He was “happy and dreamin’,” the detective told us.  I do wonder what about, don’t you, Mamma?  The next had just begun to smoke, and was angry at our entrance because we let in some air!  The detectives made him give us the pipe to smell, and we watched the way it was smoked, the man looking sullen and fierce and resentful, crouching like a beast ready to spring.  So Valerie’s brother and Gaston both thought it their duty to take care of me.  The next man was half asleep, also smoking, and the fourth what they call “quite sick.”  He was the most dreadful of all, as he might have been a corpse except for the rising and falling of his chest.  The Mayor told us, with the most amusing reflections upon this serious subject, that he would lie like that for forty-eight hours and then wake.  A fearful looking creature crouched by the stove, cooking some more dog, or preparing something for the opium; and a glaring piece of scarlet cloth hung down from a rail at the top.  There were some wicked long knives lying about, and the whole thing, lit up by the light of one lantern, was a grim picture of horror I shall never forget and hope never to see again.  And this is called pleasure!  What a mercy, Mamma, our idea of joy is different.  I am glad to have seen these strange things, but I never want to again.

Everyone’s head swam from the smell of the opium, and Tom said he was rather sorry he had let us go there because of that; but Octavia told him not to be ridiculous; experience is what we had come to America for, and this is one of the sights.

After that we just had fun, going to a joss-house to have our fortunes told, where a quaint priest and acolyte went through all sorts of comic mysteries, and finally paired Octavia off with one of the detectives for her fate! (Tom was furious!) and me with Valerie’s brother, and Gaston looked in despair at that!  Then after buying curiosities at the curio shop, we returned to the automobiles and went to Delmonico’s to supper.  But the opium had got into our brains I think, for we could only tell gruesome stories, and all felt “afraid to go home in the dark!”

And now, Mamma, in case you have been worrying over us going into awful places, I may as well tell you that at the end of supper our host informed us that the whole show of the opium den had been got up for our benefit, and was not the real thing at all!!!  But whether this is true or no I can’t say; if it was “got up” it was awfully well done, and I don’t want to see any realler.

We can’t get enough “drawing-rooms” on the train for everybody to-morrow, so Octavia and I shall have one, and the senator and either Tom or the Vicomte the other, and whoever is left out will have to sleep in the general place.  I believe it is too odd, but I will tell you all about it when I have seen it.—­If Harry writes to you and asks about me, just say I am enjoying myself awfully, and say I am thinking of becoming a naturalised American!  That ought to bring him back at once.  I have been dying to cable and make it up with him, but of course as I have determined not to, I can’t.  I am sorry to hear Hurstbridge got under the piano and then banged the German Governess’s head as she tried to pull him out; but what can you expect, Mamma?  His temper is the image of Harry’s.