Besides, they are all
torn and dirty, like the mats, and old Fung-Tching is dead. He died a couple of
years ago, and gave me the pipe I always use now--a silver one, with queer
beasts crawling up and down the receiver-bottle below the cup. Before that, I
think, I used a big bamboo stem with a copper cup, a very small one, and a
green jade mouthpiece. It was a little thicker than a walking-stick stem, and
smoked sweet, very sweet. The bamboo seemed to suck up the smoke. Silver
doesn't, and I've got to clean it out now and then, that's a great deal of
trouble, but I smoke it for the old man's sake. He must have made a good thing
out of me, but he always gave me clean mats and pillows, and the best stuff you
could get anywhere.
When he died, his nephew Tsin-ling took up the Gate, and he called it the
"Temple of the Three Possessions;" but we old ones speak of it as the "Hundred
Sorrows," all the same. The nephew does things very shabbily, and I think the
Memsahib must help him. She lives with him; same as she used to do with the old
man. The two let in all sorts of low people, niggers and all, and the Black
Smoke isn't as good as it used to be. I've found burnt bran in my pipe over and
over again. The old man would have died if that had happened in his time.
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