precipitate; but in no way disconcerted, he sends his colleague off to some place best known to themselves, for a fresh supply of packets. We now return to the four men who provided themselves with morphia two or three minutes ago. We find them sitting in a ring round another fellow who we learn is the operator. He possesses a hypodermic syringe. Let us take and examine it. It is not the sort of thing one would expect to find in a chemist’s show-case or a medical man’s pocket-case. This is a weird instrument; the barrel a length of glass tubing; the plunger a bit of knitting needle, whose plunging head consists of tightly wound rag, and whose other end is topped with a conglomerate of sealing wax and sewing thimble. Both joints are lumps of sealing wax, through the lower of which an inch and a half of hollow needle projects. Handing back this septic instrument to the operator, who, by the way, tells us that he gets a copper for every injection he gives, he proceeds to empty the contents of the packets into a small china egg-cup. Adding a modicum of water, and stirring the mixture until a clear solution is formed, he takes up some in the syringe, and one of the expectant waiters draws nearer him. A search is made by the operator for a clear spot on the body of the man, where a dirty needle has not already penetrated and caused a foul sore, and after some search such a spot is found, _on the palm of the hand_, and here the needle is introduced, and the contents of the syringe discharged, after which the man operated on limps away to his place, and lying down, is soon asleep. The next draws near, and having received his share of the dose with the same needle, unsterilized and unwashed, he in turn limps off; and so with the others. Let us hope that the fell, loathesome, unnameable disease, from which one at any rate of the four was too apparently suffering, has not been introduced into the blood of the others by that death-dealing needle! But it is a hope that we cannot think is justified; the means of propagation employed are too certain to admit of any hope! The foul and fetid atmosphere of the crowded room is almost overpowering, in spite of the strong tobacco we smoke in our well-lit pipes, but we will linger a little longer and take a glance at those who are lying around like so many logs. Look at this one of them. What an object lesson he is to impetuous youth! Thin to emaciation; his hair fallen off in tufts; his nose almost eaten away; his body covered with sores and ulcers. There is nothing to wonder at in this being taking morphia to ease his pain of mind and body. Since death will not come, let him have oblivion. It is better so.