This is the smallest and least conspicuous department of the work of the
American Missionary Association, but the one that stands in the closest
relation to ourselves, and the one also that can show the largest
returns. The Chinese in America are few in number, but they are
scattered everywhere, as if God intended in them to put the spirit of
our churches to a crucial test, and, where that test is endured, to give
to his servants a prompt reward and an unanswerable confirmation of his
promises and of their faith.

These strange little men from "the land of Sinim," mysterious, silent,
capable, incredibly industrious, money-making, with their pig-tails and
their felt shoes, their "pidgin English" and their unintelligible
"turkey tracks," their wooden countenance and their "bias eyes," their
opium, and their "ways that are dark," who, in spite of restrictive laws
and brutal personal treatment, are filtering in everywhere, until they
may be seen crouched in the corner of any street car, and are a familiar
object in the village street--why are they here? here just now and here
so persistently? It is no mighty immigration of men, such as De
Tocqueville liked to dwell upon. It is no conquering host, no familiar
immigration. Whatever may once have been the attractive force of the
California gold fields, washing soiled linen can hardly be regarded as
satisfying a national instinct, or thumping through the long hours of
the night upon an ironing table a soul-filling amusement. Much may be
said of "the golden fleece," but these are no modern Argonauts. They are
money-making as our friends the Jews, but no "high emprise" or "grand
endeavor" fires their calm pulse, and much as has been written of the
coolie system and the "Six Companies," nothing has been adduced which
seems adequate to explain the movement.

The fact is, God is in it. He is crowding these heathen upon our