CHAPTER IX.
MUSIC, GAMBLING, EATING, THEATRE-GOING In Chinatown--A Musician's Shop--A Secret Society--Gambling Houses--"The Heathen Chinee"-- Fortune-telling--The Knife in the Fan-Case--A Boarding House--A Lesson for Landlords--A Kitchen--A Goldsmith's Shop--The Restaurant--Origin of the Tea-Plant--What a Chinaman Eats--The Tobacco or Opium Pipe--A Safe with Eight Locks--The Theatre--Women by Themselves--The Play--The Stage--The Actors--The Orchestra and the Music--The Audience--A Death on the Stage--The Theatre a Gathering Place--No Women Actors--A Wise Provision--Temptations--Real Acting--Men the Same Everywhere.
The reader will now accompany us to a musician's shop in our wanderings through Chinatown.

This is located in a basement and is a room about fifteen feet wide and some twenty feet deep.

This son of Jubal from the Flowery Kingdom was about fifty-five years old and a very good-natured man.

He received us with a smile, and when he was requested by the guide to play for us he sat down before an instrument somewhat like the American piano, called _Yong Chum_.

The music was of a plaintive character, and was lacking in the melody of a Broadwood or a Steinway.