under
which vast, populous China groans. One who has never visited an opium
shop can have no conception of the fatal fascination that holds its
victims fast bound--mind, heart, soul and conscience, all absolutely
dead to every impulse but the insatiable, ever-increasing thirst for
the damning poison. I entered one of these dens but once, but I
can never forget the terrible sights and sounds of that "place of
torment." The apartment was spacious, and might have been pleasant
but for its foul odors and still fouler scenes of unutterable woe--the
footprints of sin trodden deep in the furrows of those haggard faces
and emaciated forms. On all four sides of the room were couches
placed thickly against the walls, and others were scattered over
the apartment wherever there was room for them. On each of these lay
extended the wreck of what was once a man. Some few were old--all were
hollow-eyed, with sunken cheeks and cadaverous countenances; many were
clothed in rags, having probably smoked away their last dollar;
while others were offering to pawn their only decent garment for an
additional dose of the deadly drug. A decrepit old man raised
himself as we entered, drew a long sigh, and then with a half-uttered
imprecation on his own folly proceeded to refill his pipe. This he did
by scraping off, with a five-inch steel needle, some opium from the
lid of a tiny shell box, rolling the paste into a pill, and then,
after heating it in the blaze of a lamp, depositing it within the
small aperture of his pipe. Several short whiffs followed; then the
smoker would remove the pipe from his mouth and lie back motionless;
then replace the pipe, and with fast-glazing eyes blow the smoke
slowly through his pallid nostrils. As the narcotic effects of the
opium began to work he fell back on the couch in a state of silly
stupefaction that was alike pitiable and disgusting. Another smoker,
a mere youth, lay with face buried in his hands, and as he lifted his
head there was a look of despair such as I have seldom seen. Though so
young, he was a complete wreck, with hollow eyes, sunken chest and a
nervous twitching in every muscle. I spoke to him, and learned that
six months before he had lost his whole patrimony by gambling, and
came hither to quaff forgetfulness from these Lethean cups; hoping, he
said, to find death as well as oblivion. By far the larger proportion
of the smokers were so entirely under the influence of the stupefying
poison as