they were affectionate they always spoke of each other as “ladies,” but
while they were fighting “strumpet” was the mildest name they could think
of–and they could only make that do by tacking some sounding profanity
to it. In their last fight, which was toward midnight, one of them bit
off the other’s finger, and then the officer interfered and put the
“Greaser” into the “dark cell” to answer for it because the woman that
did it laid it on him, and the other woman did not deny it because, as
she said afterward, she “wanted another crack at the huzzy when her
finger quit hurting,” and so she did not want her removed. By this time
those two women had mutilated each other’s clothes to that extent that
there was not sufficient left to cover their nakedness. I found that one
of these creatures had spent nine years in the county jail, and that the
other one had spent about four or five years in the same place. They had
done it from choice. As soon as they were discharged from captivity they
would go straight and get drunk, and then steal some trifling thing while
an officer was observing them. That would entitle them to another two,
months in jail, and there they would occupy clean, airy apartments, and
have good food in plenty, and being at no expense at all, they, could
make shirts for the clothiers at half a dollar apiece and thus keep
themselves in smoking tobacco and such other luxuries as they wanted.
When the two months were up they would go just as straight as they could
walk to Mother Leonard’s and get drunk; and from there to Kearney street
and steal something; and thence to this city prison, and next day back to
the old quarters in the county jail again. One of them had really kept
this up for nine years and the other four or five, and both said they
meant to end their days in that prison. **–[**The former of the two
did.-[Ed. Men.]– Finally, both these creatures fell upon me while I was
dozing with my head against their grating, and battered me considerably,
because they discovered that I was a Chinaman, and they said I was “a
bloody interlopin’ loafer come from the devil’s own country to take the
bread out of dacent people’s mouths and put down the wages for work whin
it was all a Christian could do to kape body and sowl together as it
was.” “Loafer” means one who will not work.
AH SONG HI.
LETTER VI
SAN FRANCISCO, 18–.
DEAR CHING-FOO: To continue–the two women became reconciled to each
other again through the common bond of interest and sympathy created
between them by pounding me in partnership, and when they had finished me
they fell to embracing each other again and swearing more eternal
affection like that which had subsisted between them all the evening,
barring occasional interruptions. They agreed to swear the finger-biting
on the Greaser in open court, and get him sent to the penitentiary for
the crime of mayhem.
Another of our company was a boy of fourteen who had been watched for
some time by officers and teachers, and repeatedly detected in enticing
young girls from the public schools to the lodgings of gentlemen down
town. He had been furnished with lures in the form of pictures and
books of a peculiar kind, and these he had distributed among his clients.
There were likenesses of fifteen of these young girls on exhibition (only
to prominent citizens and persons in authority, it was said, though most
people came to get a sight) at the police headquarters, but no punishment
at all was to be inflicted on the poor little misses. The boy was
afterward sent into captivity at the House of Correction for some months,
and there was a strong disposition to punish the gentlemen who had
employed the boy to entice the girls, but as that could not be done
without making public the names of those gentlemen and thus injuring them
socially, the idea was finally given up.
There was also in our cell that night a photographer (a kind of artist