In front of this most interesting monument is a cannon that has a history. Near the head of this instrument of destruction is the legend, Pluribus nec Impar. On the body of the cannon we read Le Prince De Conde. Ultima Ratio Regum. Louis Charles De Bourbon—Comte D'Eu., Due D'Aumale. A Douay—Par T. Berenger. Commissionaire. Des Fontes Le 23 Mars, 1754.
The cannon is made of bronze, has a coat of arms, and is otherwise ornamented. It has two handles in the shape of dragons. It is twelve feet long. But it has another inscription in which we are deeply interested. This is in English, and reads as follows:
"Captured at Santiago De Cuba, July 17, 1898, by the Fifth Army Corps, U.S. Army, Commanded by Major General William R. Shafter, and presented by him to the City of San Francisco, California, in trust for the Native Sons of the Golden West, and accepted as a token of the valor and patriotism of the Army of the United States."
While I was reading the inscriptions and making measurements an open two-seated carriage was driven up to the curbstone, about four o'clock in the afternoon. From this a gentleman in a business suit, about sixty years of age, alighted and approached me. He was a man of pleasing address. He said to me, "You seem to be interested in this cannon." "I am," was the reply. Then he began to pace it and to examine it, and said, "It is just twelve feet long." He thought that possibly it came into the hands of the Spaniards during the Napoleonic wars, and that it at length found its way over to Cuba to help in enslaving the people of that island. As I was attracted to my informant, I ventured to ask him whom I had the pleasure of addressing. Imagine my astonishment and delight when he said modestly—"I am General Shafter." I said to him, "I am glad to meet one so brave and who has helped to add new lustre to our Flag." He replied that "he considered it a privilege to have had a share in the liberation of Cuba, and that our beloved nation was on the march to still greater glory." Finding out where I came from, and that I lived near Ballston Spa, he said, "You must know my son-in-law, William H. McKittrick." I replied that I did, that I knew him when he was a boy, and that he and his family were my parishioners, when I was Rector of Christ Church, Ballston Spa, twenty-eight years ago. Said he, "William distinguished himself in the Cuban War. He is now a Captain and Assistant Adjutant-General, and it was he who was the first to hoist the Flag over Santiago." The General having courteously invited me to call on him, soon after bade me good-bye. It was a chance meeting, but full of interest, especially under the circumstances. Here was the hero who had captured the cannon and who had won laurels for himself and for his country. McKittrick also comes of a patriotic family, his father having laid his life on the altar of his country in the Civil War; and after the elder McKittrick is named the Grand Army Post of Ballston Spa, N.Y.—Post McKittrick. General Shafter was as modest on the day when I met him by the cannon as he was brave at Santiago. While the Republic has such worthy sons she has nothing to fear. Her mission is one of peace to her own people in all the States and Territories of the Union, and in all our Colonial possessions; and the motto of every citizen should be Non sibi sed Patriae. For every churchman it ought to be Non sibi sed Ecclesiae.
CHAPTER VII
CHINAMEN OF SAN FRANCISCO—THEIR CALLINGS AND CHARACTERISTICS
A Visit to Chinatown—Its Boundaries—A Terra Incognita—Fond of
Mongrels—My Licensed Guide—The Study of the Signs—Men of All
Callings—Picture of the Chinaman—Devoid of Humour—Confucius—Great
Men from Good Mothers—Confucius to Women—Mormonism and
Mohammedanism—How to Regenerate China—Slaves of the Lamp—Chinamen
Impassive—Aroused to Wrath—How They Dress—The Queue—"Pidgin"
English—Payment of Debts—Bankrupt Law—Suicide.
