designed
into pins and certain insignia, and used
in a hundred other ways.
But more remarkable than all is the
old horseshoe superstition. I have seen
beautifully gowned ladies stop their
driver, descend from the carriage, and
pick up such a shoe and carry it home,
telling me that they never failed to pick
up one, as it brought good luck; yet this
lady laughed at our dragon! In the
country, horseshoes are commonly seen
over the doors of stables, and even of
houses. These same people once hung
women for witchcraft, and slaughtered
women for persisting in certain religious
beliefs. I had the pleasure of meeting
a well-known man, who stated that he
had the power of the "evil eye." In-
96
THE SUPERSTITIONS OF THE AMERICANS
numerable people believe the paw of an
animal called the rabbit to contain sov-
ereign good luck. They carry it about,
and can buy it in shops. Indeed, I
could fill a volume, much less a letter,
with the absurd superstitions of these
people who send women to China to con-
vert the "Heathen Chinee," who may be
"peculiar," as Mr. Harte states in his
poem; but the Chinaman certainly has
not the marvelous variety of superstitions
possessed by the American, who does not
allow cats about rooms where there are
infants, fearing that they will suck the
child's breath; who believe that certain
snakes milk cows, and that mermen are
possible. I stood in a tent last summer
at Atlantic City a large seaside resort
and watched a line of middle-class peo-
ple passing to- see a "Chinese mermaid,"
of the kind the Japanese manufacture so
cleverly. It was to be seen on the water.
97
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
All, so far as I could judge, accepted it
as real. So much for the influence of
the American public school, where phys-
iology is taught.
98
CHAPTER VI
THE AMERICAN PRESS
ONE feature of American life is so
peculiar that I fear I can not present it
to you clearly, as there is nothing like
it under the sun. I refer to the news-
papers. If such an institution should
appear in any Oriental country, or even
in Russia, many heads would fall to
the ground for treason or gross disre-
spect to the power of the throne. The
American must not only have the news
of his neighbor, but the news of the
world every hour in the day, and the
newspapers furnish it. In the villages
they appear weekly, in the towns daily,
in the great cities hourly, boys screaming
their names, shouting and yelling like
demons. Yesterday beneath the window
99
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
a boy screamed, "The Empress of China
elopes with her coachman!" I bought
the paper, in which a column was de-
voted to it. Fancy this in Pekin. Shades
of ! I can not better describe these
papers than to say they have absolute
license as to what to print, this freedom
being a principle, but it is grossly abused
by blackmailers. The papers have no
respect for man, woman, or child, the
President or the Deity. The most fla-
grant attacks are made upon private per-
sons. Rarely is an editor shot or im-
prisoned. The President may be called
vile names, his appearance may become
the butt of ridicule in opposition papers,
and cartoonists, employed at large sal-
aries, draw insulting pictures of him and
his Cabinet. One would think that the
way to obtain patronage of a person
would be to praise him, but this would
be considered an orientalism. The real
100
THE AMERICAN PRESS
way to secure readers in America is to
abuse, insult, and outrage private feel-
ings, the argument being that people will
buy the journal to see what is said about
them. All the American press is not
founded upon this system of virtual
blackmail. There are respectable pa-
pers, conservative and honorable; but I
believe I am not overstating it when I
say that every large city has at least one
paper where the secrets of a family and
its most sacred traditions are treated as
lawful game.
The actual heads of papers have often
been men of high standing, as Horace
Greeley, Henry J. Raymond, E. L. God-
kin, Henry Watterson, the late Charles
A. Dana, James Gordon Bennett, and
William Cullen Bryant. But in the
modern newspaper the man in control is
a managing editor, whose tenure of office
depends upon his keeping ahead of all
8 101
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
others. The press, then, with its tele-
graphic connection with the world, with
its thousands of readers, is a power, and
in the hands of a man of small mind be-
comes a menace to civilization and easily
drifts into blackmail. This is displayed
in a thousand ways, especially in politics.
The editor desires to obtain "influence,"
the power to secure places for his favor-
ites, and, if he is slighted, he intimates
to the men in power, "Appoint my can-
didate or I will attack you." This is a
virtual threat. In this way the editor
intimidates the office-holder. I was in-
formed by a good authority of two jour-
nals of standing in America which
he knew were started as "blackmailing
sheets"; and certainly the license of the
press is in every way diabolical, a result
of the American dogma of free speech.
When one arrives in America he is met
with dozens of representatives of the
102
THE AMERICAN PRESS
press, who ask a thousand and one per-
sonal and impertinent questions, which,
if one does not answer, one is attacked
in some insidious way. One man I know
refused to listen to a very importunate
newspaper man, and was congratulating
himself on his escape, when on the fol-
lowing day an article appeared in the
paper giving several libelous pictures of
him, the object being to show that he
had nothing to say because he was men-
tally deficient. He appealed to the ed-
itor, but was told that his only recourse
was to sue. As one walks down the
gangplank of a ship he may become the
mark for ten or fifteen cameras, which
photograph him without permission, and
whose owners will "poke fun" at his re-
sistance.
As a news-collecting medium the press
of the United States is a magnificent or-
ganization. At breakfast you receive
103
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
the news of the whole world social, dip-
lomatic, criminal, and religious. Meet-
ings of Congress and stories of private
life are alike all served up, fully illus-
trated with pictures of the people and
events. A corner is devoted to children,
another to women, another to religious
Americans, and a little sermon is
preached. Then there are suggestive
pictures for the man about town, recipes
for the cook, weather reports for the
traveler, a story for the romancer, per-
haps a poem, and an editorial page,
where ideas and theories are promul-
gated and opinions manufactured on all
subjects, ready made for adoption by
the reader, who in many instances has
his thinking done for him. I made a
test of this, and asked a number of men
for their opinion on a certain subject,
and then guessed the name of their fa-
vorite paper, and in most instances was
104
THE AMERICAN PRESS
correct. They all claimed that they took
the paper because it agreed with their
political ideas; but I am confident that
the reverse is true, the paper having in-
sidiously trained them to adopt its view.
Here we see where the power of one man
or editor comes in, and worse yet, a
nation which acquires this "newspaper
habit," this having some one to think for
it by machinery, as it were, will lose its
mental power, its facility in analysis. I
made bold to suggest this to a prominent
man, but he merely laughed. As a whole,
the American newspapers are valuable;
they are the real educators of the people,
and have a vast influence. For this rea-
son there should be some restriction im-
posed on them.
105
CHAPTER VII
THE AMERICAN DOCTOR
AT a dinner at Manchester in the sum-
mer I had as my vis-a-vis a delightful
young American, who, among other
things, said to me: "It is astonishing to
me that o many of your people live
long, considering the ignorance of your
doctors." I assured her that this was
merely her ppint of view, and that we
were well satisfied with our doctors or
physicians. I wished to retaliate by tell-
ing my fair companion a story I had
heard the day previous. An American
physician operated upon a man and re-
moved what he called a "cyst," which he
displayed with some pride to a doctor of
another school. "Why, man," said the
106
THE AMERICAN DOCTOR
latter, "that isn't a cyst; it's the man's
kidney!"
The Americans have made rapid ad-
vances in medicine and surgery, and they
have some extraordinary physicians.
From two to four years of study com-
pletes the education of some of the doc-
tors, and hundreds are turned out every
year. Some are of the old and regular
school of medicine, but others are called
homeopathic, which means that they
give small doses of the more powerful
medicines. Then there are those who
practise in both schools. Indeed, in no
other field does ignorance, superstition,
credulity, and lack of real education dis-
play itself as among the American doc-
tors or healers. I believe I could fill a
volume by the mere enumeration of the
diabolical and absurd nostrums offered
by knaves to heal men who profess to
hold in ridicule the Chinese doctors. I
107
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
mention but a few, and when I tell you,
as a truth beyond cavil, that the most ex-
traordinary of these healers, the most
impossible, have the largest following,
you can see what I mean by the credulity
of the people as a whole. Christian Sci-
ence doctors have a following of tens of
thousands. They combine so-called sci-
ence with religion; leave their God to
cure them at long or short range through
the medium of so-called agents. The
head of this faction is an ignorant but
clever woman, who has turned the heads
of perhaps thirty-three and a third per
cent of the American women whom she
has come in contact with.
Then come the faith curists, who rely
upon faith alone. You simply are to
think you will get well. Of course, many
die from neglect. As an illustration of
the credulity of the average American,
a Christian Science healer was once treat-
108
THE AMERICAN DOCTOR
ing a sick woman from a distant town,
and finally the patient died. When the
bill was presented the husband said,
"You have charged for treatment two
weeks after my wife died." It was a
fact that the healer had been treating the
woman after she was buried, the hus-
band having failed to give notice of the
death. One would have expected the
"healer" to be thrown into confusion,
but far from it; she merely replied, "I
thought I noticed a vacancy."
Next come the musical curists, who
listen to thrills of sound, a big organ
being the doctor. Then there is the
psychometric doctor, who cures by spir-
its. The spirit doctor cures in the same
way. The palmist professes to point out
how to avoid the ills of life. Magnetic
healers have hundreds of victims in every
city. Their advertisements in the jour-
nals of all sorts are of countless kinds.
109
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
Some cure at short hand, some miles dis-
tant from the patient. They are equaled
in numbers by the hypnotists, or hypnotic
doctors, who profess to throw their pa-
tients into a trance and cure them by sug-
gestion. I heard of one cure in which
the guileless American is made to lie in
an open grave; this is called "the return
to nature." Again, patients are cured
by being buried in hot mud or in hot
sand. I have seen a salt-water cure,
where patients were made to remain in
the ocean ten hours a day. The plain
water cure has thousands of followers,
with hospitals and infirmaries, where the
patient is bathed, soaked, filled, washed,
and plunged in water and charged a high
amount.
Then there is the vegetarian cure, no
meat being eaten ; and there are the meat
eaters, who use no vegetables. There are
over fifty thousand masseurs and osteo-
no
THE AMERICAN DOCTOR
paths in the country, who cure by baths
and rubbing. You may have a bath of
milk, water, electricity, or alcohol, or a
bath of any description under the sun,
which is guaranteed to cure any and all
ailments. Perhaps the most extraordi-
nary curists are the color doctors. They
have rooms filled with blue and other
colors, in whose rays the patient victim
or the victim patient sits, "like Patience
on a monument." I could not begin to
give you an enumeration of the various
kinds of electric cures; they are legion.
But the most amazing class comprises
the patent-medicine men, who are usu-
ally not doctors at all, but buy from
some one a "cure" and then advertise it,
spending in one instance which I inves-
tigated one million dollars a year.
Every advantageous wall, stone, or cliff
in America will be posted. You see
the name at every turn, and the gul-
iii
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
lible Americans bite, chew, and swal-
low.
It is not overstating facts when I say
that three-fifths of the people buy some
of these patent nostrums, which the real
medical men denounce, showing that the
masses of the people are densely igno-
rant, the victims of any faker who may
shout his wares loud enough. In China
such a thing would be impossible; the
block would stop the practise; but, my
dear - ,Qthe Americans assure me
China is a thousand years behind the
times, for which let us be devoutly thank-
ful! I have not enumerated a tenth of
the kinds of doctors. who prey upon these
unfortunate people.) There are compa-
nies of them, who guarantee to cure any-
thing, and skilfully mulct the sick of
their last penny. There are retreats for
the unfortunate, farms for deserted in-
fants, and homes for unfortunate women
112
THE AMERICAN DOCTOR
carried on by villains of both sexes.
There are traveling doctors who go from
town to town, who cure "while you wait,"
and give a circus while talking and sell-
ing their cure; and in nine cases out of
ten the nostrum is an alcoholic drink dis-
guised.
In no land under the sun are there so
many ignorant blatant fakers preying on
a people, and in no land do you find so
credulous a throng as in America, yet
claiming to represent the cream of the
intelligence of the world ; they are so
easily led that the most impossible per-
son, if he be a good talker, can go abroad
and by the use of money and audacity
secure a following to drink his salt water,
paying a dollar a bottle for it and sing
his praises. Such a doctor can secure the
names and pictures of judges, governors
of States, senators, congressmen, promi-
nent men and women, officers of the vol-
"3
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
unteer army, artists, actors, singers in
fact, prominent people of all kinds will
provide their pictures and give testi-
monials, which are blazonly published.
These same people go to Chinese drug
shops and laugh at the "heathen" drugs,
and wonder why the Chinaman is alive.
America has a body of physicians and
surgeons who are a credit to the world,
modest, conscientious, and with a high
sense of honor, but they are as a dragon's
tooth in a multitude to the so-called
"quacks," who take the money of the
masses and prey upon them, protected in
many cases by the law. No one profes-
sion so demonstrates the abject credulity
of the great mass of Americans as that of
medicine.
One other incident may further illus-
trate the jokes these so-called doctors play
upon the common people. In a coun-
try town was a "quack" doctor, who
114
THE AMERICAN DOCTOR
professed to be a "head examiner," giv-
ing people charts according to their
"bumps," a fad which has many follow-
ers. "This, ladies and gentlemen," said
the lecturer, holding out a small skull,
"is the skull of Alexander the Great at
the age of six. Note the prominent brow.
This [holding up a larger skull] is the
same at the age of ten. This [holding
out another] at the age of twenty-one;
[then stepping out to the front of the
stage] this is the complete skull of Alex-
ander at the time of his death." All of
which appeared to be accepted in good
faith.
Of the best physicians in America one
can not say enough in praise. I was
most impressed by their high sense of
honor. They have an agreement which
they call their "ethics," by which they
will not advertise or call attention to
their learning. Consequently, the lower
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
and ignorant classes are caught by the
blatant chaff of the patent-medicine
venders and the quack doctors. What
the word "quack" means in this sense I
do not quite know; literally, it is the cry
of the goose. The "regular doctor" will
not take advantage of any medicine he
may discover, or any instrument; all
belongs to humanity, and one doctor be^
comes famous over another by his success
in keeping people from dying. The
grateful patient saved, tells his friends,
and so the doctor becomes known. In
all America I never heard of a doctor
that acted on the principle which holds
among our doctors, that the best way to
cure is to watch the patient and keep him
well, or prevent him from being taken
sick. The Americans, in their conceit,
consider Chinese doctors ignorant fakers;
yet, so far as I can learn, the death-rate
among the Chinese, city for city, coun-
116
THE AMERICAN DOCTOR
try for country, is less than among Amer-
icans. The Chinese women are longer
lived and less subject to disease. In
what is known as New England, the
oldest well-populated section of the coun-
try, people would die out were it not for
the constant accession of immigrants. On
the other hand, the Chinese constantly in-
crease, despite a policy of non-intercourse
with foreigners. (The Americans have,
in a civilization dating back to 1492, al-
ready begun to show signs of decadence,
and are only saved by constant immigra-
tion. China has a civilization of thou-
sands of years, and is increasing in pop-
ulation every day, yet her doctors and
their methods are ridiculed by the Amer-
icansv The people have many sayings
here, one of which is, "The proof of the
pudding lies in the eating." It seems
applicable to this case.
117
CHAPTER VIII
PECULIARITIES AND MANNERISMS
ONE finds it difficult to learn the lan-
guage fluently because of a peculiar sec-
ond language called "slang," which is in
use even among the fashionable classes.
I despair of conveying any clear idea of
it, as we have no exact equivalent. As
near as I can judge, it is first composed
by professional actors on the stage. Some
funny remark being constantly repeated,
as a part of a taking song, becomes slang,
conveying a certain meaning, and is at
once adopted by the people, especially
by a class who pose as leaders in all
towns, but who are not exactly the best,
but charming imitations of the best, we
may say. To illustrate this "jargon," I
118
PECULIARITIES AND MANNERISMS
took a drive with a young lady at Man-
chester a seaside resort. Her father
was a man of good family, an official, and
she was an attendant at a fashionable
school. The following occurred in the
conversation. Her slang is italicized:
Heathen Chinee: "It is very dull this
week, Miss - ."
Young lady, sententiously: "Bum"
Heathen Chinee: "I hope it will be
less bum soon."
Young lady: "It's all off with me all
right, if it don't change soon, and don't
you forget it!"
Heathen Chinee: "I wish I could do
something."
Young lady: "Well, you'll have to get
a move on you, as I go back to school
to-morrow; then there'll be something
doing"
Heathen Chinee : "Have you seen
lately?"
119
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
Young lady: "Yes, and isn't he a
peach? Ah, he's a peacharina, and don't
you forget it/"
Young lady (passing a friend) : "Ah,
there! why so toppy? Nay, nay, Paul-
ine" this in reply to remarks from a
friend; then turning to me, "Isn't she a
jim dandy? Say, have you any girls in
China that can top her?"
These are only a few of the slang ex-
pressions which occur to me. They are
countless and endless. Such a girl in
meeting a friend, instead of saying good-
morning, says, "Ah, there" which is the
slang for this salutation. If she wished
to express a difference of opinion with
you she would say, "Oh, come off" This
girl would probably outgrow this if she
moved in the very best circle, but the
shop-girl of a common type lives in a
whirl of slang; it becomes second nature,
while the young men of all classes seem
120
PECULIARITIES AND MANNERISMS
to use nothing else, and we often see the
jargon of the lowest class used by some
of the best people. There has been com-
piled a dictionary of slang; books are
written on it, and an adept, say a "rough"
or "hoodlum," it is said can carry on a
conversation with nothing else. Thus,
"Hi, cully, what's on?" to which comes
in answer, "Hunki dori." All this means
that a man has said, "How do you do,
how are you, and what are you doing?"
and thus learned in reply that everything
is all right. A number of gentlemen were
posing for a lady before a camera. "Have
you finished?" asked one. "Yes, it's all
o#"," was the reply, "and a peach, I
think." It is unnecessary to say that
among really refined people this slang is
never heard, and would be considered a
gross solecism, which gives me an oppor-
tunity to repeat that the really cultivat-
ed Americans, and they are many, are
121
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
among the most delightful and charming
of people.
They have strange habits, these Amer-
icans. The men chew tobacco, especially
in the South, and in Virginia I have seen
men spitting five or six feet, evidently
taking pride in their skill in striking a
"cuspidore." In every hotel, office, or
public place are cuspidores which be-
come targets for these chewers. This is
a national habit, extraordinary in so en-
lightened a people. So ridiculous has it
made the Americans, so much has been
written about it by such visitors as
Charles Dickens, that the State govern-
ments have determined to take up the
"spitting" question, and now there is a
fine of from $10 to $100 for any one spit-
ting in a car or on a hotel floor. Nearly
all the "up-to-date" towns have passed
anti-spitting laws. Up to this time, or
even during my college days in Amer-
122
PECULIARITIES AND MANNERISMS
ica, this habit made walking on the side-
walk a most disagreeable function, and
the interior of cars was a horror. Is not
this remarkable in a people who claim
so much? In the South certain white
men and women chew snuff a gross
habit.
In the North they also have a strange
custom, called chewing gum. This gum
is the exudation from certain trees, and
is manufactured into plates and sold in
an attractive form, merely to chew like
tobacco, and young and old may be seen
chewing with great velocity. The chil-
dren forget themselves and chew with
great force, their jaws working like
those of a cow chewing her cud, only
more rapidly; and to see a party of three
or four chewing frantically is one of the
"sights" in America, which astonishes
the Heathen Chinee and convinces him
that, in the slang of the country, "there
123
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
are others" who are peculiar. There are
many manufactories of this stuff, which
is harmless, though such constant chew-
ing can but affect the size of the muscles
of the jaw if the theory of evolution is to
be believed; at least there will be no
atrophy of these parts.
In New England, the northeastern
portion of the country, this habit ap-
peared to be more prevalent, and I asked
several scientific persons if they had
made any attempt to trace the history of
the habit or to find anything to attribute
it to. One learned man told me that he
had made a special study of the habit,
and believed that it was merely the mod-
ern expression in human beings of the
cud chewing of ruminating mammals,
as cows, goats, etc. In a word, the gum-
chewing Americans are trying to chew
their cud as did their ancestors. Any
habit like this is seized upon by manu-
124
PECULIARITIES AND MANNERISMS
facturers for their personal profit, and
every expedient is employed to induce
people to chew. The gum is mixed
with perfumes, and sold as a breath pu-
rifier; others mix it with pepsin, to aid
the digestion; some with something else,
which is sold on ships and excursion-
boats as a cure or preventive for sea-
sickness, all of which finds a large sale
among the credulous Americans, who by
a clever leader can be made to take up
any fad or habit.
