l repaid for our trip. I think, though,
really, the best part of it was the feeling of possible danger in the
sights before us; and the spooky appearance of the dark, narrow
streets, into which the moonbeams dropped, revealing to our excited
gaze, gliding or stationary and wretched-looking Chinese, on every
hand. Our guide was a strange specimen, a short, thickset man with a
queer Pennsylvania Dutch dialect, and an Irish name, like Duffy or
McCarthy, I forget which. It was droll beyond measure, to hear his
description of the joss-house given in a sing-song, full of ludicrous
blunders and clipped words. But despite of the comic in our guide, the
joss-house itself was solemn enough, and provocative of thought. It was
strange to see altar before altar, all covered with vases and lamps
alight, and all manner of bronze bowls and incense burners. It was all
so weirdly like what one sees in many Christian churches, and yet with
a difference, for the dragons and monster forms were so strangely
gruesome and grotesque, that it gave one almost an uncomfortable
feeling. What did it all mean? Were we at times unconsciously heathen
in our cults, or are they at times unconsciously Christian? The whole
difficulty was summed up in one monosyllable, which escaped from a
brother clergyman's lips standing near me, and that one word was an
astonished and emphatic "Well!!!"

We are soon aroused from our reverie by the strident tones of our
guide, who, taking his stand near a large stove in one corner,
exclaims: "Now, ladies and gemmen, y' would s'pose that dis yere stove
was for heating this buildin', but it ain't no such thing. 'Tis for
sending things to dead Chinamen. They puts 'em on papers and burns 'em
here, and then they thinks they have 'em." Again he would show us the
accumulated ashes in the incense bowls, and tell us that it was kept to
put under the bodies of the "dead corpses;" and so on, and so on, until
you scarcely knew whether he himself knew or not what he was talking
about. During all this harangue, a pale-faced celestial was seated
behind a sort of counter in one corner, with a countenance bereft of
all expression, except the suspicion thereon of a highbred scorn for us
all, as a gaping crowd being led about among things of which none of us
knew anything. This custodian, or priest, whatever he might have been,
had a kind of jaunty cap on his head, and was comfortably smoking, in
the most earthly manner, a well-flavored cig