William Hepworth Dixon, White Conquest: Volume 2

[264] by a string of mats, or shelved in tiers all round the walls. Shelves are preferred, since no one cares to pay for privacy; and a room that will only sleep six or seven in sections may be got to sleep a dozen on shelves. From vault to attic, each room is foul with smoke, and black with dirt, and choked with men.

No less than fifteen hundred ghastly creatures find a lodging day and night in this Chinese paradise!

Rooms crowded and unwholesome I have seen before-at a feast in Einsiedeln, a mad-house in Naples, an emigrant ship at Liverpool, a barrack on the Nile-but nowhere have I seen human creatures packed and crushed as these tenants of the Globe Hotel are packed and crushed. Lee Si Tut lets his house, he says, to eight hundred tenants; which would give him, in a house of sixty rooms, including cellars and lofts, thirteen tenants to each chamber; but the rascals cheat him, he alleges, out of half his rent, by sub-letting their shelves to men who occupy them only half the day. Enquiry shows me that this story of subletting and dividing the room is strictly true. Ki Wgok lets his shelf to LI Ho;