The Americans have a peculiar habit
of "treating"; that is, one of a party will
"treat" or buy a certain article and dis-
tribute it gratuitously to one or ten peo-
ple. A young lady may treat her friends
to gum, ice-cream, soda-water, or to a
theater party. A matron may treat her
friends to "high-balls" or cocktails at
the club. The man confines his "treats"
to drinks and cigars. Thus five or six
125
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
Americans may meet in a club or bar-
room for the sale of liquors. One says,
"Come up and have something;" or
"What will you have, gentlemen ; this is
on me;" or in some places the treater
says, "Let's liquor," and all step up, the
drinks are dispensed, and the treater
pays. You might suppose that he was de-
serving of some encomium, but not at
all ; he expects that the others will take
their turn in treating, or at least this is
the assumption; and if the party is en-
gaged in social conversation each in turn
will "treat," the others taking what they
wish to drink or smoke. There is a code
of etiquette regarding the treat. Thus,
unless you are invited, it would be bad
form among gentlemen to order wine
when invited to drink unless the "treater"
asks you to have wine ; he means a drink
of whisky, brandy, or a mixed drink, or
you may take soda or a cigar, or you may
126
PECULIARITIES AND MANNERISMS
refuse. It is a gross solecism to accept
a cigar and put it in your pocket; you
should not take it unless you smoke it on
the spot.
Drinking to excess is frowned upon by
all classes, and a drunkard is avoided and
despised; but the amount an American
will drink in a day is astonishing. A
really delightful man told me that he did
not drink much, and this was his daily
experience: before breakfast a cham-
pagne cocktail; two or three drinks dur-
ing the forenoon; a pint of white or red
wine at lunch; two or three cocktails in
the afternoon; a cocktail at dinner, with
two glasses of wine; and in the evening
at the club several drinks before bed-
time! This man was never drunk, and
never appeared to be under the influence
of liquor, yet he was in reality never
actually sober; and he is a type of a
large number in the great cities who
127
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
constitute what is termed the "man about
town."
The Americans are not a wine-drink-
ing people. Whisky, and of a very ex-
cellent quality, is the national drink,
while vast quantities of beer are con-
sumed, though they make the finest red
and white wines. All the grog-shops are
licensed by the Government and State
that is, made to pay a tax; but in the
country there is a political party, the
Prohibitionists, who would drive out all
wine and liquor. These, working with
the conservative people, often succeed in
preventing saloons from opening in cer-
tain towns; but in large cities there are
from one to two saloons to the block in
the districts where they are allowed.
Taking everything into consideration,
I think the Americans a temperate peo-
ple. They organize in a thousand direc-
tions to fight drinking and other vices,
128
PECULIARITIES AND MANNERISMS
and millions of dollars are expended
yearly in this direction. A peculiar
quality about the American humor is
that they joke about the most serious
things. In fact, drink and drinking af-
ford thousands of stones, the point of
which is often very obscure to an alien.
Here is one, told to illustrate the clever-
ness of a drinker. He walked into a bar
and ordered a "tin-roof cocktail." The
barkeeper was nonplussed, and asked
what a tin-roof cocktail was. "Why, it's
on the house." I leave you to figure it
out, but the barkeeper paid the bill.
The ingenuity of the Americans is shown
in their mixed drinks. They have cock-
tails, high-balls, ponies, straights, fizzes,
and many other drinks. Books are writ-
ten on the subject. I have seen a book
devoted entirely to cocktails. Certain
papers offer prizes for the invention of
new drinks. I have told you that, all in
129
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
all, America is a temperate country, es-
pecially when its composite character is
considered; yet if the nation has a curse,
a great moral drawback, it is the habit
of drinking at the public bar.
130
CHAPTER IX
LIFE IN WASHINGTON
ONE of the best-known American au-
thors has immortalized the Chinaman in
some of his verses. It was some time be-
fore I understood the smile which went
around when some one in my presence
suggested a game of poker. I need not
repeat the poem, but the essence of it is
that th^"Heathen Chinee is peculiar."
Doubtless Mr. Harte is right, but the
Chinaman and his ways are not more
peculiar to the American than American
customs and contradictions are to the
ChinamanYIf there is any race on the
earth that is peculiar, it is the "Heathen
Yankee," the good-hearted, ingenuous
product of all the nations of the earth
black, red, white, brown, all but "yel-
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
low." j Imagine yourself going out to
what they call a "stag" dinner, and hav-
ing an officer of the ranking of lieutenant
shout, "Hi, John, pass the wine!"
Washington can not be said to be a
typical American city. It is the center
of official life, and abounds in statesmen
of all grades. I have attended one of
the President's receptions, to which the
diplomats went in a body; then followed
the army and navy, General Miles, a
good-looking, soldier-like man, leading
the former, and Admiral Dewey the lat-
ter, a fine body of men, all in full uni-
form, unpretentious, and quiet compared
to similar men in other nations. I
passed in line, and found the President,
standing with several persons, the center
of a group. The announcement and
presentation were made by an officer in
full uniform, and beyond this there was
no formality, indeed, an abundance of
132
LIFE IN WASHINGTON
republican simplicity; only the uniforms
saved it from the commonplace.
The President is a man of medium
size, thick-set, and inclined to be fleshy,
with an interesting, smooth face, eye
clear and glance alert. He grasped me
quickly by the hand, but shook it gin-
gerly, giving the impression that he was
endeavoring to anticipate me, called me
by name, and made a pleasant allusion
to of . He has a high fore-
head and what you would term an intel-
ligent face, but not one you would pick
out as that of a great man; and from a
study of his work I should say that he is
of a class of advanced politicians, clever
in political intrigue, quick to grasp the
best situation for himself or party; a man
of high moral character, but not a great
statesman, only a man with high ideals
and sentiments and the faculty of im-
pressing the masses that he is great. The
133
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
really intelligent class regard him as a
useful man, and safe. It is a curious fact
that the chief appreciation of President
McKinley, I was informed, came from
the masses, who say, "He is so kind to his
wife" (a great invalid) ; or "He is a
model husband." Why there should be
anything remarkable in a man's being
kind, attentive, and loyal to an invalid
spouse I could not see. Her influence
with him is said to be remarkable. One
day she asked the President to promote a
certain officer, the son of one of the
greatest of American generals, to a very
high rank. He did so, despite the fact
that, as an officer said, the army roared
with laughter and rage.
The influence of women is an impor-
tant factor in Washington life. I was
presented to an officer who obtained his
commission in the following manner:
Two very attractive ladies in Washing-
134
LIFE IN WASHINGTON
ton were discussing their relative influ-
ence with the powers that be, when one
remarked, "To show you what I can do,
name a man and I will obtain a commis-
sion in the army for him." The other
lady named a private soldier, whose stu-
pidity was a matter of record, and a few
days later he became an officer; but the
story leaked out.
^President McKinley is a popular Pres-
ident with the masses, but the aristocrats
regard him with indifference. It is a
singular fact, but the ViceiEiesident,
Mr. Roosevelt, attracts more attention
than the President. He is a type that is
appreciated in America, what they term
in the West a "hustler"; active, wide-
awake, intense, "strenuous," all these
terms are applied to him. Said an offi-
cer in the field service to me, "Roose-
velt is playing on a ninety-nine-year run
of luck; he always lands on his feet at
135
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
the right time and place." "What they
call a man of destiny," I suggested.
"Yes," he replied; "he is the Yankee Oli-
ver Cromwell. He can't help 'getting
there,' and he has a sturdy, evident hon-
esty of purpose that carries him through.
A team of six horses won't keep him out
of the White House." This is the gen-
eral opinion regarding the Vice-Presi-
dent, that while he is not a remarkable
statesman, he already overshadows the
President in the eyes of the public. I
think the secret is that he is young and a
hero, and what the Americans call an all-
around man; not brilliant in any par-
ticular line, but a man of energy, like
our .
He looks it. A smooth face, square,
determined jaw, with a look about the
eye suggestive that he would ride you
down if you stood in the way. I judge
him to be a man of honor, high purpose,
136
LIFE IN WASHINGTON
as my friend said, of the Cromwell type,
inclined to preach, and who also has
what the Americans call the "get-there"
quality. In conversation Vice-President
Roosevelt is hearty and open, a poor
diplomat, but a talker who comes to the
point. He says what he thinks, and asks
no favor. He acts as though he wished
to clap you on the shoulder and be fa-
miliar. It will be difficult for you to
understand that such a man is second in
rank in this great nation. There are no
imposing surroundings, no glamor of
attendance, only Roosevelt, strong as a
water-ox in a rice-field, smiling, all on
the surface, ready to fight for his friend
or his country. Author, cowboy, stock-
man, soldier, essayist, historian, sports-
man, clever with the boxing-gloves or
saber, hurdle-jumper, crack revolver and
rifle shot, naturalist and aristocrat, such
is the all-around Vice-President of the
137
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
United States a man who will make a
strong impression upon the history of the
century if he is not shot by Socialists.
I have it from those who know, that
President McKinley would be killed in
less than a week if the guards about the
White House were removed. He never
makes a move without guards or detec-
tives, and the secret-service men surround
him as carefully as possible. It would
be an easy matter to kill him. Like all
officials, he is accessible to almost any
one with an apparently legitimate ob-
ject. Two Presidents have been mur-
dered; all are threatened continually by
half-insane people called "cranks," and
by the professional Socialists, mainly for-
eigners. Both the President and Vice-
President are well-dressed men. Presi-
dent McKinley, when I was granted
an audience, wore a long-tailed black
"frock coat" and vest, light trousers, and
138
LIFE IN WASHINGTON
patent leather or varnished shoes, and
standing collar. The Vice-President was
similarly dressed, but with a "turn-down"
collar. The two men are said to make a
"strong team," and it is a foregone con-
clusion that the Vice-President will suc-
ceed President McKinley. This is al-
ready talked of by the society people at
Newport. "It is a long time," said a
lady at Newport, "since we have had a
President who represented an old and
distinguished family. The McKinleys
were from the ordinary ranks of life, but
eminently respectable, while Roosevelt
is an old and honored name in New
York, identified with the history of the
State; in a word, typical of the American
aristocracy, bearing arms by right of
heritage."
I have frequently met Admiral Dewey,
already so well known in China. He is
a small man, with bright eyes, who al-
139
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
ready shows the effects of years. Noth-
ing could illustrate the volatile, uncer-
tain character of the American than the
downfall of the admiral as a popular
idol. Here a "peculiarity" of the Amer-
ican is seen. Carried away by political
and public adulation, the old sailor's
new wife, the sister of a prominent poli-
tician, became seized with a desire to
make him President. Then the hero
lovers raised a large sum and purchased
a house for the admiral; but the poli-
ticians ignored him as a candidate, which
was a humiliation, and the donors of the
house demanded their money returned
when the admiral placed the gift in the
name of his wife; and so for a while the
entire people turned against the gallant
sailor, who was criticized, jeered at, and
ridiculed. All he had accomplished in
one of the most remarkable victories in
the history of modern warfare was for-
140
LIFE IN WASHINGTON
gotten in a moment, to the lasting dis-
grace of his critics.
One of the interesting places in Wash-
ington is the Capitol, perhaps the most
splendid building in any land. Here we
see the men whom the Americans select
to make laws for them. The looker-on
is impressed with the singular fact that
most of the senators are very wealthy
men ; and it is said that they seek the po-
sition for the honor and power it confers.
I was told that so many are millionaires
that it gave rise to the suspicion that they
bought their way in, and this has been
boldly claimed as to many of them. This
may be the treasonable suggestion of
some enemy; but that money plays a part
in some elections there is little doubt. I
believe this is so in England, where
elections have often been carried by
money.
The American Senate is a dignified
141
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
body, and I doubt if it have a peer in the
world. The men are elected by the
State legislatures, not by the people at
large, a method which makes it easy for
an unprincipled millionaire or his polit-
ical manager to buy votes sufficient to
seat his patron. The fact that senators
are mainly rich does not imply unfitness,
but quite the contrary. Only a genius
can become a multi-millionaire in Amer-
ica, and hence the senators are in the
main bright men. When observing these
men and enabled to look into their
records, I was impressed by the fact that,
despite the advantages of education, this
wonderful country has produced few
really great men, and there is not at this
time a great man on the horizon.
America has no Gladstone, no Salis-
bury, no Bright. Lincoln, Elaine and
Sumner are names which impress me as
approximating greatness; they made an
142
LIFE IN WASHINGTON
impression on American history that will
be enduring. Then there are Frye,
Reed, Garfield, McKinley, Cleveland,
who were little great men, and following
them a distinguished company, as Hanna,
Conkling, Hay, Hayes, and others, who
were superior men of affairs. A dis-
tinctly great national figure has not ap-
peared in America since Daniel Webster,
Henry Clay, and Rufus Choate all men
too great to become President. It ap-
pears to be the fate of the republic not
to place its greatest men in the White
House, and by this I mean great states-
men. General Grant was a great man,
a heroic figure, but not a statesman. Lin-
coln is considered a great man. He is
called the "Liberator"; but I can con-
ceive that none but a very crude mind,
inspired by a false sentiment, could have
made a horde of slaves, the most igno-
rant people on the globe, the political
143
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
equals of the American people. A great
man in such a crisis would have resisted
popular clamor and have refused them
suffrage until they had been prepared to
receive it by at least some education.
Americans are prone to call their great
politicians statesmen. Elaine, Reed,
Conkling, Harrison were types of states-
men; Hanna, Quay, and others are poli-
ticians.
The Lower House was a disappoint-
ment to me. There are too many ordi-
nary men there. They do not look great,
and at the present time there is not a
really great man in the Lower House.
There are too many cheap lawyers and
third-rate politicians there. Good busi-
ness men are required, but such men can
not afford to take the position. I heard
a great captain of industry, who had been
before Congress with a committee, say
that he never saw "so many asses to-
144
LIFE IN WASHINGTON
gether in all his life"; but this was an
extreme view. The House may not com-
pare intellectually with the House of
Commons, but it contains many bright
men. A fool could hardly get in, though
the labor unions have placed some vicious
representatives there. The lack of man-
ners distressed a lady acquaintance of
mine, who, in a burst of indignation at
seeing a congressman sitting with his feet
on his desk, said that there was not a
man in Congress who had any social po-
sition in Washington or at home, which,
let us trust, is not true.
C As I came from the White House some
aays ago I met a delegation of native
Indians going in, a sad sight. In Indian
affairs occurs a page of national history
which the Americans are not proud of.
In less than four hundred years they
have almost literally been wiped from
the face of the earth; the whites have
145
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
waged a war of extermination, and the
pitiful remnant now left is fast disap-
pearing. In no land has the survival of
the fittest found a more remarkable illus-
trationN But the Indians are having
their revenge. The Americans long ago
brought over Africans as slaves; then, as
the result of a war of words and war of
fact, suddenly released them all, and, at
one fell move, in obedience to the hys-
terical cries of their people, gave these
ignorant semisavages and slaves the
same political rights as themselves.
Imagine the condition of things! The
most ignorant and debased of races sud-
denly receives rights and privileges and
is made the equal of American citizens.
So strange a move was never seen or
heard of elsewhere, and the result has
been relations more than strained and
always increasing between the whites
and the blacks in the South. As voters
146
LIFE IN WASHINGTON
the negroes secure many positions in the
South above their old masters. I have
seen a* negro 1 sitting in the Vice-Presi-
dent's chair in the United States Senate;
while white Southern senators were
pacing the outer corridors in rage and
disgust. There are generally one or more
black men in Congress, and they are
given a few offices as a sop. With one
hand the Americans place millions of
them on a plane with themselves as free
and independent citizens, and with the
other refuse them the privileges of such
citizenship. They may enter the army
as privates, but any attempt to make them
officers is a failure white officers will
not associate with them. It is impossible
for a negro to graduate from the Naval
Academy, though he has the right to do
so. I was told that white sailors would
shoot him if placed over them. Several
1 Probably Senator Bruce.
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
negroes have been appointed as students,
but none as yet have been able to pass the
examination. Here we see the strange
and contradictory nature of the Amer-
icans. The white master of the South
had the black woman nurse his children.
Thousands of mulattoes in the country
show that the whites took advantage of
the women in other ways, marriage be-
tween blacks and whites being pro-
hibited. When it comes to according
the blacks recognition as social equals,
the people North and South resent even
the thought. The negro woman may
provide the sustenance of life for the
white baby, but I venture to say that any
Southern man, or Northern one for that
matter, would rather see his daughter die
than be married to a negro. So strong is
this feeling that I believe in the extreme
South if a negro persisted in his addresses
to a white woman he would be shot, and
148
LIFE IN WASHINGTON
no jury or judge could be found to con-
vict the white man.
In the North the negro has certain
rights. He can ride in the street-cars, go
to the theater, enter restaurants, but I
doubt if large hotels would entertain him.
In the South every train has its separate
cars for negroes; every station its wait-
ing-room for them; even on the street-
cars they are divided off by a wire rail
or screen, and sit beneath a sign, which
advertises this free, independent, but
black American voter as being not fit to
sit by the side of his political brother.
This causes a bitter feeling, and the time
is coming when the blacks will revolt.
Already criminal attacks upon white
women are not uncommon, and a virtual
reign of terror exists in some portions of
the South, where it is said that ^tfhite
women are never left unprotected^* and
the negro, if he attacks a white woman,
149
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
is almost invariably burned alive, with
the horrible ghastly features that attend
an Indian scalping. The crowd carry
off bits of skin, hair, finger-nails, and
rope as trophies. In fact, these "burn-
ings" are the most extraordinary features
in this "enlightened" country. The pa-
pers denounce them and compare the
people to ghouls ;fyet these same people
accuse the Chinese of being cruel, bar-
barous, insensible to cruelty, and "pa-
gans." It is true we have pirates and
criminals, but the horrible features of
the lynchings in America during the last
ten years I believe have no counterpart
in the history of China in the last five
hundred/
In Washington the servants are blacks;
irresponsible, childlike, aping the van-
ities of the white people. They are
"niggers"; the mulattoes, the illegitimate
offspring of whites, form another and
150
LIFE IN WASHINGTON
totally distinct class of colored society,
and are the aristocracy. Rarely will a
mulatto girl marry a black man, and vice
versa. They have their clubs and their
functions, their professional men, in-
cluding lawyers and doctors, as have the
white people. They present a strange
and singular feature. Despised by their
fathers, half-sisters, and brothers, de-
nied any social recognition, hating their
black ancestry, they are socially "be-
tween the devil and the deep sea." The
negro question constitutes the gravest
one now before the American people.
He is increasing rapidly, but in the years
since the civil war no pure-blooded
negro has given evidence of brilliant at-
tainments. Frederick Douglas, Senator
Bruce, and Booker T. Washington rank
with many white Americans in author-
ship, diplomacy, and scholarship; but
Douglas and Bruce were mulattoes, and
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
Booker Washington's father was an un-
known white man. These men are held
in high esteem, but the social line, has
been drawn against them, though Doug-
las married a white woman.
Balls are a feature of life in Washing-
ton. The women appear in full dress,
which means that the arms and neck are
exposed, and the men wear evening dress.
The dances are mostly "round." The
man takes a lady to the ball, and when
he dances seizes her in an embrace which
would be considered highly improper
under ordinary circumstances, but the
etiquette of the dance makes it permis-
sible. He places his right arm around
her waist, takes her left hand in his, holds
her close to him, and both begin to move
around to the special music designed for
this peculiar motion, which may be a
"waltz," or a "two-step," or a "gallop,"
or a "schottische," all being different and
152
LIFE IN WASHINGTON
having different music or time, or there
may be various kinds of music for each.
At times the music is varied, being a
gliding, scooping, swooping slide, inde-
scribable. When the dancers feel the ap-
proach of giddiness they reverse the
whirl or move backward.
