other varieties of Oriental
delight. The far glooms were struck by low-toned lanterns. Couches lay
about the walls; strange men decorated them and three young girls in
socks, idiotically drunk. Small tables were everywhere, each table
obscured in a fog of yellow faces and greasy hair. The huge scorbutic
proprietor, Ho Ling, swam noiselessly from table to table. A lank figure
in brown shirting, its fingers curled about the stem of a spent pipe,
sprawled in another corner. The atmosphere churned. The dirt of years,
tobacco of many growings, opium, betel-nut, bhang, and moist flesh
allied themselves in one grand assault on the nostrils. Perhaps you
wonder how they manage to keep these places clean. That may be answered
in two words: they don't.

On a table beneath one of the lanterns squatted a musician with a reed,
blinking upon the company like a sly cat, and making his melody of six
repeated notes.

Suddenly, at one of the tables was a slight commotion. A wee slip of a
fellow had apparently done well at fan-tan, for he slid from his corner,
and essayed a song--I fancy it was meant to be "Robert E. Lee"--in his
seaman's pidgin. At least, his gestures were those of a ragtime
comedian, and the tune bore some faint resemblance. Or is it that the
ragtime kings have gone to the antiquities of the Orient for their
melodies? But he had not gone far before Ho Ling, with the dignity of a
mandarin, removed him. And the smell being a little too strong for us,
we followed, and strolled to the Asiatics' Home.

The smell--yes. There is nothing in the world like the smell of a
Chinatown in a Western city. It is a grand battle between a variety of
odours, but opium prevails. The mouth of West India Dock Road is foul
with it. For you might as well take away a navvy's half-pint of beer as
deprive a Chink of his shot of dope and his gambling-table. Opium is
forbidden under the L.C.C. regulations, and therefore the Chink sleeps
at a licensed lodging-house and goes elsewhere for his fun. Every other
house in this quarter is a seamen's lodging-house. These hotels have no
lifts, and no electric light, and no wine-lists. You pay threepence a
night, and you get the accommodation you pay for. But then, they are not
for silk-clad ossifications such as you and me. They are for the lusty
coloured lads who work the world with steam and sail: men whose lives
lie literally in their great hands, who go down to the sea in ships and
sometimes have que