PS 1059 .B86 T5 1899 S Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from The Library of Congress http://www.archive.org/details/tistoryofsanfran01bamf TI: A STORY OF SAN FRANCISCO'S CHINATOWN By MARY E. BAMFORD. CHICAGO: David C. Cook Publishing Company, 36 WASHINGTON STREET. r > .^ ,, \<> \%* Copyright, 1899, By David C. Cook Publishing Company. ?^yp?;- ti: A STORY OF SAN FRANCISCO'S CHINATOWN. CHAPTEE I. THE "NEW WORDS.' ; T WAS low tide. Ti sat on a board at the end of the net- drying platform, and looked 5n5u~ out beyond the mud flats of the bay. He could see his father's junk far on the water. The junk had been away down the bay to San Francisco, and now was coming back, bringing a load of salt to be used in curing shrimps. Thousands of shrimps were caught and dried every year at this isolated California Chinese fishing-village where Ti lived. There were large plank floors on which the shrimps were dried. Tons of shrimps were shipped across the ocean to China yearly. His uncle, Lum Lee, hurried past to get some wood to be used as fuel in some of the processes of curing shrimps. As he ran by, he looked at Ti and observed that if the boy should fall off the board at the- end of the net-drying platform, he would land in the mud-flat underneath. " Do not fall," he called out in Chinese, as he ran. But Ti felt entirely above such ad- vice. Of course he could hold on! But what he could not do was to hurry the coming in of the tide, so that his father could bring the junk to the wharf. Ti particularly wanted the junk to hurry, because, when going away, his father had said that he would bring something from the great city for a present to his boy. And now, when the junk was returning and fairly in sight of the fishing-camp, the water near the shore line of the bay must go out and leave nothing but mud- flats! What junk could sail on a mud- flat? Ti did wish that the water would hurry coming in, so he could get his present ! What would it be? Would it be a toy 4 TI: A STORY OF CHINATOWN. balloon, such as the American children intelligible to American as well as Chinese had sometimes? Or would it be some ears. Uncle Lum Lee had long since dis- rice cakes? Perhaps it would be a fish-bladder covered with feathers, for him to use in playing "tack yin." Or maybe it would be candy! Ti clasped his little yellow hands ecstatically across his "'shorn,," as the Chinese call the blouse. But it does not do to clasp one's hands too suddenly when one is sitting on the end of a board in the air! Ti lost his balance, screamed, caught at the board, and fell over, down into the mud below! Oh, it was dreadful! His thick- soled shoes and blue trousers disappeared in the mud! The ends of his "shorn" spread out over the mud, and he Do not fall," called Uncle Lum Lee. appeared, but See Yow heard — old See Yow, who was going through the encampment to one of the buildings that had a shrine, such as a joss- house has. He was in- tending to put some in- cense sticks before the shrine, for he knew the proverb of his people, " In passing over the day in the usual way there are four ounces of sin." Yet his idea of " sin " was very different from the Christian idea. When he heard the scream he did not wait to go to the shrine, but hurriedly called to others near. There was a loud chat- tering, and at last little Ti was scooped out of the mud, as if he were a screamed a scream that would have been new and valuable variety of clam. He Chinese Fishing Hamlet. TI: A STORY OF CHINATOWN. left one thick-soled shoe buried far out of sight, and he was borne away by old See Yow to be cleaned up again. While he scraped and comforted, the old man told Ti how convenient it would have been to-day, if he had been one of the feathered people, for then he could have flown, when he found himself drop- ping into the mud. See Yow really be- lieved that there are feathered people somewhere in the world, for he had been taught so, when he was a boy long ago, by a man from Swatow in China. " The feathered people are gentle, and they are covered with fluffy down, and have wings/' said See Yow, "and they sing." Ti listened and watched the scraping off of his shoe. The old man kept on talking about the feathered people. " If one wishes to visit that nation, he must go far to the southeast and then inquire/' he finished, in the words of the tale as he had learned them. By this time Ti was quite as clean as he could be made in so short a time. See Yow was always a kind, lovable old man. " When the junk comes in, I will give you a piece of the present my father brings me," said Ti gratefully. Old See Yow smiled. " May the Five Blessings come upon you!" he answered affectionately. " Surely you were a child that neither learned to walk nor speak early nor had teeth early!" Now as certain Chinese believe that a child who does these things early has a bad disposition and will grow up unlov- able, what See Yow said was very compli- mentary. And as the Chinese "Five Blessings" are health, riches, long life, Old See Yow. love of virtue, and a natural death, the old man wished the best things he knew for Ti. But to himself he smiled at little Ti's promise about the present, and thought, " Some presents will not bear dividing! It is but a child's promise. I shall have nothing." But little Ti meant what he promised. TI: A STOBY OF CHINATOWN. Jle would certainly give a piece of his present to kind old See Yow. The little boy stayed with the shrimp- curers till the slow waters of the bay climbed again over the mud-flats toward the fishing-hamlet. Then the men on the junk out in the bay hoisted sail, and slowly the junk came toward the shore. But about three hundred yards from the shore, it ran aground in the mud. Small boats began to ply between the junk and the shore, however, and on one of these boats came Ti's father. He had not left Ti's present on board the junk with the load of salt, either. The present was in- side of the father's blouse. How Ti gazed, as his father fumbled in his blouse and brought out his present! It was a pair of bright, pink, American stockings! Oh, they were so bright and pink and pretty! The boy was delighted. He had never had anything but common white stockings to show above his low, thick-soled shoes before. The new pink stockings were clocked with silk up their sides, and to little Ti they seemed very beautiful. He smiled with happiness, for Chinese small people when " dressed up " like to wear pretty colors. Then suddenly he remembered something. Had he not said he would divide his present — what- ever it should be — with old See Yow? The little lad's smile vanished. Must he give away half of his beautiful new pink pair of stockings? What good was half a fair of stockings? But the boy's father was still fumbling in his blouse, and a moment later he brought out some Chinese candy. Put- ting this into Ti's hands, he brought out something else. " I saw the teacher woman in the city/' he told in Chinese, and she said, ' Here is something for little Ti! Tell him to fasten it up by a street door, so that all the fishing-people will see it!'" But the father frowned a little, as he said this, though he handed Ti the teacher's gift, which was a piece of red paper on which were some Chinese words in black characters. Ti's father did not like the city teacher woman very well, yet he had brought the paper safely because he thought that the little boy might like its red color. The words on the red paper seemed strange to him. He did not know what they meant. " I will give this red paper to See Yow," resolved Ti, taking the paper. " Then I shall not have to give him one of my pink stockings! He may have some of my candy, too." He ran away to find See Yow. The kind old man admired the pink stockings, refused the candy, but took the red paper. He tried to read what was printed on it in Chinese characters, but he did not un- derstand. He puzzled over it quite a while. Ti stood by, watching. " What does it say?" he asked. " They are new words," answered old See Yow. TI: A STOBT OF CHINATOWN. He read them aloud slowly: " ' Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest/ " Ti did not know what they meant. The teacher woman in the great California city where he used to live several years ago had spoken to him once about Christ, but he was a very little fellow then, and now he did not remember much she had said. So he could not help See Yow to understand the words on the red paper. " The teacher woman said to put the paper up by a door where everybody can see," stated Ti in Chinese. So See Yow held the red paper and went along slowly to the hut where he and some other Chinamen lived. Above and beside the outside of the door were already pasted red or yellow papers with inscriptions that said various things in Chinese. One paper said: "May we never be without wisdom." Another paper read, " Good hope," and another, " Good will come to us," and another, "May heaven give happiness." But none of them held any such words as the teacher woman's red paper that See Yow's wrinkled old hands pasted now among the other inscriptions. Back and forth through the narrow, dirty little street that ran through the hamlet went the Chinese men and women and children. They were all so busy with the shrimp-curing and the fish-drying and the household work that they hardly looked at See Yow's red paper. Once in a while a man stopped to look, but he did not know what the words meant. Some of the Chinamen who had once lived down in the city had heard of the Ameri- cans' Christ, but had not paid much at- tention. Many of the Chinese had lived in different fishing-villages for years, and had never had any one to teach them of Christ. See Yow had lived in California many years. He had wandered around through Chinese mining-camps and fish- ing-villages, but in the mining-camps there was no teaching of Chinese about Christ, and after all these years in a Christian land, the poor old man was in as dense ignorance of Christianity as when he came from his native land. This whole fishing-camp where he now lived knew little more of Christ than if it had been in China. After seeing the paper pasted up by the door, Ti had run off with his own precious pink stockings. But old See Yow stood still and looked awhile at the red paper, and tried to think what the words meant. At last he shook his head slowly, saying as he turned away: " They are new words. They are new words!" Yet there those words of eighteen cen- turies stood on See Yow's shabby old out- ward wall, and hither and thither went the ignorant, hard-working Chinese peo- ple, who did not know the meaning of them. TI: A STORY OF CHINATOWN CHAPTEK II. THE CALL. FOR " CHOCK CHEE." HERE was great excitement in the fishing - hamlet. There were six white men — yes, six — who had come to the hamlet, and no one knew wherefore! Outwardly the Chinese were busy about their usual work, but inwardly they thought of little except the six white visitors and their errand. White men seldom came here, for there was no direct communication between the isolated hamlet and the city save by the Chinese junk's irregular trips. But the six white men had come in another vessel, now waiting in the bay. Some thought they had come to collect poll tax. " I have paid poll tax many times," said Kim Tong in Chinese. " Perhaps they have come to hunt for some bad Chinaman, to put him in jail," suggested Lin Tan. The six white men walked around, ap- parently noting how many Chinamen there were in the camp, and what their occupations were. They looked at those who were splitting wood, and thoec who were mending nets, and those who were doing cooking, and those who were grinding shrimp shells and mixing them with sawdust. Great quantities of these ground shells and sawdust were sent to China, there to be used as a fertilizer of land. The six strangers looked at some TI: A STOHY OF CHINATOWN. 9 About a hundred such from getting the Chinamen all together, of the large nets nets belonged to the fishing hamlet. Two or three Chinamen were making mat- tresses of red and white cloth, and the white men looked at these workers. Xone of the dwellers in the little ham- let seemed outwardly to object to the white men's seeing all they wished to see. The Chinese were peaceful, but they did have a desire to know what was coming. They knew this unexpected visit meant something. The white men peered into various lit- tle buildings, and saw in two or three of them such shrines as the Chinese erect for joss-worship. u Religion isn't entirely neglected here!" said one of the visitors to another, laughingly. "You'll find joss-shrines anywhere where you find Chinese living, I guess," answered the other. They had gone around near the wharf again. " It's an opportune time for us to come on our business," said a third white man, looking at the Chinese junk next the wharf. " Even their junk isn't out in the bay." " It wouldn't be so much matter, if it were out there," said another. " These Chinese have a regular system of signals. They run up red and green and white flags on the flag-pole over that house yon- der, and they could signal a junk to come in from the bay back to this place, if necessary. So it wouldn't hinder us unless the junk was too far out to see the signals. But probably all are here who "Why have these men come?" said one Chinaman. live here, now. We'd better begin pretty soon." The men then went a little farther and gazed at the Chinamen who were attend- ing to fish. Before the very faces of the white men the Chinese kept on talking together about why these visitors had come. They felt safe in talking their own language. They did not know that 10 TI: A STOBT OF CHINATOWN. some of these men understood Chinese and knew what was being said about them. " Why have these men come?" said one Chinaman. " Perhaps they will survey the shore for some purpose. Do they think they can take away our fishing- village?" Finally, when the visitors had walked around the camp and had satisfied them- selves that all the men usually employed were there, one of them went to the Chi- nese "boss" of the fishing-hamlet and told him to call all the men together. " Chock chee," demanded the white man; and immediately the camp was astir, for " chock chee " meant the cer- tificate a Chinaman must have to show that he had been legally admitted to this country. Little Ti stood and looked at the com- motion that ensued. Some of the Chi- nese hurried to their bunks and brought back their certificates. Others were very cross at having to stop their work, and would not go and get " chock chee " till command after command had been given. "You all come here," said one white man in Chinese; and the Chinamen gath- ered in a group. Then the six men began carefully to examine the certificates and compare the photograph on each with the Chinaman who presented it. As fast as the men and the certificates were looked at, the Chinese were told to stand aside, so that by and by there were two groups of Chinamen. The white men were care- fully looking for fraudulent certificates. Ti watched, for he was somewhat alarmed by something he heard one of the Chinamen say — that the men had brought a genuine " chock chee " with them, so as to have a standard by which they might detect any forged certificates; and though the white men had not come to find a real criminal, but only to dis- cover anybody who had violated the law of " chock chee," yet they were so careful in comparing the genuine certificate with those shown by the Chinamen, that there was an impression made among the suspicious, waiting Chinese that perhaps, after all, there had been a murder com- mitted by a Chinaman somewhere in the State, and these men were looking for the murderer. Ti heard the Chinese about him mur- muring various conjectures as to whom had been killed and where it had oc- curred. There were so many surmises that he felt frightened. He knew his father would have to come before those six men very soon, and he did not know what the men might do to him. The little fellow grew so scared that he wanted to run away and hide himself in the building that was used as a sail loft and a place for storing the ropes and tackle belonging to the junk and other boats. But he stayed, because he watched for his father's turn to come before the white men. He knew that some of the Chinamen were out of temper. One of TI: A STORY OF CHINATOWN. them had even kicked over a little dwarf certificates pine that sat in a dish by his hut. But there was no use in being cross when the call was for " chock chee." Ti knew from his father's looks that something was the matter. Uncle Lum Lee was safe. He had his certificate. "When it came his father's turn to go before the six white men, Ti tried to see between two old Chinamen. He thrust his little queued head under the Chinas man's arm and looked. Before the white men stood his father, talking briskly in English of his own. " ITe leave e chock chee ' in city," he said. " Him velly good number one ' chock chee!' Xo have him here. Leave him with my cousin in city." " Very well," answered one of the men. " Then I arrest you. I will take you down to the city, and you may find 6 chock chee ' there. and show me. Stand here." Ti's father did not object at all. He had known, as soon as he heard the white men's errand, that he would have to go back to the city with them. Such a visit as this was very unexpected, and Ti's father told himself that he would always keep his " chock chee " within reaching distance hereafter. Three other men were in the same pre- dicament. Little Ti hardly understood. He knew that L T ncle Lum Lee looked dis- gusted with his father. When the examination was over, Ti's father, and the three other men whose were missing, went 11 and changed their clothes from fishing gar- ments to others more appropriate for a visit to the city. The other Chinamen went back to their work, but these four A Dwarf Pine. came to the men on the net - drying platform. " You all sure you got e chock chee ' in city?" asked one of the men. " Yes," answered the four Chinamen. They had thought the city a safer place to keep their certificates than here in the fishing-hamlet. They looked to see what their captors were going to do. The men began talking among themselves, and the Chinamen waited. During the long time that it had taken to carefully examine each one's " chock chee," the tide had 12 TI: A STORY OF CHINATOWN. gone out, and the white men would be forced to wait for its return, before they could start for the city. " Tide's out. Got to wait," explained one of the men to the Chinese. "Will they kill him?" Ti asked. The four captives acquiesced, and sat down with their captors on the net-drying platform. The sun shone warm upon them, and the men stared at the great nets, and said something once in awhile to one another. None of them knew that a pair of frightened childish eyes was watching from shore. The other more fortunate Chinamen of the hamlet did not seem to be much con- cerned about the fate of the four who had not been able to satisfy the white men about "chock chee." But Ti, who understood very little about the reason for any certificate, could not bear to go away out of sight of the net-drying plat- form where his father was — who knew what those white men were going to do to him? The little boy's heart beat heavily with fear. He went behind a small hut on the edge of the fishing-hamlet, and peered out, keeping watch of his father and the three other prisoners. " I don't know what they do to my father!" worried Ti, winking back the tears from his black eyes. The men on the platform all seemed to be waiting for something. Ti did not know what it was, for he had not looked at the water of the bay. He kept his eyes fixed on his father. He expected to see something dreadful happen, but noth- ing occurred. At last the boy came out from his hiding place and set about find- ing out what was to be. " What will they do to my father?" he asked one of the Chinamen. " Take him to the city." "Will they kill him?" he questioned, with a child's unreasoning fear. The Chinaman shook his head. " He come back," he said. TI: A STORY OF CHINATOWN. 