Many Washington men have become
famous as dancers, and quite outshadow
war heroes. All the officers of the army
and navy are taught these dances at the
Military and Naval Academies, it being
a national policy to be agreeable to
ladies; at least this must be so, as the
men never dance together. To see sev-
eral hundred people whirling about, as
I have seen them at the inaugural of the
President, is one of the most remarkable
scenes to be observed in America. The
man in Washington who can not dance
is a "wallflower" that is, he never leaves
the wall. There is a professional cham-
153
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
pion who has danced eight out of twenty-
four hours without stopping. A yearly
convention of dancing-school professors
is held. These men, with much dignity,
meet in various cities and discuss various
dances, how to grasp the partner, and
other important questions. Some time
ago the question was whether the "gent"
should hold a handkerchief in the hand
he pressed upon the back of the lady, a
professor having testified before the con-
vention that he had seen the imprint of
a man's hand on the white dress of a lady.
The acumen displayed at these conven-
tions is profound and impressive. Here
you observe a singular fact. The good
dancer may be an officer of high social
standing, but the dancing-teacher, even
though he be famous as such, is persona
non gratia, so far as society is concerned.
A professional dancer, fighter, wrestler,
cook, musician, and a hundred more are
154
LIFE IN WASHINGTON
not acceptable in society except in the
strict line of their profession; but a pro-
fessional civil or naval engineer, an or-
ganist, an artist, a decorator (household),
and an architect are received by the elect
in Washington.
I have alluded to the craze for joking
among young ladies in society. At a din-
ner a reigning beauty, and daughter of
, who sat next to me, talked with me
on dancing. She told me all about it,
and, pointing to a tall, distinguished-
looking man near by, said that he had re-
ceived his degree of D. D. (Doctor of
Dancing) from Harvard University, and
was extremely proud of it; and, further-
more, it would please him to have me
mention it. I did not enlighten the
young lady, and allowed her to continue,
that I might enjoy her animation and su-
perb "nerve" (this is the American slang
word for her attitude). The gentleman
155
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
was her uncle, a doctor of divinity, who
was constitutionally opposed to dancing;
and I learned later that he had a cork leg.
Such are some of the pitfalls in Wash-
ington set for the pagan Oriental by
charming Americans.
Dancing parties, in fact, all functions,
are seized upon by young men and
women who anticipate marriage as es-
pecially favorable occasions for "court-
ship." The parents apparently have
absolutely nothing to do with the affair,
this being a free country. The girl "falls
in love" with some one, and the courtship
begins. In the lower classes the girl is
said to be "keeping company" with so
and so, or he is "her steady company." In
higher circles the admirer is "devoted to
the lady." This lasts for a year, perhaps
longer, the man monopolizing the young
lady's time, calling so many times a week,
as the case may be, the familiarity be-
156
LIFE IN WASHINGTON
tween the two increasing until they finally
exchange kisses a popular greeting in
America. About now they become
affianced or "engaged," and the man is
supposed to ask the consent of the parents.
In France the latter is supposed to give
a dot; in America it is not thought of.
In time the wedding occurs, amid much
ceremony, the bride's parents bearing all
the expense ; the groom is relieving them
of a future expense, and is naturally not
burdened. The married young people
then go upon a "honeymoon," the month
succeeding the wedding, and this is long
or brief, according to the wealth of the
parties. When they return they usually
live by themselves, the bride resenting
any advice or espionage from her hus-
band's mother, who is the mother-in-law,
a relation as much joked about in Amer-
ica as revered in China.
Sometimes the "engaged" couple do
157
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
not marry. The man perhaps in his long
courtship discovers traits that weary him,
and he breaks off the match. If he is
wealthy the average American girl may
sue him for damages, for laceration of
the affections. One woman in the State
of New York sued for the value of over
two thousand kisses her "steady com-
pany" had taken during a number of
years' courtship, and was awarded three
thousand dollars. The journal from
which I took this made an estimate that
the kisses had cost the man one dollar
and a half each! Sometimes the girl
breaks the engagement, and if presents
have been given she returns them, the
man rarely suing; but I have seen record
of a case where the girl refused to re-
turn the presents, and the man sued for
them; but no jury could be found to de-
cide in his favor. A distinguished physi-
cian has written a book on falling in love.
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LIFE IN WASHINGTON
It is recognized as a contagious disease;
men and women often die of it, and com-
mit the most extraordinary acts when
under its influence. I have observed it,
and, all things considered, it has no ad-
vantages over the Chinese method of
attaining the marriage state. The wis-
dom of some older person is certainly
better than what the American would
call the "snap judgment" of two young
people carried away by passion. One
might find the chief cause of divorce in
America to lie in this strange custom.
I was invited by a famous wag last
week to meet a man who could claim
that he was the father of fifty-three chil-
dren and several hundred grandchildren.
I fully expected to see the Gaikivar of
Baroda, or some such celebrity, but
found a tall, ministerial, typical Amer-
ican, with long beard, whom intro-
duced to me as a Mormon bishop, who,
159
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
he said, had a virtual conge d'elire in
the Church, at the same time referring
to me as a Chinese Mormon with "fifty
wives." I endeavored to protest, but
explained to the bishop that I was
merely modest. The Mormons are a sect
who believe in polygamy. Each man has
as many wives as he can support, and the
population increases rapidly where they
settle. The ludicrous feature of Mor-
monism is that the Government has
failed to stop it, though it has legislated
against it; but it is well known that the
Mormon allows nothing to interfere with
his "revelations," which are on "tap" in
Utah.
I was much amused at the bishop's re-
marks. He said that if the American
politicians who were endeavoring to kill
them off would marry their actual con-
cubines, and all Americans would do the
same, the United States would have a
1 60
LIFE IN WASHINGTON
Mormon majority the next day. The
bishop had the frailties and moral lapses
of prominent people in all lands at his
ringers' ends, and his claim was that the
whole civilized world was practising
polygamy, but doing it illegally, and the
Mormons were the only ones who had
the honor to legitimatize it. The joke
was on , who was literally bottled
up by the flow of facts from the bishop,
who referred to me to substantiate him,
which I pretended to do, in order totally
to crush , who had tried to make me
a party to his joke. The bishop, who in-
vited me to call upon him in Utah, said
that he hoped some time to be a United
States senator, though he supposed the
women of the East could create public
sentiment sufficient to defeat him.
I once stopped over in Utah and vis-
ited the great Mormon Temple, and I
must say that the Mormon women are
161
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
far below the average in intelligence,
that is, if personal appearances count. I
understand they are recruited from the
lowest and most ignorant classes in Eu-
rope, where there are thousands of
women who would rather have a fifth of
a husband than work in the field. In the
language of American slang, I imagine
the Americans are "up against it," as the
country avowedly offers an asylum for all
seeking religious liberty, and the Mor-
mons claim polygamy as a divine revela-
tion and a part of their doctrine.
The bishop, I believe, was not a
bishop, but a proselyting elder, or some-
thing of the kind. The man who intro-
duced me to him was a type peculiar to
America, a so-called "good fellow."
People called him by his first name, and
he returned the favor. The second time
I met him he called me Count, and
upon my replying that I was not a count
162
LIFE IN WASHINGTON
he said, "Well, you look it, anyway," and
he has always called me Count. He
knows every one, and every one knows
him a good-hearted man, a spendthrift,
yet a power in politics; a remarkable
poker player, a friend worth knowing,
the kind of man you like to meet, and
there are many such in this country.
CHAPTER X
THE AMERICAN IN LITERATURE
I HAVE been a guest at the annual din-
ner of the , one of the leading lit-
erary associations in America, and later
at a "reception" at the house of ,
where I met some of the most charming
men and delightful women, possessed of
manners that marked the person of cul-
ture and the savoir faire that I have seen
so little of among other "sets" of well-
known public people. But what think
you of an author of note who knew abso-
lutely nothing of the literature of our
country? There were Italians, French,
and Swedes at the dinner, who were
called upon to respond to toasts on the
literature of their country; but was I
164
THE AMERICAN IN LITERATURE
called upon? No, indeed. I doubt if in
all that entourage there was more than
one or two who were familiar with the
splendid literature of China and its an-
tiquity.
But to come to the "shock." My im-
mediate companion was a lady with just
a soupqon of the masculine, who, I was
told, was a distinguished novelist, which
means that her book had sold to the
limit of 30,000 copies. After a toast and
speech in which the literature of Nor-
way and Sweden had been extolled, this
charming lady turned to me and said, "It
is too bad, - , that you have no litera-
ture in China; you miss so much that is
enjoyed by other nations." This was too
much, and I broke one of the American
rules of chivalry I became disputatious
with a lady and slightly cynical; and
when I wish to be cynical I always quote
Mr. Harte, which usually "brings down
12 165
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
the house." To hear a Chinese heathen
quote the "Heathen Chinee" is supposed
to be very funny.
I said, "My dear madam, I am sur-
prised that you do not know that China
has the finest and oldest literature known
in the history of the world. I assure you,
my ancestors were writing books when
the Anglo-Saxon was living in caves." 1
She was astonished and somewhat dis-
mayed, but was not cast down the clever
American woman never is. I told her
of our classics, of our wonderful Book
of Changes, written by my ancestor Wan
Wang in 1150 B. C. I told her of his
philosophy. I compared his idea of the
creation to that in the Bible. I explained
the loss of many rare Chinese books by
the piratical order of destruction by Em-
peror Che Hwang-ti, calling attention
1 As a frontispiece to this volume, the cover design used on one of
these old Chinese books is shown.
166
THE AMERICAN IN LITERATURE
to the fact that the burning of the famous
library of Alexandria was a parallel. I
asked her if it were possible that she had
never heard of the Odes of Confucius,
or his Book of History, which was sup-
posed to have been destroyed, but which
was found in the walls of his home one
hundred and forty years before Christ,
and so saved to become a part of the lit-
erature of China.
Finally she said, "I have studied lit-
erature, but that of China was not in-
cluded." "Your history," I continued,
"begins in 1492; our written history be-
gins in the twenty-third century before
Christ, and the years down to 720 B. C.
are particularly well covered, while our
legends run back for thousands of years."
But my companion had never heard of
the Shoo-King. It was so with the
Chun Tsew 1 of Confucius and the Four
1 Spring and Autumn
167
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
Books Ta-he-o* Chung-yung, 2 Lun-yu?
Mang-tsze. 4 She had never heard of
them. I told her of the invention of
paper by the Marquis Tsae several cen-
turies before Christ, and she laughingly
replied that she supposed that I would
claim next that the Chinese had libraries
like those Mr. Carnegie is founding. I
was delighted to assure her that her as-
sumption was correct, and drew a little
picture of a well-known Chinese library
founded two thousand years ago, the
Han Library, with its 3,123 classics, its
2,706 works on philosophy, its 2,528
books on mathematics, its 790 works on
war, its 868 books on medicine, 1,318
on poetry, not to speak of thousands of
essays.
I could not but wonder as I talked,
where were the Americans and their lit-
1 Great Learning. * Doctrine of the Mean.
1 Confucian Analects. * Works of Mencius.
168
THE AMERICAN IN LITERATURE
erature when our fathers were reading
these books two thousand years ago!
Even the English people were wild sav-
ages, living in caves and huts, when our
people were printing books and encyclo-
pedias of knowledge. I dwelt upon our
poetry, the National Airs, Greater Eulo-
gies, dating back several thousand years.
I told her of the splendors of our great
versifier, Le-Tai-Pih; and I might have
said that many American poets, like
Walt Whitman, had doubtless read the
translations to their advantage. I had
the pleasure at least of commanding this
lady's attention, and I believe she was the
first American who deigned to take a
Chinaman seriously. The facts of our
literature are available, but only scholars
make a study of it, and so far as I could
learn not a word of Chinese literature is
ever taught in American schools, though
in the great universities there are facili-
169
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
ties, and the best educated people are
familiar with our history.
The American authors, especially nov-
elists, who constitute the majority of
authors, are by no means all well edu-
cated. Many appear to have a faculty
of "story-telling," which enables them to
produce something that will sell; but
that all American authors, and this will
surprise you, are included among the
great scholars, is far from true. Some,
yes many, are deplorably ignorant in the
sense of broad learning, and I believe this
is a universal, national fault. If one
thing Chinese more than another is ridi-
culed in America it is our drama. I met
a famous "play-writer" at the - - din-
ner, who thought it a huge joke. I heard
that his income was $30,000 per annum
from plays alone; yet he had never heard
of our "Hundred Plays of the Yuen
Dynasty," which rests in one of his own
170
THE AMERICAN IN LITERATURE
city libraries not a mile distant, and
he laughed good-naturedly when I re-
marked that the modern stage obtained
its initiative in China.
A listener did me the honor to ques-
tion my statement that Voltaire's "Z/Or-
phelin de la Chine" was taken from
the Orphan of Chaou of this collection,
which I thought every one knew. All
the authors whom I met seemed sur-
prised to learn that I was familiar with
their literature and could compare it
synthetically with that of other nations,
and even more so when I said that all
well-educated Chinamen endeavored to
familiarize themselves with the literature
o other countries.
^ I continually gain the impression that
the Americans "size us up," as they say,
and "lump" us with the "coolie." We
are "heathen Chinee," and it is incom-
prehensible that we should know any-
171
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
thing. I am talking now of the half-
educated people as I have met them.
Here and there I meet men and women
of the highest culture and knowledges
and this class has no peer in the world)
If I were to live in America I should
wish to consort with her real scholars,
culled from the best society of New York,
Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, Bal-
timore, and other cities. In a word, the
aristocracy of America is her educated
class, the education that comes from asso-
ciation year after year with other culti-
vated people. I understand there is more
of it in Boston and Philadelphia than
anywhere; but you find it in all towns
and cities. This I grant is the real Amer-
ican, who, in time several thousand
years perhaps as in our own case, will
demonstrate the wonderful possibilities
of the human race in the West.
I would like to tell you something
172
THE AMERICAN IN LITERATURE
about the books of the literary men and
women I have met, but you will be more
interested in the things I have seen and
the mannerisms of the people. I was told
by a distinguished writer that America
had failed to produce any really great
authors I mean to compare with other
nations and I agreed with him, al-
though appreciating what she has done.
There is no one to compare with the
great minds of England Scott, Dickens,
Thackeray. There is no American poet
to compare with Tennyson, Milton, and
a dozen others in England, France, Italy,
and Germany; indeed, America is far
behind in this respect, yet in the making
of books there is nothing to compare with
it. Every American, apparently, aspires
to become an author, and I really think
it would be difficult to find a citizen of
the republic who had not been a con-
tributor to some publication at some time,
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
or had not written a book. The output
of books is extraordinary, and covers
every field; but the class is not in all
cases such as one might expect. The
people are omnivorous readers, and "sto-
ries," "novels," are ground out by the
ton; but I doubt if a book has been pro-
duced since the time of Hawthorne that
will really live as a great classic.
The American authors are mainly col-
lected in New York, where the great pub-
lishing houses are located, and are a fine
representative class of men and women,
of whom I have met a number, such as
Howells, the author and editor, and
Mark Twain, the latter the most brilliant
litterateur in the United States. This
will be discovered when he dies and is
safe beyond receiving all possible bene-
fits from such recognition. Many men
in America make reputations as humor-
ists, and find it impossible to divest their
THE AMERICAN IN LITERATURE
more serious writings from this "taint,"
if so it may be called. They are not
taken seriously when they seriously de-
sire it; a fact I fully appreciate, as I am
taken as a joke, my "pigtail," my "shoes,"
my "clothes," my way of speaking, all
being objects of joking.
The literary men have several clubs
in New York, where they can be found,
and many have marked peculiarities,
which are interesting to a foreigner.
Several artists affect a peculiar style of
dress to advertise their wares. One, it is
said, lived in a tree at Washington. It
is not so much with the authors as with
the methods of making books that I
think you will be interested. I met a
rising young author at a dinner in Wash-
ington who confided to me that the "book
business" was really ruined in America
by reason of the mad craze of nearly all
Americans to become writers. He said
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
that he as an editor had been offered
money to publish a novel by a society
woman who desired to pose as an au-
thoress. This author said that there were
in America a dozen or more of the finest
and most honorable publishing houses in
the world, but there were many more in
the various cities which virtually preyed
upon this "literary disease" of the people.
No country in the world, said my ac-
quaintance, produces so many books every
year as America; so many, in fact, that
the shops groan with them and the for-
ests of America threaten to give out, and
the supply virtually clogs and ruins the
market. So crazy are the people to be
authors and see themselves in print that
they will go to any length to accomplish
authorship.
He cited a case of a carpenter, a man
of no education, who was seized with the
desire to write a book, which he did. It
176
THE AMERICAN IN LITERATURE
was sent to all the leading publishers,
and promptly returned; then he began
the rounds of the second-class houses, of
which there are legion. One of the lat-
ter wrote him that they published on the
"cooperative" plan, and would pay half
the expenses of publishing if he would
pay the other half. Of course his share
paid for the entire edition and gave the
clever "cooperative" publisher a profit,
whether the edition sold or not. And my
informant said that at least twenty firms
were publishing books for such authors,
and encouraging people to produce
manuscripts that were so much "dead
wood" in the real literary field. He
later sent me the prospectus of several
such houses which would take any man-
uscript, if the author would pay for the
publishing, revise it and send it forth.
I was assured that thousands of books are
produced yearly by these houses, who are
177
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
really "printers," who advertise in va-
rious ways and encourage would-be au-
thors, the idea being to get their money,
a species of literary "graft," according to
my literary informant, who assured me
I must not confuse such parasites with the
large publishers of America, who will
not produce a book unless their skilled
readers consider it a credit to them and
to the country, a high standard which I
believe is maintained.
Perhaps the most interesting phase of
literature in America is found in the
weekly and monthly magazines, of which
there is no end. Every sport has its "or-
gan," every great trade, every society,
every religion ; even the missionaries sent
to China have their organs, in which is
reported their success in saving us and
divorcing us from our ancient beliefs.
The great literary magazines number
perhaps a dozen, with a few in the front
178
THE AMERICAN IN LITERATURE
rank, such as the Century, Harper's,
Scribner's, The Atlantic, Cosmopolitan,
McClure's, Dial, North American Re-
view, Popular Science Monthly, Book-
man, Critic, and Nation. Such maga-
zines I conceive to be the universities of
the people, the great educators in art, lit-
erature, science, etc. Nothing escapes
them. They are timely, beautiful, exact,
thorough, scientific, the reflex of the best
and most artistic minds in America; and
many are so cheap as to be within the
reach of the poor. It is interesting to
know that most of these magazines are
sources of wealth, the money coming
from the advertisements, published as a
feature in the front and back. These no-
tices are in bulk often more than the lit-
erary portion, and the rate charged, I was
told, from $100 to $1,000 per page for a
single printing.
The skill with which appeals are made
179
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
to the weaknesses of readers is well
shown in some of the minor publications
not exactly within the same class as the
literary magazines. One that is devoted
to women is a most clever appeal to the
idiosyncrasies of the sex: There are arti-
cles on cooking, dinners, luncheons, how
to set tables, table manners, etiquette
(one would think they had read Con-
fucius), how to dress for these func-
tions; and, in fact, every occupation in
life possible to a woman is dealt with
by an extraordinary editor who is a man.
Whenever I was joked with about our
men acting on the stage as women, I re-
torted by quoting Mr. - , the male
editor of the female , who is either a
consummate actor or a remarkably com-
posite creature, to so thoroughly antici-
pate his audience. The mother, the
widow, the orphan, the young maiden,
the "old maid," are all taken into the con-
180
THE AMERICAN IN LITERATURE
fidence of this editor, who in his edi-
torials has what are termed "heart to
heart" talks.
I send you a copy of this paper, which
is very clever and very successful, and a
good illustration of the American maga-
zine that, while claiming to be literature,
is a mechanical production, "machine
made" in every sense. One can imagine
the introspective editor entering all the
foibles and weaknesses of women in a
book and in cold blood forming a depart-
ment to appeal to each. I was informed
that the editors of such publications were
"not in business for their health," but for
money; and their energies are all ex-
pended on projects to hold present read-
ers and obtain others. The more readers
the more they can charge the "adver-
tiser" in the back or side pages, who here
illustrate their deadly corsets, their new
dye for the hair, their beauty doctors,
13 181
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
freckle eradicators, powders for the
toilet, bustles, and the thousand and one
things which shrewd dealers are anxious
to have women take up.
The children also have their journals
or "magazines." One in New York
deals with fairies and genii, on the
ground that it is good for the imagina-
tion. Another, published in Boston, de-
nounces the fairy-story idea, and gives
the children stories by great generals,
princes of the blood, captains of indus-
try, admirals, etc.; briefly, the name of
the writer, not the literary quality of the
tale, is the important feature. There are
papers for babes, boys, girls, the sick and
the well.
