This is the chief, the inevitable dissipation of our coolie tribes; this is one of the evils with which we have to battle, and in comparison with which the excessive indulgence in intoxicating liquors is no more than what a bad dream is to hopeless insanity.  See the hundred forms on opium pillows already under the Circean spell; swarms are without the chambers awaiting their turn to enter and enjoy the fictitious delights of this paradise.

While the opium habit is one that should be treated at once with wisdom and severity, there is another point which seriously involves the Chinese question, and, unhappily, it must be handled with gloves.  Nineteen-twentieths of the Chinese women in San Francisco are depraved!

Not far from one of the pleasure-houses we intruded upon a domestic hearth smelling of punk and pestilence.  A child fled with a shrill scream at our approach.  This was the hospital of the quarter.  Nine cases of small-pox were once found within its narrow walls, and with no one to care for them.  As we explored its cramped wards our path was obstructed by a body stretched upon a bench.  The face was of that peculiar smoke-color which we are obliged to accept as Chinese pallor; the trunk was swathed like a mummy in folds of filthy rags; it was motionless as stone, apparently insensible.  Thus did an opium victim await his dissolution.

In the next room a rough deal burial case stood upon two stools; tapers were flickering upon the floor; the fumes of burning punk freighted the air and clouded the vision; the place was clean enough, for it was perfectly bare, but it was eminently uninteresting.  Close at hand stood a second burial case, an empty one, with the cover standing against the wall; a few hours more and it would find a tenant—­he who was dying in rags and filth in the room adjoining.  This was the native hospital of the quarter, and the mother of the child was the matron of the establishment.

I will cast but one more shadow on the coolie quarter, and then we will search for sunshine.  It is folly to attempt to ignore the fact that the seeds of leprosy are sown among the Chinese.  If you would have proof, follow me.  It is a dreary drive over the hills to the pest-house.  Imagine that we have dropped in upon the health officer at his city office.  Our proposed visitation has been telephoned to the resident physician, who is a kind of prisoner with his leprous patients on the lonesome slope of a suburban hill.  As we get into the rugged edge of the city, among half-graded streets, strips of marshland, and a semi-rustic population, we ask our way to the pest-house.  Yonder it lies, surrounded by that high white fence on the hill-top, above a marsh once clouded with clamorous water-fowl, but now all, all under the spell of the quarantine, and desolate beyond description.  Our road winds up the hill-slope, sown thick with stones, and stops short at the great solid gate in the high rabbit fence that walls in the devil’s acre, if I may so call it.  We ring the dreadful bell—­the passing-bell, that is seldom rung save to announce the arrival of another fateful body clothed in living death.