George Allan England

“ Like a creature possessed, he searched his cabin. Again and again, to wearisome iteration, he fumbled over the same fruitless packages. He cut his hand on a jagged splinter of broken glass, but gave no heed to that. Slow, sullen blood stained everything he touched. No matter!
He emptied every drawer in his desk, turned all his pockets inside out, and crawled and fumbled in obscure corners, cursing, mouthing. He was a pitiable, unmanly figure, such as only a drug slave can be—a figure such as to make one shudder away, ashamed of humanity and of all its vaunted strength. ”

“ The little phial of tablets that meant more than life to him was gone.
For a moment, his mind blurred with confusion and suffering, Wingate stood there on the cabin rug. Barefooted, disheveled, and unlovely, he looked anything but a powerful financier, one of the biggest copper men in the world.
Is not morphine the great democratizer? Before its sovereign power do not plutocrat and slum rat, gently bred woman and slattern of the streets, all bow with equally servile adoration? In the realm of King Morphine there are—at a pinch—no gradations of pride, only degrees of suffering and abasement. ”

“ Since to those unfortunate victims of circumstance whom the thoughtless call “dope fiends” the one supreme business of life is the maintenance of their supply of the precious drug, Wingate, like many another, always kept a secret reserve, never to be touched save in cases of extreme urgency. ”