Ii8 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. 



It was in this way that he found out that when a white man robs a sluice-box 

 (by the term wbite man is meant Spaniards, Mexicans, Portuguese, Irish, Hon- 

 durans, Peruvians, Chileans, &c., &c.), they make him leave the camp ; and when 

 a Chinaman does that thing, they hang him. 



It was in this way that he found out that in many districts of the vast Pacific 

 coast, so strong is the wild, free love of justice in the hearts of the people, that 

 whenever any secret and mysterious crime is committed, they say, "Let justice 

 be done, though the heavens fall," and go straightway and swing a Chinaman. 



It was in this way that he found out that by studying one half of each day's 

 " local items," it would appear that the police of San Francisco were either 

 asleep or dead, and by studying the other half it would seem that the reporters 

 were gone mad with admiration of the energy, the virtue, the high effectiveness, 

 and the dare-devil intrepidity of that very police — making exultant mention of 

 how " the Argus-eyed officer So-and-so," captured a wretched knave of a China- 

 man who was stealing chickens, and brought him gloriously to the city prison; 

 and how "the gallant officer Such-and-such-a-one," quietly kept an eye. on the 

 movements of an "unsuspecting, almond-eyed son of Confucius " (your reporter 

 is nothing if not facetious), following him around with that far-off look of 

 vacancy and unconsciousness always so finely affected by that inscrutible being, 

 the forty-dollar policeman, during a waking interval, and captured him at last 

 in the very act of placing his hands in a suspicious manner upon a paper of 

 tacks, left by the owner in an exposed situation ; and how one officer performed 

 this prodigious thing, and another officer that, and another the other — and 

 pretty much every one of these performances having for a dazzling central 

 incident a Chinaman guilty of a shilling's worth of crime, an unfortunate, whose 

 misdemeanor must be hurraed into something enormous in order to keep the 

 public from noticing how many really important rascals went uncaptured in 

 the meantime, and how overrated those glorified policemen actually are. 



It was in this way that the boy found out that the Legislature, being aware 

 that the Constitution has made America an asylum for the poor and the 

 oppressed of all nations, and that, therefore, the poor and oppressed who fly to 

 our shelter must not be charged a disabling admission fee, made a law that 



