“What’s the matter with a can of coffee and some snails?” said the hypo. “Get whatever you can,” I said, giving him the dollar. Finnerty disappeared, and in a surprisingly short time came back with cigarettes, a gallon fruit tin half full of splendid coffee, and a bag of snails. The two young fellows took charge of the coffee and snails, spread a newspaper on the floor, and very cordially invited me to help myself. While we were having our lunch the talk was diplomatically turned to dope and the shortage that menaced my two hypo friends and the sufferings they would undergo when there was no more and the “habit” came on, and the necessity for a shot in the morning as a bracer for them when they faced the judge. They grew so despondent over their plight that when we were done eating they decided to “shoot up” the small portion of white stuff they had left. They brightened up after this operation was over, and things looked rosier. “Just think, Georgie,” said the talkative one, looking at me, “what a four-bit piece would do for us. What a life-saver! We’ll both get a ‘sixer’ in the morning if we go in front of the judge with our teeth rattlin’ so we can’t put up a talk. If I had a decent shot for the morning I could talk him out of it. “And that rat, Finnerty, the trusty,” the talker spoke to me now, “has got a ton of it out there to sell, but he wouldn’t give us a jolt if we had the horrors.” “Can you buy it from Finnerty?” I asked him, interested. “Can you? Why, that guy Finnerty would peddle you a six-shooter and a road map if you had the coin, and then snitch on you to the desk sergeant, the rat,” he finished. At that time morphine and opium were almost as cheap as tobacco. Fifty cents’ worth would last them a day. I hastily dug up a half dollar and gave it to him. In answer to his call Finnerty appeared, took the half dollar, and from his shirt pocket drew a bundle of neatly folded packets of morphine. In plain sight of the desk sergeant he counted out the required number of parcels and put them into the purchaser’s hand extended through the bars. They were divided at once. Georgie said to his partner. “I think we’d better cook up a shot just to see if the stuff is all right. That Finnerty would peddle you chloride of lime if he happened to run out of ‘morph.’” This seemed to be a very rational reason for taking another shot, and they did. Given a sufficient quantity of hop, no fiend is ever at a loss for a sound reason for taking a jolt of it. If he is feeling bad he takes a jolt so he will feel good. If he is feeling good, he takes one to make him feel better, and if he is feeling neither very bad nor very good he takes a jolt “just to get himself straightened around.”