13 And Ti was comforted. " Me go, too/' lie thought, with new inspiration. It had been a long time, about two years, since he had been to the city to see his cousin, a boy younger than himself. His father had been promising to take him sometime. Ti now ran to the net-drying platform, and asked his father's permission. His father spoke to the white men. * Oh, yes," said one. " Take the little fellow, if you want to! But don't take him unless you're sure you've got ' chock chee ' in city. If you haven't ' chock chee ' there, you're going to be in big trouble,- and you don't want any boy along!" " Me got number one ' chock chee ' in city," reiterated Ti's father. "All right," said the white man; and Ti ran to his uncle's wife to be dressed for the journey. His mother was dead, so Uncle Lum Lee's wife dressed him. He was a gorgeous little Chinaman by the time his best clothes were on. His ordinary calico apron that he wore over his every-day " shorn " was discarded, and his little body was stuffed out with many blouses, worn one over another in Chi- nese fashion. His outside blouse was bright yellow, and his trousers were green. They were tied about his ankles, but this did not hide the fact that he wore the things that he was most proud of, his new pink American stockings! The little lad was ready long before there was any need of it, and he stood on the net-drying platform, a bright little figure in yellow and green and pink. The white men, the four Chinamen, and Ti, sat on the platform and waited for the tide. After a while one of the men yawned and rubbed his eyes. " This f chock chee ' business is slow," he said. An old figure in a shabby blue shorn and trousers came down to the net-drying platform. " Here comes a real old Celestial," said one white man. Old See Yow came slowly on. He stopped. "Kunghi, kunghi!" said old See Yow; meaning, " I respectfully wish you joy." "Kunghi, kunghi, old man," said one of the men good-naturedly. " What can I do for you? Have you come to beguile our weary hours?" " You talk Chinese," said old See Yow respectfully in his own tongue. " Can you also read it?" " Some," answered the man. " Will you come ?" asked See Yow, beckoning. "I wish to show you some- thing." The man rose lazily and smiled. The time was long, and there were enough others to attend to the four Chinese. So he followed See Yow along the platform, off to the shore, through the narrow street, till they came to the old man's door. There, pasted up beside the en- trance, was the new red paper that Ti had given him. TI: A STORY OF CHINATOWN. Chinaman pointed to the 14 The old paper. " Can you read it?" he asked in Chi- nese. The man looked at the red placard. He studied it a little and then he nodded. "You no read it?" he asked. See Yow nodded. " I read," he said, " but the center of my heart does not un- derstand. What is it the words say?" The man read it: " Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." "You no sabe that?" he asked. See Yow shook his head. No, he did not understand. Somewhere in the depths of the visitor's memory something stirred. He remembered a boyhood when his mother read such verses. He remembered when he, too, read them. Little had he read such words in the years of manhood, but he knew what that red paper meant. Yes, he knew. He hesitated. He was glad his companions were not present to listen to his explanation. " Jesus Christ said that," he explained in Chinese. "You know Jesus Christ?" See Yow shook his head. He did not know anything about Jesus Christ. The man stood and looked at the paper. " Where did you get it?" he asked. See Yow explained. The other laughed a little. " Very good turned away. paper," he said, and Old See Yow looked puzzled and dis- appointed. "What is it the words say?" he asked anxiously in Chinese. " What is it they say?" But the man was walking down the nar- row street. He did not care to talk about the words any more. See Yow stood and looked at the red paper in a distressed way. Something in his heart cried out for the meaning of those words, but there was nobody to tell him what they meant. " They are new words," he re- peated despairingly. " They are new words." There was a puzzled wistfulness in the old eyes. The strange man had said that it was a " very good paper." See Yow gazed at the paper respectfully. He would keep it there. Perhaps it was a charm to ward off evil spirits, as pieces of embroidered silk may keep evil spirits away, if the silk is hung near a bed. Meantime the stranger had gone back to the net-drying platform. The men he had left there were talking together. One of them looked up. "What did your old Chinaman take you off to see?" he asked laughingly. " Just a paper," answered the other, as he walked down to the end of the plat- form, and stood alone a few minutes, looking out at the slow-coming tide. " I didn't come down here to preach a sermon!" he told himself uneasily, trying to forget how old See Yow's face had II: A STORY OF CHINATOWN, 15 looked. " ' Chock chee ' is more in my line. I wish that tide would hurry!" He looked off at the distant horizon. Perhaps he saw something there besides low-lying haze. Perhaps he saw a little boy beside his mother's knee. Perhaps, too, he heard something besides the indis- tinct sound of conversation behind him and the cry of sea-gulls. Perhaps he heard that mother's voice reading out of an old Book. Presently he turned and went back to the others. By and by the tide came up, and the men and the four Chinese went off together with Ti. After a while the little Chinese fishing-hamlet faded, and Ti could see it no more. It was wonderful to the little boy to be really going to the city! He stood on the boat and looked out at the sparkling, ruffled water. On and on they went, and he saw a sea-gull, and the wind blew brisk and salt, and he laughed at the spray that flew in his face. And then, after they had been sailing quite a time, he lifted his eyes and saw in the distance the smoke of an American steamboat. He was delighted. It was only a foretaste of the wonderful things he was going to see, he knew. He was going to the city! But little Ti did not know what things should befall him there, and that he would not see the Chinese fishing-hamlet again for two whole years. Perhaps, if he had known, he would have turned and looked once more in the direction in which the fishing-hamlet lay. But he did not think of such a thing as his staying away more than a few days. He stood looking at the smoke of the American steamboat, and the wind blew his pink-plaited little queue over his shoulder, and the spray lit on his bright yellow "shorn" and green trousers, and his almond eyes took in everything. "You're a regular little sailor," said one of the men in English. But Ti did not understand. He knew only a very little English, for he had not had anybody to talk that language with at the fishing-hamlet, and he had forgotten many words he once had known when he lived in the city as a very little boy. Be- sides, he did not want to talk now. He was going to the great city, and he was so happy! But, alas! back in the Chinese fishing- hamlet, old See Yow went to and fro, as ignorant and unsatisfied as ever. The " center of his heart " was yet wistfully longing for something, he knew not what. The " very good paper " with its message was not understood. Alas, that "chock chee " had been more in the white man's line! CHAPTER III. KWONG GOON. HE city reached, Ti's father found his certificate and made his peace with the " chock chee " men. Then the two went to Ti's uncle's, and the boy was happy with his 16 TI: A STOBY OF CHINAIOWN. little cousins in the small rooms above baby Hop, who was now two years old, and back of the uncle's store, that was but whom Ti had never before seen. And hung with gay Chinese lanterns, and had then Aunt Ah Cheng told him how nice a shelves and cases filled with Chinese dolls, birthday feast they had had for baby Hop and rice paper pictures, and little storks when he was four weeks old. Chinese and frogs, and beautifully made boxes, babies have a feast when they are four and white silk handkerchiefs such as weeks of age. The other cousin, Hop's Americans buy. brother Whan, was five years old. It was a great change for Ti, coming Ti went to the little front balcony and from his little fishing-hamlet to this great city. His aunt, Ah Cheng, was glad to see him, and she began to cook some meat in Chinese cooking oil for the visitors. She turned the meat with a couple of red chopsticks while it was cooking, and into a kettle that contained some more cook- ing oil she threw the wet leaves of some vegetable. The leaves, beginning to cook, made a great spluttering in the hot oil on top of the charcoal range, and Ti thought how good dinner would be. His aunt, Ah Cheng, was very pleasant, and told him he ought to have come to the city before, to visit his little cousin, looked out. Across the street he could see a Chinaman standing behind a small table set on the sidewalk. The table had a red, black-stained cover, and the man was a fortune-teller. On a farther building were two enor- mous red and green lanterns. All of the people who lived along here were Chinese. Over at the corner was a Chinese butcher's shop, where pork and vegetables were for sale. One shallow, round basket on the sidewalk contained a quantity of white, dry watermelon seeds, such as the Chinese eat. Another basket held beans that had been made to sprout and put TI: A STORY OF CHINATOWN. forth runners about two inches long. The runners and beans were alike very pale and were tender for eating. Ti turned around and looked at the room in which he was standing. The outer room, in which his aunt was cooking, was one used in common for that purpose by other Chinese families liv- ing in this house, but the little room Ti stood in was exclu- sively that of Aunt Cheng's family. The little boy gazed at its furnishings. There was. a shelf for the household gods, and there was a table with candles and incense - sticks. There were several stools, and a picture of the Chinese god- dess of mercy, Kun Yam, the goddess that is so much worshiped by all Chinese women and girls, whether in China or America. There was a bed made of boards, covered with a square of matting. Around the bed were some curtains, fastened with loops of Chinese money, " cash/' and beside the cur- tains hung pieces of em- broidered silk of different colors silken pieces were charms against evil spirits. Poor as the room was, it seemed beautiful to Ti, who had come so recently from his fishing-village. He went back to the room where his i, aunt was cooking. Other women of dif- ferent families were here now, and there was one quarrelsome woman among them. He did not like it so well as when his aunt was there alone, but his little These Chinese Fortune-teller's Table. cousin, Whan, was ready to run down into the store with him, so together the two somewhat unacquainted cousins went below and peeped out the store door at the old Chinese fortune-teller and his red covered table, farther down across the 18 street. It did not seem to be a very good day for the fortune-teller. He stood there without any customers. * But it is not so every day," said little CHINESE MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS. TI: A STOBT OF CHINATOWN. Yee Yin. Yet Com. Wong Sev. Tai Com. Whan in Chinese to Ti. "He is very wise, and people go to him. Is there a fortune-teller at the fishing place where you live?" "No," said Ti, who was greatly im- pressed by the wonders of the city. The two children stepped out on the street. Here and there were other Chi- nese children, some with their parents, some alone on errands. There were many Chinamen going back and forth. Some, who had been to the butcher's, carried little cornucopias of brown paper contain- ing small quantities of meat. Most such Chinese people had very little quantities of vegetables, too. There was a queer sound of music in the air. That is, the music w r ould have been strange in Ameri- can ears. Some one in the upper story of an opposite building was playing a stringed musical instrument. Ti stood and looked over at the unfor- tunate fortune-teller. But he did not seem to be much depressed by his lack of customers, and there w r as so much else to see and hear that Ti forgot about him. The stringed instrument had been joined by other Chinese musical instruments, and the little boy stared up at the higher wdndow opposite and listened. But his cousin Whan did not like this. "He pulled Ti farther on the street. " Come and see," said he, bent on show- ing his country cousin the sights. But Ti would listen for a minute or two. He thought the music was verv fine, though it was squeaky. But soon the squeaking instruments w r ere aided by a much more powerful one, for some other TI: A STOBY OF CHINATOWN. 19 player joined in with a loud sound of metal beaten, as of a kettle-drum. Ti saw an old Chinaman sitting on a box on the sidewalk. He had another little box before him, and he was an opium pipe mender. He was busy mending and cleaning part of such a pipe — jin-ten — now. Around the corner sat a Chinese cobbler, working on the street. He held a blue, thick- soled Chinese shoe, and hummed a funny little song. There were some pieces of leather soak- ing in a small tub be- side him, and on the side of the box before him there was a red paper with Chinese characters. The cobbler had a board put up at one side of his open-air shop, and he looked at Ti and little Whan in a friendly way. Ti gazed into a Chi- nese barber shop, and saw the barber shaving a customer's head. The customer held up a little tin box, and every time the barber clipped off any hair, he dropped it into this tin. Another barber was cleaning out the interior of a customer's ear with a little black instru- ment. Not far off was a Chinese druggist's ) Chinese Cobbler. shop. In the window were two bottles of " horned toads " in alcohol, and, peering into the store, Ti saw a Chinaman sitting, working the handle of a machine up and down. He seemed to be cutting roots to 20 TI: A STOBY OF CHINATOWN. pieces, and the machine appeared to work somewhat as a machine for thinly slicing dried beef does in an American grocery store. The two boys went on to a Chinese vegetable shop, where some yellow squares of bean curd were piled for sale. Each square of curd was marked with a Chi- nese character, and the curds were notice- able on account of their yellow color. Chinese manner of carrying wood in San Francisco. Long pieces of sugar cane, brought from China, stood up against the side of the building, like so many fishing poles or pieces of bamboo. There were cut pieces of sugar cane, too, about seven inches long, for sale, two pieces for five cents. Ti gazed at a cage of turtles slowly crawling about their prison. There were some big crabs, too, in a receptacle, one lying on his back. The crabs made Ti feel more at home. He had seen so many of them at the fishing village. Near by was a Chinese shop for dried fish. Here on a corner was an old scribe, writing a letter for a Chinese coolie. He wrote with a brush that he held upright and moved mostly by his little finger. Ti and Whan looked at this scribe's writing with great respect. In a few minutes the letter was written, the coolie paid the scribe and went away. " We must go home," said little Whan in Chinese to Ti. " My mother will have cooked the dinner." They i^urned around and went back toward Whan's father's store. The two children looked again at the vegetable shop as they went by it, and Whan said that once the Chinese vegetable seller had given him a piece of sugar cane to eat. Both boys would have liked some sugar cane. They looked at the vegetable man's little boy, and lingered near his shop a minute, but the vegetable seller was too busy to notice. Ti turned away. He peeped into an- other street, and beheld a sight that hor- rified him — a house with five great gilded teeth swinging in the balcony be- fore the house! He gazed with horror at those big teeth. He had never before known about Chinese dentists, and those swinging, monstrous teeth filled him with fearful conjectures of what was done in that house. He turned and ran. Little Whan could not imagine what had frightened his cousin so. He ran after, calling. Ti ran in the wrong direc- tion, not toward his uncle's store, and nearly plunged down the stairs into a cel- lar below the sidewalk, where wood was for sale by Chinamen. Looking down the stairs, the passers could see the wood tied in little bundles for purchasers. TI: A STORY OF CHINATOWN. 2f There was a bright new axe visible in the cellar. A Chinaman came along the street, carrying an amount of wood at each end of a pole hung across his shoul- der, as a Chinese vegetable peddler carries his baskets, except that the two piles of wood were not in baskets, but were kept, in place at each end of the pole by a Chi- nese contrivance. Whan caught up with Ti, and, grasping- his shoulder, said, " You go the wrong way. Why did yon run?" But Ti would not tell, for he was already a little ashamed to have been frightened over the big swinging teeth. He felt as if he were an ignorant little country Chinaman. No doubt small Whan, five years old, had often, seen that house- with the teeth,. and was not . scared; and here.