The most conspicuous literary names
before the people are Howells, Twain,
and Harte, though one hears of scores of
novelists, who, I believe, will be forgot-
ten in a decade or so. As I have said
182
THE AMERICAN IN LITERATURE
previously, I am always joked with
about the "Heathen Chinee." I have
really learned to play "poker," but I sel-
dom if ever sit down to a game that some
one does not joke with me about "Ah
Sin." Such is the American idea of the
proprieties and their sense of humor; yet
I finally have come to be so good an
American that I can laugh also, for I am
confident the jokers mean it all in the
best of feeling.
There are in America a class of lit-
terateurs who are rarely heard of by the
masses, but to my mind they are among
the greatest and most advanced Amer-
icans. They are the astronomers, geol-
ogists, zoologists, ornithologists, and
others, authors of papers and articles in
the Government Reports of priceless
value. These writers appear to me, an
outsider, to be the real safety-valves, the
real backbone of the literary productions
183
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
of the day. With them science is but a
synonym of truth; they fling all super-
stition and ignorance to the winds, and
should be better known. Such names as
Edison, Cope, Marsh, Hall, Young,
Field, Baird, Agassiz, and fifty more
might be mentioned, all authors whose
books will give them undying fame, men
who have devoted a lifetime to research
and the accumulation of knowledge; yet
the author of the last novel, "My Mule
from New Jersey," will, for the day,
have more vogue among the people than
any of these. But such is fame, at least
in America, where erudition is not ap-
preciated as it is in "pagan" China.
184
CHAPTER XI
THE POLITICAL BOSS
AT an assembly-room in New York I
met a famous American political "boss."
Many governors in China do not have
the same power and influence. I had let-
ters to him from Senators - and .
I expected to meet a man of the highest
culture, but what was my surprise to see
a huge, overgrown, uneducated Irish-
man, gross in every particular, who used
the local "slang" so fiercely that I had
difficulty in understanding him. He had
been a police officer, and I understand
was a "grafter," but that may have been
a report of his enemies, as he commanded
attention at the time of the election.
This man had a fund of humor, which
was displayed in his clapping me on the
185
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
back and calling me "John," introducing
me to a dozen or so of as hard-looking
men in the garb of gentlemen as I have
ever seen. I heard them described later
as "ward beetles," and they looked it,
whatever it meant. The "Boss" ap-
peared much interested in me; said he
had heard I was no "slouch," and knew
I must have a "pull" or I would not be
where I am. He wished to know how
we run elections on "the Ho-Hang-Ho."
When I told him that a candidate for a
governmental office never obtained it
until he passed one of three very diffi-
cult literary examinations in our nine
classics, and that there were thousands
competing for the office, he was "para-
lyzed" that is, he said he was, and vol-
unteered the information that "he would
not be 'in it' in China." I thought so
myself, but did not say so.
f I told him that the politicians in China
186
THE POLITICAL BOSS
were the greatest scholars; that the policy
of the Government was to make all offices
competitive, as we thus secured the
brightest, smartest, and most gifted men
for officials^) "Smart h 1" retorted
the "Boss." "Why, we've got smart men.
Look at our school-teachers. Them guys 1
is crammed with gulf, 2 and passing ex-
aminations all the time;. but there ain't
one in a thousand that's got sense enough
to run a tamale 3 convention. The State
governor would get left here if all the
boys that wanted office had to pass an ex-
amination. We've got something like it
here," he said, "that blank Civil Service,
that keeps many a natural-born genius
out of office; but it don't 'cut ice with
me.' I'm the whole thing in the
ward."
Despite his rough exterior, - - was
1 Slang for citizens. a Slang for information, facts.
8 Mexican hash in corn-husk.
I8 7
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
a good-hearted fellow, as they say, no
rougher than his constituents, and I was
with him several days during a local elec-
tion with a view to studying American
politics^ Much of the time was spent in
the saloons of the district where the
"Boss" held out, and where I was intro-
duced as a "white Chinee." or as a "white
Chink," and "my friend.) I wish I had
kept a list of the drinks the "Boss" took
and the cigars he smoked per diem. Per-
haps it is as well I did not; you would
not believe me. I was always "John" to
this crowd, that was made up of laboring
people in the main, of whom Irish and
Germans predominated. The "Boss"
was what they called a "bulldozer." If
a man differed with him he tried to talk
or drink him down; if it was an enemy
and he became too disputatious, he would
knock him out with his fist. In this way
he had acquired a reputation as a "slug-
188
THE POLITICAL BOSS
ger," that counted for much in such an
assemblage, and he confided to me one
evening that it was the easiest way to
"stop talk," and that if he "laid down,"
the opposition would walk off with all his
"people." He was "Boss" because he was
the boss slugger, the best executive, the
best drinker and smoker, the best "per-
suader," and the best public speaker in
his ward. So you see he had a variety of
talents. In China I can imagine such a
man being beheaded as a pirate in a few
weeks ; this would be as good an excuse
as any; yet men like this have grown and
developed into respectable persons in
New York and other cities.
"For ways that are dark and tricks that
are vain, the Heathen Chinee is pecul-
iar," but I doubt if he is more so than
the political system of the United States,
where every man is supposed to be free,
but where a few men in each town own
189
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
everything and everybody politically.
The American thinks he is free, but he
has in reality no more freedom than the
Englishman; in fact, I am inclined to
think that the latter is the freest of them
all, and I doubt if too much freedom is
good for man. Politics in America is a
profession, a trade, a science, a perfect
system by which one or two men run or
control millions. Politics means the at-
tainment of political power and influ-
ence, which mean office. Some men are
in politics for the love of power, some for
spoils ("graft" they call it in slang), and
some for the high offices. In America
there are two large parties, the Repub-
lican and the Democratic. Then there
are the Labor, Prohibition (non-drink-
ing), and various other parties, which,
in the language of politics, "cut no ice."
The real issues of a party are often lost
sight of. The Republicans may be said
190
THE POLITICAL BOSS
to favor a high tariff; the Democrats a
low tariff or free trade; and when there
is not sufficient to amuse the people in
these, then other reasons for being a Dem-
ocrat or a Republican are raised, and a
platform is issued. Lately the Democrats
have espoused "free silver," and the Re-
publicans have "buried" them. The
Democrats are now trying to invent some
new "platform"; but the Republicans
appear to have included about all the de-
sirable things in their platform, and
hence they win.
In a small town one or two men are
known as "bosses." They control the sit-
uation at the primaries; they manage to
get elected and keep before the people.
Generally they are natural leaders, and
fill some office. When the senator comes
to town they "escort" him about and ad-
vise him as to the votes he may expect.
Sometimes the ward man is the postmas-
191
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
ter, sometimes a national congressman,
again a State senator; but he is always in
evidence, and before the people, a good
speaker and talker and the "boss." Every
town has its Republican and Democratic
"boss," always striving to increase the
vote, always striving for something. The
larger the city, the larger the "boss," until
we come to a city like New York, where
we find, or did find, Boss Tweed, who
absolutely controlled the political situa-
tion for years.
This means that he was in politics, and
manipulated all the offices in order to
steal for himself and his friends; this is
of public record. He was overthrown or
exposed by the citizens, but was followed
by others, who manipulated the affairs
of the city for money. Offices were sold ;
any one who had a position either bought
it or paid a percentage for it. Gambling-
dens and other "resorts" paid large sums
192
THE POLITICAL BOSS
to "sub-bosses," who become rich, and if
the full history of some of the "bosses" of
New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, or
any great American city could be ex-
posed, it would show a state of affairs that
would display the American politician
in a dark light. Repeatedly the machina-
tions of the politicians have been exposed,
yet they doubtless go on in some form.
And this is true to some extent of the
Government. The honor of no Presi-
dent has been impugned ; they are men
of integrity, but the enormous appoint-
ing power which they have is a mere
form; they do not and could not appoint
many men. The little "boss" in some
town desires a position. He has been a spy
for the congressman or senator for years,
and now aspires to office. He obtains
the influence of the senator and the con-
gressman, and is supported by a petition
of his friends, and the President names
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
him for the office, taking the senator for
his sponsor. If the man becomes a
grafter or thief, the President is attacked
by the opposition.
In a large city like New York each
ward will have its "boss," who will report
to a supreme "boss," and by this system,
often pernicious, the latter acquires ab-
solute control of the situation. He names
the candidates for office, or most of them,
and is all powerful. I have met a num-
ber of "bosses," and all, it happened, were
Irish; indeed, the Irish dominate Amer-
ican politics. One, a leader of Tam-
many in New York, was a most prepos-
terous person, well dressed, but not a
gentleman from any standpoint; igno-
rant so far as education goes, yet su-
premely sharp in politics. Such a man
could not have led a fire brigade in
China, yet he was the leader of thou-
sands, and controlled Democratic New
194
THE POLITICAL BOSS
York for years. He never held office, I
was told, yet grew very rich.
The Republican "boss" was a tall, thin,
United States senator. I was also intro-
duced to him a Mephistophelian sort of
an individual to me utterly without any
attraction; but I was informed that he
carried the vote of the Republican party
in his "pocket. How? that is the mys-
tery. If you desired office you went to
him; without his influence one was im-
potent. Thousands of office-holders felt
his power, hated him, perhaps, but did
not dare to say it.
The "boss" controls the situation, gives
and "takes," and the other citizens get
the satisfaction of thinking they are a
free people. In reality, they are political
slaves, and the "boss," "sub-boss," and the
long line of smaller "bosses" are their
masters. Very much the same situation is
seen in national politics. The party is
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
controlled by a "boss," and at the present
this personage is a millionaire, named
Hanna, said to be an honest, upright
man, with a genius for political diplo-
macy, a puller of wires, a maker of Pres-
idents, having virtually placed President
McKinley where he is. This man I met.
Many of the politicians called him "Un-
cle Mark." He has a familiar way with
reporters. He is a man of good size,
with a face of a rather common type,
with very large and protruding ears, but
two bright, gleaming eyes, that tell of
genius, force, intelligence, power, and
executive talents of an exalted order. I
recall but one other such pair of eyes,
and those were in the head of Senator
James G. Elaine, whom I saw during my
first visit to America. Hanna is famous
for his bonhomie, and is a fine story-
teller. Indeed, unless a man can tell
stones he had better remain out of poli-
196
THE POLITICAL BOSS
tics, or rather he will never get into poli-
tics.
As an outsider I should say that the
power of the "boss" was due to the fact
that the best classes will have none of
him, as a rule (I refer to the ordinary
"boss"), and as a consequence he and his
henchmen control the situation. I think
I am not overstating the truth when I
say that every city in the United States
has been looted by the politicians of va-
rious parties. It is of public record that
Philadelphia, Chicago, St. Louis, and
New York citizens have repeatedly risen
and shown that the city was being robbed
in the most bare-handed manner. Bri-
bery and corruption have been found to
exist to-day in the entire system, and if
the credit of the republic stands on its
political morale this vast union of States
is a colossal failure, as it is being pil-
laged by politicians. Every "boss" has
14 197
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
what are termed "heelers," one function
of whom is to buy votes and do other
work in the interest of "reform." A
friend told me that he spent election day
in the office of a candidate for Congress
in a certain Western town, and the can-
didate had his safe heaped full of silver
dollars. All day long men were coming
and going, each taking the dollars to buy
votes. By night the supply was ex-
hausted, and the man defeated. I
expressed satisfaction at this, but my
friend laughed; the other fellow who
won paid more for votes, he said. I was
told that all the great senatorial battles
were merely a question of dollars; the
man with the largest "sack" won.
On the other hand, there are senators
who not only never paid for a vote but
never expressed a wish to be elected.
The foreign vote Italians and others
are swayed by cash considerations; the
198
THE POLITICAL BOSS
negroes are bought and sold politically.
The "bosses" handle the money, and the
senators consider it as "expenses," and
doubtless do not know that some of it has
been used to influence legislators. The
Americans have a remarkable network of
laws to prevent fraudulent voting. Each
candidate in some States is required to
swear to an expense account, yet the wary
politician, with his "ways that are dark,"
evades the law. The entire system, the
control of the political fortunes of 80,-
000,000 Americans, is in the hands of a
small army of political "bosses," some of
whom, had they figured as grafters in
"effete" China, would have been be-
headed without mercy.
199
CHAPTER XII
EDUCATION IN AMERICA
A FUNDAMENTAL idea with the Amer-
ican is to educate children. This is car-
ried to the extent of making it an offense
not to send those above a certain age to
school, while State or town officers,
called "truant police," are on the alert to
arrest all such children who are not in
school. The following was told me by
a Government official in Washington,
who had obtained it from a well-known
literary man who witnessed the incident.
The literary man was invited to visit a
Boston school of the lower grade, where
he found the teacher, an attractive wom-
an, engaged in teaching a class of "young-
sters," the progeny of the working class.
After the visitor had listened to the
200
EDUCATION IN AMERICA
recitations for some time, he remarked
to the teacher, "How do you account for
the neatness and cleanliness of these chil-
dren?" "Oh, I insist upon it," was the
reply. "The Board of Education does not
anticipate all the desiderata, but I make
them come clean and make it a part of
the course;" then rising and tapping on
the table, she said, "Prepare for the sixth
exercise." All the children stood up.
"One," said the teacher, whereupon each
pupil took out a clean cloth handker-
chief. "Two," counted the teacher, and
with one concerted blast every pupil blew
his or her nose in clarion notes. "Three,"
came again after a few seconds, and the
handkerchiefs were replaced. At "four"
the student body sank back to their seats
without even smiling, or without having
"cracked a smile." You could search the
world over and not find a prototype. It
goes without saying that the teacher was
201
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
a wit and wag, but the lesson of handker-
chiefs and their use was inculcated.
Education is a part of the scheme to
make all Americans equal. A more
splendid system it is impossible to con-
ceive. Every possible facility is afforded
the poorest family to educate their chil-
dren. Public schools loom up every-
where, and are increased as rapidly as
the children, so there is no excuse for
ignorance. The schools are graded, and
there is no expense or fee. The parents
pay a tax, a small sum, those who have no
children being taxed as well as those who
have many. There are schools to train
boys to any trade; normal free schools
to make teachers ; night schools for work-
ing boys; commercial schools to educate
clerks; ship schools to train sailors and
engineers. Then come the great univer-
sities, in part free, with all the splendid
paraphernalia, some being State institu-
202
EDUCATION IN AMERICA
dons and others memorials of dead mil-
lionaires. Then there are the great tech-
nical schools, as well as universities
(where one can study Chinese, if de-
sired). There are schools of art, law,
medicine, nature, forestry, sculpture;
schools to teach one how to write, how to
dress, how to eat, and how to keep well;
schools to teach one how to write ad-
vertisements, to cultivate the memory, to
grow strong; schools for shooting, box-
ing, fencing; schools for nurses and
cooks; summer schools; winter schools.
And yet the American is not pro-
foundly educated. He has too much
within his reach. I have been distinctly
surprised at crude specimens I have met
who were graduates of great universi-
ties. The well-educated Englishman,
German, and American are different
things. The American is far behind in
the best sense, which I am inclined to
203
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
think is due to the teachers. Any one can
get through a normal school and become
a teacher who can pass the examination,
and I have seen some singular instances.
If all the teachers were obliged to pass
examinations in culture, refinement, and
the art of conveying knowledge, there
would be a falling of pedagogic heads.
The free and over education of the poor
places them at once above their parents.
They are free, and the daughter of a
ditch laborer, whose wife is a floor scrub-
ber, upon being educated is ashamed of
her parents, learns to play the piano, apes
the rich, and is at least unhappy.
The result is, there remains no peasant
class. The effect of education on the
country boy is to make him despise the
farm and go to the city, to become a clerk
and ape the fashions of the wealthy at
six or eight dollars a week. He has been
educated up to the standard of his "boss"
204
EDUCATION IN AMERICA
and to be his equal. The overeducation
of the poor is a heartless thing. The
women vie with the men, and as a result
women graduates, taking positions at
half the price that men demand, crowd
them out of the fields of skilled labor,
whereas the man, not crowded out,
should, normally, marry the girl.T In
power, strength, and progress the Amer-
ican nation stands first in the world, and
all this may be due to splendid educa-
tional facilities. But this is not every-
thing. There result strife, unhappiness,
envy, and a craze for riches. I do not
think the Americana as a race are as
happy as the Chinese.! Religious denom-
inations try to have^their own schools,
so that children shall not be captured by
other denominations. Thus the Roman
Catholics have parochial schools, under
priests and sisters, and colleges of va-
rious grades. They oppose the use of the
205
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
Bible in the public school, and in some
States their influence has helped to sup-
press its use. The Quakers, with a fol-
lowing of only eighty thousand, have col-
leges and schools. The Methodists have
universities, as have the Presbyterians,
Episcopalians, and others. All denomi-
nations have institutions of learning.
These schools are in the hands of clergy-
men, and are often endowed or supported
by wealthy members of the denomina-
tion.
A remarkable feature of American life
is the college of correspondence. A man
or firm advertises to teach by corre-
spondence at so much a month. Many
branches are taught, and if the student is
in earnest a certain amount of informa-
tion can thus be accumulated. Among
the people I have met I have observed a
lack of what I term full, broad educa-
tion, producing a well-rounded mind,
206
EDUCATION IN AMERICA
which is rare except among the class that
stands first in America the refined, cul-
tured, educated man of an old family,
who is the product of many generations.
The curriculum of the high school in
America would in China seem sufficient
to equip a student for any position in
diplomatic life; but I have found that a
majority of graduates become clerks in
a grocery or in other shops, car con-
ductors, or commercial travelers, where
Latin, Greek, and other higher studies
are absolutely useless. The brightest
educational sign I see in America is the
attention given to manual training. In
schools boys are taught some trade or are
allowed to experiment in the trades in
order to find out their natural bent, so that
the boy can be educated with his future
in view. As a result of education, women
appear in nearly every field except that
of .manual labor on farms, which is
207
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
performed in America only by alien
women.
The richest men in America to-day,
the multi-millionaires, are not the prod-
uct of the universities, but mainly of
the public schools. Carnegie, Rockefel-
ler, Schwab, men of the great steel com-
bine, the oil magnates, the great railway
magnates, the great mine owners, were
all men of limited education at the be-
ginning. Among great merchants, how-
ever, the university man is found, and
among the Harvard and Yale graduates,
for example, may be found some of
America's most distinguished men. But
Lincoln, the martyred President, had the
most limited education, and among pub-
lic men the majority have been the
product of the public school, which sug-
gests that great men are natural geniuses,
who will attain prominence despite the
lack of education. The best-educated
208
EDUCATION IN AMERICA
men in America to my mind are the grad-
uates of West Point and Annapolis, the
military and naval academies. These two
institutions are extremely rigorous, and
are open to the most humble citizens.
They so transform men in four years that
people would hardly recognize them.
The result is a highly educated, refined,
cultivated, practical man, with a high
sense of honor and patriotism. If Amer-
ica would have a school of this kind in
every State there would be no limit to
her power in two decades.
Despite education, the great mass of
the people are superficial; they have a
smattering of this and that. An em-
ployer of several thousand men told the
Superintendent of Education of the Dis-
trict of Columbia that he had selected
the brightest boy graduate of a high
school for a position which required only
a knowledge of simple arithmetic. The
209
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
graduate proved to be totally unfit for
the position and was discharged. Later
he became the driver of a team of horses.
America abounds in thousands of edu-
cational institutions, yet there is not one
so well endowed that it can say to the
world we wish no more money. It is
singular that some multi-millionaire does
not grasp this opportunity to donate one
hundred millions to a great national
school or university, to be placed at
Washington, where the buildings would
all be lessons in architecture of marble
after the plans of a world's fair. In-
stead they leave a few thousands here and
a few there. Carnegie, the leading mil-
lionaire, gives libraries to cities all over
the States, each of which bears the name
of the giver. The object is too obvious,
and is cheap in conception. In San
Francisco some years ago a citizen tried
the same experiment. He proposed to
210
EDUCATION IN AMERICA
give the city a large number of fountains.
When they were ' finished each one was
seen to be surmounted by his own statue.
