No. 1.
The incipient opium-smoker is reclining (as is usual) on a couch in his mansion, while his companion is indulging in tobacco through the water-pipe common in China.
No. 2
The opium-smoker, still portly and well-dressed, is entreated by his poor wife on bended knees to desist from the disastrous habit. His child is running off with the dreaded pipe; while the aged grandmother is seen coming, leaning on her staff, to add her tears and entreaties—now for the first time proved to be powerless. The hold of the pipe is already established; interest, duty, affection, reputation—all prove too feeble to arrest the downward career of the smoker. Sad indeed is the prospect; the husband is already doomed to poverty, shame, and an early grave; his wife to ruin, his child to beggary. His mother will die of a broken heart.
No. 3
Representing the progress in dissipation of the once sober gentleman, who has now, alas! become the victim of this vice. To him day has now become night, and night day. He can no longer sleep at night; and to banish the tedium of its long quiet hours, and to drown thought of the sure ruin awaiting him, becomes an absolute necessity. Regardless, therefore, alike of entreaty and censure, he now openly introduces into his house singing men and women, and gives himself up to their society. His books, formerly the companions of his choice, now lie unheeded on his table, and will not long retain even their place there. As for his poor family, powerless to prevent, or even retard, the downward progress of events, they can only consult their own safety by keeping altogether out of sight.
