I borrow De Quincey's Confessions of an Opium Eater, the aforementioned an account of that singular Oriental vice, whereupon misplacing the volume in transit from the checkpoint, I attempt to capsulize the book's misadventures only to suffer taciturnity on the part of the staff until, the duplicity of a continued numbers game in Chinese wearing thin and with lassitude similar to the opium habit, the Chief Librarian, a girl herself of Eastern domesticity greets my queries with hushed tones and solemnity akin to a leering Siamese or bedridden Cheshire cat. If the rich are different they show it with the clarity of their table as Fitzgerald decried, the breathless hush of their garden regalias…
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