- was he, Ti, ai boy eight years-, old, afraid of: something that did not terrify his little cousin! So Whan did not get any an- swer to his ques,- tion. But it was time for dinner, and Ti was quite ready to ran home. The boys had dinner together, without any sugar cane,, but Ti did not care. The Chinese greens and the meat tasted very good, and he ate rice, too. Ti's father thought that he and his 22 TI: A STOBY OF CHINATOWN. little boy would stay a few days and visit. It was the time of the feast of Kwong Goon, that heathen deity who, the Chi- nese believe, has much to do with the dead. Ti's father had thought of its be- ing the time of the feast, and he had been all the more willing to come down to the city with the " chock chee " men. The next day after arriving in the city, Ti and his father, and little cousin Whan and the uncle, went to a joss-house to see and to carry gifts for the festival. Those Chinese who had relatives that had died since the last Kwong Goon festival, brought prayer papers and joss sticks to the altar. Candy, tea, cigars and dried fish were laid before Kwong Goon. "Well might the Chinese fear him, accord- ing to their religious belief, for he is the deity who is supposed to devour the bodies of irreligious Chinamen. Much money had been spent on this festival. Little Ti, looking at the altar of Kwong Goon, saw it resplendent with can- dles and gilt censers. The gilded altar pieces were imported ones, and in this joss-house in the Chinese part of an American city, the Chinese high priest in- toned the services for the souls of dead Chinamen. Ti and his folks were near the shrine. If this had not been so, perhaps something would not have happened. As it was, five-year-old Whan came to great grief. Notwithstanding the holiness of the altar, the Chinese men occasionally took cigars from a tray that lay before the shrine. Seeing this, little Whan reached out his tiny yellow hand and helped himself to a piece of dried fish that had been offered to Kwong Goon. Woe to little Whan! What a crime was this! The Chinese women who were about him pounced down on the little boy and nearly choked him, trying to get that piece of fish, for he had put it into his mouth, and the women were determined to get the fish before he could swallow it. They forced his mouth open. One woman had her bony fingers tightly around his throat. Another had seized the end of the piece of fish. Whan struggled and gasped. Ti looked on in alarm, lest his lit- tle cousin should be choked. But the women got the fish. The tumult subsided. Great Kwong Goon was honored by an offering of punk sticks, and little Whan, the beginner of this confusion, offended against the pro- prieties of the occasion no more. Per- haps what he had done would have been forgotten, had not something happened to him within the next few days, something that his parents regarded as the result of Whan's act at the Kwong Goon festival. What happened was this. The festival continued through the week, and Ti and his father stayed, for the father had some matters he wanted to attend to in the city. Now, about five days after his visit to the shrine of Kwong Goon, little Whan was taken ill. He was languid and slightly feverish. He could not swallow his rice without pain and difficulty. TI: A STORY OF CHINATOWN. 23 '* It is because you tried to eat a piece But Whan was not well. Seeing this, of the fish belonging to Kwong Goon/' his father made up his mind to go to a said his mother. " This is your punish- Chinese drug store, although he would not ment." Little TV h a n , who felt very mis- erable, supposed that what his su- perstitious mother said was true. He did not know that he had been ex- posed t o diph- theria, and that he would probably have had the dis- ease anyway, if he had not gone to the festival. He resolved that he would never offend Kwong Goon again. "Whan felt no better after his resolve, however, and his father thought that the disease must be produced by some angry spirit. So that night the father went outside the store with some pieces of Chinese money and a bowl of rice, and after prostrating himself several times before the invisible evil spirit, he threw the money and the rice at the place where he supposed the evil spirit to be. Then he went back into the house. "You will be well now," he told Whan. " Lu-tsu, the medicine god, who pities the sick, will help you." The Vegetable Man's Little Boy. stay there for any other business than that pertaining to the place, for fear that the evil spirits that produce sickness might be lurking among the medicines. So, having seen the sign in Chinese, " Bad Spirits Xot Admitted," he got Whan some 24 TI: A STORY OF CHINATOWN. medicine from the "Hall of Joyful Re- lief," as the Chinese characters on the apothecary's shop denoted it to be. But the " Hall of Joyful Belief » did not help the little boy, so his father got some medi- cine from the "Promise Life Palace/' and the "Hall for Multiplying Years/' and the " Great Life Hall/' and from a place where the board read in Chinese, "Wo Ki Ying feels the pulse and writes prescriptions for internal and external disease." Moreover the father consulted one of the Chinese fortune-tellers, who looked at the sick child's nose and said it was like a dog's, and for that reason Whan would live long. According to this fortune-teller's rule, " A man with a dog's nose will live long." Moreover, the friendly Chinese butcher, who had recently come from China, gave Ti's father a cow's tooth which had been found in a field near Swatow, and which, the butcher said, if brought into a dwell- ing and put on the shelf of the gods, would keep demons from entering. With all this, little Whan did not seem to get better. ♦ CHAPTER IV. LITTLE WHAN. TIRING Whan's sickness the other children were not kept away from him. It was not the Chinese custom to do that. When the teacher — who was not the person who had sent the paper to the fish- ing camp, but another teacher — came through the district and saw little Whan, she knew that something serious was the matter. She said to his father, "Your boy is sick. You should get an Ameri- can doctor." " It is Kwong Goon who makes Whan sick," said Ah Cheng, the child's mother. " Kwong Goon will punish him for taking the fish! His throat is sick." But the father did as the teacher said. He sent for an American doctor. "Your boy has diphtheria," said the doctor, as he looked at little Whan. " That's what ails him." The doctor told the father to keep the sick boy in a room separate from the other children. "Yes," said the father stupidly, and he looked at the doctor and wondered if, after all, it would not have been much better to have gone again to the "Hall of Joyful Relief " and got some more Chi- nese medicine, than to have called this American doctor. For what was the reason why Whan should be shut up in a room by himself? Would not the evil spirits that make sickness come to him? What a singular thing! The father looked suspiciously at the doctor and his medicine. It was Kwong Goon who had made Whan ill, no doubt, and was it likely that putting the boy off in a room by himself would cure him? What did this American doctor know about Kwong Goon, anyhow? TI: A STORY OF CHINATOWN. 25 The doctor saw the father's distrustful the midst of the work, the three children look, and tried to explain as best he could all were together again. There was noth- in English. ing before the doorways of the rooms, " Do you not see?" asked he. a If your boy has diph- theria, your baby might take it, and so might the cousin from the country. You must keep Whan in a room by himself/' "Yes," said the father. " Yes." "Be sure to do it," reit- erated the doctor. "Yes," said the father; and, after the doctor had gone, he told his wife, who had not seen the doctor, for he had not been allowed to come to the living-room upstairs, but only to enter the store. But the next day, when the teacher came back, she found that Whan's mother had not done as the doctor said. She meant to do the best for her children, poor Ah Cheng! but she did not understand about infection. " You must put Whan in a different room, away from the other children," said the teacher kindly, and she showed the anyhow, except thin red curtains. Ti mother how. and Hop wanted to be with Whan con- Whan stayed separate till after the stantly, and the mother thought that teacher went away. Then, somehow, in keeping the sick child separate was only Chinese Festival of Kwong Goon. 26 TU A STOBY OF CHINATOWN. an American notion, anyway, and not of ing the teacher now, and they did not much importance. It seemed too bad to watch her suspiciously, as they had once separate the children, when they liked one done. They knew, now, that she was another so well. In pure kindness, Ah friendly, and she could talk their tongue. Cheng allowed the three to be together. The teacher hastened up the long out- Toward evening the teacher came side narrow stairs that led to the rooms again. She was alarmed over Whan, and where Ti's aunt lived. A door at the top stayed to watch by him, but the ignorant of the stairway had some Chinese char- mother slept. In the morning the father acters on it. She rapped, said something and mother were frightened about the in Chinese, and entered without waiting, sick child, for they saw how very much Directly in front of her, in the tiny, worse he was. They lighted tapers and box-like entry, was what would look to burned incense, hoping to make him bet- American eyes like a large, rectangular ter, and to appease the evil spirit that tin for ashes. There were ashes in the they felt sure was tormenting him. tin, but there was a red paper on the wall Diphtheria is common enough in China, sometimes. But Whan grew worse. He could not drink without strangling. He did not wish to eat. By this time, two-year-old Hop and his cousin Ti were both taken with the same disease, diphtheria. " It is Kwong Goon who does this," still said Whan's mother. Kwong Goon." But little five-year-old Whan was dying, though his mother did not realize it. The teacher, who had been obliged to go herself for the American doctor and had not found him in, hurried now from the street into the narrow alley. Around it stood Chinamen as usual, talking. A Chinese woman with ankle ornaments like bracelets went into a doorway. The teacher nodded to the woman and hurried on. All these Chinese were used to see- above, and this was a place for worship of the gods. The teacher did not stop an instant. She hurried through the narrow passage at the left. The passage was cut with several doors, hung with thin red cur- tains. A person could readily enter any room, but the teacher hastened to the one where Ti and Whan and Hop were. She It is the god had not meant to be away so long. But she knew, now, before she entered the room, that One had been there before her. He who loves the children had looked not only upon little Whan in his pain and suffering, but on baby Hop, and was taking them to himself. The teacher heard wailing before she lifted the thin red curtain of the room. Little Whan was dead. The dreadful diphtheria had done its work, and when the teacher took baby Hop into her arms, she believed that the child would follow his brother soon. TI: A STOBY OF CHINATOWN. 27 The teacher did all she could. The American doctor came at last, but it was too late. In those last dreadful moments Whan's Mother, of baby Hop's life, his mother, poor Ah Cheng, prostrated herself before the old picture of the goddess of mercy, and prayed and sobbed. " Oh, save my baby! Save my baby!" she sobbed wildly in Chinese. " Oh, Kun Yam, goddess of mercy, save my baby!" The teacher's tears ran down her cheeks, as she saw the heart agony with which poor Ah Cheng sobbed and wrung her hands and prayed before that picture. But the dear little two-years-old baby in the teacher's arms drew a last, faint gasp, and the teacher saw with reverent awe the seal of death set itself on the baby face. She laid down the little body and put the chubby brown hands gently together, and then went softly across the room, and knelt beside the poor wailing mother. Ah Cheng lifted up her drawn, agonized face, and looked toward her child. As she realized what had hap- pened, a cry of despair broke from her lips. She flung herself wildly beat her head against the floor. 28 TI: A STORY OF CHINATOWN. "Kim Yam! Kun Yam!" she wailed. " I shall never see them again! Both my sons are dead, and I shall never see them again! Kun Yam! Kun Yam!" "Poor Ah Cheng! I am so sorry for you," said the teacher, slipping her arm around Ah Cheng and drawing her head down until it rested upon her shoulder. " I am so sorry for you, and there is One who is more sorry for you than anybody else can be, for He is here and knows our sorrow. It is Jesus, Ah Cheng, Jesus, who loves the children. Your children are with him and he will keep them safe. And, Ah Cheng,' he loves you, too, and wants to comfort you." Ah Cheng's sobbing grew a little quieter. " You cry out to Kun Yam, Ah Cheng, because your heart must have help in this trouble; and Jesus is listening to every cry, and he can help you. He has taken the little ones to himself. Some day he will restore them to you, if you trust him and open your heart to his love, believing in him as your best Friend." Then very lovingly and patiently did the teacher try to explain to the stricken mother that this Jesus is the one true God, and that he is close to us, though our eyes cannot see him. The night that baby Hop died, Ti was too ill to know it. He did not compre- hend the wailing. It had been a confused outburst of sound without any meaning to him, as he half dozed on his bunk. As feverish Ti lay there the next day, how- ever, he looked continually at the teacher. Sometimes he seemed to himself to know her. Other times he thought he did not. There was an odor of much burning in- cense in the air. He felt very strangely. He wished he were back in the fishing vil- lage with his father and old See Yow and Uncle Lum Lee and the others. He had never felt so queer there. He did not know that he was sick. He only knew that sometimes the teacher sitting as he supposed by baby Hop seemed to turn into old See Yow, and sometimes she looked like his father. And sometimes the tapers that were lit seemed to whirl and change, as he had seen the moonlight on the waves near by the fishing village at night. His throat hurt. He had not eaten his rice. His throat felt as little Whan said his felt that day at the feast of Kwong- Goon, when the bony - fingered woman clasped his neck so tightly, to keep him from swallowing the piece of fish. As Ti lay looking with feverish eyes,, suddenly the teacher's face seemed to- him to be that of the heathen deity,. Kwong Goon. The child shuddered. He- could not reason any more. He thought Kwong Goon's fingers were clasping the neck of this little sick Chinese boy, Ti himself. " I did not touch your fish! Whan did it!" Ti struggled to cry out, but the words- stopped in his throat. Surely the great, the dreadful Kwong- Goon would not make such a mistake!. He must know the difference between Ti and Whan! He tried to shut his feverish eyes, but they would come open again, and every time he opened them he became more and more sure that it was not the teacher woman who sat there, but it must be Kwong Goon. Poor little Ti! He was becoming more and more feverish and confused. He did not have his right mind, or he would not have thought so foolish a thing, but the continual talk of his relatives about Kwong Goon, the last few weeks, had frightened him, and now his feverish brain was alarmed at seeing what he thought was Kwong Goon's face. The teacher did not know that the little boy lay there in a state of terror, or she would have sprung up and come to him. He opened his lips and tried to cry, " Go TI: A STORY OF CHINATOWN. is strong. 29 He can keep you away, Kwong Goon! Go away!" He tried to say, " You must not kill me!" but something in his throat seemed to stop the words. The imagined face seemed to come nearer. It was dreadful Kwong Goon. Ti tried to cry out, to escape. Kwong Goon came nearer. " Go away!" the sick boy tried to scream. " Go away!" But he could not speak. He felt as if he were choking. Suddenly he felt the teacher woman bending over him. " Ti," she said gently in Chinese, " lit- tle Ti, what is it? Do not be afraid. Remember Jesus is here — Jesus that I told you about, Ti — Jesus who loves you. He safe." Ti could not answer. The teacher lifted him. He heard a wailing. There came a strong odor of incense. He gasped. Then he did not remember things any A man with a dog's nose will live long," said the fortune-teller. more for a while. Occasionally the teacher's face would show in the mist that seemed to surround him. One time it occurred to him to wonder why the teacher woman did not leave him any more and go to Hop. He tried to turn his head and look toward baby Hop. It took a good deal of trying, but at last he did turn his head. The place where the baby had lain was empty. Ti shut his 30 TI: A STOBY OF CHINATOWN. eyes, and everything drifted away into mist again. At the fishing - hamlet he had sometimes seen the fog roll up the bay and cover everything from sight. So now everything vanished. He did not know when the wailing- women came, and candles were burned, and afterwards Chinese imitation paper money was thrown away on the street, as the bodies of little Whan and little Hop were taken away to the Chinese burying ground far out toward the ocean. In the days that came the Christian teacher woman stayed with Ti and did her best to comfort Ah Cheng. When- ever she could, she tried to teach her more about Jesus. But Ah Cheng was afraid to believe, for all her life she had feared the gods, and what the teacher told her seemed too good to be true. Gradually Ti grew better. He was out of danger. His father, who knew from the epidemics of diphtheria in China how that disease can take away children, felt much relieved that Ti was growing better. He believed that diphtheria is caused by an evil spirit, and now he went to the joss-house and posted on the wall a red paper of thanksgiving for Ti's recovery. According to the Chinese custom of Availing, little Whan and baby Hop were wailed for by their mother at a set time of day every seventh day for seven suc- cessive weeks. But it was no formal mockery of wailing with poor Ah Cheng. Sometimes Chinese people wail at the set time and then suddenly break off wailing and go about their work as if nothing had happened except that they had performed a duty. But Ah Cheng's mourning came from her heart, and many a time, besides the set wailing periods, she wept for her little children, and often in her loneliness she sobbed, "I shall never see them again!" When Ti was well enough to be around again, his uncle and aunt besought his father, saying, "Let Ti stay with us a while! Whan is dead and Hop is dead. Let Ti stay to comfort us a while." So Ti's father, pitying the lonely par- ents, went back to the fishing-hamlet alone, and Ti was left to live on with his uncle and aunt. CHAPTER V. A NEW ACQUAINTANCE. HEY were very kind to Ti in his uncle's home. The Chinese are fond of chil- dren, and Ti had no mother at the fishing-hamlet to worry about him. When the twenty-first day after the death of little Whan and Hop was pass- ing, Ti's aunt looked very sorrowful. She spread a table with food, such as little Whan and Hop had liked in their life- time. That night the doors were all left unlocked, and the uncle and Ti and his aunt went to bed. But Ah Cheng wept, for she believed that at midnight her little boys' spirits would return and she would TI: A STORY OF CHINATOWN. 31 not see them. But the doors must not be locked on her own children. They must be allowed to come in. The Chinese think that it is not till a person has been dead twenty-one days that he knows he is dead. Then he discovers it and is fright- ened. Crying out in alarm, he starts back to earth. Ti's aunt thought that her little boys would come back and take the essence of the food she had set out for them, and would go away again to the spirit world, leaving the substance of the food for the family to eat the next morn- ing. Xo wonder that stricken Ah Cheng cried all night at the thought that her two little children came back, frightened, and she could neither see nor speak to them, and they went away again. " I shall never see them again!" wept the poor mother through the night. " Kun Yam! Kun Yam! I shall never see them again!