so.
Yesterday our people got to quarrelling among themselves, and the captain
turned a volume of hot steam upon a mass of them and scalded eighty or
ninety of them more or less severely. Flakes and ribbons of skin came
off some of them. There was wild shrieking and struggling while the
vapour enveloped the great throng, and so some who were not scalded got
trampled upon and hurt. We do not complain, for my employer says this is
the usual way of quieting disturbances on board the ship, and that it is
done in the cabins among the Americans every day or two.
Congratulate me, Ching-Fool In ten days more I shall step upon the shore
of America, and be received by her great-hearted people; and I shall
straighten myself up and feel that I am a free man among freemen.
AH SONG HI.
LETTER III
SAN FRANCISCO, 18-.
DEAR CHING-FOO: I stepped ashore jubilant! I wanted to dance, shout,
sing, worship the generous Land of the Free and Home of the Brave. But
as I walked from the gangplank a man in a gray uniform –[Policeman]–
kicked me violently behind and told me to look out–so my employer
translated it. As I turned, another officer of the same kind struck me
with a short club and also instructed me to look out. I was about to
take hold of my end of the pole which had mine and Hong-Wo’s basket and
things suspended from it, when a third officer hit me with his club to
signify that I was to drop it, and then kicked me to signify that he was
satisfied with my promptness. Another person came now, and searched all
through our basket and bundles, emptying everything out on the dirty
wharf. Then this person and another searched us all over. They found a
little package of opium sewed into the artificial part of Hong-Wo’s
queue, and they took that, and also they made him prisoner and handed him
over to an officer, who marched him away. They took his luggage, too,
because of his crime, and as our luggage was so mixed together that they
could not tell mine from his, they took it all. When I offered to help
divide it, they kicked me and desired me to look out.
Having now no baggage and no companion, I told my employer that if he was
willing, I would walk about a little and see the city and the people
until he needed me. I did not like to seem disappointed with my
reception in the good land of refuge for the oppressed, and so I looked
and spoke as cheerily as I could. But he said, wait a minute–I must be
vaccinated to prevent my taking the small-pox. I smiled and said I had
already had the small-pox, as he could see by the marks, and so I need
not wait to be “vaccinated,” as he called it. But he said it was the
law, and I must be vaccinated anyhow. The doctor would never let me
pass, for the law obliged him to vaccinate all Chinamen and charge them
ten dollars apiece for it, and I might be sure that no doctor who would
be the servant of that law would let a fee slip through his fingers to
accommodate any absurd fool who had seen fit to have the disease in some
other country. And presently the doctor came and did his work and took
my last penny–my ten dollars which were the hard savings of nearly a
year and a half of labour and privation. Ah, if the law-makers had only
known there were plenty of doctors in the city glad of a chance to
vaccinate people for a dollar or two, they would never have put the price
up so high against a poor friendless Irish, or Italian, or Chinese pauper
fleeing to the good land to escape hunger and hard times.
AH SONG HI.
LETTER IV
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