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

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