*' The teacher who had been so kind dur- ing the children's illness came often now to try to comfort their mother and teach her and Ti. But it seemed almost impos- sible for Ah Cheng to believe and so be comforted. She was very superstitious, and in this new home to which Ti had come, the " front door god," the " street god/' the "floor god," the "kitchen god," the "bed god," the "roof god," the " water god," and the " sky goddess " were worshiped. The teacher was very kind and pitiful to the poor mother. " I want to tell you something, Ah Cheng," she said one day, when she had come in and found the heart - broken woman bowed before the old picture of the goddess of mercy, and Ti sitting so- berly watching his aunt's tears and sobbing. "I want to tell you something," she repeated. " A number of years ago there lived in China a girl who worshiped the goddess of mercy, as you worship her. After this girl had worshiped the goddess for twenty years, her mother lay dying. The mother told the family to make her ready and lay her away to die. So they dressed her in good clothes and, putting her on a board, laid her in another room to die. The mother died and was buried. The daughter felt very badly, but the goddess of mercy did not help in this great trouble." Ah Cheng's wistful eyes were fixed on the teacher's face. " Xo, the goddess did not help," re- peated the teacher gently in Chinese. " The poor daughter had no hope of ever seeing her mother again. The only help she had was to go and lie on her mother's grave all day, in hope that she might dream of her at night. It was only in dreams that the poor daughter had any hope of ever seeing her dear mother's face again." The tears filled poor Ah Cheng's eyes. She could not even go and lie on her chil- dren's graves, for they were away on the sand dunes out by the ocean, and she was a Chinese woman and must stay in 32 TI: A STORY OF CHINATOWN. the little rooms where she lived. How often she had longed to dream of her two little ones since they died! " Let me tell you the rest of the story, Ah Cheng/' said the teacher gently. " That poor daughter would not pray to the goddess of mercy any more, after her mother's death. Kun Yam had not helped in her time of great trouble, so now for seven years the daughter worshiped noth- ing. She kept the old picture of the god- dess of mercy, but she did not worship it, and she was very unhappy. " But one day she went to see a friend at a Christian hospital. At the hospital one of the helpers, noticing her sad face, began to talk to her about Jesus. She told her that Jesus could make her happy. She became very attentive, and when she went away the helper asked her to come again as soon as she could to hear more about Jesus. " She came again and again, and as she learned about Jesus she learned to love him and great joy came into her heart. " Jesus made the daughter happy, dear Ah Cheng, and it is Jesus who can help you. He wants you to learn to know him, so he can give yon joy, too. He wants to make you happy even if you cannot now see your children. And then by and by when you die he wants to take you to a beautiful place where you will see him face to face, and your little ones, too, and where your children will never be taken from you again. But you need not be lonely and grieving till then. He wants to be with you right here in your home every day, to comfort and help you." Ah Cheng cried, but she dared not be- lieve. She was afraid of the gods. Oh, how she did wish she could see her little ones again and know this Jesus that the teacher told about! If only she could be sure they were safe and happy, as the teacher woman said! But Cheng's hus- band had said that the " Jesus doctrine " (religion) was not true. Poor Ah Cheng was sorely puzzled. The teacher saw how it was. "Poor Ah Cheng!" she thought as she went away. " Poor, heart-broken creature! I will pray for her and help her to come to Jesus." One day the teacher gave Ti a brown paper book, full of Chinese characters. " Ti," she said, " your uncle loves you. Perhaps he will do for you what he will not do for me. Listen to me. This is a wonderful book. It is the Jesus book, and I give it to you. I want you to ask your uncle to read it. He will not read it for me, but you ask him. He loves you. He will do much for you." So Ti, who loved the teacher because she had been good to him when he was sick, took the brown paper book and kept it carefully. It was not as pretty as the red paper the other teacher woman had sent to the fishing-hamlet, but he knew that this brown paper book must be something valuable, if this kind teacher said so. But though Ti asked his uncle many TI: A STORY OF CHINATOWN. times, the uncle would not read the book, which was the New Testament in Chi- nese. But the little boy did not yet know the reason of that refusal. He missed his two cousins very much. The teacher saw this, and she begged that the aunt and the uncle would let Ti go to a small daily Chinese Mission school with which she was connected. " He will be happy with the other children," urged the teacher, " and I will myself come for him every day and will bring him safely back after school." But the uncle would not consent. " No," said he sternly. " Ti shall not go! The Jesus doctrine is very bad!" He frowned at the teacher as he spoke. He knew what had happened in another Chinese family, he said, after a little boy had been allowed to go to the school. " The little boy's father," he said, " made the boy put the incense sticks up after the custom of Chinese worship. The boy was standing on a chair to put the incense sticks in place, but he did it very slowly. His heart was not in it, but he did it be- cause he must obey his father. The boy's little brother said, ( He doesn't want to do it. He believes in Jesus.' And the father then struck the little boy who was putting up the incense sticks and pushed him off the chair. The boy cried a little, but it was true that he did not exactly wish to put up the incense sticks. Ti shall not become like that boy." At this the teacher, fearing that she 33 if she said more, did not urge Ti's attend- ance on school. " But I do wish we could have him," she thought. " He is so bright, and already he understands a little of what I have tried to tell him about Christ. Still, I dare not talk about our school any more now! Poor little Ti!" But she did not know that she would might be forbidden to come to the house have Ti in school yet. In his loneliness it was not long till the little lad had be- come acquainted with a Chinese boy who lived near his uncle's store. The boy was several years older than Ti, and was named Yun. Yun went to an American public school, where he learned to read English. Late in the afternoons, he went to still another school, kept by a China- man, who taught boys how to read and 34 TI: A STOBY OF CHINATOWN. write Chinese characters. Yuri was a very different boy in one school from what he was in the other. In the morning and have. Yim would have thought such a thing dreadful. Some of the Chinese boys who went to these schools wore certain " honorable " gowns, long and blue, and those who wore such a garment would not have disgraced it by misbehaving. Y u n did not have one of these gowns, but in his ordinary Chinese dress he would not have behaved wrongly in the Chi- nese teachers' public school. Ti, seeing Yun start off to attend schools so often, and knowing that he was learning Chinese characters, was Reading aloud the news. early afternoon public school, taught by Americans, he was a restless, fun-loving boy. In the late afternoon when he went to learn Chinese characters of the teacher brought from China, he dared not misbe- greatly impressed, and believed that he knew a great deal. Yun's family be- lieved in learning. His grandfather, who wore great goggles and occasionally smoked a pipe that was about a yard long, was reputed to be a very learned man; and Yun's father published a Chinese newspaper every week, in some rooms upstairs across the street from Ti's uncle's store. No won- TI: A STOBT OF CHINATOWN. der that the boy Yun must go to school so mil eh and learn so many Chinese char- acters. He must become wise, like the others of his family. Ti used to walk across the street, and stand at the Chinese printing-office stair- way door, and listen to the Chinamen reading, for by the door were red and pink posters that told what the news was, and sometimes there were several men about the door, reading the news aloud. Ti could not read the Chinese characters, himself, of course, but he used to look at the bulletins and think he would read sometime. When none of the men were around, the editor's boy, Yun, would sometimes proudly show off his knowledge to Ti by pointing out characters and telling their names, and Ti would listen and admire, and wonder at Yun's learning. Innocent Ti did not notice that Yun was not wont> to air his knowledge when men were by. Yun was crafty. He knew he could impress Ti, but he knew also that it would be a long time before he could become a good reader of Chinese, and it was wise to refrain from trying to show off before men who might laugh. Occasionally Yun took Ti upstairs to the Chinese printing-office, and let him look in. He would see a man whose face showed marks which told that he had once had the "heavenly blossom," as some Chinese call smallpox. This pock-marked man Ti would see sitting engraving the stone from which the next week's paper 35 was to be printed. The old-fashioned lithographic process was followed in get- ting out the paper. On the floor Ti would see scattered clippings from American or Chinese papers, and he would go away downstairs again, feeling how very ignorant he was, and how many, many things there were yet in this world for him to learn. CHAPTEE VI. THE WORD "SHU." HERE came a time when Ti was shocked out of his friendship for Yun. One afternoon, when Yun was going to the Chinese teachers' school, Ti was permitted to go, too, as a visitor. He had never been in a Chinese school, and he was very much im- pressed, as Yun knew he would be. There were two rooms of Chinese boys, studying under two Chinese teachers. Yun was in the room for less advanced scholars, but that made no difference with Ti's admira- tion for him. There were about twenty pupils in Yun's room. They were all boys, and they sat at desks and kept their hats on in the school-room. Some of the Chinese boys dressed in American clothes, but most wore their common, every-day dress. The teacher, a dignified Chinaman on the platform in front of the school, wore a somewhat long, dark blouse and green trousers that were fastened about his 36 TI: A STOBY OF CHINATOWN. ankles. His cap had a red button on top, The speaker went immediately back to and from a hook beside the teacher hung his seat again. another blouse of his, lined with blue "See me, what I do!" said Yun to Ti. silk. With a proud heart Yun took his book Ti sat at a desk, and listened, and and went to the platform. Giving the looked. There was a great deal to listen teacher the book, he turned his back to to, for the Chinese boys studied out loud, him, as was proper in reciting from mem- It was rather startling when a boy who ory, and began a somewhat long recitation had been sitting listlessly at his desk in Chinese. Only once did the teacher would suddenly begin studying in a loud, have to correct him. Ti looked on in great shrill voice. But everybody was used to it. There was continually one boy after another carrying his brown paper book HOUND INK d-.ftC ~ U^ED IN frit CT1INESE: SCfl °t IN 5AN fRANClSCO' admiration. When should he ever be able to " back the book " like that? When Yun, proud of his success, came back to his seat, he proceeded further to impress Ti by preparing to write. Now Yun could not yet make Chinese charac- ters without tracing them, but Ti watched his method of writing with great respect. On his desk he had what looked a good deal like a round box of hard shoe-black- ing, such as bootblacks use. Yun's cake was not shoe-blacking at all, however, but of Chinese characters to the teacher's dry ink, such as the other Chinese boys platform. The teacher would mark a had. Toward one side of the round cake certain place in the book with a red pen- was a hole. cil, and the boy would begin to say the Yun left his desk, and, carrying the characters, and the teacher would go black cake of ink, went out the back door through with some sing-song recitation of the school-room. He returned with too, almost always, so that, taking the the hole in his ink-receptacle filled with teacher, and the boy that was reciting, water. Then he rubbed some of the and the dozen or so other boys that were water on his dry, round cake of ink. He studying aloud, there was much noise in took his book, which had leaves made of the room. Yet it was an orderly sort of white paper that looked as thin as tissue noise, after all. None of the pupils misbe- paper, and yet, for all their thinness, not haved. Once a boy left his seat and spoke one leaf was torn. On the leaves were a short sentence to another boy, but this many red or black Chinese characters. At seemed to be no infringement of rules, the left-hand end of the book were two of the transparent white leaves that had never been cut lengthwise. They were purposely left whole, though the top and bottom had been cut. In this way the two leaves made a kind of case. Between these leaves Yun slipped a loose sheet of Chinese characters. Of course the characters showed through the almost transparent white paper. Then he took an implement that looked much like a sharpened wooden pencil that had small Chinese characters on pink paper pasted around the handle end of the im- plement. Yun rubbed the point of this writing implement on the wet cake of ink, and began to trace the Chinese char- acters showing through the thin white paper. He did this work with great ac- curacy. Before going home, Ti obtained a peep into the other school-room where the older scholars were studying. The teacher of this room was not very pleasant-look- ing, he thought. He did not like that teacher so well as the one in Yun's room. This other teacher sat on a platform at the left-hand side of the room, instead of the front, and the scholars all had their hats on, and these boys studied out loud with more noise than the boys in the other room. On two desks were queer little green animals, made of some sort of ware, each looking somewhat like a horse with his head in the air. In the middle of the back of the " horse " was a round hole, for these animals were meant to con- tain water. If Yun had had such a TI: A STOBY OF CHINATOWN. 37 " horse," he would not have had to carry his cake of ink out of the room to get water. Back of all the scholars in this second room was a little table. Ti knew the purpose of it at once. Above the table was a picture - frame containing a red paper with large Chinese characters. Some sort of pink drapery was about the picture-frame, and two stiff bunches of what might be called artificial flowers were above. On the table below were tiny splints in a vase. The whole was a Chinese shrine, in honor of idol-worship. " To make it to joss," was Yun's explan- ation of the shrine. As Ti, greatly impressed with his after- noon at the school, walked home with Yun, vainglorious Yun grew proudly boastful. Ti was so gentle and believing that he looked on these boastings as per- fect truth. But at last Yun went too far in his talk. He said something that startled Ti. " When I am a man, I shall know both English and Chinese," said he in Chinese proudly, " and I shall translate important news from the American newspapers for our honorable Chinese paper, as my father does now! Perhaps I shall be one of the men who look over the news of the steamers from China! I shall be very learned, and I shall be ten parts glad that I know so much! But your uncle will never know anything, for he gambles every night, so that he will never read a book, because every day he means to 38 TI: A STOBY OF CHINATOWN. gamble again at night, and he is afraid of the word 'shii'!" Ti stared at Yun. " It is not true!" he exclaimed indignantly, for his uncle had been quite kind and had gained the boy's love. "Ask your uncle and see!" answered Yun tauntingly. " Does your uncle read a book any day? No, he gambles every night, and he is afraid of the word 'shii'!" Ti stood and stared at Yun with great indignation. "My uncle is not afraid! My uncle is not a gambler!" he asserted, though he hardly knew what a gambler was, but guessed from Yun's words that it must be something discreditable. Yun laughed. " You come from a lit- tle fishing-hamlet, and you know noth- ing!" said he scornfully. " You live in the same house with your uncle, and you do not know that he is a gambler! Ask him and see! Ask him to say the word 'shii'! He will not say it! Ask him! Every gambler fears the word ' shii 2 !" Ti began to run. He wanted to get away from these taunting words. He did not believe them. " Your uncle is afraid of reading a book!" Yun kept calling after him in Chi- nese. " Your uncle gambles every night, and he is afraid of the word 'shii'! I shall be much wiser than your uncle!" Ti would not listen to anything more Yun said. He ran home to the store, feeling as if he did not want to go to see him again. But alas! He found out that all Yun had said was true. His uncle was a great lover of gambling, and lost much money thereby. This was the reason why there often wa.s not much money in the house- hold, even though things in the store sold. Now, Chinese gamblers do not like to read books before playing, because the word "shii," meaning "book," sounds like the word " shii," meaning " to lose," and these gamblers are superstitious. They are careful not to speak any word considered unlucky, lest such utterance should make them lose money when they play. Ti noticed that his uncle in speak- ing of the almanac — a useful thing by which a Chinese may compute the lucky or unlucky days and know when to com- mence any enterprise — never mentioned the almanac by its name, "t'ung shii," for there was that ill-omened word " shii " again. So he called the almanac "kat sing," or "lucky stars." Alas! As he gambled every night, there did not come a day when he would not have considered it unlucky to read the Jesus book, because it was a book, " shii." So he refused to read it, -and was sometimes cross with Ti for asking. One night, when he went out to play the gambling game of " Fan T'an," he took Ti, too, to the gambling place. There were no bright colors in the inner fan fan cellar that the two entered through an outer cellar. There was white, the Chinese color of mourning, that makes players lose their money, and TI: A STORY OF CHINATOWN. the owners of the game gain the cash. Ti was very still. 