When in the City of the Golden Gate you will not fail to visit the Chinese Quarter, or "Chinatown," as it is popularly called. Just as in an Oriental city like Jerusalem or Constantinople you find different nationalities or races living apart from each other, so here in San Francisco you have "Little China" in the heart of Anglo-Saxon civilisation. It is as if you had unfolded to your wondering eyes in a dream some town from the banks of the Pearl River, the Yangtse-Kiang, or the Hwangho or. Yellow River; and it seems strange indeed that, without the trouble or expense and danger of crossing the waters of the Pacific, you can by a short walk from the midst of the teeming life of an American City, be ushered into streets that are foreign in appearance and where scenes that are unfamiliar to the eye attract your attention on every hand. With the exception of the houses, which, as a rule, take on a European or an American style of architecture, you might imagine that you were in Canton or some other Chinese city. The life is truly Asiatic and Mongolian in its character and in its display as well as in its customs. The home of the sons of the Flowery Kingdom in San Francisco is in the north-eastern section of the city, and may be said to be in one of the best portions of the metropolis of the West, sheltered as it is from the winds of the Pacific by the hills which are back of it, and with a commanding view of the Bay and its islands and the magnificent landscapes to the east, valleys and hills running up to the heights of the Sierras. The locality is bounded by Jackson, Pacific, Dupont, Commercial, and Sacramento streets, and embraces some eight squares; and within this space, crowded together, are the twenty-five or thirty thousand Chinese who form a part of the population of the city. There are Chinamen here and there in other parts of San Francisco, but nearly all live here in this quarter which we are now approaching. Here there are the homes of the people who came from the land of Confucius, here the famous shops, the theatres, the Joss-houses where heathen worship is maintained. As soon then as you set foot within the area described you feel that you are in a strictly foreign country; and if this is your first visit, the place is to you a sort of terra incognita. You will need a guide to take you through its labyrinths and point out to you its hidden recesses and explain the strange sights and interpret for you the language which sounds so oddly to your ears. If you have not some man to conduct you, a dragoman or courier, you will be likely to make mistakes as ludicrous as that related of an English woman. Sir Henry Howarth, the author of the "History of the Mongols," a learned and laborious work, was out dining one evening. It fell to his lot at his host's house to escort a lady to the dinner table; and she, having a confused idea of the great man's theme, surprised him somewhat by the abrupt question, "I understand, Sir Henry, that you are fond of dogs. Are you not? I am too." "Dogs, madam? I really must plead guiltless. I know nothing at all of them!" "Indeed," his fair questioner replied; "and they told me you had written a famous history of mongrels!" It is best then always to take a guide, and you will have no trouble in finding one, who will charge you from two to three dollars an hour. If you go with a small party, which is best, all can share the expense. It will take about three hours to explore the town thoroughly and study the life. The writer went through Chinatown on two evenings at an interval of a few days, and saw this Asiatic Quarter of San Francisco to great advantage. The first time was with a licensed guide of long experience, and the second time it was under the direction of a police-detective. Some five friends were in the party; and we started on our tour of exploration about half past nine o'clock at night. The night is the best time in which to study the life, for then you can see the Chinese in their houses and at their amusements, as well as many others who still are at work; for some of the Chinese artisans toil for sixteen hours a day, and long into the hours of the night. Here among them are no strikes for fewer hours, but patient toil, as it were in a treadmill, without a murmur. My licensed guide was Henry Gehrt, a man about fifty-five years old, of German parentage. He had been in the business for twenty-seven years, and he maintained an office on Sacramento Street. His badge was No. 60. All guides must wear badges according to law. As we went hither and thither we met occasionally groups of sight-seers, among them some of our friends, members of the Convention, Bishops, and clerical and lay deputies, who felt this was a rare opportunity to study heathendom; and I am sure all went away from this strange spot thanking God for our noble Anglo-Saxon civilisation, as well as for the knowledge of His Revelation.
The houses, I observed, are three, and sometimes four stories high, with balconies and windows, which give them a decidedly Oriental appearance. On most of them were signs displayed in the Chinese language. You also see scrolls by the doors of the private houses and on the shops. The signs are a study in their bright colours and their mythological and fantastic adornments. Yellow is the predominant colour, and the dragon is in evidence everywhere. This emblem of the Celestial Empire is represented in gorgeous array and with a profusion of ornament. A splendid dragon is the sign and trade mark of "Sing Fat and Co.," who keep a Chinese and Japanese Bazaar on Dupont Street. On their card they give this warning, "Beware of firms infringing on our name;" and it seems as if the dragon on the sign would avenge any invasion of their rights. The signs are a study, and if you are ignorant of the language, you ask your learned guide to interpret them for you. He will tell you that Hop Wo does business here as a grocer, that Shun Wo is the butcher, that Shan Tong is the tea-merchant, that Tin Yuk is the apothecary, and that Wo-Ki sells bric-a-brac. Some of the signs, your guide will tell you, are not the real names of the men who do business, that they are only mottoes. Wung Wo Shang indicates to you that perpetual concord begets wealth, Hip Wo speaks to you of brotherly love and harmony, Tin Yuk means a jewel from Heaven, Wa Yun is the fountain of flowers, while Man Li suggests thousands of profits. Other of the signs relate to the muse. They do not at all reveal the business carried on within. The butcher, for example, has over his shop such elegant phrases as Great Concord, Constant Faith, Abounding Virtue. There are many pawn-brokers who ply their vocation assiduously. They tell you of their honest purpose after this fashion: "Let each have his due pawn-brokers," and, "Honest profit pawn-brokers." In the Chinese restaurant, to which we will go later, you will be edified by such sentiments as these,—The Almond-Flower Chamber, Chamber of the Odours of Distant Lands, Garden of the Golden Valley, Fragrant Tea-Chamber. The apothecary induces you to enter his store with inviting signs of this character: Benevolence and Longevity Hall, Hall of Everlasting Spring, Hall of Joyful Relief, Hall for Multiplying Years. Surely if the American druggist would exhibit such sentences as these over his shop he would never suffer for want of customers. All are in pursuit of length of years and health; and I think the Chinese pharmacist shows his great wisdom in offering to all who are suffering from the ills to which flesh is heir a panacea for their ailments. It takes the fancy, it is a pleasing conceit for the mind, and the mere thought that you are entering Longevity Hall gives you fresh courage!
