Hall, however much we desired to cross its mysterious threshold.  The door was well guarded, and Chinamen passing in had to give assurance that they were entitled to the privilege.  On the night when the detective from Police Headquarters accompanied us we made an attempt to enter a Chinese gambling house.  The entrance even to this was well guarded; although the sentinel unwittingly left the door open for a moment as a Chinaman was passing in.  The detective seeing his opportunity went in boldly and bade us to follow him.  In a few moments all was confusion.  We heard hurrying feet in the adjoining room, and then excited men appeared at the head of the passage way and waved their arms to and fro while they talked rapidly in high tones.  Outside already some fifty men had collected together, and these were also talking and gesticulating wildly.  The detective then said to us that it would be wise to retreat and leave the place lest we might meet with violence.  We did so, but the uproar among the Chinese did not subside for some time.  We pitied the poor sentinel who had allowed us to slip in, for we knew that he would be severely punished after our departure.  The Chinese are noted for their gambling propensities, and there are many gambling houses in Chinatown.  This vice is one of their great pastimes, and whenever they are not engaged in business they devote themselves either to gambling, the amusements of the theatre, the pleasures of the restaurant, or the seductive charms of the opium pipe.

Later in my saunterings I went into a kind of restaurant, where I saw a number of Chinese men and boys playing cards and dominoes and dice.  They went on with the games as if they were oblivious to us.  I noticed there were Chinese coins of small value on the tables, and some of the players were apparently winning while others were losing.  The latter, however, gave no indication that they were in the least degree disappointed.  Of course, as a rule they play after their own fashion, having their own games and methods.  Minister Wu, of Washington, when asked recently if he liked our American games, replied that he did not understand any of them.  No doubt this is true of the majority of Chinamen in the United States.  In thinking of the Chinese and gambling one always recalls Bret Harte’s “Plain Language From Truthful James of Table Mountain,” popularly known as “The Heathen Chinee,” one of the best humorous poems in the English language.  You can fairly see the merry eyes of the author of the “Argonauts of ’49” dancing with pleasure as he describes the game of cards between “Truthful James,” “Bill Nye” and “Ah Sin.”

  “Which we had a small game,
    And Ah Sin took a hand;
  It was euchre:  the same
    He did not understand;
  But he smiled as he sat by the table
  With a smile that was childlike and bland.

  “Yet the cards they were stacked
    In a way that I grieve,
  And my feelings were shocked
    At the state of Nye’s sleeve,
  Which was stuffed full of aces and bowers,
  And the same with intent to deceive.