f our party had
to take quinine, too, for the stomach's sake to keep up, for you feel
there like faintin' right away, the climate is such.

It must be that the Chinese like amusements, for we see sights of
theatres and concert rooms and lanterns wuz hangin' everywhere and
bells. And there wuz streets all full of silk shops, and weavers, and
jewelry, and cook shops right open on either side. All the colors of
the rainbow and more too you see in the silks and embroideries, and
jewelry of all kinds and swingin' signs and mat awnings overhead, and
the narrer streets full of strange lookin' folks, in their strange
lookin' dresses.

We visited a joss house, and a Chinaman's paradise where opium eaters
and smokers lay in bunks lookin' as silly and happy as if they
wouldn't ever wake up agin to their tawdy wretchedness. We visited a
silk manufactory, a glass blowing shop. We see a white marble pagoda
with several tiers of gilded bells hangin' on the outside. Inside it
wuz beautifully ornamented, some of the winders wuz made of the inside
of oyster shells; they made a soft, pleasant light, and it had a
number of idols made of carved ivory and some of jade stun, and the
principal idol wuz a large gilded dragon.

Josiah said the idee of worshippin' such a looking creeter as that.
Sez he, "I should ruther worship our old gander." And Miss Meechim wuz
horrified, too, at the wickedness of the Chinese in worshippin'
idols.

But Arvilly walked around it with her head up, and said that America
worshipped an idol that looked enough sight worse than that and a
million times worse actin'. Sez she, "This idol will stay where it is
put, it won't rare around and murder its worshippers."

And Miss Meechim sez coldly, "I don't know what you mean; I know that
I am an Episcopalian and worship as our beautiful creed dictates."

Sez Arvilly, "Anybody that sets expediency before principle, from a
king to a ragpicker; any one who cringes to a power he knows is vile
and dangerous, and protects and extends its influence from greed and
ambition, such a one worships a far worse idol than this peaceable,
humbly-lookin' critter and looks worse to me enough sight."

I hearn Miss Meechim say out to one side to Dorothy, "How sick I am of
hearing her constant talk against intemperance; from California to
China I have had to hear it. And you know, Dorothy, that folks can
drink genteel."

But Dorothy, with her sweet lips trembling and her white dimpled