Goldsmiths Friend Abroad Again | Page 4

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