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The Hasheesh eater

page: 0 (TitlePage) [View Page 0 (TitlePage) ]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 0 (TitlePage) HASHESH EATER: BEING PASSAGES FROM THE LIFE OF A PYTHAGOREAN. "Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise." KUBLA KHAN. NEW YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE. 1857. page: 0 (Table of Contents) [View Page 0 (Table of Contents) ]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 0 (Table of Contents) Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred and fifty-seven, by HARPER & BROTHERS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. THE NIGHT ENTRANCE ................. .15 II. UNDER THE SHADOW OF ESCULAPIUS ........................ 29 "I. THE KINGDOM OF THE DREAMi .................. ................ 34 IV. CASHMERE AND CATHAY BY TWILIGHT ....................... 44 V. THE HOUR AND THE POWER OF DARKNESS ................. 60 VI. THE MYSTERIES OF THE LIFE-SIGN GEMNI ................. 75 VII. THE NIGHT OF APOTHEOSIS . .................................... 85 VIII. VOS NON VOBIS---WHEREIN THE PYTHAGOREAN IS A BY- STANDER... 9. ............ .... .............. 101 IX. THE SHADOW OF BACCHUS, THE SHADOW OF THANATOS, AND THE SHADOW OF SHAME ............................... 123 X. NIMUM-THE AMREETA CUP OF UNVEILING ................ 132 XI. THE BOOK OF SYMBOLS .......................................... 149 XII. TO-DAY, ZEUS , TO-MORROW, PROMETHEUS .................. 153 XIII. EIDOLA THEATRI AND THE PRINCE OF WHALES ............ 161 XIV. HAIL! PYTHAGORAS ............. ........ ...................... 176 XV. "THEN SEEVA OPENED ON THE ACCURSED ONE HS EYE OF ANGER .............. .......................................... 188 XVI, AN OATH IN THE FORUM OF MADNESS ...................... 203 XVII. DOWN WITH THE TIDE .................................. .......... 212 XVIII. MY STONY GUARDIAN...................... ....................... 221 XIX. RESURGAM! ........................................................... 227 XX. LEAVING HS SCHOOLMASTER, THE PYTHAGOREAN SETS UP FOR HMSELF ................ .... ....................... 232 XXI. CONCERNING THE DOCTOR; NOT SOUTHEY'S, BUT MNE.,. 247 XXII. GRAND DIVERTISSEMENT ....................................... . 258 XXIII. THE HELL OF WATERS AND THE HELL OF TREACHERY.. 264 XXIV. THE VISIONARY; TO WHCH CHAPTER THERE IS NO AD- MTTANCE UPON BUSINESS .. . .............................. 269 XXV. CAVE SUCCEDANEA ........................ ........ .... ,.. 280 NOTES ON THE WAY UPWARD ................ 285 "ABYRINTHS AND GUIDING THREADS .............. ................... . 290 IDEAL MEN AND THEIR STIMULANTS ......................... ...... .... 330 page: 0[View Page 0]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 0 PREFACE. I TTKT Prefaces as little as my readers can. If this so proverbially unnoticed part of the book catch any eye, the glance that it gives will of course travel no farther to find my apology for making this preface a short one. There is but one thought for which I wish to find place here. I am deeply aware that, if the suc- ceeding pages are read at all, it will be by those who have already learned to love De Quincey. Not that I dare for a moment to compare the manner of my narrative with that most wondrous, most inspired Dreamer's; but in the experience of his life and my own there is a single common characteristic which happens to be the very one for whose sake men open any such book. The path of De Quincey led beyond all the boundaries of the ordinary life into a world of intense lights and shadows--a realm in which all the range of average thought found its conditions surpass- ed, if not violated. My own career, however far its recital may fall short of the Opium Eater's, and not- withstanding it was not coincident anid but seldom parallel with his, still ran through lands as glorious, as unfrequented, as weird as his own, and takes those who would follow it out of the trodden highways of mind. In the most candid and indulgent reader who has come to my story from the perusal of the Confes- sions, I foresee that there will exist an inevitable tend- page: vi-vii[View Page vi-vii]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page vi-vii vi PREFACE. ency to compare the two, to seek resemblances, and perhaps, if such be found, to ascribe them to my at least unconscious imitation of the great, the elder au- thor. How much to my disparagement this would be, my natural desire for the success of this book makes unpleasant to represent even to myself. If it be possible to forestall such a state of things, let me aim at it by a few brief representations of the manner in which this work has been written. Frankly do I say that I admire De Quincey to such a degree that, were not imitation base and he inimita- ble, I know no master of style in whose footsteps I should more earnestly seek to tread; but, in the first place, as this book asserts, it is a resume of experi- ences which, so far from being fiction, have received at my hands a delineation unsatisfactory to myself from its very inadequacy. The fact of my speaking truths, so far as they can be spoken, out otrny actual memory, must shield me, if the assertion be received by any but one who has tasted my cup of Awakening, from the imputation of being a copyist of incidents. In the second place, to copy style, study, care, and frequent references to the proposed model are indis- pensable. Very well; not one of the pages which make this book has ever been rewritten. It has been printed from the first draft, and that, through neces- sities of other occupation, illness, and care, compelled to be thrown off, though on its author's part unwilling- ly, currente calamo. Moreover, out of -particular jeal- ousy against the risk of burlesquing the inimitable, I have refrained friom looking at the Confessions from the beginning to the end of my undertaking. PREFACE. vii My memory, however, tells me that occasionally there are actual resemblances both in incident and method. As, an incident-resemblance, I instance the perception, in both experiences, of the inerasible char- acter of the mind's memorial inscriptions-as De Quin- cey grandly has it-the Palimpsest characteristic of memory. Acknowledging the resemblance, I only say that we both saw the same thing. The state of insight which he attained through opium, I reached by the way of hasheesh. Almost through the very same symbols as De Quincey, a hasheesh-maenad friend of mine also saw it, as this book relates, and the vision is accessible to all of the same temperament and degree of exaltation. For a place, New York for instance, a stranger accounts, not by saying that any one of the many who testify to its existence copied from another, but by acknowledging 6" there is such a place." So do I account for the fact by saying " there is such a fact." As a resemblance in method, by which I mean me- chanical arrangement, I am aware only of this, viz., that I divide my narrative into use and abandonment of hasheesh, and speculation, upon the phenomena after abandonment, which latter, for the sake of antic- ipating the charge, I say might perhaps be compared as to its order with the Suspiria; but the most per- fect Zoilus among hypercritics would be aware that in this arrangement I follow Nature, who begins, goes on, and finishes, and reflects the past in her progress, so that I should seem no copyist on that score. But, at any rate, if influenced by the memory of the great Visionary's method in any sense (and it is true page: viii-ix[View Page viii-ix]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page viii-ix V1i PREFACE. that I might have made my course more dissimilar by neglecting the order of time), I feel that the influence must necessarily have been beneficial to my own ef- forts. As the bard who would sing- of heroes follows the blind old harper of Ionia along that immortal corridor of resounding song which first made Greece imperish- able, and tells his battles in the Epic, not the Elegy, so must every man hereafter, who opens the mysteries of that great soul within him, speak, so far as he can, down the channels through which Thomas de Quincey has spoken, nor out, of vain perversity refuse to use a passage which the one grand pioneer has made free to all. If in any way, therefore, except servilely, I seem to have followed De Quincey, I am proud of it. If there be any man who does not feel the grace which the mantle of that: true poet's influence confers upon every thinker and: scholar who 16ovse truth, beauty, and thie music of the English tongue, I ask that he will trans- fer unto me his share thereof, and at once the Preface and the Prayer of THE HASHEESH EATER, THE SON OF PYTHAGOlES, are ended. INTRODUCTION, THE singular energy and scope of imagination which characterize all Oriental tales, and especially that great typical representative of the species, the Arabian Nights, were my ceaseless marvel from earliest child- hood. The book of Arabian and Turkish story has very few thoughtful readers among the nations of the West, who can rest contented with admiring its bold flights into unknown regions of imagery, and close the mystic pages that have enchanted them without an in- quiry as to the influences which have turned the hu- man mind into such rare channels of thought. Sooner or later comes the question of the producing causes, and it is in the power of few--very few of us-to an- swer that question aright. We try to imitate Eastern narrative, but in vain. Our minds can find no clew to its strange, untrodden by-ways of speculation; our highest soarings are still in an atmosphere which feels heavy with the reek and damp of ordinary life. We fail to account for those storm-wrapped peaks of sublimity which hover over the path of Oriental story, or those beauties which, like rivers of Paradise, make music beside it. 5We are all of us taught to say, "The children of the East live under a sunnier sky than their Western brethren: they A2 page: x-xi[View Page x-xi]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page x-xi X - INTRODUCTION. are the repositors- of centuries of tradition; their semi- civilized imagination is unbound by the fetters of logic and the schools." But the lonians once answered all these conditions, yet Homer sang no Eblis, no su- perhuman journey on the wings of genii through infin- itudes of rosy ether. At one period of their history, France, Germany, and England abounded in all the characteristics of the untutored Old-world mind, yet when did an echo of Oriental music ring from the lute of minstrel, minnesinger, or trouvere? The differ- ence can not be accounted for by climate, religion, or manners. It is not the supernatural in Arabian story which is inexplicable, but the peculiar phase of the supernatural both in beauty and terror. I- say inexplicable, because to me, in common with all around me, it bore this character for years. In later days, I believe, and now with adl due modesty assert, I unlocked the secret, not by a hypothesis, not by pro- cesses of reasoning, but by journeying through those self-same fields of weird experience which are dinted by the sandals of the glorious old dreamers of the East. Standing on the same mounts of vision where they stood, listening to the same gurgling melody that broke from their enchanted fountains,'yes, plunging into their rayless caverns of sorcery, and imprisoned with their genie in the unutterable silence of the fath- omless sea, have I dearly bought the right to come to men with the chart of my wanderings in my hands, and unfold to them the foundations of the fabric of Oriental story. The secret lies in the use of hasheesh. A very few words will suffice to tell what hasheesh is. In north- INTRODUCTION. xi em latitudes the hemp plant (Cannabis Sativa) grows almost entirely to fibre, becoming, in virtue of this quality, the great resource for mats and cordage. Un- der a southern sun this same plant loses its fibrous texture, but secretes, in quantities equal to one third of its bulk, an opaque and greenish resin. Between the northern and the southern hemp there is no differ- ence, except the effect of diversity of climate upon the same vegetable essence; yet naturalists, misled by the much greater extent of gummy secretion in the latter, have distinguished it from its brother of the colder soil by the name Cannabis Indica. The resin of the Can- nabis Indica is hasheesh. From time immemorial it has been known among all the nations of the East as possessing powerful stimulant and narcotic properties; throughout Turkey, Persia, Nepaul, and India it is used at this day among all classes of society as an ha- bitual indulgence. The forms in which it is employed are various. Sometimes it appears in the state in which it exudes from the mature stalk, as a crude res- in; sometimes it is manufactured into a conserve with clarified butter, honey, and spices; sometimes a decoc- tion is made of the flowering tops in water or arrack. Under either of these forms the method of administra- tion is by swallowing. Again, the dried plant is smoked in pipes or chewed, as tobacco among our- selves. Used in whatever preparation, hasheesh is charac- terized by the most remarkable phenomena, both phys- ical and spiritual. A series of experiments made with it by men of eminent attainments in the medical pro- fession, principally at Calcutta, and during the last ten page: xii-xiii[View Page xii-xiii]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page xii-xiii xUI INTRODUCTION. years, prove it to be capable of inducing all the ordi- nary symptoms of catalepsy, or even of trance. However, from the fact of its so extensive daily use as a pleasurable stimulus in the countries where ex- periments with it have been made, it has doubtless lost interest in the field of scientific research, and has come to be regarded as only one more means among the multitude which mankind in all latitudes are seeking for the production of a sensual intoxication. Now and then a traveler, passing by the bazar where it was ex- posed for sale, moved by curiosity, has bought some form of the hemp, and made the trial of its effects upon himself; but the results of the experiment were dig- nified with no further notice than a page or a chapter in the note-book of his journeyings, and the hasheesh phenomena, with an. exclamation of wonder, were thenceforward dismissed from his own and the public mind. Very few even of the permanently domesticated foreign residents in the countries of the East have ever adopted this indulgence as a habit, and of those few I am not aware of any who have communicated their ex- perience to the world, or treated it as a subject pos- sessing scientific interest. My own personal acquaintance with this drug, cov- ering as it did a considerable extent of time, and al- most every possible variety of phenoalna, both phys- ical and psychological, proper to its operation, not only empowers, but for a long time has been impelling me to give it a publicity which may bring it in contact with a larger number of minds interested in such re- searches than it could otherwise hope to meet. As a key to some of the most singular manifestations of the INTRODUCTION, xiii Oriental mind, as a narrative interesting to the atten- tive student of the human soul and body, and the mys- terious network of interacting influences which connect them, I therefore venture to present this experience to the investigation of general readers, accompanying it with the sincere disavowal of all fiction in my story, and the assurance that whatever traits of the marvel- ous may appear in its gradual development are inher- ent in the truth as I shall simply delineate it. I am aware that, without this disavowal, much-nay, even most that I shall say, will be taken " cum grano salis." I desire it, therefore, to be distinctly understood at the outset that my narrative is one of unexaggerated fact, its occurrences being recorded precisely as they im- pressed themselves upon me, without one additional stroke of the pencil of an after-fancy thrown in to heighten the tone or harmonize the effect. Whatever of the wonderful may appear in these pages belongs to the subject and not to the manner. The progress of my narration will be in the order of time. I shall begin with my first experiment of the use of hasheesh, an experiment made simply from the promptings of curiosity; it will then be my en- deavor to detail the gradual change of my motive for its employment from the desire of research to the fas- cinated longing for its weird and immeasurable ecsta- sy; I shall relate how that ecstasy by degrees became daily more and more flecked with shadows of as im- measurable pain, but still, in this dual existence, as- sumed a character increasingly apocalyptic of utterly unpreconceived provinces of mental action. In the next succeeding stage of my experience, torture, save page: xiv-15[View Page xiv-15]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page xiv-15 xiv INTRODUCTION. at rare intervals, will have swallowed up happiness al- together, without abating in the least the fascination of the habit. In the next and final one will be beheld my instantaneous abandonment of the indulgence, the cause which led to it, and the discipline of suffering which attended the self-denial. The aim of this relation is not merely aesthetic nor scientific: though throughout it there be no stopping to moralize, it is my earnest desire that it may teem with suggestions of a lesson without which humanity can learn nothing in the schools. It is this: the soul withers and sinks from its growth toward the true end of its being beneath the dominance of Any sensual in- dulgence. The chain of its bondage may for a long time continue to be golden-many a day may pass before the fetters gall--yet all the while there is going on a slow and insidious consumption of its native strength, and when at' last captivity becomes a pain, it may awake to discover in inconceivable terror that the very forces of disenthralment have perished out of its reach. , o THE HASHEESH EATER. I. bte Nighlt (ntrance . ABOUT the shop of my friend Anderson the apothe- cary there always existed a peculiar fascination, which early marked it out as my favorite lounging-place. In the very atmosphere of the establishment, loaded as it was with a composite smell of all things curative and preventive, there was an aromatic invitation to scien- tific musing, which could not have met with a readier acceptance had it spoken in the breath of frankincense. The very gallipots grew gradually to possess a charm for me as they sat calmly ranged upon their oaken shelves, looking like a convention of Unostentatious philanthropists, whose silent bosoms teemed with ev- ery variety of renovation for the human race. A little sanctum at the inner end of the shop, walled off with red curtains from the profane gaze of the unsanative, contained two chairs for the doctor and myself, and a library where all the masters of physic were grouped, through their sheep and paper representatives, in more friendliness of contact than has ever been known to characterize a consultation of like spirits under any other circumstances. Within the limits of four square feet, Pereira and Christison condensed all their stores page: 16-17[View Page 16-17]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 16-17 16 THE HASHEESH EATER. of wisdom and research, and Dunglison and Brath- waite sat cheek by jowl beside them. There stood the Dispensatory, with the air of a business-like office, wherein all the specifics of the materia medica had been brought together for a scientific conversazione, but, becoming enamored of each other's society, had resolved to stay, overcrowded though they might be, and make an indefinite sitting of it. In a modest niche, set apart like a vestibule from the apartments of the medical gentlemen, lay a shallow case, which disclosed, on the lifting of a cover,- the neatly-ordered rank of tweezers, probe, and lancet, which constituted my friend's claim to the confidence of the plethoric community; for, although unblessed with metropolitan fame, he was still no "Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood." Here many an hour have I sat buried in the statis- tics of human life or the history of the make-shifts for its preservation. Here the details of surgical or med- ical experiment have held me in as complete engross- ment as the positions and crises of romance; and here especially, with a disregard to my own safety which would have done credit to Quintus Curtius, have I made upon myself the trial of the effects of every strange drug and chemical which the laboratory could produce. Now with the chloroform bottle beneath my nose have I set myself careering upon the Egs of a thrilling and accelerating life, until I had just ehough power remaining to restore the liquid to its place upon the shelf, and sink back into the enjoyment of the de- licious apathy which lasted through the few succeeding moments. Now ether was substituted for chloroform, THE NIGHT ENTRANCE. 17 and the difference of their phenomena noted, and now some other exhilarant, in the form of an opiate or stim- ulant, was the instrument of my experiments, until I had run through the whole gamut of queer agents with- in my reach. In all these experiences research and not indulgence was my object, so that I never became the victim of any habit in the prosecution of my headlong investi- gations. When the circuit of all the accessible tests was completed, I ceased experimenting, and sat down like a pharmaceutical Alexander, with no more drug- worlds to conquer. One morning, in the spring of 185-, I dropped in upon the doctor for my accustomed lounge. "Have you seen," said he, "my new acquisitions?" I looked toward the shelves in the direction of which he pointed, and saw, added since my last visit, a row of comely pasteboard cylinders inclosing vials of the various extracts prepared by Tilden & Co. Arranged in order according to their size, they con- fronted me, as pretty a little rank of medicinal sharp- shooters as could gratify the eye of an amateur. I ap- proached the shelves, that I might take them in re- view. A rapid glance showed most of them to be old ac- quaintances. "Conium, taraxacum, rhubarb-ha! what is this? Cannabis Indica?" "That," answered the doctor, looking witla parental fondness upon his new treasure, "is a preparation of the East Indian hemp, a powerful agent in cases of lock-jaw." On the strength of this introduction, I took down the little archer, and, removing his outer verdant coat, began the page: 18-19[View Page 18-19]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 18-19 18 THE HASHEESH EATER. further prosecution of his acquaintance. To pull out a broad and shallow cork was the work of an instant, and it revealed to me an olive-brown extract, of the consistency of pitch, and a decided aromatic odor. Drawing out a small portion upon tilepoint of my pen- knife, I was just going to put it to my tongue, when "t Iold on!" cried the doctor; "do you want to kill "--- yourself? That stuffis deadly poison." "Indeed!"I replied; "no, I can riot say that I have any settled determination of that kind ;" and with that I replaced the cork, and restored the extract, with all its appur- tenances, to the shelf. The remainder of my morning's visit in the sanctum was spent in consulting the Dispensatory under the title ",Cannabis Indica." , The sum of my discoveries there may be found, with much additional information, in that invaluable popular work, Johnston's Chemistry of Common Life. This being universally accessible, I will allude no further to the result of that morning's researches than to mention the three following conclu- sions to which I came. First, the doctor was both right and wrong; right, inasmuch as a sufficiently large dose of the drug, if it could be retained in the stomach, would produce death, like any other'narcotic, and the ultimate- effect of its habitual use had always proved highly injurious to mind and body; wrong, since moderate doses -of it were never immediately deadly, and many millions of 3 people daily employed it as an indulgence similarly to opium. Second, it was the hasheesh referred to by Eastern travelers, and the subject of a most graphic chapter from the pen of Bayard Taylor, which months TH1E NIGHT ENTRANCE. * 19 before had moved me powerfully to curiosity and ad- miratioi. Third, I would add it to the list of my form- er experiments. In pursuance of this last determination, I waited till -my friend was out of sight, that- I might not terrify him by that which he considered a suicidal venture, and then quietly uncapping my'little archer a second time, removed from his store of offensive armor a pill sufficient to balance the ten grain weight of the sanc- torial scales. This, upon the authority of Pereira and the Dispensatory, I swallowed without a tremor as to the danger of the result. Making all due allowance for the fact that I had not taken my hasheesh bolus fastirng, I ought to experience its effects within the next four hours. That time elapsed without bringing the shadow of a phenome- non. It was plain that my dose had been insufficient. For the sake of observing the most conservative prudence, I suffered several days to go by without a repetition of the experiment, and then, keeping the matter equally secret, I administered to myself a pill of fifteen grains. This second was equally ineffectual with the first. Gradually, by five grains at a time, I increased the dose to thirty grains, which I took one evening half an hour after tea. I had now almost come to the con- clusion that I was absolutely unsusceptible of the hasheesh influence. Without any expectation that this last experiment would be more successful than the former ones, and indeed with no realization of the manner in which the drug affected those who did make the experiment successfully, I went to pass the page: 20-21[View Page 20-21]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 20-21 20 THE HASHEESHt EATER. evening at the house of an intimate friend. In music and conversation the time passed pleasantly. The clock struck ten, reminding me that three hours had elapsed since the dose was taken, and as yet not an unusual symptom had appeared. I was provoked to think that this trial was as fruitless as its predeces- sors. Ha! what means this sudden thrill? A shock, as of some unimagined vital force, shoots without. warn- ing through my entire frame, leaping to my fingers' ends, piercing my brain, startling me till I almost spring from my chair. I could not doubt it. I was in the power of the hasheesh influence. My first emotion was one of un- controllable terror---a sense of getting something which I had not bargained for. That moment I would have given all I had or hoped to have to be as I was three hours before. No pain any where--not a twinge in any fibre-yet a cloud of unutterable strangeness was settling upon me, and wrapping me impenetrably in from all that -was natural or familiar. Endeared faces, well known to me of old, surrounded me, yet they were not with me in my loneliness. I had entered upon a tremend- ous life which they could not share. If the disem- bodied ever return to hover over the hearth-stone which once had a seat for them, they look upon their friends as I then looked upon mine. A nearness of place, with an infinite distance of state, a connection which had no possible sympathies for the wants of that hour of revelation, an isolation none the less perfect for seem- ing companionship. THE NIGHT ENTRANCE. 21 Still I spoke; a question was put to me, and I an- swered it; I even laughed at a bon mot. Yet it was not my voice which spoke; perhaps one which I once had far away in another time and another place. For a while I knew nothing that was going on externally, and then the remembrance of the last remark which had been made returned slowly and indistinctly, as some trait of a dream will return after many days, puzzling us to say where we have been conscious of it before. A fitful wind all the evening had been sighing down the chimney; it now grew into the steady hum of a vast wheel in accelerating motiop. For a while this hum seemed to resound througall space. I was stunned by it-I was absorbed in it.\Slowly the rev- olution of the wheel came to a stop, asd its monoto- nous din was changed for the reverberating peal of a grand cathedral organ. The ebb and flow of its in- conceivably solemn tone filled me with a grief that was more than human. I sympathized with the dirge-like cadence as spirit sympathizes with spirit. And then, in the full conviction that all I heard and felt was real, I looked out of my isolation to see the effect of the music on my friends. Ah! we were in separate worlds Nh indeed. Not a trace of appreciation on any face. Perhaps I was acting strangely. 'Suddenly a pair of busy hands, which had been running neck and neck all the evening with a nimble little crochet-needle over a race-ground of pink and blue silk, stopped at their goal, and their owner looked at me steadfastly. Ah! I was found out-I had betrayed myself. In terror I waited, expecting every instant to hear the page: 22-23[View Page 22-23]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 22-23 22 THE IHASHEESH EATER. word " hasheesh." No, the lady only asked me some question connected with the previous conversation. As mechanically as an automaton I began to reply. As I heard once more the alien and unreal tones of my own voice, I became convinced that it was some one else who spoke, and in another world. I sat and lis- tened; still the voice kept speaking. Now for the first tim. I experienced that vast change which ha- sheesh makes in all measurements of time. The first word of the reply pccupied a period sufficient for the action of a drama, the last left me in complete igno- rance of any point far enough back in the past to date the commencement of the sentence. Its enunciation might have occupied years. I was not in the same life which had held me when I heard it begun. And now, with time, space expanded also. At my friend's house one particular arm-chair was always re- served for me. I was sitting in it at a distan'ce of hardly three feet from the centre-table around which the members of the family were grouped. Rapidly that distance widened. The whole atmosphere seemed ductile, and spun endlessly out into great spaces sur- rounding me on every side. We were in a vast hall, of which my friends and I occupied opposite extremi- ties. The ceiling and the walls ran upward with a gliding motion, as if vivified by a sudden force of re- sistless growth. Oh! I could not bear it. I should soon be left alone in the midst of an infinity of space. And now more and more every moment increased the conviction that I was watched. I did not know then, as I learned afterward, that suspicion of all earthly things and THE NIGHT ENTRANCE. 23 persons was the characteristic of the hasheesh delir- ium. In the midst of nmy complicated hallucination, I could perceive that I had a dual existence. One portion of me was whirled unresistingly along the track of this -tremendous experience, the other sat looking down from a height upon its double, observing, reasoning, and serenely weighing all the phenomena. This calm- er being suffered with the other by sympathy, but did not lose its self-possession. Presently it warned me that I must go home, lest the growing effect of the hasheesh should incite me to some act which might frighten my friends. I acknowledged the force of this remark very much as if it had been made by another person, and rose to take my leave. I advanced toward the centre-table. With every step its distance in- creased. I nerved myself as for a long pedestrian journey. Still the lights, the faces, the furniture re- ceded. At last, almost unconsciously, I reached them. Itould be tedious to attempt to convey the idea of the time which my leave-taking consumed, and the at- tempt, at least with all minds that have not passed through the same experience, would be as impossible as tedious. At last I was in the street. Beyond me the view stretched endlessly away. It was an unconverging vista,whose nearest lamps seem- ed separated from me by leagues. I was doomed to pass through a merciless stretch of space. A soul just disenthralled, setting out for his flight beyond the far- thest visible star, could not be more overwhelmed with his newly-acquired conception of the sublimity of dis- tance than I was at that moment. Solemnly I began my infinite journey. page: 24-25[View Page 24-25]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 24-25 24 TIE HASHEESH EATER; Before long I walked in entire unconsciousness of all around me. I dwelt in a marvelous inner world. I existed by turns in different places and various states of being. Now I swept my gondola through the moon- lit lagoons of Venice. Now Alp on Alp towered above my view, ;nd the glory of the coming sun flashed pur- ple light upon the topmost icy pinnacle. Now in the primeval silence of some unexplored tropical forest I spread my feathery leaves, a giant fern, and swayed and nodded in the spice-gales over a river whose waves , at once sent up clouds of music and perfume. My soul changed to a vegetable essence, thrilled with a strange and unimagined ecstasy. The palace of Al Haxoun could not have bought me back to human- ity. I will not detail all the transmutations of that walk. Ever and anon I returned from my dreams into con- sciousness, as some well-known house seemed to leap out into my path, awaking me with a shock. The whole way homeward was a series of such awakings and relapses into abstraction and delirium until I reached the corner of the street in which I lived. Here a new phenomenon manifested itself. I Ilad just awaked for perhaps the twentieth time, and my eyes were wide opte. I recognized all surrounding objects, and began calculating the distance home. Suddenly, out of a blank wall at my side a muffled figure stepped into the path before me. His hair, white as snow, hung in tangled elf-locks on his shoul- ders, where he carried also a heavy burden, like unto the well-filled sack of sins which Bunyan places on the back of his pilgrim. Not liking his manner, I THE NIGHT ENTRANCE. 25 stepped aside, intending to pass around him and go on my way. This change of our relative position, allowed the blaze of a neighboring street-lamp to fall full on his face, which had hitherto been totally ob- scured. Horror unspeakable! I shall never, till the day I die, forget that face. Every lineament was stamped with the records of a life black with damning crime; it glared upon me with a ferocious wickedness and a stony despair which only he may feel who is entering on the retribution of the unpardonable sin. He might have sat to a demon painter as the ideal of Shelley's Cenci. I seemed to grow blasphemous in looking at him, and, in an agony of fear, began to run away. He detained me with a bony hand, which pierced my wrist like talons, and, slowly taking down the burden from his own shoulders, laid it upon mine. I threw it off and pushed him away. Silently he returned and restored the weight. Again I repulsed him, this time crying out, "Man, what do you mean?" In a voice which impressed me with the sense of wick- edness as his face had done, he replied, "You shall bear my burden with me," and a third time laid it on my shoulders. For the last time I hurled it aside, and, with all my force, dashed him from me. He reeled backward and fell, and before he could recover his disadvantage I had put a long distance between us. Through the excitement of my struggle with this phantasm the effects of the hasheesh had increased mightily. I was bursting with an uncontrollable life; I strode with the thews of a giant. Hotter and faster came my breath; I seemed to pant like some tremen- dous engine. An electric energy whirled me resist- B page: 26-27[View Page 26-27]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 26-27 26 VTHE HASHEESH EATER. lessly onward; I feared for myself lest it should burst its fleshy walls, and glance on, leaving a wrecked frame-work behind it. At last I entered my own house. During my absence a family connection had arrived from abroad, and stood ready to receive my greeting. Partly re- / stored to consciousness by the naturalness of home- faces -and the powerful light of a chandelier which shed its blaze through the room, I saw the necessity of vigilance against betraying my condition, and with an intense effort suppressing all I felt, I approached my friend, and said all that is usual on such occasions. Yet recent as I was from my conflict with the super- natural, I cast a stealthy look about me, that I might learn from the faces of the others if, after all, I was shaking -hands with a phantom, and making inquiries about the health of a family of hallucinations. Grow- ing assured as I perceived no symptoms of astonish- ment, I finished the salutation and sat down. It soon required all my resolution to keep the secret which I had determined to hold inviolable. My sen- sations began to be terrific---not from any pain that I felt, but from the tremendous mystery of all around me and within me. By an appalling introversion, all the operations of vitality which, in our ordinary state, go on unconsciously, came vividly into my experience. Through every thinnest corporeal tissue and minutest vein I could trace the circulation of the blood along each inch of its progress. I knew when every valve opened and when it shut; every sense was preter- naturally awakened; the room was full of a great glory. The beating of my heart was so clearly audi- THE NIGHHT ENTRANCE. 27 ble that I wondered to find it unnoticed by those who were sitting by my side. Lo, now, that heart became a great fountain, whose jet played upward with loud vibrations, and, striking upon the roof of my skull as on a gigantic dome, fell back with a splash and echo into its reservoir. Faster and faster came the pulsa. tions, until at last I heard them no more, and the stream became one continuously pouring flood, whose roar resounded through all my frame. I gave myself up for lost, since judgment, which still sat unimpaired above my perverted senses, argued that congestion must take place in a few moments, and close the drama with my death. But my clutch would not yet relax from hope. The thought struck me, Might not this rapidity of circulation be, after all, imaginary? I determined to find out. Going to my own room, I took out my watch, and placed my hand upon my heart. The very effort which I made to ascertain the reality gradually brought perception back to its natural state. In the intensity of my observations, I began to 'perceive that the cir- culation was not as rapid as I had thought. From a pulseless flow it gradually came to be apprehended as a hurrying succession of intense throbs, then less swift and less intense, till finally, on comparing it with the second-hand, I found that about 90 a minute was its average rapidity. Greatly comforted, I desisted from the experiment. Almost instantly the hallucination returned. Again I dreaded apoplexy, congestion, hemorrhage, a multiplicity of nameless deaths, and drew my picture as I might be found on the morrow, stark and cold, by those whose agony would be re- page: 28-29[View Page 28-29]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 28-29 28 THE HASHEESH EATER. doubled by the mystery of my end. I reasoned with myself; I bathed my forehead-it did no good. There was one resource left: I would go to a physician. With this resolve, I left my room and went to the head of the staircase. The family had all retired for the night, and the gas was turned off from the burner in the hall below. I looked down the stairs: the depth was fathomless; it was a journey of years to reach the bottom! The dim light of the sky shone through the narrow panes at the sides of the front door, and seemed a demon-lamp in the middle dark- ness of the abyss. I never could get down! I sat me down despairingly upon the topmost step. Suddenly a sublime thought possessed me. If the distance be infinite, I am immortal. It shall be tried. I commenced the descent, wearily, wearily down through my league-long, year-long journey. To record my impressions in that' journey would be to repeat-what I have said of the time of hasheesh. Now stopping to rest as a traveler would turn aside at a wayside inn, now toiling down through the lonely darkness, I came by-and-by to the end, and passed out into the street. UNDER THE SHADOW OF ESCULAPIUS. 