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The Project Gutenberg Etext of Goldsmiths Friend Abroad Again,
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Title: Goldsmiths Friend Abroad Again

Author: Mark Twain

Release Date: April, 2002  [Etext #3191]
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Goldsmiths Friend Abroad Again

by Mark Twain




GOLDSMITH'S FRIEND ABROAD AGAIN

NOTE.--No experience is set down in the following letters which had to be
invented.  Fancy is not needed to give variety to the history of a
Chinaman's sojourn in America.  Plain fact is amply sufficient.


LETTER I

                                             SHANGHAI, 18-.
DEAR CHING-FOO: It is all settled, and I am to leave my oppressed and
overburdened native land and cross the sea to that noble realm where all
are free and all equal, and none reviled or abused--America!  America,
whose precious privilege it is to call herself the Land of the Free and
the Home of the Brave.  We and all that are about us here look over the
waves longingly, contrasting the privations of this our birthplace with
the opulent comfort of that happy refuge.  We know how America has
welcomed the Germans and the Frenchmen and the stricken and sorrowing
Irish, and we know how she has given them bread and work, and liberty,
and how grateful they are.  And we know that America stands ready to
welcome all other oppressed peoples and offer her abundance to all that
come, without asking what their nationality is, or their creed or color.
And, without being told it, we know that the, foreign sufferers she has
rescued from oppression and starvation are the most eager of her children
to welcome us, because, having suffered themselves, they know what
suffering is, and having been generously succored, they long to be
generous to other unfortunates and thus show that magnanimity is not
wasted upon them.
                                             AH SONG HI.



LETTER II

                                                  AT SEA, 18--.
DEAR CHING-FOO:  We are far away at sea now; on our way to the beautiful
Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.  We shall soon be where all men
are alike, and where sorrow is not known.

The good American who hired me to go to his country is to pay me $12 a
month, which is immense wages, you know--twenty times as much as one gets
in China.  My passage in the ship is a very large sum--indeed, it is a
fortune--and this I must pay myself eventually, but I am allowed ample
time to make it good to my employer in, he advancing it now.  For a mere
form, I have turned over my wife, my boy, and my two daughters to my
employer's partner for security for the payment of the ship fare.  But my
employer says they are in no danger of being sold, for he knows I will be
faithful to him, and that is the main security.

I thought I would have twelve dollars to, begin life with in America, but
the American Consul took two of them for making a certificate that I was
shipped on the steamer.  He has no right to do more than charge the ship
two dollars for one certificate for the ship, with the number of her
Chinese passengers set down in it; but he chooses to force a certificate
upon each and every Chinaman and put the two dollars in his pocket.  As
1,300 of my countrymen are in this vessel, the Consul received $2,600 for
certificates.  My employer tells me that the Government at Washington
know of this fraud, and are so bitterly opposed to the existence of such
a wrong that they tried hard to have the extor-- the fee, I mean,
legalised by the last Congress;--[Pacific and Mediterranean steamship
bills.(Ed.  Mem.)]-- but as the bill did not pass, the Consul will have
to take the fee dishonestly until next Congress makes it legitimate.  It
is a great and good and noble country, and hates all forms of vice and
chicanery.

We are in that part of the vessel always reserved for my countrymen.
It is called the steerage.  It is kept for us, my employer says, because
it is not subject to changes of temperature and dangerous drafts of air.
It is only another instance of the loving unselfishness of the Americans
for all unfortunate foreigners.  The steerage is a little crowded, and
rather warm and close, but no doubt it is best for us that it should be
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
portion of this continent.  His enterprise was a failure, and so he set
us all free, merely taking measures to secure to himself the repayment of
the passage money which he paid for us.  We are to make this good to him
out of the first moneys we earn here.  He says it is sixty dollars
apiece.

We were thus set free about two weeks after we reached here.  We had been
massed together in some small houses up to that time, waiting.  I walked
forth to seek my fortune.  I was to begin life a stranger in a strange
land, without a friend, or a penny, or any clothes but those I had on my
back.  I had not any advantage on my side in the world--not one, except
good health and the lack of any necessity to waste any time or anxiety on
the watching of my baggage.  No, I forget.  I reflected that I had one
prodigious advantage over paupers in other lands--I was in America!  I
was in the heaven-provided refuge of the oppressed and the forsaken!

