The tenement houses in the poorer sections of any great city are a disgrace to modern civilization, but a Chinese tenement house is as much worse than any of these as can be imagined. In one section of the Chinese quarter at San Francisco is a four-story building above ground, with a double basement below, one being under the other, and with an open court extending from the lower basement clear to the roof. In this building, which is jocularly styled by the guides, "The Palace Hotel of the Chinese quarter," and in which a hundred Americans would find difficulty in existing, over a thousand Chinamen live, sleep and eat, all of the cooking being done on a couple of giant ranges in the basement, which is divided up into shops, opium dens and sleeping quarters. In these shops are some clever artisans in brass and ivory, and the locks that are turned out by hand by some of these brass-workers, and made to a great extent on the same principles as the celebrated locks made in this country by the Yale Company, are marvels of workmanship in all of their parts, the joints being as neatly filled in as though turned out by the latest improved machinery, the wonder of it all being that the principles upon which they were made have been known to the Chinese for thousands of years, the Yale locks being apparently nothing but a slight improvement on the original John Chinaman ideas. In the opium dens one sees nothing but squalor and misery. A visit to one of them is a visit to them all, and one visit is generally enough to disgust the seeker after strange sensation, the acrid smell of the smoke and the noisome stench of the close rooms being almost unbearable. The Joss Houses, in which are hideous idols before which tapers and incense are constantly burning, and the Chinese theaters, with their never-ending performances, are all strange sights in their way, and sights that are well worth the taking in. The Chinese quarter is a blot on the fair name of San Francisco, however, and leaving it one wonders how and why it has ever been allowed to grow into its present huge proportions. The memories of these after-dark trips still linger with me even now, like the shadow of some dark dream, and yet I am glad that I made them, if only for the purpose of seeing how the other half of the world manages to exist. In company with Tom Daly, Bob Pettit, Harry Palmer and others of the party I enjoyed several horseback rides through the residence and suburban portions of the city, where I found much to wonder at and admire.