pium into China; and not without reason does Lord Charles
Beresford, in his book "The Break-up of China," say: "Thus,
indirectly the Hong Kong government derives a revenue by fostering
an illegitimate trade with a neighbouring and friendly Power, which
cannot be said to redound to the credit of the British Government. It
is in direct opposition to the sentiments and tradition of the laws of
the British Empire." It was here in Chinatown, in San Francisco, that
I was brought face to face with the havoc that is made through the
opium trade and the use of the pernicious drug in eating and smoking.
I was told that Europeans and Americans sometimes sought the
opium-joints for the purpose of indulgence in the vice of smoking.
Even women were known to make use of it in this way. The old man whom
I visited was lying on his left side, with his head slightly raised
on a hard pillow covered with faded leather. He took the pipe in his
right hand, the other, as I have already said, having been cut off in
the mines. Then he laid down the pipe by his side with the stem near
his mouth. The next movement was to take a kind of long rod, called a
dipper, with a sharp end and a little flattened. This he dipped in
the opium which had the consistency of thick molasses. He twisted the
dipper round and then held the drop which adhered to it over the lamp,
which was near him. He wound the dipper round and round until the
opium was roasted and had a brown colour. He then thrust the end of
the dipper with the prepared drug into the opening of the pipe, which
was somewhat after the Turkish style with its long stem. He next held
the bowl of the pipe over the lamp until the opium frizzled. Then
putting the stem of the pipe in his mouth he inhaled the smoke, and
almost immediately exhaled it through the mouth and nostrils. While
smoking he removed the opium, going through the same process as
before, and it all took about fifteen minutes. What the old man's
feelings were he did not tell us, but he seemed very contented, as if
then he cared for nothing, as if he had no concern for the world and
its trials. But one must read the graphic pages of Thomas De Quincey
in his "Confessions of an English Opium Eater," in order to know what
are the joys and what the torments of him who is addicted to the use
of the pernicious drug. It was while De Quincey was in Oxford that he
came under its tyranny. At first taken to allay neuralgic pain, and
then resorted to as