tell of lives not spent in toil. They loll on blackwood divans and smoke
opium and send their bank-notes and commands to the gambling table by
servants, until yielding to the exalted dreams induced by the poppy
fumes. They are polite fellows, every man of them, and make it apparent
that they would like to do something for the entertainment of each man
and woman tourist in the room.

In this strange establishment globe-trotting novices sit around the
railed opening and make their bets on the game below through an
interpreter attendant. This obliging man lowers your coins to the
croupier in a basket, and draws up any "bet" you may have had the luck
to win. And what a medley of coins you are paid in! There are coins of
China and Japan obsolete years ago in those countries, money of the
Philippine Islands, even nickles and dimes whose worth has been stamped
by Uncle Sam. It is said that half the pocket-pieces of Asia find their
way onto the gambling boards of Macao, and that a thrifty croupier seeks
to pay them out to the tourist who will remove them from local
circulation. The linguistic representative of the management endeavors
to play the bountiful host to most visitors. He takes one through the
building, permits you to peep within a chamber filled with oleaginous
Chinamen in brocade petticoats, sleeping off the effects of the opium
pipe, explains painted fans and other attempts at decoration on the
walls, and indicates a retiring room where you may rest or even pass the
night, all without charge.

[Illustration: IN A FAN-TAN GAMBLING HOUSE, MACAO]

Then he orders refreshments brought, and with the manner of a veteran
courtier proffers a tray heaped with oranges, an egg-shell cup filled
with tea that is almost without color, and dried watermelon seeds that
you might munch after the manner of the neck-or-nothing gamblers on the
lower floor. When you politely decline these, the courtly one most
likely says, "You no likee tea and seeds--then have whiskysoda." Chinese
courtezans, with feet bound to a smallness making locomotion difficult
and obviously painful, wearing what in the Western World would be called
"trousers," and invariably bedecked with earrings or bracelets of
exquisite jade, edge their way to the gambling table, and put their
money down in handfuls as long as it lasts. To spend an evening in the
liberally-conducted establishment of Messrs. Ung Hang and Hung Vo is
enlightening in various ways.

Because fan