How do these people get their supplies? Let us go into a morphia den unofficially, and take a glance at it in all its sordidity. We draw aside a filthy sheet of cloth which does service as a curtain, and enter a room about twenty feet square. It is dim almost to darkness; but at the farther end, opposite the entrance door, we notice a wooden partition which has a locked door in it, and near it a hole not unlike the window of a box or ticket office. Through this hole a light is seen, so we presume that there is someone behind the locked door in the partitioned-off portion of the room. Looking round us, we see a row of human figures, clad in the foulest rags, lying along the two sides of the room, near the walls. Some are apparently asleep; actually, they are drugged, overcome by the last injection of morphia. Others are about to make themselves comfortable for a sleep, having just had an injection; while some, too poor to afford the cost of another dose, are groaning and whimpering with the combined agonies of some painful disease, and the wearing off of the effects of the last injection. These accost everybody that enters the den for the price of “just one little injection.” They appeal to those who have endured the same pangs with which these unfortunates are wracked. The appeal is to a real, live sympathy; and if it can be spared, the required money is handed over. One of these beings has not appealed in vain to a fellow votary who has just entered the den in company with two companions, and the four make their way to the hole in the partition, and in exchange for the coppers handed in, a skinny hand passes out four little paper packets, each one containing a dose of morphia powder. Let us peep through the hole, and look at the owner of the skinny hand before following the four to the place to which they have retired. It is a Chinaman, characteristically lean, sitting at a rough table on which is a cigar box filled with paper packets similar to those we saw being handed to the late purchasers. The red and green ones contain morphia, the white cocaine (for he caters for both classes, the injecters of morphia, and eaters of cocaine). Looking up at the hole, he sees us, and thinking we are either excise or police officers, he hastily gathers up his wares, and rushing to the sanitary arrangement in the corner of his cubicle, empties them into the receptacle, and pulling the chain, flushes away the incriminating evidences of his occupation. Being assured that they are well on their way to the sea through the sewer, he turns towards us with a “smile that is child-like and bland,” and explains that he has “got nothing—all gone—you can’t do nothing.” We explain that we had no intention of doing anything, and were merely curious. Recollecting that he had heard no call from his ever watchful colleague who stands by to give timely warning in the event of a raiding party coming in sight, he admits that he has been