Just as that comforting thought passed through my mind, some young men
set a fierce dog on me.  I tried to defend myself, but could do nothing.
I retreated to the recess of a closed doorway, and there the dog had me
at his mercy, flying at my throat and face or any part of my body that
presented itself.  I shrieked for help, but the young men only 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, no furniture in the den except a long, broad
board, or combination of boards, like a barn-door, and this bed was
accommodating five or six persons, and that was its full capacity.  They
lay stretched side by side, snoring--when not fighting.  One end of the
board was four, inches higher than the other, and so the slant answered
for a pillow.  There were no blankets, and the night was a little chilly;
the nights are always a little chilly in San Francisco, though never
severely cold.  The board was a deal more comfortable than the stones,
and occasionally some flag-stone plebeian like me would try to creep to a
place on it; and then the aristocrats would hammer him good and make him
think a flag pavement was a nice enough place after all.

I lay quiet in my corner, stroking my bruises, and listening to the
revelations the prisoners made to each other--and to me for some that
were near me talked to me a good deal.  I had long had an idea that
Americans, being free, had no need of prisons, which are a contrivance of
despots for keeping restless patriots out of mischief.  So I was
considerably surprised to find out my mistake.

Ours was a big general cell, it seemed, for the temporary accommodation
of all comers whose crimes were trifling.  Among us they were two
Americans, two "Greasers" (Mexicans), a Frenchman, a German, four
Irishmen, a Chilenean (and, in the next cell, only separated from us by a
grating, two women), all drunk, and all more or less noisy; and as night
fell and advanced, they grew more and more discontented and disorderly,
occasionally; shaking the prison bars and glaring through them at the
slowly pacing officer, and cursing him with all their hearts.  The two
women were nearly middle-aged, and they had only had enough liquor to
stimulate instead of stupefy them.  Consequently they would fondle and
kiss each other for some minutes, and then fall to fighting and keep it
up till they were just two grotesque tangles of rags and blood and
tumbled hair.  Then they would rest awhile and pant and swear.  While
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
who makes likenesses of people with a machine), who had been for some
time patching the pictured heads of well-known and respectable young
ladies to the nude, pictured bodies of another class of women; then from
this patched creation he would make photographs and sell them privately
at high prices to rowdies and blackguards, averring that these, the best
young ladies of the city, had hired him to take their likenesses in that
unclad condition.  What a lecture the police judge read that photographer
when he was convicted!  He told him his crime was little less than an
outrage.  He abused that photographer till he almost made him sink
through the floor, and then he fined him a hundred dollars.  And he told
him he might consider himself lucky that he didn't fine him a hundred and
twenty-five dollars.  They are awfully severe on crime here.

About two or two and a half hours after midnight, of that first
experience of mine in the city prison, such of us as were dozing were
awakened by a noise of beating and dragging and groaning, and in a little
while a man was pushed into our den with a "There, d---n you, soak there
a spell!"--and then the gate was closed and the officers went away again.
The man who was thrust among us fell limp and helpless by the grating,
but as nobody could reach him with a kick without the trouble of hitching
along toward him or getting fairly up to deliver it, our people only
grumbled at him, and cursed him, and called him insulting names--for
misery and hardship do not make their victims gentle or charitable toward
each other.  But as he neither tried humbly to conciliate our people nor
swore back at them, his unnatural conduct created surprise, and several
of the party crawled to him where he lay in the dim light that came
through the grating, and examined into his case.  His head was very
bloody and his wits were gone.  After about an hour, he sat up and stared
around; then his eyes grew more natural and he began to tell how that he
was going along with a bag on his shoulder and a brace of policemen
ordered him to stop, which he did not do--was chased and caught, beaten
ferociously about the head on the way to the prison and after arrival
there, and finally I thrown into our den like a dog.

And in a few seconds he sank down again and grew flighty of speech.  One
of our people was at last penetrated with something vaguely akin to
compassion, may be, for he looked out through the gratings at the
guardian officer, pacing to and fro, and said:

"Say, Mickey, this shrimp's goin' to die."

