William Hepworth Dixon, White Conquest: Volume 2

[255] in America regards San Francisco as his capital and the great joss-house in that city as his temple. Tim, like most of his countrymen, is pious. No joss-house has been raised in the village near Pinos Point, for the fishermen cannot afford the luxury of a priest; but in every shanty on the bluff, we find an image of Buddha on the mantelpiece, just as in every Basque hovel we see a cross, and in every Russ cabin an icon of the Virgin. Poor though he be, each Mongol keeps a small cup of tea simmering and a few spikes of cedar-wood burning in front of his joss. “Man better go, alleesame,” says Ah Tim, “without his rice and opium, than leavee joss without his tea and cedar-wood, all-ee-same, no.”

In one tenement five or six men are sitting down to dinner — a mess of cabbage boiled in tallow, flanked by a little fried shell-fish-each moon-face with his chop-sticks in his hand. Before sitting down they look to the joss, and see that his tea is warm. On rising from their meal they light a few cedar matches and leave them to burn out; but they do these acts of worship without delicacy and reverence, showing nothing of that awe which