39 He felt sorry, for There was a table covered with a mat, he knew it made his aunt angry to have his uncle lose money; and the teacher woman, after she learned that Ti knew his uncle gambled, told him that gam- bling was very, very bad. Ti thought the teacher was wise, and his aunt said so, too. The players in the gambling cellar were still. It is not customary to talk while playing. On the table there was a little pile of Chinese "cash," round coins with a square hole in the center of each piece. Ti looked on, while the T'an kiin took a handful of cash and put them under a brass cup, and the players wagered their money on the numbers on the tin square, the "spreading out square," t'an ching, in the middle of the table. Ti did not dare to say anything, every- body was so still. One Chinese player looked very downcast. On the way here and there were some chairs. Other men he had been jostled by somebody, and as secretly came in to play. Fan fan games were forbidden by law in this city of the Americans, but little Ti did not know it. The two owners of the game, the T'an kun, or " Euler of the Spreading Out," and the Ho kiin, or cashier, were there. The T'an kiin was a cross-looking China- man who stood by one side of the table, and the Ho kun was a crosser-looking Chinaman. TV>^ oV-~„j- j i , ., . Chinese Round Cash. Ine stout door between this cellar and the outer portion of the cellar was that is an unlucky sign according to Chi- nese gamblers' superstition, he had turned The Tan Kun. 40 back. But his desire to play fan fan had brought him here at last, though he looked as if he expected to lose money. Ti wished his uncle would come away from these men. He looked and saw that even the candles burning before the joss- shrine were white candles instead of red ones. There must be no color, excepting that which is supposed to be worn by the epirits of the dead. Some time passed and yet the foolish Chinese players were eagerly absorbed in their game. They still placed their money beside the fan ching in the center of the table, and the T ? an kiin counted the Chinese " cash " with the tapering rod of black wood used for this purpose. Over and over again the players wagered money, and Ti's uncle sometimes won and sometimes lost, but almost always lost. Some of the other men lost, too. Ti did not know that some of these Chinamen were employes in hotels, who sometimes in a single night lost all their money in fan fan games or Chinese lotteries. But he was troubled because of what the teacher woman had said. He slipped down on the floor and sat there, hiding his face. The eager players forgot him. " My uncle is doing bad," thought Ti. " He gives all his money to the fan fan men, and my aunt and the teacher woman are much sorry, and my uncle will never read the Jesus book, never! For he gambles every night, and he will not touch a book, and he is afraid of anything TI: A STOBY OF CHINATOWN. called 'shii.' So how will he ever read book, as the teacher woman the Jesus wished?" The fan fan game kept on in eager silence. Nobody thought of Ti, who crept under the table and went to sleep. The next thing Ti knew, he was waked by a jar and a loud noise. There were blows on the outer cellar door, as if it would be broken in, and there were American men's voices in the other cellar. The lights of the cellar Ti was in were all out. Crash! came the blows of axes on this cellar's outer door. " Uncle!" screamed Ti in Chinese. Wide awake now, and frightened at the strange sounds, he scrambled from under the table, and stretched out his hands, expecting to feel somebody. He felt only empty chairs! Crash! crash! came the axes. The frightened little boy ran around the dark room, calling his uncle amid the tumult of sounds. He found no- body. He stumbled over an overturned chair and fell, hurting himself a little. Ti lay where he had fallen, too fright- ened to rise. His heart beat so it gave him a feeling of suffocation. "Uncle! uncle!" he cried. Why were the lights all out? What did it all mean? Who was it that was trying to get in? Why had the Chinese all run away? Ti lay, a trembling, piti- ful little object, in the dark. To his hor- ror, the thick cellar door began to give out a splitting sound. He had faintly hoped that the door might be thick TI: A STOBT OF CHINATOWN. enough to keep the men out, whoever they were who were trying to get in. He sprang up and ran wildly around in the dark, stretching out his hands and feeling no one to help him in his terror. He fell over chairs, he picked him- self up, he cried out in fear. He did not know what was coming. There was so much noise that his voice was unheard by those men who were forcing their way in. " Where is my uncle?" sobbed the scared child in Chinese. The crashing and the sound of splint- ering wood was terrifying. The door was giving way. "Bad men come in and catch me!" thought Ti, his heart thumping and a lump coming in his throat. He found the table again and crawled under it. He waited, shivering. He did not know how to get out of the room. He and his uncle had come in by the now attacked door. 41 The frightened child shuddered. He had no doubt that he would be instantly killed. CHAPTER VII. THE OUTCOME FOR TI. SNE of the policemen who had ^™ entered the room where the game was going on held up his lantern a moment. The room was apparently empty. No implements of fan t'an were visible. The players were gone. Nobody saw the little boy under the table. " Stay by the door, Jim! They've run!" said one man hastily; and one policeman stayed, while the others ran through the cellar into the passageway. Under the table, in the dark once more, Ti crouched and trembled. In a few minutes he heard distant blows as of axes again on wood. He could not under- In the dark the little boy stand what was happening. He did not could not see to escape. He could only crouch under the table, too frightened to attempt to search further for any passage- way out of the room. There was not time. He must hide. There was a great final crash. The stout cellar door gave way. Ti caught his breath. A flash of light illumined the dark room, and some men came in through the broken door. It seemed to Ti that the men would see him the first thing. Oh, what would they do with him when they found him? know that when the policemen, who were making a raid on Chinatown fan fan games, had followed the passage for a dis- tance, they were suddenly confronted with some thick iron bars that crossed the passage and forbade further advance. When the Ho kiin and the T'an kiin and the excited players of fan fan, alarmed over the police, had fled, forgetting Ti asleep under the table, they had escaped through these bars. There was a secret spring that the Ho kun and the T'an kiin knew, and if this spring were touched, 42 TI: A STOBY OF CHINATOWN. the iron bars would be raised out of the men coming back to the cellar. They had men's way and they could pass through, given up their search in the farther rooms. fleeing in haste from the police. But the They had found the Ho kun, and had bars had immediately been put in place recognized him as a man who was believed again, and as the policemen did not know to know something about some fan fan where the secret spring was, the only way schemes, but there was no proof against they could go on in the passage was to him. So they could do nothing except chop down the posts to which the bars order the Ho kun to go back to the cellar were attached. This took a little time, with them. If no evidences of fan fan and the gamblers would have opportunity could be found there, the Ho kun would to conceal themselves or get out of the be unmolested further, house by the many intricate passages. The policemen and the Ho kun re-en- The policemen at length chopped their tered the cellar. Ti crouched under the way and went on, but they did not find table. what they sought. In some of the " Why didn't somebody open the cellar crowded little rooms of the building were door, then, when we first came?" a po- Chinese quietly sitting, playing on little liceman was demanding of the Ho kun. musical instruments such as the Chinese If Ti could have seen the Ho kun's use, but no evidences of fan fan or other face, the little boy might have noticed games were in sight. Search as they that it did not look nearly as animated might, the policemen could find nothing, as it had looked during the fan fan game. All this time, Ti was hiding under the The man had put on a very stupid and table, back in the cellar. From under sleepy look. the table he peered fearfully out toward "Why?" repeated the Ho kun sleepily, the dark, for he knew that one policeman "Why? Keep door shut nights, evely was there. This one had no lantern, night." Everything was dark and the policeman The police began to search among the kept so dreadfully quiet! Not a sound chairs and about the room, but all the im- came from him. He was waiting, ready plements of fan fan had vanished. Even to catch any Chinaman, Ti knew. He the table's mat was gone. Where was the was so afraid of that policeman! He did tin " spreading out square," " fan ching," not know that a policeman might be the and the brass cup, " fan koi," and the friend of a little Chinese boy who was not tapering black rod, " fan pong "? Where at all to blame for a fan fan game, but was the "cash"? Ah! all these things had been brought here by his uncle. Poor had been caught up and run away with, little Ti! How scared he was! The Ho kun felt sure that the police After a while he heard the other police- would never find the implements of fan TI: A STORY OF CHINATOWN. 43 fan where he had hidden them, and he remained ' tranquil, for he knew nothing to condemn him was in the cellar. - The policemen searched diligently and found nothing but Ti. It was a dreadful moment of discovery to the little boy. A policeman, seeing him under the table, drew him forth. "Who's this?" he asked. " LiF boy," said the Ho bin blandly. " Nice liF boy." Ti burst into a loud wail of terror. The big policeman had children of his own at home. He did not want to scare this child. " Well," said he, not unkindly, " you're in the wrong place, little chap. Don't cry, little fellow." Then the policeman turned to the Ho ktin. "What's your name?" he de- manded. similarity in sound to one of his names. Besides, what sounded as if it were Wo Ki's first name — according to American ideas — was in reality not his first but his surname, since Chinese put their surname first. It is as if one said " Smith Char- lie " instead of Charlie Smith. The police kept hunting, but the Ho kun assured them, " You look. You see. No fan fan. Me no sabe fan fan." The Ho kiin had never had any Chris- tian training. All his life he had lived in heathen darkness. He did not speak the truth to the police about the fan fan game. But they did not believe his words. "Yes, you do sabe about fan fan!" as- serted one of them scornfully. "You know well enough about fan fan! Didn't you hear about that Chinaman down at Los Angeles, who ran a fan fan game, and " Wo Ki," answered the other, telling was arrested, and had to put up two hun- the truth, for of course "Ho kun" was dred dollars' bail?" only his official title as cashier of the fan fan game. " Well," said the policeman, " Wo Ki, I'd like to see you in jail, for I haven't the slightest doubt that you've had a fan fan game running here. But if I can't find proof of it to-night, I know well enough you've had it; and let me warn you now, that if you don't quit such busi- ness, the first part of your name will come true!" Wo Ki did not know exactly what that meant, since he was not familiar enough with the Ensrlish word " woe " to know its The Ho kun did not look as if he were aw r are what the word " bail " means. No one could look very much more stupid than he could when he tried. The policemen were very loath to give up the search. They examined every- thing closely, hoping to find some secret place where the fan fan implements might have been hidden. But the Ho kun and the T'an kun had known better than to hide such things in the cellar. Frightened Ti, crouching again under- neath the table, cried silently, and dared not look out. But the policemen did not 44 disturb him again. stand all the English the policemen talked. But the Ho kiin was very sleepy and very stupid, until the policemen, giving up the search as useless, went out of the cellar door, through the outer cellar into the street, and away from the build- ing. Then the Ho kun began to try to fasten the broken door as well as pos- sible. Having finished, he turned to Ti, who was crouching trembling behind some chairs. If Ti had been scared before in the presence of the policemen, he was al- most more frightened now at being left alone with the Ho kun. He broke into sobs again. Where was his uncle? "No cly! You come," said the Ho kiin. But the little boy fled. He rushed away from the Ho kiin through the pass- age the police had traversed. No bars prevented him from running on, for the police had cut down the posts. Ti stumbled over them, though, on the floor. He sprang up again and ran. He won- dered why he had not dared to run while the Ho kiin was fixing the cellar door. He had been too alarmed to think of running, then. The Ho kiin followed through the winding way. Ti was beside himself with terror. He ran desperately through the dark, bumping into partitions. His heart was beating heavily. Oh, if he could only get away from this dreadful, following Ho TI: A STOBY OF CHINATOWN. Ti could not under- kun! He wanted to cry so he could hardly keep down his sobs. A light was coming behind him. By it, before the Ho kun came in sight of the boy, Ti spied a little nook between two partitions. Trembling, he crowded himself into the narrow space and lay still. On came the footsteps of the dreadful Ho kiin. Ti held his breath. He was sure he would be found, and then what would become of him? The light from the taper the Ho kun carried fell on his hardened face, as he hurried along the passageway. Ti's frightened eyes looked out at the man, who was calling, " Come! You come!" The light was dim and the Ho kun did not see Ti in his nook. He hurried on, imagining the child was somewhere ahead. The little boy, left in the dark again, hardly dared breathe. The foot- steps died away. "He is walking softly," thought Ti. " He thinks he will find me and catch me. I am so afraid of him! He will come back when he does not find me. He will come back and find me here. I shall never see my father and my uncle and my aunt again. I am so afraid!" He crawled out of the nook where he had hidden, and crept back along the passage. He wanted to go where the Ho kiin would not come, wherever that might be. In moving through the dark, Ti found a narrow passageway that turned off from the one by which he had come. He II: A STOBT OF CHINATOWN. stumbled over some jars standing in the passage. He tried to hurry on, but it was of no use. The Ho kiin, not having heard the child for a while, had been standing listening, and now came running back. He rushed down the passage and caught Ti, who screamed with terror. But the Ho kun's big hand guided the little boy, by many queer, narrow pass- ages, through to the other side of the building. There at a door opening into an alley, Ti's cowardly uncle who had run away from him, was waiting. "No cly, no cly!" said the Ho kun; and Ti, seeing his uncle, tried to stop sobbing. The uncle took Ti, and they slipped into the alley and hurried home. But when they reached the rooms above the back of his uncle's store, Ti cried all his frightened little heart out in his aunt's sympathizing arms. He did not want to stay in the city another minute! No, he wished to go straight back to his father and the fishing village. Oh, fan fan was bad, bad, and there had been police- men! The child wept and would not be com- forted. He shrank from his uncle, who was so ashamed, or else so reluctant to lose the little fellow's confidence, that, going into the store, he got a pretty imi- tation red fish, made of cloth, and brought it back and gave it to him to wear with a crimson tassel as an orna- ment on the right-hand side of his blouse. The fish was pretty, but Ti could not re- 45 cover from his fright. He cried himself to sleep, and during the next few days he kept begging so to be allowed to go back to the fishing-hamlet that his aunt and uncle were at a great loss how to make him contented to stay. They did not wish that he should go. They missed their own little children too much. But now the teacher saw her oppor- tunity to gain that which she had been refused before, though she had often re- quested it. " If you will let Ti go to our school," she said, " he will see so many other little Chinese children that he will be happy and will not be lonesome. It will be much better for him than crying here at home and wishing he were at the fishing village. Do you not see it will? Won't you try it a while and see if we can't make Ti happy? The little children seem so happy and contented in our school." The teacher dared speak longer and more urgently now than she had done heretofore, because she could see that Ti's uncle was in a humiliated frame of mind over his having frightened the child so badly. He had not intended that the visit to the fan fan game should end so disastrously. How was he to have known that the police would choose that night for a raid? He well knew that Ti's father would have been angry to see his son in a fan fan cellar. Ti might tell a woeful story to his father if he were allowed to go back to the fishing-hamlet just now. 46 Yet that other little boy who went to the teacher woman's school had not liked to put up incense sticks afterwards. That was the danger in sending children to the Christians' school. Ti's uncle thought of this, but he reasoned that something must be done to keep the little boy more contented. Fi- nally he said, " Yes, I let Ti go to school now," and the heart of the teacher was glad. " Oh," she said to herself, " it was a good day when poor little Ti came from his fishing village down to this city! He is so bright. He will listen and learn to understand what we tell him, and will come to know Jesus for himself. If only we can have him a little while, and his father doesn't call him back to that fish- ing village, how much bright little Ti will learn!" But Ti's aunt, Ah Cheng, did not know whether to be glad or sorry that he was going to attend the teacher woman's school. She thought about it a while, and then after the teacher was gone, she went to the old picture of the goddess of mercy, and poured out tea before the pic- ture from the little teapot that was used for this purpose, and burned incense. Yet even after worshiping, Aunt Ah Cheng went about her work troubled and afraid about the little boy's going to the teacher woman's school. She did not know how blessed a crisis in Ti's life this going to the Christians' school would prove to be. TI: A STOBT OF CHINATOWN. CHAPTER VIII. THE JESUS TEACHERS' SCHOOL. T WAS Ti's first afternoon at school. Around him in the school-room sat other little 3^^" Chinese children, boys and girls. Some of the little girls wore red, yellow-figured head-dresses that fitted over the upper part of the forehead and went around to the back of the head. These head-dresses had green borders and were somewhat like hats with the crowns cut out. One little boy near him wore a cap with some Chinese words on the front of it. The words meant " Peace be with you in your going in and coming out." Another little boy wore a cap that said "Bless- ings " in Chinese. This boy had bracelets of jade on his chubby wrists, and one of the teachers came and asked him to take off the " Blessings " cap. The other lit- tle boy whose cap said the wish about peace had to take off his head-covering, too. Most of the children in Ti's room were quite a little younger than he; so young that their heathen parents thought the children could not learn anything. But the children did learn. Some of the little ones sat on tiny low stools about a rectangular bin of sand, and played in the sand with long tin spoons. One chubby little Chinese girl, who lifted sand with a long spoon, could sing very well in her sweet baby voice a song that begins with TI: A STORY OF CHINATOWN. 