“My life in my uncle’s house was hard and unlovely, and I should certainly have run away had I been able. He kept a gambling and boarding-house, where a man, after losing all his money, could go further and lose his body. A man who had lost all might stake his liberty against a sum of money, perhaps five dollars or more; once he’d lost this he became the property of the winner and passed into ‘the mansion of supreme blessedness,’ or, in other words, my uncle’s boarding-house; there he was kept and fed, and on occasions would be sent to sea in whatever ship required. In other words, my uncle was a crimp and supplied sailors to the foreign ships that required them. He was well known to all the China traders, and could be relied on to fill up a ship with whatever number of hands they required; in fact, I’ve known him put dead men on board if it chanced that he had not the number in ‘the mansion of supreme blessedness’ that a captain required. He’d explain that the man was drunk, carry him on board at night, and put him in the fo’c’sle when the ship was sailing next morning at daylight. He kept careful records of all he shipped and the ships they sailed in, and when the unfortunate men returned to Hong Kong my uncle would be the first on board, would have them again conducted to ‘the mansion’ to be kept till again required, and would himself draw their pay from the Shipping Office. In this way you can imagine that my wicked relation soon grew rich. Me he kept as a sort of servant to wait on the unfortunates in ‘the mansion of supreme blessedness’; and for over two years I remained there, being beaten, overworked, and underfed, and had it not been for the healthy open-air life that I had previously led I might have succumbed to the hardships; still, foul air never chokes a Chinaman, and somehow I grew and increased in strength. The ‘mansion’ must have got unusually depopulated at one time, because without any previous warning I one day found myself put on board a steamer with the remainder of my uncle’s guests. The steamer was bound for London with tea, and my job was to cook rice, etc., for the firemen and stokers. This job necessitated my turning out in every watch. I was kicked and cuffed by all the engine-room hands, and was at their beck and call day and night. Sleep I got when I could, food what I could steal, wages none, and my continual unhappiness bred in me an ever-increasing hatred of and desire for revenge on my paternal uncle. Of the voyage to England I remember nothing, and I saw nothing of London except the docks, as my work never allowed of my going ashore. I managed, however, to pick up some English from the stevedores, and after an absence of about nine months I was once more back in Hong Kong. To show you how unpopular my uncle’s methods were with some of his ‘guests,’ I may tell you that the night before we entered Hong Kong harbour three of his protégés jumped overboard and were drowned, rather than partake of his further