situated on the east side of Portsmouth Square. This is a large
building of several stories with numerous offices. The chief in his
office on the main floor, on the right hand of the entrance, received
us courteously and assigned to us a detective according to an
arrangement previously made with Ashton. In the office were portraits
of police commissioners and the chiefs and others who had been
connected with the department for many years. Entering an elevator we
were soon on the topmost floor where were the cells in which prisoners
just arrested and waiting for trial were confined. The doors of the
cells, all of iron, were opened or closed by moving a lever. It was
now about 9:30 P.M., and officers were bringing in such persons as had
been arrested for theft, for assault and battery, for drunkenness and
other kinds of evil doing. Towards daybreak the cells are pretty well
filled, but now they were nearly empty. How true His words who knows
what is in man. "Men love darkness rather than light because their
deeds are evil!"

One young man who had killed another in a quarrel was pointed out to
us. The woman who loved him and who expected to be his wife, and still
had faith in him, was at his side, with her sister, conversing with
him between her sobs, in a low earnest tone. He seemed greatly
agitated. A detective stood a little way off from the trio. The
evidence was strong against the murderer, and an officer said to us
that there was no chance for him to escape from the penalty of the
law. In a cell was a young Chinese woman, just brought in, possibly
for disorderly conduct. She could not have been more than fifteen
or sixteen years old. She was pretty and refined in appearance and
handsomely dressed, and she wept as if her heart would break. Not yet
hardened by sin, and probably imprisoned for the first time, she felt
the shame and degradation of her lot. I could not but feel pity for