A few were put up, how many I do not
recall, but one night some citizens waited
on a statue, fastened a rope to its neck,
and hauled it down. So peculiar are the
Americans that I believe if Mr. Carnegie
should place his name on ten thousand
libraries, with the object of attaining un-
dying fame, the people, by a concerted
effort, would forget all about him in a
few decades. Such an attempt does not
appeal to any side of the American char-
acter. I have known the best Americans,
but Mr. Carnegie has not known the best
of his own countrymen or he would not
attempt to perpetuate his memory in this
way.
211
CHAPTER XIII
THE ARMY AND NAVY
AMONG the most delightful people I
have met in America are the army and
navy officers, graduates of West Point
and Annapolis, well-bred, cultivated
men, patriotic, open-hearted, and chival-
rous. They are like our own class of
men who answer to the American term
of gentlemen. I am not going to tell you
of their splendid ships, their training or
uniform, but of a few of their idiosyn-
crasies. There is no dueling in the
army. If two men have trouble at the
academies they fight it out with bare
fists, and in the army settle it in some
other way, dueling being forbidden.
Owing to the fact that all men are equal
in America, the attitude of the officer to
212
THE ARMY AND NAVY
the civilian is entirely different. If a
civilian strikes an officer in Germany the
latter will cut him down with his saber
and be protected in it, but here the man
would be arrested and treated as any
other criminal; in a word, the officer is
a servant of the people, and stands with
them. He has been trained to treat his
men well, and they respect him. But
while the officer is the people's servant
and his salary in some part is paid by the
humblest grocer's clerk, laborer, or ar-
tisan, the officer has a social position
which, in the eyes of himself and the
Government, makes him the social equal
of kings and emperors; and here we see
a strange fact in American life.
When a garrison is ordered to a town
or city, people call to pay their respects.
The grocer, who in being taxed aids in
paying the officer's salary, is persona non
gratia. The grocer, milk dealer, shoe
15 2I 3
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
dealer, and retail dealers in general might
call, but would not be received on cordial
terms. The wife of the colonel might re-
turn the call of the grocer's wife if she
made a good appearance, but the latter
would under no circumstances be invited
to a function at the camp or post. The
undertaker, the dentist, the ice-man, the
retail shoe man are under the ban. Cer-
tain kinds of business appear to have
certain social rights. Thus a dentist
would not be received, but the man who
manufactures dentists' tools may be a
leader among the "Four Hundred."
Strange complications arise. A young
officer fell in love with a sergeant's
daughter, and married her, as I learned
from a well-known officer at the Army
and Navy Club. This was serious
enough, as there could be no intimacy
between a commissioned and non-com-
missioned officer. The young man and
214
THE ARMY AND NAVY
his bride were ordered to a distant post,
where the story of course followed them.
All went well for a time. The bride sank
her social inferiority in the rank of her
husband, and the ladies of the post called
on her, not as the sergeant's daughter but
as the officer's wife. The mother of the
bride finally decided to visit her, and
thus became the guest of the officer, who
was a lieutenant. Under ordinary cir-
cumstances it was the duty of all the
ladies to call on the mother of the lieu-
tenant's wife; but it so happened that she
was the wife of a sergeant, and hence to
call was impossible. No one did so.
The young wife felt herself insulted,
and the ubiquitous reporter seized upon
the situation, until it was taken up by
every paper in the country. The pictures
of mother, daughter, and sergeant were
shown, and columns were written on the
subject. Almost to a man the editors de-
215
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
nounced what they termed the snobbish-
ness of the army, and denounced West
Point for producing snobs, claiming that
the ladies of the post, had they been real
ladies, would have called on a respectable
laundress even if she had been the ser-
geant's wife. I refer to this to show the
intricacies of American etiquette. The
point is that nearly all the editors who
knew anything, believed that the ladies
were right, but did not dare to say so on
account of the fact that the majority of
their readers felt themselves the equals
of the army officer; hence the cry of
snobbery that went whistling over the
land. The lieutenant committed a gross
mistake in marrying the girl; he married
out of his class. But in America I am
told there are no classes, and I am con-
stantly forgetting this.
In the army there are several black
regiments (negroes). They have black
216
THE ARMY AND NAVY
chaplains, and attempts have been made
to find black officers, but the social diffi-
culties make this impossible, though the
blacks are free and independent citizens
and help pay the salaries of the white
men. It would be impossible to force
white soldiers to admit to their regiment
black soldiers. No white man would per-
mit a black officer to be placed over him,
even by inference.
In the navy we see an entirely differ-
ent situation. On every ship are negroes
in the crew, sleeping on the same gun-
decks with the white men, and no fault
is found; but a negro officer would be
an impossibility. Though several have
been sent to the Naval Academy, none
have "gone through." Even in these al-
most perfect institutions favoritism exists.
To illustrate: the son of a prominent
man was about to fail in his examina-
tions, when the powers that be passed the
217
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
word thai he must pass, nolens volens.
The professor in whose class he was and
who had found him deficient resented
this, and when he learned that it was the
intention to pass the boy over his head
he resigned and was ordered to his regi-
ment. The young man was graduated,
entered the army and, aided by influence,
jumped many of his class men and finally
acquired rank at the request of the wife
of one of the Presidents. This was a very
exceptional case, the result of strong na-
tional sentiment that favored the father.
The management of the army does not
seem rational to a foreigner. To pre-
serve the idea of republican simplicity
and equality, army men are not rewarded
with orders, as in other countries, which
is a great injustice. Few officers, though
veterans of many wars, wear medals, and
when they do they were not given as re-
wards for bravery, but are merely corps
218
THE ARMY AND NAVY
badges, showing that the officer belongs
to this or that army corps. But if an
officer does a brave deed he may be pro-
moted several points over his fellows, as
brave as he, but who did not have the
same opportunity to show bravery. Ill
feeling may be the result. Every man
is expected to be brave, and extraordinary
examples of bravery are recognized in
other nations by the presentation of
medals, the possession of which creates
no ill feeling. The actual head of the
army is the Secretary of War, a political
appointment, an adviser selected by the
President, who, usually, has no military
knowledge. This officer gives all the or-
ders to the general of the army, and, as
in a recent instance, a vast amount of
friction has been the result. Intense feel-
ing was occasioned by the elevation of
certain officers, who were supposed to
possess remarkable executive ability.
219
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
Civil war veterans at the Army and
Navy Club complained to an acquaint-
ance of mine that when they arrived at
the seat of war in Cuba they found their
superior officers to be, first, General
Wheeler, an ex-Confederate, against
whom they had fought in the civil war;
second, Colonel Wood, who had been a
contract army surgeon under nearly all
of them; and finally, Lieutenant-Colonel
Roosevelt, who was a babe in arms when
they were fighting the battles of the civil
war. This story serves to illustrate the
point that political "pulls" and favoritism
are rampant in the service, and are the
cause of much disgust among officers.
General Funston affords an illustration
that has incensed many officers. Funston
was an unknown man, who captured
Aguinaldo by a clever ruse, a valuable
and courageous piece of work, which
should have been rewarded with a dec-
220
THE ARMY AND NAVY
oration and some promotion; but he was
jumped over the heads of hundreds,
landing at the top of the army in one
"fell swoop." I judge the policy of the
Government to be to promote officers so
soon as they show evidence of extraor-
dinary capability.
It would be an easy matter for any
one to obtain photographs of plans and
sketches of American fortifications. One
of my friends hired a photographer to
get up what he called a scrap-book of
pictures to take home to his family in
Tokio in order to "entertain his people."
The photographer sent him a wonderful
series, showing the forts overlooking New
York harbor, interiors and exteriors;
and those in Boston, Portland, Baltimore,
Fort Monroe, Key West, and San Fran-
cisco were also obtained. Photographs of
guns and charts, which can be purchased
everywhere, were included, as well as
221
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
Government reports. If Japan ever goes
to war with the Yankees my friend's
scrap-book will be in demand. I do not
believe the American War Department
makes any secret of the forts. They are
open to the public. Even if a kodak
were not permitted, pictures could be se-
cured. My friend said his photographer
had a kodak which he wore inside his
vest, the opening protruding from a but-
ton-hole. All he had to do was to stand
in front of an object and pull a cord.
Such a kodak is known as a "detective
camera." There are several designs, all
very clever. I once saw my face repro-
duced in a paper, and until I heard about
this camera it was a mystery how the
original was obtained, as I had not
"posed" for any one.
The possibility of America going to
war with another nation is remote. From
what I see of the people and their tre-
222
THE ARMY AND NAVY
mendous activity they could not be de-
feated by any nation or combination of
nations. They are like Senator - 's
Malay game-cock, of which the senator
has said that there is only one trouble
with him the bird never knows when
he is licked, and if he does he does not
stay licked. America could raise an
army of ten or twelve millions of the
finest fighters in the world for defense
against any combination, and she would
win. The senator told me a story, which
illustrates the situation. One of the
American men-of-war in a Malay port
had an old American eagle aboard as a
mascot and pet. When the men got lib-
erty they went ashore with the eagle, and
showed it as an "American game-cock."
The natives wanted to arrange a match,
and finally one was planned, the eagle
cock against a black Malay. When the
fight began, the black cock put its spur
223
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
into the eagle several times, the latter
doing nothing but eye the cock, first with
one eye, and then with the other. Once
more the black cock stabbed the eagle,
bringing blood, whereupon the eagle
leaned forward, and as the cock thrust
out its head, seized it with one claw,
pressed it to the ground, and with the
other tore off its head and began to eat
it. This is what would happen if almost
any nation really and seriously went to
war with the United States. But the
country was ill prepared for the war with
Spain. If Cervera had reached the New
England coast he could have shelled Bos-
ton and then New York.
Service in America is not compulsory.
It is merely made popular, and as a re-
sult, every part of the country has State
militia of splendidly drilled men, ready
to be called on at a moment's notice.
They receive no pay, considering it an
224
THE ARMY AND NAVY
honor to be in the militia service. In the
regular army old names are perpetuated.
The great generals and admirals have
sent sons into the service\ Our Govern-
ment would do well to send young men
to West Point and Annapolis. The Jap-
anese did this for years, and received the
best of their ideas from those sources.
There is but one thing in the way.
Chinamen are tabooed in America, and
doubtless would reach no farther than
the port of entry. The only way to get
in now would be for a new minister or
diplomat to bring over ten or a dozen
young men as members of the suite and
then distribute them among the schools
and universities a humiliation that
China will probably resenty
Our trade with America is extremely
valuable to her. The cotton, flour, and
other commodities we import represent
a vast sum, and I believe if we refused
225
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
at once to buy anything from America
we could make our own terms in less
than two years. This could be accom-
plished very gradually. The Americans
would find it out first through their con-
suls, who are all instructed to report on
every possible point of vantage that can
be taken in China by their merchants.
They would report a decreased demand.
American merchants would then demand
an explanation from the Department of
State, and finally we could announce that
we preferred to buy from our friends,
American treatment of the Chinese being
inimical to good feeling. Knowing the
American business men as I do, you
could count on a wail coming up from
them. An appeal would be made to
Congress through representatives and
senators, the American business men de-
manding that the "Chinese matter" be
arranged upon a "more liberal basis."
226
THE ARMY AND NAVY
When you touch the pocketbook of "Un-
cle Sam" you reach his earthquake cen-
ter; yet for defense, for the preservation
of the national honor, this people will
spend untold sums. The American Gov-
ernment bond is the best security in the
world. It is founded on the rock of
honor and patriotism. And there is no
repudiation like that of - , and none
like the pretended one of - 1 We have
our faults, and it is well to recognize
them; but I never saw them until I min-
gled with the English and Americans.
There is of course a large foreign ele-
ment in the American army thousands
of Irish and Germans; but this does not
signify, as I learn that in the State of
Massachusetts, the stronghold of Amer-
icans, the Irish hold a third of the offi-
cial positions, the native-born Yankees
1 China has twice repudiated its Government bonds within four
centuries.
227
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
about one-fourth. This is particularly
exasperating to old families in New Eng-
land, as it is notorious that the Irish come
directly from the very dregs of the pov-
erty-stricken peasantry the "bog-trot-
ters." I was much impressed by the
high standard of honor in the army and
navy, and am told that it is the rarest
of occurrences for a regular army officer
to commit a crime or to default. This is
due to the training received at the mili-
tary and naval schools, where young men
are placed on their honor.
228
CHAPTER XIV
ART IN AMERICA
IT is seldom that I have been compli-
mented in America, but a lady has told
me that she envied our u art sense." She
said the Chinese are essentially artistic,
that the cheapest thing, the most ordinary
article, is artistic or beautiful. I wished
that I could return the compliment, but
a strict observance of the truth compels
me to say that the reverse is true in
America. If one go into a Chinese shop
and ask for any ordinary article, it will
be found artistic. If one go into an
American shop, say a hardware "store,"
there will not be found an article that
would be considered decorative, while
everything in a Chinese shop of like
character would fall under this head.
16 229
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
The conclusion is that the Chinese are
artistic, while the Americans are not.
The reason lies in the fact that the Chi-
nese are homogeneous, while the Amer-
icans are a mixed race, that is injured by
the continual introduction of baser ele-
ments. If immigration could be stopped
for fifty years, and the people have a
chance to acquire "oneness," they might
become artistic.) The middle class, how-
ever, is, from an artistic standpoint, a
horror; they have absolutely no art sense,
and the nouveaux riches are often as bad.
The latter sometimes place their money
in the hands of an agent, who buys for
them; but all at once a man may break
out and insist upon buying something
himself, so that in a splendid collection
of European names will appear some
artistic horror to stamp the owner as a
parvenu.
The Americans have not produced a
230
ART IN AMERICA
great painter. By this I mean a really
great artist, nor have they a great sculp-
tor, one who is or has been an inspira-
tion. But they have thousands of artists,
and many poor ones thrive in selling
their wares. You may see a man with
an income of thirty thousand dollars
having paintings on his walls that give
one the vertigo. The poor artist has
taken him in, or "pulled his leg," to use
the latest American slang. There are
some fine paintings in America. I have
visited the great collections in Boston,
New York, Philadelphia, Washington,
Chicago, and those in many private gal-
leries, but the best of the pictures are al-
ways from England, France, Germany,
and other European countries. Old mas-
ters are particularly revered. Americans
pay enormous sums for them, but some-
times are deceived.
They have art schools by the hundred,
231
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
where they study from the nude and
from models of all kinds. There are
splendid museums of art, especially in
Boston and New York. The art interests
are particularly active, but not the peo-
ple; there are a few art lovers only, the
people in the mass being hopeless.
Cheap prints, chromos, and other deadly
things are ground out by the million and
sold, to clog still deeper the art sense of
an inartistic people. They laugh at our
conventional Chinese art, but the ex-
treme of conventionality is certainly bet-
ter than some of the daubs I have seen
in American homes. Americans have
peculiar fancies in art. One is called Im-
pressionist Art. As near as I can under-
stand it, painters claim that while you
are looking at an object you do not really
see it all, you merely gain an impres-
sion; so they paint only the impression.
In a museum of art I was shown several
232
ART IN AMERICA
rooms full of daubs, having absolutely
nothing to commend them, weird colors
being thrown together in the strangest
manner, without rhyme or reason, but
over which people went mad. The great
masters of Europe appeal to me strongly.
In America, marine painters attract me
the most, for example, Edward Moran,
who is a splendid delineator of the sea.
Bierstadt is a noble painter, and so is
Thomas Moran. There are half a hun-
dred men who are fine painters, but half
a thousand men and women who think
they are artistic but who are not.
Americans have developed no individ-
ual architecture. You see semipagoda-
like effects in the East, and old English
houses in the South. They steal the lat-
ter and call them Colonial. They steal
the architecture of the Moors and call
it Mexican. They borrow Roman and
Grecian effects for great public build-
233
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
ings. At one time they went mad over
the French roof, or mansard. Nowhere
have I seen purely American architec-
ture. The race is not possessed of suf-
ficient unity. So all their art is from
abroad, and notably is French and Eng-
lish. They make broad effects, and
give them an American name; but they
are copied from the Dutch or Germans.
All the furniture designers in Amer-
ica are Europeans. You will find a
splendid house with a Chinese room,
having teak inlaid with ivory, etc. ; a
Japanese room, a Moorish room, and
an Italian room, all splendidly deco-
rated; but the family lives in an "Amer-
ican room," that is commonplace and
subversive of all art digestion and as-
similation. The average middle-class
American knows absolutely nothing
about art; the lower classes so little that
their homes are hopeless. Knowing this,
234
ART IN AMERICA
they are preyed upon by thousands of
foreign swindlers. There are hundreds
of articles manufactured in Europe to
sell to the American tourist. I have seen
Napoleonic furniture enough to load a
fleet. I can only compare it to the pieces
of the true cross and the holy relics of
the Catholics, of which there are enough
to fill the original ark which the Bible
tells the Americans landed on Mount
Ararat in a great flood.
The houses of the best people I have
told you about are as far removed from
the commonplace as the equator from
the poles. They are rich in conception,
sumptuous in detail, artistic in every way,
and filled with the art gems of the world.
But these people have descended from
refined people for several generations.
They are the true Americans, but make
up a small number compared to the in-
artistic whole. I believe America recog-
235
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
nizes this, and with her stupendous
energy is doing everything to educate the
masses in art. They are building splen-
did museums; rich men give away mil-
lions. There are hundreds of art schools,
free to all, and art is taught in all the
schools. Fine monuments are placed in
public squares and parks, and beautiful
fountains and memorials in these and
other public places. Their buildings,
though foreign in design, are beautiful.
In Boston one may see marvelous work
in frescoes, etc., and in the Government
buildings at Washington. The Capitol,
while not American in design, is a
pile worthy of the great people who
erected it.
236
CHAPTER XV
THE DARK SIDE OF REPUBLICANISM
THE questions I know you will wish
answered are, Whether this stupendous
aggregation of States is a success? Does
it possess advantages beyond those of the
Chinese Empire? Does it fulfil the ex-
pectations of its own people? Frankly,
I do not consider myself competent to
answer. I have studied America and the
Americans for many years during my
visits to this country and Europe, and
while I have seen many accounts of the
country, written after several months of
observation, I believe that no just esti-
mate of the republican form of govern-
ment can be formed after such experi-
ence. My private impression, however,
is that the republic falls far short of what
237
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
the men in Washington's time expected,
and it is also my private opinion that it
has not so many advantages as a govern-
ment like that of England.
It is too splendid an organization to
be lightly denounced. The idea of the
equality of men is noble : and I would
not wish to be arraigned among its critics.
There is too much good to offset the bad.
I have been attempting to amuse you by
analyzing the Americans, pointing out
their frailties as well as their good qual-
ities. I tell you what I see as I run, al-
ways, I hope, remembering what is good
in this spontaneous and open-hearted peo-
ple. The characteristic claim of the
people is that the Government offers free-
dom to its citizens ; yet every man is quite
as free in China if he behaves himself,
and he can rise if he possesses brains.
Any native-born citizen in the United
States may become the head of the na-
238 '
THE DARK SIDE OF REPUBLICANISM
tion has he the courage of his convic-
tions, the many accomplishments which
equip the great leader, and should the
hour and the man meet opportunity.
This is the one prize which distinguishes
America from England. The latter in
other respects offers exactly as much free-
dom with half the wear and tear; in
fact, to me the freedom of America is
one of her disadvantages. Every one
knows, and the American best of all, that
all men are not equal, never were and
never can be. Yet this false doctrine is
their standard, and they swear by it,
though some will explain that what is
meant is political freedom. Freedom ac-
counts for the gross impertinence of the
ignorant and lower classes, the laughable
assumptions of servants, and the illogical
pretenses of the nouveau riche, which
make America impossible to some peo-
ple. Cultivated Americans are as thor-
239
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
oughly aristocratic as the nobility of
England. There are the same classes
here as there. A grocer becomes rich and
retires or dies; his children refuse to as-
sociate with the families of other gro-
cers; in a word, the Americans have the
aristocratic feeling, but they have no
peasant class ; the latter would be, in their
own estimation, as good as any one. One
class, the lower and poorer, is arraigned
against the upper and richer, and the gap
is growing daily.
