It was lacquered black, with
red and gold writings on it, and I've heard that Fung-Tching brought
it out all the way from China. I don't know whether that's true or
not, but I know that, if I came first in the evening, I used to
spread my mat just at the foot of it. It was a quiet corner you
see, and a sort of breeze from the gully came in at the window now
and then. Besides the mats, there was no other furniture in the
room--only the coffin, and the old Joss all green and blue and
purple with age and polish.
Fung-Tching never told us why he called the place "The Gate of a
Hundred Sorrows." (He was the only Chinaman I know who used bad-
sounding fancy names. Most of them are flowery. As you'll see in
Calcutta.) We used to find that out for ourselves. Nothing grows
on you so much, if you're white, as the Black Smoke. A yellow man
is made different. Opium doesn't tell on him scarcely at all; but
white and black suffer a good deal. Of course, there are some
people that the Smoke doesn't touch any more than tobacco would at
first.
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