and spoke as cheerily as I could. 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 presently the doctor came and did his work and took
my last penny--my ten dollars which were the hard savings of nearly a
year and a half of labour and privation. Ah, if the law-makers had only
known there were plenty of doctors in the city glad of a chance to
vaccinate people for a dollar or two, they would never have put the price
up so high against a poor friendless Irish, or Italian, or Chinese pauper
fleeing to the good land to escape hunger and hard times.

AH SONG HI.




LETTER IV

SAN FRANCISCO, 18--.
DEAR CHING-FOO: I have been here about a month now, and am learning a
little of the language every day. My employer was disappointed in the
matter of hiring us out to service to the plantations in the far eastern
portion of this continent. His enterprise was a failure, and so he set
us all free, merely taking measures to secure to himself the repayment of