But this would not prove that the re-
public is a failure. What then? It is,
in the opinion of many of its clergymen,
a great moral failure. No nation in his-
tory has lasted many centuries after hav-
ing developed the "symptoms" now
shown in the United States. I quote
their own press, "the States are morally
rotten," and you have but to turn to these
organs and the magazines of the past dec-
240
THE DARK SIDE OF REPUBLICANISM
ade, which make a feature of holding
up the shortcomings of cities and mil-
lionaires, to read the details of the trag-
edy. Thieves grafters have seized
upon the vitals of the country. St. Louis,
Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, great
representative cities what is their his-
tory? The story of dishonesty among
officials, of bribery, stealing, and every
possible crime that a man can devise to
wring money from the people. This is
no secret. It has all been exposed by the
friends of morality. City governments
are overthrown, the rascals are turned
out, but in a few months the new officers
are caught devising some new "grafting"
operation.
I have it from a prominent official that
there is not an honest State or city ad-
ministration in America. What can a na-
tion say when for years it has known that
a large and influential lobby has been
241
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
maintained to influence statesmen, a
lobby comprising a corps of "persua-
ders" in the pay of business men? How
do they influence them? The great fights
waged to defeat certain measures are well
known, and it is known that money was
used. Certain congressmen have been
notoriously receptive. I have seen the
following story in print in many forms.
I took the trouble to ask a well-known
man if it was possible that it could be
founded on fact; his reply was, "Cer-
tainly it is a fact." A briber entered the
private room of a congressman. "Mr.
, to come right to the point, I want
the bill to pass, and I will give you
five hundred dollars for the vote and
your interest." The congressman rose to
his feet, purple with rage. "You dare
to offer me this insulting bribe? You
infernal scoundrel, I will throw you
out." "Well, suppose we make it one
242
THE DARK. SIDE OF REPUBLICANISM
thousand," said the imperturbable vis-
itor. "Well," replied the congressman,
cooling down, "that is a little better put.
We will talk it over."
The American Government had been
attempting, since 1859, to build a canal
across the Isthmus. I believe surveys
were made earlier than that, but bribery
and corruption and "graft" enabled the
friends of transcontinental railroads to
stop the canals. It would be a disad-
vantage to the railroads to have a canal
across the Isthmus. So in some mys-
terious way the canal, which the people
wished, has not been built, and will not
be until the people rise and demand
it. Corruption has stood on the Isthmus
with a flaming sword and struck down
every attempt to build the canal. The
morality of the people is low. Divorce
is rampant, the daily journals are filled
with accounts of divorces, and daily lists
243
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
of crimes are printed that would seem
impossible to a nation that can raise mil-
lions to send to China to convert the
"heathen." If they would only divert
these Chinese missionaries from China to
their own heathen and grafters, but they
will not. The peculiar freedom of the
country, which is nothing less than the
most atrocious license, tends to drag it
down.
The papers have absolutely no check
on their freedom. Men and women are
attacked by them, ruined, held up to
scorn and ridicule, and the victim has no
recourse but to shoot the editor and thus
embroil himself. That it is a crime to
ridicule a man and make him the butt of
a nation or the world seems never to oc-
cur to these men. Certain statesmen have
been so lampooned by the "hired" libel-
ers that they have been ruined. The
press hires a class of men, called cartoon-
244
THE DARK SIDE OF REPUBLICANISM
ists, usually ill-bred fellows of no stand-
ing, yet clever, in their business, whose
duty it is to hold up public men to ridi-
cule in every possible way and make
them infamous before the people. This
is called the freedom of the press, and its
attitude, or the sensational part of it, in
presenting crime in an alluring manner,
is having its effect upon the youth of the
country. Young girls and boys become
familiar with every feature of bestial
crime through the "yellow journals," so
called, and that the republic will reap
sorely from this sowing I venture to
prophesy.
I asked one of the great insurance men
why it was that great financial institu-
tions took so strong an interest in poli-
tics. He laughed, and said, "If I am not
mistaken, not long since your country
repudiated its Government bonds, and
they are not negotiable to any great ex-
17 245
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
tent among your people." Hearing this
I assumed the American attitude and
"sawed wood." "We take an interest in
politics," he continued, "to offset the
professional blackmailer and thief. Now
in the case of your repudiation I under-
stand all about it. The Chinese Govern-
ment was in straits, and suddenly some
seemingly patriotic citizen started a pe-
tition, stating to the Government that the
subscribers offered their Government se-
curities to the Government as a gift. By
no means all the bondholders signed,
but enough, I understand, to have justi-
fied your Government in repudiating the
bonds 'at the request of the people'
thus destroying the national credit at
home and abroad. Now in America
that would be called 'graft.' The act
would be done by a few grafters in the
hope of reward, or by some unscrupulous
statesmen to save the Government from
246
THE DARK SIDE OF REPUBLICANISM
bankruptcy during their term of office.
I conceive this to be what was done in
China. If we do not keep eternal watch
we shall be bled every day. It is done
in this way: a grafter becomes an assem-
blyman, and with others lays a plan of
graft. It is to get up a bill, so offensive
to our corporation that it would mean
ruin if passed. The grafter has no idea
that it will pass, but it is made much of,
and of course reaches our ears, and the
question is how to stop it. We are
finally told that we had better see Mr.
, in our own city. He is accordingly
looked up and found to be a cheap and
ignorant politician, who, if there are no
witnesses, tells our agent plainly that it
can be stopped for ten thousand dollars.
Perhaps we beat him down to eight
thousand, but we pay it. Hundreds of
firms have been blackmailed in this way.
Now we keep an agent in the State Cap-
247
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
itol to attend to our interests, and we take
an interest in politics to head off the elec-
tion of professional grafters."
\ One of the most serious things in this
phase of national immorality is showing
itself in what are termed "lynchings";
that is, a negro commits a crime against
a white woman, and instead of permit-
ting the law to run its course, the people
rise, seized with a savage craze for re-
venge, batter in the jails, take the crim-
inal, and burn him at the stake. This
burning is sometimes attended by thou-
sands, who display theynost remarkable
abandon and savagery! Some African
chiefs have sacrificed more people at one
time, but no savage has ever displayed
greater bestiality, gloated over his vic-
tim with more real satisfaction, than these
free Americans in numerous instances
when shouting and yelling about the
burning body of some unfortunate whose
248
THE DARK SIDE OF REPUBLICANISM
crime has aroused their ferocity to the
point of madness.
Not one but many clergymen have de-
nounced this. They compare it to the
most brutal acts of savagery, and we have
the picture of a country posing as civ-
ilized, with the temerity to point out the
sins of others, giving themselves over to
orgies that would disgrace the lowest of
races. I have it from the lips of a clergy-
man that during the past twelve years
over twenty-five hundred men have been
lynched in the United States. In a sin-
gle year two hundred and forty men were
killed by mobs in this way, many being
burned at the stake. If any excuse is
offered, it is said that most of these were
negroes, and the crime was rape, and the
victims white women ; but of the number
mentioned only forty-six were charged
with this crime and but two-thirds were
black. Many confessed as the torch was
249
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
applied, many died protesting their in-
nocence, and in no case was the offense
legally proved. This lynching seems to
be a mania with the people. It began
with the attack of negroes on white
women. The repetition of similar cases
so enraged the whites that they have be-
come mad upon the subject. The feel-
ing is well illustrated by the remark of
a Southerner to me. "If a woman of my
family was attacked by a negro I must
be his executioner. I could not wait for
the law." This man told me that no
lynching would ever have taken place
had it not been for the uncertainty of
the law. Men who were known to be
guilty of the grossest of crimes had been
virtually protected by the law, and their
cases dragged along at great expense to
the State, this occurring so many times
that the patience of the people became
exhausted. This man forgot that the
250
THE DARK SIDE OF REPUBLICANISM
law was instigated for the purpose of
justice.
The negro is an issue in America and
a cause of much crime, a vengeance on
the people who held them as slaves.
The negro has increased so rapidly that
in forty years he has doubled in number,
there now being over nine millions in the
country. At the present rate there will
be twenty- five millions in 1930 a black
menace to the white American.
The negro is a factor in the national
unrest. They outnumber the whites in
some localities, and hence vote them-
selves many offices, while the few whites
pay eighty or eighty-five per cent of the
taxes and the negroes supply from eighty
to ninety per cent of the criminals.
While this is going on in the South and
the whites are rising and preparing to
disfranchise the blacks in many States,
the people of Boston and Cambridge are
251
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
discussing the propriety of the whites
and blacks marrying to settle the ques-
tion of social equality. Such proposals
I have read. Reprinted in the South,
they added fuel to the flame.
Another element of distress in Amer-
ica is the attitude of labor, the policy of
the Government of letting in the lowest
of the low from every nation except the
Chinese, against whom the only charge
has been that they are too industrious and
thus a menace to the whites. The swarms
of people from the low and criminal
classes of Europe have enabled the an-
archists to obtain such a foothold that in
this free country the President of the
United States is almost as closely guard-
ed as the Emperor of Russia. The White
House is surrounded and guarded by
detectives of various kinds. The secret-
service department is equal in its equip-
ment to that of many European nations,
252
THE DARK SIDE OF REPUBLICANISM
and millions are spent in watching crim-
inals and putting down their strikes and
riots. The doctrine of freedom to all ap-
peals so well to the ignorant laborer that
he has decided to control the entire sit-
uation, and to this end labor is divided
into "unions," and in many sections bus-
iness has been ruined.
The demands of these ignorant men
are so preposterous that they can scarcely
be credited. The merchant no longer
owns his business or directs it. The la-
borer tells him what to pay, how to pay
it, when and how long the hours shall
be in fact, undertakes to usurp entire
control. If the owner protests, the labor-
ers all stop work, strike, appoint guards,
who attack, kill, or intimidate any one
who attempts to take their place. In this
way it is said that one billion dollars
have been lost in the last few years. Con-
tracts have been broken, men ruined,
253
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
localities and cities placed in the greatest
jeopardy, and hundreds of lives lost.
Every branch of trade has its "union,"
and in so many cases have the laborers
been successful that a national panic
comes almost in sight. Never was there
a more farcical illustration of freedom.
Irrational, ignorant Irishmen, who had
not the mental capacity to earn more
than a dollar a day, dictated to merchant
princes and millionaire contractors. In
New York it was proved that the leaders
of the strikers sold out to employers, and
accepted bribes to call off strikes.
The question before the American peo-
ple is, Has an American citizen the right
to conduct his own business to suit him-
self and employ whom he wishes? Has
the laborer the right to work for whom
and what rate he pleases? The imported
socialists, anarchists, and their converts
among Americans say no, and it will re-
254
THE DARK SIDE OF REPUBLICANISM
quire but little to precipitate a bloody
war, when labor, led by red-handed mur-
derers, will enact in New York and all
over the United States the horrors of the
French Commune.
The republic for a great and enlight-
ened country has too many criminals. I
am told by a prohibition clergyman that
the curse of drink and license has its
fangs in the heart of the land. He tells
me that the Americans pay yearly $1,172-
000,000 for their alcoholic drink; for
bread, $600,000,000; for tobacco, $625,-
000,000; for education, $197,000,000; for
ministers' salaries, $14,000,000. It has
been found that the downfall of eighty-
one per cent of criminals is traceable to
drink. He said: "Our republic is a
failure morally, as we have 2,550,000
drunkards and people addicted to drink.
We have 600,000 prostitutes, and many
more doubtless that are not known, and
2 55
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
in nine cases out of ten their downfall
can be traced to drink."
I listen to this side of the story, and
then I see wonderful philanthropy, in-
stitutions for the prevention of crime,
good men at work according to their
light, millions employed to educate the
young, thousands of churches and so-
cieties to aid man in making man better.
When I listen to these men, and see tens
of thousands of Christian men and wom-
en living pure lives, building up vast
cities, great monuments for the future, I
feel that I can not judge the Americans.
They perhaps expect too much from their
freedom and their republican ideas. I
shall never be a republican. I believe
that we all have all the freedom we de-
serve. It is well to remember that man
is an animal. After all his polish and
refinement, he has animal tastes and de-
sires, and if he makes laws that are in
256
THE DARK SIDE OF REPUBLICANISM
direct opposition to the indulgence which
his animal nature suggests, he certainly
must have some method of enforcing the
laws. Like all animals, some men are
easily influenced and others not, and the
human animal has not made progress so
far but that he needs watching in order
to make him conform to what he has de-
cided or elected to call right.
You will expect me to compare the
American to the Chinaman, but it is im-
possible. Some things which we look
upon as right, the, American considers
grievous sins. The point of view is en-
tirely at variance, but I have boundless
faith in the brilliant and good men and
women I have met in America. I say
this despite my other impressions, which
also hold.
The great political scheme of the peo-
ple is poorly devised and crude. It is so
arranged that in some States governors
257
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
are elected every year or two and other
officers every year, representatives of the
people in Congress every two years, sen-
ators every six, Presidents every four
years. Thus the country is constantly in
a whirl, and as soon as the rancor of one
national election is over begins the
scheming for another. The people have
really little to do with the selection of a
President. A small band of rich and in-
fluential schemers generally have the
entire plan or "slate" laid out. A plan,
natural in appearance, is arranged for
the public, and at the right time the
slated program is sprung. Senators
should be elected by the people, congress-
men should be elected for a longer pe-
riod, and Presidents should have twice
the terms they do. But it is easy to sug-
gest, and I confess that my suggestions
are those of many American people them-
selves which I hear reformers cry abroad.
258
THE DARK SIDE OF REPUBLICANISM
(^ The vital trouble with America to-day
is that she can not assimilate the 600,000
debased, ignorant, poverty-stricken for-
eigners who are coming in every year.
They keep out the one peaceful nation.
They exclude the Chinese and take to
the national heart the Jew, the Socialist,
the Italian, the Roumanian and others
who constitute a nation of unrest.) What
America needs is the "rest cure" that you
hear so much about here. She should
close her seaports to these aliens for ten
years, allow the people here to assimi-
late; but they can not do it. The for-
eign transportation lines under foreign
flags are in the business to load up Amer-
ica with the dregs of Europe. I know of
one family of Jews, four brothers, who
wished to come to America, but found
that they would have to show that they
were not paupers. They mustered about
one thousand dollars. One came over,
259
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
and sent back the money by draft. The
second brought it back as his fortune,
then immediately sent it back for another
brother to bring over, and so on until
they all arrived, each proving that he was
not a pauper. Yet these same brothers,
each with several children, became an ex-
pense to the Government before they
were earners. The children were sent to
industrial homes, and later entered the
sweat-shops. In America there is not a
Chinaman to-day in a workhouse, or a
pauper 1 at the expense of the Govern-
ment; yet the Chinese are not wanted
here.
1 This is doubtful. EDITOR.
26O
CHAPTER XVI
SPORTS AND PASTIMES
I HAD not been in Washington a month
before I received invitations to a "coun-
try club golf" tournament, to a "rowing
club," to a "pink tea," to a "polo game,"
to a private "boxing" bout between two
light-weight professionals, given in Sen-
ator 's stable, to a private "cock-
fight" by the brother of 's wife, to
a gun club "shoot," not to speak of in-
vitations to several "poker games." From
this you may infer that Americans are
fond of sport. The official sport that is,
the game I heard of most among Gov-
ernment officials, senators, and others
was "poker," and the sums played for at
times I am assured are beyond belief.
There are rules and etiquette for poker,
is 261
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
and one of the most distinguished of
American diplomatists of a past genera-
tion, General Schenck, emulated the
Marquis of Queensberry in boxing by
writing a book on the national game, that
has all the charm claimed for it. It is
seductive, and doubtless has had its in-
fluence on the people who employ the
"bluff" in diplomacy, war, business, or
poker, with equal tact and cleverness.
Middle-class Americans are fond of
sport in every way, but the aristocrats
lack sporting spontaneity; they like it, or
pretend to like it, because it is the fash-
ion, and they take up one sport after
another as it becomes the fad. That this
is true can be shown by comparing the
Englishman and the American of the
fashionable class. The Englishman is
fond of sport because it is in his blood;
he does not like golf to-day and swim-
ming to-morrow, but he likes them all,
262
SPORTS AND PASTIMES
and always has done so. He would never
give up cricket, golf, or any of his games
because they go out of fashion; he does
not allow them to go out of fashion; but
with the American it is different.
Hence I assume that the average Amer-
ican of the better class is not imbued with
the sporting spirit. He wears it like an
ill-fitting coat. I find a singular feature
among the Americans in connection with
their sports. Thus if something is known
and recognized as sport, people take to
it with avidity, but if the same thing is
called labor or exercise, it is considered
hard work, shirked and avoided. This
is very cleverly illustrated by Mark
Twain in one of his books, where a boy
makes his companions believe that white-
washing a fence is sport, and so relieves
himself from an arduous duty by pre-
tending to share the great privilege with
them.
263
AS A CHINAMAN ,SAW US
No one would think of walking stead-
ily for six days, yet once this became
sport; dozens of men undertook it, and
long walks became a fad. If a man
committed a crime and should be sen-
tenced to play the modern American
'game of football every day for thirty days
as a punishment, there are some who
might prefer a death sentence and so
avoid a lingering end; but under the
title of "sport" all young men play it, and
a number are maimed and killed yearly.
Sport is in the blood of the common
people. Children begin with tops, mar-
bles, and kites, yet never appreciate our
skill with either. I amazed a boy on the
outskirts of Washington one day by ask-
ing him why he did not irritate his kite
and make it go through various evolu-
tions. He had never heard of doing that,
and when I took the string and began to
jerk it, and finally made the kite plunge
264
SPORTS AND PASTIMES
downward or swing in circles, and always
restored it by suddenly slacking off the
cord, he was astonished and delighted.
The national game is baseball, a very
clever game. It is nothing to see thou-
sands at a game, each person having paid
twenty-five or fifty cents for the priv-
ilege. In summer this game, played by
experts, becomes a most profitable bus-
iness. Rarely is any one hurt but the
judge or umpire, who is at times hissed
by the audience and mobbed, and at
others beaten by either side for unfair
decisions; but this is rare.
Football is dangerous, but is even more
popular than the other. You might im-
agine by the name that the ball is kicked.
On the contrary the real action of the
game consists in running down, tripping
up, smashing into, and falling on whom-
ever has the ball. As a consequence, men
wear a soft armor. There are fashions in
265
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
sports which demonstrate the ephemeral
quality of the American love for sport.
A while ago "wheeling" was popular,
and everybody wheeled. Books were
printed on the etiquette of the sport;
roads were built for it and improved; but
suddenly the working class took it up and
fashion dropped it. Then came golf, im-
ported from Scotland. With this fad
millions of dollars were expended in
country clubs and greens all over the
United States, as acres of land were nec-
essary. People seized upon this with a
fierceness that warmed the hearts of
dealers in balls and clubs. The men
who edited wheel magazines now
changed them to "golf monthlies." This
sport began to wane as the novelty wore
off, until golf is now played by com-
paratively few experts and lovers.
Society introduced the automobile, and
we have the same thing more maga-
266
SPORTS AND PASTIMES
zines, the spending of millions, the build-
ing of the garage, and the appearance
of the chaufeur or driver. Then came
the etiquette of the auto a German navy
cap, rubber coat, and Chinese goggles.
This peculiar uniform is of course only
to be worn when racing, but you see the
American going out for a slow ride
solemnly attired in rubber coat and gog-
gles. The moment the auto comes
within reach of the poor man it will be
given up; but it is now the fad and a
most expensive one, the best machines
costing ten thousand dollars or more, and
I have seen races where the speed ex-
ceeded a mile a minute.
All sports have their ethics and rules
and their correct costuming. Baseball
men are in uniform, generally white,
with various-colored stockings. The
golfer wears a red coat and has a servant
or valet, who carries his bag of clubs,
267
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
designed for every possible expediency.
To hear a group of golfers discuss the
merits of these tools is one of the ex-
traordinary experiences one has in Amer-
ica. I have been made fairly "giddy,"
as the Englishmen say, by this anemic
conversation at country clubs. The
"high-ball" was the saving clause a re-
markable invention this. Have I ex-
plained it? You take a very tall glass,
made for the purpose, and into it pour
the contents of a small cut-glass bottle or
decanter of whisky, which must be
Scotch, tasting of smoke. On this you
pour seltzer or soda-water, filling up the
glass, and if you take enough you are
"high" and feel like a rolling ball. It is
the thing to take a "high-ball" after
every nine holes in golf. Then after the
game you bathe, and sit and drink as
many as your skin will hold. I got this
from a professional golf-teacher in
268
SPORTS AND PASTIMES
charge of the links, and hence it is
official.
