. The visitors see what they
expect to see, for the Chinaman always gives his public exactly what it
wants.

But a dollar does not show you Chinatown. To some the ivories will
always be but crudely carven bone, the jades the potter's sham, the musk
and aloes the product of a soap factory, the joss but a cigar-store
Indian, and the Oriental dainties of Hong Fah the scrappings of a Yankee
grocery store. Yet behind the shoddy tinsel of Doyers and Pell Streets,
as behind Alice's looking-glass, there is another Chinatown--a strange,
inhuman, Oriental world, not necessarily of trapdoors and stifled
screams, but one moved by influences undreamed of in our banal
philosophies. Hearken then to the story of the avenging of Wah Sing.

_'Tis a tale was undoubtedly true
In the reign of the Emperor Hwang_.

In the murky cellar of a Pell Street tenement seventeen Chinamen sat
cross-legged in a circle round an octagonal teakwood table. To an
Occidental they would have appeared to differ in no detail except that
of a varying degree of fatness. An oil lamp flickered before a joss near
by, and the place reeked with the odor of starch, sweat, tobacco, rice
whisky and the incense that rose ceilingward in thin, shaking columns
from two bowls of Tibetan soapstone. An obese Chinaman with a walnutlike
countenance in which cunning and melancholy were equally commingled was
speaking monotonously through long, rat-tailed mustaches, while the
others listened with impassive decorum. It was a special meeting of the
Hip Leong Tong, held in their private clubrooms at the Great Shanghai
Tea Company, and conducted according to rule.

"Therefore," said Wong Get, "as a matter of honor it is necessary that
our brother be avenged and that no chances be taken. A much too long
time has already elapsed. I have written the letter and will read it."

He fumbled in his sleeve and drew forth a roll of brown paper covered
with heavy Chinese characters unwinding it from a strip of bamboo.

_To the Honorable Members of the On Gee Tong:_

Whereas it has pleased you to take the life of our beloved
friend and relative Wah Sing, it is with greatest courtesy
and the utmost regret that we inform you that it is
necessary for us likewise to remove one of your esteemed
society, and that we shall proceed thereto without delay.

Due warning being thus honorably given I subscribe
myself with profound appreciation,

For the Hi