This must be mainly discursive and anecdotal, for no one really knows much more than externals concerning the Chinese.  Some men there are, generally reporters on the big dailies, who have been admitted to the tongs; who can take you into the exclusive Chinese clubs; who are everywhere in Chinatown greeted cordially, treated gratis to strange food and drink, and patted on the back with every appearance of affection.  They can tell you of all sorts of queer, unknown customs and facts, and can show you all sorts of strange and unusual things.  Yet at the last analysis these are also discursions and anecdotes.  We gather empirical knowledge:  only rarely do we think we get a glimpse of how the delicate machinery moves behind those twinkling eyes.

I am led to these remarks by the contemplation of Chinese Charley at the ranch.  He has been with Mrs. Kitty twenty-five years; he wears American clothes; he speaks English with hardly a trace of either accent or idiom; he has long since dropped the deceiving Oriental stolidity and weeps out his violent Chinese rages unashamed.  Yet even now Mrs. Kitty’s summing up is that Charley is a “queer old thing.”

If you start out with a good Chinaman, you will always have good Chinamen; if you draw a poor one, you will probably be cursed with a succession of mediocrities.  They pass you along from one to another of the same “family”; and, short of the adoption of false whiskers and a change of name, you can find no expedient to break the charm.  When one leaves of his own accord, he sends you another boy to take his place.  When he is discharged, he does identically that, although you may not know it.  Down through the list of Gins or Sings or Ungs you slide comfortably or bump disagreeably according to your good fortune or deserts.

Another feature to which you must become accustomed is that of the Unexpected Departure.  Everything is going smoothly, and you are engaged in congratulating yourself.  To you appears Ah Sing.

“I go San Flancisco two o’clock tlain,” he remarks.  And he does.

In vain do you point to the inconvenience of guests, the injustice thus of leaving you in the lurch; in vain do you threaten detention of wages due unless he gives you what your servant experience has taught you is a customary “week’s warning.”  He repeats his remark:  and goes.  At two-fifteen another bland and smiling heathen appears at your door.  He may or may not tell you that Ah Sing sent him.  Dinner is ready on time.  The household work goes on without a hitch or a tiniest jar.

“Ah Sing say you pay me his money,” announces this new heathen.

If you are wise, you abandon your thoughts of fighting the outrage.  You pay over Ah Sing’s arrears.

“By the way,” you inquire of your new retainer, “what’s your name?”

“My name Lum Sing,” the newcomer replies.

That is about the way such changes happen.  If by chance you are in the good graces of heathendom, you will be given an involved and fancy reason for the departure.  These generally have to do with the mysterious movements of relatives.