Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1906-05-04

silk coverings half an inch thick; TOO
exquisite for the lzlnd of man or wom-
an to have doomed them
They looked as though they must
have grown in some magic garden
hanging somewhere in world of
dreams. 1t was a golconda of decora-
tive art, the EldOado of all the crafts
men, and it had taken these smiling,
gentle, subtle people just 5000 years
to achieve It all
And every day after the gentle ladies
| We're gone the night came down and
the lanterns We're lighted and the red
| flare from paper covered windows was
flung in gatudy patches across the black
tunnels oftmyriad streets. Then came
| the men tourists, laundering, heavy
footed and curious. avid for strange
degeneracy, where only the cynicism OF
a thOusandiyears laughed at them with
silent lips. Under the gathering can
delights and smoking lanterns in hun
dredS of Swallowed rooms the hives of
yellow men SUNK silently about, mark
ing their tickets for the fantan games.
listening TO the music of the heaps of
brass tokens that flowed onto the bare
deal tables from big canvas bags. Slip
ping away silently to solace themselves
for their losses with the fumes from
the kissing opium pill that is such
very present help to stodcal philosophy.
On rows of benches, piled like the
hunks in an old ships fo'caStle. where
the air was sweet with the sweet fac
tor of the sucking pipes, the dreAmers
lay building their castles in the clouds,
swimming on golden visions to the
land of everlasting mysteries no man
has ever seen, wrapped in the bliss
that only poppies bring.
And when the trippers with their
guides were gone the tired Chinaman
turned him to his joss and the hidden
vices of a thousand years. The police
men, bribed and coZened to the chin,
lay them down to sleep, while the
Sinking emlSsaries of the warning
tongs went to and fro and up and
down in the land, carrying in their
hands the silent messengers of death.
Women were there of another race,
dreaming on poppies, too, ministered
by the tender hands that caresS and
never smite, but soothe extinction with |
grooming song, and over them hanged |
always the inSoluble mysteries of the |
east
The Chinese Cinnamon of those hours |
between the night and morning were
very, very old; so old that to count |
their years in centuries would be mean
ingless. They We're tired too; weary Of
the futility of philosophy, cynical at all
efforts for further knowledge, having
behind them the histories of lost peo-
pies and vanished ideals that the west.
ern world has never reached.
But they could rise greatly to great
occasions, too, and, on their festivals,
when their prodigious dragon trailed
its enormous length through the mar
row streets, its swinging jaws belch-
ing colored fires, its waving scales
glinting in the sun, they trooped in
long professions, draped in gay raj
ment and filling the air with their
sonorous music that lacked all melody.
That has gone, too with all the rest
that San Francisco knew and loved so
well; gone never to return. They are
saying in Washington that when the
city is rebuilt Chinatown will be ex-
cluded, but that is unnecessary. China
town evolved: 1t was not design.
1t grew with the years where the seeds
were planted by circumstance, and the
mystery and the splendor and the deep
vices that 1t knew have passed forever,
with all the other glories and sins that
are dead and meet for fables.