The place was vast, naked, dreary; its court a barn, its galleries stalls for human horses.

The cadaverous, half nude varlets that served in the establishment had nothing of poetry in their appearance, nothing of romance, nothing of Oriental splendor.

They shed no entrancing odors -- just the contrary.

Their hungry eyes and their lank forms continually suggested one glaring, unsentimental fact--they wanted what they term in California "a square meal." I went into one of the racks and undressed.

An unclean starveling wrapped a gaudy table-cloth about his loins, and hung a white rag over my shoulders.