“Where me workee ? ” he answered, repeating the question as is the Chinaman’s habit when he speaks but little English. I asked one of them where he was at work. The Lee women - if, indeed, they were Lees-didn’t appear to be wholly desirable members of the community, and one of the doctors had such an air as I fancy belongs to adepts in the black art but otherwise the Lees and their neighbors looked like worthy and industrious persons.- taking down their shutters, sweeping out their shops and stores, putting things to rights on the sidewalks, and generally going about their business as though they meant business. We found the Lee family largely represented: Hop Lee did washing and ironing, and so did Tae Lee : Quong Lee had a lottery shop on one side of the street, and Sam Lee had a similar shop on the other side Ah Lee kept a rice store on one block, and Yang Lee dealt in tea and dried fish on the next block while Guy Lee and Angle Lee were rivals in the medical profession and How Lee sat sedate and serious on a cobbler’s bench at an open door. We stopped a day at Truckee, over in Nevada, and got up an appetite for breakfast by taking a long stroll through the Chinese section of that wild and bustling village. Lee is one of the pioneers of his people in their movement to the East, though it isn’t likely that he thinks of himself in that light and the fact that a single Chinaman is dwelling in Promontory renders it possible that the place may sometime be a decent and respectable town. They told me he did his work well: “ charges two dollars a dozen, and collars not counted.” I should charge more than that if I had to live at Promontory and take in washing. The name was the first thing from China that we saw on the journey, and I noted that the man was one of the few in town who appeared to be trying to make an honest living. “Wo Lee-Washing and Ironing”: I found my eyes and thoughts running down to that sign over and over again while we waited for the railroad folks to make up the train for Sacramento. On the whole, it was as modest and unpretending a domicile as the law ever invested with the dignity of a castle. His dwelling betrayed no aristocratic tastes it was made of undressed lumber, and had a canvas roof it showed but one window, and for the door there was a hasp-and-staple fastening. Wo Lee, but I 've no doubt he is fitter for the kingdom of heaven than the majority of his fellow-townsmen. Every second house is a gambling-shop and drinking-saloon, and in most of the others gambling and drinking seemed to be the chief business. It was painted on cloth, and nailed over the door of the fourth house from the western end of Main Street though, truth to tell, Promontory has but a single street, and that is n’t one on which a man need be proud to live. LOOKING out from my car window when we stopped at Promontory on our way to California, I saw this sign: WO LEE-WASHING AND IRONING.
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