d Ah Fe's pilgrimage.

On the road to Sacramento he was twice playfully thrown from the top
of the stage-coach by an intelligent but deeply-intoxicated Caucasian,
whose moral nature was shocked at riding with one addicted to
opium-smoking. At Hangtown he was beaten by a passing stranger,--purely
an act of Christian supererogation. At Dutch Flat he was robbed by
well-known hands from unknown motives. At Sacramento he was arrested
on suspicion of being something or other, and discharged with a severe
reprimand--possibly for not being it, and so delaying the course of
justice. At San Francisco he was freely stoned by children of the public
schools; but, by carefully avoiding these monuments of enlightened
progress, he at last reached, in comparative safety, the Chinese
quarters, where his abuse was confined to the police, and limited by the
strong arm of the law.

The next day he entered the wash-house of Chy Fook as an assistant, and
on the following Friday was sent with a basket of clean clothes to Chy
Fook's several clients.

It was the usual foggy afternoon as he climbed the long wind-swept hill
of California Street,--one of those bleak, gray intervals that made the
summer a misnomer to any but the liveliest San Franciscan fancy. There
was no warmth or color in earth or sky, no light nor shade within or
without, only one monotonous, universal neutral tint over every thing.
There was a fierce unrest in the wind-whipped streets: there was a
dreary vacant quiet in the gray houses. When Ah Fe reached the top of
the hill, the Mission Ridge was already hidden; and the chill sea-breeze
made him shiver. As he put down his basket to rest himself, it is
possible, that, to his defective intelligence and heathen experience,
this "God's own climate," as it was called, seemed to possess but
scant tenderness, softness, or mercy. But it is possible that Ah
Fe illogically confounded this season with his old persecutors, the
school-children, who, being released from studious confinement, at this
hour were generally most aggressive. So he hastened on, and, turning a
corner, at last stopped before a small house.

It was the usual San Franciscan urban cottage. There was the little
strip of cold green shrubbery before it; the chilly, bare veranda, and
above this, again, the grim balcony, on which no one sat. Ah Fe rang
the bell. A servant appeared, glanced at his basket, and reluctantly
admitted him, as if he were some necessary domesti