n a great excitement about the Chinese here, and
several meetings have been held to consider how to get rid of them; and
anti-Chinese processions, carrying banners with crossed daggers, have
paraded the streets. One night the Chinese armed themselves, and went up
on to the tops of their houses, prepared to fire on a mob. They issued a
proclamation, saying, that they were not much accustomed to fighting (I
remember learning, in the geography, that they dressed themselves in
quilted petticoats when they went to battle), but they should sell their
lives as dearly as they could.

Another proclamation which they sent out was very characteristic of
them; it showed so good an understanding of the subject, suggesting so
artfully that, if the Chinamen were not allowed unlimited freedom to
come here, Americans should not be allowed to go to China.

In an "Address to the Public" which they recently put forth, they
explained, that, instead of taking the places of better men, as they
are accused of doing, they considered that, in performing the menial
work they did, they opened the way to higher and more lucrative
employments for others; saying several times, in their simple,
impressive way, "We lift others up."

In regard to the other chief accusation,--that they do not profit the
country any, do not invest any thing here, but send every thing home to
China,--they said, "The money that you pay us for our labor, we send
home; but the work remains for you,"--as, for instance, the Pacific
Railroad.

In trying to accumulate arguments against them, the anti-Chinese party
have made a great deal of the fact that they are bound to companies, who
advance money for them to come here, and say that the cooly trade is
like the slave-trade. One of the anti-Chinese speakers said he helped
make California a free state, and seemed to think he was employed in the
same meritorious way now. Upon investigation, it proved that many of
them do mortgage themselves--that is, their services--for a number of
years, to get here; and that it is often in order that they may support
poor relatives at home, who would otherwise starve. This shows some of
their heathen virtues. A good deal of the objection to them seems to be
on the ground of their being Pagans; some of the speakers saying that it
is "so very demoralizing to our Christian youth," that they should be
here,--quite overlooking a very large class of the population who are
worse than Pagans, and vas