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w I oilskins and take electric light globes and examine every inch where other men can go. The owners of the ships are doing all thtey can to stamptut the traffic, but it's a hard matter, because petty officers often connive with the sailors and get their percentage for helping. And government employes earning $3 a day are often offered large bribes. It's a pretty lucrative business, too. The Chinese sailor pays about $9 for a tin box of "hop" weighing a third of a pound. He pays $5 more to get it smuggled over from China. In the United States he may sell it for any sum from $25 to $50. The government has had much trouble, too, in trying to prevent opium smuggling across the north ern and southern borders. From Mexico the stuff reached Laredo, El Paso and Calexico by trains, auto mobiles and runners. Once it gets aboard a Pullman car, it is especially hard to discover. It is frequently hid den by Pullman porters, who know many secret places for keeping it. On our northern border we have been more successful. The Canadian authorities are co-operating with us, as the Mexican officials will not do, and are also keeping close watch on ports. The Japanese lines of steam ers are also fighting it Conditions have improved much from the days when sailors used to throw the opium overboard, attached to floats, as the ships came in, and leave it for their confederates to pick up. The government cutters and launches put an end to that practice. But there is still need of great vigil ance and of new laws to do away with the present loopholes. OPIUM HABIT WRECKS WHITE MEN AND WOMEN By William Hanna Thomson, M. D., Ex-President New York Academy of Medicine. The 'American "opium fiend" sel dom smokes opium. A white- jopium user may start by taking laudanum as medicine. As the habit grows on him he increases the dose until at last he can swallow it as a drink. Under its influence not only is pain deadened, but a sense of intense in terest is awakened in him. Every concern in his life is displaced for the time by that interest. A crowd of thoughts arrive, bring ing a succession of splendid ideas, and up he ascends, as if to take a seat on a cloud where he can serene ly look down on this poor mundane sphere, feeling himself quite above its'fussy littleness. , N . After the effect has passed off it is succeeded by a sense of horrible vacancy, which causes a restlessness that nothing can relieve but more laudanum,! or by opium itself, in the form of pills, instead of its laudanum extract. toes this. baleful agent injure his body? Not' much. Nor does it per ceptibly injure the mind, for many of these poor creatures can talk beautifully and write elegantly. But in them the-Will can no longer rule. That is why the man is ruined. The drug has dethroned his will; and when the wills falls everything good in the man goes down with it. LEGAL TALENT "Yes, I went to two lawyers and got their opinions." "And.what were they?" "Ten dollars-each." njaja jJi! i -inj &sx? 4iQrfJrica.3Xitfi; Uidm .&.