"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 glittering white teeth. Here is a young girl sitting among a group of newly arrived customers singing some romance. As they hand round the pipes there is a bonny little lad of six or seven watching his father's changing face with a dreadful indifference. "At night these dens are crowded to excess, and it is estimated that there are upwards of twelve thousand persons in Lucknow enslaved by this hideous vice. An opium sot is the most hopeless of all drunkards. Once in the clutches of the fiend, everything gives way to his fierce promptings. His victims only work to get more money for opium. Wife, children, home, health, and life itself are sacrificed to this degrading passion." If twelve thousand for Lucknow be a fair estimate, can we put the figures for the whole country at less than 100,000? Still there is a deeper depth. In the same city, says Mr. Caine, there are ninety shops for the sale of Bhang and Churras. "Bhang," says the same writer, "is the most horrible intoxicant the world has ever produced. In Egypt its importation and sale is absolutely forbidden, and a costly preventive service is maintained to suppress the smuggling of it by Greek adventurers. When an Indian wants to commit some horrible crime such as murder, he prepares himself for it with two annas' worth of Bhang." _(c) Prostitution._