than that which Dickens found in London and put into The Mystery of Edwin Drood.' The room was partially divided. Lighted by a dim lamp we could see at the further end two narrow compartments, with shadowy figures lying on benches, their square pallid faces indicated by a fitful glimmer of light. A sickly smell pervaded the apartment. We were received by a shrivelled little Mongolian, who looked ugly enough for the idealised conscience of a slanderer. 'Captain John Chinaman,' said the detective, this is a friend of mine from England, who is anxious to know you.' 'Tanky-you come see smoke,' said the shrivelled figure, shuffling towards us. 'Yes, yes,' we replied. Captain John is the oldest Chinaman in New York,' said the detective. 'You come see smoke,' said John again, pointing to a powerfullybuilt Celestial, who was lying on a bench on our right, and preparing a pipe for use. He took the preparation of opium from a tin case little larger than a thimble, and cooked a small portion of it by blowing the flame of the lamp upon it through a tube. The action was like that of a plumber soldering a gaspipe. He placed the dried paste upon a small aperture in the bowl of his pipe-a thick primitive-looking implement-and commenced to inhale the smoke. Pulling vigorously at the pipe, he concentrated all his mind upon it, now and then stopping to re-cook and re-fill. Presently the inhalation went on to his complete satisfaction, and there stole over his passionless features a quiet calmness, which Captain John contemplated with a contented nod and grin. Leaving the dreamer to dream his way to a transient happiness, we entered the compartments at the further end of the room. Four Chinamen, in various stages of insensibility, were lying there, the principal luxury of their hard couches being wooden pillows. One man writhed and moaned in his sleep, and they all looked hideous; the ghastly light from the lamp we carried throwing a lurid ray upon the scene, which helped to heighten the common horrors of the den and make up a Dantesque picture. The Celestial does not drink, but he smokes with a vengeance. The drug is used privately and publicly, and a smoke in a regular opium shop costs from 18 to 25 cents. From Captain John's establishment we went to another next door, and there found quite a family party just beginning to 'lie off,' in honour, as it seemed to us, of a new arrival from China, a bright-eyed young man, evidently of more than ordinary position. He was in full Chinese costume, whereas the others wore a mixture of European and Eastern garments, all, however, having pigtails; but this fulldressed Oriental was the only one whom we encountered during our midnight inquiries in the complete garb of his country. It is not impossible that he was an inspector on duty for one of the companies to which his fellow-countrymen belonged. A short ramble through tortuous alleys and streets brought us to a flight of dark steps leading into a cellar, the door of which opened upon a scene even more interesting than that we had just left. It was a Chinese gambling saloon. Some twenty or thirty natives were standing round a table breast-high, upon which were scattered dice, buttons, cents, and dollars in little proprietary heaps. The banker stood at the head of the board, and as we entered he glanced at the face of the detective. Several of the players looked at us for a moment with their dreamy unspeaking eyes, and then paid no further attention to us. There were no chairs nor seats in the cellar, but the walls were covered with 'Notices' and 'Regulations' written up in big sprawling characters, like extracts from half-forgotten tea chests in the London Docks. In one corner of the room there was a Joss altar, lighted with a pair of brass candlesticks of very English manufacture. There was a show of gaudy decoration on the altar, and an inscription in Chinese; but, when we came to examine the thing more closely, we found that it had been converted into a washstand, unless cleansing the hands with soap is part of the religious devotions at a Joss altar. Seeking in an odd amused way for some clue to this, we looked at the hands of several of the gamblers, and found that they carried their real estate with them, as the Americans say of a person who neglects his finger-nails. Tan' is the game mostly played. A large heap of buttons is rapidly divided into three or four lots, and the players bet upon odd or even numbers; but at the den in question, whatever the game might be, it was played with dice and double dominoes. The numbers of the latter were regulated in some way by the numbers thrown in the dice. A player shuffled the dominoes and gave one to each of his fellows. Then the banker threw the dice and the game was decided, the bank paying or receiving. It was worth while to watch the flat Tartar faces. They betokened little or no interest in the game beyond a calm attention to it. There was no excitement, no gesticulation, no talk. Now and then a player would smile and show a set of white teeth. They were dressed like Europeans, and some of them had their hair cut close to their heads. There seemed to me to be food for a world of reflection in the fact that these descendants of a people so ancient and so mysterious should be clustered together in this modern city, thousands of miles away from the Flowery Land, gambling in a cellar by the light of a Birmingham lamp blazing under a French shade, and surrounded with tokens of their strange home to which they or their bones are booked to return. 6 'They make excellent servants,' said a doctor, who was one of our midnight party, and who knows them well; as cooks they are very successful-you can teach them anything-but they are wofully superstitious. They stay with you for a very long time, and seem to be perfectly happy: suddenly they have a dream, and they must go. I will give you a case in point. I had a Chinaman cook, who not only prepared the dinner but served it himself. When he had dished it up he would slip another garment over his kitchen clothes and wait at table with the quiet perfection of a Frenchman. One evening I noticed that he had put on his Sunday coat, and that while he waited at table he looked anxiously round as if a ghost were at his side. Dinner was hardly finished, when he said, "Me leave you." "When?" I asked. "Now, this minute," he said, looking round as if death were at his elbow. "Another China boy come; better China boy than me." Before the night was over he had introduced his successor and vanished.' 'In regard to their imitative powers and their docility under tuition,' said an amiable colonel who had joined us after our visit to the gambling saloon, 'I can give you a fair illustration. My brotherin-law had a house at Tarrytown. He went to Saratoga in the summer and left his place in charge of two French maids and a Chinese butler. I called there occasionally in my brother-in-law's absence, and found that the butler went through his daily routine in every particular, even to ringing the bell for dinner, when there was no dinner served, as if the family were at home.' It was now the detective's turn. I guess I can tell you a better affair than that. I knew a lady that taught a Chinaman to cook, and she showed him how to make coffee for breakfast, clarifying the coffee with an egg. The first egg she broke was a bad one; she threw it away, and went on with the next. She only learnt, three months afterwards, that her imitative cook regularly threw away the first egg, and only used the second.' New York is too cosmopolitan ever to have any great difficulty with the national peculiarities of her various classes of foreign citizens; but San Francisco finds herself face to face with a Chinese puzzle, which one day she will break in pieces and solve with judicial calmness. There are thirty thousand of this strange people in San Francisco, herding together like pigs, living in open adultery, cleanly only during the daily employment they get from the whites, but living in indescribable filth at home. The slaves of VOL. XXXII. NO. CXXVI. Q companies in China, they do not develop into citizenship. They cheapen labour to such an extent that they kill competition. The Asiatic settler earns money from the white man and trades only with his own race. He does not remain longer than he can help. If he dies, he goes home all the same. Supposing he has money enough to pay the cost of such a luxury, he is embalmed and sent to his friends. If he is poor, his remains are buried until his bones can be gathered together and forwarded as luggage. He has no sympathy for his new home, nothing akin to the Europeans among whom he settles; but like a rat he is gradually burrowing his way into street after street, encompassing the best and most picturesque of the sites upon which San Francisco should extend itself, and turning a garden into a wilderness. Time solves all problems, wipes out all difficulties. The only danger is that San Francisco may grow tired of Time's slow but certain progress, and try her hand at solving this Chinese puzzle herself. Her Portrait. LADY, see your portrait's finished; On your bosom rose-buds resting, Ah! but here I see my failure: All the petals of the roses, Dead as autumn leaves appear. Yet accept the picture, lady, |