There are seventy thousand (and possibly one hundred thousand) Chinamen on the Pacific coast.  There were about a thousand in Virginia.  They were penned into a “Chinese quarter”—­a thing which they do not particularly object to, as they are fond of herding together.  Their buildings were of wood; usually only one story high, and set thickly together along streets scarcely wide enough for a wagon to pass through.  Their quarter was a little removed from the rest of the town.  The chief employment of Chinamen in towns is to wash clothing.  They always send a bill, like this below, pinned to the clothes.  It is mere ceremony, for it does not enlighten the customer much.  Their price for washing was $2.50 per dozen—­rather cheaper than white people could afford to wash for at that time.  A very common sign on the Chinese houses was:  “See Yup, Washer and Ironer”; “Hong Wo, Washer”; “Sam Sing & Ah Hop, Washing.”  The house servants, cooks, etc., in California and Nevada, were chiefly Chinamen.  There were few white servants and no Chinawomen so employed.  Chinamen make good house servants, being quick, obedient, patient, quick to learn and tirelessly industrious.  They do not need to be taught a thing twice, as a general thing.  They are imitative.  If a Chinaman were to see his master break up a centre table, in a passion, and kindle a fire with it, that Chinaman would be likely to resort to the furniture for fuel forever afterward.

All Chinamen can read, write and cipher with easy facility—­pity but all our petted voters could.  In California they rent little patches of ground and do a deal of gardening.  They will raise surprising crops of vegetables on a sand pile.  They waste nothing.  What is rubbish to a Christian, a Chinaman carefully preserves and makes useful in one way or another.  He gathers up all the old oyster and sardine cans that white people throw away, and procures marketable tin and solder from them by melting.  He gathers up old bones and turns them into manure.  In California he gets a living out of old mining claims that white men have abandoned as exhausted and worthless—­and then the officers come down on him once a month with an exorbitant swindle to which the legislature has given the broad, general name of “foreign” mining tax, but it is usually inflicted on no foreigners but Chinamen.  This swindle has in some cases been repeated once or twice on the same victim in the course of the same month—­but the public treasury was no additionally enriched by it, probably.

Chinamen hold their dead in great reverence—­they worship their departed ancestors, in fact.  Hence, in China, a man’s front yard, back yard, or any other part of his premises, is made his family burying ground, in order that he may visit the graves at any and all times.  Therefore that huge empire is one mighty cemetery; it is ridged and wringled from its centre to its circumference with graves—­and inasmuch as every foot of ground must be made to do