are as industrious as the day is long ... A disorderly Chinaman is rare, and a lazy one does not exist.

Empathy is expressed in terms of the abusive treatment by other people, especially whites. Mentioning both insults and injuries that are inflicted and noting that “white men” sometimes treat them as badly as they treat “dogs,” Twain presents the Chinese people as rather stoical: “they seldom think of resenting the vilest insults or the cruelest injuries.”

Twain goes on to elaborate numerous facets of this collective characterization. His description is interesting in that he is very harsh on the whites who abuse the Chinese, but at the same time, he enforces stereotypes—the portrait of hardworking Asians that in recent times has been criticized for lumping all Asians together as the “model minority.”

The abuse he mentions includes whites literally getting away with murder and the inequalities in the US justice system that bans Chinese people from testifying in court. He mentions a specific incident that encourages his empathy: the killing of an innocent man, for which the killers were never brought to justice.

Ours is the "land of the free"—nobody denies that—nobody challenges it. [Maybe it is because we won't let other people testify.] As I write, news comes that in broad daylight in San Francisco, some boys have stoned an inoffensive Chinaman to death, and that although a large crowd witnessed the shameful deed, no one interfered.