"Stop your noise!" was all the answer he got.  But presently our man
tried it again.  He drew himself to the gratings, grasping them with his
hands, and looking out through them, sat waiting till the officer was
passing once more, and then said:

"Sweetness, you'd better mind your eye, now, because you beats have
killed this cuss.  You've busted his head and he'll pass in his checks
before sun-up.  You better go for a doctor, now, you bet you had."

The officer delivered a sudden rap on our man's knuckles with his club,
that sent him scampering and howling among the sleeping forms on the
flag-stones, and an answering burst of laughter came from the half dozen
policemen idling about the railed desk in the middle of the dungeon.

But there was a putting of heads together out there presently, and a
conversing in low voices, which seemed to show that our man's talk had
made an impression; and presently an officer went away in a hurry, and
shortly came back with a person who entered our cell and felt the bruised
man's pulse and threw the glare of a lantern on his drawn face, striped
with blood, and his glassy eyes, fixed and vacant.  The doctor examined
the man's broken head also, and presently said:

"If you'd called me an hour ago I might have saved this man, may be too
late now."

Then he walked out into the dungeon and the officers surrounded him, and
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.
I was not uneasy about the result of the trial, but on the contrary felt
that as soon as the large auditory of Americans present should hear how
that the rowdies had set the dogs on me when I was going peacefully along
the street, and how, when I was all torn and bleeding, the officers
arrested me and put me in jail and let the rowdies go free, the gallant
hatred of oppression which is part of the very flesh and blood of every
American would be stirred to its utmost, and I should be instantly set at
liberty.  In truth I began to fear for the other side.  There in full
view stood the ruffians who had misused me, and I began to fear that in
the first burst of generous anger occasioned by the revealment of what
they had done, they might be harshly handled, and possibly even banished
the country as having dishonoured her and being no longer worthy to
remain upon her sacred soil.

The official interpreter of the court asked my name, and then spoke it
aloud so that all could hear.  Supposing that all was now ready, I
cleared my throat and began--in Chinese, because of my imperfect English:

"Hear, O high and mighty mandarin, and believe!  As I went about my
peaceful business in the street, behold certain men set a dog on me,
and--

"Silence!"

It was the judge that spoke.  The interpreter whispered to me that I must
keep perfectly still.  He said that no statement would be received from
me--I must only talk through my lawyer.

I had no lawyer.  In the early morning a police court lawyer (termed, in
the higher circles of society, a "shyster") had come into our den in the
prison and offered his services to me, but I had been obliged to go
without them because I could not pay in advance or give security.  I told
the interpreter how the matter stood.  He said I must take my chances on
the witnesses then.  I glanced around, and my failing confidence revived.

"Call those four Chinamen yonder," I said.  "They saw it all.  I remember
their faces perfectly.  They will prove that the white men set the dog on
me when I was not harming them."

"That won't work," said he.  "In this country white men can testify
against Chinamen all they want to, but Chinamen ain't allowed to testify
against white men!"

What a chill went through me!  And then I felt the indignant blood rise
to my cheek at this libel upon the Home of the Oppressed, where all men
are free and equal--perfectly equal--perfectly free and perfectly equal.
I despised this Chinese-speaking Spaniard for his mean slander of the
land that was sheltering and feeding him.  I sorely wanted to sear his
eyes with that sentence from the great and good American Declaration of
Independence which we have copied in letters of gold in China and keep
hung up over our family altars and in our temples--I mean the one about
all men being created free and equal.

But woe is me, Ching Foo, the man was right.  He was right, after all.
There were my witnesses, but I could not use them.  But now came a new
hope.  I saw my white friend come in, and I felt that he had come there
purposely to help me.  I may almost say I knew it.  So I grew easier.
He passed near enough to me to say under his breath, "Don't be afraid,"
and then I had no more fear.  But presently the rowdies recognised him
and began to scowl at him in no friendly way, and to make threatening
signs at him.  The two officers that arrested me fixed their eyes
steadily on his; he bore it well, but gave in presently, and dropped his
eyes.  They still gazed at his eyebrows, and every time he raised his
eyes he encountered their winkless stare--until after a minute or two he
ceased to lift his head at all.  The judge had been giving some
instructions privately to some one for a little while, but now he was
ready to resume business.  Then the trial so unspeakably important to me,
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.





End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Goldsmiths Friend Abroad Again,
by Mark Twain