When Brown, the lawyer, was studying French and read his Telemaque aloud by his open office window in such a stentorian voice as to be heard over a third of the “camp,” and with never a Frenchman at hand to correct his pronunciation, which he manufactured to suit himself as he went along, it was a part of the Bella Union circus to hear “Yank” imitate him. When old Broche, the long, thin, bald-headed French baker, who never would learn one word of English, put on his swallow-tailed Sunday coat, which he had brought over from La Belle France, and lifted up those coat tails when he tripped over the mud-puddles as a lady would her skirts, it was a part of the Bella Union circus to see “Scotty” mimic him. When John S——, the Virginian, impressively and loudly swore that a Jack-rabbit he had killed that day leaped twenty-five feet in the air on being shot, and would then look around the room as if he longed to find somebody who dared dispute his assertion, while his elder brother, always at his elbow in supporting distance, also glared into the eyes of the company, as though he also longed to fight the somebody who should dare discredit “Brother John’s” “whopper,” it was a part of the circus to see the “boys” wink at each other when they had a chance. When one heard and saw so many of every other man’s peculiarities, oddities, and mannerisms, save his own, set off and illustrated while the man was absent, and knew also that his own, under like circumstances, had been or would be brought out on exhibition, it made him feel that it was somewhat dangerous to feel safe on the slim and slippery ice of self-satisfaction and self-conceit. People in great cities haven’t so much time to make their own fun and amusement, as did the residents of so many of those lazy, lounging, tumbling-down, ramshackle “camps” of the era of “1863” or thereabouts.
People in the city have more of their fun manufactured for them at the theatres of high and low degree. Yet it was wonderful how in “camp” they managed to dig so many choice bits and specimens out of the vein of varied human nature which lay so near them. Whenever I visited “Jimtown” my old friend Dixon would take me into his private corner to tell me “the last” concerning a character who was working hard on an unabridged copy of Webster’s Dictionary in the endeavor to make amends for a woeful lack of grammatical knowledge, the result of a neglected education. “He’s running now on two words,” Dixon would say, “and these are ‘perseverance’ and ‘assiduity.’ We hear them forty times a day, for he lugs them in at every possible opportunity, and, indeed, at times when there is no opportunity. He came to business the other morning a little unwell, and alluded to his stomach as being ‘in a chaotic state.’ And, sir, he can spell the word ‘particularly’ with six i’s. How he does it I can’t tell; but he can.”
CHAPTER XX.
THE ROMANCE OF AH SAM AND HI SING.
The culminating events of the following tale occurred in “Jimtown” during my pedagogical career, and I was an indefatigable assistant in the details as below stated.
Ah Sam loved Miss Hi Sing. Ah Sam was by profession a cook in a California miners’ boarding house and trading post combined, at a little mining camp on the Tuolumne River. Following minutely the culinary teachings of his employer, having no conception of cooking, save as a mere mechanical operation—dead to the pernicious mental and physical effect which his ill-dressed dishes might have on the minds and stomachs of those he served—Ah Sam, while dreaming of Hi Sing, fried tough beef still tougher in hot lard, poisoned flour with saleratus, and boiled potatoes to the last extreme of soddenness, all of which culinary outrages promoted indigestion among those who ate; and this indigestion fomented a general irritability of temper—from whence Swett’s Camp became noted for its frequent sanguinary moods, its battles by midnight in street and bar-room, with knife and six-shooter, and, above all, for its burying ground, of which the inhabitants truthfully boasted that not an inmate had died a natural death.
Hi Sing was the handmaid of old Ching Loo. Her face was broad, her nose flat, her girth extensive, her gait a waddle, her attire a blue sacque reaching from neck to knee, blue trousers, brass rings on wrist and ankle, and wooden shoes, whose clattering heels betrayed their owner’s presence, even as the shaken tail of the angry rattlesnake doth his unpleasant proximity. She had no education, no manners, no accomplishments, no beauty, no grace, no religion, no morality; and for this and more Ah Sam loved her. Hi Sing was virtually a slave, having several years previously, with many other fair and fragile sisters, been imported to California by Ching Loo; and not until meeting Ah Sam did she learn that it was her right and privilege in this land of occasional laws and universal liberty to set up for herself, become her own mistress and marry and unmarry whenever opportunity offered.
