The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1907-09-07

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in this country did their best to have
us stay. Letters and kilograms began
to fly to the Chinese Minister and the
Secretary of the Treasury Department
in Washington. We were finally al
lowed to stay in the detention shed
when the Doric left for China.
The detention shed is another name
for "Chinese Jail. - l have visited
quite few jails and State prisons in
this country, but have never seen any
place half SO bad. It is situated at one
end of the wharf, reached by long,
narrow stairway The interior is about
one hundred feet square. Oftentimes
| they put in as many as two hundred
human beings. The whitewashed win
dows and the wire netting attached to
| them added to the misery. The air is
| impure, the place is crowded. No friends
are allowed to come in and see the
unfortunate sufferers without special
permission from the American author
ity. No letters are allowed either to
be sent out or to come in. There are
no tables, no chairs. We were treated
like. a group of animals, and we were
fed on the floor. Kicking and swear
ing by the white man in charge was not
a rare thing. I was not surprised when,
one morning, a friend pointed out to
me the place where heart broken
Chinaman had hanged himself after
four months imprisonment in this
dreadful dungeon, thus to end his agony
and the shameful outrage.
After staying a whole week in this
miserable den we were allowed to come
out at the request of a doctor, because
our suffering was too great for physical
endurance. The Chinese Consul in that
city had to give bond for two thous-
and dollars before this request was
granted.
We stayed in San Francisco more
than half a year waiting for our new
passports, owing to the death of the
great yiceroy. Li-Hung- Chang, and to
the fact that not until August, 1902,
did the Allies permit the customs Tao
tai to occupy his official residence and
take up his customary duties in ITEMS
sin.
We spent the summer in Tacoma,
Washington, with the teacher who, had
hrOurh+ NC r. +biS oo,,1+r,, To+o, -,
in August. we started for oberlin, as
a whole year OF precious time and |
hundreds of dollars had already been
wasted. Permission was obtained from |
our bondsman, and our future address
was handed to the American authori- |
ties in San Francisco, and it was I'M
derstood that if our new passports
were not correct we must return to
San Francisco, but if they were we
could receive them at the nearest port
say Cleveland, for instance.
We had chosen cur route by the
Canadian Pacific Railway, because the
air was cooler and the scenery is mag
but, unfortunately, we did
les partly on Canadian soil. The COL
ector at the boundary was easy and
kind enough to let US go out; but,
after three days travelling, when we
9ame back to the boundary, we were.
stopped at midnight in a place called
Portal, North Dakota, by the Amer
can authority. This was followed by
six weeks anxiety. Once more te1e-
grams and letters began to fly to
by the score. A professor
n Oberlin College and an expert law
yer of Washington, many friends who
knew us in China, and many inf1uen-
.ial friends in this country, sent in APP
oeals in. our behalf to the authorities
n Washington and San Francisco, but
LII in vain. The final decision was ac-
,ording to the law of the Free Coun-
.ry: we have no right to. re-enter
America after we once get out. So,
IN September "a, the very day we had
hoped to take up our college work in
Oberlin, we turned our faces sadly
and tried to seek a refuge
n the Dominion of Canada.
We had hardly time to reach Toron-
20 when several kilograms came from
he Chinese Consul at San Francisco
lrging our immediate return to that
,itys by way of Vancouver, for the
American authority pressed him for
he bond of $1,000. In despair we pre-
pared to obey; but, alas! there is
another law of the Free Country, that
no tickets can be sold to any Chinese
to any part of the United States with
1ut proper certificates. The law re-
luired us to return to San Francisco;
The law refused US permission to
travel on the American soil; and.
again, the law forbade us to secure
tickets.
AT this critical point another permits
sion was obtained from the Attorney
General, through the request of our
kind friends, that we might remain in
Canada for three months, waiting for
the papers which Minister Whiting
Fang sent for the third time.
The papers finally came early In
January, 1908, and, strange to say,
they were accepted by the American
government. But here arose another
We had planned, before we
started from China, to work our way
through college and not depend en-
tirely on our kind friends; but the law
he 1