29 II. ntner thfe 21abow of (tflanpios. ON reaching the porch of the physician's house, I rang the bell, but immediately forgot whom to ask for. No wonder; I was on the steps of a palace in Milan --no (and I laughed at myself for the blunder), I was on the staircase of the Tower of London. So I should not be puzzled through my ignorance of Italian. But whom to ask for? This question recalled me to the real bearings of the place, but did not suggest its requisite answer. Whom shall I ask for? I began setting the most cunning traps of hypothesis to catch the solution of the difficulty. I looked at the sur- rounding houses-; of whom had I been accustomed to think as living next door to them? This did not bring it. Whose daughter had I seen going to school from this house but the very day before? Her name was Julia-Julia--and I thought of every combination iwhich had been made with this name from Julia Domna down to Giulia Grisi. Ah! now I had it--Julia II.; and her father naturally bore the same name. During this intellectual rummage I had rung the bell half a dozen times, under the impression that I was kept waiting a small eternity. When the servant opened the door she panted as if she had run for her life. I was shown up stairs to Dr. I.'s room, where he had thrown himself down to rest after a tedious operation. Locking the door after me with an air of determined page: 30-31[View Page 30-31]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 30-31 30 THE HASHEESH EATER. secrecy, which must have conveyed to him pleasant little suggestions of a design upon his life, I approached his bedside. "I am about to reveal to you," I commenced, "something which I would not for my life allow to come to other ears. Do you pledge me your eternal silence?" "I do; what is the matter?" "I have been taking hasheesh-Cannabis Indica, and I fear that I am going to die." "How much did you take?" "Thirty grains." "Let me feel your pulse." He placed his finger on my wrist and counted slowly, while I stood waiting to hear my death-warrant. "Very regular," shortly spoke the doctor; "triflingly accelerated. Do you feel any pain?" "None at all." "Nothing the mat- ter with you; go home and go to bed." "'But-is there--is there-no-danger of-apoplexy?" ('Bah!" said the doctor; and, having delivered. himself of this very Abernethy-like opinion of my case, he lay down again. My hand was on the knob, when he stopped me with, "Wait a minute; I'll give you a powder to carry with you, and if you get frightened again after you leave me, you can take it us a sedative., Step ut on the landing, if you please, and call my servant." AI did so, and my voice seemed to reverberate like thunder from every recess in the whole building. I was terrified at the noise I had made. I learned in after days that this impression is only one of the many due to the intense susceptibility of the sensorium as produced by hasheesh. At one time, having asked a UNDER THE SHADOW OF ESCULAPIUS. 31 friend to check me if I talked loudly or immoderately while in a state of fantasia among persons from whom I wished to conceal my state, I caught myself shout- ing and singing from very estasy, and reproached him with a neglect of his friendly office. I could not be- lieve him when he assured me that I had not uttered an audible word. The intensity of the inward emotion had affected the external through the internal ear. I returned and stood at the foot of the doctor's bed. All was perfect silence in the room, and had been per- feet darkness also but for the small lamp which I held in my hand to light the preparation of the powder when it should come. And now a still sublimer mystery be- gan to enwrap me. I stood in a remote chamber at the top of a colossal building, and the whole fabric be- neath me was steadily growing into the air. Higher than the topmost pinnacle of Bel's Babylonish tem- ple-higher than Ararat-?on, on forever into the lone- ly dome of God's infinite universe we towered cease- lessly. The years flew on; I heard the musical rush of their wings in the abyss outside of me, and from cycle to cycle, from life to life I careered, a mote in eternity and space. Suddenly emerging from the orbit of my transmigrations, I was again at the foot of the doctor's bed, and thrilled with wonder to find that we were both unchanged by the measureless lapse of time. The servant had not come.' "Shall I call her again?" "Why, you hav this moment called her." "Doctor," I replied solemnly, and n language that would have seemed bombastic e-Augh to any one who did not realize what I felt, "I will not believe you are deceiving me, but to me it ap- page: 32-33[View Page 32-33]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 32-33 32 THE HASHEESH EATER. pears as if sufficient time has elapsed since then for all the Pyramids to have crumbled back to dust." ( Ha! ha! you are very funny to-night," said the doctor; "but here she comes, and I will send her for some- thing which will comfort you on that score, and re- establish the Pyramids in your confidence." He gave the girl his orders, and she went out again. The thought struck me that I would compare my time with other people's. I looked at my watch, found that its minute-hand stood at the quarter mark past eleven, and, returning it to my pocket, abandoned my- self to my reflections. Presently I saw myself a gnome imprisoned by a most weird enchanter, whose part I assigned to the doctor before me, in the Domdaniel caverns, "under the roots of the ocean." Here, until the dissolution of all things, was I doomed to hold the lamp that lit that abysmal darkness, while my heart, like a giant clock, ticked solemnly the remaining years of time. Now, this hallucination departing, I heard in the solitude of the night outside the sound of a wondrous heaving sea. Its waves, in sublime cadence, rolled forward till they met the foundations of the building; they smote them with a might which made the very topstone quiver, and then fell back, with hiss and hollow murmur, into the broad bosom whence they had arisen. Now through the street, with measured tread, an armed host passed by. The heavy beat of their footfall and the griding of their brazen corslet-rings alone broke the silence, for among them all there was no more speech nor music than in a battalion of the dead. It was the army of the ages going by into eternity. A godlike UNDER THE SHADOW OF ESCULAPIUS. 33 sublimity swallowed up my soul. I was overwhelmed in a fathomless barathrum of time, but I leaned on God, and was immortal through all changes. And now, in another life, I remembered that far back in the cycles I had looked at my watch to measure the time through which I passed. The impulse seized me to look again., The minute-hand stood half way between fifteen and sixteen minutes past eleven. The watch must have stopped; I held it to my ear; no, it was still going. I had traveled through all that im- measurable chain of dreams in thirty seconds. "My God!"I cried, "I am in eternity." In the presence of that first sublime revelation of the soul's own time, and her capacity for an infinite life, I stood trembling with breathless awe. Till I die, that moment of un- veiling will stand in clear relief from all the rest of my existence. I hold it still in unimpaired remem- brance as one of the unutterable sanctities of my be- ing. The years of all my earthly life to come can never be as long as those thirty seconds. Finally the servant reappeared. I received my powder and went home. There was a light in one of the upper windows, and I hailed it with unspeakable joy, for it relieved me from a fear which I could not conquer, that while I had been gone all familiar things had passed away from earth. I was hardly safe in my room before I doubted having ever been out of it. "(I have experienced some wonderful dream," said I, "as I lay here after coming from the parlor." If I had not been out, I reasoned that I would have no powder in my pocket. The powder was there, and it steadied me a little to find that I was not utterly hallucinated page: 34-35[View Page 34-35]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 34-35 34 THE HASHEESH EATER. on every point. Leaving the light burning, I set out to travel to my bed, which gently invited me in the distance. Reaching it after a sufficient walk, I threw myself down. "I. tle iinghom of tDe tream. THE moment that I closed my eyes a vision of ce- lestial glory burst upon me. I stood on the silver strand of a translucent, boundless lake, across whose bosom I seemed to have been just transported. A short ay up the beach, a temple, modeled like the Parthenon, lifted its spotless and gleaming columns of alabaster sublimely into a rosy air-like the Parthe- non, yet astnuch excelling it as the godlike ideal of architecture must transcend that ideal realized by man. Unblemished in its purity of whiteness, faultless in the unbrokymmetry of every line and angle, its pediment was draped in odorous clouds, whose tints outshone the rainbow. It was the work of an un- earthly builder, and my soul stood before it in a trance of ecstasy. Its folded doors were resplendent with the glory of a multitude of eyes of glass, which were inlaid throughout the marble surfaces at the corners of diamond figures from the floor of the porch to the top- most moulding. One of these eyes was golden, like the midday sun, another emerald, another sapphire, and thus onward through the whole gamut of hues, all of them set in such collocations as to form most ex- THE KINGDOM OF THE DREAM. 35 quisite harmonies, and whirling upon their axes with the rapidity of thought. At the mere vestibule of the temple I could have sat and drunk in ecstasy forever; but lo! I am yet more blessed. On silent hinges the doors swing open, and I pass in. I did not seem to be in the interior of a temple. I beheld myself as truly in the open air as if I had never passed the portals, for whichever way I looked there were no walls, no roof, no pavement. An atmosphere of fathomless and soul-satisfying serenity surrounded and transfused me. I stood upon the bank of a crys- tal stream, whose waters-,as they slid on, discoursed notes of music which tinkled on the ear like the tones of some exquisite bell-glass. The same impression which such tones produce, of music refined to its ulti- mate ethereal spirit and borne from a far distance, characterized every ripple of thoise translucent waves. The gently sloping banks of the stream were luxuri- ant with a velvety cushioning of grass and moss, so living green that the eye and the soul reposed on them at the same time and drank in peace. Through this amaranthine herbage strayed the gnarled, fantastic roots of giant cedars of Lebanon, from whose primeval trunks great branches spread above me, and interlock- ing, wove a roof of impenetrable shadow; and wan- dering down the still avenues below those grand arbo- real arches went glorious bards, whose snowy beards fell on their breasts beneath countenances of ineffable benignity and nobleness; They were all clad in flowing robes, like God's high- priests, and each one held in his hand a lyre of un- earthly workmanship. Presently one stops midway page: 36-37[View Page 36-37]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 36-37 36 THE HASHEESH EATER. down a shady walk, and, baring his right arm, begins a prelude. While his celestial chords were trembling up into their sublime fullness, another strikes his strings, and now they blend upon my ravished ear in such a symphony as was never heard elsewhere, and I shall never hear again out of the Great Pres- ence. A moment more, and three are playing in har- mony; now the fourth joins the glorious rapture of his music to their own, and in the completeness of the chord my soul is swallowed up. I can bear no more. But yes, I am sustained, for suddenly the whole throng break forth in a chorus, upon -whose wings I am lifted out of the riven walls of sense, and music and spirit thrill in immediate communion. Forever rid of the intervention of pulsing air and vibrating nerve, my soul dilates with the swell of that transcendent har- mony, and interprets fromt it arcana of a meaning which words can never tell. I am borne aloft upon the glory of sound. I float in a trance among the burning choir of the seraphim. But, as I am melting through the purification of that sublime ecstasy into oneness with the Deity himself, one by one those pealing lyres faint away, and as the last throb dies down along the meas- ureless ether, visionless arms swiftly as lightning carry me far into the profound, and set me down before an- other portal. Its leaves, like the first, are of spotless marble, but ungemmed with wheeling eyes of burning color. Before entering on the record of this new vision I will make a digression, for the purpose of introducing two laws of the hasheesh operation, which, as explicato- ry, deserve a place here. First, after the completion of THE KINGDOM OF THE DREAM. 37 any one fantasia has arrived, there almost invariably succeeds a shifting of the action to some other stage entirely different in its surroundings. In this transi- tion the general character of the emotion may remain unchanged. I may be happy in Paradise and happy at the sources of the Nile, but seldom, either in Para- dise or on the Nile, twice in succession. I may writhe in Etna and burn unquenchably in Gehenna, but al- most never, in the course of the same, delirium, shall Etna or Gehenna witness my torture a second time. Second, after the full storm of a vision of intense sublimity has blown past the hasheesh-eater, his next vision is generally of a quiet, relaxing, and recreating nature. He comes down from his clouds or up from his abyss into a middle ground of gentle shadows, where he may rest his eyes from the splendor of the seraphim or the flames of fiends. There is a wise philosophy in this arrangement, for otherwise the soul would soon burn out in the excess of its own oxygen. Many a time, it seems to me, has my own thus been saved from extinction. - This next vision illustrated both, but especially the latter of these laws. The temple-doors opened noise- lessly before me, but it was no scene of sublimity which thus broke in upon my eyes. I stood in a large apartment, which resembled the Senate-chamber at Washington more than any thing else to which I can compare it. Its roof was vaulted, and at the side op- posite the entrance the floor rose into a dais surmount- ed by a large arm-chair. The body of the house was occupied by similar chairs disposed in arcs; the heavy paneling of the walls was adorned with grotesque page: 38-39[View Page 38-39]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 38-39 38 THE HASHEESH EATER. frescoes of every imaginable bird, beast, and monster, which, by some hidden law of life and motion, were forever changing, like the figures of the kaleidoscope. Now the walls bristled with hippogriffs; now, from wainscot to- ceiling, toucans and maccataws swung and nodded from-their perches amid emerald palms; now Centaurs and Lapithaw clashed in ferocious tumult, while crater and cyathus were crushed beneath ringing hoof and heel. But my attention was quickly dis- tracted from the frescoes by the sight of a most witchly congress, which filled all the chairs of that broad cham- ber. On the dais sat an old crone, whose command- ing position first engaged my attention to her personal appearance, and, upon rather impolite scrutiny, I be- held that she was the product of an art held in pre- eminent favor among persons of her age and sex. She was knit of purple yarn! In faultless order the stitches ran along her face; in every pucker of her re- entrant mouth, in every wrinkle of ther brow, she was a yarny counterfeit of the grandam of actual life, and by some skillful process of stuffing her nose had received its due peak and her chin its projection. The occu- pants of the seats below were all but reproductions of their president, and both she and they were constantly swaying from side to side, forward- and back, to the music of some invisible instruments, whose tone and style were most intensely and ludicrously Ethiopian. Not a word was spoken by any of the woolly conclave, but with untiring industry they were all knitting, knit- ting, knitting ceaselessly, as if their lives depended on it. I looked to see the objects of their manufacture. They were knitting old women like themselves! One THE KINGDOM OF THE DREAM. 39 of the sisterhood had nearly brought her double to com- pletion; earnestly another was engaged in rounding out an eyeball; another was fastening the gathers at i;f the corners of a mouth; another was setting up stitch- es for an old woman in petto. With marvelous rapidity this work went on; ever and anon some completed crone sprang from the nee- dles which had just achieved her, and, instantly vivi- fied, took up the instruments of reproduction, and fell to work as assiduously as if she had been a member of the congress since the world began. "Here," I cried, "here, at last, do I realize the meaning of endless pro- gression!" and, though the dome echoed with my peals of laughter, I saw no motion of astonishment in the stitches of a single face, but, as for dear life, the man- ufacture of old women went on unobstructed by the involuntary rudeness of the stranger. An irresistible desire to aid in the work possessed me; I was half determined to snatch up a quartette of needles and join the sisterhood. My nose began to be ruffled with stitches, and the next moment I had been a partner in their yarny destinies but for a hand which pulled me backward through the door, and shut the congress forever from my view. For a season I abode in an utter void of sight and sound, but I waited patiently in the assurance that some new changes of magnificence were preparing for me. I was not disappointed. Suddenly, at a far distance, three intense luminous points stood on the triple wall of darkness, and through each of -them shot twin attenuated rays of magic light and music. 'Without being able to perceive any thing of my im- page: 40-41[View Page 40-41]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 40-41 40 THE HASHEESH EATER. mediate surroundings, I still felt that I was noise- lessly drifting toward those radiant and vocal points. With every moment they grew larger, the light and the harmony came clearer, and before long I could distinguish plainly three colossal arches rising from the bosom of a waveless water. The mid arch tow- ered highest; the two on either side were equal to each other. Presently I beheld that they formed the portals of an enormous cavern, whose dome rose above me into such sublimity that its cope was hidden from my eyes in wreaths of cloud. On each side of me ran a wall of gnarled and rugged rock, from whose jutting points, as high as the eye could reach, depended stalac- tites of every imagined form and tinge of beauty, while below me, in the semblance of an ebon. pavement, from the reflection of its overshadowing crags, lay a level lake, whose exquisite transparency wanted but the smile of the sun to make it glow like a floor of ada- mant. On this lake I lay in a little boat divinely carved from pearl after the similitude of Triton's shelly shallop; its rudder and its oarage were my own un- conscious will, and, without the labors of especial voli- tion, I floated as I list with a furrowless keel swiftly toward the central giant arch. With every moment that brought me nearer to my exit, the harmony that poured through it developed into a grander volume and an intenser beauty. And now I passed out. Claude Lorraine, freed from the limitations of sense, and gifted with an infinite canvas, may, for aught I know, be upon some halcyon island of the universe painting such a view as now sailed into my vision. : THE KINGDOM OF THE DREAM. 41 Fitting employment would it be for his immortality were his pencil dipped into the very fountains of the light. Many a time in the course of my life have I yearned for the possession of some grand old master's soul and culture in the presence of revelations of Na- ture's loveliness which I dared not trust to memory; before this vision, as now in the remembrance of it, that longing became a heartfelt pain. Yet, after all, it was well; the mortal limner would have fainted in his task. Alas! how does the material in which we must embody the spiritual cramp and resist its execu- tion! Standing before windows where the invisible spirit of the frost had traced his exquisite algae, his palms and his ferns, have I said to myself, with a sigh, Alh! Nature alone, of all artists, is gifted to work out her ideals! Shall I be so presumptuous as to attempt in words that which would beggar the palette and the pencil of old-time disciples of the beautiful? I will, if it be only to satisfy a deep longing. From the arches of my cavern I had emerged upon a horizonless sea. Through all the infinitudes around me I looked out, and met no boundaries of space. Often in after times have I beheld the heavens and the earth stretching out in parallel lines forever, but this was the first time I had ever- stood un-" ringed by the azure world," and I exulted in all the sublimity of the new conception. The whole atmosphere was one measureless suffusion of golden motes, which throbbed continually in cadence, and showered radiance and harmony at the same time. With ecstasy vision spread her wings for a flight against which material page: 42-43[View Page 42-43]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 42-43 42 THE HASHEESH EATER. laws locked no barrier, and every moment grew more and more entrancedrat further and fuller glimpses of a beauty which floated like incense from the pavement of that eternal sea. With ecstasy the spiritual ear gathered in continually some more distant and unim- aginable tone, and grouped the growing harmonies into one sublime chant of benediction. With ecstasy the whole soul drank in revelations from every prov- ince, and cried out, "1Oh, awful loveliness!" And now out of my shallop I was borne away into the full light of the mid firmament; now seated on some toppling peak of a cloud-mountain, whose yawning rifts disclosed far down the mines of reserved light- ning; now bathed in my ethereal travel by the rivers of the rainbow, which, sidel by side, coursed through the valleys of heaven; now dwelling for a season in the environment of unbroken sunlight, yet bearing it like the eagle with undazzled eye; now crowned with a coronal of prismatic-beads of dew. Through what- ever region or circumstances I passed, one characteris- tic of the vision remained unchanged: peace-every- where godlike peace, the sum of all conceivable desires satisfied. Slowly I floated down to earth again. There Ori- ental gardens waited to receive me. From fountain to fountain I danced in graceful mazes with inimitable houris, whose foreheads were bound with fillets of jasmine. I pelted with figs the rare exotic birds, whose gold and crimson wings went flashing from branch to branch, or wheedled them to- me with Arabic phrases of endearment. Through avenues of palm I walked arm-in-arm with Hafiz, and heard the hours THE KINGDOM OF THE DREAM. 43 flow singing through the channels of his matchless po- etry. In gay kiosques I quaffed my sherbet, and in the luxury of lawlessness kissed away by drops that other juice which is contraband unto the faithful. And now beneath citron shadows I laid me down to sleep. When I awoke it was morning-actually morning, and not a hasheesh hallucination. The first emotion that I felt upon opening my eyes was happiness to find things again wearing a natural air. Yes; although the last experience of which I had been conscious had seemed to satisfy every human want, physical or spir- itual, I smiled on the four plain white walls of my bed- chamber, and hailed their familiar unostentatiousness with a pleasure which had no wish to transfer itself to arabesque or rainbows. It was like returning home from an eternity spent in loneliness among the palaces of strangers. Well may I say an eternity, for during the whole day I could, not rid myself of the feeling that I was separated from the preceding one by an im- measurable lapse of time. In fact, I never got wholly rid of it. I rose that I might test my reinstated powers, and see if the restoration was complete. Yes, I felt not one trace of bodily weariness nor mental depression. Every function had returned to its normal state, with the one exception mentioned; memory could not efface the traces of my having passed through a great mys- tery. I recalled the events of the past night, and was pleased to think that I had betrayed myself to no one but Dr. H. I was satisfied with my experiment. Ah! would that I had been satisfied! Yet history must go on. page: 44-45[View Page 44-45]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 44-45 " THE HASHEESH EATER. IV. fastlmere anb Cathab bR VwiligDt. "You will never take it again, will --you?" "Oh no, I never expect to; I am satisfied with my one successful experiment." It was the fair lady of the crochet-needle who ask- ed me the question as, a few days after my first prac- tical acquaintance with hasheesh, I gave her the re- cital contained in the preceding pages. In my answer I spoke truly; I did suppose that I never should re- peat my experiment. The glimpse which I had gain- ed in that single night of revelation of hitheito unconi- ceived modes and uncharted fields of spiritual being seemed enough to store the treasure-house of grand memories for a lifetime. Unutterably more, doubt- less, still rqmained unveiled, but it contented me to say, "In Nature's infinite book of secrecy A little I can read," when that little swept a view whose faintest lineament outshone all the characters upon the scroll of daily ex- istence. No, I never should take it again. I did not know myself; I did not know hasheesh. There are temperaments, no doubt, upon which this drug produces, as a reactory result, physical and men- tal depression. With me, this was never the case. Opium and liquors fix themselves as a habit by be- coming necessary to supply that nervous waste which CASHMERE AND CATHAY BY TWILIGHT. 45 they in the first place occasioned. The lassitude which succeeds their exaltation demands a renewed indul- gence, and accordingly every gratification of the appe- tite is parent to the next. But no such element enter- ed into the causes which attached me to hasheesh. I speak confidently, yet without exaggeration, when I say that I have spent many an hour in torture such as was never known by Cranmer at the stake, or Gau- dentio di Lucca in the Inquisition, yet out of the depths of such experience I have always come with- out a trace of its effect in diminished strength or buoyancy. Had the first experiment been followed by depres- sion, I had probably never repeated it. At any rate, unstrunmg muscles and an enervated mind could have been resisted much more effectually when they plead- ed for renewed indulgence than the form which the fascination actually took. For days I was even unu- sually strong; all the forces of life were in a state of pleasurable activity, but the memory of the wondrous glories which I had beheld wooed me continually like an irresistible sorceress. I could not shut my eyes for midday musing without beholding in that world, half dark, half light, beneath the eyelids, a steady pro- cession of delicious images which the severest will could not banish nor dim. Now through an immense and serene sky floated luxurious argosies of clouds, continually changing form and tint through an infinite cycle of mutations. Now, suddenly emerging from some deep embower- ment of woods, I stood upon the banks of a broad riv- er that curved far off into dreamy distance, and glided page: 46-47[View Page 46-47]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 46-47 " THE HASHEESH EATER. noiselessly past its jutting headlands, reflecting a light which was not of the sun nor of the moon, but midway between them, and here and there thrilling with sub- dued prismatic rays. Temples and gardens, fountains -', and vistas stretched continually through my. waking or sleeping imagination, and mingled themselves with all I heard, or read, or saw. On the pages of Gibbon the palaces and lawns of Nicomedia were illustrated with a hasheesh tint and a hasheesh reality; and jour- neying with old Dan Chaucer, I drank in a delicious landscape of revery along all the road to Canterbury. The music of my vision was Still heard in echo; as the Bells of Bow of old time called to Whittington, so did it call to me-"Turn again, turn again.". And I turned. Censure me not harshy, ye who have never known what fascination there is in the ecstasy of beauty; there aqre baser attractions than those which invited me. Perhaps ye yourselves have turned from the first simple-mindedness of life to be led by the power of a more sordid wooing. The hope of being one day able to sleep lazily in a literally golden sun, the lazzaroni of fortune; of securing a patient hearing for some influential and patriotic whisper in the ear of the "mobilium turba Quiritium;" of draining any cup which drugs the soul and leaves the body to rifle it of its prerogative-each and all of these are lower fascinations than that to which I yielded. And ye better, wiser, and therefore gentler ones, who decry not another's weakness because it is not your own, who are free from all bondage, be it of the sordid or the beautiful, be kindly in your judgment. CASHMERE AND CATHAY- BY TWILIGHT. 47 Wherein I was wrong I was invited as by a mother's voice, and the blandishments which lulled me were full of such spiritual sweetness as we hear only twice in a lifetime--once at its opening, once at its close; the first time in the cradle-hymn that lulls innocence to slumber, the last in that music of attendant angels through which the soul begins to float upward in its euthanasia toward the restoration of primeval purity and peace. I yielded to no sensual gratification. The motives for the hasheesh-indulgence were of the most exalted ideal nature, for of this nature are all its ecstasies and its revelations--yes, and a thousand-fold more terrible, for this very reason, its unutterable pangs. I yielded, moreover, without realizing to what. Within a circleof one hundred miles' radius there was not a living soul who knew or could warn me of my danger. Finally, I yielded without know- ing that I yielded, for I ascribed my next indulgence to a desire of research. One day, about the hour of noon, a little more than a week after my first experiment, I rolled twenty grains of hasheesh into a pill and swallowed it, saying as I did so, "Here is the final test for the sake of science." The afternoon lay before me unoccupied by any espe- cial appointment, and, after dining, I threw myself down upon a lounge to await the result of the dose. The day was soft and hazy, and its influence lay so nepenthe-like upon my eyelids, that before long, with- out knowing it, I fell asleep. It was tea-time when I awoke, and I had not experienced any visions. A friend of mine joined me at the table, and when we pushed back our chairs, lie proposed that we should page: 48-49[View Page 48-49]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 48-49 48 THE HASHEESH EATER. take a walk. Every thing above, below, around us united in the invitation. It was one of t'se evenings when the universal sense of balminess m aes all out- doors as homelike and delicious as the cheeriest winter fireside can be, with its enlivenment of ruddy blaze, and its charm of sheltered privacy. The very soul seems turned inside out for an airing, and we are al- most ashamed of ourselves for ever preferring rafters to the sky, and fleeing from the presence of Nature to find a home. Through all the streets that ran toward the west the sun was sending a thrill of light from his good-by place on the horizon, and the pavements were a mo- saic of dancing leaf-shadows and golden polygons, for- ever shifting as the trees quivered over us in the gen- tlest of southern winds. Arm-in-arm with Dan, I strolled down the checkered avenue, and more and more luxuriant grew the sunset as we came gradually out of the environment of houses and breathed the air of the open country. The suburbs of? are very beautiful. If the stranger knows it and rbmarks it, it is not because he is smitten with the mere novelty of his view. There are few landscapes which will bear so frequent beholding-few whose admirers so soon and lastingly become their lovers. Were there any jealousy in my love for that, my own home-scenery, I know no season which would ever have given me more pangs for fear of a rival than the one of which I speak, for the earth and sky were fair around us, even with a human fascination. Of my companion let me say that which any man of varying moods will realize to be one of the highest eulogies that can be passed upon a CASHMERE AND CATHAY BY TWILIGHT. 49 friend. Dan was one of those choice spirits whom you are always glad to have beside you, whatever may be your feeling. He belonged to that rare and sensitive /iii order of beings who can never become uncongenial to one who has once been in sympathy with them. How many a time, most valued and longed-for one, have I tested this in thee! How often, -n this very intuitive perception of our accordance, have I felt the proof that friendship is as inborn a principle in hearts as the qual- ity of their harmony in tones of a chord, There is a road running south from the suburbs of which in many respects affords one of the most delightful walks which can be imagined. On the one hand, for a long distance, a terraced embankment rises luxuriantly green through all the days of summer, and crowned with picturesque rusurban cottages. On the other, a broad table-land stretches away to the ab- rupt banks of the Hudson, dotted over all its surface with clumps of healthful trees and embowered villas. Here and there, through the fringes of shade which skirt the brink, delicious views of the river break upon the eye, with a background of mountains, still unsub- dued by labor, rising in primeval freshness from the other side. Under the tutelar protection of their even- ing shadows the farther water lay, at the season of which I speak, like a divine child asleep, watched by an eternal nurse. Along this road we traveled arm-in-arm, so filled and overcome with the, beauty of the view that we read each other's feelings and went silently. Perhaps we had come half a mile from the town when, without the smallest premonition, I was smitten by the hasheesh page: 50-51[View Page 50-51]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 50-51 50 THE HASHEESH EATER. thrill as by a thunderbolt. Though I had felt it but once in life before, its sign was as unmistakable as the most familiar thing of daily life. I have often been asked to explain the nature of this thrill, and have as often tried to do it, but no analogue exists which will represent it perfectly, hardly even approximately. The nearest resemblance to the feeling is that contained in our idea of the instantaneous separation of soul and body. Very few in the world have ever known before absolute death what state accompanies this separation, yet we all of us have an idea more or less distinct of that which it must be when it arrives. Even on this vague conception I throw myself for the sake of being understood with more confidence than I would dare to give to the most thorough description that I could elaborate. The road along which we walked began slowly to lengthen. The hill over which it disappeared, at the distance of half a mile from me, soon came to be per- ceived as the boundary of the continent itself. But for the infinite loveliness of the sky, and waters, and fields, I should have been as greatly terrified with the increasing mystery of my state as I had been at the commencement of my first experience. But a most beautiful sunset was dying in the west, the river was tinged by it, the very zenith clouds were bathed in it, and the world beneath seemed floating in a dream of rosy tranquillity. My awakened perceptions drank in this beauty until all sense of fear was banished, and every vein ran flooded with the very wine of delight. Mystery enwrapped me still, but it was the mystery of one who walks in Paradise for the first time. Could I keep it from Dan? No, not for a moment. I had no remembrance of having taken hasheesh. The past was the property of another life, and I supposed that all the world was reveling in the same ecstasy as myself. I cast off all restraint; I leaped into the air; I clapped my hands, and shouted for joy. An invol- untary exclamation raised the mustache of the poet beside me. "What in the world," he cried, " is the matter with you?" I could only answer, "Bliss! bliss! unimagined bliss!" In an instant he saw all, for he knew my former experience, and as quickly formed the resolution of humoring me to the utmost in all my vagaries. I glowed like a new-born soul. The well-known landscape lost all of its familiarity, and I was setting out upon a journey of years through heavenly territo- ries, which it had been the longing of my previous life- time to behold. "My dear friend," I said, " we are about to realize all our youthful dreams of travel. To- gether you and I will wander on foot at our will through strange and beauteous countries; our life spreads be- fore us henceforward unoccupied by cares, and the riches of all nature stretch onward through the im- mense domain we see in exultant expectancy to be- come the food for our thought and the fountains of our delight. To think that we should have been spared until this day--spared to each other, spared for such glorious scenes! My friend, we shall travel together, linked soul to soul, and gaining ecstasy by impartition. At night, beneath the shade of zephyr-fanned mimo- sas, we shall lay ourselves down to sleep on the banks of primeval Asian rivers, and Bulbul shall sing us to page: 52-53[View Page 52-53]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 52-53 i -i 52 THE HASHEESH EATER. sleep with his most delicious madrigals. When the first auroral tinges are glassed back from the peaks of Himmaleh, we will arise, and, bathing ourselves in rock- o'ershadowed fountains, will start again upon oum-im- mortal way. Sleep shallrepeat-tieechehdes of therday to another and unfatigiiedi'ne s/e of dre/ .i awaking shall be a repetition' mlt'i:iew : still more enchanting life. n:!' ': 5! "I will go," said my friend, " with delight." Not a shadow of incredulousness or inappreciation passed over his face, and, drawing his arm still closer through my own, I hastened ,onward, as delighted with his con- sent as I was thoroughly convinced of the reality of the presence of grand old Asia. The peculiar time of hasheesh, already so frequently mentioned, added one more most rapturous element to my enjoyment. Through leagues of travel the shad, ows did not deepen around us, but the same unuttera- ble sunset peace and beauty transfused the earth un- changeably. In watching the glories of the west at sunset in our ordinary state, they pass away from us so soon that the dying lustres have become to us al- most the synonym for transition and decay. The gold- en masses become ruddy, the ruddy fall away to pur- ple, the purple speedily grow black, and all this trans- mutation occupies no longer time than we may lean our foreheads, unfatigued, against a window-pane. In my present state of enlarged perception, Time had no kaleidoscope for me; nothing grew faint, nothing shift- ed, nothing changed except my ecstasy, which height- ened through interminable degrees to behold the same rose-radiance lighting us up along all our immense CASHMERE AND CATHAY BY TWILIGHT. 