At the end of one's third pipe the dragons used to move about and
fight. I've watched 'em, many and many a night through. I used to
regulate my Smoke that way, and now it takes a dozen pipes to make
'em stir. Besides, they are all torn and dirty, like the mats, and
old Fung-Tching is dead. He died a couple of years ago, and gave me
the pipe I always use now--a silver one, with queer beasts crawling
up and down the receiver-bottle below the cup. Before that, I
think, I used a big bamboo stem with a copper cup, a very small one,
and a green jade mouthpiece. It was a little thicker than a
walking-stick stem, and smoked sweet, very sweet. The bamboo seemed
to suck up the smoke. Silver doesn't, and I've got to clean it out
now and then, that's a great deal of trouble, but I smoke it for the
old man's sake. He must have made a good thing out of me, but he
always gave me clean mats and pillows, and the best stuff you could
get anywhere.
When he died, his nephew Tsin-ling took up the Gate, and he called
it the "Temple of the Three Possessions;" but we old ones speak of
it as the "Hundred Sorrows," all the same.
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