The avidity with which the Americans
seize upon a sport and the suddenness
with which they drop it, illustrating
what I have said about the lack of a na-
tional sporting taste, is well shown by
the coming of a game called "ping
pong," a parlor tennis, with our battle-
dores for rackets. What great mind
invented this game, or where it came
from, no one seems to know, but as a wag
remarked, "When in doubt lay it to
China." Some suppose it is Chinese, the
name suggesting it. So extraordinary
was the early demand for it that it ap-
peared as though everybody in America
was determined to own and play ping
pong. The dealers could not produce it
fast enough. Factories were established
all over the country, and the tools were
ground out by the ten thousands. Books
269
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
were written on the ethics of the game;
experts came to the front; ping pong
weeklies and monthlies were founded, to
dumfound the masses, and the very air
vibrated with the "ping" and the "pong."
The old and young, rich and poor,
feeble and herculean, all played it. Doc-
tors advised it, children cried for it, and
a fashionable journal devised the correct
ping-pong costume for players. Great
matches were played between the experts
of various sections, and this sport, a game
really for small children, after the fash-
ion of battledore and shuttlecock, ran its
course among young and old. Pictures
of adult ping-pong champions were bla-
zoned in the public print; even church-
men took it up. Public gardens had
special ping-pong tables to relieve the
stress. At last the people seized upon
ping pong, and it became common. Then
it was dropped like a dead fish. If some
270
SPORTS AND PASTIMES
cyclonic disturbance had swept all the
ping-pong balls into space, the disap-
pearance could not have been more com-
plete. Ping pong was put out of fashion.
All this to the alien suggests something,
a want of balance, a "youngness" perhaps.
At the present time the old game of
croquet is being revived under another
name, and tennis is the vogue among
many. Among the fashionable and
wealthy men polo is the vogue, but
among a few everything goes by fads for
a few years. Every one will rush to see
or play some game; but this interest soon
dies out, and something new starts up.
Such games as baseball and football,
tennis and polo are, in a sense, in a class
by themselves, but among the pastimes
of the people a wide vogue belongs to
fishing, and shooting wild fowl and large
game. The former is universal, and the
Americans are the most skilled anglers
271
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
with artificial lures in the world, due to
the abundance of game-fish, trout, and
others, and the perfect Government care
exercised to perfect the supply.
As an illustration, each State consid-
ers hunting and fishing a valuable asset
to attract those who will come and spend
money. I was told by a Government
official that the State of Maine reck-
oned its game at five million dollars per
annum, which means that the sport is so
good that sportsmen spend that amount
there every year; but I fancy the amount
is overestimated. The Government has
perfect fish hatcheries, constantly supply-
ing young fish to streams, while the bus-
iness in anglers' supplies is immense.
There are thousands of duck-shooting
clubs in the United States. Men, or a
body of men, rent or buy marshes, and
keep the poor man out. Rich men ac-
quire hundreds of acres, and make pre-
272
SPORTS AND PASTIMES
serves. Possibly the sport of hunting
wild fowl is the most characteristic of
American sports. This also has its eti-
quette, its costumes, its club-houses, and
its poker and high-balls. I know of one
such club in which almost all the mem-
bers are millionaires. A humorous paper
stated that they used "gold shot."
As a nation the Americans are fond of
athletics, which are taught in the schools.
There are splendid gymnasiums, and
boys and girls are trained in athletic ex-
ercises. Athletics are all in vogue. It
is fashionable to be a good "fencer." All
the young dance. I believe the Amer-
icans stand high as a nation in all-around
athletics; at least they are far ahead of
China in this respect.
I have reserved for mention last the
most -popular fashion of the people in
sport, which is prize-fighting. Here
again you see a strange contradiction.
2 73
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
The people are preeminently religious,
and prize-fighting and football are the
sports of brutes; yet the two are most
popular. No public event attracts more
attention in America than a gladiatorial
fight to the finish between the champion
and some aspirant. For months the pa-
pers are filled with it, and on the day of
the event the streets are thronged with
people crowding about the billboards to
receive the news. No national event,
save the killing of a President, attracted
more universal attention than the beat-
ing of Sullivan by Corbett and the
beating of Corbett by Fitzsimmons, and
"Fitz" in turn by Jeffries. I might add
that I joined with the Americans in this,
as the modern prize-fighter is a fine ani-
mal. If all boys were taught to believe
that their fists are their natural weapons,
there would be fewer murders and sud-
den deaths in America. I have seen
274
SPORTS AND PASTIMES
several of these prize-fights and many
private bouts, all with gloves. They are
governed by rules. Such a combat is by
no means as dangerous as football, where
the obvious intention seems to be to break
ribs and crush the opponent.
Rowing is much indulged in, and
yachting is a great national maritime
sport, in which the Americans lead and
challenge the world. In no sport is the
wealth of the nation so well shown.
Every seaside town has its yacht or boat
club, and in this the interest is perpetual.
Even in winter the yacht is rigged into
an "ice-boat." I have often wondered
that fashionable people do not take up
the romantic sport of falconry, as they
have the birds and every facility. I sug-
gested this to a lady, who replied, "Ah,
that is too barbaric for us." "More bar-
baric than cock-fighting?" I asked, know-
ing that her brother owned the finest
275
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
game-cocks in the District of Columbia.
Among the Americans there is a dis-
tinct love for fair play, and such sports
as "bull-baiting," "bull-fights," "dog-
fights," and "cock-fights" have never at-
tained any degree of popularity. There
are spasmodic instances of such indul-
gences, but in no sense can they be in-
cluded, as in England and Spain, among
the national sports, which leads me to the
conclusion that, aside from the many pe-
culiarities, as taking up and dropping
sports, America, all in all, is the greatest
sporting nation of the world. It leads in
fist-fighting, rifle-shooting, in skilful an-
gling, in yachting, in rowing, in run-
ning, in six-day walking, in auto-racing,
in trotting and running horses, and in
trap-shooting, and if its champions in all
fields could be lined up it would make a
surprising showing. I am free to con-
fess and quite agree with a vivacious
276
SPORTS AND PASTIMES
young woman who at the country club
told me that it was very nice of me to
uphold my country, but that we were
"not in it" with American sports.
The Presidents are often sportsmen.
President Cleveland and President Har-
rison both have been famous, the former
as a fisherman, the latter as well as the
former as a duck-shooter. President Mc-
Kinley has no taste for sport, but the
Vice-President is a promoter of sport of
each and every kind. He is at home in
polo or hurdle racing, with the rifle or re-
volver. This calls to mind the national
weapon the revolver. Nine-tenths of
all the shooting is done with this weapon,
that is carried in a special pocket on the
hips, and I venture to say that a pair of
"trousers" was never made without the
pistol pocket. Even the clergymen have
one. I asked an Episcopal clergyman
why he had a pistol pocket. He replied
19 277
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
that he carried his prayer-book there.
The Southern people use a long curved
knife, called a bowie, after its inventor.
Many people have been cut by this
weapon. The negro, for some strange
reason, carries a razor, and in a fight
"whips out" this awful weapon and
slashes his enemy. I have asked many
negroes to explain this habit or selection.
One replied that it was "none of my
d business." Nearly all the others
said they did not know why they car-
ried it.
278
CHAPTER XVII
THE CHINAMAN IN AMERICA
THE average Irishman whom one
meets in America, and he is legion, is a
very different person from the polished
gentleman I have met in Belfast, Dub-
lin, and other cities in Ireland; but I
never heard that the American Irishman,
the product of an ignorant peasantry
crowded out of Ireland, had ybeen ac-
cepted as a type of the race\ Peculiar
discrimination is made in America
against the Chinese. Our lower classes,
"coolies" from the Cantonese districts,
have flocked to America. Americans
"lump" all Chinese under this head, and
can not conceive that in China there are
cultivated men, just as there are culti-
279
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
vated men in Ireland, the antipodes orf
the grotesque Irish types seen in America).
^1 believe there are seventy-five or
eighty thousand Chinamen in America.
They do not assimilate with the Amer-
icans. Many are common lab&rers, laun-
drymen, and small merchants/ In New
York, Chicago, San Francisco, and other
cities there are large settlements of them.
In San Francisco many have acquired
wealth. (jThe Chinese quarter is to all in-
tents and purposes a Chinese city. None
of these people, or very few, are Amer-
icanized in the sense of taking an active
part in the government; Americans do
not permit it. I was told that the Chi-
nese were among the best citizens, the
percentage of criminals being very small.
They are honest, frugal, and industrious
too industrious, in fact, and for this
very,reason the ban has been placed upon
thernjf Red-handed members of the Ital-
280
THE CHINAMAN IN AMERICA
ian Mafia a society of murderers the
most ignorant class in Ireland, Wales,
and England, the scum of Russia, and
the human dregs of Europe generally
are welcome, but the clean, hard-work-
ing Chinaman is excluded/
f Millions are spent yearly in keeping
him out after he had been invited to
come. He built many American rail-
roads; he opened the door between the
Atlantic and the Pacific; he worked in
the mines; he did work that no one else
would or could do, and when it was com-
pleted the American laborer, the product
of this scum of all nations, demanded
that tht Chinaman be "thrown out" and
kept/ut. America listened to the bla-
tant demagogues, the "sand-lot orators,"
and excluded the Chinese\ To-day it is
almost impossible for a Chinese gentle-
man to send his son to America to travel
or study.) He will not be distinguished
' 281
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
from laundryman "John," and is thrown
back in the teeth of his countrymen;
^meanwhile China continues to be raided
by American missionaries) The insult is
rarely resented. In the treaty ratified by
the United States Senate in 1868 we read:
"The United States of America and
the Empire of China cordially recognize
the inherent right of man to change his
home and allegiance, and also the mutual
advantage of the free immigration and
emigration of their citizens and subjects
respectively from the one country to the
other for purposes of curiosity, of trade
or as permanent residents."
Again we read, in the treaty ratified
under the Hayes administration, that the
Government of the United States, "if its
labor interests are threatened by the in-
coming Chinese, may regulate or limit
such coming, but may not absolutely pro-
hibit it." The United States Govern-
282
THE CHINAMAN IN AMERICA
ment has disregarded its solemn treaty
obligations. Not only this, our people,
previous to the Exclusion Act, were
killed, stoned, and attacked time and
again by "hoodlums." The life of a
Chinaman was not safe. The labor class
in America, the lowest and almost always
a foreign class, wished to get rid of the
Chinaman so that they could raise the
price of labor and secure all the work.
China had reason to go to war with
America for her treatment of her people
and for failure to observe a treaty. The
Scott Exclusion Act was a gratuitous in-
sult.t I hope our people will continue to
retaliate by refusing to buy anything
from the Americans or sell anything to
them. Let us deal with our friends.
Then came the Geary Bill, which was
an outrage, our people being thrown into
jail for a year and then sent back. I
might quote some of the charges made
283
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
against our people. Mr. Geary, I un-
derstand, is an Irish ex-congressman
from the State of California, who, while
in Congress, was the mouthpiece of the
worst anti-Chinese faction ever organized
in America. He was ultimately de-
feated, much to the delight of New Eng-
land and many other people in the East.
Mr. Geary's chief complaint against the
Chinese was that they work too cheaply,
are too industrious, and do not eat as
much as an American. He obtained his
information from Consul Bedloe, of
Amoy. He says the average earnings of
the Chinese adult employed as mechanic
or laborer (in China) is five dollars per
month, and states that this is ten per cent
above the average wages prevailing
throughout China.
The wages paid, according to his re-
port, per month, to blacksmiths are $7.25 ;
carpenters, $8.50; cabinet-makers, $9;
284
THE CHINAMAN IN AMERICA
glass-blowers, $9; plasterers, $6.25;
plumbers, $6.25; machinists, $6; while
other classes of skilled labor are paid
from $7.25 to $9 per month, and common
laborers receive $4 per month. In Eu-
ropean houses the average wages paid to
servants are from $5 to $6 a month, with-
out board. Clothing costs per year from
75 cents to $1.50. Out of these incomes
large families are maintained. He says :
"The daily fare of an Amoy working man
and its cost are about as follows: i l / 2
pounds of rice, 3 cents; i ounce of meat,
i ounce of fish, 2 ounces of shell-fish, i
cent; i pound of cabbage or other veg-
etable, i cent; fuel, salt, and oil, i cent;
total, 6 cents.
"Here," said Mr. Geary, "is a condi-
tion deserving of attention by all friends
of this country, and by all who believe in
the protection of the working classes. Is
it fair to subject our laborer to a com-
285
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
petitor who can measure his wants by an
expenditure of six cents a day, and who
can live on an income not exceeding five
dollars a month? What will become of
the boasted civilization of our country
if our toilers are compelled to compete
with this class of labor, with more com-
petitors available than twice the entire
population of France, Germany, Aus-
tria, Belgium, Denmark, Switzerland,
Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain?
"The Chinese laborer brings neither
wife nor children, and his wants are lim-
ited to the immediate necessities of the
individual, while the American is com-
pelled to earn income sufficient to main-
tain the wife and babies. There can be
but one end to this. If this immigration
is permitted to continue, American labor
must surely be reduced to the level of the
Chinese competitor the American's
wants measured by his wants, the Amer-
286
THE CHINAMAN IN AMERICA
lean's comforts be made no greater than
the comforts of the Chinaman, and the
American laborer, not having been edu-
cated to maintain himself according to
this standard, must either meet his Chi-
nese competitor on his own level, or else
take up his pack and leave his native
land. The entire trade of China, if we
had it all, is not worth such a sacrifice."
Mr. Geary forgets that when China-
men go to America they adapt them-
selves to prevailing conditions. Chinese
cooks in the States to-day receive from
$30 to $50 per month and board; Chi-
nese laborers from $20 to $30, and some
of them $2 per day. In China, where
there is an enormous population, prices
are lower, people are not wasteful, and
the necessities of life do not cost so
much. The Chinaman goes to Amer-
ica to obtain the benefit of high wages,
not to reduce wages. I have never seen
287
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
such poverty and wretchedness in China
as I have seen in London, or such vice
and poverty as can be seen in any large
American city. Mr. Geary scorns the
treaties between his country and China,
and laughs at our commercial relations.
He says, "There is nothing in the Chi-
nese trade, or rather the loss of it, to
alarm any American. We would be bet-
ter off without any part or portion of it."
In answer to this I would suggest that
China take him at his word, and I assure
you that if every Chinaman could be re-
called, if in six months or less we could
take the eighty or one hundred thousand
Chinamen out of the country, the region
where they now live would be demoral-
ized. The Chinese control the vegetable-
garden business on the Pacific Coast;
they virtually control the laundry bus-
iness; and that the Americans want them,
and want cheaper labor than they are get-
288
THE CHINAMAN IN AMERICA
ting from the Irish and Italians, is shown
by the fact that they continue to patronize
our people, and that in various lines
Chinamen have the monopoly. Even
when the "hoodlums" of San Francisco
were fighting the Chinese, the American
women did not withdraw their patron-
age, and while the men were off speaking
on the sand-lots against employing our
people their wives were buying veg-
etables from them.
Why? Because their hypocritical hus-
bands and brothers refused to pay higher
prices. America is suffering not for
want of the cheapest labor, but for a
laborer like the Chinese, and until they
have him industries will languish. With
American labor and American "union"
prices it is impossible for the American
farmer or rancher to make money. The
vineyardist, the orange, lemon, olive, and
other fruit raisers can not compete with
289
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
Europe. Labor is kept up to such a high
rate that the country is obliged to put on
a high tariff to keep out foreign compe-
tition, and in so doing they "cut off the
nose to spite the face." The common
people are taxed by the rich. The sal-
vation of industrial America is a cheap,
but not degraded, labor. America desires
house-servants at from $10 to $12 per
month; this is all a mere servant is
worth. She wants good cooks at $12 or
$15 per month. She wants fruit-pickers
at $10 to $12 per month and board. She
wants vineyard men, hop-pickers, cherry,
peach, apricot and berry pickers, and
people to work in canneries at these
prices. She wants gardeners, drivers,
railroad laborers at lower rates, and, to
quote an American, "wants them 'bad.' "
When in San Francisco I made a thor-
ough investigation of the "house-servant"
question, and learned that our people as
290
THE CHINAMAN IN AMERICA
cooks in private houses were receiving
from $30 to $50 per month and board.
A friend tells me there is continued pro-
test against this. Housekeepers on the
Pacific coast are complaining of the
lack of "Chinese boys," and want more
to come over so that prices shall go down.
The American wants the Chinaman, but
the American foreign laborer, the Irish-
man, the Italian, the Mexican, and others
who dominate American politics, do not
want him and will not have him. As a
result of this bending to the alien vote
the Americans find themselves in a most
serious and laughable position in their
relations to domestic labor.
I am not overstating the fact when I
say that the "servant-girl" question is
going to be a political issue in the future.
The man may howl against the Chinese,
but his wife will demand that "John" be
admitted to relieve a situation that is be-
291
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
coming unbearable. As the Americans
are all equal, there are no servants among
them. The poor are as good as the
"boss," and won't be called servants.
You read in the papers, "A lady desires
a position as cook in a small family, no
children; wages, $35." "A young lady
wishes a position to take care of chil-
dren; salary, $30." "A saleslady wants
position." "A lady (good scrubber) will
go out by the day; $2." When you meet
these "ladies," in nine cases out of ten
they are Irish from the peasant class
untidy, insolent, often dissipated in the
sense of drink. When they apply for a
position they put the employer through
a course of questions. Some want refer-
ences from the last girl, I am told. Some
want one thing, some another, and all
must have time for pleasure. Few have
the air of servants or inferiors, but are
often offensive in appearance and man-
292
THE CHINAMAN IN AMERICA
ners. I have never been called "John"
by the girls who came to the door where
I called to pay a visit, but I could see that
they all wished so to address me. In
England, where classes are acknowledged
and a servant is hired as a servant, and is
one, an entirely different state of affairs
holds. They are respectful, having been
educated to be servants, know that they
are servants, and as a result are cared for
and treated as old retainers and pension-
ers of the family.
The whole story of exclusion is a blot
upon the American national honor, and
the most mystifying part of it is that in-
telligent people, the best people, are not
a party to it. The railroads want the
Chinese laborer. The great ranches of
the West need him ; people want cooks at
$15 and $20 a month instead of $30 or
$50. In a word, America is suffering
for what she must have some time
20 293
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
cheap labor; yet the low elements force
the issue. Congressmen are dominated
by labor organizations on the Pacific
slope, and there are hundreds of Dennis
Kearneys to-day where there was one a
few years ago. To make the case more ex-
asperating, the Americans, in their dire
necessity, have imported swarms of low
Mexicans to take the place of the Chi-
nese on the railroads, against whom there
seems to be no Irish hand raised. The
Irish and Mexicans are of a piece. I
know from inquiry everywhere that the
country at large would welcome thou-
sands of servants and field-workers in
vineyards and orchards which can not be
made to pay if worked by expensive
labor.
The Americans try to keep us out, but
they also try to convert those who get in.
They have what they call Chinese mis-
sions, to which Chinamen go. To be
294
THE CHINAMAN IN AMERICA
converted? No. To learn the language?
Yes. I am told by an American friend
that here and in China over fifty thou-
sand Chinese have embraced Christian-
ity. On the Atlantic coast I am assured
that eight hundred Chinamen are Chris-
tians, and on the Pacific slope two thou-
sand have embraced the faith of the
Christians. There is a Christian Chinese
evangelist working among our people in
the West, Lum Foon, and I have met the
pastor of a Pacific coast church who told
me that nearly a third of his congrega-
tion were Chinamen, and he esteemed
them highly. But the most conclusive
evidence that the Americans are succeed-
ing in their proselyting is that in one year
a single denomination received as a do-
nation from Chinamen $6,000. The
Americans have a saying, "Money talks,"
which is much like one of our own.
