"a disaster
which had no parallel in the history of human misery" would have reached
our ears.

In the long street already mentioned as extending from Bankipore to
Patna is situated the government opium manufactory and warehouse. March
and April are the months in which opium is made: at the time of my visit
it was being packed and prepared for shipment to China. The various
buildings are of brick, and the grounds are surrounded by a high wall.
Entering one of the gates, I passed a Sepoy sentinel, and a little
farther on some stone barracks. I then entered one of the largest
buildings, and found about a hundred natives, with a European
superintendent, busily engaged in weighing and packing the drug. The
juice of the poppy-plant is brought in by the farmers from the
surrounding country in stone jars, and has the appearance of thick tar.
It is placed in large tanks, well worked up, and then dried in the sun.
Next, cases are made about six inches in diameter, resembling
cannon-balls, of alternate layers of thin poppy-leaves, of the
poppy-flowers and of the liquid juice, and these are an inch in
thickness. The whole interior is then filled with the viscous fluid, and
the balls are placed to dry in earthenware cups upon immense shelves
with which many entire buildings are filled. The balls weighed two seers
(four pounds), and were worth thirty-two rupees (sixteen dollars) each.
They were packed in long wooden boxes with thin partitions, rolled in
poppy-leaves. There were forty balls in a box, which was worth when
filled twelve hundred and eighty rupees or six hundred and forty
dollars. About three thousand natives were employed in this manufactory.

From Patna I went on to Benares, the Mecca of Hindooism, where for the
space of two weeks I was royally feted by Maharajah Isuree Pershod,
chief of the four great castes of the Hindoos.

FRANK VINCENT, JR.

BEHIND THEIR FANS.

FROM THE FRENCH OF GUSTAVE DROZ.

Last evening I was guilty of a very shameful action. I hid behind a
curtained door and listened to a conversation, and, what makes it still
more unpardonable in me, I cannot help telling you what I heard. It was
this.

I had been at the ball about half an hour when I saw in a corner of the
parlor, through the door which leads into the conservatory, a little
group of three young girls arrayed in billows of white muslin, who were
talking behind their fans with so much animation that it was impossible
not