All about opium / edited by Hartmann Henry Sultzberger.

Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: All about opium / edited by Hartmann Henry Sultzberger. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    181/230 (page 161)
    A HINT FROM A EUROPEAN MANDARIN. As an old subscriber to the China Overland Trade Report, of Hong Kong, I was struck one morning—while reading a leader on “ The Report of the Trade of China for the Year 1879”—to see a certain name mentioned therein, which, because both scarce and confined to the immediate neighbourhood of my native place in Switzerland, I felt sure could refer to no one else but an old schoolfellow of mine, whom I had lost sight of entirely ever since the year 1856, when he left Liverpool for some place in the West Indies. The mere prospect of thus being afforded a rare opportunity of ob- taining additional and first-rate information, with respect to my article, determined me at once to write to this supposed friend of mine, and to make use of the editor of the said Hong Kong periodical as the best medium for the transmission of my letter. Six months later on, and after having already given up all hope of ever hearing anything at all in the matter, I was most agreeably sur- prised to receive a letter, bearing the Peking post-mark. The writer of this letter, my old schoolfellow of course, after first explaining the involuntary delay in his reply, due to his promotion from Shanghai to Peking, and next giving me a short account of his extra- ordinary career in the flowery land, then entered into my several in- quiries as follows :— “ Translation. “ My present position of Acting Statistical Secretary to Mr. Robert Hart, Inspector-General of Customs—not to say anything about my special obligations as a Mandarin of the third degree—does not admit of my entering into either the ‘merits’ or the ‘demerits’ of this opium question, while about the article itself, in its purely commercial aspect, you will gather from the several printed reports, which I forward to you per book-post, all the information I could give you about it. “ I therefore confine myself to a few remarks on that Don Sini- baldo reprint of yours, which I have read with particular interest. “ Making due allowance for the time at which this chapter on opium was written, I think the same ‘ still remains a very fair expose’ of the subject, while under present circumstances I am particularly struck by the peculiar ‘ clairvoyance ’ of this ‘ Don ’ with respect to his predicted ‘ general increase in the consumption,’ as well as his hinted-at ‘ possible development of the home production ’ of the drug. “ On the other hand, I could not help laughing when I came across that statement of the ‘ two millions of annual deaths resulting from opium smoking,’ which statement reminded me at once of our homely expression : ‘ Der kann liigen wie nur ein Missioniir liigen kann’! * while * “ He can tell fibs as only a missionary can pass them off.” M