The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1905-06-02

also i'll the 'washce" business, but in a
Hibernian way, who lived four doors
below. Rosey was very pretty girl.
In Ching Ting's eyes she was the prettiest
thing he had ever seen. She had dash
of red in her hair, and corresponding
tint-only bit redder-in her checks.
She was not bad girl by any manner of
means. Rosey's mother had seen to that.
But she liked gay frocks and walked the
pavements Of East Boston deal oftcner
than would have been considered good
form on Beacon street. The first time
Ching Ting saw her he had been standing
smokeing cigarette in front of his laun-
| dry on a Saturday night. Then he had
gonein into the back room and prayed to his
little joss harder than he had ever done
before, even harder than when he thought
he should have to go back and be
waiter Wah Kings.
1t was some weeks afterward that
Rosey walked with Ching Ting down
Clancy street. She's takin' him to Sum
day School, an he's a dacint Chinyman,"
said Mrs. Coulan when her neighbors
demonstrated. And sight better than
the drunken young blayguards yer own
! daughters go wild, she had added. And
Mrs. Coulan's maternal disconcernment
was correct. Ching Ting was decent.
He was clean; and he was not given to
| getting drunk Saturday evenings and
staying so over Sunday, as were some of
| the young gentlemen who were counting
! the Oldest daughters of Mrs. Coulan's
neighbors.
People have laughed when have said
that Ching Ting had fallen in love at
first sight said the man who told ME
this.
When the little laundry business was
worse than usual, and Ching Ting's rice
allowance dwindled, it was Mrs. Coulan,
four doors below, who saw, and saw,
too, that he had "a sup of somethin'
warrum." And Ching Ting felt grateful
for it, just as you or l should have done,
although he was d Chinaman. Mrs.
Coulan and Rosey were the only people
who had been kind to him.
1t was after one of these times that he
had listened to Mrs. Coulan and had
parted with his beloved pig tail"
Yell niver be an Amerrikin wild that
wrapped round yer head" she had said.
And Ching Ting had gone to the tiny
barber shop across the way, and the man
had taken the scissors and shipped it off
for two dimes and a nickel. Then his
customer had carried the queue home
and cried bit over it.
You see it meant something for Ching
Ting to lose his pig tail" 1t meant
that he was Chinaman no longer; that
his own father would now disown him,
and that he could not own little rice
field near Hongkong nowif he wanted to
the worst sort of way. Cutting the ties
to ones country with pair of scissors,
even when ones fatherland is China, is
not pleasant thing. When he appeared
on Sunday morning soon after in suit
of store clothes, Mrs. Coulan and Rosey
surveyed him with completed satistac-
ton.
One night he was allowed to take Rosey
to the Castle Square Theatre to see THE
Black Hussar." He had gotten two gal
lery tickets with considerable difficulty,
for he and the window man had not been
able to understand one another thor
oughly. But finally he had secured the
bright bits of yellow pasteboard and had
come away happy.
He had never been inside of an Ameri-
can theatre before; and he enjoyed every
thing almost as much as did Rosey He
clapped his hands whenever he saw her
doing it; and this was rather often, for
Rosey was not an opera critic of much
artistic discernment, and went to thea
tres strictly to enjoy herself-a thing very
few of us do.
Once he had noticed some men in the
row behind him look III his direction, and
when one of them said something, the
others looked over at Ching Ting and
laughed. Roscy noticed it, too, for she
turned around and said some things very
Grossly, which made the laughing stopas
quickly as it had begun. Ching Ting
could not understand It at all, and on the
way home he asked Rosey about it.
ooh, they were Ginning because you
are a Chink," she said. But l fixed
them," and she laughed, too.
Ching Ting said nothing, but he knew
he was not Chinaman any longer, be-
cause his ''pig-tair' was gone. And he
wondered how he could turn into an
American faster, SO that men would not
laugh at him when he took Rosey to the
theatre.
And so, for year or two, the little
laundry business went on, and, save
when stones would break the windows
on Halloween nights; or when the man
who boarded next door. and whose cuffs
and collars Ching Ting Numbered, would
come in drunk, and smash much glass
with a handy fatiron, trade prospercd.
Rosey grew prettier every day, and he
used to get down on his knees before the
joss in the tubroom, when he had shut
up the laundry for the night, and pravto
"be Mclean man soon, so he can mally
Rosey." Ching Ting was perfectly hon
est about it, and be meant what he said.
Then there came great change in the
line of the proprietor of No. II Clancy
Street. Ching Ting went to Sunday
school at the Methodist Church in Stuart
Square, and was instructed on Sunday
afternoons at half after one, by young
woman whose hands were always gloved
and who wore quieter gowns than the
ones Rosey usually appeared in. To
Ching Ting's prejudiced and plebeianeye,
Rosey's trocks, with their bits of scarlet
ribbon, were far prettier. He did not tell
this to her, although it would have
CONCLUDED on FOURTH PAGE.