There is no more melancholy sight, in China’s teeming nightmare cities, than a drug-befuddled victim staggering out in the early dawn from some hasheesh house and tumbling down in the street where he dreams he is in the Celestial City with his ancestors. When he is rudely awakened by a hungry rat gnawing his hand or foot, the golden vision vanishes. In the cold light of the morning, racked with nameless pains, he crawls off to work at some mean job, hoping to make enough for another night’s opium dream in which to forget the hell of this tormenting world.
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Be An “I Can” Giant
As on through Life’s journey we go, day by day,
There are two whom we meet, at each turn of the way,
To help or to hinder—to bless or to ban,
And the names of these two are “I Can’t” and “I Can!”
“I Can’t” is a dwarf, a poor, pale, puny imp,
His eyes are half blind and his walk is a limp,
He stumbles and falls, or lies writhing in fits,