________________________________________________
_ SAN FRANCISCO, 18--.
DEAR CHING-FOO: I have been here about a month now, and am learning a
little of the language every day. My employer was disappointed in the
matter of hiring us out to service to the plantations in the far eastern
portion of this continent. His enterprise was a failure, and so he set
us all free, merely taking measures to secure to himself the repayment of
the passage money which he paid for us. We are to make this good to him
out of the first moneys we earn here. He says it is sixty dollars
apiece.
We were thus set free about two weeks after we reached here. We had been
massed together in some small houses up to that time, waiting. I walked
forth to seek my fortune. I was to begin life a stranger in a strange
land, without a friend, or a penny, or any clothes but those I had on my
back. I had not any advantage on my side in the world--not one, except
good health and the lack of any necessity to waste any time or anxiety on
the watching of my baggage. No, I forget. I reflected that I had one
prodigious advantage over paupers in other lands--I was in America! I
was in the heaven-provided refuge of the oppressed and the forsaken!
Just as that comforting thought passed through my mind, some young men
set a fierce dog on me. I tried to defend myself, but could do nothing.
I retreated to the recess of a closed doorway, and there the dog had me
at his mercy, flying at my throat and face or any part of my body that
presented itself. I shrieked for help, but the young men only jeered and
laughed. Two men in gray uniforms ( policemen is their official title)
looked on for a minute and then walked leisurely away. But a man stopped
them and brought them back and told them it was a shame to leave me in
such distress. Then the two policemen beat off the dog with small clubs,
and a comfort it was to be rid of him, though I was just rags and blood
from head to foot. The man who brought the policemen asked the young men
why they abused me in that way, and they said they didn't want any of his
meddling. And they said to him:
"This Ching divil comes till Ameriky to take the bread out o' dacent
intilligent white men's mouths, and whir they try to defind their rights
there's a dale o' fuss made about it."
They began to threaten my benefactor, and as he saw no friendliness in
the faces that had gathered meanwhile, he went on his way. He got many a
curse when he was gone. The policemen now told me I was under arrest and
must go with them. I asked one of them what wrong I had done to any one
that I should be arrested, and he only struck me with his club and
ordered me to "hold my yap." With a jeering crowd of street boys and
loafers at my heels, I was taken up an alley and into a stone-paved
dungeon which had large cells all down one side of it, with iron gates to
them. I stood up by a desk while a man behind it wrote down certain
things about me on a slate. One of my captors said:
"Enter a charge against this Chinaman of being disorderly and disturbing
the peace."
I attempted to say a word, but he said:
"Silence! Now ye had better go slow, my good fellow. This is two or
three times you've tried to get off some of your d---d insolence. Lip
won't do here. You've got to simmer down, and if you don't take to it
paceable we'll see if we can't make you. Fat's your name?"
"Ah Song Hi."
"Alias what?"
I said I did not understand, and he said what he wanted was my true name,
for he guessed I picked up this one since I stole my last chickens. They
all laughed loudly at that.
Then they searched me. They found nothing, of course. They seemed very
angry and asked who I supposed would "go my bail or pay my fine." When
they explained these things to me, I said I had done nobody any harm, and
why should I need to have bail or pay a fine? Both of them kicked me and
warned me that I would find it to my advantage to try and be as civil as
convenient. I protested that I had not meant anything disrespectful.
Then one of them took me to one side and said:
"Now look here, Johnny, it's no use you playing softly wid us. We mane
business, ye know; and the sooner ye put us on the scent of a V, the
asier yell save yerself from a dale of trouble. Ye can't get out o' this
for anny less. Who's your frinds?"
I told him I had not a single friend in all the land of America, and that
I was far from home and help, and very poor. And I begged him to let me
go.
He gathered the slack of my blouse collar in his grip and jerked and
shoved and hauled at me across the dungeon, and then unlocking an iron
cell-gate thrust me in with a kick and said:
"Rot there, ye furrin spawn, till ye lairn that there's no room in
America for the likes of ye or your nation."
AH SONG HI. _
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