and thieves, meet on perfect equality in
New-court, and there smoke themselves into
dreamy pleasant stupefaction.

There is a little colony of Orientals in the
centre of Bluegate-fields, and in the centre of
this colony is the opium divan. We reach
it by a narrow passage leading up a narrow
court, and easily gain admission on
presenting ourselves at its door. Yahee is of great
age, is never free from the influence of opium,
but sings, tells stories, eats, drinks, cooks, and
quarrels, and goes through the routine of his
simple life, without ever rousing from the
semi-comatose state you see him in now. The curious
dry burning odour, which is making your
eyelids quiver painfully, which is giving your
temples the throbbing which so often predicates
a severe headache, and which is tickling your
gullet as if with a feather and fine dust, is opium.
Its fumes are curling overhead, the air is laden
with them, and the bed-clothes and the rags
hanging on the string above are all steeped
through and through with the fascinating drug.
The livid, cadaverous, corpse-like visage of
Yahee, the wild excited glare of the young
Lascar who opens the door, the stolid sheep-like
ruminations of Lazarus and the other Chinamen
coiled together on the floor, the incoherent
anecdotes of the Bengalee squatted on the bed,
the fiery gesticulations of the mulatto and the
Manilla-man who are in conversation by the
fire, the semi-idiotic jabber of the negroes
huddled up behind Yahee, are all due to the same
fumes. As soon as we are sufficiently acclimatised
to peer through the smoke, and after the
bearded Oriental who makes faces and passes
jibes at, and for the company, has lighted a small
candle in our honour, we see a sorry little
apartment, which is almost filled by the French
bedstead, on which half a dozen coloured men
are coiled long-wise across its breadth, and
in the centre of which is a common japan tray
and opium lamp. Turn which way you will, you
see or touch opium smokers. The cramped little
chamber is one large opium-pipe, and inhaling
its atmosphere partially brings you under the
pipe's influence. Swarthy sombre faces loom out
of dark corners, until the whole place seems
alive with humanity; and turning to your guides
you ask, with strange puzzlement, who Yahee's
customers are, where they live, and how they
obtain the wherewithal for the expensive luxury
of opium smoking? But Booboo on the bed
there is too quick for you, and, starting up, shouts
out, with a volubility which is astounding, considering
his half-dead condition a few seconds
before, full particulars concerning himself, his
past, his future, and the grievance he unjustly
labours under now. First, though, of the drug
he smokes. "You see, sar, this much opium,
dam him, smoke two minutes, sar—no more.
Him cost four pennies—him dam dear, but him
dam good. No get opium at de Home, sar
(the Home for Asiatics); so come to Yahee for
small drunk, den go again to Home and sleep
him, sar. Yes, me live at de Home, sar—
me ship's steward—Bengalee—no get opium
good as dis, except to Yahee, sar. Four
pennies, you und'stand, make smoke two
minutes, no more; but him make better drunk as
tree, four, five glasses rum—you Inglesee like
rum drunk, me Bengalee like opium drunk, you
und'stand—try him, sar; he much good."

Thus Booboo, who is a well-dressed Asiatic,
in a clean shirt, and with a watch chain of great
strength and massiveness. He has been without
a ship for five months; has just engaged to
go on board one on Monday; shows me the
owner's note for four pounds, and complains
bitterly that they won't change it at the Home,
or give him up his box. "Me owe them very
leetle, sar, very small piece; me there five
months, and pay long time, and now they say
you give us money, and we no give you change."
Booboo looks a little dangerous as he brandishes
his opium-pipe; and old Yahee, who is lying on
his back, with his eyes closed and his mouth
open, growls out an incoherent warning to be
calm. Mother Abdallah, who has just looked
in from next door, interprets for us, and we
exchange compliments and condolences with
Booboo. Mother Abdallah is a London lady,
who, from long association with Orientals, has
mastered their habits and acquired their tongue.
Cheeny (China) Emma and Lascar Sal, her
neighbours, are both from home this evening,
but Mother Abdallah does the honours for her
male friends with much grace and propriety—a
pallid wrinkled woman of forty, who prepares
and sells opium in another of the two-roomed
hovels in the court—she confesses to smoking
it, too, for company's sake, or if a friend asks
her to, as yer may say—and stoutly maintains
the healthiness of the habit. "Vy, look at this
'ere court when the fever was so bad. Who 'ad
it? Not them as took opium; not one of 'em,
which well you knows, Mr. Cox," turning to the
handsome, bluff sergeant of police, who has
joined the inspector and myself; "but every one
else, and look at the old gen'elman, there; vy,
he's more nor eighty year old, and 'ardly ever
goes to sleep, bless yer, he don't, indeed; he
sings and tells stories the whole blessed night
through, and is wonderful 'ealthy and clean.
There ain't a cleaner old man than Mr. Yahee,
not in Bluegate-fields, and if you could see him
in the morning a-scrubbin' and washin' his 'ouse
out, and a-rinsing his clothes, it 'ad do your 'art
good. Does everythin' for hisself, buys his own
bits o' fish, and rice, and vegetables, and cooks
and prepares them in the way they like it, don't
he, Chin Chin?" Chin Chin is a Chinaman,
whose face is well known at the West-end, and
who lives by selling tracts and song-books in
the streets. He boards with Yahee, and pays
one shilling a day. Chin Chin proves more
sardonic than communicative, and Mrs. Abdallah
resumes: "The old gen'elman has lived here
these twenty year, and has looked just the same,
and allers done what he's a-doin' of now, made
up the opium as they like it, and had a few of
'em lodging with 'im. I don't pretend to make
it as well as he does, but I've lived here these
dozen year, and naturally have got into many