No experience is set down in the following letters which had to be
invented. Fancy is not needed to give variety to the history of a
Chinaman's sojourn in America. Plain fact is amply sufficient.
DEAR CHING-FOO: It 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!
But he said, wait a minute--I must be vaccinated to prevent my taking the
small-pox. I smiled and said I had already had the small-pox, as he
could see by the marks, and so I need not wait to be "vaccinated," as he
called it. But he said it was the law, and I must be vaccinated anyhow.
The doctor would never let me pass, for the law obliged him to vaccinate
all Chinamen and charge them ten dollars apiece for it, and I might be
sure that no doctor who would be the servant of that law would let a fee
slip through his fingers to accommodate any absurd fool who had seen fit
to have the disease in some other country.
And I grew still more uneasy, when I found that any succored and
befriended refugee from Ireland or elsewhere could stand up before that
judge and swear, away the life or liberty or character of a refugee from
China; but that by the law of the land the Chinaman could not testify
against the Irishman.