Page:The Californian volume 1 issue 1.djvu/1



"Alcohol is for the brutish body, opium for the divine spirit," said Tong-ko-lin-sing,'as he lighted the lamp. "The bliss from wine grows and wanes as the body has its time of growth and loss, but that from opium stays at one height, as the soul knows no youth nor age." He brought the jar of black paste, rounded up by layer on layer of poppy petals. "Opium soothes, collects, is the friend alike of rich or poor. It has power to prove to the sinner that his soul is pure, and make the unhappy forget; it reverses all unpleasant things, like the phonograph, playing a piece of music backward.' He handed me the pipe—flute-like, fit instrument for the divine music of dreamland, though clumsy bamboo—the earthen bow! with the rich coloring of much smoking, like a Chinaman himself. "Dead faces look on us, and dead voices call, for the soul then gains its full stature, can mix with the immortals, and does; when alone and in silence, it can know that Time and Space have no bounds." He took a wire, which he dipped in the jar and held in the flame. " Strangest of all is the power of opium to form as well as repeat, even from odds and ends in our minds. There are herbs which inspire, those which destroy, and those which heal. The Siberian fungus benumbs the body and not the mind, the Himalayan and the New Granadan thorn-apple brings spectral illusions: why should there not be those which may cast prophetic spells?" The few drops of the paste clinging to the wire bubbled and burned. He smeared it on the rim of the pipe-bowl. "Opium has the power of a god; it can efface or renew the Past, and ignore or foretell the Future."

I drew three or four whiffs of whitish smoke; the bowl was empty. Again he went through the long course of filling. "Though it bring dream within dream, like our Chinese puzzles—mark their meaning, for our Chinese saying is, 'The world's nonsense is the sense of God!'"

I heard. I knew him for my queer teacher of Chinese, who knew French, English, and Sanscrit as well, whom I was wont to muse over here in "Chinatown," as over a relic, until oppressed with thought of the age of his country, until San Francisco seemed a town built of a child's toy-houses, and ours but a gad-fly race. I knew the room with its odd urns and vases, fans and banners, some of the last with stain which shows the baptism of human blood, given to make them lucky in war; the china and bronze gods, ugly and impossible as nightmare visions; the table with lamp and pot of tar-like paste, my Chinese grammar, and paper and ink; the other table with its jar of sweetmeats, covered with classical quotations, basket of queer soft-shelled nuts, and bottle of Sam-Shoo ricebrandy; the much-prized gift, a Lianchau coffin, standing up in the corner; the mantel-piece with Tong-ko-lin-sing's worn lot of books, where the great poet, Lintsehen, leaned on Shakspeare, Sakuntala stood beside Paul and Virginia, Robinson Crusoe nudged Confucius Vol. I.—1.