But Ching Loo had noticed, with a suspicious eye, the growing intimacy between Ah Sam and Hi Sing; and arguing therefrom results unprofitable to himself, he contrived one night to have the damsel packed off to another town, which happened at that time to be my place of residence; and it is for this reason that the woof of my existence temporarily crossed that of Ah Sam and Hi Sing.
Ah Sam following up his love, and discovering in me an old friend, who had endured and survived a whole winter of his cookery at Swett’s Bar, told me his troubles; and I, resolving to repay evil with good, communicated the distressed Mongolian’s story to my chosen and particular companion, a lean and cadaverous attorney, with whom fees had ceased to be angels’ visits, and who was then oscillating and hovering between two plans—one to run for the next State Legislature; the other to migrate to Central America, and found a new republic. Attorney, Spoke on hearing Ah Sam’s case, offered to find the maid, rescue her from her captors, and marry her to him permanently and forever in consideration of thirty American dollars; to which terms the Mongolian assenting, Spoke and myself, buckling on our arms and armor, proceeded to beat up the filthy purlieus of “Chinatown;” and about midnight we found the passive Hi Sing hidden away in a hen-coop, whither she had been conveyed by the confederates of Ching Loo.
We bore Hi Sing—who was considerably alarmed, neither understanding our language nor our purpose—to Spoke’s office, and then it being necessary to secure the services of a magistrate in uniting the couple, I departed to seek the Justice of the Peace, who was still awake—for Justice rarely slept in camp at that hour, but was commonly engaged at the Bella Union playing poker, whilst Spoke sought after the groom, Ah Sam, whom he found in a Chinese den stupidly drunk from smoking opium, having taken such means to wear the edge off his suspense while we were rescuing his affianced. Not only was he stupidly but perversely drunk; but he declared in imperfect English that he had concluded not to marry that night, to which observation Attorney Spoke, becoming profane, jerked him from the cot whereon he lay, and grasping him about the neck with a strangulating hold, bore him into the street and toward his office, intimating loudly that this business had been proceeded with too far to be receded from, and that the marriage must be consummated that night with or without the consent of the principals. Ah Sam resigned himself to matrimony. The office was reached, the door opened and out in the darkness bolted the bride, for she knew not what these preparations meant, or whether she had fallen among friends or enemies. After a lively chase we cornered and caught her; and having thus at last brought this refractory couple together we placed them in position, and the Justice commenced the ceremony by asking Hi Sing if she took that man for her lawful wedded husband, which interrogatory being Chaldaic to her, she replied only by an unmeaning and unspeculative stare. Spoke, who seemed destined to be the soul and mainspring of this whole affair, now threw light on the Mongolian intellect by bringing into play his stock of Chinese English, and translating to her the language of the Justice thus: “You like ’um he, pretty good?” Upon which her face brightened, and she nodded assent. Then turning to the groom, he called in a tone fierce and threatening, “You like ’um she?” and Ah Sam—who was now only a passive object in the hands of Spoke, forced and galvanized into matrimony—dared not do otherwise than give in his adhesion, upon which the Justice pronounced them man and wife; whereupon two Virginians present with their violins (all Virginians fiddle and shoot well) struck up the “Arkansas Traveller;” and the audience—which was now large, every bar-room in Jamestown having emptied itself to witness our Chinese wedding—inspired by one common impulse, arose and marched seven times about the couple. Ah Sam was now informed that he was married “American fashion,” and that he was free to depart with his wedded encumbrance. But Ah Sam, whose intoxication had broken out in full acquiescence with these proceedings, now insisted on making a midnight tour of all the saloons in camp, and treating everybody to the deathly whiskey vended by them, to which the crowd—who never objected to the driving of this sort of nails in their own coffins—assented, and the result of it was (Ah Sam spending his money very freely) that when daylight peeped over the eastern hills the Bella Union saloon was still in full blast; and while the Justice of the Peace was winning Spoke’s thirty hard-earned dollars in one corner, and the two Virginians still kept the “Arkansas Traveller” going on their violins in another, Stephen Scott (afterward elected to Congress) was weeping profusely over the bar, and on being interrogated as to the cause of his sadness by General Wyatt, ex-member of the State Senate, Scott replied that he could never hear played the air of “Home, Sweet Home” without shedding tears.
Ah Sam departed with his bride in the morning, and never were a man’s prospects brighter for a happy honeymoon until the succeeding night, when he was waylaid by a band of disguised white men in the temporary service and pay of old Ching Loo; and he and Hi Sing were forced so far apart that they never saw each other again.