_ 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. _