have taken Woon Ha's new slave girl!" We
would be glad to end the story of our little friend's troubles and
safe escape with her arrival at last in the Mission Home that day.
But how few rescues ever do end in that peaceful and pleasant way!
There followed the usual train of lawyers and warrants. To avoid
these unpleasant experiences, Kum Ping had to change her place of
residence several times, the last time being the night before the
fatal eighteenth of April. A warrant was served at ten o'clock
that night, but being forewarned, the one named in it was with
friends at some distance from the city. The warrant summoned us to
court at two o'clock next day. God disposed of that case! No court
has ever passed judgment on it. Long after the excitement of these
days was over, Kum Ping returned to our Home; country air and a
free life are working their spell. It is hard to recognize in the
round, sun-tanned, happy face we see today, the unhappy slave girl
of Woon Ha's den on Spofford alley.
CHAPTER 18.
PERILS AND REMEDIES.
It is a matter of no small importance that the Christian public of
America should realize that in the Oriental slavery of its Pacific
Coast it faces a flood. One can gaze with indifference upon a little
stream that trickles through a wall, so long as it is thought to be
merely a natural spring of water; but when one is informed that this
is the trickling of water through a dike which dams out the raging
sea, the sensations are changed to a realizing sense of imminent
peril. If some are disposed to criticise this book for leading its
readers into past history and far distant countries, to tell them
harrowing tales, let them know it is intended to take them for a view
behind the dike,--that they may understand the source of the trickling
stream of brothel slaves that, almost unobserved, flows steadily into
our fair land, and know that the stream is the precursor of a flood.
No mere wall of immigration restrictions will ever get control of the
flow so long as men are permitted to hold slaves after they have once
been landed. And for the further reason, that so soon as China and
Japan have drilled a little longer with the fire-arms furnished them
by Western nations, they will force a free entrance to America. The
yellow flood is sure to come, and we must make ready for it. We must
realize what may happen to American women if almond-eyed ci
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