a remedy on all occasions of even the slightest
suffering, it wove its chain around him like a merciless master who
puts his servant in bonds. But though given to its use all his life
afterwards, in later years he took it moderately. Still he was its
slave. A man of marvellous genius, a master of the English tongue,
he had not full mastery of his own appetite; and one of such talent,
bound Andromeda-like to the rock of his vice, ready to be devoured
in the sea of his perplexity by what is worse than the dragon of the
story, he deserves our pity, nay, even our tears. He tells us how
he was troubled with tumultuous dreams and visions, how he was a
participant in battles, strifes; and how agonies seized his soul, and
sudden alarms came upon him, and tempests, and light and darkness;
how he saw forms of loved ones who vanished in a moment; how he heard
"everlasting farewells;" and sighs as if wrung from the caves of hell
reverberated again and again with "everlasting farewells." "And I
awoke in struggles, and cried aloud, 'I will sleep no more!'"

CHAPTER IX

MUSIC, GAMBLING, EATING, THEATRE-GOING

In Chinatown--A Musician's Shop--A Secret Society--Gambling Houses--"The
Heathen Chinee"--Fortune-telling--The Knife in the Fan-Case--A Boarding
House--A Lesson for Landlords--A Kitchen--A Goldsmith's Shop--The
Restaurant--Origin of the Tea-Plant--What a Chinaman Eats--The Tobacco
or Opium Pipe--A Safe with Eight Locks--The Theatre--Women by
Themselves--The Play--The Stage--The Actors--The Orchestra and the
Music--The Audience--A Death on the Stage--The Theatre a Gathering
Place--No Women Actors--A Wise Provision--Temptations--Real Acting--Men
the Same Everywhere.

The reader will now accompany us to a musician's shop in our
wanderings through Chinatown. This is located in a basement and is a
room about fifteen feet wide and some twenty feet deep. This son of
Jubal from the Flowery Kingdom was about fifty-five years old and a
very good-natured man. He received us with a smile, and when he was
requested by the guide to play for us he sat down before an instrument
somewhat like the American piano, called _Yong Chum_. The music was of
a plaintive character, and was lacking in the melody of a Broadwood
or a Steinway. Then he played on another instrument which resembled
a bandore or banjo and was named _Sem Yim_. Afterwards he took up a
Chinese flute and played a tune, which was out of the ordinary and
was withal of a che