they kept up ,a low and earnest buzzing of conversation for fifteen
minutes, I should think, and then the doctor took his departure from the
prison. Several of the officers now came in and worked a little with the
wounded man, but toward daylight he died.
It was the longest, longest night! And when the daylight came filtering
reluctantly into the dungeon at last, it was the grayest, dreariest,
saddest daylight! And yet, when an officer by and by turned off the
sickly yellow gas flame, and immediately the gray of dawn became fresh
and white, there was a lifting of my spirits that acknowledged and
believed that the night was gone, and straightway I fell to stretching my
sore limbs, and looking about me with a grateful sense of relief and a
returning interest in life. About me lay the evidences that what seemed
now a feverish dream and a nightmare was the memory of a reality instead.
For on the boards lay four frowsy, ragged, bearded vagabonds, snoring–
one turned end-for-end and resting an unclean ,foot, in a ruined
stocking, on the hairy breast of a neighbour; the young boy was uneasy,
and lay moaning in his sleep; other forms lay half revealed and half
concealed about the floor; in ,the furthest corner the gray light fell
upon a sheet, whose elevations and depressions indicated the places of
the dead man’s face and feet and folded hands; and through the dividing
bars one could discern the almost nude forms of the two exiles from the
county jail twined together in a drunken embrace, and sodden with sleep.
By and by all the animals in all the cages awoke, and stretched
themselves, and exchanged a few cuffs and curses, and then began to
clamour for breakfast. Breakfast was brought in at last–bread and
beefsteak on tin plates, and black coffee in tin cups, and no grabbing
allowed. And after several dreary hours of waiting, after this, we were
all marched out into the dungeon and joined there by all manner of
vagrants and vagabonds, of all shades and colours and nationalities, from
the other cells and cages of the place; and pretty soon our whole
menagerie was marched up-stairs and locked fast behind a high railing in
a dirty room with a dirty audience in it. And this audience stared at
us, and at a man seated on high behind what they call a pulpit in this
country, and at some clerks and other officials seated below him–and
waited. This was the police court.
The court opened. Pretty soon I was compelled to notice that a culprit’s
nationality made for or against him in this court. Overwhelming proofs
were necessary to convict an Irishman of crime, and even then his
punishment amounted to little; Frenchmen, Spaniards, and Italians had
strict and unprejudiced justice meted out to them, in exact accordance
with the evidence; negroes were promptly punished, when there was the
slightest preponderance of testimony against them; but Chinamen were
punished always, apparently. Now this gave me some uneasiness, I
confess. I knew that this state of things must of necessity be
accidental, because in this country all men were free and equal, and one
person could not take to himself an advantage not accorded to all other
individuals. I knew that, and yet in spite of it I was uneasy.
And I grew still more uneasy, when I found that any succored and
befriended refugee from Ireland or elsewhere could stand up before that
judge and swear, away the life or liberty or character of a refugee from
China; but that by the law of the land the Chinaman could not testify
against the Irishman. I was really and truly uneasy, but still my faith
in the universal liberty that America accords and defends, and my deep
veneration for the land that offered all distressed outcasts a home and
protection, was strong within me, and I said to myself that it would all
come out right yet.
AH SONG HI.
LETTER VII
SAN FRANCISCO, 18–.
DEAR CHING FOO: I was glad enough when my case came up. An hour’s
experience had made me as tired of the police court as of the dungeon.