53 journey. I mighlt style my present chapter "4Notes of Travel through the Champaigns of perpetual Sun- set." rFrom the road along which we traveled another leads back into P-- , across a, more precipitous hill than any we had already ascended. Into this second road we turfjed. Yet, from the absence of all familiar appear- ances in the world around me, I did not suppose that we were returning to the town, but merely that we were continuing our journey through a new and less frequented by-path. Presently we struck a plank walk, and began mounting the hill of which I have spoken. The moment that the planks began to resound be- neath our feet I realized in what part of Asia we were journeying. We were on the great wall of China. Be- low us stretched into grand distances the plains of Thi- bet. Multitudinous were the flocks that covered them; countleqs groups of goats and goatherds were dispersed over the landscape as far as the eye could reach. The banks of innumerable -streams were dotted with pic- turesque tents, and every minutest detail of the view in all respects harmonized with the idea of Asiatic life. Beyond Thibet, as with clairvoyant eyes, I looked straight through and over Hindoo Koosh, and beheld Cashmere sleeping in -grand shadows. The fountains of the Punjaub were unveiled, and among their spicy outflowings there gamboled, in Old-world freshness of heart, children of a primitive race whom prodigal na- ture had put beyond the necessity of labor. Through greenest valleys roved pairs of Oriental lovers, while above them flashed golden light from the fruit that page: 54-55[View Page 54-55]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 54-55 54 THE HASHEESH EATER. hung in a Vallambrosa of citron-branches. Distance did not dim either scenery or countenances; every liv- ing thing was audible and visible in its rejoicing though leagues of light and shadow stretched between us. Again I leaped into the air and shouted for joy. Along the road that skirted the outside of my Chi- nese wall a carriage came, drawn by a span of richly-ca- parisoned white horses. In it a young man and a maid- en were sitting, and as they drew nearer they bowed to myself and my fellow-traveler. "Who are those?" asked Dan. "An' eminent mandarin of the interior,' I replied, " of the order of the Blue Button, and by- name Fuh-chieng, who, with his sister, at this season every year takes the tour of the provinces, dispensing justice and examining into the state of the public works. Verily, an estimable youth. Having known him during the summer we spent together at Pekin, I feel constrained to speak with him." With a choice compliment upon my lips, worded in the most courtly Chinese with which I was conversant, I was about to rush up to the carriage and make my kow-tow, when my friend, grasping my arm, entreated me to desist, begging to know whether I were not aware that, since the year 580 B C., when Ching-Chong was assassina- ted in his palanquin, it had been a criminal offense to approach within ten paces of a mandarin on his trav- els. "C My dearest friend," I replied, " you have saved me! I am astonished at your knowledge of Chinese law, this title of which had entirely escaped my mind. With thankfulness I yield to your suggestion, and will suffer the young man to pass on." It was well that I did so, as my acquaintances in the carriage might CASHMERE AND CATHAY BY TWlLIGHT. 55 otherwise have been terrified beyond measure by the singularity, if not by the sublimity of the dialect in which I should have addressed them. It is possible for a man of imaginative mind, by mere suggestions of rich veins of thought, to lead a companion in the hasheesh state through visions of in- comparable delight. This fact Dan had discovered in the good grace with which I instantly received his ad- vice as to the mandarin. In our journeying we came to a tall gate-post of granite, which stood at the en- trance to a lawn in front of one of the suburban resi- dences of which I have spoken. Making his manner Oriental, to suit our'supposed surroundings, he said to me, "Seest thou that tower that rises into the rosy air?"In an instant I beheld the tower with such con- viction of reality that I did not even think of it as a metamorphose from something else. From the battle- ments flaunted yellow'flags gorgeous with crimson dragons, and over each corner of the turret glared a rampant hippogriff, flaming, from his forked tongue even to his anomalous tail, with scales of dazzling : gold. There was revelry within; its ecstasy worded in Shemitic monosyllables, and accompanied by the mellifluous flights of gong and tom-tom. We passed on through Asia. We now reached the summit of the hill. The broadest scope of vision which was possible was now ours. My ecstasy became so great that I seemed to cast off all shackles of flesh. The lover of beauty who should, for the first time, drink in the richness of this exalted view through the channels of the soul which are ordinarily opened, might well burst forth page: 56-57[View Page 56-57]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 56-57 56 THE HASHEESH EATER. into singing were not reverence the stronger feeling. But when, with me, that flow of loveliness broke in through doors in the spiritual nature to which no open sesame had ever before been granted, I felt, I cried out, "Why need we, in our journey, touch the earth at all? Let us sweep through air above this expanse of beau- ty, and read it like the birds." I was about to fly heavenward, chanting a triumph- ant hymn, when I turned and looked at Dan. He was standing sorrowfully, without means of flight. I was filled with contrition. "Dear brother of my pilgrim- age," I said, " did I speak of -tempting the air, forget- ful that thou wast not like unto myself? Forgive me --I will not leave thee; yet, oh that thou couldst also fly!- through what abysses of sublimity would we float!"Restoring myself to contentment with the airy tread of feet which hardly seemed to touch the ground, and my wish to oblivion, I again took his arm, and we voyaged as before. Now we went singing, and I question whether Mozart ever rejoiced in his own musical creations as I did in that symphony-we sang together. --The tune and the words were extemporaneous, yet, by a close sympathy, he sang an accordant base to my air, and I heard de- licious echoes thrown back from the dome of heaven. We sang the primal simplicity of Asia, the cradle of the nations, the grand expectancy of the younger con- tinents, looking eastward to their mysterious mother for the gift of races still treasured in her womb. On our paean were borne the praises of the golden days of Foh and the serene prophecies of Confucius; we spoke of the rivers that for numberless centuries bore down to the eternal ocean no freight but the sere leaves of uninhabited wildernesses, whose shadows they glass- ed, and of fountains upon whose face no smile had rested save that of Hesper and the rising sun. I lived in what we sang: our music seemed a wondrous epic, whose pages we illustrated, not with pictures, but with living groups; the ancient days were restored be- fore my eyes and to my ears, and I exulted in the per- ception with such conviction of reality that I ascribed it to no power of my own, but knew it as an exterior and universal fact. This will be realized, perhaps, by very few who read my recital. The word for every strange phenomenon with all the world is "only imagination." Truly, this was imagination; but to me, with eyes and ears wide open in the daylight, an imagination as real as the soberest fact. It will be remembered that the hasheesh states of ecstasy always alternate with less intense conditions, in which the prevailing phenomena are those of mirth or tranquillity. In accordance with this law, in the present instance, Dan, to whom I had told my former experience, was not surprised to hear me break forth at the final cadence of our song into a peal of unextin- guishable laughter, but begged to know what was its cause, that he might laugh too. I could only cry out that my right leg was a tin case filled with stair-rods, and as I limped along, keeping that member perfectly rigid, both from fear of cracking the metal and the dif- ficulty of bending it, I heard the rattle of the brazen contents shaken from side to side with feelings of the most supreme absurdity possible to the human soul. page: 58-59[View Page 58-59]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 58-59 58 THE HASHEESH EATER. Presently the leg was restored to its former state, but in the interim its mate had grown to a size which would have made it a very respectable trotter for Bri- an Borru or one of the Titans. Elevated some few hundred feet into the firmament, I was compelled to hop upon my giant pedestal in a way very ungraceful in a world where two legs were the fashion, and emi- nently disagreeable to the slighted member, which sought in vain to reach the earth with struggles amus- ing from their very insignificance. This ludicrous af- fliction being gradually removed, I went on my way quietly until we again began to be surrounded by the houses of the town. Here the phenomenon of the dual existence once more presented itself. One part of me awoke, while the other continued in perfect hallucination. The awakened portion felt the necessity of keeping in side streets on the way home, lest some untimely burst of ecstasy should startle more frequented thoroughfares. I mentioned this to Dan, who drew me into a quiet lane, by the side of which we sat down together to rest on a broad stone. By this time the sunset had nearly faded, while my attention was directed to other things, and its regency of all the beauties of the sky was re- placed by that of the full moon, now at the zenith. A broad and clearly-defined halo surrounded her, and re- fracted her rays in such a manner as to shower them from its edge in a prismatic fringe. That vision of loveliness was the only possible one which could have recompensed me for the loss of my sunset. I gazed heavenward, as one fascinated by mystical eyes. And now the broad luminous belt began to be peopled with CASHMERIE- AND CATHAY BY TWILIGHTO. 59",' ' myriads of shining ones from the realm of Faery, who plunged into the translucent lake ;of ether as into a sea, and, dashing back its silvery spray from their breasts, swam to the moon and ascended its gleaming beach. Between this moon-island and the shore of halo now growing multitudes endlessly passed and repass- ed, and I could hear, tinkling down through the vacant spaces, the thrill of their gnome-laughter. I could have kept that stony seat all night, and looked speech- lessly into heaven, unmoved though an armed host had passed by me on the earth, but unconsciously I closed my eyes, and was in a moment whirling on through a visionary dance, like that in which I had been borne as soon as I lay down at the time of my first ex- periment. Temples and gardens, pyramids and un- earthly rivers, began to float along before the win- dows of my sense, when Dan, looking around, saw that I would become unconscious, and aroused me. Again we walked on. And now that unutterable thirst which character- izes hasheesh came upon me. I could have lain me down and lapped dew from the grass. I must drink, wheresoever, howsoever. We soon reached home-soon, because it was not five squares off from where we sat down, yet ages, from the thirst which consumed me and the expansion of time in which I lived. I came into the house as one would approach a fountain in the desert, with a wild bound of exulta- tion, and gazed with miserly eyes at the draught which my friend poured out for me until the glass was brim- ming. I clutched it-I put it to my lips. Ha! a & page: 60-61[View Page 60-61]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 60-61 60 THE HASHEESH EATER. j surprise! It was not water, but the most delicious metheglin in which ever bard of the Cymri drank the health of Howell Dda. - It danced and sparkled like some liquid metempsychosis of amber; it gleamed with the spiritual fire of a thousand chrysolites. To sight, to taste it was metheglin, such as never man- tled in the cups of the Valhalla. The remainder of that evening I spent in a delirium which, unlike all that had preceded it, was one of un- utterable calm. Not the heavy sleep of a debauch, not the voluntary musing of the visionary, but a clar- ifying of all thought, and -the flowing in of the rich- est influences from the world around me, without the toil of selecting them. I looked at the stars, and felt kindred with them; I spoke to them, and they an- swered me. -I dwelt in an inner communion with heaven-a communion where every language is under- stood, rather where all speak the same language, and deeply did I realize a voice which seemed to say, as in my waking dreams I had faintly heard it murmur upon earth, Ioi;al Rev OvrTroi y27rrat, plta aaOdvarozatv. ^ i'1 * -, . * V. glle Cont anb the Power of Markness. IT may perhaps be not altogether a fanciful classifi- cation to divide every man's life into two periods, the locomotive and the static. Restless fluidity always characterizes the childish mind in its healthy state, T THE HOUR AND THE POWER OF DARKNESS. 61 exemplifying itself in the thousand wayward freaks, hair-breadth experiments, and unanswerable questions which keep the elder portions of a family in continual oscillation between mirth and terror. There is not always a thorough solidification of the mental nature, even when the great boy has learned what to do with his hands, and how to occupy his station at maturer tea-parties with becoming dignity and resignation. No longer, to be sure, does he gratify experimental tendencies by taking the eight-day clock to pieces to look at its machinery; no longer does he nonplus grave aunts and grandmothers with questions upon the causes of his own origination, but the same dynamic propensities exist expanded into a larger and more self-conscious sphere. His restlessness of limb has now become the desire of travel, his investigation into the petty matters of household economy has grown into a thirst for research whose field is the world and whose instruments are the highest faculties of induc- tion. With some men this state remains unchanged through a long life, but to most of us there comes: sooner or later, a period when the longing for change ' dies out, and a fixed place and an unalterable condi tion become the great central ideas of existence. We look back with a wonder that is almost incredulous- ness upon the time when a ride by railway was the dream of weeks preceding, and try in vain to realize the supernatural freshness which the earth put on when for the first time we discovered that we were near-sighted, and looked through some friend's specta- cles. Motion, except for the rare purpose of recrea- " - ' page: 62-63[View Page 62-63]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 62-63 62 THE HASHEESH EATER. \ tion, becomes an annoyance to us beyond a circum- scribed territory, and we have emerged into the static condition of life before we are aware. Much earlier than the usual period did this become the case with me. A feeble childhood soon exhausted its superfluous activities, and into books, ill health, and musing I settled down when I should have -been playing cricket, hunting, or riding. -The younger thirst for adventure was quenched by rapiddeg rees as I found it possible to ascend Chimborazo with Hum- boldt lying on a sofa, or chase harte-beests with Cum- ming over muffins and coffee. The only exceptions to this state of imaginative indolence were the hours spent in rowing or sailing upon the most glorious river of the world, and the consciousness that the Hudson rolled at my own door only contributed to settle the conviction that there was no need of going abroad to find beauties in which the soul might wrap itself as in a garment of delight. Even at these seasons exercise was not so much the aim as musing. Many a time, f with the handles of my sculls thrust under the side- girders, and the blades turned full to the wind, have I sat and drifted for hours through mountain-shadows, and past glimpses of light that flooded the woody gorges, with a sense of dreamy ecstasy which all the novelties of a new world could never have supplied. Oh, most noble river, what hast thou not been to me? In childhood thy ripples were the playmates of' my perpetual leisure, dancing up the sandy stretches of thy brink, and telling laughing tales of life's beamy spray and sunshine. In after years, the grand prophet ; of a wider life, thine ebb sang chants to the imperial X? ,i THE HOUR AND THE POWER' OF DARKNESS. 63 ocean, into whose pearly palaces thou wast hastening, and thy flood brought up the resounding history of the infinite surges whence thou hadst returned. It is not thine to come stealing from unnamed fountains of mystery, nor to crown thy sublime mountains with the ruined battlements of a departed age; but more than Nile hath God glorified thee, and Nature hath hallowed thy walls with her own armorial bearings till thou art more reverend than Rhine. On thy guarding peaks Antiquity sits enthroned, asking no register in the crumbling monuments of man, but bearing her original sceptre from the hand of Him'who first found- ed her domain beside thy immortal flow. Gradually the Hudson came to supply all my spir- itual wants. Were I sad, I found sympathy in the almost human murmurs of his waters, as, stretched upon the edge of some rocky headland, I heard them go beating into the narrow caves beneath me, and re- turn: sighing, as if defrauded of a hiding-place and a home. Were I merry, the white-caps danced and laughed about my prancing boat, and the wind whis- tled rollicking glees against nr stays. In weariness, I leaped into the stream; his -cl hand upbore and caressed me till I returned braced for thought, and re- newed as by a plunge into El Dorado. In the Hud- son I found a wealth which satisfied all wishes, and my supreme hope was that on his banks I might pass all my life. Thus supplied with beauty, consolation, dreams, all things, every day I became more and more careless of the world beyond, and in my frame grew even hyvperstatic. It was in this state that hasheesh found me. After page: 64-65[View Page 64-65]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 64-65 " THE HASHEESH EATER. the walk which I last recorded, the former passion for travel returned with powerful intensity. I had now a way of gratifying it which comported both with indo- lence and economy. The whole East, from Greece to farthest China, lay within the compass of -a township; no outlay was necessary for the journey. For the humble sum of six cents I might purchase an excur- sion ticket over all the earth; ships and dromedaries, tents and hospices were all contained in a box of Til- den's extract. Hasheesh I called the "drug of trav- el," and I had only to direct my thoughts strongly to- ward a particular part of the world previously to swal- lowing my bolus to make my whole fantasia in the strongest possible degree topographical. Or, when the delirium was at its height, let any one suggest to me, however faintly, mountain, wilderness, or market-place, and straightway I was in it, drinking in the novelty of my surroundings in all the ecstasy of a discoverer. I swam up against the current of all time; I walked through Luxor and Palmyra as they were of old; on Babylon the bittern had not built her nest, and I gazed on the unbroken columns of the Parthenon. Soon after my -pedestrian journey through Asia I changed my residence for a while, and went to live in the town of Schenectady. It was here that the re- mainder of my hasheesh-life was passed, and here, for many days, did I drain alternately cups of superhu- man joy and as superhuman misery. At Union Col- lege, of which I was a resident, I had a few friends to whom I communicated my acquaintance with the won- drous drug which was now becoming a habit with me. Some of them were surprised, some warned me, and as THE HOUR AND THE POWER OF DARKNESS. , 65 they will most of them be introduced into the narra- tive which I am writing, I now mention them thus particularly, lest it may be thought strange that, in an ordinary town of small size, there should be found by one man a sufficient number of congenial persons to vary the dramatis personae of a story as mine will be varied. Having exhausted the supply of hasheesh which I had originally obtained from the shelves of my old lounging-place at the shop of the doctor, I procured a small jar of a preparation of the same drug by another chemist, which, I was told, was much weaker than the former. Late in the evening I took about fifty grains of the new preparation, arguing that this amount was a rational equivalent for the thirty which had before been my maximum dose. It is impossible, however, to base any calculation of the energy of hasheesh uponl such a comparison. The vital forces upon which this most magical stimu- lant operates are too delicate, too recondite to be treat- ed like material parts in a piece of mechanism whose power of resistance can be definitely expressed by an equation. 'There are certain nerves, no doubt, which the anatomist and the physician will find affected by the cannabine influence--certain functions over which its essence appears to hold peculiar regency; but we must have proceeded much farther in the science which treats of the connection between matter and mind, must know much more of those imponderable forces which, more delicate than electricity and more myste- rious than the magnetic fluid, weave the delicate in- teracting network that joins our human duality, before page: 66-67[View Page 66-67]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 66-67 " THE HASHEESH EATER. we can treat that part of us affected by hasheesh as a constant in any calculation. There are two facts which I have verified as uni- versal by repeated experiment, which fall into their place here as aptly as they can -in the course of my narrative: 1 st. At two different times, when body and mind are apparently in precisely analogous states, when all circumstances, exterior and interior, do not differ tangibly in the smallest respect, the same dose of the same preparation of hasheesh will frequently pro- duce diametrically opposite effects. Still further, I have taken at one time a pill of thirty grains, which hardly gave a perceptible phenomenon, and at another, when my dose had been but half that quantity, I have suf- fered the agonies of a martyr, or rejoiced in a perfect phrensy. So exceedingly variable are its results, that, long before I abandoned the indulgence, I took each successive bolus with the consciousness that I was daring an uncertainty as tremendous as the equipoise between hell and heaven. Yet the fascination em- ployed Hope as its advocate, and won the suit. 2d. If, during the ecstasy of hasheesh delirium, another dose, however small-yes, though it be no larger than half a pea--be employed to prolong the condition, such agony will inevitably ensue as will make the soul shudder at its own possibility of endurance without annihilation. By repeated experiments, which now oc- cupy the most horrible place upon my catalogue of hor- rible remembrances, have I proved that, among all the variable phenomena of hasheesh, this alone stands un- varying. The use of it directly after any other stim- ulus will produce consequences as appalling. j A4 THE HQOUR AND THE POWER OF DARKNESS. 67 But to return from my digression. It was per- haps eight o'clock in the evening when I took' the dose of fifty grains. I did not retire until near, mid- night, and as no effects had then manifested them- selves, I supposed that the preparation was even weak- er than my ratio gave it credit for being, and, without any expectation of result, lay down to sleep. Previ- ously, however, I extinguished my light. To say this seem trivial, but it is as important a matter as any which it is possible to notice. The most direful suggestions of the bottomless pit may flow in upon the hasheesh-eater through the very medium of dark- ness. The blowing out of a candle can set an unfath- omed barathrum wide agape beneath the flower- wreathed table of his feast, arid convert his palace of sorcery into a Golgotha. Light is a necessity to him, even when sleeping; it must tinge his visions, or they assume a hue as sombre as the banks of Styx. I do not know how long a time had passed since midnight, when I awoke suddenly to find myself in a realm of the most perfect clarity of view, yet terrible with an infinitude of demoniac shadows. Perhaps, I thought, I am still dreaming; but no effort could arouse me from my vision, and I realized that I was wide awake. Yet it was an awaking which, for tor- ture, had no parallel in all the stupendous domain of sleeping incubus. Beside my bed in the centre of the room stood a bier, from whose corners drooped the folds of a heavy pall; outstretched upon it lay in state a most fearful corpse, whose livid face was distorted with the pangs of assassination. The traces of a great agony were frozen into fixedness in the tense position page: 68-69[View Page 68-69]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 68-69 68 THE HASHEESH EATER. :- of every muscle, and the nails of the dead man's fin- gers pierced his palms with the desperate clinch of one who has yielded not without agonizing resistance. Two tapers at his head, two at his feet, with their tall and unsnuffed wicks, made the ghastliness of the bier more luminously unearthly, and a smothered laugh of derision from some invisible watcher ever and anon mocked the corpse, as if triumphant demons were ex- ulting over their prey. I pressed my hands upon my eyeballs till they ached, in intensity of desire to shut out the spectacle; I buried my head in the pillow, that I might not hear that awful laugh of diabolic sar- casm. But-oh horror immeasurable! I beheld the walls of the room slowly gliding together, the ceiling coming down, the floor ascending, as of old the lonely captive saw them, whose cell was doomed to be his coffin. Nearer and nearer am I borne toward the corpse. I shrunk back from the edge of the bed; I cowered in most abject fear. I tried to cry out, but speech was paralyzed. The walls came closer and closer togeth- er. Presently my hand lay on the dead man's fore- head. I made my arm as straight and rigid as a bar of iron; but of what avail-was human strength against the contraction of that cruel masonry? Slowly my el- bow bent with the ponderous pressure; nearer grew the ceiling-I fell into the fearful embrace of death. I was pent, I was stifled in the breathless nichle, which was all of space still left to me. The stony eyes stared up into my own, and again the maddening peal of fiendish laughter rang close beside my ear. Now I was touched on all sides by the wallas of the terrible press; there came a heavy crush, and I felt all sense blotted out in darkness. I awaked at last; the corpse was gone, but I had taken his place upon the bier. In the same attitude which he had kept I lay motionless, conscious, although in darkness, that I wore upon my face the counterpart of his look of agony. The room had grown into a gigantic hall, whose roof was framed of iron arches; the pavement, the walls, the cornice were all of iron. The spiritual essence of the metal seemed to be a com- bination of cruelty and despair. Its massive hard- ness spoke a language which it is impossible to em- body in words, but any one who has watched the re- lentless sweep of some great engine crank, and realized its capacity for murder, will catch a glimpse, even in the memory, of the thrill which seemed to say, I( This iron is a tearless fiend," of the unutterable meaning I saw in those colossal beams and buttresses. I suffer- ed from the vision of that iron as from the presence of a giant assassin. But my senses opened slowly to the perception of still worse presences. By my side there gradually emerged from the sulphureous twilight which bathed the room the most horrible form which the soul could look upon unshattered-a fiend also of iron, white hot and dazzling with the glory of the nether penetralia. A face that was the ferreous incarnation of all imagin- ations of malice and irony looked on me with a glare, withering from its intense heat, but still more from the unconceived degree of inner wickedness which it symbolized. I realized whose laughter I had heard, and instantly I heard it again. Beside him another page: 70-71[View Page 70-71]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 70-71 70 THE HASHEESH EATER. demon, his very twini, was rocking a tremendous cradle framed of bars of iron like all things else, and candes- cent with as fierce a heat as the fiend's. And now, in a chant of the-most terrific/blasphemy which it is possible to imagine, or rather of blasphemy so fearful that no human thought has ever conceived of it, both the demons broke forth, until I grew in- tensely wicked merely by hearing it. I still remem- ber the meaning of the song they sang, although there is no language yet coined which will convey it, and far be it from me even to suggest its nature, lest I should seem to perpetuate in any degree such pro- fanity as beyond the abodes of the lost no lips are ca- pable of uttering. Every note of the music itself ac- corded with the thought as symbol represents essence, and with its clangor mixed the maddening creak of the forever-oscillating cradle, until I felt driven into a fero- cious despair. Suddenly the nearest fiend, snatching up a pitchfork (alsol of white-hot iron), thrust it into my writhing side, and hurled me shrieking into the fiery cradle. I sought in my torture to scale the bars; they slipped from my grasp and under my feet like the smoothest icicles. Through increasing grades of agony I lay unconsumed, tossing from side to side with the rocking of the dreadful engine, and still above me pealed the Chant of blasphemy, and the eyes of de- moniac sarcasm smiled at me in mockery of a mother's gaze upon her child. "Let us sing him," said one of the fiends to the other, "the lullaby of Hell." The blasphemy now changed into an awful word-picturing of eternity, un- veiling what it was, and dwelling with raptures of mal- THE HOUR AND THE POWER OF DARKNESS. 71 ice upon its infinitude, its sublimity of growing pain, and its privation of all fixed points which might mark it into divisions. By emblems common to all lan- guage rather than by any vocal words, did they sing this frightful apocalypse, yet the very emblems had a sound as distinct as tongue could give them. This was one, and the only one of their representatives that I can remember. Slowly they began, "To-day is fa- ther of to-morrow, to-morrow hath a son that shall beget the day succeeding." With increasing rapid- ity they sang in this way, day by day, the geneal- ogy of a thousand years, and I traced on the succes- sive generations, without a break in one link, until the rush of their procession reached a rapidity so aw- ful as fully to typify eternity itself; and still I fled on through that burning genesis of cycles. I feel that I do not convey my meaning, but may no one' else ever understand it better! Withered like a leaf in the breath of an oven, after millions of years I felt myself tossed upon the iron floor. The fiends had departed, the cradle was gone. I stood alone, staring into immense and empty spaces. Presently I found that I was in a colossal square, as of some European city, alone at the time of evening twilight, and surrounded by houses hundreds of sto- ries high. I was bitterly athirst. I ran to the mid- die of the square, and reached it after an infinity of travel. There was a fountain carved in iron, every jet inimitably sculptured in mockery of water, yet dry as the ashes of a furnace. "I shall perish with thirst," I cried. "Yet one more trial. There must be peo- ple in all these immense houses. Doubtless they love page: 72-73[View Page 72-73]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 72-73 72 THE HASHEESH EATER. the dying traveler, and will give him to drink. Good friends! water! water!" A horribly deafening din poured down on me from the four sides of the square. Every -sash of all the hundred stories of every house in that colossal quadrangle flew up as by one spring. Awakened by my call, at every window stood a terrific maniac. Sublimely in the air above me, in front, be- side me, on either hand, and behind my back, a wilder- ness of insane faces gnashed at me, glared, gibbered, howled, laughed horribly, hissed, and cursed. At the unbearable sight I myself became insane, and, leaping up and down, mimicked them all, and drank their de- mented spirit. A hand seized my arm-a voice called my name. The square grew lighter-it changed-it slowly took a familiar aspect, and gradually I became aware that my room-mate was standing before me with a lighted lamp. I sank back into his arms, crying "Water! water, Robert! For the love of heaven, water!"He passed across the room to the wash-stand, leaving me upon the bed, where I afterward found he had replaced me on being awakened by hearing me leap frantically ? up and down upon the floor. In going for the water, he seemed to be traveling over a desert plain to some ? far-off spring, and I hailed him on his return with the i pitcher and the glass as one greets his friend restored : after a long journey. No glass for me! I snatched the pitcher, and drank a Niagara of refreshment with every draught. I reveled in the ecstasy of a drinker : of the rivers of A1 Ferdbos. ; Hasheesh always brings with it an awakening of a perception which magnifies the smallest sensation till X THE HOUR AND THE POWER OF DARKNESS. 73 it occupies immense boundaries. The hasheesh-eater who drinks during his highest state of exaltation al- most invariably supposes that he is swallowing interm- inable floods, and imagines his throat an abyss which is becoming gorged by the sea. Repeatedly, as in an agony of thirst I have clutched some small vessel of water and tipped it at my lips, I have felt such a real- ization of an overwhelming torrent that, with my throat still charred, I have put the water away, lest I should be drowned by the flow. With the relighting of the lamp my terrors ceased. The room was still immense, yet the iron of its struc- ture, in the alembic of that heavenly light, had been transmuted into silver and gold. Beamy spars, chased by some unearthly graver, supported the roof above me, and a mellow glory transfused me, shed from sun- ny panels that covered the walls. Out of this hall of grammarye I suddenly passed through a crystal gate, and found myself again in the world outside. Througli a valley carpeted with roses I marched proudly at the head of a grand army, and the most triumphant music pealed from all my legions. In the symphony joined many an unutterable instrument, bugles and ophi- cleides, harps and cymbals, whose wondrous peals seemed to say, "We are self-conscious; we exult like human souls." There were roses every where -roses under foot, roses festooning the lattices at our sides, roses showering a prodigal flush of beauty from the arches of an arbor overhead. Down the valley I gained glimpses of dreamy lawns basking in a Claude Lorraine sunlight. Over them multitudes of rosy children came leaping to throw garlands on my vi'et. D page: 74-75[View Page 74-75]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 74-75 74 .THE HASHEESH EATER. rious road, and singing paeans to me with the voices of cherubs. Nations that my sword had saved ran bounding through the flowery walls of my avenue to cry "Our hero--our savior," and prostrate themselves at my feet. I grew colossal in a delirium of pride. I felt myself the centre of all the world's immortal glory. As once before the ecstasy of music had borne me from the body, so now I floated out of it in the intensity of my triumph. As the last cord was dissolved, I saw all the attendant splendors of my march fade away, and became once more conscious of my room restored to its natural state. Not a single hallucination remained. Surrounding objects resumed their wonted look, yet a wonderful surprise broke in upon me. In the course of my de- lirium, the soul, I plainly discovered, had indeed de- parted from the body. I was that soul utterly di- vorced from the corporeal nature, disjoined, clarified, purified. From the air in which I hovered I looked down upon my former receptacle. Animal life, with all its processes, still continued to go on; the chest heaved with the regular rise and fall of breathing, the temples throbbed, and the cheek flushed. I scrutin- ized the body with wonderment; it seemed no more to concern me than that of another, being. I do not remember, in the course of the whole experience I have had of hasheesh, a more singular emotion than I felt at that moment. The spirit discerned itself as possessed of all the human capacities, intellect, susceptibility, and vill-saw itself complete in every respect; yet, like a grand motor, it had abandoned the machine which it once energized, and in perfect independence stood TIIE MYSTERTES OF THE LIFE-SIGN GEMNI. 