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