It suggested all kinds of
tragedies, and no doubt its invention had behind it some treacherous
impulse. The writer ventured to purchase it, but he hastens to
announce to his friends that his purposes are good and innocent.
Though in the same category as the sword or dagger hidden in a
walking-stick or a concealed weapon, this bloodthirsty knife will
repose harmlessly in its fan-case like a sleeping babe in his cradle.
A Chinese boarding house next claimed our inspection. It was rather a
forbidding place, but no doubt the Chinaman was well content with its
accommodations. It was a long, rambling structure, and it seemed to me
as if I were going through an underground passage in walking from room
to room. The various halls were narrow, indeed so narrow that two
persons meeting in them could not without difficulty pass each other.
The beds, which brought a dollar a month, were one above another in
tiers or recesses in the walls. Generally a curtain of a reddish hue
depended in front of them. They reminded one of the berths in a ship
or of the repositories of the dead in the Roman Catacombs.
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