The People’s Club House didn’t wear the kindly beneficent aspect it had wore. He felt that coffee and good books and music would have been safer to fill the Poor Man’s Club with; safer for the poor man; safer for the poor man’s family. Tea and coffee seemed to look different to him from whiskey, and true liberty that he had talked about didn’t seem the liberty to kill and destroy. The license law didn’t wear the aspect it had wore to him, the two licensed institutions Christian America furnished for its citizens at home and abroad seemed now to him, instead of something to be winked at and excused, to be two accursed hells yawning for the young and innocent and unsuspicious as well as for the wicked and evil-minded. Ungrateful country, here wuz one of thy sons who sung the praises of thy institutions under every sky! Ungrateful indeed, to pierce thy most devoted vassal with this sharp thorn, this unbearable agony.
“For how was he goin’ to live through it,” he cried. How was he? His beautiful, innocent daughter! his one pet lamb! It was not for her undoing that he had petted and smiled on these institutions, the fierce wolves of prey, and fed them with honeyed words of excuse and praise. No, it wuz for the undoing of some other man’s daughter that he had imagined these institutions had been raised and cherished.
He wuz an old broken man when he tottered out of that room. And whilst we wuz moving heaven and earth hunting for the girls he wuz raving with delerium with a doctor 163 and trained nurse over him. Poor man! doomed to spend his hull life a wretched wanderer, searching for the idol of his heart he wuz never to see agin––never!
Well, the time come when we wuz obleeged to leave Manila. Robert Strong, for Dorothy’s sake as well as his own, left detectives to help on the search for the lost ones, and left word how to communicate with him at any time. Waitstill Webb, bein’ consulted with, promised to do all in her power to help find them, but she didn’t act half so shocked and horrified as I spozed she would, not half so much as Arvilly did. She forgot her canvassin’ and wep’ and cried for three or four days most all the time, and went round huntin’, actin’ more’n half crazy, her feelin’s wuz such. But I spoze the reason Waitstill acted so calm wuz that such things wuz so common in her experience. She had knowledge of the deadly saloon and its twin licensed horror, dretful things was occurring all the time, she said.
The detectives also seemed to regard it as nothing out of the common, and as to the saloon-keeper, so much worse things wuz happenin’ all the time in his profession, so much worse crimes, that he and his rich pardner, the American Govermunt, sees goin’ on all the time in their countless places of bizness, murders, suicides, etc., that they evidently seemed to consider this a very commonplace affair; and so of the other house kep’ by the two pardners, the brazen-faced old hag and Christian America, there, too, so many more terrible things wuz occurrin’ all the time that this wuz a very tame thing to talk about.
But to us who loved her, to us whose hearts wuz wrung thinkin’ of her, mournin’ for her, cryin’ on our pillers, seekin’ with agonized, hopeless eyes for our dear one, we kep’ on searchin’ day and night, hopin’ aginst hope till the last minute of our stay there. And the moon and stars of the tropics looked in night after night to the room where the old father lay at death’s door, mourning for his beautiful innocent daughter who wuz lost––lost.
But the hour come for us to go and we went, and right by us, day or night, in sun or shade, from that hour on a black shadder walked by the side on us in place of the dimpled, merry face of the little maid. We didn’t forgit her in the highest places or the lowest. And after days and days had passed I felt guilty, and as if I hadn’t ort to be happy, and no knowin’ where she’d drifted to in the cruel under world, and wuz like sea-weed driftin’ in the ocean current. And when we wuz out evenin’s, no matter where I wuz, I watched the faces of every painted, gaudy dressed creeter I see, flittin’ down cross streets, hoping and dreading to see Aronette’s little form. Arvilly and Miss Meechim openly and loudly, and Dorothy’s pale face and sorrowful eyes, told the story that they too wuz on the watch and would always be. But never did we catch a glimpse of her! never, never.
As we drew nigh to the city of Victoria on Hongkong island we see that it wuz a beautiful place. Big handsome houses built of gray stun, broad roads tree-bordered, leadin’ up from terrace to terrace, all full of trees, covered with luxuriant tropical foliage. It wuz a fair seen clear from the water’s edge, with its tall handsome houses risin’ right up from the edge of the bay, clear up to the top of Victoria mountain, that stands up two thousand feet, seemin’ly lookin’ over the city to see what it is about. And this is truth and not clear simely, for the Governor General and Chief Justice have houses up there which they call bungalows, and of course they have got to see what is goin’ on. The hull island is only nine milds long and three wide. And here we wuz ten thousand milds from home. Did the Hongkongers ever think on’t, that they wuz ten thousand milds from Jonesville? I hope they didn’t, it would make ’em too melancholy and deprested.
We all went to a comfortable tarven nigh by, and after partakin’ of nourishin’ food, though kinder queer, and a good night’s rest, we felt ready to look round and see what we 165 could. Josiah and I, with little Tommy, wuz the first ones up in the mornin’, and after breakfast we sallied out into the street. Here I proposed that we should take a jinrikisha ride. This is a chair some like a big willow chair, only with a long pole fastened to each side and two men to carry you round. Josiah wuz real took with the looks on ’em, and as the prize wuz low we got into the chairs, Tommy settin’ in Josiah’s lap, and wuz carried for quite a ways through the narrer streets, with shops juttin’ out on each side, makin’ ’em still narrerer.