75 apart. In the prerogative of my spiritual nature I was restrained by no objects of a denser class. To myself I was visible and tangible, yet I knew that no material eyes could see me. Through the walls of the room I was able to pass and repass, and through the ceiling to behold the stars unobscured. This was neither hallucination nor dream. The sight of my reason was preternaturally intense, and I remembered that this was one of the states which fre- quently occur to men immediately before their death has become apparent to lookers-on, and also in the more remarkable conditions of trance. That such a state is possible is incontestably proved by many cases on record in which it has fallen under the observation of students most eminent in physico-psychical science. A voice of command called on me to return into the body, saying in the midst of my exultation over what I thought was my final disenfranchisement from the corporeal, "The time is not yet." I returned, and again felt the animal nature joined to me by its mys- terious threads of conduction. Once more soul and body were one. VI. blle M^steries of the tifecsigtln emini. IN this vision the conception of our human duality was presented to me in a manner more striking than ever before. Hitherto it had been more a suggestion than a proof; now it appeared in the light of an intu- page: 76-77[View Page 76-77]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 76-77 ;76 THE HASHEESH EATER. ition. A wonderful field of questions is opened by such an experience, and I am constrained to sketch a few of them as they have occurred to myself. Ist. Are the animal and spiritual conjoint parts of the same life, or two different lives which intensely interact, yet are not altogether dependent upon each other for their continuance? That the soul is dependent upon aught that we call material for the preservation of its highest functions, very few men will feel disposed to assert. Yet we are all exceedingly loth to concede that the animal has a distinct life of its own, which, for some time aft- er the dissolution of the ties which bind it to the spir- itual, might continue to throb on unimpaired. Your critic, who aims altogether at uses comprehended in bread, meat, and broad-cloth, may ask, ( If it be so, of what practical utility would it be to discover it?" A sufficient answer lies in the fact that men would know one more truth. A truth tested and establish- ed may lie for centuries, mildewed and rusted, in the armory of knowledge, until some great soul comes along, draws it out of the rubbish, buckles it ,on, rush- es into the conflict, and with it pries open the portals of one more promised land of blessing for the human race. Gunpowder is a truth; wise men sneer at the monk's obstreperous plaything. The years float calm- ly on; that plaything strikes the cliffs of Dover, and as they go toppling down to leave a highway for the nations, contemned truth vindicates her uses with a triumphant voice of thunder. But there is also a tangible utility in this discovery of an independent animal life (supposing it to be made) THE MYSTERIES OF THE LIFE-SIGN GEMNI. " which arises out of the fact that we should thus pos- sess much higher notions of the spiritual than we have at present. In the desire to make the body entirely dependent on the soul for all its processes, we have linked the two in so close a marriage that the soul it- self has become materialized by contact in our concep- tions. What we call spirit is, after all, when its vague and variable boundaries are somewhat accurately drawn, nothing but an exceedingly rarefied mist, ca- pable, to be sure, of self-conscious phenomena, but nevertheless subject to most of the conditions of mat- ter. We grant, indeed, that after death the interior eyes may see without the mediation of our present lens and retina, but scout the idea that those eyes, in this world, ever employ a power which, after a few years, they shall keep in constant activity forever. Now, if we can more definitely mark the line between the spiritual and the animal as between two independ- ent lives hinged on each other, yet not interpenetrat- ing, we shall have done much to glorify the soul and reinstate it in its proper reverence. Not to assert the separate existence of the animal life as proven, let us look at some singular phenomena which, by such an hypothesis, would be explained, and (as it seems to me) by such a one only. 1st. In surgical operations performed while the pa- tient lay under the influence of an anesthetic, as chlo- roform or ether, I have witnessed contortions of the whole muscular system, and heard outcries so fearful that it was impossible to persuade the lookers-on that the application of the instrument was not causing the severest agony. Upon one occasion I myself stood by page: 78-79[View Page 78-79]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 78-79 78 THE HASHEESH EATE1L a man who was to suffer a difficult dental operation, and with my own hands administered chloroform to him. All the usual symptoms of complete anaesthe- sia ensuing, I signaled the dentist to begin his work. The moment that the instrument came into successful operation, the patient uttered a harrowing cry of pain and struggled convulsively, at the same time entreating the operator to stop. I was persuaded, from former cases of a similar nature, that the man had no con- sciousness of pain, and so advised the dentist. From motives of humanity, however, the latter desisted when his work was but partly accomplished, and, having ex- tracted a single tooth instead of the several which were to be drawn, permitted the seeming sufferer to return to his natural state. He presently awoke, as from a dream; and on being asked whether he endured great torture, he laughed at the idea, denying that he had even been aware of the application of the forceps, although fully self-conscious internally during the whole effect of the anvesthetic. I believe I am only stating one of many cases which fall under the almost daily observation of men of wide experience in the surgical profesilon. Although far from being an expert myself, I have been an eye-wit- ness to twov such instances. Now what is it, or who is it that is suffering tor- tures so great that the face, the lips, the limbs must give vent to them in such intensity of expression? The soul has been all the time lying in a delicious calm of meditation, or gliding through a succession of strange images, whose order was notince broken by the thrillof pain. It frequently remembers its visions, THE MYSTERIES OF THE LIFE-SIGN GEMNI. 79 and can repeat them coherently; it would certainly have recollected, if it had ever known them, some traits of an experience so utterly discordant as suffering. An inference directly suggests itself. Where all the outer phenomena of torture have been witnessed, the anaesthetic has not so much affected the body as the ties which unite it with the soul. A temporary disjunction has taken place between the two, and the animal nature has been suffering while the spiritual, completely insulated, was left to its own free activ- ity. 2d. I believe it is gradually becoming conceded that the agonies which universal belief once attghed to the idea of death are rather imaginary than real. Yet the hour of dissolution is almost invariably accompanied by groans and contortions, which tell tales of the bitter pang felt somewhere in the depths of that mysterious being which is becoming disjoined. While the dying man, if still fully conscious, frequently asserts that he is in ecstasy beyond compare, tense muscles and writh- ing limbs are telling another story. What is it that is suffering? 3d. There have been instances of the trance state which throw an additional light upon this question, or involve it in deeper mystery, according to the mental temperament of the man who considers them. It is needless to quote the case of Tennant in our own country, and many cataleptic and hypnotic states which have fallen under private notice, when an argu- ment a fortiori maybe drawn from the remarkable phenomena which but a few years ago transpired under the eye-witness of many eminent men of the medical page: 80-81[View Page 80-81]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 80-81 80 THE HASHEESH EATER. and other professions in India.* So important a field. :of inquiry did these phenomena seem to open, that Dr. Braid, of Edinburgh, a physician of considerable fame, made it the groundwork of a book, condensed, yet valuable for its research, upon the trance condition, and the scientific mind throughout Great Britain took a lively interest in the subject. A fakeer presented himself at one of the Company's stations, and proffer- ed the singular request that he might be buried alive. Though not much astonished at any possible petition coming from one of an order of men so wildly fanatic as those who infest India with their monstrous devo- tions and insatiable almns-begging, the servants of the Company still treated him as insane, and answeredllis request with corresponding neglect. Still, the fakeer insisted upon their compliance, asserting that lie pos- sessed the power of separating soul and body at will, and was able to live without air or food for the space of thirty days. Upon his producing native witnesses who fully corroborated his statement, he obtained a more deferential attention to his demand. As his reason for asking sepulture, he stated the desire for a more complete abstraction of soul than he could attain above ground and among the things of sense, positively assuring his questioners that this abstraction, as he had tested by repeated experiments, was in no danger of provng fatal to the body. At last, then, his petition was granted. By an effort of will he threw himself into the ecstatic or trance state, and when the vital .processes had become absolutely imperceptible, and he lay to all appearance dead, he * Appendix, Note A. THE MYSTERIES OF THE LIFE-SIGN GEMNI. 81 was closely wrapped in a winding-sheet, and, for fear of imposition, buried in a tightly-masoned tomb. The opening was then filled with earth, and the mound thus raised above him thickly sown with barley. Ai Mo- hammedan guard (the last in the world which would be likely to connive at the cheat of a disciple of Brahm) was stationed about the grave night and day. The barley grew up undisturbed till the month was accom- plished, and, at the expiration of that time, hundreds of people thronged to be present at the disentombing of the fakeer. Among them were grave men, men of calm and scientific minds, and many utterly incredu- lous of the possibility that human life could have been sustained from inner sources through so long a period. Every test was thus present which could make evidence of any fact conclusive beyond doubt. The body of the fakeer was found unaltered by decay, yet shriveled to a mummy. Means of restoration were used very similar to those employed in bringing a cat- aleptic patient to consciousness. Presently the seem- ingly dead man began to breathe, his color returned, and before the close of the day, as the nutriment which was given him was assimilated, all his functions were in their ordinary activity. A more complete separation of the animal and spirit- ual probably never existed without death, yet thejwo lives, through the whole period of sepulture, were sus- tained apart without the slightest consciousness in the soul that the body was growing emaciated, convulsed, and juiceless. Many of the eye-witnesses to this won- derful experiment are living to the present day. Upon the theory of these independent existences it D 2 page: 82-83[View Page 82-83]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 82-83 82 THE HASHEESH EATER. may be asked, "How is death possible at all to the animal?" We reply, In most cases, doubtless, the animal dies first, and the spiritual deserts it afterward; but, wherever the spiritual is tie more powerfully agon- ized of the two, in the very shock of its exertions to depart it may bear the animal away with it, which, not being immortal, has no possible residence outside of the body, but -instantly perishes. Yet when, as by the gentle disentanglement of patient fingers, the ligaments of the corporeal life are unwound from about the soul, the latter, undestroyed, may still remain through its allotted day of endurance. If this be more than mere visionary conjecture, it accounts for the unchanged appearance of bodies disentombed after a hundred years, and the relics unconsumed by time, which, in the world's reaction from hyper-credulity, we have so long been apt to classify with the other legends of the Vita Sanctorum. 2. Another question suggested by the experience of my own duality is this: If the two existences are in- dependent, may not the fact account for that blind feel- ing which almost every man has experienced, that he has lived previously to his present form in other and entirely different states? The idea of the metempsy- chosis was never, indeed, made the central one of any system -of philosophy until the time of Pythagoras. He was the first of whom we have historic mention to scale off from the original gem the laminse of grosser Egyptian and Indian fable, which covered it like a later deposit (and he had reasons for doing so, which we think will be proved, to a strong probability at least, in a future portion of this narrative); yet, after THE MYSTERIES OF THE LIFE-SIGN GEMNI. 83 all, metempsychosis, as a fact, has been dimly felt by universal humanity, and even at the present day pre- sents itself at times so- strongly to many a mind as almost to carry the conviction of an intuition. But, upon our hypothesis, can the idea be accounted for? Let us see. Except in the prerogative of the peculiar quality of that life which animates it, the body has no more claims to reverence than the same number of pounds of alkali, water, iron, and other chemicals composing it, in any other form. But for the energizing, vital element of the particu- lar rank in the scale of vitality which energizes man, he would be worthy of quite as much consideration were he sealed up in carboys, poured into pitchers, blown into bladders, and tied up in brown paper par- cels. His body has not the faintest stamp of origi- nality. As bovine muscle he existed long ago in the food which nourished his parents; still farther back he was eaten by an ox in the form of some succulent weed of the pasture, and that very weed educed him from the soil through microscopic tubes by capillary attraction. Wash this soil, and he will be deposited in the form of a precipitate; yet, after all this investi- gation of his material genealogy, we have only arrived at the -same result which could be attained by any skill- ful chemist who would undergo the labor of taking him to pieces in his present state, and subject him to adequate tests. The man of visionary mind may sit down before one solitary cabbage, and find food for his thought, if not for his palate, in the reflection, L"Truly thou mightest have been my brother." page: 84-85[View Page 84-85]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 84-85 84 THE HASHEESH EATER. Now, without the least shadow of a wish to prove matter self-conscious, may we not hold it possible that the particles entering into our corporeal composition still preserve some subtile properties (not memory, be it understood) of the other bodies through which they have passed, which, being felt by our own animal na- ture, are suggested by it to the spiritual as a ground for the idea of metempsychosis? The body will then be that part of us which has really transmigrated, while the soul is original. The idea that the soul has ever transmigrated leads us into painful, disgusting, irrational, and irreligious conclusions. But grant that, in the animal life, a blind perception exists of peculiar qualities in the corporeal particles, arising out of former conditions through which they have passed, and we can then see how it may be possible for the spiritual to sympathize with the ani- mal to such a degree as to etherealize these percep- tions into a dreamy echo of its own former being. The problem, therefore, stands thus: Both for the sake of right and reason we must utterly disown the idea of spiritual metempsychosis. How, then, can we explain the fact of its universality among the race? We offer our hypothesis. THE NIGHT OF APOTHEOSIS. 85 VII. the Nisht of apotheosie. IT may be thought strange that, after that experi- ence of infinite agony which I have last related, I should ever take hasheesh again. "Surely," it will be said, " another experiment with the drug would be a daring venture into the realms of insanity and-death. The gentlest name that could be applied to it is fool- hardiness." The morning immediately succeeding my night of horror found me as vigorous and buoyant as I ever was in my life. No pain, no feeling of lassitude re- mained, and on my face there was not the faintest rec- ord of the tortures through which I had passed. In the midst of the very astonishment with which I noted this fact, I felt assured that I had done myself no in- jury. Yet, mentally, I had the conception of being older by many years than on the night previous; all past experiences in life seemed separated from me by a measureless gulf of duration, and when the demon faces or the hellish songs of my vision flashed up into memory, I shuddered and turned my head as if they were close at hand. Quietly I made a resolve that I would experiment with the drug of sorcery no more, for I dreaded another plunge into the abyss of terror as I dreaded hell itself. Slowly passed away from my mind the image of my sufferings. The elqstic force of thought threw off the weight of all direful remembrances, and whenever I page: 86-87[View Page 86-87]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 86-87 86 THE HASHEESH EATER. recalled my last night of vision it was only to dwell with tenderness upon the roses of my valley, and ex- ult in the echo of the pseans which had glorified my march. So beautiful did such memories make the in- ner world, that I wearied of the outer till it became ut- terly distasteful, like a heavy tragedy seen for the for- tieth time. I tried in vain to detect in the landscape that ever-welling freshness of life which hasheesh un- veils; trees were meaningless wood, the clouds a va- pory sham. I thirsted for insight, adventure, strange surprises, and mystical discoveries. I took hasheesh again. I was sitting at the tea-table when the thrill smote me. I had handed my cup to Miss M'Ilvaine -to be replenished for the first time, and she was about re- storing it to me brimming with that draught!"which cheers but not inebriates." I should be loth to calcu- late the arc through which her hand appeared to me to travel on its way to the side of my plate. The wall grew populous with dancing satyrs; Chinese manda- rins nodded idiotically in all the corners, and I felt strongly the necessity of leaving the table before I be- trayed myself. I rose and hurried from the room. A friend of mine, thinking that I had been taken suddenly ill, immedi- ately followed me. The look of wild delight with which I greeted him would have revealed my secret, even had I not spontaneously imparted it to him. In the first stages of his singular life, the hasheesh- eater finds so much that is strange, beautiful, or ap- palling, that he can restrain neither his outhursts of en- thusiasm nor of pain. He is big with infinite arcana, THE NIGHT OF APOTHEOSIS. 87 which he feels he must disclose or perish. Gradually self-control becomes with him more of a possibility, and finally it is stereotyped into a habit. In my ear- lier experience I found it beyond my power, even with the most agonizing efforts, to keep back the wonders which I saw, and accordingly, the moment that I found my brain expanding into the hasheesh-dome, I made it my wont to rush from the presence of all who ought not to share my secret. When many days had taught me lessons of self-retention, I sat frequently for hours charred in demoniac flames, or lifted into the seventh heaven of ecstasy, with a throng around me who could not have gained the faintest intimation from my man- ner of the processes which were going on within. When Sam joined me I was on the eve of another journey through vast territories. I say "Sam," for I shall take the liberty of calling all my friends by those familiar names which imbody to me all that is loving, genial, and belonging to idiosyncrasy in my re- membrance of them. Doubtless such a practice is dis- cordant with courtly style in the most eminent degree. It would be much more polite to say Villiers where I meant Joe, and Cholmondeley instead of Harry ; for in this way I should much more readily and thoroughly conciliate those minds which, enervated by the spicy feasts of high-life literature, are unable to find the least sapidity in the vocabulary of daily affections. Southey, discoursing of the Doctor, has made that mirror of true-heartedness, as well as true courtesy, re- mark (I quote from memory), that among the most painful, though quiet and unnoticed losses which a man sustains in his passage from the infant to the gray- page: 88-89[View Page 88-89]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 88-89 88 THE HASHEESH EATER. beard, is the gradual divestment of his right to be call- ed by the name which he heard in the nursery and on the play-ground. "Now," saith Daniel Dove, with a gentle sigh, " even my wife speaks of me as ' the Doc- tor. " Most genial men have felt the same thing with sorrow as the "toga virilis" slowly wrapped them closer and closer into the reserve of middle life, hiding those earlier insignia of frankness and good-fellowship which no longer give them a claim to be hailed with affectionate intimacy, yet which every true man will still bear with lively remembrance upon his heart of hearts. I have always entertained a deep grudge against the cold and courtly Cicero for that unworthy sneer launch- ed at the friendship between Catiline and Tongilius, "Quem amare in prxetexta coeperat." It was in the style of Cicero, indeed, yet not in the style of the truly noble man, nor of one who holds in fitting reverence the bond of our earlier humanities. It seems impos- sible to conceive how any one dignified with the better and deeper feelings of our nature should become aware, with any other sentiment than pain, that he is surviv- ing the days when a more intimate confidence and un- worldly simplicity gave genial friends a right to ad- dress him and treat him as a brother. I shall therefore, without any apology, unless this digression may be styled so, call all the nearer and dearer companions of my youth by those names which' sound as the sweetest echoes of the Past in the cham- bers of my memory, since the strings with which they vibrate in unison can not too long be kept thrilling in any heart that would not neglect all music beyond that THE NIGHT OF APOTHEOSIS. 89 with which the march of our dusty life in the exterior keeps step. I have said that when Sam joined me I was once more filled with the phrensy of travel. I besought him to go with me, painting in the most glowing tints the treasures which such a gigantic tour as I had laid out would add to his acquaintance with the grand Kosmos. He consented to become my compagnon de voyage for a few hundred miles, at any rate, and directly we set out. Our way led through a broad meadow, at that season beautifully green, and before my gaze it grew into a tremendous Asiatic plateau thronged with innu- merable Tartars. As if assembling for a foray, they rushed past me in mad haste, their oblique eyes snap- ping with a ferocious light, and plumes of horse-hair streaming from their tufted caps. It is not possible to convey to a mind in its ordinary state the effect pro- duced by beholding a field which one has been accus- tomed to see vacant suddenly bristling with weird and foreign forms, which by perfect distinctness of outline equal in reality, while they surpass in impressiveness the most usual objects of daily sight. Sam was a man unexcelled by any of his age that I have ever met for the breadth of his historic, geo- graphical, and political knowledge. Mention a fact in the Saracen annals, and straightway he would give you its date, and run its parallel of chronological latitude through all the empires and dynasties of the world. The name of the most inconsiderable place suggested to him every thing of note that had ever been trans- acted in its neighborhood, and on the factious efforts of an Athenian demagogue he would build you in an page: 90-91[View Page 90-91]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 90-91 90 THE HASHEESII EATER. instant the intricate fabric of all the coups d' etat, revolutions, and strokes of diplomacy up to the present day. It is not to be wondered at, such being the case, that some incongruous remark of my own, which con- founded two utterly distinct tribes of Tartary, should grate on his historic taste to such a degree as to force from him a mild correction. "It is impossible," said -Sam, ' that the tribe of which you speak should occupy this territory through whose boundaries you inform me we are traveling." The instantaneous thrill of pain which this slight contradiction darted through me can not be imagined by any one who does not know the intense sensitive' ness of the hasheesh state. In a tone of deepest re- proach I said, "Alas! my friend, I see you do not sym. pathize with me. Let us travel apart." So saying, I wandered from his side and walked- alone, feeling hurt in the very centre of my pride and self-respect. But Sam, who now, saw that he must humor my hallucination, followed me, and appeasing my indignation upon the delicate subject of the Ukraine Tartars, took my arm, and we walked together as be- fore. With all the delicious ecstasy of a traveler who looks for the first time upon the gorgeous piles of mediaeval architecture, I saw far in the distant east a palace rise sublimely above its emerald terraces. We walked for hours and through leagues, yet it grew no nearer, and I enjoyed the luxury of anticipation indefinitely pro- longed, yet growing sweeter by delay. The wind came to me freighted with spicy odors; it whispered of dalliance with citron blossoms,. and reeled in play- THE NIGHT OF APOTHEOSIS. 91 ful circles, new-flown from its deep draught among the vines of Muscat. In my ears it sang promises of im- mortal youth, and added its own wings to my already superhuman lightness. What mattered it that my far-off battlements were the walls of college, my mighty plain a field, and my wind of balm but an ordinary sunset breeze? To me all joys were real-yes, even with a reality which ut- terly surpasses the hardest facts of the ordinary world. Hasheesh is indeed an accursed drug, and the soul at last pays a most bitter price for all its ecstasies; moreover, the use of it is not the proper means of gain- ing any insight, yet who shall say that at that season of exaltation I did not know things as they are more truly than ever in the ordinary state? Let us not as- sert that the halffcareless and uninterested way in which we generally look on nature is the normal mode of the soul's power of vision. There is a fathomless meaning, an intensity of delight in all our surround- ings, whch our eyes must be unsealed to see. In the jubilance of hasheesh, we have only arrived by an im- proper pathway at the secret of that infinity of beauty which shall be beheld in hleaven and earth when the veil of the corporeal drops off, and we know as we are known. Then from the muddy waters of our life, de- filed by the centuries of degeneracy through which they have flowed, we shall ascend to the old-time orig- inal fount, and grow rapturous with its apocalyptic draught. But for this reflection I had never abandoned ha- sheesh. Yet, through all the long agonies which a{t- tended its abjurement, I consoled myself with tile page: 92-93[View Page 92-93]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 92-93 92 THE HASHEESH EATER. knowledge that the infinite glories of the past should beam on me again. I had caught a glimpse through the chinks of my earthly prison of the immeasurable sky which should one day overarch me with an uncon- ceived sublimity of view, and resound in my ear with unutterable music. Then I stayed myself upon the hope, and grew into calm endurance. We may depend upon it, we have not read the world within or the world without. Some mystic wind, like that of hasheesh, now and then just flutters the leaves of those shut books as it passes by, and the gleam of the divine characters for an instant ravishes us. As from children too young to bear them, they are kept against that day when, grown into perfect men, the props, and helps, and screens of the earthly shall be removed from us, and " the books shall be opened." Presently we reached the doors of college. I do not remember whether I have yet mentioned that in the hasheesh state an occasional awaking occurs, per- haps as often as twice in an hour (though I have no way of judging -accurately, from the singular proper- ties of the hasheesh time), when the mind returns for an exceedingly brief space to perfect consciousness, and views all objects in their familiar light. Such an awaking occurred to me as we drew near the steps of the building, and I took advantage of it to request Sam that he would conduct me to the room of another friend of mine, if he were unable to remain longer with me himself. He answered that he was obliged to leave me, and accordingly led me to the place I had men- tioned. The hasheesh fantasia having returned di- rectly after I had made my request, I might never Ihave been able to find it alone. THE NIGHT OF APOTHEOSIS. 93 Repeatedly have I wandered past doors and houses which, in my ordinary condition, were as well known as my own, and have at last given up the search for them in utter hopelessness, recognizing not the faintest familiar trace in their aspect. Certainly, a hasheesh- eater should never be alone. I found Sidney in his room: in his charge Sam left me, after apprising him of my state, and I easily per- suaded him to go with me on my travels. Back of the buildings a very large domain of woods and fields extends toward the east. From the door of one of the entries a continuous path leads to the further extent of these grounds, and into this path we struck. The evening shadows were deepening, yet the woods had not yet become so sombre as to wear that terrible air of mystery which, among them, in my after hasheesh-life, oppressed me to an unbearable de- gree, even in the daylight. Our way skirted the banks of a little stream, which, tinkling over its rocky bed, makes music through all those shades from boundary to boundary. Coming to a convenient place, we cross- ed it on broad stepping-stones a pebble's throw from a low waterfall, which, higher up the bed, was now swollen by recent rains. An instantaneous dart of exultation shot through me. Could it be possible? Yes, true, beyond doubt! I clapped my hands and cried, "The Nile! the Nile! the eternal Nile!" Lo, now I was Bruce, and beside me walked Clapperton. "Companion of my journey," I exclaimed, " see you yonder cataract? Above it lie the sources. Out of that gleaming chasm which you behold toward the east, this mystery-veiled river has poured his floods page: 94-95[View Page 94-95]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 94-95 " THE HASHEESH EATER. since God first awakened the years. I drink in the ecstasy of his maternal fount now for the second time. Through lonely pilgrimages I toiled, foot-sore, in the desert; my life hung, many a night of sleeplessness and many a day of famine, upon the mood of ferocious men; I did all things, I suffered ll things; and one day, at even, the sources broke upon me. Oh, that unshared view was glory enough for a lifetime!" "But why," askedClapperton, "has the world never known this discovery of yours? In all my wanderings (and, as you are aware, they have been only exceeded by your own), I have never heard of your visit to this fountain before." "I died in the desert on my way homeward. As I felt the unmistakable signs of death come upon me, I gathered strength to trace upon a small piece of pa- per a few words, simply stating the fact of the discov- ery, and the bearings of the sources. Tllis I commit- ted -to my guide, extorting from him a reluctant prom- ise never to part with it until he had carried it to my friends at Alexandria." "Why reluctant?" "Because he declared that it was sacrilege to un- veil the forehead of the Nile, and that he drea ded sonme fearful recompense for his impiety." "Where is that paper now? Did he fulfill his promise?" "No. He carried the writing as far as Alexandria, and there, being overcome by the terrors of his super- stition, burned it, and forever deprived me of the tri- umph of my labors. Yet with you, Clapperton-you, who so well know my toils-I rejoice as if the world THE NIGHT OF APOTHEOSIS. 95 were applauding me. Glory, glory in the highest, that I behold again--that I behold with you-the Nile, the eternal Nile!"' My eyes ran tears of ecstasy. I clasped Clapperton to my bosom in speechless joy. I heard the river in its upper caverns hymning such invitations as float down to the seer, entranced, from the lips of angels. Bruce revisiting earth felt such exultation as can only be excelled by that of Bruce first freed from earth. Leaving the banks of the Nile, we struck deeper into the dense shade of pines and chestnuts, which, to my sense, were spice-trees of the African wilderness. On a stile over which our way led sat two students repeating Shakspeare to each other. To avoid their beholding my rejoicing, Sid gently took me into an- other path, yet we came near enough to hear one sen- tence : "With this, farewell; I'm on my way to Padua." (Not exactly Shakspeare, but they meant it to be, and I was not in a mood to cavil.) In an instant, like the shifting of a scene, all the thoughts and images of Africa vanished. Italy, the glad, the sunny, took its place, and the wood grew dense with palaces and fountains. In a broad piazza we sauntered up and down, transfused with a dreamy summer languor, or strolled from portico to portico, on all sides surrounded by the most beautiful creations of Art. At first I had a dim conception of the unreality of this vision, for I saw its groundwork in certain mate. rial things, remembered as once existing in other forms. For instance, I sometimes perceived the de- page: 96-97[View Page 96-97]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 96-97 96 THE HASHEESH EATER. velopment of an arch in its transition state from two curved branches which locked over us, and now and then a new column grew up gradually from the vacant light- spaces between two trunks of trees. But in a very short time, of course, much shorter than I supposed, every suspicion 0f the imaginary utterly vanished from my mind, and I no more doubted our being in some fair Italian city than I doubted my own existence. The effect of the hasheesh increased, as it always does, with the excitement of the visions and the exer- cise of walking. I began to be lifted into that tre- mendous pride which is so often a characteristic of the fantasia. My powers became superhuman; my knowl- edge covered the universe; my scope of sight was in- finite. I was invested with a grand mission to human- ity, and slowly it dawned upon me that I was- the Christ, come in the power and radiance of his mil- lennial descent, and bearing to the world the restora- tion of perfect peace. I spoke, and it was -done: with a single sentence I regenerated the Creation. A smile of exultation beamed from the awakened earth. I could hear her low music of rejoicing as she perceived that the fullness of the times with which, for centuries, she had travailed in woe, had at length been brought forth. All men once more lived in love to God and their neigh- bor, and, secure in an eternal compact, began marching on harmoniously to the sublime end of spiritual great- ness. The nature of all beasts grew mild; the satyr walked down from his mountain fastness, and led his young fearlessly into the presence of his old foe, the leopard; the kite and the dove imped their wings upon the same branch; out of the depths of the jungle THE NIGHT OF APOTHEOSIS. 97 the tiger stepped forth and gently drew near to fawn upon his king. The terrible lustre of his eyes was dissolved into the serene light of love, and as I caress- ed his spotted hide, he returned the kindness with a thankful purr. My mission being accomplished, we passed on. Re- turning to the college, a most singular phenomenon presented itself. The faces of all that I met were metamorphosed into appearances which symbolized some inner attribute, or some speciality of manners and habits. One of my friends was an admirable whist- player, noted for his accurate observance and employ- ment of the times and seasons for returning leads, finessing, and crying privilege. His face was changed to a fan-like display of cards, which winked at me with a quiet and balmy air of exultation, as in the con- sciousness of being ' Quite irresistible, Like a man with eight trumps in his hand at a whist-table." Another, famous for his studently habits, a great read- er, and fond of research, looked at me for a moment, and his visage immediately turned into a book-cas bristling with encyclopaedias. I stretched forth my hand to take one from its shelf, and, by a sudden out- cry, became aware that I had performed that amiable office known among mortals as pulling one's nose. But this vision of the ludicrous was soon dissipated by the return of the former ecstasy of pride. Now braced for its exaltation by the few moments of jocose refreshment, I towered into all the sublimity of self- adulation. Pacing the floor, which, for my display, had been changed into that of the Senate, as Webster E page: 98-99[View Page 98-99]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 98-99 98 THE HASHEESH EATER. revivified, I rolled a thunder-cloud of colossal argu- ment over the head of a mythical opponent, and brought all time to the witness-stand with testimony against the direful results of some intemperate measure. And now, the hallucination changing, I was ex- haustlessly rich, and as exhaustlessly benevolent. Through long avenues I walked between kneeling files of poor, and scattered handfuls of gold into their bo- soms. "Be comfortable, be opulent, be luxurious," I cried; and as the metallic rain dripped from my thrilling fingers, again the plaudits of my march pour- ed in upon me, and the famine-stricken shouted, "Oar savior!"I rejoiced in' the measureless pride of boun- teousness. Awaking on the morrow after a succession of vague and delicious dreams, I had not yet returned to the perfectly natural state. I now began to experience a law of hasheesh which developed its effects more and more through all the future months of its use. With the progress of the hasheesh life, the effect of every successive indulgence grows more perduring until the hitherto isolated experiences become tangent to each other; then the links of the delirium intersect, and at last so blend that the chain has become a continuous band, now resting with joyous lightness as a chaplet, and now mightily pressing in upon the soul like the glowing hoop of iron which holds martyrs to the stake. The final months of this spell-bound existence, be it terminated by mental annihilation or by a return into the quiet and mingled facts of humanity, are passed :in one unbroken yet checkered dream. In the morning the ludicrous side of the hasheesh THE NIGHT OF APOTHEOSIS. 99 sphere alone was turned toward me. I was whirled through the progress of an infinite number of strange transmutations. Now, as a powerful saw in some mill of a northern lumber region, I darted up and down at the imperative instigation of an overshot wheel, and on either side of me the planks flew off in the utmost completeness of manufacture. Now, changed to a bottle of soda-water, I ran hither and thither with in- tricate and rapid involutions, pursued by an army of publicans, who, with awl in hand, were trying to break the wires which kept in my vital effervescence. Weak with laughter, for I was strangely reckless of the peril which my life sustained, I sat down to rest, having distanced the whole troop of my persecutors. Sud- denly the sentiment of an intense mortification over- came me. "Is it possible," I soliloquized, "that thou, the descendant of an ancient and glorious line, canst be so utterly dishonored as to merge thy being in one of society's grossest and basest potables? Child wor- thy of a better destiny, I will implore the gods for thee, that in their condescension they may elevate thee to some more spiritual essence." No sooner said than done. My neck grew longer, my head was night- capped with snowy kid, ethereal odors of delight streamed through my brain, and, exultant with apo- theosis, I beheld my patent of nobility stamped on my crystal breast in these golden characters: EAU DE COLOGNE. JEAN MARIA DE FARINA. A lordly hippopotamus, I wandered in from the wil- derness, and with my fore-foot knocked at the door of a friend of mine celebrated for wasting the midnight page: 100-101[View Page 100-101]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 100-101 100 THE HASHEESH EATER. burning-fluid in the pursuit of classical and mathemat- ical researches. "Tidings!"I cried; " tidings from the interior of Africa!" With a look of astonishment and half terror, for he had never seen me in the ha- sheesh state before, the lover of books opened unto me, and I passed in. An unceremonious hippopotamus, I sat down, with the most incongruous disregard of the breadth of beam proper to my species, in the nearest chair, without ex- planation or apology. A poetical hippopotamus, I soared into a sublime description of equatorial crags, medio-terrene lakes, and marshy jungles. I expati- ated upon the delights of an Ethiopian existence; I grew rapturous over the remembered ecstasy of mud- baths and lunches upon succulent lotus-stems by river- sides where Nature kept free restaurant for pachyder- matous gentlemen forever. Ed was a man of strong social impulses, most kindly heart, and high appreciation of the beautiful. Yet at that moment, being ensconced in a tremendous muni- tion of tomes, and supplied with stores of reading which might sustain the most protracted siege, pleaded preoc- cupation, and begged me to defer my lecture on thee African far niente. I consented, with some indigna- tion, however, at his lack of taste. I opened the door to leave his room for the sake of finding a more re- spectful auditor, when lo! to my shame, I had alto- gether mistaken my species, for I was the tallest gi- raffe that ever dallied amorously with a palm-bud. Abasing my exalted head to suit the dimensions of the door, I passed out, and was again restored to the human semblance. VOS NON VOBIS. 