There was a low, dull humming in my ears, a giddiness in my head, and a general sense of faintness and nausea pervading my entire system. “For God’s sake, take me out of this!” I cried, at last; and some time after I realized that I was being walked up and down the sidewalk, the doctor and the colonel supporting me on either side. My head was getting clearer, but I felt deadly ill. The faint, sickening odor of the opium fumes clung around me and oppressed me, and I said as much at last, as I leaned heavily against a lamp-post.
The colonel with his usual enthusiasm exclaimed, “O, yes, I see it; you want a good strong stimulant of some kind to help you get rid of it. Now, I know a Mexican over on the corner of Vallejo Street, who has got some double refined Mescal, which will dissolve a gun-flint in half an hour; one good drink of that will set you all right.”
“Not if I know myself aright!” I remarked, emphatically. “You are the most hospitable people I have ever fallen in with. Your good intentions are unbounded, and your kindness I never can forget, but I don’t want any Mescal to-night. I have made a sufficient number of new acquaintances for one evening. Pisco, Cocomongo, Betel, Samshoo, and Opium, are all very fine in their way, but the new things are crowding each other a little too fast. We will omit the Mescal on this occasion; I want to go home!”
They called a hack, and we rode back to the Occidental in silence. This was my first experience in a San Francisco opium den.
It will also be my last!
Next morning the colonel called on me and said he had forgotten something—an opium den worse than the one we had seen.
“How’s that?” I asked.
LIVING IN A SEWER.
“Why,” said the colonel, “it is an opium den of a very romantic character. Some years ago the line of Jackson Street was changed by the city authorities, and it became necessary to build new sewers. The old sewer was given up, and in the new arrangements it was under some of the buildings occupied by the Chinese. They took possession of it, and hollowed out galleries on either side. The enterprising proprietors converted it into an opium palace, at the popular admission fee of two cents. The accommodations and odors are a hundred-fold worse than those of the place where we were last night. For two cents you can get smells enough to last you a lifetime. Do you want to go?”