$Unique_ID{bob01514}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Sketches, Old And New
John Chinaman in New York}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Twain, Mark}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{
}
$Date{1893}
$Log{}
Title:       Sketches, Old And New
Book:        John Chinaman In New York
Author:      Twain, Mark
Date:        1893

John Chinaman in New York

     As I passed along by one of those monster American tea-stores in New
York, I found a Chinaman sitting before it acting in the capacity of a sign.
Everybody that passed by gave him a steady stare as long as their heads would
twist over their shoulders without dislocating their necks, and a group had
stopped to stare deliberately.

     Is it not a shame that we, who prate so much about civilization and
humanity, are content to degrade a fellow-being to such an office as this? Is
it not time for reflection when we find ourselves willing to see in such a
being, matter for frivolous curiosity instead of regret and grave reflection?
Here was a poor creature whom hard fortune had exiled from his natural home
beyond the seas, and whose troubles ought to have touched these idle strangers
that thronged about him; but did it?  Apparently not. Men calling themselves
the superior race, the race of culture and of gentle blood, scanned his quaint
Chinese hat, with peaked roof and ball on top, and his long queue dangling
down his back; his short silken blouse, curiously frogged and figured (and,
like the rest of his raiment, rusty, dilapidated, and awkwardly put on); his
blue cotton, tight-legged pants, tied close around the ankles; and his clumsy
blunt-toed shoes with thick cork soles; and having so scanned him from head to
foot, cracked some unseemly joke about his outlandish attire or his melancholy
face, and passed on.  In my heart I pitied the friendless Mongol.  I wondered
what was passing behind his sad face, and what distant scene his vacant eye
was dreaming of.  Were his thoughts with his heart, ten thousand miles away,
beyond the billowy wastes of the Pacific?  among the rice-fields and the plumy
palms of China?  under the shadows of remembered mountain-peaks, or in groves
of bloomy shrubs and strange forest-trees unknown to climes like ours?  And
now and then, rippling among his visions and his dreams, did he hear familiar
laughter and half-forgotten voices, and did he catch fitful glimpses of the
friendly faces of a bygone time?  A cruel fate it is, I said, that is befallen
this bronzed wanderer.  In order that the group of idlers might be touched at
least by the words of the poor fellow, since the appeal of his pauper dress
and his dreary exile was lost upon them, I touched him on the shoulder and
said -

     "Cheer up - don't be down-hearted.  It is not America that treats you in
this way, it is merely one citizen, whose greed of gain has eaten the humanity
out of his heart.  America has a broader hospitality for the exiled and
oppressed.  America and Americans are always ready to help the unfortunate.
Money shall be raised - you shall go back to China - you shall see your
friends again.  What wages do they pay you here?"

     "Divil a cint but four dollars a week and find meself; but it's aisy,
barrin the troublesome furrin clothes that's so expinsive."

     The exile remains at his post.  The New York tea-merchants who need
picturesque signs are not likely to run out of Chinamen.