lent papa, and from a genuine desire to see what they
call Life, with a capital Hell, I went through Hong-Kong for the space
of a night. I am glad that I am not a happy father with a stray son who
thinks that he knows all the ropes. Vice must be pretty much the same
all the round world over, but if a man wishes to get out of pleasure
with it, let him go to Hong-Kong.

"Of course things are out and away better at 'Frisco," said my guide,
"but we consider this very fair for the Island." It was not till a fat
person in a black dressing-gown began to squeal demands for horrible
stuff called "a bottle of wine" that I began to understand the glory of
the situation. I was seeing Life. "Life" is a great thing. It consists
in swigging sweet champagne that was stolen from a steward of the P. and
O., and exchanging bad words with pale-faced baggages who laugh demnibly
without effort and without emotion. The _argot_ of the real "chippy"
(this means man of the world--_Anglice_, a half-drunk youth with his hat
on the back of his head) is not easy to come at. It requires an
apprenticeship in America. I stood appalled at the depth and richness of
the American language, of which I was privileged to hear a special
dialect. There were girls who had been to Leadville and Denver and the
wilds of the wilder West, who had acted in minor companies, and who had
generally misconducted themselves in a hundred weary ways. They
chattered like daws and shovelled down the sickly liquor that made the
rooms reek. As long as they talked sensibly things were amusing, but a
sufficiency of liquor made the mask drop, and verily they swore by all
their gods, chief of whom is Obidicut. Very many men have heard a white
woman swear, but some few, and among these I have been, are denied the
experience. It is quite a revelation; and if nobody tilts you backwards
out of your chair, you can reflect on heaps of things connected with
it. So they cursed and they drank and they told tales, sitting in a
circle, till I felt that this was really Life and a thing to be quitted
if I wished to like it. The young man who knew a thing or two, and gave
the girls leave to sell him if they could, was there of course, and the
hussies sold him as he stood for all he considered himself worth; and I
saw the by-play. Surely the safest way to be fooled is to know
everything. Then there was an interlude and some more shrieks and howls,
which the generous public took as indicating immense