47 the words, " Up, up in the sky the little birds fly/' and finishes with the words, " Our heavenly Father, how kind and how good." At some of the low tables sat other little girls with paper-weaving. One girl's queue was finished with braided pink and green and yellow and blue, and then wound on the back of her head so it looked like one of the flat table-mats that are sometimes woven by American chil- dren by aid of pins and thread of dif- ferent colors. The Chinese children's blue and red colored shoes showed under the low tables. One "little boy had read entirely through the First Chinese Book. It was a brown paper book with a red cover on one side, and Ti was determined that he would become as smart as that other little boy! He was glad, though, that he was to learn in this school instead of the one that Yun attended. He did not like to go with Yun any more, because he kept speaking teasingly of his uncle's gambling. Ti saw in the school-room before him a big chart with what he afterwards discov- 48 ered was the Lord's Prayer in English, and on the walls were two strips of cloth, lettered with two texts written in Chinese and English. The texts were, " For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlast- ing life," and, " Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." Ti sat and listened as the children re- cited. He did not feel lonesome here or afraid. But how much the other Chinese children knew! The teacher — not the same one who had brought him to the school, but another with just as pleasant a face — stood before the children and asked in Chinese: " Does Jesus love the little children ?" and the children answered: TI: A STORY OF CHINATOWN. Ti did not know that these were words from the Jesus book, the book that his uncle would not read. " What else does Jesus say?" asked the teacher; and the children answered: u Come unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Ti listened. Where had he heard those last words before? The other words that the children said were new, but somehow he seemed to remember something about those last words. He did not know what it was. He did not remember that those had been the words on the red paper he " Suffer little children to come unto had given old See Yow at the fishing me/ village. Then she But now the children loves me." Ti did not know what the teacher was thinking of, that she should look so sober while the children sang that song. But when the song was ended she told them that she was thinking of a little three-year-old Chinese girl who had been playing around in a missionary's study. The little girl hummed the words of "Jesus loves me" to herself, stopped. "He don't love me!" said the child firmly to her- self. "He don't! He don't!" The lady missionary over- heard, and told the little Chinese girl that Jesus did love her. The little girl answered, " My mamma don't love him! She don't! She don't! She don't!" The teacher said there were many Chinese parents who do not love Jesus. She wished all the boys and girls in her school might learn to love him while they were still children. Ti heard a great deal of talk against the Jesus religion, at home, but he loved that teacher who had helped him when he was sick, and he listened very carefully to all that was said. Something told him that the Jesus teacher woman and such men TI: A STORY OF CHINATOWN. 49 lg, "Jesus as the T'an kun and the Ho kun were very far apart. He did not want his uncle to become such a man as the T'an kiin or the Ho kun was. In fact, on this first day of school, Ti re- ceived a good many new im- cause the teacher did not have to talk to the children in English, but could explain things in Chi- nese. Yes, he heard a great many new things to-day. When the teacher took the little boy home after school, she said to him, " Did you like school, Ti? Will you go to-mor- ?» row, again j Ti nodded, smiling. The teacher's heart rejoiced. She 50 TI: A STOBT OF CHINATOWN. looked up at the tall building across the street in this Chinese quarter. She saw a Chinese Voy angrily strike a child in a bal- cony. She saw an old Chinese man look- ing out of a window, a pipe in his mouth. She saw the dragon flag of China flying in the breeze, with the emblems of one of the Chinese "tongs." High on one building there was a large sign in English words, though full of Chinese heathen meaning. The sign read: Chow Loon, 4 FAMILY PARENTAL Tablet Society. j And she thought of the light burning before the ancestral tablet in Ti's home, and in many other homes. And as she held the little boy's hand, she prayed in her heart that though he lived in dark- ness, yet that he might learn the truth. " What did yon learn to-day?" said his aunt to Ti, after the teacher had left him at home. But the child could not tell what he had learned. He could not put his new impressions into words. " You did not learn anything!" said his aunt. "Nei kong tai wa," ("You do not speak the truth,") said Ti's uncle, who was at home and in a bad humor. " He has learned something and he will not tell us what it is! He will grow up to be like the Yesoo Yan!" The "Yesoo Yan," or "Jesus man," was a Chinese shoemaker Ti's uncle knew. The shoemaker had become a Christian. " His father will be very angry," went on the uncle crossly. " And I am angry! Ti shall not grow up to be like the Yesoo Yan! If he must go to that school, he shall go with me, too, wherever I will take him! Nei kong tai wa! He has learned something, and he will not tell us what it is!" Ti tried to think what he had learned. But he found no words to express himself. The uncle laughed, but looked at the little boy suspiciously. Who knew what the Jesus teachers had told him to-day? "You shall go with me," he said, and the next afternoon he took Ti to a joss- house. The joss-house consisted of some rooms, reached by flight after flight of narrow, dirty stairs. Up and up climbed the child and his uncle till they came to the top story of the building. In a little ante-room sat the temple-keeper, who TI: A STOBY OF CHINATOWN. sold the articles used in temple idol wor- ship, such as candles, incense sticks, paper money, and paper clothes. Ti's uncle bought of the temple- keeper an offering and the service of one of the temple-keeper's assistants. Then the two pro- ceeded to worship. The assistant beat on a drum to wake the gods. On a frame was hung a bell that the as- sistant might have used for the same pur- pose as the drum. There was a plat- form at the side of the wall in the joss - house, and six idols were waiting to be wor- shiped. The idols were of wood or plaster, and there was a glass lantern hanging in front of the gods, and in a box at their feet was sand, in which were small sticks of paper and sandalwood burning. There was also tea, ready made, in front of the gods. in the Joss-house. 51 Ti's uncle sought the queer-shaped divining blocks, and threw them till they fell, one with its oval and the other with its flat side to the floor. This manner of falling was propitious. Then the sacred jar of bamboo splints was shaken till one splint fell to the floor. Each splint was n u in- hered to cor- respond with numbers i n the temple- keeper's book o f prayers. The assistant, with a brush pen, took the number of Ti's uncle's splint and gave it to the temple- keeper, who in turn gave the answer according to the number. About the walls and on the curtains were Chinese inscriptions in red and gilt and crimson. After making offerings and worshiping, the two went away from the crimson curtains and the images and the rows of brilliant banners and bronze 52 fans, down the stairs again to the city- street. The temple-keeper's assistant had lighted the paper money and carried it to burn in an oven kept for that purpose. " You shall not grow up to be a Yesoo Yan!" said the uncle in Chinese to the little boy as they went home. "You shall grow up to worship the gods!" Yet, because of his prom- ise to the teacher, Ti's uncle did not forbid the little boy's going to the Christian school. He would not like to have the charge, " You do not speak the truth," applied to him. He had said that Ti might go, and the promise should not be broken. He took the child diligently to the Chinese joss-house on succeeding days, and one day, in a certain joss- house, he showed Ti a little side shrine for those dead Chinese per- sons who have no sons or other relatives in this world to offer prayers or incense in the dead persons' names. To this shrine charitable Chinese, who were not related to the dead, would come and lay offerings under the tablets that bore the names of the de- ceased persons. Otherwise the "wander- TI: A STOBT OF CHINATOWN. ing ghosts " of such persons are supposed to have no rest in the next world. Under some of the tablets bearing the names of women this Before the Shrine. shrine, Ti saw fans and jewelry such as a Chinese woman might use in this life. The uncle kept the little boy long enough before this shrine to impress the child. " See," he said, " what would be, if you grow up to be a Jesus man! Your father has no other son. When your father dies, there will be nobody to burn incense for him, if you are a believer in the Jesus religion. You will leave your father to be prayed for at this shrine, and people will forget to do it. Yes, they will forget! You will leave your father all alone, all alone!" The uncle's tone was very reproachful, and little Ti felt very sober. Surely he would never leave his father, his dear father, to be one of the poor, wandering, forgotten ghosts of the next world. He loved his father, and he went away from the joss-house thinking grave thoughts for so little a fellow. No wonder that some of the Chinese children shut their mouths tightly and shook their heads, when the teacher woman spoke about Jesus. Yet, though Ti did not mean ever to neglect his father, the little boy could not disbelieve what the kind teacher said about Jesus loving little children. And he was afraid to go with his uncle to the joss-houses, for fear the uncle might on the way go to some gambling place, and he might again see the T'an kiin or the Ho kun. It is very difficult to trust one's uncle entirely, after being once terrified by his acts. Ti would rather be with the teacher who had been so good to him when he was sick. His uncle, however, was quite satisfied that he had greatly impressed the child. TI: A STOBT OF CHINATOWN. 53 " He will not be a Yesoo Yan," said the uncle to himself with a satisfied feeling of certainty. "No, he will not! He loves his father too well. I am glad I have showed him that shrine!" And from that hour the vigilance of Ti's uncle began to relax. He did not know that despite what man may say or do in opposition, God's word, when faith- fully taught, will have an effect. Ti was having very faithful, tender teaching in these days at the school. And Ah Cheng, too, was beginning to think very differently. For when the teacher came each day to bring the boy to and from school, she often stopped to talk with Ah Cheng about Jesus. CHAPTER IX. TI'S TENTH BIRTHDAY*. HAD been going to school for some time. The teacher came one day to take him there as usual. Her eyes were red. Ti could see that she had been crying. He wondered why. She looked as his aunt looked sometimes, when his uncle had thrown away all the money gambling and had come home cross and struck her. He did not like to see anyone unhappy. The teacher, however, did not say any- thing about why she had been crying. She tried to control her trembling lips, and she did not talk about anything, all 54 the time that Ti and she were going to school together. "When they came to the school-room, they found themselves quite early. The other scholars had not come yet. Inside the school-room, Ti began to in- terest himself in some paper-folding that the children did. Suddenly, something made him look up, and he saw that the teacher was crying. He dropped the paper-folding, and ran to her and pulled at her sleeve. " No cly," (cry) begged the little fellow gently. "Wha' fo' you cly?" The teacher could not talk for a minute. Then she sat down, and Ti stood beside her, while she told him, partly in Chinese and partly in English, what had happened. He could under- stand a good deal of English now. The teacher told him that a poor Chinese girl who was brought to a mission Home had been dying of consumption, and she had said to a teacher, " I am dying. Stay with me." The sick girl could not under- stand English, but some other Chinese girls told her of Jesus and heaven. She had had a hard, sorrowful life, and now she listened and said that she would try to trust in Him. But after a while she said, " Oh, I am afraid I cannot under- stand the way." Then one of the Chi- nese girls prayed with her and tried to tell her how to talk to Jesus herself, so she might feel he was with her and wanted to comfort her. But the poor dying girl lay still a little while, and then said, " I TI: A STORY OF CHINATOWN. am afraid the door of heaven will be shut. It will not open for me! I cannot see the way! Who will lead me?" They prayed for her and told her Jesus would lead her to heaven and see that the door was open for her. After that she lay still for a time with closed eyes, then suddenly she opened her eyes, her face lit up with joy, and she cried, " I see the way! Jesus is with me and the door of heaven is open! It is all beautiful there! Oh, how beautiful!" and, almost instantly, she died. " Oh, Ti!" said the teacher, as the tears ran down her face, " I am so glad the poor girl found Jesus before she died! She had had such a hard life, but when she heard of Jesus she believed, and I know she did find the gates of heaven open. But there are so many others that don't know about Jesus! Chinese girls and boys and women and men, Ti! I want you to know and love Jesus while you are a little boy. Won't you? So many Chinese don't know Jesus. We teachers do all we can, but we are so few, and there are so many to be told!" The teacher bowed her head on her hands and sobbed. Then came the sound of the steps of other scholars, and she stopped crying, and turned to the little pupils. But Ti's tender heart had been touched. He did not know that all that day there rang in the teacher's ears the words of that dying Chinese girl, " I am afraid the door of heaven will be shut. It will not open for me! I cannot see the way. Who will lead me?" To the teacher it was the cry of hundreds on hundreds of souls she was unable to reach. She felt as if her heart would break. She did not know that what she had said to one little Chi- nese boy this day wouid stay in his mem- ory. She had said, " Oh, Ti, I want you to know and love Jesus while you are a little boy," and Ti's attentive heart had opened to that appeal. He had been learning every day in the months he had attended this school. He no longer went home without being able to tell his aunt what he had learned. She asked him every day, and now he could tell her little texts he had learned in Chi- nese. Very short texts they were, but the aunt, as is often the way with Chinese women, believed more the word brought to her by childish lips than what the mis- sionary woman had said. • One night when the aunt asked Ti the usual question, " What did you learn to- day?' 7 he answered, " Honor father and mother," and she was much pleased that he had had such teaching in school, for the Chinese believe strongly in the honor- ing of fathers and mothers. Ti's uncle had forgotten his first fear lest the little boy should grow up a be- liever in Jesus. He was absorbed in his own affairs, and he thought that the child was too young to learn very much at school, after all. So he let him go, with- out fear. But Ti was learning more than either TI: A STOBY OF CHINATOWN. 55 his uncle or his aunt guessed, although at home he of course had to see much heathenism, and one day, when the teacher called to take him to school, Ti was not at home. He was absent from school that day, because he had to go with his uncle and a number of Chinese men and women to the Chinese cemetery, out by the sand dunes near the ocean. They rode there in express wagons, which also carried provisions. Ti saw that the cemetery was divided by white fences into inclosures. His uncle told him that each inclosure was for a separate " tong," as the Ye On Tong, or the Tung San Tong. A small wooden altar was before each plot, and the provisions were taken from the wagons and laid on these altars. There were a number of whole, roasted pigs, decorated with colored papers and rib- bons. The Chinese bowed before the graves, and set off a good many firecrackers, and burned packages of colored papers, and the roast pigs standing on the altars soon looked out through air that was filled with smoke. Then the people went back to the city for a feast, since this was the twenty-fourth day of the second month of the Chinese year, the time of the Tsing Ming — " pure and resplendent " — fes- tival, when the Chinese believe that the gates of the tomb are thrown open and the spirits of the dead are permitted to revisit the earth. Ti's aunt thought about her two little children, Whan and Hop, who bad died, and she went to the 56 TI: A S10BY OF CHINATOWN. cemetery with the other women and men. But though Ti did not know any better than to think it was right to make these many offerings at the graves, yet he did know and remember what the teacher woman had said about the gates of heaven opening for the sick girl, and his aunt cried when he told her. The next day, when the teacher came to take the little boy to school, his aunt told why he had not been able to go the previous day. The teacher listened sadly. She knew how much of heathen customs surrounded the child. But Ah Cheng looked at the teacher at last and said hesi- tatingly, " Ti say the gates of heaven opened for the sick girl." The teacher's heart rejoiced that the little lad had told his aunt. "Yes, Ah Cheng, Ti is right. The gates opened for her, I am sure. She loved the Jesus who first loved us. And he loves the little ones." These and many other words of comfort the teacher said that day as she lovingly talked with the mother. "I am so glad we are keeping Ti so long!" thought the teacher joyfully. " So many parents take their boys out of school, but we are keeping him." Ti himself had no intention of leaving the school. There was a class of older Chinese boys downstairs, and they had another teacher, and sang hymns in Chi- nese, and read Chinese books, and were very wise, Ti thought. Sometimes they sang in English, and one song they sang was, "Do you know what makes us ha.ppy? We are little friends of Jesus." Ti could sing that song himself, and he meant it; only he never dared sing it where his uncle could hear. The months slipped by till Ti was over nine years old. His father had several times wanted to take him back to the fishing village, but the uncle and the aunt begged to have him left with them, and the father reluctantly consented. So he stayed, and the Christian teaching went on. Then there came a day that brought sad tidings to Ti. His father had been drowned in the bay, not far from the Chi- nese fishing-hamlet. He would never see his father alive again. The little boy cried bitterly, for he loved his father. For a little while he was taken from school, and the teacher was very anxious, for she was afraid his uncle would never let him come back again. His mother had died several years ago, when he was quite small, and now he would probably live continually with his aunt and uncle, and the teacher knew that the uncle did not like the school. But after a while, Ti came back to school with a sober little face and a small white cord, as an emblem of mourning, braided into his queue. The teacher knew that at his uncle's home the child was made to worship before the ancestral tablet, into which, according to Chinese belief, it was supposed that part of the spirit of Ti's father had entered. The TI: A STORY OF CHINATOWN. 