Adventures of an Effigy

Probably nothing in the world’s economy is subject to as many mutations, misfortunes and miseries as the effigy.

A thoroughly reliable, honest effigy is always regarded as a fit target for the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.”

He is an object of contumely and derision, and has heaped upon him all the real and imaginary sins of the animate substance of which the effigy is simply the symbol.

As an example of the transitions of fortune, experienced by the effigy, the adventures of the stuffed Chinaman, hung up at the corner of Thirteenth and Franklin streets, in this city, to receive the jeers of the small boys, who detest the Chinese Minister at Washington, will serve.

He swung in the wind of morning, and the zephyrs of the gloaming fanned his hideous cheeks and lifted his queue; but he regarded them not, content to survey the things of earth from his elevated hang-point, with all the stoicism and indifference of the race he was made to represent.

At night he was cut down and dragged to an anti-veto indignation meeting, where the omnipresent small boy pelted him with pebbles and beans.

Still he did not complain, enduring his humiliation like a martyr to a better cause.

Late in the night the effigy was conveyed by some young men to the City Prison, and being booked as “John Doe,” was thrust into a dark cell, where the shrieks of the raving Caucasian drunk came to him like the far-off roar of Yosemite’s leaping waters.

Joe Kenner shoved food to him through the cat-hole, and Bailiff Mitchell dragged him forth to docket him for appearance in the Police Court.

Still the unfortunate effigy uttered no word of complaint, but bore these rapidly recurring misfortunes bravely, as if willing and happy that he was allowed the opportunity of suffering for his distant relative in Washington.

Finally, even the dungeon cast him forth, and a “trusty” flung his limp, lifeless form contemptuously into the street—at the corner of Tenth street and Broadway.

And a saddle-hued Mongolian, a living effigy, gathering rags, rubbish and refuse chanced that way and with his three pronged hook gathered the counterfeit presentment of himself into his basket.

Then, and not until then, did the effigy of the Chinese Minister rebel.

He upbraided that Cantonese scavenger until the semblance of a blush stole like a thief in the night athwart the sallow visage of the chiffionier.

But sentiment was not the ruling passion, the best hold, as it were, distinguishing the rag picker’s character from any other Chinaman’s character, and he annihilated the still small voice of sympathy by viciously punching with his hook the complaining effigy, crushing it deeper into the basket, which he shortly after shouldered and at a dog-trot glided away toward a chinese junk shop.