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He's one of these short-legged, ham-faced gents that's almost as tall when he's sittin' down as when he's standin' up. A neck that takes a No. 18 turn-down collar goes with that. He has his hands in his pockets, an Egyptian joss-stick in his mouth, and he's straddlin' up and down, as satisfied with himself as if he'd just cashed a ticket on the right horse.
Chinatown by a thousand eccentricities drew and held me; I could never have enough of its ambiguous, interracial atmosphere, as of a vitalised museum; never wonder enough at its outlandish, necromantic-looking vegetables set forth to sell in commonplace American shop-windows, its temple doors open and the scent of the joss-stick streaming forth on the American air, its kites of Oriental fashion hanging fouled in Western telegraph-wires, its flights of paper prayers which the trade-wind hunts and dissipates along Western gutters.
But the fool has never lived; life, said Bichat, is the totality of the functions; his past has endured no more organization than his future has; he never understood it; he can make no use of it; so he deifies it, and burns the flying moment like a joss-stick before the wooden image in which he has caricatured all its sweet and beneficent capabilities; as if it were likely that one moment of his existence could be of any more weight than another.
When dowager lady Chia picked up a joss-stick and prostrated herself to perform her devotions, one and all fell simultaneously on their knees, packing up the five-roomed principal pavilion, the inside as well as outside of the three antechambers, the verandahs, the top and bottom of the stairs, the interior of the two vermilion avenues so closely with all their fineries and embroideries that not the slightest space remained vacant among them.
The joss-stick burns, the opium pipe is smoked, the floors are strewn with slips of coloured paper prayers, you would say, that had somehow missed their destination and a man guiding his upright pencil from right to left across the sheet, writes home the news of Monterey to the Celestial Empire. The woods and the Pacific rule between them the climate of this seaboard region.
"At the first moon festival, several persons carried a cracker as large as a room and went out of town to let it off. Over and above ten thousand persons were attracted, and they followed to see the sight. One among them was of an impatient disposition. He could not reconcile himself to wait; so stealthily he snatched a joss-stick and set fire to it. A sound of 'pu-ch'ih' was heard.
If this poor ignorant native burns his joss-stick, makes his offering of a cake, lights a lamp in front of an image, or takes part in any other act which in effect means the lifting up of his soul to something higher and greater than himself that he can now only see through a glass darkly, surely he ought not to be condemned. At any rate I will pass no condemnation on him.
We generally found them in loose morning-gowns, smoking, and cigars were invariably offered us; for this habit appears in Manila to extend to all ranks. Even in the public offices of the custom-house it was the fashion, and cigars, with a machero for striking a light, or a joss-stick kept burning, were usually seen in every apartment.
Every house has its little shrine, and although some superior persons may laugh at the act of burning a joss-stick, or some other trivial act of worship, as merely ignorant superstition, I think the unprejudiced man would look rather at the motive which inspired the act.
The joss-stick burns, the opium-pipe is smoked, the floors are strewn with slips of coloured paper prayers, you would say, that had somehow missed their destination and a man guiding his upright pencil from right to left across the sheet writes home the news of Monterey to the Celestial Empire. The woods and the Pacific rule between them the climate of this seaboard region.
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