57 Chinese think that every spirit has three parts, one that goes with the body to the grave, one part that goes like vapor to heaven, and a third part that stays in the ancestral tablet. The teacher was sorry that Ti had to worship before the tablet on which his father's name was now writ- ten. She conld not help it, but she tried to teach and comfort the little boy as well as she conld. " God grant that Ti may love Christ!" she prayed daily as the months went by. And at last she came to believe that her prayer was answered. She felt sure that, though Ti was a Chinese boy, he had really begun to know Jesus and was every day learning to love and trust him more, and that he was asking for help to do right. Ti's tenth birthday came. He had learned very rapidly in school. He had long ago read through the First Chinese Book, and had been promoted to the more advanced room downstairs. He had learned and believed so much of gospel truth by this time that his uncle would have been much alarmed and very angry if he had known it. But the truth was, the uncle was becoming so inveterate a gambler that he had little thought or care for anything else. He was growing to smoke opium, also, and he was going down morally and intellectually. He did not know that for many months, now, Ti had been praying to Jesus. The little boy never put up the incense sticks before the idols, of his own accord, now, though his aunt wished to insist on his keeping up the ancestral worship. He tried to avoid doing that. Every few days mock-paper money and perhaps paper meant to rep- resent clothing were burned before the ancestral tablet. It seemed to Aunt Ah Cheng a dreadful thing if Ti's father should be neglected now that he was dead! And the teacher knew that her little pupil was sometimes commanded to do things contrary to what she had taught him. One day Ti asked her if the gifts he of- fered could reach his father in the next world, and if it was true that his father's spirit was in the ancestral tablet. " No, Ti, one of your father's spirits i9 not in the ancestral tablet. The Chinese are mistaken about that. But I am glad you love your father, who is gone, and think often of him; and Jesus is glad you love him. You cannot help him by of- fering gifts before the tablet, but you can talk to Jesus about your father, and he can comfort you and help you to do right in your home." Ti listened, with his sober eyes intent on his teacher's, and she saw that the ten- year-old boy thought deeply. He avoided ancestral worship all he could. "I am so glad Ti is growing up with us!" thought the teacher. u I hope we shall keep him. We have had him up- wards of two years." 58 CHAPTEE X TI DISAPPEARS. ^KE day Ti stepped out of his uncle's store and went a little way on the street. Almost all of his acquaintances were heathen, not Christian, Chi- nese. He passed the old man who sat on a box on the sidewalk mending an opium pipe (jin ten), and passed also the other man who cobbled Chinese shoes on the sidewalk. He went across the street. There sat the fortune - teller behind his red - covered, ink - stained table as usual. Ti was thinking of something he had heard lately at his mission Sunday-school about fortune-telling. The teacher had said that a fortune-teller could not know any more about what was going to happen in the future than other persons did. The fortunes he pretended to tell must be lies, and Ti knew that lying and deceit were wrong. The fortune-teller had learned his business in China itself, and he considered himself an expert in his art when he re- membered a blind fortune-teller who lived in China. Blind men there sometimes have this business, but they are under a disadvantage because they cannot read any Chinese book on the subject. There are several different ways of fortune-tell- ing practiced among the persons of this business in China, and blind men have their own way. But Ti's city friend had TI: A STORY OF CHINATOWN. a book on his table which told of a method that he pursued. Ti went up to the fortune-teller's table. He was not doing any business just this moment, and he looked at Ti in a neigh- borly manner, as an American might look at a pleasant, well-behaved small boy who came in friendliness to stand and look at business. The Chinaman's future dinner, a tiny piece of fresh pork, with a bit of greens that had a yellow blossom like mustard, was in a brown paper cornu- copia on the table, just as the fortune- teller had bought them of the Chinese butcher. His book was on the ink- stained red cover of the table, as were his writing pencil and a box. " Have you gone to school to-day?" he asked in Chinese. " Yes/' answered Ti. " I go to school. Very good school. I read Chinese. I read my Chinese book. I read English book, too." The fortune-teller looked at the little boy with approbation. " It is very good to read Chinese and to have Chinese books," he said. " I have a Chinese book." He laid his hand on the paper book of fortune-telling. " You will be a great man," continued the fortune-teller to Ti. " Perhaps you will some day be a fortune - teller like me." Ti looked sober. He remembered what he had heard at school. " No," said he, gravely, " I shall not be a fortune-teller. TI: A STOBY OF CHINATOWN. The teacher woman says that no one can tell fortunes truly." The man sat up angrily. " The teacher woman has an oily mouth and a heart like a razor!" he said angrily, using a proverb of the Chinese people. He meant that the teacher was a person who spoke pleasantly, but had a treacherous heart. " May the Five Em- perors catch the teacher woman!" he continued. Ti shrank back. He had not supposed the man would be angry. The " Five Emperors " are certain five heathen gods that are believed by the Chinese to have power over pestilence, cholera, and so on. To say, " May the Five Emperors catch you!" is a Chinese maledic- tion; therefore Ti did not like to have the man use it in speaking of the teacher. The fortune - teller sat and scowled. Presently a customer engaged his atten- tion. The customer paid his fee and went away. After this the man was more pleasant and talked, telling Ti of the for- tune-tellers in China. 59 There came another customer. Ti looked at him. Then he wanted to run, for who was this second customer but the man who had been the Ho kiin of the fan The second customer was the Ho Mn. fan game to which his uncle had taken him on the evening when the police made their raid. Ti shrank back, but the Ho kun did not seem to recognize him. The child stood there, not daring to run lest he should draw to himself the attention of this dreaded person. 60 TI: A STOBY OF CHINATOWN. The Ho kun wanted the fortune-teller lucky day for the Ho kun. to discover whether the twenty-fifth day of the month would be a lucky day for him to do something. What the some- thing was, Ti did not understand. The Ho kun was beginning to explain about it, when the fortune-teller suddenly caught him by the sleeve of his " shorn " (blouse) and hurriedly said something warning but unintelligible to Ti. The Ho kun evidently took the warn- ing, whatever it was. Then the fortune- teller proceeded to open his box of small, folded papers. Inside each folded paper was written a Chinese character. The fortune-teller told the Ho kun to choose two papers. This he proceeded to do at random, one at a time. Then the fortune- teller took the two chosen papers, opened them, and saw what the Chinese charac- ters were. Now Chinese characters are made up of different parts. The fortune- teller, according to the rules that he usually followed, divided the two chosen characters into their separate, distinct parts. Afterwards he asked the Ho kun some questions in so low a tone that Ti, who stood at one side, did not understand. He was not trying to understand, anyhow. His one great anxiety was that the dread- ful Ho kun should go away. The fortune-teller, by some adroit strokes of his writing pencil, made some new words out of the parts of the Chinese characters, and then gave his opinion. It was that the twenty-fifth day of the present Chinese month was a most un- Days that are lucky for one person are not always lucky for another, according to Chinese belief, but the twenty-fifth day of the present month would be the unluckiest kind of a day for the Ho kun to do what he in- tended to do. The fortune-teller em- phatically charged him to put off doing it till the fifth day of the next month. That would be a lucky day for him. Ti heard so much, but he did not un- derstand, any more than before, what the Ho ktin's undertaking was. "Do it the fifth day of next month I" charged the fortune-teller again and again; and the Ho kun, duly impressed, promised, paid his money and went away. The fortune-teller looked at Ti. For an instant the little boy thought that he was almost sorry about something. "You like me tell your fortune?" in- quired he. Ti shook his head and smiled. " Good-by," he said in English; and he hurried away across the street to the safety of his uncle's store. He did not know that the fortune- teller stood and watched him cross the street and then muttered, " The fifth day of the next month will be lucky for the Ho ktin!" What the Ho kun had come to consult the fortune-teller about was this: Ti's uncle, through his gambling and through borrowing, had become greatly in debt to the Ho kun, so much in debt as to almost equal the value of his store. The T'an TI: A STORY OF CHINATOWN. kvin and the Ho kun, finding that he ried. Ti was not in school. made no payments, knew enough of American customs to resolve to put an attachment on the little store. TVs uncle had realty lost everything. Yet the Ho kun was enough of a Chinaman to want to consult a fortune-teller about which day would be the fortunate one on which to attach the store. As Ti had been present, the fortune - teller had warned the Ho kun not to explain aloud what he intended to do. Ti went home, ignorant that the future plans of the Ho kiin would affect his fu- ture. And the fortune-teller stood and looked, and muttered in Chinese again to himself, "The fifth day of the next month will be a lucky day for the Ho kun!" But the fortune-teller had a plan of his own, and it was because of this hastily- conceived plan to help Ti's folks a little, that he had charged the Ho kun again and again that the twenty-fifth day was unlucky. The twenty-fifth day of the present month would be to-morrow, but the fifth day of the next month would give a little time for the fortune-teller's plan. Ti was now so large that for some time he had been going to the American teacher's school and returning home again daily, without the teacher being obliged to go and come with him. He knew the way and felt quite safe. But the fifth day of the next Chinese month the teacher looked very much wor- 61 He had not been there the day before, either, which was Monday. She had not seen him since Friday in school. " I will go around that way just as soon as school is over to-day," she thought anxiously. " There must be something the matter. I meant to have gone last night, as he wasn't at school yesterday. But I had so much to do." Immediately after school she went to Ti's home. She was startled when she went in. The door at the head of the out- side stairway had been unfastened, and after her customary knock she opened the door as usual. But the room was empty. !STo one was visible to tell what had happened. "Why, I wonder if they've moved?" said the teacher to herself. A new, forbidding - looking woman lifted a red curtain that hung before the doorway of a room, and the teacher ap- pealed to this stranger. "Where have the folks gone?" she asked in Chinese. " The little boy gone ? All gone?" The woman only stared at her and did not answer. She repeated her question, but the woman did not return a word. " Perhaps I can find out down in the store," thought the teacher. She went down the outside stairs and around to the front of what had been Ti's uncle's store. There she was disturbed to see new faces. Ti and his uncle and aunt were not there. A Chinaman with a 62 TI: A STORY OF CHINATOWN. hard face scowled at her from behind the counter. "Where is Ti? Where have they all gone?" she asked anxiously. The Chinaman shook his head sullenly. " Don't you know?" she asked. The Chinaman shook his head and scowled harder. He was the man who had been Ho kun in the fan fan game in the gambling cellar, but of course the teacher did not know this. "Have they moved?" she asked. " They all go 'way! Never come back any more!" was all the Ho kun would say. The troubled woman turned and went out of the store. The instant she ap- peared the boy Yun, the son of the Chi- nese newspaper man across the street, came running over toward her. " Teacher woman," asked Yun eagerly, "you like know where Ti gone?" "Yes," answered the teacher quickly. " Where is he gone ? What's happened ?" " Ti's uncle gamble, gamble all the time," explained Yun in English. " Get gleat debt to Ho kun man! Ti's uncle take Ti and his aunt and go 'way off to China on China steamer this morning! Never come back to Cal'forn'a any more! They go on China steamer this morning!" " Gone to China!" exclaimed the startled teacher. She knew a steamer had really started for China that morning. It was steamer day. Yun nodded. " They go China this morning!" he said. For an instant the teacher was over- whelmed. Then she recollected that no Chinaman who was in debt could go to China without first paying his creditors, and Yun had just said that Ti's uncle had been in debt to the Ho kiin. "How could Ti's uncle go if he owed the Ho kun man?" asked the teacher. " Every steamer day the ship agent stands one side the gang-plank to take steamer tickets, and, the Six Chinese Companies' man stands the other side to take each Chinaman's release ticket, showing he has paid his obligations to the company that represents his province in Canton. Ti's uncle couldn't leave America without that release ticket. The Six Companies wouldn't allow it. He must have paid his debts to the Ho kun man somehow, or he cant have gone." Yun stood silent. The teacher looked gravely at him. " Oh," she said suddenly, " I see now how it was! Those Chinamen who have the store now must have bought it, and so Ti's uncle had money to pay his debts; or else the Chinamen took the store in- stead of his paying them. Perhaps that was the way he got out of debt and could go to China." " Yes," said Yun readily, " they go to China this morning on steamer." The teacher had no doubt of the story now. Ti's folks had gone to China. And the little boy was gone! Her face was pale and startled as she stood there. She did not know this was TI: A STORY OF CHINATOWN. 63 a lie that the Chinese fortune-teller, who had a grudge against her because she did not approve of his business, had sent Yun to tell. The fortune-teller knew the teacher would feel badly over Ti's going so far away as China. Yun did not really knew where he had gone. He suspected he was telling a lie, but he thought it was well to obey the fortune-teller, and, brought up in a heathen home, he had little scruple about telling the teacher a lie. " They must have kept it a secret from Ti until the very last that he and they were going to China," said the teacher. " He could not have known it, or he would have told me in school last week. This is Tuesday, and he was not at school yesterday. I have not seen him since Friday. If he had known then that he was going away, he would have said good- by to me. Gone to China! Poor little Ti!" She did not doubt the story, for she had seen other scholars vanish as summarily from her school. But she had so hoped to keep Ti! She felt stunned, over- whelmed, as she turned away. She did not know that the fortune - teller was watching. Yun went away. " Probably Ti's uncle was afraid I would say some last words about Jesus that the child would remember," she thought. "The uncle and aunt didn't want me to know he was going." The teacher looked blankly at the Chi- nese red papers and great lanterns. She saw afar the table of the apparently oblivious fortune-teller. Then she did not see anything clearly, because of the rush of tears that blinded her. It seemed as if the great sea of heathenism had risen and swept away bright, loving, stu- dious Ti. She remembered the joss-house of the " Queen of Heaven " on the next street. But oh, with all the heathenism of this Chinese quarter, how much darker was China itself! And Ti was on the way there, perhaps never again to hear a word about Christ! What would become of him, little Ti, who had grown so dear to his teachers and had seemed to open his heart so readily to Christianity? Here, Christians could penetrate Chinatown. In China there might not be a Christian or a missionary that he could see! " Oh, my little scholar! My little Ti!" she cried. " I can't help you any more! I'm afraid I sha'n't ever see you again! Oh, God keep you, in the world of hea- thenism! God help you not to forget Jesus! Oh, dear little Ti, God keep you!" "With sorrowful heart the teacher went away. She could only ask God to care for Ti wherever he was. The teacher, however, had been greatly deceived as to Ti's present whereabouts. He was not going to China at all. What had happened really was this: The even- ing of the day on which the fortune-teller had been consulted by the Ho kun as to the luckiness or unluckiness of the twenty-fifth day for putting an attach- 64 TI: A STOBY OF CHINATOWN. ment on Ti's uncle's store, the fortune- teller ate his supper as usual, and then in the darkness secretly wended his way to see Ti's uncle. He did not usually tell the secrets intrusted to him hy customers, but he liked Ti and was not unwilling to help his folks a little. Ti's uncle was ignorant of the fact that any attachment was to be placed on his store. This evening the fortune-teller told him just what the Ho kiin intended to do on the fifth of next month. The fortune-teller could not help him by let- ting him have money, but he suggested that if there was anything special that he would like to save before that attachment was put on his store, he would do well to save it before the fifth of next month. Ti's uncle was greatly excited over the bad news. He did not know how he could get any money to pay the Ho kun, for the amount needed was large. The fortune-teller said that the reason he had told the Ho kun to wait till the fifth of next month was because he knew that was the day a steamer sailed for China, and he also knew that the junk from the Chinese fishing village up the bay would probably come down to the city the third or fourth day of the month, as there were one or two Chinese from the fishing-ham- let who wanted to go to China the fifth day. He suggested to the uncle that the best way would be to send his wife and Ti back to the fishing village by the junk, and they could carry whatever valuables could be saved from the store. The main contents of the store could not be saved without a wagon's coming, and the Chi- nese neighbors' finding out what was go- ing on, and the Ho kun's probably being told and his rushing in and defeating the plan. The Ho kun would not prob- ably wait for the fifth day in that case. So the store must go. But, if he did not suspect anything, he would not put on the attachment till the fifth day of the month, and meantime Ti's uncle might secretly save something. "You keep still! Don't tell the neighbors you are going! Don't tell Ti!" warned the fortune-teller in Chinese. " He might tell his teacher! You keep still! When junk comes, you have things ready and you go quick at night when no- body see!" This plan was carried out. Ti's uncle watched for the junk. The third evening of the next month, greatly excited, he hurried back from the wharves to tell his folks the junk had come. That was the first Ti knew about the plan of moving. None of the neighbors knew. Secretly in the dark Ti's uncle hurried such things to the junk as he could carry. He re- turned, hurried Ah Cheng and the little boy out in the evening darkness, and hast- ened to the wharves. It was a breathless hour, for he knew he was saving some things that the Ho kun expected to put an attachment upon. Ah Cheng and Ti and the bundles reached the junk, and Ti's uncle breathed more freely. He stayed on board that TI: A STOKY OF CHINATOWN. 