You will find here in Chinatown men of all callings, the labourer who is ready to bear any burden you lay on him, the artisan who is skilled in his work, the grocer, the clothes' dealer, the merchant, the apothecary, the doctor, the tinsmith, the furniture-maker, the engraver, the goldsmith, the maker of paper-shrines for idols, the barber, the clairvoyant, the fortune-teller, and all others of every calling which is useful and brings profit to him who pursues it. But we are deeply interested in the men whom we meet. At first view they all seem to look alike, you can hardly distinguish one from another. They are a study. Look on their solemn faces, sphinx-like in their repose and imperturbability. They are a riddle to you. You rarely ever hear them laugh. They are like a landscape beneath skies which are wanting in the sparkling sunbeams. They seem to you as if they had continual sorrow of heart, as if some wrong of past ages had set its seal on their features. The Chinaman has very little sense of the ludicrous, and he is lacking in the elements of intellectual sprightliness and vivacity which lead a Frenchman or an American to appreciate and enjoy a sally of wit, a bon mot, or a joke. Life indeed is better, and a man can bear his burdens with more ease if he has a sense of humour. Some of the great characters in history have often come out of the depths with triumph by reason of the spirit within them which could perceive the flash of wit and apply its medicine to the wounds of the heart. I think it may be said, as a rule, that the Asiatic has not the power to appreciate wit and humour like the old Greek or the Teuton or the Celt. He is not wanting in his love of the beautiful, in his appreciation of poetry, in the vision which perceives the flowers blooming by the waters in the desert, and in the hearing which catches the sound of the harmonies of his palm-trees and lotus flowers, but in the sense or faculty to seize on mirth and appropriate her to his service in burden-bearing he is sadly deficient. He is but a child in this respect. While the Chinaman has inventive faculties and keen intellect and wonderful imitative powers, yet in other respects he is behind the progressive races of the world. He has made little advance for thousands of years. His isolation, his narrow sphere, his simple life, and his religion even, which, while some of its maxims and tenets are admirable, still is lacking in the knowledge of the true God and in lofty ideals, have had a marked effect upon his thoughts and habits and pursuits. His great teacher, Confucius, who flourished five centuries before the Christian era and who spoke some sublime truths, was nevertheless ignorant of a Revelation from heaven and inferior in his grasp of religious truth to such sages of Greece as Socrates and Plato. In his system also woman is practically a slave. She is simply the minister of man, and therefore unable to rear up children, sons who would reflect the greatness of soul of a noble motherhood. It has often been remarked that great men have had great mothers. I think experience and observation will bear out this statement. Glance over the pages of history, and eminent examples will rise up before the view. Whence spring the Samuels and the Davids, whence a Leonidas and a Markos Bozzaris, whence the Scipios and the Gracchi, whence the Augustines and the Chrysostoms, whence the Alfreds and the Gladstones, whence the Washingtons and the Lincolns, whence the Seaburys and the Doanes, and many another? Are they not all hewn from the quarries of a noble motherhood? Are they not sprung from the fountain of a womanhood whose living streams are clear as crystal and sweet and refreshing? The first Chavah, Eve, is rightly styled the mother of all living; and a generation or race of men to be living, active, noble in achievement, distinguished in virtues, must issue from a well-spring which vitalises and beautifies and magnifies the spirit and the intellect, as Engannim waters her gardens, and Engedi nourishes her acacias and lotus-plants, and Enshemesh reflects the sun's golden beams the livelong day. But what, you ask, are the exact teachings of the sage Confucius, who influences Chinese society even to this day, with regard to woman? Hear him: "Moreover, that you have not in this life been born a male is owing to your amount of wickedness, heaped up in a previous state of existence, having been both deep and weighty; you would not then desire to adorn virtue, to heap up good actions, and learn to do well! So that you now have been hopelessly born a female! And if you do not this second time specially amend your faults, this amount of wickedness of yours will be getting both deeper and weightier, so that it is to be feared in the next state of existence, even if you should wish for a male's body, yet it will be very difficult to get it." Again another saying of Confucius is: "You must know that for a woman to be without talent is a virtue on her part." With such teaching then ever before them, do you wonder that Chinese women do not