Opium smoking is increasing all the time and being openly winked at by any authorities that there! fare, "It is no longer thought worth while to try to conceal it and the dens are now wide street for all to see. ashamed or atr any more. Practically every chair and load ea rier now uses it and does not mind saying $0, A few years ago many used it but were ashamed or afraid! to admit it and so denied it. Now they freely admit it and in reckon~ ing the wages they will need to carry a certain stage, they will reckon how many times they need] to smoke opium on the way. This is at least honest but it shows that all pretence of prohibition of opium smoking fs at an end. Thus the country is being ruined and there is. no one to stop it. There is no publ opinion strong enough to effect anything. But then how could anything be done anyway if individual liberty is to be preserved, and not that what the republic stands: for?
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.