capable of either. For that matter, we knew that the Chinese themselves
possessed some means of secretly and quickly communicating with one
another. Any news of good or ill import to their race was quickly
disseminated through the settlement before WE knew anything about it. An
innocent basket of clothes from the wash, sent up from the river-bank,
became in some way a library of information; a single slip of
rice-paper, aimlessly fluttering in the dust of the road, had the
mysterious effect of diverging a whole gang of coolie tramps away from
our settlement.
When See Yup was not subject to the persecutions of the more ignorant
and brutal he was always a source of amusement to all, and I cannot
recall an instance when he was ever taken seriously. The miners found
diversions even in his alleged frauds and trickeries, whether innocent
or retaliatory, and were fond of relating with great gusto his evasion
of the Foreign Miners' Tax. This was an oppressive measure aimed
principally at the Chinese, who humbly worked the worn-out "tailings" of
their Christian fellow miners. It was stated that See Yup, knowing the
difficulty--already alluded to--of identifying any particular Chinaman
by NAME, conceived the additional idea of confusing recognition by
intensifying the monotonous facial expression. Having paid his tax
himself to the collector, he at once passed the receipt to his fellows,
so that the collector found himself confronted in different parts of the
settlement with the receipt and the aimless laugh of, apparently, See
Yup himself. Although we all knew that there were a dozen Chinamen or
more at work at the mines, the collector never was able to collect the
tax from more than TWO,--See Yup and one See Yin,--and so great was
THEIR facial resemblance that the unfortunate official for a long time
hugged himself with the conviction that he had made See Yup PAY TWICE,
and withheld the money from the government! It is very probable that the
Californian's recognition of the sanctity of a joke, and his belief that
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