brief
discussion of the Chinese question. "Then let us take it by all means,"
replied the artist, who had been an indulgent listener for at least ten
minutes. We were strolling upon the verge of the Chinese Quarter in San
Francisco, and, turning aside from one of the chief thoroughfares of the
city, we plunged into the busiest portion of Chinatown. From our
standpoint--the corner of Kearny and Sacramento Streets--we got the most
favorable view of our Mongolian neighbors. Here is a goodly number of
merchant gentlemen of wealth and station, comfortably, if not elegantly,
housed on two sides of a street that climbs a low hill quite in the
manner of a tea-box landscape.

A few of these gentlemen lodge on the upper floors of their business
houses, with Chinese wives, and quaint, old-fashioned children gaudily
dressed, looking like little idols, chatting glibly with one another,
and gracefully gesticulating with hands of exquisite slenderness.
Confucius, in his infancy, may have been like one of the least of these.
There are white draymen and porters in the employ of these shrewd and
civil merchants, and the outward appearance of traffic, as conducted in
the immediate vicinity, is rather American than otherwise.

Farther up the hill, on Dupont Street, from California to Pacific
Streets, the five blocks are almost monopolized by the Chinese. There
is, at first, a sprinkling of small shops in the hands of Jews and
Gentiles, and a mingling of Chinese bazaars of the half-caste type,
where American and English goods are exposed in the show windows; but as
we pass on the Asiatic element increases, and finally every trace of
alien produce is withdrawn from the shelves and counters.

Here little China flaunts her scarlet streamers overhead, and flanks her
doors with legends in saffron and gold; even its window panes have a
foreign look, and within is a glimmering of tinsel, a subdued light, and
china lamps flickering before graven images of barbaric hideousness. The
air is laden with the fumes of smoking sandal-wood and strange odors of
the East; and the streets, swarming with coolies, resound with the
echoes of an unknown tongue. There is hardly room for us to pass; we
pick our way, and are sometimes curiously regarded by slant-eyed pagans,
who bear us no good-will, if that shadow of scorn in the face has been
rightly interpreted. China is not more Chinese than this section of our
Christian city, nor the heart of Tartary less Ame