Ambrose Bierce and the One-Eyed Jacks

CHAPTER ONE TUESDAY, APRIL 27, 1891Unlike Bierce, my friend Father Flanagan, of Old St. Mary's Cathedral, applauded my piece on the slave girls, and said to me, "I will introduce you to a person who is actually doing something about the plight of those unfortunate children." Miss Eliza Lindley, directress of the Protestant Stockton Street Mission, was seated at a cluttered desk beneath an elaborate sign that announced: I CAN DO ALL THINGS THROUGH CHRIST WHICH STRENGTHENETH ME. Upstairs was the cheerful racket of the girls the Mission had saved from slavery-"at study," which sounded more like play to me. Miss Lindley wore severe black-rimmed eyeglasses, a white shirtwaist, and her light brown hair drawn into a bun. She smelled of soap. She ran this place with an iron hand, Father Flanagan had told me. She was a New Englander of granite conscience and devotion to her cause. "Thank you for your piece in the Examiner, Mr. Redmond," she said, rising to proffer her hand. "It was very encouraging to our work here." "Saving Chinese children's souls," I said. "And their bodies, Mr. Redmond." It was the Mission's work to rescue the enslaved children who were worked to the bone by cruel masters and mistresses. She admitted an inability to deal with those who had been imported as the most degraded of prostitutes. Some of their powerful masters were reputed to be white men, and their guardians were armed highbinders. She was assisted by a teacher of English, Miss Cochran, and a Chinese interpreter. The girls were instructed in American homemaking and female responsibilities in preparation for marriage with reputable gentlemen of their race. I wanted to see her in action, if that was possible, and she quickly assented. So we went for a walk through the noisy streets of Chinatown, with its powerful smells and brilliant colors and exotic mix of the foreign and the familiar. Miss Lindley seemed very much at home here, in her tight tweed jacket and voluminous skirt. She had removed the spectacles which gave her face a severe expression, and now she looked eager, expectant, and quite pretty, with her high cheekbones and vivid blue eyes. I had to stretch my steps to match the confident stride of her polished black boots. We halted by a basement entrance beneath an herbalist's shop, where a wraith of a girl was chopping wood. She looked nine or ten, in a filthy white shift, her hair in two untidy braids. She balanced a piece of log on its end, grasped her hatchet with both hands, and brought it down to split off a sliver of the wood. She glanced up at Miss Lindley and quickly away. "They will claim she is their daughter," Miss Lindley said, as we strode on. "She is not, of course. Did you notice the burns on her arms where they have tortured her?" "I'm afraid I did not." "I beg of you that you did," Miss Lindley said, "for we are going before Judge Tallent with that information." "Does she know who you are?" I asked. "She knows," Miss Lindley said. In Judge Tallent's office in Old City Hall I cheerfully perjured myself. A search warrant was issued, a patrolman provided. His name was Perkin and he seemed to be an old friend of Miss Lindley's. With Miss Lindley leading the way almost at a trot, Perkin hustling behind her in his eight-button blue uniform, we returned to the herbalist's shop. Miss Lindley threw open the basement door. Here were pots boiling over wood fires, in a powerful steaming-vegetable stench. We made our way past clotheslines and hanging garments. A sour-faced Chinaman with a gray beard appeared, calling out, "This velly good house! You go way, Missy Lingling!" I knew that many of these storefronts concealed gambling establishments and opium dens. Miss Lindley proceeded along a dim passage, sliding her hands over wooden paneling, stooping and stretching. Finally she found something. "PeHall, Oakley M. is the author of 'Ambrose Bierce and the One-Eyed Jacks' with ISBN 9780670031801 and ISBN 0670031801.