and dull
with coming, stupor; and her lips drawn convulsively back from her
glittering white teeth. Here is a young girl sitting among a group
of newly arrived customers singing some romance. As they hand round
the pipes there is a bonny little lad of six or seven watching his
father's changing face with a dreadful indifference.

"At night these dens are crowded to excess, and it is estimated that
there are upwards of twelve thousand persons in Lucknow enslaved by
this hideous vice. An opium sot is the most hopeless of all
drunkards. Once in the clutches of the fiend, everything gives way
to his fierce promptings. His victims only work to get more money
for opium. Wife, children, home, health, and life itself are
sacrificed to this degrading passion."

If twelve thousand for Lucknow be a fair estimate, can we put the
figures for the whole country at less than 100,000?

Still there is a deeper depth. In the same city, says Mr. Caine, there
are ninety shops for the sale of Bhang and Churras. "Bhang," says the
same writer, "is the most horrible intoxicant the world has ever
produced. In Egypt its importation and sale is absolutely forbidden, and
a costly preventive service is maintained to suppress the smuggling of
it by Greek adventurers. When an Indian wants to commit some horrible
crime such as murder, he prepares himself for it with two annas' worth
of Bhang."

_(c) Prostitution._

In the all but impenetrable shades and death-breathing swamps of this
social forest, lie and suffer and rot probably not less than one hundred
thousand prostitutes. Multitudes of these are dedicated to such a life
in childhood, given over to it, in some cases by their parents and not
unfrequently kept in connection with the temples. Thousands are searched
for and persuaded and entrapped by old women, whose main business it is
to supply the market. We know of at least one village where beautiful
children, who have been decoyed or purchased from their parents by
these prostitute-hunters, are taken to be reared and trained for the
profession. In Bombay there is actually a caste in which the girls are
in early childhood "married to the dagger," or, in other words,
dedicated to a life of prostitution. In some of the cities old men are
employed as touts to secure customers for the women, who remain in their
haunts, thus seducing and leading into vice crowds of lads and young men
who might ot