Goldsmiths Friend Abroad Again | Page 6

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.

LETTER V
SAN FRANCISCO, 18--. DEAR CHING-FOO: You will remember
that I had just been thrust violently into a cell in the city prison when I
wrote last. I stumbled and fell on some one. I got a blow and a curse=
and on top of these a kick or two and a shove. In a second or two it was
plain that I was in a nest of prisoners and was being "passed
around"--for the instant I was knocked out of the way of one I fell on
the head or heels of another and was promptly ejected, only to land on a
third prisoner and get a new contribution of kicks and curses and a new
destination. I brought up at last in an unoccupied corner, very much
battered and bruised and sore, but glad enough to be let alone for a little
while. I was on the flag- stones, for there was,