JUDGE--"Give him five dollars or ten days."

In my desolation there was a glad surprise in the words; but it passed
away when I found that he only meant that I was to be fined five dollars
or imprisoned ten days longer in default of it.

There were twelve or fifteen Chinamen in our crowd of prisoners, charged
with all manner of little thefts and misdemeanors, and their cases were
quickly disposed of, as a general thing. When the charge came from a
policeman or other white man, he made his statement and that was the end
of it, unless the Chinaman's lawyer could find some white person to
testify in his client's behalf, for, neither the accused Chinaman nor his
countrymen being allowed to say anything, the statement of the officers
or other white person was amply sufficient to convict. So, as I said,
the Chinamen's cases were quickly disposed of, and fines and imprisonment
promptly distributed among them. In one or two of the cases the charges
against Chinamen were brought by Chinamen themselves, and in those cases
Chinamen testified against Chinamen, through the interpreter; but the
fixed rule of the court being that the preponderance of testimony in such
cases should determine the prisoner's guilt or innocence, and there being
nothing very binding about an oath administered to the lower orders of
our people without the ancient solemnity of cutting off a chicken's head
and burning some yellow paper at the same time, the interested parties
naturally drum up a cloud of witnesses who are cheerfully willing to give
evidence without ever knowing anything about the matter in hand. The
judge has a custom of rattling through with as much of this testimony as
his patience will stand, and then shutting off the rest and striking an
average.