To the last conclusion there are many objectors; and this subject has been canvassed as much as any in connection with the habit. Some years ago a trial took place in consequence of the death of the Earl of Mar, who was an opiophagi, and the insurance society on this ground objected to pay the money to his representatives. Dr. Christison, after detailing the facts, adds, “they would certainly tend on the whole rather to show that the practice of eating opium is not so injurious, and an opium-eater’s life not so uninsurable, as is commonly thought.” The result of the above-named trial was that the money had to be paid. Before passing from this Plutonian region, the evidence of a good authority may be taken to show how apt prejudice is to impute even worse effects to the “subtle drug” than circumstances will warrant. An opium den is visited; the members of this convivial society are good-humoured and communicative. “One was a chair-cooly, a second was a petty tradesman, a third was a runner in a mandarin’s yanum; they were all of that class of urban population which is just above the lowest. They were, however, neither emaciated nor infirm. The chair-cooly was a sturdy fellow, well capable of taking his share in the porterage of a sixteen-stone mandarin; the runner seemed well able to run, and the tradesman, who said he was thirty-eight years old, was remembered by all of us to be a singularly young-looking man of his age. He had smoked opium for seven years. As we passed from the opium-dens, we went into a Chinese tea-garden—a dirty paved court, with some small trees and flowers in flower-pots—and a very emaciated and yawning proprietor presented himself. ‘The man has destroyed himself by opium-smoking,’ said an English clergyman who accompanied us. The man being questioned, declared that he had never smoked an opium-pipe in his life,—a bad shot, at which no one was more amused than the reverend gentleman who had fired it. “I only take the experiment for what it is worth. There must be very many most lamentable specimens of the effects of indulgence in this vicious practice, although we did not happen to see any of them that morning. They are not, however, so universal, nor even so common, as travellers who write in support of some thesis, or who are not above truckling to popular prejudices in England are pleased to say they are. But if our visit was a failure in one respect, it was fully instructive in another. In the first house we visited, no man spent on an average less than 80 cash a-day on his opium-pipe. One man said he spent 120. The chair-cooly spends 80, and his average earnings are 100 cash a-day. English physicians, unconnected with the missionary societies, have assured me that the cooly opium-smoker dies, not from opium, but from starvation. If he starves himself for his pipe, we need not ask what happens to his family.” (_Times._) CHAPTER XIII. OPIUM MORALS. _Fal._ No abuse, Hal. _Poins._ No abuse!