第9章 II(3)
All manner of nourishing food,from sea-fish to beef,may be bought at the lowest prices,and the people are consequently well-developed and of a high stomach.They demand ten shillings for tinkering a jammed lock of a trunk;they receive sixteen shillings a day for working as carpenters;they spend many sixpences on very bad cigars,which the poorest of them smoke,and they go mad over a prize-fight.When they disagree they do so fatally,with fire-arms in their hands,and on the public streets.I was just clear of Mission Street when the trouble began between two gentlemen,one of whom perforated the other.
When a policeman,whose name I do not recollect,"fatally shot Ed Hearney"for attempting to escape arrest,I was in the next street.For these things I am thankful.It is enough to travel with a policeman in a tram-car,and,while he arranges his coat-tails as he sits down,to catch sight of a loaded revolver.
It is enough to know that fifty per cent of the men in the public saloons carry pistols about them.
The Chinaman waylays his adversary,and methodically chops him to pieces with his hatchet.Then the press roars about the brutal ferocity of the pagan.
The Italian reconstructs his friend with a long knife.The press complains of the waywardness of the alien.
The Irishman and the native Californian in their hours of discontent use the revolver,not once,but six times.The press records the fact,and asks in the next column whether the world can parallel the progress of San Francisco.The American who loves his country will tell you that this sort of thing is confined to the lower classes.Just at present an ex-judge who was sent to jail by another judge (upon my word I cannot tell whether these titles mean anything)is breathing red-hot vengeance against his enemy.The papers have interviewed both parties,and confidently expect a fatal issue.
Now,let me draw breath and curse the negro waiter,and through him the negro in service generally.He has been made a citizen with a vote,consequently both political parties play with him.
But that is neither here nor there.He will commit in one meal every betise that a senllion fresh from the plow-tail is capable of,and he will continue to repeat those faults.He is as complete a heavy-footed,uncomprehending,bungle-fisted fool as any mem-sahib in the East ever took into her establishment.But he is according to law a free and independent citizen--consequently above reproof or criticism.He,and he alone,in this insane city,will wait at table (the Chinaman doesn't count).
He is untrained,inept,but he will fill the place and draw the pay.Now,God and his father's fate made him intellectually inferior to the Oriental.He insists on pretending that he serves tables by accident--as a sort of amusement.He wishes you to understand this little fact.You wish to eat your meals,and,if possible,to have them properly served.He is a big,black,vain baby and a man rolled into one.
A colored gentleman who insisted on getting me pie when I wanted something else,demanded information about India.I gave him some facts about wages.
"Oh,hell!"said he,cheerfully,"that wouldn't keep me in cigars for a month."Then he fawned on me for a ten-cent piece.Later he took it upon himself to pity the natives of India."Heathens,"he called them--this woolly one,whose race has been the butt of every comedy on the native stage since the beginning.And I turned and saw by the head upon his shoulders that he was a Yoruba man,if there be any truth in ethnological castes.He did his thinking in English,but he was a Yoruba negro,and the race type had remained the same through-out his generations.And the room was full of other races--some that looked exactly like Gallas (but the trade was never recruited from that side of Africa),some duplicates of Cameroon heads,and some Kroomen,if ever Kroomen wore evening dress.
The American does not consider little matters of descent,though by this time he ought to know all about "damnable heredity."As a general rule he keeps himself very far from the negro,and says things about him that are not pretty.There are six million negroes,more or less,in the States,and they are increasing.
The American,once having made them citizens,cannot unmake them.
He says,in his newspapers,they ought to be elevated by education.He is trying this,but it is likely to be a long job,because black blood is much more adhesive than white,and throws back with annoying persistence.When the negro gets religion he returns directly as a hiving bee to the first instincts of his people.Just now a wave of religion is sweeping over some of the Southern States.
Up to the present two Messiahs and a Daniel have appeared,and several human sacrifices have been offered up to these incarnations.The Daniel managed to get three young men,who he insisted were Shadrach,Meshach,and Abednego,to walk into a blast furnace,guaranteeing non-combustion.They did not return.
I have seen nothing of this kind,but I have attended a negro church.They pray,or are caused to pray by themselves in this country.The congregation were moved by the spirit to groans and tears,and one of them danced up the aisle to the mourners'
bench.The motive may have been genuine.The movements of the shaken body were those of a Zanzibar stick dance,such as you see at Aden on the coal-boats,and even as I watched the people,the links that bound them to the white man snapped one by one,and Isaw before me the hubshi (woolly hair)praying to a God he did not understand.Those neatly dressed folk on the benches,and the gray-headed elder by the window,were savages,neither more nor less.
What will the American do with the negro?The South will not consort with him.In some States miscegenation is a penal offence.The North is every year less and less in need of his services.