best soporific.
Here and there a citizen of the better class was to be seen picking his
way by the light of a lantern, held by a boy, and twice we met sedan
chairs containing women, preceded by a lantern bearer. The passage of
two sedans in these narrow streets is a difficult and unpleasant
process, the bearers generally managing to grind your shins against a
wall. At night it is still more difficult to avoid contact, and the
coolies are incessantly shouting, in a sing-song voice, to prepare the
way. As it was, in the narrower streets we passed between files of dusky
figures and black, inquisitive eyes, ranged on either side to barely
allow passage. The cook-shops were deserted, and the attendants busy in
putting out the fires; only the places where lanterns or candles were
sold seemed to be doing an active trade, although it had scarcely struck
nine. At ten o'clock no doubt all were asleep, for hosts of beggars and
poor wretches were snoring by the roadsides. The most picturesque groups
passed in this evening stroll were those on the bridges, where, by the
light of tallow candles, men and boys were gambling and fighting
crickets. Although probably there was not another European or American
within the walls of the city, the passage was as safe as if made at
noonday, guarded by a file of soldiers.

A visit to Shanghai would be incomplete if the traveller failed to
inspect the numerous and very curious temples, and to contrast them with
the church edifices erected in the heart of the city by the Protestant
missionaries. There is one without the walls, in the French Concession,
where all the instruments of torture, the devilish devices of heathen
cruelty, are to be seen, a horrid spectacle. The largest of the temples,
however, is within the walls, approached through a wide court, with a
fountain (not in use) in the centre. This court is crowded with fortune
tellers, conjurors, and gamblers of every kind. Some of these gentry
play a game very much like thimble-rigging, in which copper cash,
appears under different inverted teacups. Every man who approaches the
idol draws from among the fortune tellers a stick or a piece of paper,
from the figure on which he is supposed to tell whether his prayer will
succeed, or the work he contemplates prove lucky. Entering the shrine,
it is difficult to see for a few moments, so gloomy is the place and so
grimy every object with the smoke of joss offerings from time
immemorial. A kind of