Life and letters of Joseph Hardy Neesima - Softcover

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1892 Excerpt: ...passengers and 230 steerage. The former consist of eleven different nationalities, i. e., American, English, Belgian, French, Austrian, Prussian, Polish, Italian, Irish, Chinese, and Japanese, and the latter chiefly of Chinese. There are quite a number of opium smokers among the Chinese, and six of them died since we left San Francisco. Is it not a dreadful thing? It is a great curse to the Chinese. Woe unto them who first introduced it to that empire. These opium smokers are not allowed to smoke anywhere, but are compelled to smoke in a large box, the inside of which is lined with tin, once used for keeping ice in. Those who died were mostly aged men. I saw there a man who has not been out of that box since we left San Francisco. He is lying there day and night, and has scarcely taken anything-except that deadly poison. 1 have not formed any special acquaintances among the passengers beside our missionary friends except a German doctor who is going to be a professar in the Imperial Medical School at Yedo, and to whom I give Japanese lessons every day. Our missionaries are obliged to suspend its study on account of seasickness. The sea has lately been very rough; even I who professed to be a good sailor have been ill this week on account of the unceasing up and down motions. I have read through Eitel's Lectures on Buddhism and some other books, and am intending to write a Japanese sermon. I have observed among the passengers that they form different societies. The smokers go together as they were real and congenial friends, and so do the drinkers. The Germans get up a beer party every evening, and so do the English their rum party. Here is one gentleman, who leans on an umbrella wherever he goes, who is intending simply to go round the world before he dies....