inally die, most commonly of diarrhoea
induced by the use of opium."

When a man has got himself into this condition, he must have opium, and
must have it all the time. I have already pointed out that opium-smoking
not only is perhaps the most expensive of the vices, but that, unlike
opium-eating, it consumes an immense amount of time. Few smokers can keep
slaves to fill their pipes for them, like that wealthy official at
Shau-ying. It takes a seasoned smoker from fifteen minutes to half an hour
to prepare a pipe to his satisfaction, smoke it, and rouse himself to
begin the operation again. If he smokes ten or twenty pipes a day, which
is common, and then sleeps off the effects, it is not hard to figure out
the number of hours left for business each day. When he has slept, and the
day is well started, his body at once begins to clamour for more opium. He
must begin smoking again, or he will suffer an agony of physical and
mental torture. His ten to twenty pipes a day will cost him from fifty
cents or a dollar (if he is a poor man and smokes the scrapings from the
rich man's pipe), to ten or twenty dollars (or more, if he smokes a high
grade of opium). I learned of many wealthy merchants and officials who
smoke from forty to sixty pipes a day.

It is just at this period, when the smoker is so enslaved by the drug that
he has lost his earning power, that his opium expenditure increases most
rapidly. He is buying opium now, not so much to gratify his selfish vice,
as to keep himself alive. He becomes frantic for opium. He will sell
anything he has to buy the stuff. His moral sense is destroyed. A
diseased, decrepit, insane being, he forgets even his family. He sells his
bric-a-brac, his pictures, his furniture. He sells his daughters, even his
wife, if she has attractions, as slaves to rich men. He tears his house to
pieces, sells the tiles of his roof, the bricks of his walls, the woodwork
about his doors and windows. He cuts down the trees in his yard and sells
the wood. And at last he crawls out on the highway, digs himself a cave in
the loess (if he has strength enough), and prostrates himself before the
camel and donkey drivers, whining, chattering, praying that a few copper
cash be thrown to him.

Since there are no statistics in China, I can give the reader only the
observations and impressions of a traveller. But Shansi Province is full
of ruins. So are Szechuan and Yunnan and Kuei-chow, and half a dozen
others.