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.

AhSong hi.

LETTER III

SanFrancisco, 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.