232 MASK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. 



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 niy 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 1 " 



"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. 



