Disgraceful Percecution Of A Boy By Mark Twain

      In San Francisco, the other day," A well-dressed boy ,on his way to Sunday-school was arrested and thrown into the city prision for stoning chinamen ."
   
      What a commentray is this upon human justice ! What sad prominence it gives to our human disposition to tyrannize over the  weak ! San Francisco has little right to take credit to herself for her treatment  of this poor boy.What had the child's education been?How should he suppose  it was wrong  to  stone a Chinaman ? Before we side against him,
along wtih outraged San Francisco, let us give him a chance ____ let us hear testimony for the defense.
     
        He was a "well-dressed" and a Sunday -school scholar  and the chances are thathis parents were intelligent, well-to-do people with just enough natural villainy  in  their composition  to make them yearn after  the daily  papers, and enjoy them; and so this boy had opportunities to learn all through the week how to do right, as well as on Sunday.

         It was in this way that he found out that the great  commonwealth of California imposes an  unlawful mining--tax upon John the foreingner and allows Patrick the foreigner to dig gold for nothing____ probbly because the degraded Mongol  is at  no expense for whisky, and the refied Celt  cannot exist  without  it.

         It was in this way that he found out that a respestable  number of  the tax -gatherers ---- it would be unkind to say all of them ____ collect the tax twice , instead of once ;and that , inasmuch  ,as they do it solely  to discourage Chinese immagration into  the mines applauded  and likewise regarded as being singularly facetious .

         It as in this way that he found  out thaat when a white  man robs a sluice-box ( by the term white  man is meant Spaniards,Mexicans, Portuguses,Irish ,Hondurans, chileans,etc,etc ), they make him leave the camp ; and when a Chinaman does  that thing they hang him .

        It was in this way that he found out that in many distris  of the vast Pacific coast, so strong, is the wild free love of justice in the hearts  of the people , that whenever any secrect and mysterious crime is committed  they say ,"Let justice be done , though the heavens fall," and go straightway  and swing a Chinaman.

        It was in this way that he found out that by studying one half of each day's "local items ,"  it would appear  that the police of San Francisco were either asleep or dead and by studying the other half  it would seem that the reporters were  gone mad with admiration  of the energy, the virtue , the high effectiveness  and the dare- devil intrepidity of that very police- making exultant mention of how "the Argus- eyed officer So- and -so" captured a wretched knave of a Chinaman who was stealing  chickens, and bought him  gloriously to the city prison ;and how " the gallant officer Such- and such -a -one "  quietly kept an eye on the movements of  of an "unsuspecting , almond- eyed son of Confucius  " (your reporter is nothing if not facetious ), following him  around with that far-off look .of vacancy and  unconsciousness always so finely affected by that  inscrutable being  the  froty- dollar policeman, during a waking interval, and captured  him at last in the very act of placing his hands  in a suspicious manner upon a paper of tracks ,left by the owner  in an exposed situation : and how  one officer performed this prodigious thing  and another officer that  and another the other ___ and pretty much every one of these performances  having for dazzling central incident a Chinaman guilty of a shilling's worth of crime, an unfortunate whose misdemeanor must be hurrahed into something enormmous  in order to keep the public from noticing how many really important rascals went uncaptured in the mean time, and how overrated those glorified  policemen actually are .
           It wa in this way that the boy found out that the legislature, being aware that the Constitution has amde America, an asylum  for the poor and oppreesed who fly to our shelter must not be charged a diabling admission fee, made a law that every Chinaman, upon landing must  be vaccinated upon the wharf  and pay  to  the state's appointed
officer ten dollars for the service, when there are plenty of doctors in San Francisco who would  be glad enough to do it for him for fifty cents  .
 
         It was in this way that the boy found out that a Chinaman had no rights that any man was bound to respect ; that he had no sorrows  that any man was bound to pity ; that neither his life nor his liberty  was  worth the purchase of a  penny  when a white man needed a scapegoat ;that nobody loved Chinamen , nobody befriended  them , nobody spared  them suffering when it was convinent to  inflict it ; everybody ,individuals ,communities ,the majesty of the state itself ,joined in hating ,abusing and t persecuting   these hamble strangers.

       "  And,therefore goes a Chinaman! God will not love  me if I don't stone him ."

          And for this  he was arrested and put in the city jail.

          Everything conspired to teach him that  it was a high and holy thing to stone a Chinaman, and yet he no sonner attempts to do  his duty than he is punished for it -----
he,poor,chap who has been aware all his life that one of the principal recreations of the police ,out toward the Gold Refinery , is to look on with tranquil enjoyment while the butchers of Brannan  Street  set their dogs on  unoffending  Chianmen, and make them flee for their lives .

         { I have many such memory in my mind, but  am thinking just at present of one particular one, where the Brannan Street butchers see their dogs on a Chinaman who
was quitely  passing with a basket of clothes on his head ; and while the dogs mutilated his flesh, abutcher increased the hialrity of the occassion by knocking some of the Chinaman's teeth down his throat with half a brick.This incident sticks in my memory with a more malevolant teanacity ,perhaps ,on account of the fact that I was in the employ of  a San Francisco  journal at the time ,and was not allowed to publish it because it might  offend some of the peculiar element that subscribed for the paper .}

       Keeping  in mind the tuition in the humanities which the entire "Pacific coast " gives it youth, there is a very  sublimity of incoming in congruity in the virtuous flourish with which  the good city fathers of  San Francisco proclaim (as they have lately done ) that "The police are positively ordered to arrest all boys of every description and wherever  found who engage in assulating Chinamen "

       Still ,let us be truly glad they have made the order, notwithstanding   its inconsistency ;and let us rest perfectly confident the police are glad , too .Because there is no personal peril  in arresting boys, provided they  be of the small kind and the reporters will have  to laud their performances just as loyally as ever, or go without items.

      The new form for the local items in San Francisco  will now be : "The  ___ever__vigilant and efficient officer So-and -so succeeded, yesterday afternoon, in arresting master Tommy jones, after  a determined resistance, " etc...etc... followed by the cystomary statistics  and final hurrah , with its unconscious  sarcasm : " We are happy in being able to state that this is the forty- seventh boy arrested by this gallant officer since the new ordinance went into effect .The most extraordinary activity prevails in the police  department. Nothing like it has been seen since we  can remember . "