101 Vlil. bos non robis--wDrein the tpthagorean i, a DBf-stanber. THE judgment that must be passed upon the ha- sheesh life in retrospect is widely different from the one which I formed -during its progress. Now the drug, with all its revelation of interior mysteries, its glimpses of supernatural beauty and sublimity, appears as the very witclh-plant of hell, the weed of madness. At the time of its daily use, I forgave it for all its pangs, for its cruel exercise of authority, its resistless fascination, and its usurpation of the place of all other excitement, at the intercession of the divine forms which it created for my soul, and which, though grow- ing rarer and rarer, when they were present retained their glory until the last. Moreover, through many ec- stasies and many pains, I still supposed that I was only making experiments, and that, too, in the most wonderful field of mind which could be opened for in- vestigation, and with an agent so deluding in its influ- ence that the soul only became aware that the strength of a giant was needed to escape when its locks were shorn. In accordance with these facts, I did not suppose that I was imperiling any friend of mine by giving him an opportunity to make the same experiment which he beheld producing in me phenomena so aston- ishing to a mind in love with research. Several of page: 102-103[View Page 102-103]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 102-103 102 THE HASHFSH EATER. my intimate associates applied to me for the means of experimentally gratifying their curiosity upon the sub- ject, and to some of them, as favorable opportunities presented themselves, I administered hasheesh, remain- ing by their side during the progress of the effects. In no other experience can difference of temperament, physical and mental, produce such varieties of phe- nomena; nowhere can we attain so well defined an idea of this difference. I shall, therefore, devote this chapter to the relation of some of the more remarkable of these cases. Upon William N . hasheesh produced none of the effects characteristic of fantasia. There was no hallucination, no volitancy of unusual images before' the eye when closed. Circulation, however, grew to a surprising fullness and rapidity, accompanied by tile same introversion of faculties and clear perception of all physical processes which startled me in my first experiment upon myself. There was stertorous breathing, dilatation of the pupil, and a drooping ap- pearance of the eyelid, followed at last by a comatose state, lasting for hours, out of which it was almost im- possible fully to arouse the energies. These symp- toms, together with a peculiar rigidity of the muscular system, and inability to measure the precise compass and volume of the voice when speaking, brought the case nearer in resemblance to those recorded by Dr. O'Shaughnessy, of Calcutta, as occurring under his immediate inspection among the natives of India than any I have ever witnessed. In William N I observed, however, one phe- nomenon which characterizes hasheesh existence in VOS NON VOBIS. 103 persons of far different constitutions-the expansion of time and space. Walking witlh him a distance not exceeding a furlong, I have seen him grow weary and assume a look of hopelessness, which he explained by telling me that he never could traverse the immensity before him. Frequently, also, do I remember his asking to know the time thrice in as many minutes, and when answered, he exclaimed," Is it possible? I supposed it an hour since I last inquired." His temperament was a mixture of the phlegmatic and nervous, and he was generally rather unsusceptible to stimulus. I was anxious at the time that lie should be favorably affect- ed, since he had been, and afterward was still more so, in an eminent degree, the kind-hearted assuager of my sufferings and increaser of my joys in many an expe- rience of hasheesh. To him I ran, many a time, for companionship in my hasheesh journeyings, and al- ways found in him full appreciation and sympathy. I am now glad that lie learned none of the fascina- tion of the drug, for Heaven only, and not the hasheesh- eater in any wise, knows where it will lead him. One of my friends in college was a man to whom it would have been physically, spiritually, and morally impossible ever to have borne any other name than Bob, the name by which he was called among all his intimates, and which has an air eminently expressive of his nature. Impulsive, enthusiastic in his affec- tions, generous to a fault; excitable, fond of queer re- searches and romantic ventures, there is no other cog- nomen which would so typify him as to give more than a shadowy image of his constitution--none which would so incarnate him as not to leave some elbow of page: 104-105[View Page 104-105]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 104-105 104 THE HASIEESH EATER. his inner being sticking out in the improper place. It is not surprising that a person of his temperament found much in the hasheesh condition that was strik- ingly attractive. At half past seven in the evening, and consequently after supping instead of before, as I should have pre- ferred, he took twenty-five grains of the drug. This may seem a large bolus to those who are aware that from fifteen grains I frequently got the strongest can- nabine effect; but it must be kept in mind that, to se- cure the full phenomena, a much greater dose is nec- essary in the first experiment than ever after. Unlike all other stimuli with which I am acquainted, hasheesh, instead of requiring to be increased in quantity as ex- istence in its use proceeds, demands rather a diminu- tion, seeming to leave, at the return of the natural state (if I may express myself by rather a material analo- gy), an unconsumed capital of exaltation for the next indulgence to set up business upon. From the untoward lateness of the hour at which the dose was administered, it was half past ten o'clock before any effects began to show themselves in this case. At that time Bob, and Edward, the reading man, to whose favorable notice I had presented myself un- der the guise of a hippopotamus, were both seated, to- gether with myself, in a well-lighted room, conversing. Suddenly Bob leaped up from the lounge on which he had been lying, and, with loud peals of laughter, danced wildly over the room. A strange light was in his eyes, and he gesticulated furiously, like a player in pantomime. I was not in the least surprised by these symptoms, for I realized precisely the state of mind VOS NON VOBIS. 105 through which he was passing; yet my other com- panion was astonished even to terror with the idea that the experimenter would permanently lose his san- ity. Suddenly he stopped dancing, and trembling, as with an undefinable fear, he whispered, "What will become of me?"This question distinctly recalled all the horrible apprehensions of my first experiment; and, though satisfied of the perfect harmlessness of the result, I saw the necessity of steadying the sufferer's mind upon my own firm assurance of his safety, for the sake of giving him quiet and endurance. I re- plied, "Trust me, however singularly you may feel, you have not the slightest cause for fear. I have been where you are now, and, upon my honor, guar- antee you an unharmed return. No evil will result to you; abandon yourself to the full force of your feel- ings with perfect confidence that you are in no dan- ger." Entirely new and unconceived as is the ha- sheesh-world, viewed for the first time, the man ot greatest natural courage is no more capable of bearing its tremendous realities, unbraced by some such exte- rior support, than the most feeble woman. The -delirium, now rapidly mounting to its height, made it better that Bob should exert the supernatural activity with which he was endued out of doors, where the air was freer and less constraint was necessary. Clothing my words in as imaginative a garb as I was master of, I therefore proposed to him that we should set out on a journey through the wonderful lands of vision. We were soon upon the pavement, he leaping in unbounded delight at the prospect of the grand scenery to come, I ready to humor to the utmost any E 2 page: 106-107[View Page 106-107]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 106-107 106 THE HASHEESH EATER. pleasing fantasy which might possess him; and in the absence of such, or the presence of the contrary, to suggest fine avenues for his thought to follow up. It will of course be perceived that I labor under a great disadvantage from being compelled to relate the progress of subjective states from an objective point of view. My authority for all that I shall give in this case will be my own observation of outward phenom- ena and my friend's statement of interior ones, which he gave to me upon returning to consciousness. These latter were expressed with a height of ideality which I feel myself incompetent to give; and gave evidence of as remarkable an inner condition as I have ever known hasheesh to produce. On our first leaving the steps of the building, a grand mosque rose upon his vision in the distance, its minarets flaunting with innumerable crescent-embla- zoned flags. A mighty plain, covered with no other than a stinted grass, stretched between him and the mosque. Mounted upon Arab horses, with incredible swiftness we sped side by side toward the structure; and I knew when this imagination took place by the answers which he returned me upon my inquiry into the reasons of his prancing as we went. Before we reached the walls, arch and minaret had vanished, and, metamorphosed into an ostrich, he scoured the desert reaches, now utterly void of any human sign. Of this fact also I became aware at the moment from his own lips; for, although in perfect hallucination, the dual- existence, as in me, was still capable of expressing its own states. It is not one of the least singular facts of hasheesh VOS NON VOBIS. 107 that its fantasia almost invariably takes an Oriental form. This can not be explained upon the hypothe- sis that the experimenter remembers it as an indul- gence in use among the people of the East, for at the acme of the delirium there is no consciousness re- maining in the mind of its being an unnatural state. The very idea of the drug is utterly forgotten, and present reality shuts out all inquiry into grounds for belief. The only supposition which at all accounts for the fact to my own mind is that the hasheesh is the antecedent instead of the result of the peculiar charac- teristics of Oriental mind and manners. The Turk and the Syrian are indeed situated amid surroundings well calculated to stimulate the imaginative nature. A delicious sky, a luxuriant vegetation, and scenery like that of the Bosporus and Damascus are eminently calculated for fascination to dreams and poesy, but then hasheesh comes bearing an unutterably grander and richer gratification to the same music and odor haunted sense, and makes the highest tone in a har- mony already beautiful almost beyond all that earth possesses. To us, of a mistier atmosphere, yet far more lively perceptions of the very principle of beauty, the drug brings a similar wealth of visions, and, conjoining its influence with a greater scope of sight and strength of thought than the Oriental ever possesses, fills up all deficiencies of exterior sun and landscape by borrow- ing from the activities of the experimenter. Eastern architecture, and, in fine, the sum total of Eastern manners, are all the embodiment and symbol of Eastern mind. That mind, or at least its speciality page: 108-109[View Page 108-109]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 108-109 108 THE HASHEESH EATER. of condition, is very much the product of those stimu- lants which are in use throughout that portion of the world, and among these hasheesh holds the regency, as swaying the broadest domain of mind, and most au- thoritatively ruling all faculties within it. It is there- fore the case that, wherever this drug comes in contact with a sensitive organization, the same fruit of super- natural beauty or horror will characterize the visions produced. It is hasheesh which makes both the Syr- ian and the Saxon Oriental. That this hypothesis is more than mere vagary, it appears to me, may be ,proved by numerous parallels running through other nations than the Eastern. It is not mere murky weather, chill winds, and sudden changes of temperature which have built up the walls of reserve in manner and masonry in architecture around the Englishman. His national stimulus is beer, mildly toned by the moderate use of tobacco; his mental result is reticence, solidity, reflectiveness. Nor does the newness of his country, the peculiari- ties of his climate, and the demand of his age for rapid- ity of action alone erect for the American his airy structures, rising with a fungus-vitality from basement to cope in a fortnight, and the pale fence of frankness, which permits insight into all his thoughts. His in- fants stretch supplicating hands from the cradle to- ward their father's tobacco-box; the olive-plants around his table are as regularly fumigated as if they were in a green-house ; his gray-beard uncle (whenever an American takes time to live so long) through all the house continually pipes a fragrant music, to which the remainder of the household do not refise to dance, and VOS NON YOBIS. 109 from, this most catholic transfusion of nicotine he re- sults in that very anomalous, yet, on the whole, laud- able product, our National 3Ian. This nlan is a sin- gular compound of the visionary and the actual: vis- ionary, because (withl other causes, to be sure) his stim- ulant makes him so; actual, because the necessity of hard work in this New World of intense' activity de- mands it of him. His mind incarnates itself in struc- tures whose decoration and rapidity of finish are ac- complished at the risk of safety, permanence, and health, and in manners which caution and reserve only characterize when hard knocks against projecting an- gles of humanity have taught him the lesson of their needfulness. His town house is the embodiment of the cigar, as the Briton's is that of the tankard, and the modes of living of both of them symbolize to a great degree the essence of their several stimulants. In all civilized nations, the public works of archi- tecture are an exception to this rule, for the design of the pile being more cosmopolitan, national idiosyncra- sies are merged in the more comprehensive plan which contains within itself the garnered excellences of all worldly art. With the Turk it is not so-; uncatho- licized as is his nature, his mosque and his sultan's seraglio are as definite incarnations of generic peculi- arity as his kiosk. Excusing myself for this digression, I return to the details of the vision which I had commenced. The night was much darker than it should have been for a hasheesh-eater's walk, who, it will be re- membered, cnalls imperatively for light to tinge his vis- page: 110-111[View Page 110-111]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 110-111 "O THE HASHEESH EATER. i ions. The hallucination of the ostrich still remaining, we passed out into the street through the stone gate- way at the end of the college terrace. The sky above us was obscured by clouds, but the moon, now at her full, was about three breadths of her disk above the western horizon. I pointed through the trees to her radiant shield, and called Bob's attention to the peculiar beauty of the view. He clapped his hands in ecstasy, exclaim- ing, "Behold the eternal kingdom of the moonlight!" From that moment until the planet set, in this king- dom he walked. A silvery deliciousness transfused all things to his sight; his emotions rose and fell like tides with the thrill of the lunar influence. All that in past imaginings he had ever enjoyed of moonlit river views, terraces, castles, and slumberous gardens, was melted into this one vision of rapture. At length the moon sank out of sight, and a thick darkness enveloped us in the lonely street, only relieved by the corner lamps, which dotted the long and drear prospective. For a while we walked silently. Pres- ently I felt my companion shudder as he leaned upon my arm. "What is the matter, Bob?"I asked. "Oh! I am in unbearable horror," he replied. "If you can, save me!" "How do you suffer?" "This shower of soot which falls on me from heaven is dread- fi1!" I sought to turn the current of his thoughts into another channel, but he had arrived at that place in his experience where suggestion is powerless. His world of the Real could not be changed by any inflow from ours of the Shadowy. I reached the same place in after days, and it was then as impossible for any VOS NON VOBIS. I1 human being to alter the condition which enwrapped me as it would have been for a brother on earth to stretch out his hands and rescue a brother writhing in the pangs of immortality. There are men in Oriental countries who make- it their business to attend ha- sheesh-eaters during the fantasia, and profess to be able to lead them constantly in pleasant paths of hal- lucination. If indeed they possess this power, the de- lirium which they control must be a far more ductile state than any I have witnessed occurring under the influence of hasheesh at its height. In the present instance I found all suggestion powerless. The inner actuality of the visions and the terror of external dark- ness both defeated me. Again, for a short distance, we went without speak- ing. And now my friend broke forth into a faint, yet bitter cry of "Pray for me! I shall be lost!"Though still knowing that he twas in no ultimate danger, I felt that it was vain to tell him so, and, granting his re- quest, ejaculated, "Oh best and wisest God, give peace unto this man!" "Stop! stop!" spoke my friend; "that name is terrible to me; I can not hear it. I am dying; take me instantly to a physician." Aware that, though no such physical need existed, there was still a great spiritual one if I would make him calm, I immediately promised him that I would do as he asked, and directed our course to the nearest doc- tor. Now, demoniac shapes clutched at him from the darkness, cloaked from head to foot in inky palls, yet glaring with fiery eyes from the depths of their cowls. I felt him struggling, and by main force dragged him from their visionary hands. The place wherein he page: 112-113[View Page 112-113]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 112-113 "2 TrHE HASHEESH EATER. seemed to himself to be walking was a vast arena, en- circled by tremendous walls. As from the bottom of a black barathrum, he looked up and saw the stars in- finitely removed; they gazed mournfully at him with a human aspect of despairing pity, and he heard them faintly bewailing his perdition. Sulphureous fires roll- ed in the distance, upbearing on their waves agonized forms and faces of mockery, and demon watch-fires flared up fitfully on the impenetrable battlements around him. 'He did not speak a word, but I heard him groan with a tone that was full of fearful meaning. And now, in the midst of the darkness, there sud- denly stood a wheel like that of a lottery, surrounded by one luminous spot, which illustrated all its move- ments. It began slowly to revolve; its rapidity grew frightful, and out of its opening flew symbols which in- dicated to him, in regular succession, every minutest act of his past life: from his first unfilial disobedience in childhood-the refusal upon a certain day, as far back as infancy, to go to school when it was enjoined upon him, up to the latest deed of impropriety he had com- mitted-all his existence flew before him like light- ning in those burning emblems. Things utterly for- gotten--things at the time of their first presence con- sidered trivial-acts as small as the cutting of a willow wand, all fled by his sense in arrow-flight; yet he re- membered them as real incidents, and recognized their order in his existence. This phenomenon is one of the most striking exhi- bitions of the state in which the higher hasheesh ex- altation really exists. It is a' partial sundering;, for the time, of those ties which unite soul and body. VOS NON VOBIS. 113 That spirit should ever lose the traces of a single im- pression is impossible. De Quincey's comparison of it to the palimpsest manuscripts, while it is one of the most powerful that even that great genius could have conceived, is not at all too much so to express the truth. We pass, in dreamy musing, through a grassy field; a blade of the tender herbage brushes against the foot; its impression hardly comes into con- sciousness; on earth it is never remembered again. But not even that slight sensation is utterly lost. The pressure of the body dulls the soul to its perception, oth- er external experiences supplant it; but when the time of the final awaking comes, the resurrection of the soul from its charnel in the body, the analytic finger of in- evitable light shall search out that old inscription, and to the spiritual eye no deep-graven record of its earthly triumphs shall be clearer. The benumbing influences of the body protect us here from much of remorse and retrospective pining. Its weight lies heavily upon the inner sense, and dead- ens it to perception of multitudes of characters which, to be read, require acutest powers of discernment. When the body is removed, the barrier to the Past goes also. This fact may perhaps be one of the final causes why the body exists at all. Why are we not born directly into the spiritual world, without having to pass through a weary preliminary experience hem- med in by the gross corporeal nature? May not the answer be something like this? Were the soul, at its first creation, introduced directly into the world where truth is an intuition, and stands in the dazzling light page: 114-115[View Page 114-115]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 114-115 "4 THE HASHEESH EATER. of its own essence, the dreadful sublimity of the view' might prove its annihilation. We accordingly pass first through an apprenticeship, in which we have noth- ing colossal either to learn or to do; and eternal veri- ties dawn on us slowly, instead of breaking in like lightning. The Phenomenal is at first all that we know; we have qualities and quantities, and through the period of infancyare content with novel acquisi- tions in this field. Next, we become aware of cer- tain faculties of induction, investing us with the pow- er of apprehending the Notional, which never comes within the grasp of Sense: we learn relations which exist only to the thought, yet are deemed still as valid experiences as if they were tasted or handled. Last, of all, we mount into the Intuitional domain, and, with- out the props of Sense in any way to steady us, either by sensations perceived or suggesting relations, we know universal principles of Being face to face. Up this gradual stairway of Sense, Understanding, Intui- tion, we mount to that height from which we are able to behold, with some degree of calmness, the infinite fields of intuitive Beauty and Truth, when the screen of the bodily is removed, and the scope of vision be- longing to our highest faculty is realized to be immeas- urably beyond all that our most rapturous visions ever conceived it.' Without this slow indoctrination, the soul might have flamed out in dazzling momentary ir- radiance, and then been extinguished in eternal noth- ingness. If it be true that the bodily is thus our shield from the lethal glories of the purely spiritual world, and also -from the full force of painful memories in the past, VOS NON VOBIS. 115 we can easily see how a most terrible retribution might be wreaked upon the soul by permitting it to stand through eternity without any covering to dim the events of its earthly time. Doubtless the spirit, interiorly in a state harmonious to the celestial concourse, will be invested with a spiritual body-a body which, while it does not press heavily, like ours of the earthy, will still so condition states of mind as to permit no inflow but that of delightful impressions. IBut let the soul to which such societies and such garments are uncongen- ial, from the evils which he loves, stand bare in the pres- ence of the Nemesis of his past life, with the wondrous light of the New World irradiating the terrors of her countenance, and all the symbols of fire and scorpion- stings will but faintly image the agonies of the view. Well, then, does Paul pray, "Not that I may be un- clothed, but clothed upon." I left the narration of my story while we were still walking toward the doctor's. At length, reaching there, we found him still sitting in his office, although it was now eleven o'clock. I tried in vain to obtain the first word with him; for Bob, who seemed, according to the frequent nature of the hasheesh hallucination, suspicious of some wrong about to be done him, would not allow me to say any thing which might tinge the opinion of the physician. He persisted in affirming that he was at the point of death, although denying that he felt pain in any place which he could touch. He was totally unable to in- form the doctor of the cause of his condition; but I at last managed to tell him myself. Like the great ma- jority of practitioners, he knew nothing of the nature page: 116-117[View Page 116-117]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 116-117 "6 THE HASHEESH EATER. of the drug, and could only shake his head and presage evil from observing the singular phenomena which characterized his patient's outward conduct. a He told Bob that he was very foolish to have made the experi- ment; was in imminent danger-might die; would give him a powder-ahem! With such pre-eminent consolation he was poul- ticing the poor fellow's excited mind, when I took ad- vantage of his going out for a dose of ipecac to follow him unostentatiously, feigning the intention of helping him to prepare the dose. The moment that we were in another room, I said, with as much vehemence as was possible without Bob's overhearing it, "For Heaven's sake, if you have any mercy, tell that man that he is in no danger! He is in none whatever. I have made the same experiment repeatedly, and I assure you that all he wants is the calm assurance of his safety." My earnest manner satisfied him of my truth, and he accordingly went into the room where Bob was still sitting, and comforted him very much in the same manner that my doctor used with me when I was ter- rified in my first experiment. He told him, laugh- ingly, to be in no apprehension whatever for results, as he would certainly recover from his present feelings intact. In an instant Bob became perfectly calm, and the former state of happiness succeeded his agonies. We passed out of the doctor's office and began return- ing home. On the way he supposed himself a Man- darin freshy come from some triumph over invading tribes. Like myself, in the vision of my victori- ous march, he heard anthems of laud and glory peal- VOS NON VOBIS. 117 ing in his ears; but he did still more-he played one of the instruments himself. Always a man of fine musical imagination, and quite a brilliant pianist, he now possessed a power of melodious creation unknown in his highest natural states. Setting his lips so as to send forth sounds in imitation of a bugle, he played in my hearing a strain of his own impromptu composi- tion so beautiful that it would have done credit to any player upon wind instruments that ever obtained ce- lebrity. For a quarter of a mile I enjoyed this unex- pected rapture of music, in the utmost astonishment at a phenomenon I had never conceived of before. We reached home. The experimenter lay down, and through all the night he was wrapped in visions of the utmost ecstasy. I sat beside his bed for hours, and always became aware of the moment of his high- est exaltation by some strain after the manner of that which had cheered our way up the dark and lonely hill, bursting from his lips, even in sleep, with deli- cious melody. In the morning le awoke at the usual time; but, his temperament being perhaps more sensi- tive than mine, the hasheesh delight, without its hal- lucination, continued for several days. Bob never took it again. The next case which I shall mention is that of my friend Fred W--, who, although now having aban- doned hasheesh forever, still, from the first experiment he made with it, was so delighted with the spell that for several months he made trial of its powers, as suc- cessfully, if never to the same extent, as myself. His temperament was the sanguine and nervous commin- gled; his taste for the arts amounted to a passion. page: 118-119[View Page 118-119]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 118-119 "8 THE HASHE ESH EATER. The initiatory test of hasheesh which he made gave him only its space and time expanding effects, but he had obtained a sufficient glimpse of its weirdness to make him try again. Upon many a bright moonlight night have I walked with him through streets made balmy by the breath of the summer night, or rowed our boat along the sil- very river while he lay in ecstatic musing upon the stem seat. In the dreams of such a man as he or the last one whom I mentioned, by sympathy I lived al- most as delicious a hasheesh life as in my own. Once do I remember well, while we were floating noiselessly between those twin welkins, the glorious sky above us, and its image mirrored in the stream below, his be- holding in the clouds that lifted their beamy masses on the western horizon a resplendent city, built am- phitheatrically like Algiers, yet in every dome and ar- chitrave beautiful with the taintless lustre of marble. And now he cried, "Sing! my mood is congenial to the ethereal spirit of music." I softly hummed "Spargi d'amaro pianto." "That is ecstasy!" he broke forth once more. "Do you remember those words, 'Ar- chitecture is frozen music?' With your ascending notes I saw grand battlements rise immensely into the sky; with the descending tones they sank again, and through all your song I have sat enamored of one de- licious dance of Parian marble." But his most wonderful experience-wonderful for its exceeding beauty, but still more so for the glimpse which it gave him of the mind's power of sympathetic perception, was a vision which he had after that which I have just related. Having taken hasheesh and felt VOS NON VOBIS. 119 its influence already for several hours, he still retained enough of conscious self-control to visit the room of a certain excellent pianist without exciting the suspicion of the latter. Fred threw himself upon a sofa imme- diately on entering, and asked the artist to play him some piece of music, without naming any one in par- ticular. The prelude began. With its first harmonious rise and fall the dreamer was lifted into the choir of a grand cathedral. Thenceforward it was heard no longer as exterior, but I shall proceed to tell how it was inter- nally embodied in one of the most wonderful imagin- ative representations that it has ever been my lot to know. The windows of nave and transept were emblazoned, in the most gorgeous coloring, with incidents culled from saintly lives. Far off in the chancel, monks were loading the air with essences that streamed from their golden censers; on the pavement, of inimitable mosaic, kneeled a host of reverent worshipers in silent prayer. Suddenly, behind him, the great organ began a plaintive minor like the murmur of some bard relieving his heart in threnody. This minor was joined by a gentle treble voice among the choir in which he stood. The low wail rose and fell as with the expression of wholly human emotion. One by one the remaining singers joined in it, and now he heard, thrilling to the very roof of the cathedral, a wondrous miserere. But the pathetic delight of hearing was soon supplanted by, or rather mingled with, a new sight in the body of the pile below him. At the farther end of the nave page: 120-121[View Page 120-121]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 120-121 120 THE HASHEESH EATER. a great door slowly swung open and a bier entered, supported by solemn bearers. Upon it lay a coffin covered by a heavy pall, which, being removed as the bier was set down in the chancel, discovered the face of the sleeper. It was the dead Mendelssohn! The last cadence of the death-chant died away; the bearers, with heavy tread, carried the coffin through an iron door to its place in the vault; one by one the crowd passed out of the cathedral, and at last, in the choir, the dreamer stood alone. He turned himself also to depart, and, awakened to complete conscious- ness, beheld the pianist just resting from the keys. "What piece have you been playing?" asked Fred. The musician replied it was "M lendelssohn's Funeral March!" This piece, Fred solemnly assured me, he had never heard before. The phenomenon thus appears inexpli- cable by any hypothesis which would regard it as a mere coincidence. Whether this vision was suggest- ed by an unconscious recognition of Mendelssohn's style in the piece performed, or, by the awaking of some unknown intuitional faculty, it was produced as an original creation, I know not, but certainly it is as re- markable an instance of sympathetic clairvoyance as I ever knew. Dan, the partner of my hasheesh-walk mentioned as occurring in the town of P--, was, at the same time as myself, a member of the college. The Coryphaeus of witty circles, and the light of all our festivals, he was still imaginative in higher spheres, and as worthily held the rostrum and the bard's chair as his place by the genial fireside or generous table. A poet, and an VOS NON VOBIS. 121 enthusiastic lover as well as performer of music, I sup- posed that the effedt of hasheesh upon his susceptible temperament would be delightful in the extreme. But to such a result, the time at which he took the drug was one of the most unfavorable in the world-when his nervous system was in a state' of even morbid ex- citability. We had started together on a walk when the thrill came on. And such a thrill-or, rather, such a succession of thrills-it is wonderful how a hu- man organism could sustain. At first a cloud of im- penetrable mystery inwrapt him; then upon the crown of his head a weight began to press. It increased in gravity without gaining bulk, and at last, breaking through the barrier of the skull, it slid down the spi- nal column like lightning, convulsing every nerve with one simultaneous shudder of agony. This sensation was repeated again and again, until, with horror, he called on me to return, as assured as I had ever been in my first experiments that death was soon to, be the result of the shock. I instantly obey- ed his wish, and on reaching his room he lay down. Of a sudden all space expanded marvelously, and into the broad area where he reclined marched a multitude of bands from all directions, discoursing music upon all sorts of instruments, and each band playing a differ- ent march on a different key, yet all, by some scientif- ic arrangement, preserving perfect harmony with each other,- and most exquisitely keeping time. As the symphony increased in volume, so also did it height- en in pitch,until at last the needle-points of sound seemed to concentre in a demon music-box of incred- ible upper register, which whirled the apex of its F page: 122-123[View Page 122-123]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 122-123 122 THE HASHEESH EATER. scream through the dome of his head, inside of which it was playing. Now, on the wall of the room, removed to a great distance by the hasheesh expansion, a monstrous head was spiked up, which commenced a succession of gri- maces of the most startling yet ludicrous character. First its ferociously bearded under jaw extended for- ward indefinitely, and then, the jaw shooting back, the mouth opened from ear to" ear. Now the nose spun out into absurd enormity, and now the eyes winked with the rapidity of lightning. Yet suffering in Dan bore an excessive over-ratio to mirth. In his greatest pain he had framed a with- ering curse against some one who had entered the room, but when he tried to give it utterance his lips failed in their office as if paralyzed. I gave him wa- ter when his thirst had become extreme, and the same sensations of a cataract plunging down his throat which I have before described occurred so powerfully that he set the glass down, unwilling to risk the consequences of his draught. Returning to consciousness, he did not, however, re- cover from the more moderate hasheesh effects for months. The nervous thrills which I have related re- appeared to him at intervals, and his dreams constant- ly wore a hasheesh tint. Indeed, in all cases which I have known, this drug has retained a more enduring influence than any stimulant in the whole catalogue. A number of experiments made upon other persons with more or less success, yet none of them character- ized by any phenomena differing from those already detailed, prove conclusively that upon persons of the THE SHADOW OF BACCHUS, ETC. 123 highest nervous and sanguine temperaments hasheesh has the strongest effect; on those of the bilious occa- sionally almost as powerful a one; while lymphatic constitutions are scarcely influenced at all except in some physical manner, such as vertigo, nausea, coma, or muscular rigidity. Yet to this statement there are striking exceptions, arising out of the operation of some latent forces of vitality which we have not yet included in our physical or psychical science. Until the laws which govern these are fully apprehended, hasheesh must ever remain a mystery, and its operation in any specific case an uncertainty. IX. ghe 0habow of jarthut, the Zh(abow of Zhlanatos, anb the 0lhabow of Zihame. ONCE more at the table I was seized by the hand of the hasheesh genie. Dinner was nearly over, and I escaped into the street without being suspected. Street did I say? Ah no! That conventional syn- onym of all dust, heat, and garbage is unheard upon the sunny slopes of Mount Bermius, where I wandered Bacchus-smitten among the Maenades. Through the viny shades that embowered our dance of rapture, Ha- liacmon threw the gleam of his sky-bright waters, and the noon rays, sifted through leaves and clusters, fell on us softened like gold into the lap of Danae. Grapes above us, grapes around us, grapes every where, made the air fragrant as a censer. They dropped with the page: 124-125[View Page 124-125]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 124-125 124 THE HASHEESH EATER. burden of their own sweetness; they shed volatile dews of ecstasy on everyt sense. Constellations of empurpled orbs, they dissolved the outer light of heaven by their own translucency; and from their hemispheres of silver down, which looked toward the sun, to those hemispheres which turned in upon our dance a gaze half of jet, half of sapphire, they trans- mitted the gentle radiance, until it bathed our cheeks and foreheads in the hue of autumn sunsets. To- gether with troops of Bacchantes I leaped madly among the clusters; I twirled my thyrsus, and cried Evoe Bacche with the, loudest. On a delicious wind of fragrance the fawn-skin floated backward from my shoulders, and the viny leaves and tendrils of my gar- land caressed my temples lovingly. I drank the blood of grapes like nectar; I sang hymns to the son of Semele; I reeled under the possession of the divine afflatus. Around me in endless mazes circled beaute- ous shapes of men and women; with hands enclasped we danced and sang, and the Msenad houris overshad- owed me with their luxuriant disheveled hair. Now, wandering from their throng in a rapture which, too high to be imparted, sought some solitude where it could shed itself forth unheard, I passed through the college gateway, and began traveling up the long walk which finally led into the woods- toward the east- finally, I say, for I remember even now the measure- less stretch of the journey. At length, reaching the borders of the stream which had before become to me the Nile, and which, through my whole hasheesh life, witnessed many a delirium of joy and torture, I sat down upon a high, precipitous THE SHADOW OF BACCHUS, ETC. 125 bank which overhung the water, and gave myself up to my fantasia. The stream broadened and grew glo- rified: it was the Amazon, and on a towering bluff I was gazing down the liquid sweep toward the sea. Now a great ship came gliding past, lifting its top-gal- lant far above my post of observation, and men ran up the shrouds to peer' curiously at me. With her long pennant flying and every inch of her courses shaken out, she passed me majestically, and I climbed down to the brink of the river to catch the last look at her, and see it returned from another