more rapidly than by war, pestilence and famine."

Nothing is clearer than that a rapidly increasing multitude in this
country, once remarkable for its sobriety and thrift, are rushing
headlong into the disastrous vice of intemperance and its attendant
horrors, almost without check. Something must be done. We cannot
cold-bloodedly abandon them to a gospel of despair.


_(b) The Opium Slaves._

Darker still perhaps is the dreadful night, and more sickening the
miasma, which lies around the opium creeks, multiplying and increasing
and slowly sucking down into their slimy depths thousands upon thousands
of those who dare to seek momentary relief from sorrow in its lethal
stream. Mr. Caine thus describes an opium den in Lucknow:--

"Enter one of the side rooms. It has no windows and is very dark,
but in the centre is a small charcoal fire whose lurid glow lights
up the faces of nine or ten human beings, men and women, lying on
the floor. A young girl some fifteen years of age has charge of each
room, fans the fire, lights the opium pipe, and holds it in the
mouth of the last comer, till the head falls heavily on the body of
his or her predecessor. In no East-end gin palace, in no lunatic or
idiot asylum, will you see such horrible destruction of God's image
in the face of man, as appears in the countenances of those in the
preliminary stage of opium drunkenness! Here you, may see some
handsome young married woman, nineteen or twenty years of age,
sprawling, on the ground, her fine brown eyes flattened and dull
with coming, stupor; and her lips drawn convulsively back from her