Ao association has been formed here called the "Self-governing Association" (BB ®) by order of the Central Government. It is supposed to be somewhat analogons to our home, "city and county councils," but what its daties are no one seems to know; and from all accounts, least of all, the man' who was sent down to start it, Tls, 40,000 have been set _tpart to start the Association, and all that has been done so far, is the opening of @ school to instruct several hundred young men how to start sim sociations in every prefecture and subprefecture" in the Province. They are to graduate in three months What good will result one cannot tell. Sensible people are not very sanguine We have moved slightly. All our dens are shut and secret ones are quickly closed and their owners pani ed. I have it on sure evidence that smokers have decreased enormously. Asa sign of this, I might say that the smoking apparatus of the better class, which ased to cost $5, can now be had for fifty cents. Many have broken off the habit and young men are not cage to pick it up. Bat alas we, Hongkong, have an opium farm. A rich pawnbroker has the whole of the opium taxes in the province in his hands, and he licenses shops all over the place to sell the raw material, and no one has any difficulty in buying it. This man makes thirty or forty thousand taels yearly over the transaction, xo it is said, and is detested by the better classes. Licensing the smokers has been postponed indefinitely, so we hare some way to travel yet.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.