THE DEN
At last I have been to a Den. The attempt was first made many years ago in Lahore City, where my guide was a young Missionary, who wasted all his time in liking people and making them like him. I have often wondered what he found to convert, and what his financial backers—old ladies in America and England—will have to say upon the results of his labours. He had lived in the Lahore bazaars as a poor man, and as he walked through their intricacies he explained how this became comprehensible, and that pardonable, and that inevitable, so soon as one drew close enough to it to understand. We did interesting things—went into a temple as big as a cupboard where we were allowed to hold the gods and ring the bells, visited a lawyer who was defending a client against the charge of selling a wife—and as the afternoon closed the Missionary said he supposed I should like to include a Den. He remarked that a great deal of rubbish was talked about opium, and he led me to a courtyard, round whose sides were some lean-to's of straw. "Oh! it isn't working," he said with disappointment. He peered about and pulled from a lean-to a solitary sinner. "Look at his eyes," he said. "I'm afraid that's all."
79
