d 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