The agony of Colonel Starbottle on finding his wash bill made out on the unwritten side of one of these squares, and delivered to him with his weekly clean clothes, and the subsequent discovery that the remaining portions of his letter were circulated by the same method from the Chinese laundry of one Fung Ti of Fiddletown, has been described to me as peculiarly affecting.

Yet I am satisfied that a higher nature, rising above the levity induced by the mere contemplation of the insignificant details of this breach of trust, would find ample retributive justice in the difficulties that subsequently attended Ah Fe's pilgrimage.
On the road to Sacramento he was twice playfully thrown from the top of the stagecoach by an intelligent but deeply intoxicated Caucasian, whose moral nature was shocked at riding with one addicted to opium-smoking.
At Hangtown he was beaten by a passing stranger--purely an act of Christian supererogation.

At Dutch Flat he was robbed by well-known hands from unknown motives.

At Sacramento he was arrested on suspicion of being something or other, and discharged with a severe reprimand--possibly for not being it, and so delaying the course of justice.

At San Francisco he was freely stoned by children of the public schools; but, by carefully avoiding these monuments of enlightened progress, he at last reached, in comparative safety, the Chinese quarters, where his abuse was confined to the police and limited by the strong arm of the law.
The next day he entered the washhouse of Chy Fook as an assistant, and on the following Friday was sent with a basket of clean clothes to Chy Fook's several clients.
It was the usual foggy afternoon as he climbed the long windswept hill of California Street--one of those bleak, gray intervals that made the summer a misnomer to any but the liveliest San Franciscan fancy.