the inner passages of the house are mysteriously changed,
and it is impossible to track them without being frequently misled;
meanwhile the alarm is sounded throughout the building, and very
speedily every trace of guilt has disappeared. The lottery is another
popular temptation in the quarter. Most of the very numerous wash-houses
are said to be private agencies for the sale of lottery tickets. Put
your money, no matter how little it is, on certain of the characters
that cover a small sheet of paper, and your fate is soon decided; for
there is a drawing twice a day.

Enter any one of the pawn-shops licensed by the city authorities, and
cast your eye over the motley collection of unredeemed articles. There
are pistols of every pattern and almost of every age, the majority
of them loaded. There are daggers in infinite variety, including the
ingenious fan stiletto, which, when sheathed, may be carried in the
hand without arousing suspicion, for the sheath and handle bear an exact
resemblance to a closed fan. There are entire suits of clothes, beds and
bedding, tea, sugar, clocks--multitudes of them, a clock being one of
the Chinese hobbies, and no room is completely furnished without at
least a pair of them,--ornaments in profusion; everything, in fact, save
only the precious queue, without which no Chinaman may hope for honor in
this life or salvation in the next.

The throngs of customers that keep the pawnshops crowded with pledges
are probably most of them victims of the gambling-table or the
opium-den. They come from every house that employs them; your domestic
is impatient of delay, and hastens through his daily task in order that
he may nightly indulge his darling sin.

The opium habit prevails to an alarming extent throughout the country,
but no race is so dependent on this seductive and fatal stimulant as the
Chinese. There are several hundred dens in San Francisco where, for a
very moderate sum, the coolie may repair, and revel in dreams that end
in a death-like sleep.

Let us pause at the entrance of one of these pleasure-houses. Through
devious ways we follow the leader, and come at last to a cavernous
retreat. The odors that salute us are offensive; on every hand there is
an accumulation of filth that should naturally, if it does not, breed
fever and death. Forms press about us in the darkness,--forms that
hasten like shadows toward that den of shades. We enter by a small door
that is open for a moment o