Chapter I: The Chinese Opium-Smoker

No. 1.

The incipient opium-smoker is reclining (as is usual) on a couch in
his mansion, while his companion is indulging in tobacco through the
water-pipe common in China.

No. 2.

The opium-smoker, still portly and well-dressed, is entreated by
his poor wife on bended knees to desist from the disastrous habit.
His child is running off with the dreaded pipe; while the aged
grandmother is seen coming, leaning on her staff, to add her tears
and entreaties--now for the first time proved to be powerless. The
hold of the pipe is already established; interest, duty, affection,
reputation--all prove too feeble to arrest the downward career of the
smoker. Sad indeed is the prospect; the husband is already doomed to
poverty, shame, and an early grave; his wife to ruin, his child to
beggary. His mother will die of a broken heart.

No. 3.

Representing the progress in dissipation of the once sober gentleman,
who has now, alas! become the victim of this vice. To him day has
now become night, and night day. He can no longer sleep at night;
and to banish the tedium of its long quiet hours, and to drown
thought of the sure ruin awaiting him, becomes an absolute necessity.
Regardless, therefore, alike of entreaty and censure, he now openly
introduces into his house singing men and women, and gives himself up
to their society. His books, formerly the companions of his choice,
now lie unheeded on his table, and will not long retain even their
place there. As for his poor family, powerless to prevent, or even
retard, the downward progress of events, they can only consult their
own safety by keeping altogether out of sight.

No. 4.

All trace of literary occupation is now gone: the opium scales have
taken the place of the classics. In the foreground a servant is
preparing extract of opium, for crude opium is never smoked. Before
the portable stove stands a small bucket of water, and a little
charcoal lies on the ground beside it. The opium is boiled in water,
and filtered; and the dregs are again boiled, till all the soluble
matter is extracted. The watery solutions are then boiled down to the
consistency of treacle, when it is ready for use.

At the table, by her husband, the wife of the smoker sits with
pencil in hand, and with a long strip of paper before her. Now she
needs to augment the family income. Happy is the wife who in these
circumstances is able to execute Indian-ink drawings, or to write out
ornamental quotations from the classics.

No. 5.

Creditors will no longer forbear. Either the habit must at once and
for ever be given up, or all hope of retaining possession of the
ancestral property must be lost. The very graves of the ancestors
join, as it were, in the last appeal of the weeping wife and mother,
and of the weeping child, whose hopes of education, of literary
advancement, and thus of promotion to office, are destroyed by the
baneful narcotic.

The aged mother, now needing the support of a staff, is bringing hot
tea for her son. Will he bring down _her_ grey hairs with sorrow to
the grave? Will he see her turned out, a homeless wanderer, out of
the mansion in which she nursed and tended him when a helpless babe
upon her lap?

No. 6.

It is easy to imagine the feelings of the unfortunate wife, who,
seeing the misery and wretchedness wrought in her once comfortable
home, determines to destroy the whole of the smoking apparatus. The
tray and lamp are dashed upon the floor, a few more moments will see
the destruction of the pipe itself; but the noise has reached the
ears of her lord, who rushes in, and, forgetful of all the teachings
of his great master, Confucius, proceeds to belabour her with the
bamboo stick he has seized for the purpose, in spite of the cries of
their unfortunate child. The entrance of an old and faithful retainer
alone prevents him from inflicting serious injury.

No. 7.

Still lower sinks the opium victim in his miserable career. The
comfort and shelter of his paternal home are now things of the past.
A roof which, from the absence of tiles, can hardly be said to cover,
with at one side some bamboo matting to screen from the blast, and a
mat, arranged to form a shelter, covering the place where meals, when
forthcoming, may be cooked, is all that now remains to him of home.
Surely he will see his folly, and give up the practice which has
wrought him such ruin? _He cannot._ The appetite is perpetuated and
intensified by that upon which it feeds. Without medical aid it would
now probably be impossible to give up the habit, and indulgence in it
has taken away all desire for assistance.

No. 8.

Not much better than the shed in which he lives by day, is the
shelter in which he now spends the night. Somewhat screened by the
garden fence, his bed, supported at one end on a pile of bricks,
at the other on his only remaining stool, is still covered by his
curtains, and his opium lamp is sufficiently sheltered to keep
alight. Most of his clothes have gone to the pawnshop; ere long his
curtains will follow them. His wife and child, the picture of misery,
can only look with hopeless sorrow on the living and half-naked
skeleton of the once portly and well-dressed gentleman. Wealth and
property have gone, clothes and respectability have gone, home and
health have gone, and what remains? Ah, what indeed! There is a
ruined soul in that poor, heartless, wrecked body, almost beyond the
possibility of salvation.

No. 9.

The victim of opium is now a homeless beggar, squatting in some
out-of-the-way corner, and dependent upon charity for a morsel of
bread. His unshaven head well agrees with the general squalor of
his appearance, and the ground is now his only bed and table. His
sole remaining possessions are his opium-pipe and a few earthenware
cooking utensils. Some compassionate person, perhaps a former
farm-servant, is bringing him a small flattened loaf.

No. 10.

Crime too often follows the destitution caused by opium-smoking;
for _at all costs_ opium _must_ be had. Thefts, robberies, or even
murders may result. The wretched culprit may have to flee from
justice, or to make his escape from a neighbourhood which will no
longer tolerate him. The very dogs pursue him. Probably the bucket
in which the wanderer carries his pipe, and the labourer’s hat slung
behind him, are both stolen. Some cave among the hills may shelter
him, or the rocks may shield him from the cutting wind.

No. 11.

The downward course of the opium-smoker is now very rapid. Exposure
to the weather and want of food accelerate the injurious effects
of the opium. No one would think of giving a night’s shelter to a
man whose imperious craving for opium would compel him to rob his
benefactor before morning. Endeavouring to warm himself in the
sunshine, with unshaven head and haggard countenance, the sower
coming with his seed-basket finds him in a sheltered corner of the
field.

No. 12.

Winter draws on apace. The fields supply nothing that the wretched
opium-smoker can eat. All he can beg is insufficient to purchase
that opium without which he could not exist for a single day; he has
therefore exchanged his only shirt for a little opium, to quiet for
a time what an opium-smoker well called “the torments of the hell
within.” All power of enjoyment has long since passed away: now there
is nothing before him but suffering--suffering beyond the grave!
With trembling steps and a shivering frame he seeks the shelter of a
cave among the rocks, in which he will lie down and _die_. Nor is he
alone in his misery; thousands of similar victims are living, dying,
dead--they are to be found everywhere.