inquisitive gazer at the taffrail. - I wandered completely through the woods, and came out into a broad field upon the farther side. Before me rose the buildings of a grand square, in some city whose name, whose nation I could not even imagine, so utterly foreign did it appear to any thing in the world of modern days. In the centre of the square a mighty host had assembled to inaugurate the eques- trian statue of a hero, which, exquisitely carved in a rose-tinted marble, rose on its colossal pedestal far above their heads. I was drawn toward them by an irresistible impulse, for sculpture and architecture had reached, in that city, the highest ideal of art. I thought of the hero; and seemed to share the glory of his triumph. Then out of the borders of the dense wood from which I had just emerged came a hot and hissing whisper, "Kill thyself! kill thyself!" Shuddering, I turned to see who spoke. No one was visible. Again, with still intenser earnestness, the whisper was repeat- ed; and now unseen tongues syllabled it on all sides page: 126-127[View Page 126-127]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 126-127 126 THE HASHEESH EATER. and in the air above me. To these words soon argu- ments were added, until the atmosphere seemed all aglow with fierce breathings of "I Thou shalt be im- mortal; thou shalt behold the hidden things of God. The Most High commands thee to kill thyself." "My God!"I cried, "can this be true? I will obey thee, and drink in the eternities." Feeling myself as mightily pressed on to do the deed as by a direct behest of Deity; daring not, for my soul's sake, to resist the utterances; and immeas- urably exalted with the prelibation of the glories that, in a moment, were to fow in upon mne, in frantic fury I drew forth my knife, opened it, and placed it at my, throat. Another heart-throb, and all would have been over. It was just then that I felt the blow of some invis- ible hand 'strike my arm; my hand flew back, and, with the force of the shock, the knife went spinning away into the bushes. The whispers ceased. I looked up into heaven, and-lo! from zenith to horizon, an awful angel of midnight blackness floatedwith poised wings, on the sky. His face looked unutterable terrors into me, and his dreadful hand, half clenched, was hollowed above my head, as if waitiiig to take me by the hair. Across the firmament a chariot came like lightning; its wheels were-rainbow-suns that rolled in tremendous music; no charioteer was there, but in his place flash- ed the glory of an intense brightness. At its approach the sable angel turned and rushed downward into the horizon, that seemed to smoke as he slid through it; and, thank GRod! from Azrael I was saved. How many a temptation, which the ordinary gross- THE SHADOW OF BACCHUS, ETC. 127 ness of the ear prevents us from ascribing to its true 1 external source, and which we would fain persuade our- s selves is nothing but our own thought, would come to us j thus in a real demon-voice were the bands of the body / but a little loosened! In how many attractions to- ward good and repulsions from evil would we then feel the touch of angel hands! The world at present is, to a great degree, Sadducee; it scoffs at the Spiritual, which for blindness it can not discern, and lives in meat and bone. The best men conservatively go half way to shake hands with the most unspiritual skeptic, and acknowledge with him that the most reasonable way to account for our wooings and our warnings is the re- action of soul upon itself. What these poor lovers of the earthy will do when they arrive among the reali- ties of another world, it is hard to say. When this poor, mouldy, moth-eaten, time-tattered cloak of the corporeal, which for years has flapped about their heads in the gusts of worldly fortune, or tangled in its wet rags the feet of the soul that were trying to climb higher-when this poor cloak falls off, and they stand transformed into that most dreaded bughear of their previous lives, spirit-we may, perhaps, hear them cry out in agony, "Oh, my beloved garment! my best suit! what will become of thee?" and see them diving headlong off of the battlements of light to recover the only part of their human wardrobe in which they can feel comfortable. After my escape from death I returned to the bor- der of the brook, and began pacing back and forth upon a long flat stone around which the shelve of the bank curved. My surroundings instantly became theatrical; page: 128-129[View Page 128-129]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 128-129 128 THE HASH IE SH EATER. the woods behind me changed into a back scene, and on a grand stage I was holding entranced a great au- dience, whom I beheld before me rising in colossal tiers from earth to sky. . The part I was acting was that of a victorious soldier in some tragedy whose words I improvised, and, growing rapidly into the in- terest of my speech, I poured forth words-now in prose and now in verse-which swayed the hearers like a whirlwind. As my manner increased in earnest- ness, I saw a strange and dreadful look of suspicion overshadowing every face of the thousands in my au- dience. From the searching stare of the pit I sought relief in turning my face toward the boxes. The same stony glance from under eyebrows met me still, and when I raised my despairing countenance to the galle- ries, the same quenchless scrutiny poured down upon me. "Can it be?"I asked myself. "Oh! they know my secret!" and at that instant one maddening chorus broke from the whole theatre: "H-asheesh! hasheesh! he has eaten hasheesh!" Then, with one tumultuous uprising, the concourse fled. From the stage I crept away, consumed by an unutterable shame. I sought a place upon the bank of the stream still lower down, where a large hazel-bush leaned over the water, and beneath its branches I crouched. The helmet and corslet were gone. I looked at my garments, and be- held them foul and ragged as a beggar's. From head to foot I was an incarnation of the genius of squalid- ity. Alas! even here I could not hide. I had chosen my asylum on the very pavement of a great city's principal thoroughfare. Children went by to school, THE SHADOW OF BACCHUS, ETC. 129 and pointed at me in derision; loungers stood still, and searched me with inquisitive scorn. Tile multi- tude of man and beast all eyed me; the very stones of the street mocked me with a human raillery as I cowered against a side wall in my bemired rags. Now, mixing with the throng of passers-by, and no more real than they, two of my college friends came strolling along the brook. They saw and knew me, and my shame reached its unbearable height when I saw them approach me with looks which I thought also of sarcasm. But, as they drew nearer, they spoke to me kindly, and asked what was the matter with me, and why I sat hiding behind the hazel-branches. I hesitated for a moment, but, on their promise of se- crecy, told them my latest experience. They sat down beside me, and in the diversion of talking the hallu- cination passed by. Suddenly an unconquerable apprehension possessed me. There were certain secrets which for my right arm I would not have betrayed, and yet I felt impera- tively called upon to speak them. I struggled against the impulse with the thews of a spiritual Titan. I was determined to conquer it, yet, that I might provide against a failure, I conceived this expedient. Picking up a withered leaf from the bank of the stream, I called the two to hold it, each by a portion of the rim, while I grasped it by the stem. In this way we raised the leaf toward heaven, and with our other hands clasped in each other, I solemnly repeated this adjuration: " As this leaf shall be withered in the fiery breath of the final day, so may we be withered in the vengeance of the Eternal if aught that may be here said pass our F,2 9. page: 130-131[View Page 130-131]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 130-131 130 THE HASHEESH EATER. lips without the consent of us all three." - Here we all said "Amen," and once more I was at ease. I did not betray my own secrecy. When I became calm the two left me and returned to their rooms. I wandered back to my old station on the high ledge, where I had seen the ship sweep by me, and sat down. When I looked into the sky be- tween the tree-tops, the sun seemed reeling from his place, and the clouds danced around him like a chorus. I turned my eyes downward, and found that I was surrounded by warriors, who had come to bear me an invitation to the coronation of Charlemagne. "In a moment I will go with you," was my reply, "but first I must drink; I am dreadfully athirst." Tihe stream was rattling away directly below me; my distance from it by the most easy roundabout descent was not more than fifty feet, yet I must relate, even at the risk of saying too much of the hasheesh expansion of dis- tance, that in going to it I seemed passing down the league-long ridge of a mountain. I walked, I roamed, I traveled before reaching it, and at last, lying down upon the water's brim, I drank such streams of refresh- ment as appeared to lower the flood. On my return, after toiling up the weary steep, my escort had gone, and I certainly could not blame them, if the length of my unceremonious absence seemed to them half as great as it did to me. Wandering through jungle, heather, brake, and fern -through savanna, oak-opening, and prairie-through all imagined and unimaginable countries-now despair. ing of my ability ever to find my way, and now pluck- ing heart to press on-through many a day, or rather THE SHADOW OF BACCHUS, ETC. 131 through one boundless perpetual day of journeying, I went until i reached home. Throwing myself down upon a bed, I was immedi- ately compensated for all past sufferings. In the mid- dle of a vast unpeopled plain I stood alone. With one quick ravishment I was borne upward, as on su- perhuman wings, until, standing on the very cope of heaven, I looked down and saw beneath me all the worlds that God has made, not wheeling upon their beamy paths through ether, nor yet standing without significance like orbed clods. By an instantaneous revealing I became aware of a' mighty harp which lay athwart the celestial hemi- sphere, and filled the whole sweep of vision before me. The lambent flame of myriad stars was burning in the azure spaces between its strings, and glorious suns gemmed with unimaginable lustre all its colossal frame- work. While I stood overwhelmed by the vision, a voice spoke clearly from the depths of the surrounding ether: "Behold the harp of the universe." In an instant I realized the typifaction of the grand harmony of God's infinite creation, for every influence, from that which nerves the wing of Ithuriel down to the humblest force of growth, had' there its beautiful and peculiar representative string. As yet the music slept, when the voice spake to me again, "Stretch forth thine hand and wake the har- monies." Trembling, yet daring, I swept the harp, and straightway all heaven thrilled with an unuttera- ble music. My arm strangely lengthened, I grew bolder, and my hand took a wider range. The sym- phony grew more intense; overpowered, I ceased, and page: 132-133[View Page 132-133]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 132-133 132 THE HASHEESH EATER. heard tremendous echoes coming back from the in- finitudes. Again I smote the chords, but, unable to endure the sublimity of the sound, I sank into an ec- static trance, and was thus borne off unconsciously to the portals of some new vision. X. Nimiam-th, mrtma Cunp of tneilitg. IT was shortly after the last vision which has been related that I first experienced those sufferings which are generated by a dose of hasheesh taken to prolong the effects of a preceding one. Through half a day I had lain quietly under the influence of the weed, possessed by no hallucination, yet delighted with a flow of pleasant images, which passed by under my closed eyelids. Unimaginable houris intoxicated the sense with airy ballet-dances of a divine gracefulness, rose-wreathed upon a stage of roses, and fooded with the blush of a rosy atmosphere. Through grand avenues of overarching elms I floated Urwn toward the glimpse of an impurpled sky, caught through the vista, or came glancing through the air over gateways of syenite, rose-tinted by the atmosphere, and in Egypt walked among the Caryatides. Up mystic pathways, on a mountain of evergreens, the priests of some nameless religion flocked, mitre-crowned, and passed into the temple of the sun over the threshold of the horizon. Now, " ringed with the azure world," I stood, a lonely hemisphere above me, a calm and voice- NIMUM-THE AMREETA CUP OF UNVE!TTTNG. 133 less sea beneath me; suddenly an island of feathery palms floated into the centre of the watery expanse, and gauze-winged sprites dropped down upon its shore. Now landscapes of strange loveliness slowly slid before me, but stopped at my will, that I might wander far up their music-haunted bays, and sit, bathed in sunlight, on the giant rock-fragments which lay around their unpeopled shores. But once did I open my eyes and leap up in fear; for into the gardens of the Grecian villa where I walk- ed among statues and fountains, an incongruous horde of Indian braves burst whooping, in their war-dance; and writhing in savage postures, with brandished club and tomahawk, they called upon my name, and looked for me through the olive-trees. Lying down again, I soared into the dome of St. Peter's, and, lighting on the pen of the apostle, laid my hand upon the angel's shoulder. A mighty stretch of arm indeed; yet, to the hasheesh-eater, all things are possible. About the hour of noon I found the effects of my first dose rapidly passing off. It had been a small one, possibly fifteen grains, and, as I have said, produced no hallucination; yet so enamored had I become of the procession of pleasing images which it set in mo- tion, that, for the sake of prolonging it, I took five grains more. Hour after hour went by; I returned to the natural state, and gave up all idea of any result from the last dose. At nine o'clock in the evening I was sitting among my friends writing, while they talked around me. I became aware that it was gradually growing easier for me to express myself; my pen glanced pres- page: 134-135[View Page 134-135]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 134-135 134 THE HASHEESH EATER. ently like lightning in the effort to keep neck and neck with my ideas. At first I simply wondered at the phe- nomenon, without in the least suspecting the hasheesh which I had eaten nine hours before. At last, thought ran with such terrific speed that I could no longer write at all. Throwing down my pen, I paced the room, chafed my forehead, and strove to recover quiet by joining in the conversation of those about me. In vain! intense fever boiled in my blood, and every heart-beat was the stroke of a colossal engine. With- in me I felt that prophecy of dire suffering which the hasheesh-eater recognizes as unmistakably as were it graven by the finger of light, but whose signs, to all but him, are incommunicable. In agony of spirit I groaned inwardly, "My God, help me:!" The room grew unbearable with a penetrating glory of light. I mounted into it, I expanded through it, with a blind and speechless pain, which, in my very heart's core, was slowly developing itself into some- thing afterward to burst forth into demoniac torture. I felt myself weeping, and ran to a looking-glass to observe the appearance of my eyes. They were pour- ing forth streams of blood! And now a sudden hem- orrhage took place within me'; my heart had dissolved, and from my lips the blood was breaking also. Still, with that self-retent which a hasheesh-eater acquires by many a bitter discipline, I withheld from my friends the knowledge of my torture, averting my face until the hallucination passed by. Indeed, as oft- en occurs at such times, a paralysis of speech had taken place, which prevented me from communicating with others: not physical, but spiritual; for the re- NIMUM-THE AMREETA CUP OF UNVETTTNG. 135 cital of such pain seems to increase it tenfold by draw- ing its outlines more distinctly to the perception, and therefore I did not dare to give it utterance. And now a new fact flashed before me. This ago- ny was not new; I had felt it ages ago, in the same room, among the same people, and hearing the same conversation. To most men, such a sensation has happened at some time, but it is seldom more than vague and momentary. With me it was sufficiently definite and lasting to be examined and located as an actual memory. I saw it in an instant, preceded and followed by the successions of a distinctly-recalled past life. What is the philosophy of this fact? If we find no grounds for believing that we have ever lived self-con- sciously in any other state, and can not thus explain it, may not this be the solution of the enigma? At the moment of the soul's reception of a new impression, she first accepts it as a thing entirely of the sense; she tells us how large it is, and of what quality. To this definition of its boundaries and likeness succeeds, at times of high activity, an intuition of the fact that the sensation shall be perceived again in the future un- veiling that is to throw open all the past. Prophet- ically she notes it down upon the indestructible leaves of her diary, assured that it is to come out in the fu- ture revelation. Yet we who, from the -tendency of our thought, reject all claims to any knowledge of the future, can only acknowledge perceptions as of the present or the past, and accordingly refer the dual re- alization to some period gone by. We perceive the correspondence of two sensations, but, by an instanta- y 1 page: 136-137[View Page 136-137]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 136-137 136 THE HASHEESH EATER. neous process, give the second one a wrong position in the succession of experiences. The soul is regard- ed as the historian when she is in reality the sibyl; but the misconception takes place in such a micro- scopic portion of time that detection is impossible. In the hashseesh expansion of seconds into minutes, or even according to a much mightier ratio, there is an opportunity thoroughly to scrutinize the hitherto eva- nescent phenomena, and the truth comes out. How many more such prophecies as these may have been rejected through the gross habit of the body we may never know until spirit vindicates her claim in a court where she must have audience. At length the torture of my delirium became so great that I could no longer exist unsustained by sym- pathy. To Bob, as possessing, from his own experi- ence, a better appreciation of that which I suffered, I repaired in preference to all others. "Let us walk," said I; "it is impossible for me to remain here." Arm-in-arm we passed down the front steps. And now all traces of the surrounding world passed away from before me like marks wiped from a slate. When we first emerged from the building, I noticed that the night was dark, but this was the last I knew of any thing external. I was beyond all troubles from earth or sky; my agonies were in the spiritual, and there all was terrific light. By the flame of my previous vision the corporeal had been entirely burned off from about the soul, and I trod its charred ruins under foot without a remembrance that they had ever been sens- itive or part of me. A voice spoke to me, "By the dissolution of fire hast thou been freed, to behold all NIMUM--THE AMREETA CUP OF UNVFJITNG. 137 things as they are, to gaze on realities, to know princi- ples, to understand tendencies of being." I now perceived that I was to pass through some aw- ful revelation. It proved to be both Heaven and Hell, the only two states in the universe which together domprehend all free-agent creatures, whether in the Here or the Hereafter. Of both I drank tremendous draughts, holding the cup to my lips as may never be done again until the draught of one of them is final. Over many a mountain range, over plains and riv- ers, I heard wafted the cry of my household, who wept for me with as distinct a lamentation as if they were close at hand. Above all the rest, a sister mourned bitterly for a brother who was about to descend into hell! :Far in the distance rolled the serpentine fires of an infinite furnace; yet did this not seem to be the place to which I was tending, but only the symbol of a cer- tain spiritual state which in this life has no repre- sentative. And now the principles of being, which the prophetic voice had foretold that I should see, suddenly disclosed themselves. Oh, awful sight! Iron, for they were unrelenting; straight as the ideal of a right line, for they'were unalterable; like colossal railways they stretched from the centre whereon I stood. Yet more were they to me than their mere material names, for they embodied an infinity of sublime truth. What that truth was I strove to express to my companion, yet in vain, for human language was yet void of signs which might characterize it. "Oh God!"I cried, "grant me the gift of a supernatural speech, that I may, if r? ever I return, come to humanity like a new apostle, '?, page: 138-139[View Page 138-139]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 138-139 138 THE HASHEESH EATER. and tell them of realities which are the essence of their being!"I perceived that this, also, was impossible. But vaguely, then, like some far-sighted one who points his brethren through the rack and tempest to a distant shore, should I ever be able to disclose what I had seen of the Real to men who dwelt amid the Shadowy. For days afterward I remembered the unveiling. I myself knew that which it disclosed, yet could not tell it; and now all the significance of it has faded from my mind, leaving behind but the bare shard and husk of the symbols. The railway which I saw appeared twofold: one arm -led toward the far fires of my torture, the other into a cloudy distance which veiled its end completely from my sight. Upon the first I traveled, yet not on wheels, for I felt my feet still upbearing me through all the stages of an infinitely rapid progress. Symbols-symbols everywhere. Allalongmyjour- ney they flashed forth the apocalypse of utterly unim- agined truths. All strange things in mind, which had before been my perplexity, were explained-all vexed questions solved. The springs of suffering and of joy, the action of the human will, memory, every complex fact of being, stood forth before me in a clarity of re- vealing which would have been the sublimity of hap- piness but for their relation to man's tendencies to- ward evil. I was aware at the time (and I am no less so now) that, to a mind in its natural state, the symbols by which I was taught would be marrowless and un- meaning; yet so powerfully were they correspondences to unpreconceived spiritual verities, that I can not re- frain from giving one or two of them in this recital. NIMUM---TE AMREETA CUP OF UNVEILING. 139 Hanging in a sky of spotless azure, within the walls of my own heart, appeared my soul as a coin flaming with glories, which radiated from the impress of God's face stamped upon it. This told me an unutterable truth of my being. Again the soul appeared as a vast store of the same coin shed prodigally upon the earth. Through clefts in the rocky wall which rose beside my way were thrust, in a manner expressive of won- drous craft, barbed talons, which, grasping the coin one by one, as a fish-hook holds the prey, drew them slowly in, while I stood helpless, shrieking in the des- ert loneliness. As each piece of my treasure slid through the crevices, I heard it fall, with a cruel metal- lic ring, upon the bottom of some invisible strong-box, and this ring was echoed by a peal of hollow laughter from within. Another truth, though not the most ev- ident one which now suggests itself, but far more dread- ful, was taught me by this symbol. Again, my heart was a deep well of volatile blood, and into it buckets perpetually descended to be drawn up filled, and carried away by viewless hands to nur- ture the flames which writhed in the distant furnace. Through all this time I was witnessing one more tre- mendous truth. But one of the representatives still retains its full significancy to my mind, and is commu- nicable also to others. Standing upon a mountain peak appeared a serene old prophet, whose face was radiant with a divine maj- esty. In his look, his form, his manner, was embod- ied all that glorifies the sage; wonderfully did he typi- fy the ideal of the bard-- page: 140-141[View Page 140-141]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 140-141 "O THE HASHEESH EATER..... "His open eyes desire the truth; The wisdom of a thousand years Is in them." All that science, art, and. spotless purity of life can do to ennoble humanity, had ennobled him, and I well- nigh knelt down before him in an ecstasy of worship. A voice spoke to me from the infinitudes, "Behold man's soul in primeval grandeur, as it was while yet he talked with God." Hurried away through immensity, I came, some- where in the universe, upon a low knoll, flaunting in a growth of coarse and gaudy flowers. Half way down its slope sat a hideous dwarf, deformed in body, but still much more terrible in the soul, which ogled me through his leaden eyes, or broke in ripples of idi- otic laughter over his lax and expressionless lip. One by one he aimlessly plucked the flowers among which he was sitting; he pressed them to his bosom, and leered upon them, as a maniac miser looks upon his treasures, and then, tearing to pipces their garish petals, tossed them into the air, and laughed wildly to see them whirling downward to strew his lap. In hor- ror I averted my face, but a strange fascination drew it back to him again, when once more the terrible voice sounded over my shoulder, "Behold thine own soul!" In an agony I cried, "Why, oh why?" Sternly, yet without a thrill of passion, the voice replied, "Thou hast perverted thy gifts, thou hast squandered thine opportunities, thou hast spurned thy warnings, and, blind to great things, thou playest with bawhles. Therefore, behold thyself thus!" In speechless shame I hid my face and turned away. NIMUM --THE AMRIEETA CUP OF UNVrITTTNG. 141 Now, as with the descent of a torrent, all my violations of the principles which I saw revealed fell down upon my head from the heights of the Past. It was no be- wailing over the inexpediency of any deed or thought which I then uttered; from the abysses of my soul a cry of torture went up for discords which I had caused in the grand harmony of universal law. The importance to mere temporal well-being of this act or that, made no difference in the inconceivable pain which I felt at its clear remembrance. Whether, in the Past, I was confionted witlI a deliberate falsehood or a ficti- tious addition, for the sake of symmetry, to an other- wise true recital, the horror was the saire. It was not consequences to happiness that troubled me, but some- thing of far mightier scope, for I looked upon some lit- tle pulse of evil which, at its time, had seemed to die away in the thought, and lo, in all the years since then it had been ceaselessly waving onward in consecutive circles, whose outer rim touched and invaded the ma- jestic .symphony of unalterable principles of Beauty and Truth. Before the presence of that beholding there was no such thing as a little wrong in all the universe. And now, in review, there passed before my mind all those paradoxes of being which, to our natural sense, forever perplex the relations between God and 'Man- God, the omnipotent; Man, the free agent, the two concentric wheels -of self-determining will which turn the universe. How can these things be? In an instant I saw that hitherto unattainable How. Out of the depths of mystery it broke forth and stood in grand relief upon its midnight veil. Between truths page: 142-143[View Page 142-143]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 142-143 "2 THE IIASHEESH EATER. there was no longer any jar; as on a map, illustrated by eternal light, I beheld all their relative bearings, and in the conviction of an intuition cried out, "True, true, divinely true!" Do you ask me to give the process-? As well might I attempt to define sight to a being born without eyes as to image, even to myself, at this moment, the mode of that apocalypse. Had memory of it as aught else than a fact remained to me, I had long since been con- sumed, as a red-hot needle dissolves away in oxygen. As it is, I remember not the manner, except that it was Sight; at the moment it was incommunicable by any human language. Yet the stamp of the intuition remains so indelibly upon my soul, that there is no self-evident truth which I could not more easily abjure than the undimmed and perfect harmony which, in that dreadful night, I beheld as an intuition. After this I suffered hellish agonies, prolonged through an infinity of duration. As they were all embodied in symbols, I recall them but dimly, and the endeavor to relate them would be painful and prof- itless. At the end of my representative road, arriving through growing distances, times, and tortures, God- drawn, I was hurried back to be launched forward in the direction of the other, the celestial tendency. The music of unimaginable harps grew clearer with every league of speed; symbols were turned to their most ravishing uses; the gleam of crystal gates and empy- rean battlements flashed on me with increasing radi- ance; the sky breathed down a balm which signified love, love-quenchless love. At the end of this jour- NIMUM --TIIE AMREETA CUP OF UNVEILING. 143 ney I arrived also; and, between towers of light, was about to pass through into a land resounding with in- finite choruses of joy. I was detained. Again the voice spake to me, '"The thing is too great for thee; seek not to enter. As thou wast preserved at the end of thy former way from going into the fires to which it led, so also now do I guard thee from beholding the fatal glories of the Divine face to face." With incon- ceivable grief I hid my face in my hands and returned, weeping bitterly. At this moment, for the first time since coming from my room, I became aware of the external world. My friend still walked by my side, supporting me through the darkness. We had not come half a mile while I passed through all that awful vision! Presently we came to a short bridge. Little conceiv- ing the state of mind from which I had just emerged, Bob said to me, with the impression that the novelty of the idea would give me an attractive suggestion of adventure, "I See the Styx." Groaning in spirit, I looked down upon that dark and sullen water which rolled below me, and saw it mightily expanded beneath horrible shadows toward a shore which glowed with the fires of my earlier vision. "My God!"I cried, "am I again journeying toward the Infernal? Yes,it must be so; for even this man, who has learned noth- ing of my past tortures, knows and tells me this is one of the rivers of Hell!" Bob caught a glimpse of the pain he had innocently caused me, and assured me, for the sake of my peace, that he had only been jesting. "This is not the Styx at all," said he, " but only a small stream which runs page: 144-145[View Page 144-145]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 144-145 "4 THE HASHEESH EATER. through Schenectady." By pointing out to me familiar surroundings, by persuasion, by entreaty, he at length prevailed upon me to cross the bridge; yet I only did so by concealing my eyes in his bosom and clasping his hands with the clutch of a vice. Supposing that light and the restorative influence of wine would relieve me, he led me to a restaurant, and there, sitting down with me to a table, called for a glass of Port. In the unnatural shadow which in- wrapped all things and persons, a man was standing near the door, and in the conversation which he was carrying on with another I heard him ,use the word "damn." In an instant my mind, now exquisitely susceptible, took fire from that oath as tinder from steel. "There is, indeed," Isoliloquized, "such a thing as damnation, for I have seen it. Shall I be saved?"- This dread- ful question forced me to determine it with an impera- tive fascination. I continued, ," Oh thou Angel of Des- tiny, in whose book all the names of the saved are written, I call on thee to open unto me the leaves!" Hardly had I spoken when upon a sable pedestal of clouds the dread registrar sat before me, looking im- measurable pity from his superhuman eyes. Silently he stretched out to me the great volume of record, and with devouring eyes I scanned its pages, turning them over in a wild haste that did not preclude the most rigid scrutiny. Leaf after leaf flew back; from top to bottom I consumed them in my gaze of agony. Here and there I recognized a familiar name, but even rmy joy at such revelations took nothing from the cruelty of the suspense in which I looked to find my own. NIMUM---THE AMREETA CUP OF UNVEILING. 145 With a face cold as marble I came to the last page, and had not found it yet. Drops of torture beaded my brow as with eye and finger I ran down the final column. One, two, three-I came to the bottom-the last. It was not there! My God! nothing but thine upbearing arms at that moment kept me from eternal annihilation. In stony horror I sat dumb. After the Angel of Destiny took back his book and shut it with the echo of doom, I know not what time elapsed while I dwelt in that unfathomable abyss of despair. I saw Eternity, like a chariot out of which I had fallen, roll out of sight upon the bowed and smoking clouds to leave me, a creature of perdition, in an inanity of space and out of the successions of dura- tion. Familiar faces were around me, yet the thought of obtaining relief from them hever crossed my mind. They were powerless to help a sufferer of the immor- tal pangs. If, as I sat at the table, a caldron of boiling lead had been brought in and set beside me, I would have leaped into it with exultant haste, to divert my mind from spiritual to physical sufferings. Through a period which the hasheesh-eater alone can know, I sat speech- lessly beside my friend. Suddenly upon the opposite wall appeared a cross, and Christ the Merciful was nailed thereon. I sprang from my seat; I rushed toward him; I embraced his knees; I looked intensely into his face in voiceless en- treaty. That sad face sweetly smiled upon me, and I saw that my unspoken prayer was granted. Through my soul, as through a porous film, swept a wind of G page: 146-147[View Page 146-147]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 146-147 "6 THE HASHEESH EATER. balm, and left it clean. The voice that had attended me through all past journeyings, now changed from stern upbraiding to unimaginable love, spoke gently, "By the breath of the Spirit thine iniquities are borne utterly away." To colossal agonies peace as great succeeded, and, thus sustained, I returned to my room. Yet all my sufferings had not yet been fulfilled. The moment that I reached home I threw myself down upon my bed. Hardly had I touched it when, from all sides, devouring flame rolled upward and girt me in with a hemisphere of fire. Shrieking, I leaped up and ran to my friends, who cared for me till the wrath- ful hallucination was overpast. At this day it seems to me almost incredible that I ever survived that experience at all. Yet, inexpliba- ble as it may be, when I awoke on the next morning, I was as free from-all traces of suffering as if I had been, all the evening previous, cradled in a mother's arms. XI. OIC Book of O3ilmbols. OF all experiences in the hasheesh state, my indoc- trination into spiritual facts through means of symbols was the most wonderful to myself. In other visions I have reveled in more delicious beauty, and suffered horrors even more terrible; but in this I was lifted entirely out of the world of hitherto conceivable being, and invested with the power of beholding forms and modes of existence which, on earth, are impossible to THE BOOK OF SYMBOLS. 147 be expressed, for the reason that no material emblems exist which even faintly foreshadow them. Among men we communicate entirely by symbols. Upon any thought which has not its symbol in the Outer, " untransferable" is stamped indelibly. A cer- tain relation between two thoughts is beheld by one human mind. How shall the man inform his neigh- bor of this relation? There is no meatus for it through any of the labyrinths of material sense; it can not be seen, heard, felt, smelt, or tasted. What is to be done'? A flock of cranes are assembling from the four quar- ters of heaven to hold their aerial council on some tall crag above him. Into our thinker's mind flashes a bright idea. Those birds shall mediate for his relation a passage into his 'brother's understanding. The cranes (grues) are coming together (con), and in this visible symbol he embodies his invisible relation, and the name henceforth that passes for it among men is "congruous." Yet there is one condition beyond the mere discov- ery of an apt symbol which is necessary before that symbol can be circulated as the bank-note which bases its security on the intangible coin within the spiritual treasury. That coin must be universally felt to exist, or the bill will be good for nothing. In the present instance, the idea of the relation expressed by " con- gruous" must already have been perceived by the com- municatee, or the communicator will be unable to ex- press himself intelligibly. Rather should we say, the idea of the possibility of this relation must exist before the former can perceive it; for, if he recognizes such a page: 148-149[View Page 148-149]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 148-149 "8 THE HASHEESH EATER. possibility, then, by virtue of this very capacity, he will immediately actualize the possible, and on the com- munication of the symbol perceive the idea of II con- gruity," though it be for the first time. The question now arises, What state of mind lies back of, and conditions the capacity to recognize, through symbols, the mental phenomena of another? Plainly this: the two who are in communication must be situated so nearly upon the same plane of thought that they behold the same truths and are affected by the same emotions. In proportion as this condition is violated will two men be unappreciating of each oth- er's inner states. Now in hasheesh it is utterly violated. In the ha- sheesh-eater a virtual change of worlds has taken place, through the preternatural scope and activity of all his faculties. -Truth has not become expanded, but his vision has grown telescopic; that which others see only as the dim nebula, or do riot see at all, he looks into with a penetrating scrutiny which distance, to a great extent, can not evade. Where the luminous mist or the perfect void had been, he finds wondrous constel- lations of spiritual being, determines their bearings, and reads the law of their sublime harmony. To his neighbor in the natural state he turns to give expression to his visions, but finds that to him the symbols which convey the apocalypse to his own mind are meaning- less, because, in- our ordinary life, the thoughts which they convey have no existence; their two planes are utterly different. This has not only occurred in my own case, but in several others-in persons upon whom I have experi- THE BOOK OF SYMBOLS. 