65 The junk, having delivered at the had no intention of telling the teacher night city the passengers who expected to go to China the fifth, would now sail back to the Chinese fishing - hamlet the next morning, the morning of the fourth, not waiting till the China steamer sailed. Ti's uncle would not go to the fishing- hamlet. He would stay behind in the city. He hoped to go to China in some way, after he had given up the store to satisfy his creditors. He could not go by this steamer, for he must earn his passage money yet, and satisfy two other creditors for small sums before he could go. But he had been wanting to go to see his old father and mother, and now would leave Ti and Ah Cheng with the other uncle, Lum Lee, and his folks at the Chinese fishing village. In this hurried, breathless going, there had been no time for Ti to send any good-by to his teacher at the mission school. He felt very badly. " Teacher woman not know where I go/' the boy told his uncle. " She feel bad." At last, when his uncle was leaving the junk, early in the morning just before it sailed, Ti begged so hard that the uncle would tell the teacher where he had gone and why he could never come to her school again, that the uncle prom- ised. "Yes," he said, "I tell the teacher woman. I tell her to-day." So the junk sailed away on its course and the uncle went back to' his store. He an} r thing. He had only promised in order to make Ti stop begging. Neither had he any intention of telling any one where his wife and Ti had gone. As soon as the Ho kun and the T'an kun put the attachment on the store the fifth day of the month, Ti's uncle vanished. The T'an kun and the Ho kun took pos- session, and the teacher received no in- formation from the uncle about the little boy's destination. In the succeeding days the teacher fully believed that Ti had gone to China. As a matter of fact, not even his uncle had gone to China yet, for he was par- tially engaged in opium smoking, to help him forget the mortifying fact of his hav- ing lost his store, and he was also partly occupied with plans for earning his pass- age money to China. He did not go near his former store, so the teacher never met him. CHAPTER XL TI IS TESTED. NE day, a while after Ti's go- ing away, the teacher was startled. With some other Christian workers she was out on an errand of mercy among the tenements of Chinatown. They had not found the Chinese person they sought. They went further, down a long, narrow alley, on either side of which were fish and vegetable stalls. The 66 TI: A STORY OF CHINATOWN. sidewalks were so narrow that the little party walked in the center of the alley, on the cobblestones. They opened one door of the alley, and, as they shut that door behind them, they passed into utter dark- ness inside of a building. They found their way up one flight of stairs. At the landing, all was darkness. They groped to the right and went up another flight of dark stairs. They stumbled through narrow black passages. Here and there were little rooms like cupboards. In these tiny rooms on shelves Chinamen lay. "We've found an opium joint!" whis- pered one of the men of the party. It was so. In the blackness of the lit- tle cupboard-like rooms the only light would be that coming from a wick burn- ing in a tumbler and illuminating the smoker's face. By the light could be seen the nut-oil lamp (the dong) for cooking the opium, the bamboo pipe (jin ten), and the needle for manipulating the opium (ah pin yin). The visitors, intent on the object of their search, hurried past these closet- like rooms. They stumbled in the dark, wishing they had thought to bring a lan- tern, for though it was daylight in the alley, it was like night here. At length the party found a woman who assured them that the one they searched for could surely be found in an- other house in another part of China- town. The informant seemed honest, and there was nothing to be done but for them to retrace their steps through the dark hallways. They had reached the back of the building. " Look down," murmured one of the party. Below, in the narrow yard between this building and the next, there arose a cloud of steam. " It's the opium factory!" The very yard below was somewhat dim, for besides its narrowness and its situation between the two tenements, it was boarded at either end, and, above, the roofs nearly formed a covering. The party looked down as well as they could, and perceived, in the narrow yard, a place built of cement, in which were furnaces for charcoal. There was the sight of the steam of boiling opium and a glimpse now and then of the charcoal's red glow. Two scantily-dressed Chinese coolies were kneading opium, as the water evaporated, in brass dishes that were over the fur- naces. The coolies were strong men, for opium - kneading requires considerable strength. " The opium becomes more and more stiff, so that it's harder to knead," softly said one of the party. " At the right time those coolies will use brass flatteners to form the opium into a thick cake at the bottom of each dish. Then the dishes will be turned upside down over the embers, and the men will lift the cakes every minute, and peel off the skin that has cooked. So each opium pancake will make fourteen or fifteen thinner ones." The party did not linger, but stumbled back through corridors and black stair- Mays, trying to find the way to the alley once more. They began to go by other little cupboards with shelves covered with matting. Lying, getting ready to smoke, on one shelf was a young Chinaman, who seemed to be somewhat ashamed, and ex- plained aloud to the party of strangers 67 Has he gone to TI: A STORY OF CHINATOWN. "Where has Ti gone? China?" There was no reply. The sallow, half- narcotized face stood out of the black- ness, but there was no look of recognition, no apparent realization that he had been addressed. The opium had done its work. " He is too stupid to understand," said that he only smoked " one li gee of opium , one of the party in English. a day." One li gee is twenty cents' worth. They hurried on in the blackness. Suddenly, as they passed one of the black little cupboards, a Chinese face dimly lit by the light from the dong shone from the darkness. The teacher gave a little cry and caught the arm of the next one in her party. "Wait a minute! Wait!" she ex- claimed. " I must speak to this opium smoker. I think I know him. I want to ask him a question. I thought he was in China. I thought he had taken his folks there." The party stopped. They knew the teacher must have some particular reason for her request. Out of the blackness of the weird little smoking-room, the yellow light from the dong made the Chinese head the more striking as one looked at it, the only visible thing amid the heavy shadows. The Chinaman had not appeared to notice the party at all. " You are Ti's uncle, are you not?" asked the teacher clearly in Chinese. The man's head, resting on a wooden pillow, did not stir. The teacher knew, however, as she looked, that she was not mistaken. It was Ti's uncle who lay there. "Where is Ti?" she repeated more> loudly in Chinese. " I am the teacher woman. You remember me! I was at your house when little Hop died. I have been there many times. Where is Ti? Tell me, where is Ti now?" The yellow face, surrounded by the heavy black shadows, did not open its lips to reply. It seemed to the teacher as if she could not give up without any answer. She was startled and excited over finding Ti's uncle. Could it be possible that the little boy was still somewhere in this great city? If only she could find and help him! "Just let me try once more," she begged her party in English. She turned to Ti's uncle again, and took up Chinese speech. " Won't you tell me where Ti is ?" she begged. " Only tell me this one thing. 68 TI: A STOBY OF CHINATOWN. Tell me, yes or no! Is he in this city? Is he here?" She waited. There was no response. It was not the silence of refusal, but of stupidity. " It's too bad, but you can't make him comprehend your question/' said one of the party; and the teacher knew that it was so. There was no use in waiting any longer. The little company went on, carrying the remembrance of the vision of that one yellow face in the blackness. The visitors groped out of the passage-ways through the door at last into the light of the alley again. And this was the teacher's first clew to Ti's whereabouts. It was a very slender clew. She knew no more than before where the uncle had sent the little boy. Certainly he was not in that opium fac- tory, she thought. But the fact that she had seen Ti's uncle made the teacher, for the first time, doubt the story that Yun had told about Ti's going to China. She had supposed that he told the truth. Now she began to look for her little pupil daily, as she went about her busy work of visiting the Chi- nese women and children in their homes. She believed that Ah Cheng and Ti must be in the city, too, as long as the uncle was. " I think Ti will keep on praying as we taught him," she told herself. " And yet, I wish I could be quite sure!" Ah! it is so hard sometimes, after sow- ing the seed patiently, to have no oppor- tunity to care for and cultivate it! The teacher watched and sought in vain for some time, without gaining the slight- est trace of her little pupil. Then once more she thought she had found a slight clew. It was on the departure of a steamer for China. The teacher had gone to the wharves to see a Christian Chinese family and say good-by to them as they started for the old home in China again. It was almost time for the vessel to sail. The wharf was full of people, white and Chinese. Coolies hurried over the gang- plank. Some Chinese carried their be- longings wrapped in matting; some had baskets or sheets or boxes. All was bustle and hurry. There was a laugh at one Chinaman, who had dropped his box on the wharf. The box had broken open, and his goods had flown hither and thither. He hastily gathered his belong- ings. He had clothing, and dried herbs, and a box of huge pills. Hurriedly he crammed the things into his box again, and fled toward the gang - plank of the steamer, which was almost ready to lift. The teacher had just come off the steamer, where she had been bidding the Christian Chinese family God-speed. As she stepped off the gang - plank to the wharf, the Chinaman who had so hastily gathered his belongings rushed past her. She had only one glimpse of his face as he ran by, but she knew him. It was Ti's uncle. TI: A STORY OF CHINATOWN. 69 With a cry she sprang back, but it was ways saved TVs red paper with its " new too late. The Chinaman ran on the ves- words." sel. The gang-plank lifted. The water In the one street Chinese men and was covered with bits of papers, being women were as busy as they had been two prayers thrown by Chinese on the dock years before, when Ti had gone away, for the safe return home of the voyagers. She called across the water, but Ti's uncle did not look behind him. He plunged in- side the vessel, out of sight. " Oh," she cried, " can Ti be on board, , too, and his aunt? They were not with the uncle ! Is he going to China alone, or are they on board, too? If only I could have seen my little pupil! If only I had known, when -I was on board, Fd have hunted the vessel over! I did look, but I didn't expect he was there. Is he?" The steamer swung around. The teacher looked eagerly at the crowd on the decks. People were waving farewell. The width of water between the wharf and the steamer grew greater. She drew a long breath. " Oh, my Ti!" she said, as she watched the steamer, " may God keep you, even though you go where there is no one to teach you any more about Christ!" Away from the great city, in the little fishing-hamlet far up the bay, the old red paper still showed its message to the Chi- nese fisher-people as they passed along the narrow, crooked street. But none of the passers-by paid any attention to it. There were various red or yellow, or white papers about the doors of other hovels, but when the papers were renewed, See Yow had al- See Yow. Now, out on the rocks, a boy was turn- ing some fish. By and by he had the nu- merous little fish all turned, and he left the rocks and went away, through the narrow street, past the little houses, to the place where old See Yow used to live. See Yow was ill, now, and he had been put into a sort of rude shed back of the 70 TI: A STORY OF CHINATOWN. small hut he and half a dozen other Chinamen had occupied. Poor old See Yow! He had not been able to walk to the shrine for a long time. To-day he felt so feeble that he did not open his eyes when the boy entered the shed. Ti - - for the boy was Ti — went out again, and cooked some rice, and brought it to the old man. But he could take little. The boy sat down at his side. See Yow lay still for a little while. Presently he stirred and said in Chinese, " Tell me the new words." And Ti, who knew he meant the words on the red paper outside the door of his former hut, repeated the " new words " in Chinese: "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." " Tell me again what the teacher said about the ' new words/ " Ti straightened, and before he began to speak, thought hard as to all the teacher had tried to make him understand. " She said," he began, " that when Jesus lived here on earth, folks who were in trouble came to him and he helped them; and that when they are tired or sick now, they can tell Jesus about it, and he will help them to bear trouble and sick- ness, 'cause he is never far away, but close beside us." " But," said See Yow, interrupting, " how can one come to him, as the new words say?" " When we love folks, we trust them. And though we cannot see this Jesus, he is with us. He has helped me, just little Ti. He makes my heart glad, for I know he loves me — and I love him, too." This last the boy said very softly. There was silence. Old See Yow breathed heavily, but he was awake. Then Ti began to sing. It was a song with Chinese words, but it told how Jesus had come down from heaven to show peo- ple how much he loved them and wanted to help them, and that he would take them to live with him in heaven, if only they would believe on him. It told how he even died to show his love. It was a song that Ti had learned in the little mis- sion school in the city. It had very easy words and its meaning was very plain, so that a little child might understand. Oh, teacher in that mission school in the city, you knew not what you did when you taught Ti that song and the meaning of the "new words"! You knew no more than did the other teacher who years be- fore had sent the red paper to Ti at the fishing-hamlet, as to what would be the result of your act. But the Lord of the harvest takes care of seed sown for him. By and by Ti left Sea Yow, to attend to some more fish. The little boy met his aunt, Ah Cheng, outside in the street, carrying some salt for the shrimp-curing. Ti and Ah Cheng had to work quite hard, now, for Uncle Lum Lee always expected anybody who lived with his family to work. Uncle Lum Lee was very fond of money; he and TI: A STORY OF CHINATOWN. his wife worked hard, and saved all they could. Ah Cheng and Ti were perfectly willing to work, however, and as Ah Cheng's opium-smoking, gambling hus- band was not present to make the days wretched with his crossness and his blows, they were not very unhappy, though often very tired. In one thing Ah Cheng could already see that there was going to be trouble, however. Ti was neglecting an- cestral worship and did not bow to the gods. She felt worried, though she had not said anything about it to Uncle Lum Lee's folks. Ah Cheng had not learned to believe in Jesus as Ti did, and Uncle Lum Lee's wife was a firm believer in the gods. Uncle Lum Lee prized the shrines of the fishing village as being places where, according to his thinking, he could dis- cover which were the luckiest days to go fishing. Still Ti, young as he was, noticed that the shrines did not seem always to give correct information, even on that subject. He did not dare, however, to say anything about it. He was glad to have been let alone, thus far, and not have the " Jesus book " discovered and taken from him. Though he could not read the Jesus book perfectly, yet he could read it somewhat, and he prized it. Uncle Lum Lee's folks did not know that he pos- sessed it. Ti smiled at his aunt now, and hurried away to attend to his fish. The aunt went on with her salt. Back in the little shed, old See Yow, 71 weak and sick, lay still. His- withered, wrinkled face was very thin. By and by, with an effort, the old man raised himself on his elbow. He looked cautiously around the interior of the shed, as if to make sure that no one but himself was in the little room. Then he lay back and shut his eyes, as he had seen Ti do when he prayed. "Jesus," murmured old See Yow al- most inaudibly in Chinese, " Jesus Christ, I am only a poor old fisherman Chinaman. I have heard the new words. Jesus Christ, I never heard them when I was young. I have heard the new words now when I am old, a very poor old fisherman Chinaman. Jesus Christ, make the center of my heart understand the new words before I die!" Slowly, over and over, with pauses for breath, the old man repeated his prayer. Out by the long tables for fish-drying, back of the hamlet, Ti worked. Once he looked up, and the sunlight glittering far on the bay struck his eyes, and the boy thought of his father who had been drowned out in that stretch of waters. The lad's face grew very wistful as he worked. He did so wish that he could have told his father what the teacher taught at the mission school, and could have sung to his father that song about Jesus loving everyone. But just as he was thinking this, L T ncle Lum Lee came by. He was in a surly mood. "Work harder!" he said sharply to Ti in Chinese, though the boy was already working as faithfully as anybody could. 72 TI: A STOBT OF CHINATOWN. Ti redoubled his efforts, while his uncle frowned. Uncle Lum Lee was becoming very sus- picious of Ti. From various things he had observed in him, he was coming to believe that the boy had had altogether too much teaching in that Christian mis- sion school in the city. This money-lov- ing Chinaman thoroughly despised the unbusiness-like way in which Ah Cheng's .husband had lost his store, and he also thought that allowing Ti to go so long — two years — to the teacher of the " Jesus doctrine" was another wrong thing in Ah Cheng's husband. Uncle Lum Lee had not been very dili- gent himself about worshiping the gods sometimes, but he despised Christians. He knew the Chinese saying, sometimes written over temple doors in China,