I drew him into talk about the underground system for diseased emigrants, and he said that there were doctors in Naples who could so relieve trachoma in forty-eight hours that if the emigrant kept up the treatment he or she could get by the doctors at New York or Boston. The eyes would be worse than before after the treatment was stopped, and, if continued too long, would cause blindness. Those emigrants who could not be doctored up temporarily were sent through, however. “How sent through?” For answer a shrug of the shoulders and—“Oh, pay some money to some people!” Always that evasive, baffling answer. However, having heard of the system in Messina, on the steamer, and in the city of Naples, and now seeing such palpable signs of it right in the shelter of the Capitaneria, I began for the first time to believe what I could scarcely credit before,—that the “gold-paved avenue” leading into my beautiful, healthy home country, for the loathsomely and contagiously diseased, did exist. I set on foot at that point some investigations not yet ripe, and I may never harvest them; but if I do not some one else will sooner or later “get on the inside.” I shall later prove beyond a doubt that there is a door for diseased aliens. Another flagrant abuse which I should mention here was that of supposed bankers’ agents inducing emigrants to buy New York drafts for the safety of their money. One man was going about cautioning the emigrants to invest in drafts, and another followed him offering drafts. The first man came up to me, after some of our boys had been approached by him and had referred him to me. “Who are you?” I asked, feigning stupidity. “The chief of police,” he said,—and I laughed in his face. However, many were caught in the scheme, among them a boy I had taken an interest in, a lad named Salvatore Biajo, bound for St. Louis. He had 100 lire in gold and eight in silver, and bought a draft. The draft was all right, being on the Bank of Naples, but the man who sold it to him, instead of making it for 108 lire minus a few centesimi for discount, put it in dollars, writing in only $19 when it should have been about $21.35 according to Post & Flagg’s Ellis Island rate. The gang of draft-sellers made two dollars off young Biajo, and if they made as much off the hundreds of others who bought, they did a fine day’s business.