nce the delight and scorn of the intelligent Caucasian who
did not understand a word of it. Such, at least, was the feeling
with which Mr. Tretherick on his veranda, and Col. Starbottle who was
passing, regarded their heathenish jargon. The gallant colonel simply
kicked them out of his way: the irate Tretherick, with an oath, threw a
stone at the group, and dispersed them, but not before one or two slips
of yellow rice-paper, marked with hieroglyphics, were exchanged, and a
small parcel put into Ah Fe's hands. When Ah Fe opened this in the dim
solitude of his kitchen, he found a little girl's apron, freshly washed,
ironed, and folded. On the corner of the hem were the initials "C. T."
Ah Fe tucked it away in a corner of his blouse, and proceeded to wash
his dishes in the sink with a smile of guileless satisfaction.

Two days after this, Ah Fe confronted his master. "Me no likee
Fiddletown. Me belly sick. Me go now." Mr. Tretherick violently
suggested a profane locality. Ah Fe gazed at him placidly, and withdrew.

Before leaving Fiddletown, however, he accidentally met Col. Starbottle,
and dropped a few incoherent phrases which apparently interested that
gentleman. When he concluded, the colonel handed him a letter and
a twenty-dollar gold-piece. "If you bring me an answer, I'll double
that--Sabe, John?" Ah Fe nodded. An interview equally accidental,
with precisely the same result, took place between Ah Fe and another
gentleman, whom I suspect to have been the youthful editor of "The
Avalanche." Yet I regret to state, that, after proceeding some distance
on his journey, Ah Fe calmly broke the seals of both letters, and, after
trying to read them upside down and sideways, finally divided them into
accurate squares, and in this condition disposed of them to a brother
Celestial whom he met on the road, for a trifling gratuity. The agony of
Col. 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 attende