149 mented with hasheesh. At their highest exaltation, so earnest has been the desire to communicate the burden which overpowered them, that they have spoken forth the symbols presented to their minds; yet from these symbols men around them, in the unexalted state, drew an entirely different significance from the true one, or, perceiving none at all, laughed at what was said as an absurdity, seeing nothing in the name of some ordinary thing or mode of being to excite such emotions of ter- ror or of ecstasy as were produced in the hasheesh- eater. Yet many a time, as I stood near, by these symbols thus expressed, have I been able to follow the ecstatic wanderer, and recognize the exact place in his journey at which he had arrived as something which I had once seen myself. It is this process of symbolization which, in certain hasheesh states, gives every tree and house, every peb- ble and leaf, every footprint, feature, and gesture, a significance beyond mere matter or form, which pos- sesses an inconceivable force of tortures or of happi- ness. Perhaps one of the most difficult things to convey to a mind not in the hasheesh delirium, by the symbols which there teach the manner of its process, or by any others, is the interchange of senses. The soul is some- times plainly perceived to be but one in its own sen- sorium, while the body is understood to be all that so variously modifies impressions as to make them in the one instance smell, in another tastes another sight, and thus on, ad finem. Thus the hasheesh-eater knows what it is to be burned by salt fire, to smell colors, to see sounds, and, much more frequently, to see feelings. page: 150-151[View Page 150-151]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 150-151 1 s50 THE HASHEESH EATER. How often do I remember vibrating in the air over a floor bristling with red-hot needles, and, although I never supposed I came in contact with them,feeling the sensation of their frightful pungency through sight as distinctly as if they were entering my heart. In the midst of sufferings unfathomable or raptures measureless, I often thought of St. Paul's God-given trance, and the ;'adppra pluara a ovX eSbv &vap)r7W lailOaat." Never was I more convinced of any thing in my life than that our translation, "which it is not lawful for a man to utter," is wholly inadequate. It should be, " which it is impossible to utter to man;" for this alone harmonizes with that state of intuition in which the words are "speechless words," and the truths beheld have no symbol on earth which will em- body them. Though far from believing that my own ecstasy, or that of any hasheesh-eater, has claim to such inspiration as an apostle's, the states are still analogous in this respect, that they both share the na- ture of disembodiment, and the soul, in both, beholds realities of greater or less significance, such as may never be apprehended again out of the light of eter- nity. There is one thought suggested by the symboliza- tion of lasheesh which I can not refrain from intro- ducing here. In some apocalyptic states of delirium like that which I have mentioned, and others succeed- ing it, there were symbols of an earthly nature used, which not only had never before conveyed to me such truth as I then saw, but never had expressed any truth at all. Things the least suspected of having any sig- nificance beyond their material agency were perceived THE BOOK OF SYMBOLS. 151 to be the most startling illustrations and incarnations of spiritual facts. Now where, among created things, shall we set the boundaries to this capacity for symbolizing. In view of that which I saw, especially upon the last detailed memorable night, I felt, and still feel, forced to the con- clusion that there is no boundary. If, as the true philosopher must believe, the material was created for the spiritual, as the lower for the higher, the means for the end, it is impossible that any minutest lichen should exist as mere inert matter, lessonless to the soul of all creation's viceroy-man. What a world of symbols, then, lie sleeping in ex- pectancy of the approaching times which shall bring some translator to their now unnoticed sermons, and bid them speak of unconceived beauties and truths! Following out the perverted tendencies of a pseudo- science, we are now forever seeking some reason for the existence of the outer world as it is, which will ut- terly insphere it within the ends of material well-being. Plainly perceiving that respect for the Creative Wis- dom will not permit us to suppose that any thing, how- ever microscopic, has been made aimlessly, we belabor our brains with attempts to find out some physical good arising out of the being of every object in all the terrene kingdoms. Such a thing was created that man might be cured of the headache; such another, that his food might be varied; still another, that a con- venient circulating medium might be in his power. Doubtless such corporeal goods were among the final causes of some portions of the creation. Our trouble is not our activity in the discovery of these, but that page: 152-153[View Page 152-153]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 152-153 152 THE HASHEESH EATER. beyond their petty circle discovery does not dare to set her foot, for fear of being called visionary. Doubtless, when God has lent us a tenement to lodge in, albeit for a few days and nights, it is our duty to find out and apply all those materials of re- pair which will keep it in good order till we pass finally from its low door-step into our palace; as hon- orable tenants, and for the sake of our own better pres- ervation, this is both duty and right, so far as it may be done without bespangling and frr Jcoing our way- faring house as if it were to be our perpetual home. Yet what effort can be meaner, what more unworthy of Spirit, than studiously to degrade the whole sub- lime Kosmos into one colossal eating-house, wardrobe, or doctor's shop for the body? Good men, perhaps wise men, are forever looking for something medicinal in the scorpion, or edible in the fungus, to vindicate God's claim to an intention. Most ingeniously do they fabricate supposititious purposes for outer things; hopelessly writhe in the folds of perplexity when, with all their far-fetched hypotheses, they can not see what material good is to come out of some obstinate resist- ant to their analysis. Blind philosophers! Nature refuses to cramp her- self within your impossible law; she rejects your generalization; she throws off the shackles of your theory! For the sake of mere physical well-being, it had doubtless been far better that never a centipede had been created; that the most formidable snake had been the harmless garter; that the euphorbus had never put forth a leaf, nor the seleniuret a vapor. Yet this is not the grand aim of the system of things, but TO-DAY, ZEUS; TO-MORROW, PROMETHEUS. 153 that man might, for the present, have symbols for the communication of manly thought; that God himself, for the future, might'have symbols for the revelation of Divine Truth, when, in the grand unveiling, rocks, trees, and rivers--yea, the smallest atom also-shall come thronging up along all the ways of the Universe to unseal their long-embosomed messages, and join in the choral dance of the Spiritual-the only science- to the Orpheus-music of the awakened soul. XII. ozo^-a, eust; to-morrowt, promethets. AT what precise time in my experience I began to doubt the drug being, with me, so much a mere exper- iment as a fascinating indulgence, I do not now recol- lect. It may be that the fact of its ascendency grad- ually dawned upon me; but, at any rate, whenever the suspicion became definite, I dismissed it by so va- rying the manner of the enjoyment as to persuade my- self that it was experimental still. I had walked, talked, and dreamed under the ha- sheesh influence; I would now listen to music and see acting, that, under such circumstances, I might note the varying phenomena, if any occurred. To reach New York for the purpose I would go by -water, sailing down the glorious Hudson under the full moon; and this would still be another opportunity for experimenting. Upon one of the largest and most beautiful of the G2 page: 154-155[View Page 154-155]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 154-155 154 THE HASHEESH EATER. steamers which ever glided down the shining pathway of the river upon a moonlight night of summer, I step- ped, at eight o'clock in the evening, accompanied by several of my friends, and carrying in my pocket a box of boluses. The gang-plank was drawn in, and we were on our way. In the few moments which elapsed before the stew- ard appeared, brandishing his noisy harbinger of things edible, I managed to swallow, unseen, a number of the spheroids contained in my box. On regaining the deck from that savory, subaque- ous cavern where, amid sepulchral lights, five hundred Americans of us had, for the incredible space of fifteen minutes, been fiercely elbowing each other in insane haste to secure that grand national end, indigestion, we found the broad disk of the moon just above the horizon, and, on arm-chairs taken forward, sat down, with our toes thrust into the bulwark-netting, for our post-ccenatial smoke. Cigars and studently habits of thinking impelled us toward song, and for two hours, at least, the low rocks which skirt the upper channel echoed with "There is music in the air," "Co-ca-che- lunk," and other collegiate harmonies. The Opera, with its glory of lights, passionate song, orchestral crashes, and scenery, whirls the soul on with it, indeed, in a bewildering dance of delight; the bal- lad we love, sung feelingly by the woman we love, at that hour when to lift the curtains would only let in more twilight, is a calm rapture which is good for the heart; -if it be not too near, the bugle discourses rich melody and spirit-stirring among the mountains of its birth; yet, beyond all other music, grant me a song TO-DAY, ZEUS ; TO-MORROW, PROMETHEUS. 155 trolled from manly throats, which keep good chord and time, and first learned within those homely walls which, to the true American collegian, are dearer than all the towers of Oxford. Reverend Union! it is not thine to deck thyself in the outworn trappings of feudal pomp; not even is it thine to bear upon thy brow the wrinkles of unnum- bered years, though long before thou lackest such pres- tige its sign shall come upon thee. Thou hast no high places for lineage nor fat tables for gold; thou art beautiful neither in marble nor carved workmanship. Yet art thou the mother of thinkers and workers- high souls and brave hearts, which make their throb felt in the giant pulses of a great nation. To these Gracchi of thine dost thbu point and say, "Behold my jewels." With the love of thy sons thou art crown- ed more royally than turrets might crown thee; and better than all the remembrance of coronets upon thy calendar and ermine in thy halls is the thought that, grasping thy protectress hand, merit hath so often struggled up to fame out of the oblivion of nameless- ness and the clutch of poverty. It is in the American college, with its freedom from fictitious distinctions, its rejection of all odious badges, which set genealogy and money over mind and heart; its inculcation of manly self-government rather than the fear of tyrannic espionage; its unrestrained inter- course between congenial souls, and its grouping of congenialities by society bonds, that the most perfect development of the social and individual man takes place. Here it is that, by attrition of minds, unworthy eccentricities are rubbed off, while the personal and page: 156-157[View Page 156-157]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 156-157 156 THE HASHEESH EATER. characteristic nature of the man is solidified and pol- ished into higher symmetry. And here, last, though far from least, among all the true purposes of educa- tion, the heart gets its due in the attainment of those unworldly associations which, many a year after the actual presences which they symbolize have dropped down into the " long ago," send up the hallowed savor of friendship and disinterestedness through the dust and cobwebs which choke well-nigh every other mem- ory. It is not wonderful that, out of such firee and inti- mate converse among young men as we find in our colleges, song should spring up as a most legitimate and accredited progeny. He who should collect the college carols of our country, or, at least, those of them whose spice would not be wholly lost in the transplant- ation from their original time and place, would be add- ing no mean department to the national literature. Piquant, fresh-imaged, outwelling, and sitting snug to their airs, they are frequently both excellent poetry and music. Whether they ring through the free air of a balmy summer evening from a row of sitters on a terrace or a green, who snatch fragrant puffs of old Virginia between staves, or gladden a college room through the long evenings of winter, they are always inspiriting, always heart-blending, and always, I may add, well sung. I have rambled round the complete circle of my di- gression to the place where I left my friends seated -upon the forward deck and singing in the incipidnt moonlight. By the time that we had grown tired of singing, the river was very beautiful with the clear re- TO-DAY9 ZEUS; TO-MORROW, PROMETHEUS. 157 flection of the sky, turning the spray of our prow to silver beads, and giving still snowier lustre to our wake. The excitement of music hac put off that of hasheesh, but I was not surprised to feel the well- known thrill as our voices died away. In a moment I became the fairy monarch. Ethere- alized and beautified, I was gliding upon my will- borne pleasure-vessel through the moonlit kingdom over which I was supreme. Now whippoorwills chant- ed me a plaintive welcome from the dreamy, wooded shores; fire-flies illuminated, with triumphal lights, their palace fronts among the shadowy elms; and the little moon-glorified islands; that caught our waves upon their foreheads, sent back a delicious voice of laud and joy. In this ecstasy I sat reviewing my domain until the moon stood at the zenith, and then pacing through the long saloons,.I reveled in the ownership of gorgeous tapestry and panelings, and from the galleries looked proudly upon my retinue of beautiful women and brave men who sat or walked below. When I shut my eyes I dwelt in a delicious land of dreams. Chaiging at the head of ever-victorious legions, I drove millions of laughing foes in playful rout through an illimitable field of roses. Down the mountains of Congo a whole universe of lithe and shapely negro children ran leaping, with their arms full of elephants' tusks, boxes of gold-dust, and fresh co- coanuts, to be the purveyors of my palace. On the wings of a speechless music I floated through the air, and in the cloud-valleys played hide-and-seek with meteors. page: 158-159[View Page 158-159]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 158-159 158 THE HASHEESH EATER. A little after midnight I felt the hasheesh effects de- creasing, and not having yet recognized that law of the drug which forbids prolonging its dreams by a second dose (nor, indeed, did I recognize it until several bitter experiences had taught me), I took five grains more. Gradually more and more the hasheesh influence wore off. I went to my state-room, and now, perfectly restored to the natural state, lay down, and all night slept quietly. Upon awaking with the early sunlight I found that we were midway past the Palisades. Upon the east- ern bank of the river the signs of suburban' life had become visible in terraces, lawns, and verandas, and bells were audible down the bay. It was not until we reached the pier that I felt the effect of my last bolus. I stepped ashore, and, for the first time, separated for a season from my fellow- voyagers. The morning already gave most earnest promise of a day which was to be one of the hot- test of summer, and as I walked up that unshelter- ed quay alone, and with the sun streaming full upon me, I suddenly felt my heart catch fire. There was no premonitory, no mystery, no thrill; and this gave a more terrible tone to my suffering, for I burned among acknowledged and familiar realities without the possi- bility of remembering any former state of a calmer na- ture upon which to steady myself. O- Most fully did I then realize the hell of Eblis and its inextinguishable pangs, as, walking through the thronged streets of the great city, I laid my hand upon my heart to hide its writhings, and saw in every face of the vast multitude who hurried past tokens of some- TO-DAY, ZEUS; TO-MORROW, PROMETHEUS. 159 thing despairing and diabolic. The well-known long rows of palatial shops and gaudy windows swept by me as I paced along. The hurrying crowds of men upon the pavement who went to their business, and the fluctuating stream of carriages and omnibuses which rolled down the street, seemed, in their mere matter, nothing unusual to me. Yet the spirit which pervad- ed all things was that of the infernal. I wandered through a colossal city of hell, where all men were pur- suing their earthly tendencies amid pomp and afflu- ence as great as ever, yet stamped upon their foreheads with the dreadful sign of all hope of better things for- ever lost. At all times the thoroughfare of a large town is a wilderness to me. In desert loneliness, on mountain tops, or by the side of an unfrequented stream, there is no such hermit conceivable as the hermit of a crowd. The study of character in faces, of universal human nature in its elbowings and windings toward its aim, may be pursued upon a city's pave to the greatest ad- vantage; yet overtopping all the external aspects of society found there is the solitude which inspheres the wanderer within himself, as he perceives not one being within the distance of miles to whom he is bound by any dearer interest than our common humanity. But at this time how singularly, how especially was I a hermit! Still conscious of retaining some of the attributes of a man, I was surrounded by infernal forms and features, shaped, indeed, like my own, but with the good-will, the hope, the confidence of our com- mon life forever evaporated from them. Every one of the beings that hastened by me in hum and tumult page: 160-161[View Page 160-161]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 160-161 160 THE HASHEESH EATER. looked under his eyebrows, with dreadful suspicion, at his neighbor and at me. The ideal of hell, where all faith hath perished, and in endless mutation of couples the wretched sneer and glare at each other continually, was realized in that scene. I could not bear the pavement, and so stepped into an omnibus, that I might behold less of that terrible ebb and flow of Life in Death. As we rolled heavily over the stones of the street, I felt my heart transferred to some flinty road-bed, a fathom below the surface, where it writhed beneath the jar of wheels, and the puncture of the cruel rock-fragments yet communicated all its sufferings to me by slender cords of conduction, whose elastic fibre stretched more and more as we rode on, and grew tenser with an unutterable pain. At the same time, all my fellow-passengers in the omnibus seemed staring at me with hot and searching eyes; in one corner I cowered from their glance, and sat with my hand upon my face. They whispered; it was my- self of whom they talked, and I distinctly heard them use the word " hasheesh." I got out of the omnibus and again took the pave- ment, realizing that there was nowhere any relief for my pangs. It would be vain to detail all the horrors through which I passed before I took shelter in the house of a friend. Among them not the least were a heart on fire, a brain pierced by a multitude of revolv- ing augers, and the return, amid dim inner flames, of the fearful symbolization and the demon-songs of for- mer visions. Arriving at my friend's, I pleaded fatigue, and lay down. Hours were wretchedly passed in falling asleep, EIDOLA THEATRI AND THE PRINCE OF WHATLS. 161 and then darting up in terror at some ideal danger. Sometimes a gnashing maniac looked at me, face to face, out of the darkness; sometimes into rayless cav- erns I fell from the very heavens; sometimes the lofty houses of an unknown city were toppling over my head in the agonies of an earthquake. Agonies, I say, for their throes seemed like human sufferings. Out of this woe I emerged entirely by noon, but be- gan to be aware that I should never again, in the ha- sheesh state, be secure in the certainty of unclouded visions. The cup had been so often mingled, that its savor of bitterness would never wholly pass away. Yet ascribing all the pain which, in this instance, I had endured, to some unfavorable state of the body (I had not yet realized the law of a second dose), I supposed that, by preserving a general healthy tone of the sys- tem, hasheesh might be used harmlessly. XTTT. (ibola theatri andt thllE rine of klalet. WAITING until the next day at evening, I took a moderate bolus, say twenty-five grains, and repaired to the theatre. In the action of the pieces which were performed I lived as really as I had ever lived in the world. With the fortunes of a certain adventurer in one of the plays my mind so thoroughly associated me that, when he was led to the block and the headsman stood over him, I nerved myself for the final stroke, and waited page: 162-163[View Page 162-163]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 162-163 162 THE HASHEESH EATER. to feel the steel crash through my own neck. He was reprieved, and, in his redemption, it was I who ex- i, ultedi The effect of some rich-toned frescoing above the stage was to make me imagine myself in heaven. Yet "imagine" is not the proper word, for it does not express the cloudless conviction of reality which characterized this vision. There were no longer any forms or faces visible below me, but out of the won- drous rosy perspective of the upper paneling angels came gliding, as through corridors hewn of ruby, and showered down rays of music, which were also beheld as rays of color. A most singular phenomenon occurred while I was intently listening to the orchestra. Singular, because it seems one of the most striking illustrations I have ever known of the preternatural activity of sense in the hasheesh state, and in an analytic direction. Seated side by side in the middle of the orchestra played two violinists. That they were playing the same part was evident from their perfect uniformity in bowing; their bows, through the whole piece, rose and fell simultaneously, keeping exactly parallel. A cho- rus of wind and stringed instruments pealed on both sides of them, and the symphony was as perfect as possible; yet, amid all that harmonious blending, I was able to detect which note came from one violin and which from the other as distinctly as if the violin- ists had been playing at the: distance:-of a hundred feet apart, and with no other instruments discoursing near them. According to a law of hasheesh already mentioned, EIDOLA THEATRI AND THE PRINCE OP WHALES. 163 a very ludicrous hallucination came in to relieve the mind from its tense state. Just as the rapture of mu- sic, lights, and acting began to grow painful from ex- cess, I felt myself losing all human proportions, and, spinning, up to a tremendous height, became Cleopa- tra's Needle. A man once remarked to young Dumas, "My poor friend, M. Thibadeau, returned home, took off his spec- tacles, and died." "Did he take off his spectacles first?" asked Dumas. "Yes, truly," replied the oth- er; "but why?" "Merely how delightful it must have been to him to be spared the grief of seeing him- self die!" About as absurd a duality as that inferred for Mon- sieur Thibadeau, if he had kept on his spectacles, was the duality with which I looked up and saw my own head some hundred feet in the air. Suddenly a ha- sheesh-voice rang clearly in my ear, "Sit still upon thy base, Eternal Obelisk!" Ah me! I had not real- ized till then how necessary it was that I should pre- serve the centre of gravity. What if I should go over? One motion on this side or that, and dire de- struction would overwhelm the whole parquette. From my lofty top I looked down upon responsible fathers of families; innocent children; young maidens, with the first peach-bloom of womanhood upon their cheeks; young men, with the firelight of ambitious enterprise new-kindled in their eyes. There was absolutely no effort which I was unwilling to make to save them from destruction. So I said to myself, "'Be a good obelisk and behave yourself, old fellow; keep your equilibrium, I entreat you. You don't want to clothe - '., page: 164-165[View Page 164-165]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 164-165 164 THE 'HASHEESH EATER. all the families of New York in mourning, I know you don't; control yourself, I beg." Bolt upright and mo- tionless I sat, until it pleased the gods 'to alter my shape, most opportunely, when I was just giving out, to the far more secure pyramid, after which all hallu- cinations gently passed away. The hasheesh state, in its intensest forms, is gener- ally one of the wildest insanity. By this I do not mean to say that the hasheesh-eater at such a season necessarily loses his self-control, or wanders among the incoherent dreams of a lawless fancy, for neither of these propositions is true. As I have heretofore remarked, self-government during the delirium, from being at first apprehended as a necessity, grows up at length into a habit, and the visions that appear before the shut or open eyes of the ecstatic have an orderly progress and a consistent law according to which they are informed, which elevate them above the prodigal though meaningless displays of fancy into the highest sphere of imagination. Yet, after all, there are reasons for calling the state an insanity, and a wild insanity,'which will defend the name to all who can realize them from a descrip- tion, and far more completely to those who have known them by experiment. In the first place, when self-control has reached its utmost development, and the tortured or exultant spirit restrains itself from all eruptive paroxysms of commu- nication among those people to whom its secret would be unwisely imparted, there is still a sense of perfect passivity to some Titanic force of life, which, for good or evil, must work on through its seeming eternity. EIDOLA THEATRI AND THE PRINCE OF WHALES. 165 Hurried through sublimest ascending paths, or whirled downward through ever-blackening infinitudes, longing for a Lemnos where the limbs may rebound from solid ground, even though shattered by the shock, there is no relief for the soul but to endure, to wait, and through a time of patience but faintly imaged by the nine days of the headlong Hephzestus. When the Afreet who was of old your servant becomes your lord, he is as deaf to petitions as you were avaricious in your demand for splendors. Again: at the moment of the most rapturous exulta- tion, the soul hears the outcry of the physical nature pouring up to its height of vision out of the walls of flesh, and the burden of that cry is, "I am in pain; I am finite, though thou art infinite!"The cords which bind the two mysterious portions of our duality together have been stretched to their ultimate tensity, and the body, for the sake of its own existence, calls the soul back into the husk which it can not carry with it. Oftentimes, in the presence of the most ravishing views, have I felt these cords pulling me downward with as distinct a sensation as if they were real sinews, and, compelled to ask the question "Is this happiness or torture?" soul and body have return- ed opposite verdicts. These two facts constitute hashepsh a most tre- mendous form of insanity. At intervals, however, in the enchanted life which I led under the influence of the drug, there occurred seasons of a quieter nature than the ravishment of delirium, when my mind, with a calm power of insight, penetrated into some of its own kingdoms, whose ex- page: 166-167[View Page 166-167]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 166-167 166 THE HASHEESH EATER. ternal boundaries only- it had known before, reflected, marveled, and took notes as serenely as a philosophic voyager. In the department of philological discovery I some- times reveled for hours, coming upon clews to the gene- alogy of words and unexpected affinities between lan- guages, which, upon afterward recalling them (though only in a few cases was I able to do this), I generally found substantiated by the authorities of- science, or, if they had not before been perceived by any writers whom I had at hand, at least bearing the stamp of a strong probability of correctness. I mention but one of them as with me merely con- jectural, for it bases its plausibility upon a root in the Sanscrit, with which language I do not pretend to be acquainted. I remembered during one of these calm, suggestive states that the Latin cano (to sing) and candeo (to shine) were supposed to derive their origin from a common Sanscrit root, whose signification was "to dart forth, as the sun his rays of light." The thought struck me, Might not other vocal utterance than sing- ing be found cognate with the out-darting of light also? I would see. The Latin "fari," "to speak," referred me back to its Greek equivalent, Odavat. The verb "to shine" was " qaiverv." So far, in sound at least, the two were affiliated. It now occurred to me that "co0." was both "a light" and "man," in his prerogative of speech, with a slight variation of accent in the -different cases. I had here four words (dividing the last by its two meanings), all of whose original roots must have been something very nearly like Pa-. On referring to EIDOLA THEATRI AND THE PRINCE OF WHALES. 167 authorities, I found that the fountain-head of the Greek "naive" is supposed to be the Sanscrit "bha," "to shine forth." Following out the result of my previous argument, I connected all the words with this root, and in this conjecture saw both light and speech as effluences from Brahm, the great giver of all radiance, and man not merely an effluence from him, but, in virtue of speech, a "shiner" also, a reflector of Him from whose radiance he came, and into whose glory he should be absorbed. Now all this process, (be its result true or false) was accomplished internally in a hundredth part of the time which it will take to read it-nay, almost instantaneously, and with a sense of delight in the mental activity which carried it on such as the creation of his highest ideal by an artist gives him when he stands mute before his marble. Another field through which I sometimes wandered was sown with those sound-relations between words which constitute the pun. For hours I walked aching with laughter in this land of Paronomasia, where the whole Dictionary had arrayed itself in strophe and antistrophe, and was dancing a ludicrous chorus of quirk and quibble. If Hood had been there, the notes which he would have taken had supplied him with materials for the Comic Annuals of a cycle. Rarely did the music of a deeper wit intermingle with the rattling fantasies of the pun-country; never was any thing but the broad laugh heard there, and the very atmosphere was crazy with oxygen. Were it possible to transport to a country such as this those grave pro- fessors of the moralities who have been convicted of contempt of the court of Mirth, and high treason to page: 168-169[View Page 168-169]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 168-169 168 THE HASHEESH EATER. the King of Misrule, how delightful would it be to behold their iron diaphragms vibrating perforce, and the stereotyped downward curves at the corners of their mouths reversed until they encroached upon the boundaries of theirjuiceless cheeks! But, in hasheesh saltates temperament and previous habit so much decide tendencies, that the transport-ship which bore these convicts would float inevitably to the mouth ofAcheron, or strand midway upon some reef upraised by a million of zoophytic Duns Scotuses. Out of, the number of double-entendres which ap- peared to me (and they probably amounted to thou- sands), I recollect but very few. To recall them all would be nearly, if not quite as difficult as to remem- ber the characteristics of each separate wheat-head in a large harvest-field after having but once passed through it. I give two of them. A youth, not at all of that description which "maketh a glad father," was seen standing at the counter of a gaudy restaurant. Glass after glass of various exhila- rating compounds was handed to him by the man in waiting, and as quickly drained. I did not observe that the genius of decanters received any compensation for the liquors consumed from the young man who demanded them, and modestly asked him how he had been induced to purvey to the drinker's thirst on so liberal a scale. With arms akimbo, and casting upon me a most impressive look, the official replied, "Like the man in Thanatopsis, I am ' Sustained by an unfaltering trust. " Upon the steps of the post-office stood another young EIDOLA THEATRI AND THE PRINCE OF WHALES. 169 man, who had been disappointed in a remittance from the parental treasury. "What are you doing there?" I asked. "I am waiting patiently until my change come." Occasionally there intervened between the vagaries of pun and double-entendre some display of comic points in human nature, which were as amusing as the puns themselves. For instance, I remember the representation to me of a man of remarkable self-esteem, who happened, as he sat in my presence, to appease the irritation of his scalp with his digit. Just then a peal of thunder shook the sky above us. "Heavens!" cried our friend, "to think that it should thunder because a man scratched his head!" I feel that these things lose very much of their original effervescence in. the relation, for at the time they none of them seemed so much told to me as acted before me; nor was it the action of a stage, but of a vivified picture, where fun, in all its myriad mutations, was embodied to sight, and the joke was as much ap- prehended by the eye as by the feeling. Every gesture of the figures that passed before me told more of raillery than tongue could utter, and it was this fact that some- times made pantomime upon the stage a perfect feast of mirth to me as I sat seeing it in the appreciative state induced by hasheesh. At such seasons, not the faintest stroke of humor in look or manner escaped me, and I no doubt often committed that most gross error in any man, laughing when my neighbors saw fit not to be moved. At one time, in my ramble through the realm of in- congruities, I came to the strand of the Mediterranean, II page: 170-171[View Page 170-171]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 170-171 170 THE HASHEESH EATER. ^ and beheld an acquaintance of mine standing close beside the water. With a tourist's knapsack upon his back, and a stout umbrella in his hand, to serve the double purpose of a walking-stick, he drew near and accosted me. "Will you go with me," said he, "to make a call upon a certain old and valued friend?" '"Most willingly, if you will let me know his name." "It is the Prophet Jonah, who still occupies sub- marine lodgings in a situation, to be sure, rather cold and damp, yet commanding a fine water privilege." "There is nothing," I replied, " which would please me more; but how is it to be accomplished?" "Be patient, and you shall see." Just then a slight ripple ridged the surface of the sea, bubbles appeared, and then there followed them the black muzzle of Levi- athan, who, with mighty strokes, pushed toward the shore. Arriving there, his under jaw slid half way up the beach, and his upper jaw slowly rose like a trap- door, disclosing a fearful chasm of darkness within. I looked down the throat of the beast, and beheld de- scending it a rickety wooden staircase, which was evi- dently the only feasible access to interior apartments. Hardly would I have dared to trust myself to the tumble-down passage but for the importunate hand of my companion, which pressed me along beside him through the doorway and down the steps. The mon- ster let down his grisly portcullis behind us, and in total darkness we groped to the bottom of our way, where we emerged into the most shabby room that ever dawned upon the eyes of the visiting committee of a benevolent association. The central figure was an unutterably lean and woe- EIDOLA THEATRI AND THE PRINCE OF WHALTES. 171 begone looking man, who, on a rush-bottomed chair, the only one in the room, sat mending his sole pair of unmentionables by the aid of a small needle-book which I was informed his mother had given him on leaving home. "Mr. Jonah, Mr. Fitz-Gerald," said my friend, sen- tentiously. "Very happy to know Mr. Fitz-Gerald," returned the seer; though, as I took his lank and ghostly fingers in mine, he looked the very antipodes of happy. Decayed gentleman as he was, he shuf- fled around to do the honors of his mansion, and offer- ed us the chair in which he had been sitting. We re- fused to dispossess him, and took our seats upon the shaky pine table, which, with one battered brazen can- dlestick, holding an inch of semi-luminous tallow, and a dog's-eared copy of Watts's Hymns, also a gift from his mother, completed his inventory of furniture. "How do you like your situation?" asked my friend. "Leaky," replied Jonah; "find the climate don't agree with me. I often wish I hadn't come." "Can't you leave here when you want to? I should think you would clear out if you find it uncomforta- ble," said I to our entertainer. "I have repeatedly asked my landlord to make out his bill and let me go," replied the gentleman;!" but he isn't used to casting up his prophets, and I don't know when I shall get off." Just then Leviathan, from the top of the stairs, by a strange introversion looked down. into his own inte- riors, and in a hoarse voice called out to know wheth- er we were going to stay all night, as he wanted to put down the shutters. page: 172-173[View Page 172-173]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 172-173 172 THE HASHEESH EATER. "Be happy. to give you a bed, gentlemen, but I sleep on the floor myself," woefully murmured the poor seer. "You mustn't neglect to call on me if you ever pass through Joppa, and-and-I ever get back my- self." We wrung Jonah's hand convulsively, rattled up the crazy stairs, and ran out upon the sand just as Leviathan was about shoving off into deep water. It may, perhaps, be hard to conceive how this in- congruous element of the hasheesh visions should com- port with all I have said upon the subject of those de- licious raptures of beauty and sublime revealings of truth which break upon- the mind under the influence of the drug. How, it will be asked, as oftentimes it has been asked me already, can you put any confidence in dis- coveries of unsupposed significancy in outer things, and wonderful laws of mental being, attained during the hasheesh state, when you have also beheld vaga- ries of fancy which Reason instantly pronounced ab- surd? You do not believe that you really saw Jonah; how, then, can you believe that you saw truth? I would answer thus: The domains of intuition and those bf a wild fancy were always, in my visions, sep- arated from each other by a clearly-defined and recog- nized boundary. The congruous and the incongruous might alternate, but they never blended. The light which illustrated the one was as different from that shed upon the other as a zenith sun is from lamplight. Moreover, at the time of each specific envisionment, I beheld which faculty of mind was working as dis- tinctly as in the simplest tests of his laboratory the chemist knows whether cobalt or litmus is producing EIDOLA THEATRI AND THE PRINCE OF WHALES. 