On the other hand, a clergyman told
295
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
me that it was discouraging work to
some, so few Chinamen were "con-
verted" compared to the great mass of
them. The Chinese of California have
sent $1,000 to Canton to build a Chris-
tian church, and the Chinese members
of the Presbyterian Church of Califor-
nia sent $3,000 in one year for the same
purpose. I am told that the Chinese
Methodists of one church in California
give yearly from $1,000 to $1,800 for the
various purposes of the church. The
Christians have captured some brilliant
men, such as Sia Sek Ong, who is a
Methodist; Chan Hon Fan, who ought
to be in our army from what I hear;
Rev. Tong Keet Hing, the Baptist, a
noted Biblical scholar; Rev. Wong, of
the Presbyterians; Rev. Ng Poon Chiv,
famous as a Greek and Hebrew reader;
Gee Gam and Rev. Le Tong Hay,
Methodists; and there are many more,
296
THE CHINAMAN IN AMERICA
suggestive that our people are interested
in Christianity, against the moral teach-
ings of which no one could seriously
object.
I dined some time ago with a mer-
chants' club, and was much pleased at
the eulogy I heard on the Chinese. A
merchant said, "My firm deals largely
with the Chinese and Japanese. When
I make a trade with the Japanese I tie
them up with a written contract, but I
have always found that the word of a
Chinese merchant was sufficient." This
I found to be the universal feeling, and
yet Americans exclude us at the bidding
of "hoodlums," a term applied to the
lowest class of young men on the Pacific
coast. In the East he is a "tough" or
"rough" or "rowdy." "Tough nut" and
"hard nut" are also applied to such peo-
ple, the Americans having numbers of
terms like these, which may be called
297
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
"nicknames," or false names. Thus a
man who is noted for his dress is a
"swell," a "dude," or a "sport."
The United States Government does
not allow the Chinese to vote, yet tens
of thousands of poor Americans, "white
trash" in the South, ignorant negroes,
low Irish and Italians who can not speak
the tongue, are welcome and courted by
both parties. It is difficult for me to
overlook this insult on the part of Amer-
ica. There is a large settlement of Chi-
nese in New York, but they are as iso-
lated as if they were in China. In San
Francisco there is the largest settlement,
and many fine merchants live there, and
also in Los Angeles.
In the latter city - - told me that the
best of feeling existed between the Chi-
nese and Americans; and at the Amer-
ican Festival of the Rose the Chinese
joined in the procession. The dragon
298
THE CHINAMAN IN AMERICA
was brought out, and all the Chinese
merchants appeared; but these gentlemen
are never consulted by the Americans,
never allowed to vote or take any inter-
est in the growth of the city, and in-
formed me that none of them had ever
been asked to join a board of trade. It is
the same everywhere; the only advances
the Americans make is to try and "con-
vert" us to their various religious denom-
inations! While the Chinese are not al-
lowed to vote or to have any part in the
affairs of government, they are taxed.
"Taxation without representation" was
the cause of the war of the American
Revolution, but that is another matteni
Yet our people have ways of influ-
encing the whites with the "dollar," for
which some officials will do anything,
and, I regret to say, all Chinamen are
not above bribing Americans. I have
heard that the Chinese of San Francisco
299
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
for years were blackmailed by Ameri-
cans, and obliged to raise money to fight
bills in the Legislature. In 1892 the
Six Companies raised $200,000 to defeat
the "Geary Bill." The Chinese mer-
chants have some influence. Out of the
1 10,000 Chinamen in America hardly ten
per cent obeyed the iniquitous law and
registered. The Chinese societies con-
tracted to defend all who refused to
register.
Our people have a strong and influen-
tial membership in the Sam Yup, Hop
Wo, Yan Wo, Kong Chow, Ning Ye-
ong, and Yeong Wo companies. These
societies practically control everything
in America relating to the Chinese, and
they retain American lawyers to fight
their battles. I have met many of the
officers of these companies, and China
has produced no more brilliant minds
than some, and, sub rosa, they have been
300
THE CHINAMAN IN AMERICA
pitted against the Americans on more
than one occasion and have outwitted
them. Among these men are Yee Ha
Chung, Chang Wah Kwan, Chun Ti
Chu, Chu Shee Sum, Lee Cheang Chun,
and others. Many of these men have
been presidents of the Six Companies in
San Francisco, and rank in intelligence
with the most brilliant American states-
men. I regret to see them in America.
Chun Ti Chu especially, at one time
president of the Sam Yuz, should be in
China. I met this brilliant man some
years ago in San Francisco. After din-
ner he took me to a place and showed
me a placard which was a reward of $300
for his head. He had obtained the
enmity of criminal Chinamen on the
Pacific coast, but when I last heard of
him he was still alive. There are many
criminals here who do not dare to return
to China, who left their country for their
301
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
country's good. These are the cause of
much trouble here, and bring discredit
upon the better class of our people. Our
people in America are loyal to the Gov-
ernment. It was interesting to see at one
time a proclamation from the Emperor
brought over by Chew Shu Sum and
posted in the streets of an American city:
"By order of his Imperial Majesty, the
Emperor of China." The President, the
mayor of San Francisco, was not thought
of; China was revered, and is to-day
holding her government over the Chi-
nese in every American city where they
have a stronghold. So much for the
loyalty of our people.
302
CHAPTER XVIII
THE RELIGIONS OF THE AMERICANS
THOMAS J. GEARY, the former con-
gressman, is an avowed enemy of the
Chinese and the author of the famous
Geary bill, but I condone all he has said
against us for one profound utterance
made in a published address or article,
in which he said: "As to the missionaries
(in China), it wouldn't be a national loss
if they were required to return home. If
the American missionary would only
look about him in the large cities of the
Union he would find enough of misery,
enough of suffering, enough people fall-
ing away from the Christian churches,
enough of darkness, enough of vice in all
its conditions and all its grades, to fur-
303
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
nish him work for years to come." This
is a sentiment Americans may well think
of; but there are "none so blind as those
who will not see." There will always be
women and men willing to spend their
time in picturesque China at the expense
of foreign missions. China has never at-
tempted to convert the Americans to her
religion, believing she has all she can do
to keep her people within bounds at
home.
In my search for information in Amer-
ica I have had some singular experiences.
I have made an examination of the many
religions of the Americans, and they have
been remarkably prolific in this respect.
While we are satisfied with Taoism,
Buddhism, but mostly with Confucian-
ism, I have observed the following sects
in America: Baptists of two kinds, Con-
gregationalists, Methodists, Quakers of
three kinds, Catholics, Unitarians, Uni-
304
THE RELIGIONS OF THE AMERICANS
versalists, Presbyterians, Swedenbor-
gians, Spiritualists, Christian Scientists
(healers), Episcopalians (high and low),
Jews, Seventh-Day Adventists, and
many more. Nearly all are Christians,
as we are nearly all Confucians. Uni-
tarians, Universalists, Jews, and several
others believe in the moral teachings of
Christ, but hold that he was not of divine
origin. America was first settled to sup-
ply room for religious liberty, which per-
haps explains the remarkable number of
religions. They are constantly increas-
ing. Nearly all of these denominations
hold that their own belief is the right
one. Much proselyting is going on
among them, with which one would take
no exception if tj^ere was no denouncing
of one another.' Our religion, founded
in the faith of Confucius, seems satisfy-
ing to us. Some of us believe that at
least we are not savages^
' 305
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
Some American friends once invited
me to go to a negro church in Washing-
ton. Upon arriving we were given a
seat well down in front. The pastor was
a "visiting evangelist," and in a short
time had these excitable and ignorant
people in a frenzy, several being carried
out of the church in a semicataleptic
condition. Suddenly the minister began
to pray for the strangers, and especially
"for the heathen in our midst," for the
unsaved from pagan lands, that they
might be saved ; and I could not but won-
der at the conceit and ignorance that
would ask a believer in the splendid
philosophy of Confucius to- throw it aside
for this African religion. ^ This idea that
a Chinaman is a "pagan" and idolater is
found everywhere in America, and every
attempt is made to "save" hin/.
I very much fear that many of our
countrymen go to the American missions
306
THE RELIGIONS OF THE AMERICANS
and Sunday-schools merely to learn the
language and enjoy the social life of
those who are interested in this special
work. I was told by a well-to-do China-
man that he knew Chinamen who were
both Catholic and Protestant, and who
attended all the Chinese missions with-
out reference to sect. They were Metho-
dist when at the Methodist mission,
Catholic when at mass, and when they
returned to their home slipped back into
Confucianism. Let us hope this is not
universal, though I venture the belief
that the witty Americans would see the
humor of it.
I was told by a prominent patron of
the Woman's Christian Union that she
felt very sorry I did not have the conso-
lation of religion, coming as I did from
a heathen land. Some "heathens" might
have been insulted, but I had come to
know the Americans and was aware that
307
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
she really felt a kindly interest in me. I
replied that we could find some consola-
tion in the sayings of our religious teach-
ers, as the great guide of our life is,
"What you do not like when done to
yourself do not do to others."
"Why," said the lady, "that is Chris-
tian doctrine, our 'Golden Rule.' "
"Pardon me," I answered, "this is the
golden rule of Confucius, written four
hundred years or so before Christ was
born."
"I think you must be mistaken," she
continued; "this is a fundamental pillar
of the Christian belief."
"True," I retorted; "but none the
less Christians obtained it from Con-
fucius."
She did not believe me, and we re-
ferred the question to Bishop - , who
sat near us. Much to her confusion he
agreed with me, and then quoted the
308
THE RELIGIONS OF THE AMERICANS
well-known lines of one of our religious
writers who lived twelve hundred years
before Christ: "The great God has con-
ferred on the people a moral sense, com-
pliance with which would show their
nature inevitably right," and remarked
that it was a splendid sentiment.
"Then you believe in a God," said the
lady, turning to me.
"I trust so," was my answer.
Now this lady, who believed me to be
a "pagan" and unsaved, was a product of
the American school system, yet she had
never read a line of Confucius, having
been "brought up" to consider him an
infidel writer.
I have seen many of the great Western
nations and observed their religions. My
conclusion is that none make so general
and united an attempt to be what they
consider "good and moral" as the Amer-
icans; but the Americans scatter their
21 309
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
efforts like shot fired from a gun, and the
result is a multiplicity of religious be-
liefs beyond belief. I do not forget that
America was settled to afford an asylum
for religious belief, where men could
work out their salvation in peace. If
Americans would grant us the same priv-
ilege and not send missionaries to fight
over us, all would be well. No one can
dispute the fact that the Americans are
in earnest; the greater number believe
they are right, and that they possess true
zeal all China knows.
r"The impression the convert in China
obtains is that the United States is a sort
of paradise, where Christians live in
peace and happiness, loving one another,
doing good to those who ill-treat them,
turning the cheek to those who strike
them, etc.; but the Chinaman soon finds
after landing in America that this is
often "conspicuous by its absence."
310
THE RELIGIONS OF THE AMERICANS
These ideas are preached, and doubtless
thousands follow them or attempt to do
so, but that they are cojnmon practises
of the people is not true.J There is great
need of Christian missions in America as
well as in China. I told a clergyman that
our people believed the Christian relig-
ion was very good for the Americans,
and we had no fault to find with it, nor
had we the temerity to insinuate that our
own was superior.
A Roman Catholic young lady whom
I met spoke to me about burning our
prayers, our joss-houses, and our dragon,
which she had seen carried about the
streets of San Francisco. "Pure sym-
bolism," I answered, and then told her
of the Christian dragon in the Divine
Key of the Revelation of Jesus Christ as
Given to John, by a Christian writer,
William Eugene Brown. This dragon
had nine heads, while ours has only one.
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
I believe I had the best of the argument
so far as heads went. This young woman,
a graduate of a large college, wore an
amulet, which she believes protects her
from accident. She possessed a bottle of
water from a miraculous spring in Can-
ada, which she said would cure any dis-
ease, and she told me that one of the
Catholic churches there, Ste. Anne de
Beaupre, had a small piece of the wrist-
bone of the mother of the Virgin, which
would heal and had healed thousands.
She had a picture of the church, showing
piles of crutches thrown aside by cured
and grateful patients. Can China pro-
duce such credulity? I think not.
All nations may be wrong in their re-
ligious beliefs, but certainly "pagan
China" is outdone in religious extrava-
ganza by America or any European
state. Our joss-houses and our feasts are
nothing to the splendors of American
312
THE RELIGIONS OF THE AMERICANS
churches. An American girl laughed at
the bearded figures in a San Francisco
joss-house, but looked solemn when I re-
ferred to the saints in a, Catholic cathe-
dral in the same city. (jf I were "fancy
free" I should like to lecture in America
on the inconsistencies of the Caucasian.
They really challenge our own.y Instead
of having one splendid churcn and de-
voting themselves to the real ethics of
Christianity, these Christians have di-
vided irrevocably, and so lost strength
and force. They are in a sense turned
against themselves, and their religious
colleges are graduating men to perpet-
uate the differences. No more splendid
religion than that expounded by Christ
could be imagined if they would join
hands and, like the Confucians, devote
their attention not to rites and theolog-
ical differences but to the daily conduct
of men.
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
The Americans have a saying, "Take
care of the pennies and the dollars will
care for themselves." We believe that
in taking care of the morals of the in-
dividual the nation will take care of
itself.^ I took the liberty of commending
this Confucian doctrine to a Methodist
brother, but he had never been allowed
to read the books of Confucius. They are
classed with those of Mohammed, Vol-
taire, and others. So what can one do
with such people, who have the conceit oL
the ages and the ignorance of all time?)
Their great scholars see their idiosyn-
crasies, and I can not begin to describe
them. One sect believes that no one can
be saved unless immersed in water;
others believe in sprinkling. Others, as
the Quakers, denounce all this as mum-
mery. One sect, the Shakers, will have
no marriages. Another believes in hav-
ing as many wives as they can support
3H
THE RELIGIONS OF THE AMERICANS
the Mormons. The Jews and Quakers
oblige members to marry in the society;
in the latter instance the society is dying
out, and the former from constant inter-
marriage has resulted in conspicuous and
marked facial peculiarities. These dif-
ferent sects, instead of loving, despise
one another. Episcopalians look down
upon the Methodists, and the latter de-
nounce the former because the priests
sometimes smoke and drink. The Uni-
tarians are not regarded well by the
others, yet nearly all the other bodies
contain Unitarians, who for business
and other reasons do not acknowledge
the fact. A certain clergyman would
not admit a Catholic priest to his plat-
form. All combine against the poor
Jew.
So strong is the feeling against this
people among the best of American cit-
izens that they are almost completely
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
ostracised, at least socially. In all the
years spent in America I do not recall
meeting a Jew at dinner in Washington,
New York, or Newport. They are dis-
liked, and as a rule associate entirely
with themselves, having their own
churches, clubs, etc. Yet they in large
degree control the finances of America.
They have almost complete control of
the textile-fabric business, clothing, and
many other trades. Why the American
Christians dislike the American Jews is
difficult to understand, but the invariable
reply to this question is that their man-
ners are so offensive that Christians will
not associate with them. I doubt if in
any of the first circles of any city you
would meet a Jew. In the fashionable
circles of New York I heard that it
would be "easier for a camel to pass
through the eye of a needle" than for a
Jew to enter these circles. Many hotels
THE RELIGIONS OF THE AMERICANS
will not receive them. In fact, the ban
is on the Jew as completely in America
as in Russia. I was strongly tempted to
ask if this was the brotherly love I heard
so much about, but refrained. I heard
the following story at a dinner: A Chi-
nese laundryman received a call from a
Jew, who brought with him his soiled
clothing. The Chinaman, glancing at
the Jew, refused to take the package.
"But why?" asked the Jew; "here's the
money in advance." "No washee," said
the Christian Chinaman; "you killed
Melican man's Joss," meaning that the
Jews crucified the Christ.
The more you delve into the religions
of the Americans the more anomalies
you find. I asked a New York lady at
Newport if she had ever met Miss ,
a prominent Chinese missionary. She
had never heard of her, and considered
most missionaries very ordinary persons.
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
This same lady, when some one spoke
about laxity of morals, replied, "It is not
morals but manners that we need"; and I
can assure you that this high-church lady,
a model of propriety, judged her men ac-
quaintances by that standard. If their
manners were correct, she apparently did
not care what moral lapses they commit-
ted when out of her presence. Briefly, I
looked in vain for the religion in every-
day life preached by the missionary.
Doubtless many possess it, but the meek
and humble follower of the head of the
Christian Church, the American who
turned his cheek for another blow, the
one who loved his enemies, or the one
who was anxious to do unto others as
he would have them do unto him, all
these, whom I expected to see every-
where, were not found, at least in any
numbers.
In visiting a certain village I dined
THE RELIGIONS OF THE AMERICANS
with several clergymen. One told me he
was the Catholic priest, and invited me
to visit his chapel. Not long after I met
another clergyman. I do not recall his
denomination, but his work he told me
was undoing that of the Catholic priest.
The latter converted the people to Cathol-
icism, while the former tried to reclaim
them from Catholicism. I heard much
about our joss-houses, but they fade into
insignificance when compared with the
splendid religious palaces of the Amer-
icans, and particularly those of the Cath-
olics and Episcopalians. Their religious
customs are beyond belief. As an illus-
tration, their religion teaches them that
the dead, if they have led a good life,
go at once to heaven, though the Cath-
olics believe in a purgatory, a half-way
house, out of which the dead can be
bought by the payment of money.
Now the simple Chinaman would
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
naturally believe that the relatives would
be pleased at the death of a friend who
was immediately transported to para-
dise and freed from the worries of life,
but not at all ; at the death of a relative
the friends are plunged into such grief
that they have been known to hire pro-
fessional mourners, and instead of put-
ting on clothes indicative of joy and
thanksgiving array themselves in somber
black, the token of woe, and wear it for
years. Everything is black, and the more
fashionable the family the deeper the
black. The deepest crape is worn by the
women. Writing-paper is inscribed with
a deep band, also visiting cards. Women
use jet as jewelry, and white pearls are
replaced by black ones. Even servants
are garbed in mourning for the departed,
who, they believe, have gone to the most
beautiful paradise possible to conceive.
Contemplating all these inconsistencies
320
THE RELIGIONS OF THE AMERICANS
one is amazed, and the amazement is
ever increasing as one delves deeper into
the ways of the inconsistent American.
The credulity of the American is
nowhere more singularly shown than in
his susceptibility to religion. At a din-
ner given by the - - of - - in Wash-
ington, conversation turned on religion,
and Senator , a very clever man, told
me in a burst of confidence, "Our people
are easily led; it merely requires a leader,
a bright, audacious man, with plenty of
'cheek,' to create a following." There
are hundreds of examples of this state-
ment. No matter how idiotic the relig-
ion or philosophy may be, a following
can be established among Americans. A
man of the name of Dowie, "ignorant,
impertinent, but with a superabundance
of cheek" (I quote an American jour-
nal), announced himself as the prophet
Elijah, and obtained a following of
321
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
thousands, built a large city, and lives
upon the credulity of the public.
Three different "healers" have ap-
peared within a decade in America,
each by inference claiming to be the
Christ and imitating his wanderings and
healing methods. All, even the last,
grossest, and most impudent impostor,
who advertised himself in the daily press,
the picture showing him posing after one
of the well-known pictures of Christ, had
many followers. I hoped to hear that
this fellow had been "tarred and feath-
ered," a happy American remedy for
gross things. This fellow, as the Amer-
icans say, "went beyond the limit." I
asked the senator how he accounted for
Americans, well educated as they are,
taking up these strange impostors.
"Well," he replied, puffing on a big
cigar, "between you and me and the
lamp-post it's on account of the kind of
322
THE RELIGIONS OF THE AMERICANS
schooling they get. I didn't get much
myself I'm an old-timer; but I accu-
mulated a lot of 'horse sense,' that has
served me so well that I never have my
leg pulled, and I notice that all these
'suckers' are graduates from something;
but don't take this as gospel, as I'm
always getting up minority reports."
The religion of the Americans, as
diffuse as it is, is one of the most remark-
able factors you meet in the country.
Despite its peculiar phases you can not
fail to appreciate a people who make
such stupendous attempts to crush out
evil and raise the morals of the masses.
We may differ from them. \We may re-
sent their assumption that we are pagans
and heathens, but this colossal series of
movements, under the banner of the
Cross, is one of the marvels of the worldJ
Surely it isyrfisinterested. It comes from
the heart. ( I wish the Americans knew
323
AS A CHINAMAN SAW US
more of Confucius and his code of
morals; they would then see that we are
not so "pagan" as they supposed
THE END
324
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY
Los Angeles
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IB APR 2 6 1974
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MAY 06 198'
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