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."
