The ''heathen Chinese" is none too good to begin with, but when he becomes addicted to the Indian drug he seems to lose many of those characteristics which recommend him to the respect and esteem of the European. My own experience is that lying prevails to an unusual degree among: this class. The habit is often attended with the entire loss of shamefacedness and certainly the trend is downgrade.
The question is often asked, what do the Chinese think of opium? On the continent if a man has wine daily on his table he defends the habit. If a Kentuckian makes Bourbon whiskey, he argues thnt the distillery is legalized. Not so the Chinese with their favourite pipe. They consider the use of opium as a vice and a vice of the deepest die. Even were ti Protestant missionary disposed to baptist moderate smokers, its use is so generally condemned, that it would be considered by the h-ation a disgrace to the church to have men of this class within the fold. Their only defence is: ' You, " teacher from the West, exhort men to be virtrious and you sell poison to our people. They say: "Your words are very plausible but we look at your actions. You bring Christianity and opium; are we to jud: the one by the direful effects of the other?
Opium is making havoc in this old land. It has lulled the conscience of the country to sleep. As the craving increases, ideas of principle diminish. The craving has a tremendous grip and opium becomes the one thing needful for life. Men, and they ure not a for, become fiends, and mortgage their wives and sell their daughters for a roll of silver so that they may pass a few happy hours in the opium den.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.