EUROPEAN LIFE IN HONGKONG.

IV.

There is an establishment not very far from the Joss-house, which we must go and see, for it is one of the institutions of Hongkong.

The street is narrow, dirty, and crowded with people; it is traversed by streets that are narrower still, and all swarming with dirty women and children, sitting about in the mud. Here is a row of furtive looking houses with the shutters all up, but the doors all open. You catch glimses, as you pass, of drowsy looking people, lying on benches and tables inside, while outside are seated on stools, twenty or thirty Chinese girls, all dressed in clean white clothes, their hair arranged in the English fashion of fifteen or twenty years ago, and decorated with gold combs. Chinese girls did I say? look at them! They are not all Chinese. Look at their faces-this one, and this one, and this one, these are not Chinese! It is dreadful to think it, but help seeing that they have European blood in their veins.

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Here is a shop where cooked meat is sold: there are some crisp looking delicately browned hind quarters hanging up. What are they?-not mutton, they are too small-nor sucking pig, they are too large-look closer, and you will see, at the end of the tail, a tuft of black hair. It is roast dog!

Here is the house we are looking for. It is one of a block of six, larger in size than other houses in the street, and having an enormous lantern over the entrance. Just within the doorway on the right hand side, is a small altar -a little niche in the wall with crimson paper pasted on it bearing an inscription about a "happy and virtuous doorkeeper." This is the altar of the household god of the establishment. Lighted Joss sticks are burning before it, a pot of incense smoulders near, a bundle of candles hangs close at hand, and a heap of paper silver lies ready to be sacrificed. On each side of the altar is a scroll; on one is inscribed, "The golden branch is now sprouting," on the other, "The silver tree is now opening into flower." Seated near is a Chinaman reading an abominable romance. This, no doubt, is the happy and virtuous doorkeeper referred to on the altar.

A flight of six or eight steps runs across the hall, and at the top, there is a carved screen upon which is hung a black signboard with the inscription in raised and gilt characters "Good Luck!"

Turning to the right we enter a small room about ten feet square with whitewashed walls having one or two printed notices pasted on them. There is perfect stillness except a very soft iss-iss-iss, and this stillness surprises you, for there is a crowd of thirty or forty coolies in the room, all standing motionless upon stools, gazing intently at something in the centre of the crowd.

You are about to be initiated into the mysteries of one of the latest addition to the list of the glorious institutions of your country. This is a licensed gambling house.

A place is cleared for you, and you stand upon a stool at the end of a kind of table or platform, about three and-a-half feet high, six feet long, and three feet broad, covered with a piece of matting. On the left hand side stands the banker, near him is a tray filled with dollars, smaller coins, and little packets of broken silver, and he has a supply of bank notes in a drawer. On the table in front of him is a square slab of pewter. The sides of this slab are called one, two, three, and four respectively. The players are staking, and I will bet on number three. I give my dollar to the banker, and he places it on that side of the slate called number three, over a Chinese playing card. He does not know the names of the players, and, in order to maintain their separate individualities he deals to each one a playing card, and regards them in his own mind, during the game, not as Ho Kee, Poh Kee, Wan Kee, or Fum, but as such and such a number of such and such a suit.

Before we began to stake, a man seated at the other end of the table took, from a large heap of bright clean Chinese cash before him, a double handful, which he placed in a smaller heap upon the table and covered with a pewter cup. When all have staked, he takes off the cup, and, this done, no more stakes can be made. Now, with a long chop stick, he draws four cash from the heap, and then four more, and then four more, and so on, until the last complete four have been drawn out and only three remain, and I have won! The banker takes up all the stakes on the one, two and four sides of the pewter slab first, and then he pays the winners. I receive back my dollar and three dollars besides, less seven per cent, the banker's commission, so that I win two dollars seventy-nine cents.

The question in the game is,-what number of cash will remain, when all on the heap have been counted in fours-whether the remainder will be one, two, three, or none. If none remain, then four is accounted the winning number. The chances are therefore three to one against the player, but, when the player wins, he wins three times his stake, so that the game is even so far; but the banker deducts seven per cent from the players' winnings, and this throws the chances, on the whole, seven per cent against the player. That the bank wins, and wins largely, in the long run, is sufficiently proved by the fact that some twenty thousand dollars a month are paid to the Government for the gambling licenses. These large profits are derived, almost entirely, from the losses of poor coolies, who, having earned a few cents, go to the gambling house and play until their money is all gone. All day long, the gambling houses are filled with such persons, while at night people who can play higher stakes, present themselves-not at night only, for there are some here now. Look above your head; there is a kind of gallery round the room, made by cutting a large hole in the floor of the room above, and putting a rail round