THE CHINESE IN SAN FRANCISCO. 663 
are in the buildings maintained by the Chinese Emigrant 
Aid Societies as reception-houses and hospitals, — vile dens 
as we should deem them, but, it is said, fully level with a 
Chinaman's notions of repose and comfort. 
These people are by no means unintelligent. It is said 
that there are none of them who cannot read, write, and cast 
accounts ; and there are among them some men of high edu- 
cation, polished manners, large business, and friendly, yet 
never intimate relations with their brother-merchants. 
There is a mission-house, with a school and a chapel; but 
the missionary, an intelligent man and an indefatigable 
worker (by the way, my guide and mentor among the 
theatres and gambling-houses, in which he seemed very much 
at home, on the principle of becoming all things to all men), 
told me that he had gained a firm hold on very few ; that he 
found it almost impossible to keep a small congregation to- 
gether through a very short service, though many came in to 
listen for a little while ;* and that the slightest disturbance in 
the street, even the passing of a hand-organ, would instantly 
empty his chapel. 
These Chinamen are generally without their families; the 
numerous women that live in their quarters -being with very 
few exceptions persons of bad character. The men come to 
this country with the purpose of remaining but a few years; 
and if they die, their bodies are embalmed, and sent home 
for burial, Chinese corpses sometimes forming a vessel's 
entire freight. 
he Chinese question I cannot undertake to discuss here. 
Suffice it to say that, in my opinion, all that can be hoped 
from the Chinese is the supply of cheap labor which is 
needed for the rapid development of a new country. As 
to making these people citizens who will even prize their 
rights, still more exercise them judiciously, or changing their 
older and to them satisfying type of civilization into the 
Anglo-Saxon Christian type, — this is utterly beyond proba- 
bility or hope. If the Chinese are to be Christianized, it 
