t was
mainly to see whether or not the consuls were "helping" that I went down
to Tientsin. There was no need to ask questions or to burrow among
statistics. The opium dens of the concessions were either or they were
not. Accordingly, I set out from the Astor House at nine o'clock one
evening, by rickshaw. For interpreter I had Mr. Sung, the secretary of the
Native Young Men's Christian Association, and with us went a young
Englishman who spoke the language. This test seemed a fair one to apply,
for it was April 23d, nearly five months after Viceroy Yuan's
proclamation, and several weeks after the closing of the last dens in the
native city.

We began with the French concession; and our first glimpses of the
thriving opium business of the little municipality astonished us. The
Taiku Road, the main street, where one finds churches, mission compounds,
offices, and shops, displayed a row of red lights. Our three rickshaws
pulled up at the first and we went in.

An opium den usually takes up one floor of a building. Against the walls
is a continuous wooden platform, perhaps two feet high and extending over
seven or eight feet into the room. This platform is divided at intervals
of five or six feet by low partitions, sometimes but a few inches in
height, into compartments, each of which accommodates two smokers, with
one lamp between them. Sometimes a rug or a bit of matting is laid on this
hard couch, sometimes not; for the Chinaman, accustomed to sleeping on
bricks, prefers his couches hard. A man always lies down to smoke opium;
for the porous pill, which is pressed into the tiny orifice of the pipe,
cannot be ignited, but is held directly over the lamp and the flame drawn
up through it.

The first den we entered was on the second floor of a rickety building. We
climbed the steep, infinitely dirty stairway, crossed a narrow hall, and
opened a door. At first I found it difficult to see distinctly in the dim
light and through the thick blue haze; and the overpowering, sickish fumes
of the drug got into my nose and throat and made breathing a noticeable
effort. There was a desk by the door, behind which sat the keeper of the
den, with a litter of pipes and thimble-like cups before him. In a corner
of the desk was a jar of opium, a thick, sticky substance, dark brown in
colour, in appearance not unlike molasses in January. There were twenty
smokers on the couches, some preparing the pellet of opium by kneading it
and press