and freighted with such prodigious consequence to my wife and children,
began, progressed, ended, was recorded in the books, noted down by the
newspaper reporters, and forgotten by everybody but me–all in the little
space of two minutes!
“Ah Song Hi, Chinaman. Officers O’Flannigan and O’Flaherty, witnesses.
Come forward, Officer O’Flannigan.”
OFFICER–“He was making a disturbance in Kearny street.”
JUDGE–“Any witnesses on the other side?” No response. The white friend
raised his eyes encountered Officer O’Flaherty’s–blushed a little–got
up and left the courtroom, avoiding all glances and not taking his own
from the floor.
JUDGE–“Give him five dollars or ten days.”
In my desolation there was a glad surprise in the words; but it passed
away when I found that he only meant that I was to be fined five dollars
or imprisoned ten days longer in default of it.
There were twelve or fifteen Chinamen in our crowd of prisoners, charged
with all manner of little thefts and misdemeanors, and their cases were
quickly disposed of, as a general thing. When the charge came from a
policeman or other white man, he made his statement and that was the end
of it, unless the Chinaman’s lawyer could find some white person to
testify in his client’s behalf, for, neither the accused Chinaman nor his
countrymen being allowed to say anything, the statement of the officers
or other white person was amply sufficient to convict. So, as I said,
the Chinamen’s cases were quickly disposed of, and fines and imprisonment
promptly distributed among them. In one or two of the cases the charges
against Chinamen were brought by Chinamen themselves, and in those cases
Chinamen testified against Chinamen, through the interpreter; but the
fixed rule of the court being that the preponderance of testimony in such
cases should determine the prisoner’s guilt or innocence, and there being
nothing very binding about an oath administered to the lower orders of
our people without the ancient solemnity of cutting off a chicken’s head
and burning some yellow paper at the same time, the interested parties
naturally drum up a cloud of witnesses who are cheerfully willing to give
evidence without ever knowing anything about the matter in hand. The
judge has a custom of rattling through with as much of this testimony as
his patience will stand, and then shutting off the rest and striking an
average.
By noon all the business of the court was finished, and then several of
us who had not fared well were remanded to prison; the judge went home;
the lawyers, and officers, and spectators departed their several ways,
and left the uncomely court-room to silence, solitude, and Stiggers, the
newspaper reporter, which latter would now write up his items (said an
ancient Chinaman to me), in the which he would praise all the policemen
indiscriminately and abuse the Chinamen and dead people.
AH SONG HI.