excel in virtue, and that they are the mothers of a race of men who are practically like standing water instead of a flowing fountain to refresh the waste places of human life? The teachings of Mormonism and Mohammedanism with regard to woman also degrade her and rob her of the beautiful crown which her Maker has put upon her head; and hence it is that such peoples are not virile and progressive like the nations where woman is looked upon as man's helpmeet, where she stands upon his right hand as a queen. The Mormons are better in many respects than their faith; and if the first generation was hardy and aggressive and brave in subduing the desert and changing Rocky Mountain wastes into a blooming garden, it was because they had been trained in the school of Christianity and had imbibed lessons of wisdom at the fountain of a pure faith and inherited from Christian fathers and mothers those qualities which are stamped on the soul through upright living and a creed that is formulated in true doctrine. But Mormonism is dying out, and woman in Utah is receiving the rightful place assigned her by her Creator in the work of building up the race and perpetuating the virtues and forces of a true manhood. The followers of Mohammed are still numerous and powerful, and the Religion of the Koran has shown great vitality for centuries. The nobility of character, however, which has manifested itself in such lives as that of Saladin the Great is the product of other causes than the specific teachings and views of Islam respecting domestic life and the position and office of woman. The destinies of men have been determined often by their environments. We must also bear in mind that from time to time, under the sway of the Crescent, different sections of the civilised world have been brought under the rule of the Sultans, and all that was good and noble in the lives of peoples newly incorporated into the faith of the Arabian Prophet has contributed in no small degree to the strength of a system which has in its own bosom the seeds of decay and which will ultimately become effete and pass away. Mohammed Ali, the founder of the present Khedivial house of Egypt, had in his veins old Macedonian blood, and his views respecting marriage and domestic life, as well as the traditions of his family in his old home at Kavala, had much to do with the development of his character and his brilliant career; and hence neither he nor others like him in the Turkish Empire can be singled out to prove that a religion which looks upon woman as an inferior being to man is excellent in its tendencies and produces a noble fruitage. What Napoleon once said with respect to France, that she needed good mothers, is true as regards China. Where woman is held in honour and where the domestic virtues are woven into a beautiful chaplet of spring-time blossoms to bedeck her brow, there you will find good and great men. Our own nation is an example of this. To regenerate China then, to improve the morals of Chinatown in San Francisco, or Chinatown in New York where there are between seven and eight thousand sons and daughters of the Flowery Kingdom, you must create pure homes, and to do this you must first of all sweeten them with the precepts of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Confucius will fail you. The Son of God will reform you and save you! Such thoughts and reflections as these naturally sprang up in my mind in my walks through Chinatown. I saw its people on every hand. Sometimes they were in twos, again in groups of a half a dozen or more. They scarcely noticed us as we walked by them; they showed no curiosity to observe us, but went on their way as though intent on one object. They moved about like automatons, as if they were a piece of machinery; and such as were at work in shops heeded us not even when we stood over them and watched them as they handled their tools. It was work, work. They were doing their masters' bidding like the genii of the lamp; and in the glare of the light in which they wrought on their bench or at their stand the workers in gold and silver, the makers of ornaments and jewelry, were like some strange beings from another world. They work to the point of endurance. They have their amusements, their holidays, as the Chinese New Year which comes in February, their processions from time to time, but their great indulgence is in the use of opium. Once or twice a month the ordinary labourer or workman gives himself up to its seductive charms, to its power more fatal to his manhood than intoxicating drinks taken to excess. The Chinaman is so stolid and impassive that it is hard to arouse his wrath. He will bear insults without a murmur for a long time, but in the end he will be stung into madness and he will give force to all his pent up fires of hate that have slumbered like a volcano. He may wait long without having punished his oppressor, but he will bide his time. So it was with the Boxers in China whose story is so painfully fresh in the memories of the great legations of the world in Pekin.