173 a certain change of color. The conviction of truth in the one case was like that of an axiom; in the other, such only as is drawn inferentially from mere sense. We very little realize in our daily life that there are two species of conviction felt at various times by every man, yet a moment's reflection will show that it is so. I look, for example, at a piece of silk, and pronounce it black; if I were now to turn away without any fur- ther inspection, I should not be at all astonished to hear afterward, from some one who had examined the fabric more closely and in a better light, that it was not black, as I had pronounced it, but a dark shade of blue. I would be very willing to abjure my previous conviction, and, in this willingness, would show that I ascribed no absolute infallibility to the proofs of sense. Yet if the same man should assure me that the silk was both wholly black and wholly blue at the same time, I should instantly reject his assertion as absurd, for the reason that it was a violation of the very law of possibility. There would be no need of going back to test his truth, for it is denied by an entirely differ- ent conviction from that of sense-the conviction aris- ing from an insight into necessary and universal law. Between the convictions of reality in the different hasheesh states, the boundary-lines are drawn even more distinctly than in the natural; and not only so, but the hasheesh-eater beholds those lines and ac- knowledges them, as the ordinary observer never does, from the fact that the practical wants of life make it convenient, nay, even imperative, that the data of sense should be treated as valid for the basis of action. We have neither time nor power in our present day-labor page: 174-175[View Page 174-175]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 174-175 174 THE - ASHEESHE EATER. to secure the same unerring verdict upon objects of sense which the axiom gives us upon objects of in- tuition. Nor is it necessary that in this life such a power should be possible. In a former part of these pages we have suggested a reason why it would not be best for the soul, thus early in its career, to have its intui- tional domain enlarged. We may here, by anothbr process, get at some of the final causes why this do- main is just so large as it is. We have a sufficient scope of intuition for all our earthly purposes. Those truths are imparted to us as axioms which are neces- sary for the shaping of our habitual conduct. In the thousands of constantly-recurring cases where, to di- rect our course wisely, it is necessary to know that a straight line is the shortest distance between two given points, that the whole is equal to its parts, and numer- ous similar facts, it would greatly hinder action were it necessary to take the rule and the balance into each specific consideration, and make a measurement ac- cording to sense. These truths, therefore, stand be- fore every man in a light which shows them to be universal and necessary; they are every where assent- ed to upon their mere statement. The animal is not God's grand laborer, but man's; he, therefore, needs no such faculty as intuition, the work of his little day requiring neither dispatch nor accuracy; and when he is impressed for human uses into the harness or the mill, the intuitions of his master guide him through the rein and the halter. Doubtless, as our field of action widens, our intui- tional eyesight shall be increased also; not only be- EIDOLA THEATRI AND THE PRINCE OF WHALES. 175 cause otherwise we should be mortified and saddened by our purblindness and the sense of making no progress proportional to the pace of our circumstances, but because God will never leave the workmen of his purposes hampered in their action among the colossal plans of the eternal building. There is one more fact to which I would advert in this rather rambling portion of my narrative, which characterizes the hasheesh state at times when it does not reach the height of delirium. I refer to a lively appreciation of the feelings and manners of all people, in whatever lands and ages-a catholic sympathy, a spiritual cosmopolitanism. Not only does this exiib- it itself in affectionate yearnings toward friends that' are about one, and an extraordinary insight into the excellencies of their characters, but, taking a wider sweep, it can understand and feel with the heroism of philanthropists and the enthusiasm of Crusaders. The lamentation of the most ancient Thracian captive is a sincere grief to the dreamer, and the returning Ca- millus brought no greater joy to Rome, as he threw his defiant sword into the scale, than over the chasm of ages he sends thrilling into the hasheesh-eater's heart. Whether it is the Past or the Present that is read or heard, he sorrows in all its woes and rejoices in all its rejoicings. He understands all feelings; his mind is malleable to all thoughts; his susceptibilities run into the mould of all emotions. Sitting in this fused state of mind, I have heard the old ladies of the Latin time, as they sat gossiping over spindle and distaff, keep up their perpetual round of "inquit" and "papae" with as distinct and as kind page: 176-177[View Page 176-177]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 176-177 176 THE HASHEESH EATER. appreciation as were they our own beloved American aunts and grandmothers, knitting after tea amid the in- terchange of "says he" and!" do tell." For Epami- nondas, coming glorious from Leuctra, I could have hur- rahed as enthusiastically as any Theban of them all, or hobnobbed with Horace over his "Pocula veteris Massici" with a true Roman zest and fall-heartedness. At such times no anachronism seems surprising; time is treat- ed as an insignificant barrier to those souls who, in the element of their generous humanity, possess the only true bond of conjunction, and a bond which, though now so elastic that it permits years and leagues to keep souls apart, shall one day pull with a force strong enough to bring all congenialities together, in place as well as in state, and every man shall be with those whom, for their inner qualities, he has most deep- ly loved through all his life. X1V. Cail! pgtltagoras. THE hemisphere of sky which walls us in is some- thing more than a mere product of the laws of sight. It is our shield from unbearable visions. Within our little domain of view, girt by the horizon and arched by the dome of heaven, there is enough of sorrow, enough of. danger, yes, enough of beauty and lof mirth visible to occupy the soul abundantly in any one single beholding. That lesser and unseen hemisphere which THAT,! PYTHAGORAS. 1" bounds our hearing is also amply large, for within it echo enough of music and lamentation to fill all sus- ceptibility to the utmost. In this world we are but half spirit; we are thus able to hold only the percep- tions and emotions of half an orb. Once fully rounded into symmetry ourselves, we shall have strength to bear the pressure of influences from a whole sphere of truth and loveliness. It is this present half-developed state of ours which makes the infinitude of the hasheesh awakening so un- endurable, even when its sublimity is the sublimity of delight. We have no longer any thing to do with horizons, and the boundary which was at once our barrier and our fortress is removed, until we almost perish from the inflow of perceptions. One most powerful realization of this fact occurred to me when hasheesh had already become a fascination and a habit. In the broad daylight of a summer after- noon I was walking in the full possession of delirium. For an hour the expansion of all visible things had been growing toward its height; it now reached it, and to the fullest extent I apprehended what is meant by the infinity of space. Vistas no longer converged; sight met no barrier; the world was horizonless, for earth and sky stretched endlessly onward in parallel planes. Above me the heavens were terrible with the glory of a fathomless depth. I looked up, but my eyes, unopposed, every moment penetrated farther and farther into the immensity, and I turned them down- ward, lest they should presently intrude into the fatal splendors of the Great Presence. Unable to bear visible objects, I shut my eyes. In one moment a I 2 page: 178-179[View Page 178-179]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 178-179 178 THE HASHEESH EATER., colossal music filled the whole hemisphere above me, and I thrilled upward through its environment on visionless wings. It was not song, it was not instru- ments, but the inexpressible spirit of sublime sound- like nothing I had ever heard-impossible to be sym-- bolized; intense, yet not loud; the ideal of harmony, yet distinguishable into a multiplicity of exquisite parts. I opened my eyes, but it still continued. I sought around me to detect some natural sound which might be exaggerated into such a semblance; but no, it was of unearthly generation, and it thrilled through the universe an inexplicable, a beautiful, yet an awful symphony. Suddenly my mind grew solemn with the conscious- ness of a quickened perception. And what a solemnity is that which the hasheesh-eater feels at such a moment! The very beating of his heart is silenced; he stands with his finger on his lip; his eye is fixed, and he becomes a very statue of awful veneration. The face of such a man, however little glorified in feature or expression during his ordinary states of mind, I have stood and looked upon with the consciousness that I was beholding more of the embodiment of the truly sublime than any created thing could ever offer me. I looked abroad on fields, and waters, and sky, and read in them a most startling meaning. I wondered how I had ever regarded them in the light of dead matter, at the farthest only suggesting lessons. They were now, as in my former vision, grand symbols of the sublimest spiritual truths--truths never before even feebly grasped, and utterly unsuspected. HAIL! PYTHAGORAS. 179 Like a map, the arcana of the universe lay bare before me. I saw how every created thing not only typifies, but springs forth from some mighty spiritual law as its offspring, its necessary external development -not the mere clothing of the essence, but the essence incarnate. I am aware that, in this recital, I may seem to be repeating what I have said before of my dreadful night of insight; but between the two visions there was this difference, the view did not stop here. While that music was pouring through the great heavens above me, I became conscious of a numerical order which ran through it, and in marking this order, I beheld it transferred to every movement of the universe. Every sphere wheeled on in its orbit, every emotion of the soul arose and fell, every smallest moss and fungus germinated and grew according to some peculiarity of numbers which severally governed them, and was most admirably typified by them in return. An exquisite harmony of proportion reigned through space, and I seemed to realize that the music which I heard was but this numerical harmony making itself objective through the development of a grand harmony of tones. The vividness with which this conception revealed itself to me made it a thing terrible to bear alone. An unutterable ecstasy was carrying me away, but I dared not abandon myself to it. I was no seer who could look on the unveiling of such glories face to face. An irrepressible yearning came over me to impart what I beheld, to share with another soul the weight of this colossal revelation. With this purpose I scru- tinized the vision; I sought in it for some character- page: 180-181[View Page 180-181]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 180-181 180 THE HASHEESH EATER. istic which might make it translatable to another mind. There was none. In absolute incommunicableness it stood apart. For it, in spoken language, there was no symbol. For a time-how long a hasheesh-eater alone can know-I was in an agony. I searched every pocket for my pencil and note-book, that I might at least set down some representative mark which would afterward recall to me the lineaments of my/apocalypse. They were not with me. 'Jutting into the water of the brook along which I then wandered, and which, before and afterward, was my sole companion through so many ecstasies, lay a broad, flat stone. "Glory in the high- est!"I shouted, exultingly; "I will at least grave on this tablet some hieroglyph of what I feel. Trem- blingly I sought for my knife; that, too, was gone! It was then that, in a phrensy, I threw myself prostrate on the stone, and with my nails sought to make some memorial scratch upon it. Hard, hard as flint! In despair I stood up. Suddenly there came a sense as of some invisible presence walking the dread paths of the vision with me, yet at a distance, as if separated from my side by a long flow of time. Taking courage, I cried, "Who has ever been here before me? who, in- years past, has shared with me this unutterable view?"In tones which linger with me to this day, a grand, audible voice responded "Pythagoras!" In an instant I was calm. I heard the footsteps of that sublime sage echoing upward through the ages, and in celestial light I read my vision unterrified, since it had burst upon his sight before me. HAIL! PYTHAGORAS. 181 For years previous I had been perplexed with his mysterious philosophy. I saw in him an isolation from universal contemporary mind for which I could not account. When the Ionic school was at the height of its dominance, he stood forth alone the, originator of a system as distinct from it as the antipodes of mind. The doctrine of Thales was built up by the uncer- tain processes of an obscure logic; that of Pythago- ras seemed informed by intuition. In his assertions there had always appeared to me a grave conviction of truth, a consciousness of sincerity which gave them a great weight, though I saw them through the dim refracting medium of tradition, and grasped their mean- ing imperfectly. It was now given to see, in their own light, the truths which he set forth. I also saw, as to .this day I firmly believe, the source whence their revelation flowed. Tell me not that from Phoenicia he received the wand at whose signal the cohorts of the spheres came troop- ing up before him in review, unveiling the eternal law and itinerary of their revolutions, and pouring on his spiritual ear that tremendous music to which they marched through space. No. During half a lifetime spent in Egypt and in India, both mother-lands of this nepenthe, doubt not that he quaffed its apocalyptic draught, and awoke, through its terrific quickening, into the consciousness of that ever-present and all-per- vading harmony "which we hear not, because the coarseness of the daily life hath dulled our ear." The dim penetralia of the Theban Memnonium, or the si- lent spice-groves of the upper Indus, may have been page: 182-183[View Page 182-183]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 182-183 182 THE HASHEESH EATER. the gymnasium of his wrestling with the mighty re- vealer; a priest or a gymnosophist may have been the first to anoint him with the palestric oil, but he con- quered alone. On the strange intuitive characteristics of his system; on the spheral music; on the govern- ment of all created things, and their development ac- cording to the laws of numbers; yes, on the very use of symbols, which could alone have force to the eso- teric disciple (and a terrible significancy, indeed, has the simplest form to a mind hasheesh-quickened to read its meaning)-on all of these is the legible stamp of the hasheesh inspiration. It would be no hard task to prove, to a strong prob- ability, at least, that the initiation to the Pythagorean mysteries, and the progressive instruction that succeed- ed it, to a considerable extent consisted in the employ- ment, judiciously, if we may use the word, of hasheesh, as giving a critical and analytic power to the mind, which enabled the neophyte to roll up the murk and mist from beclouded truths till they stood distinctly seen in the splendor of their own harmonious beauty as an intuition. One thing related of Pythagoras and his friends has seemed very striking to me. There is a legend that, as he was passing over a river, its waters called up to him, in the presence of his followers, "Hail! Pythag- oras." Frequently, while in the power of the hasheesh delirium, have I heard inanimate things sonorous with such voices. On every side they have saluted me, from rocks, and trees, and waters, and sky; in my happiness filling me with intense exultation as I heard them welcoming their master; in my agony HAIL! PYTHAGORAS. 183 heaping nameless curses on my head as I went away into an eternal exile from all sympathy. Of this tradition of Iamblichus I feel an appreciation which almost convinces me that the voice of the river was indeed heard, though only by the quickened mind of some hasheesh-glorified esoteric. Again, it may be that the doctrine of the metempsychosis was first communicated to Pythagoras by Theban priests; but the astonishing illustration which hasheesh would contribute to this tenet should not be overlooked in our attempt to assign its first suggestion and succeed- ing spread to their proper causes. A modern critic, in defending the hypothesis that Pythagoras was an impostor, has triumphantly asked, "Why did he assume the character of Apollo at the Olympic games? Why did he boast that his soul had lived in former bodies, and that he had first been AEthalides, the son- of Mercury, then Euphorbus, then Pyrrhus of Delos, and at last Pythagoras, but that he might more easily impose upon the credulity of an ignorant and superstitious people?' To us these facts seem rather an evidence of his sincerity, Had he made these assertions without proof, it is difficult to see how they would not have had a precisely contrary effect from that of paving the way to a more complete im- position upon popular credulity. Upon our hypothesis it may be easily shown, not only how he could fully have believed these assertions himself, but also have given them a deep significance to the minds of his disciples. Let us see. We will consider, for example, his assumption of the character of Pheebus at the Olympic page: 184-185[View Page 184-185]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 184-185 184 THE HASHEESH EATER. games. Let us suppose that Pythagoras, animated with a desire of alluring to the study of his philosophy a choice and enthusiastic number out of that host who, along all the radii of the civilized world, had come up to the solemn festival at Elis, had, by the talisman of hasheesh, called to his aid the magic of a preternatural eloquence; that while he addressed the throng, whom he had chained into breathless attention by the weird brilliancy of his eye, the unearthly imagery of his style, and the oracular insight of his thought, the grand im- pression flashed upon him from the very honor he was receiving, that he was the incarnation of some sublime deity. What wonder that he burst into the acknowl- edgment of his godship as a secret too majestic to be hoarded up; what wonder that this sudden revelation of himself, darting forth in burning words and amid such colossal surroundings, went down with the acces- sories of time and place along the stream of perpetual tradition? If I may illustrate great things by small, I well re- member many hallucinations of my own which would be exactly parallel to such a fancy in the mind of Pythagoras. There is no impression more deeply stamped upon my past life than one of a walk along the brook which had so often witnessed my wrestlings with the hasheesh-afreet, and which now beheld me, the immortal Zeus, descended among men to grant them the sublime benediction of renovated life. For this cause I had abandoned the serene seats of Olym- pus, the convocation of the gods, and the glory of an immortal kingship, while by my side Hermes trod the earth with radiant feet, the companion and dis- i HAIL! PYTHAGORAS. 185- penser of the benefipence of Deity. Across lakes and seas, from continent to continent we strode; the snows of- IEmus and the Himmalehs crunched beneath our sandals; our foreheads were bathed with the upper light, our breasts glowed with the exultant inspiration of the golden ether. Now resting on Chimborazo, I poured forth a majestic blessing upon all my creatures, and in .an instant, with one omniscient glance, I beheld every human dwelling-place on the whole sphere irra- diated with an unspeakable joy. I saw the king-rule more wisely; the laborer return from his toil to a -happier home; the park grow green with an intenser culture; the harvest-field groan un- der the sheaves of a more prudent and prosperous hus- bandry. Adown blue slopes came new and more pop- ulous flocks, led by unvexed and gladsome shepherds; a thousand healthy vineyards sprang up above their new-raised sunny terraces; every smallest heart glov- ed with an added thrill of exultation, and the universal rebound of joy came pouring up into my own spirit with an intensity which lit my deity with rapture. And this was but a lay hasheesh-eater,; mysteriously clothed in no Pallas-woven, philosophic stole, who, with his friend, walked out into the fields to enjoy his de- lirium among the beauties of a clear summer after- noon. What, then, of Pythagoras? It was during this walk that one of the strangest phenomena of sight which I have ever noticed appear- ed to me. Every sunbeam was refracted into its prim- itive rays; wherever upon the landscape a pencil of light fell, between roclksor trees, it seemed a prismatic pathway between earth and heaven. The atmosphere page: 186-187[View Page 186-187]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 186-187 186 THE HASHEESH EATER. was one network of variegated s9lar-threads, tremu- lous with radiance, and distilling rapture from its fibres into all my veins. It is singular in how many ways, during the ha- sheesh life, the harmony of creation was typified to me. The harp of the universe, which I have already mentioned, was itself once repeated in vision; other representations, on a scale perhaps even as grand, have left but a dim outline upon my memory; yet there is one which, though at least thrice repeated, lost no glory by growing familiar, but more and more deepened its first impress of awe and rapture. The first time that it occurred to me was when, at the close of my walk amid the majesty of apotheosis, I sat quietly at the window of my room looking out upon the sunset which bathed the gigantic landscape before me. As yet the magnifying effect of the drug had not begun to decrease, and I gazed with fascinated eyes upon mountains which scaled heaven, and a river which was oceanic, in a breathless exultancy which vibrated on the diamond edge of pain. -. ..... A,-. I Suddenly the landscape floated out -of sight, and in its place there sat on the trembling ether a tremendous ship, which within itself included every portion of created being. Not a God-born essence, not a micro- scopic atom, but was builded up into some bulwark, beam, or spar of the colossal vessel. Its marked out- line was traced with the more glorious things of crea- tion, the baser formed its inner and hidden parts. Its sides, its stern, its bow were wrought of mighty stars whose rays interlaced; its masts were similar constel- lations, that at their heads, a million leagues above me, HAIL! PYTHAGORAS. 187 yet still distinctly radiant, bore systems of suns for lanterns. Like lanterns flashed far off upon the plow, and dazzling clouds and nebulae, filled out with the breath of an omnipotent will, strained the crystal yards upon which they hung. Now I was transferred to the deck of this infinite ship; her name was!whispered in my ear, "The Ship of the Universe," and the helm was put into my hand. With unutterable symphonies we floated out upon the boundless space, and on the distant bows there broke in music the waves of resplendent ether. It was at this post of pilotage, steering out into the unknown void, that I felt human nature within me grow godlike to an insane excess. The helmsman, the master of all being but the Divine, I burst into a chant of tri- umph, which shook the starry lights above me till their clusters rained glory like wine. I bethought me, forgetful of the infinity of the ocean we were traveling, that I might mark the rate of our progress, and so drew out my watch. Its second-hand had stopped. I held it to my ear and heard it tick. Again I looked at it; the hand was motionless. Con- tinuing my gaze, I saw it at length move slowly through one of the second-spaces, when it stopped once more. Still I looked, and at last became aware that, by the hasheesh expansion of time, I was ena- bled to realize as a quite prolonged and definite period - -a period as great as in our ordinary state a whole minute, at least, would appear-that almost infinitesi- mal instant during which a second-hand actually is motionless at the end of its vibration between two con- secutive ticks. / page: 188-189[View Page 188-189]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 188-189 188 THE HASHEESH EATERi XV. "deu Seeta oveneb on the rcuersb rne thhit 0e of Agnev" * IN the agonies of hasheesh, which now became more and more frequent, a new element began to develop itself toward a terrible symmetry, which afterward made it effective for the direst spiritual evil. This was the appearance of Deity upon the stage of my visionary life, now sublimely grand in very person, and now through the intermediation of some messenger or sign, yet always menacing, wrathful, or avenging, in whatever form or manner the visitation might be made. The myriad voices which, earlier in my enchanted life, I had heard from Nature through all her mysterious passages of communication, now died down forever, or, rather, became absorbed into one colossal and central voice, which spoke with the force of a fiat, and silenced my own faint replies like the sentence of inevitable doom. At first I was calmly warned. Repeatedly, as I sat in an elysium of rosy languor, banqueting upon all that could exalt the inner sense into the serenest ecstasy, the hand that wrote upon the wall has invaded the sanctity of my feast, and its dread tracery has made me suddenly afraid. In characters of light I have seen it written, ' Beware how thou triflest with a mysterious power of the Most High!" and an audible voice, whose divinity at the moment I no more doubted than my own "THEN SEEVA OPENED," ETC. 189 humanity, has added its injunction, "Beware! beware!" Anticipating nothing but an uninterrupted procession of sublime images and the choral music which had so often ravished me out of the walls of sense, I have in an instant shuddered with unutterable terror as I felt the unlooked-for finger of some awful presence marking out downward channels for my upwelling thought, and solemnly forcing its streams into them with a power which bore no doubtful tokens of irresistibleness, but commanded even my own assent to the impossibility of escape. At length the reasons of my punishment were shown me. Here again, as audibly as man talks with man, I was told, ," Thou hast lifted thyself above humanity to peer into the speechless secrets before thy time; and thou shalt be smitten-smitten-smitten." As the last echo of the sentence died away, it always began its execution in Promethean pangs. At last even the faintest suggestion of the presence of Deity possessed a power to work me ill which hardly the haunting of demons had been able to produce before. At one time I well remember beholding a colossal veiled figure part the drapery of sombre clouds which hung over the horizon, and appear upon a platform which I supposed to be the stage of the universe. No sound, no radiance issued from behind the veil, yet when the mysterious figure lifted his hands, I cried, "It is the Day of Judgment, and my doom is being pronounced!"Then I fled for my soul, and cowered in the darkest spot that I could find. One, tremendous vision occurred to me during the progress of one of these peculiar states, which, while page: 190-191[View Page 190-191]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 190-191 190 THE HASHEESH EATER. it filled me with the agony of despair for my own fate, still gave me an inconceivable pain for another being. In the heavens I heard a voice of weeping; no plaintive wail like that of woman in affliction, no passionate cry like that of a strong man riven by distress, but some nameless agony, foreshadowed by a solemn voice of woe, which spoke of universal creation suffering fear- fully at its centre, life drying up at its fountain-head i of being. "Who weeps?"I cried in terror. And the answer was returned to me out of the viewless air, "The Mighty One, who was of old held supreme, hath discovered that his supremacy is void. Fate, blind Fate, that hath no ear for thy yearnings, sits mover of the spring of all things, and He to whom thou prayest is a discrowned King." Ah! well might there be such weeping in the heavens! After all, we had no Lord, no God but Destiny. And I saw dynas- ties rush down in aimless ruin; good and evil met in eternal shock; there should be no prevalence to Right; the souls of all humanity were but atoms hurled onward through an infinite, lawless Chaos. In my own spirit there sounded an echo to the celestial groaning, and with tearless horror I went straying through the ray- less abyss of accident, a tortured creature without a goal. "My God," I whispered, "annihilate me!" Words of accursed folly! God no longer lived. I threw myself upon the earth, and clutched its dead, ungoverned dust in my writhing fingers. I called no longer upon God, and was dumb because Fate was deaf. I cursed the day that I was born--meaningless, still meaningless, since there was no power who could authenticate the curse. I lay balancing the chances "THEN SEEVA OPENED," ETC. 191 of being blotted out. Somewhere in the eternities a crash might end me. Forever? What if my disrupted being should float together in cycles measurelessly on? Reunited, I should wander once more a godless wretch! From horizon to horizon there flashed a quick glory; heaven rang through all its dome with a multitude of tremendous bands, and a sound of chanting joined in the symphony. "Ah! what is this?"I said, and started up. "I hear a harmony, and Fate knows only discords." Again the aerial voice responded, but now in a triumphant song, "After all, there is a Supreme; he rules whose right it is; there is no destiny but God, and he is over all forever." I leaped into the air-I shouted for joy. The hope of the ages was sure-there was a God! Yet few of my visions of the Divine, as bitterly I tested in many a trial of fire, were to have an issue so blessed as this. Through the watches of a long and lonely night I had been sitting, with no other companion than my crusted lamp, and the shapes of strange men and things passed by me ceaselessly in tides of pain and pleasure. At length I found myself in the highest story of an unknown and desolate house, surrounded by blank walls, and lighted by a single narrow win- dow. "This room," spoke the hasheesh voice, " is that which thou callest Time. Outside thee whirl the resistless, the unbounded winds of Eternity." I went to the window, and, looking out, saw nothing; but the heavy roar of a storm-lashed atmosphere shook the panes. A strange fascination tempted me to draw nearer to the tempest. I threw up the sash; in one page: 192-193[View Page 192-193]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 192-193 192 THE HASHEESH EATER. momenit the wind of eternity came rushing in; the foundations of my building shook, and straightway, by those stormy wings, every atom of it was winnowed out of sight, and, houseless, I found myself alone among the infinitudes. For a while I was blown hither and thither unconsciously. Then, coming to myself, I found that I had been wafted to the door of a certain friend of mine, who doubtless would care for me in my bewil- derment of suffering. It was now four o'clock of a midsummer morning, and the western hills, that I could see through a hall window, began to be impurpled by reflection from the opposite horizon of the dawn. My friend was an early riser, and he would, perhaps, be willing to walk with me, for I could not endure to sit still for a mo- ment. "Baldwin!"I cried; "Baldwin, it is necessa- ry that I should speak with you," at the same time knocking stoutly until I aroused him from sleep. It was at first very difficult for me to persuade him how intensely I was suffering, for my habit of self- control subdued even my face. At last we were in the open air, and I walked clinging to Baldwin's arm. I said little; for I had no power to speak above a whis- per, and in disjointed sentences. Coming to the steps which led from my own entry, we sat down for a few moments' rest. All familiarity of appearance was ut- terly dissipated from the place, and the buildings in view had become to me the temples and pylons of dis- entombed Memphis. Awful Egyptian gateways frown- ed down upon me with a wrathful meaning, which they had not lost in all their centuries of sepulchral dust since the Pharaohs, and the grisly stare of Sphinx "THEN SEEVA OPENED," ETC. 193 and Caryatid appalled me, on all sides shutting out relief through change of view. But, worse horror yet, beneath pedestal and foundation, under the lowest stone of the deepest-based temple of all the adamantine group, supporting its weight, bursting with a torture in which it could not writhe, lay my own, my living heart, unreached and never to be reached by the instru- ment of the resurrectionist of ages! It was the wrath of God which had whelmed that city; my heart, therefore, lay under that wrath. Yet I would appeal submissively to the Supreme, that he might perchance have mercy on me. I looked heav- enward, but what a vision there unveiled itself! In the most intimate recess of a sable, cloudy cavern flamed vengefully two burning, soul-penetrating eyes. Their gaze dissolved me, and, turning away, I hid my face in my friend's lap. When he sought the cause of my pain, I could not tell him. At that moment I would not have embodied in words the infinity of wrathful menace which I had seen on high for the endowment of coined worlds. When at length I dared to look out from my lurk- ing-place, my sight chanced to fall upon the vapory banks which skirted the gleaming western horizon. In mercy my vision was here changed to one of peace. As if to heal the pangs of my spirit, I saw, flowing down to me through a rift in the clouds, a silvery river of unutterable balm. Unknown trees drooped, prodi- gal of wondrous fruit and odors, over its enameled margin; and rare beings floated, with their beaming girdles streaming on the breeze, above the crystal wa- ters, or stooped to drink of them along the edge; and I page: 194-195[View Page 194-195]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 194-195 194 THE HASHEESH EATER. the hasheesh voice whispered me, "The River of' the Water of Life." If heaven be like that, the stake and the rack are worth while to bear on the way to it! Slowly the celestial aspect of the vision passed away. The river still remained, but on its banks a great city lifted her walls, and I knew that the river was Simois, and the city Troy. As yet the inner citadel rose fair and vast, and the broad gates stood firm. Upon the bank of the stream I saw a dead face turned up toward the morning sky. The agony of the death-struggle had plowed no furrows upon brow or cheek, and a mysterious, matchless loveliness slept in the features chiseled without fault. - More than I had ever been with life was I ravished with death- nay, I had given my own life to print a kiss upon the serene lips of the sleeper, or to pluck a lock from the wavy wealth which flowed out of his helmet, whose clasps, now unbound, hung idly to the earth beside him. A warrior still living came into my view. With shield thrown on the ground and spear trailing through his arm in all the negligence of grief, with bowed crest and hands intensely clasped, he stood silently gazing upon the dead, and his look was so instinct with a superhuman grief that I wept in sympathy with him. Again the hasheesh voice spoke to me, "This is Achilles standing over the slain Patroclus," and my grief was changed into a sublime awe of mystery as I beheld that some unknown power had borne me over the bridgeless abyss of three thousand years to sorrow in the sorrowing of one of the grandest children of the epic Past. I have sometimes lamented that in my hasheesh ex- "THEN SEEVA OPENED," ETC. 195 perience visions of ecstasy almost always followed those of pain, and, indeed, generally concluded the trance, whether I walked or slept. With opium-eaters or drinkers of liquor the case is ordinarily different. Their happiness comes first, and the depression that follows brings with it shame, repentance, and at least a feeble aim at some new life. When they have be- come satiated with their pleasure, they have to pay for it, and of all things which it is odious to pay for, a luxury enjoyed in the past is the most so. If, in my own experience, such a disgust and loathing, such re- action of body and spirit, had succeeded the hasheesh indulgence, I had possessed much stronger motives for renouncing it. But with me ecstasy had always the last word, and, on returning to the natural state, I re- membered great tortures to be sure, but only as the unnecessary adjuncts to a happiness which I fondly persuaded myself was the legitimate effect of the drug. I said, I have suffered, but only because certain unfor- tunate circumstances came in to pervert my condition, and I will, in the future, avoid them. In the instance just related this fact fully obtained. For days after- ward I never looked toward a certain quarter of the heavens without shuddering, as I remembered that it was there I met the gaze of the burning eyes, and my hand involuntarily went to my heart as I saw the site of the disentombed city, in imagination, once more oc- cupied by its ponderous and cruel piles of granite. But from such memories as these my mind glanced with an elasticity as yet undiminished by its many shocks to the -healing waters of the celestial river, or the face of mortal loveliness which has never, even now, passed thoroughly frocm my dreams. page: 196-197[View Page 196-197]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 196-197 196 THE HASHEESH EATER, After this, therefore, I took hasheesh many times; nay, more, life became with me one prolonged state of hasheesh exaltation-a very network, singularly varied, of golden and iron strands, and throughout this life I ever and anon bore hours of wretchedness from super- human threatenings such as I would not, if I could, transcribe entire, unless called by most imperative duty to hand down a legacy of admonition to all who may seek by other than the appointed means to mount into a life above the utterly material. I shall not, there- fore, detail in their order of time all the visitations of horror which afflicted me, but will endeavor here and there to cull those which may most graphically fore- shadow that "last state of a man which is worse than the first." Repeatedly, as I have said,was I menaced by voices. Yet the threatening sometimes took other forms, and none of them were more terrific than the exhibition to me, as frequently occurred, of all nature abominating me, sometimes for the reason clearly set forth that I had tampered with a mystery which encroached on the prerogative of God, and sometimes for the sake of a nameless crime-nameless because too horrible to be named-whose nature or aggravation I did not know, but which lurked for me in some covert by the way- side, ready to spring upon me with the sword of Nem- esis as I came by. Through the whole of one breezy summer afternoon I had been wandering through the woods which I have so often mentioned, happy to delirious excess, and sus- tained by the arm and the conversation of a congenial friend, whom I now found it wisest to take with me "THEN SEEVA OPENED," ETC. 197 as a precaution against wild vagaries, whenever I walk- ed in the hasheesh state. Our pathway led over a thick carpet of fallen pine leaves, and my delight was heightened by the aromatic odors which exhaled from them in the warm winds which fanned us as we went. In this perfume was luxuriant suggestion of Indian spice-groves, and nothing more marked than such a mere suggestion does the hasheesh-eater need to build up for him the fabric of a most amazing and odorous dream. Straightway a grand procession of Burmese priests wound down the slope of a distant hill; sol- emnly, yet joyously, they approached me with music, and the air was loaded with the breath of their swing- ing censers. At a vast distance above me I could catch glimpses through the tree-tops of a radiant sap- phire sky, and rose-tinged clouds floated dreamily therein, yet the incense vapors reached and blended with them even at that grand height. I stopped the foremost of the sacerdotal train, and spoke with him in his own language. He answered me, and we un- derstood each other through a prolonged conversation, while my friend stood waiting by my side, in speech- less marvel at an exhibition of my delirium for which he could not see even as much cause as usually ex- plains conduct in the hasheesh state. Our conversation over, the procession passed on. I now felt, as suddenly as if it had fallen upon me from heaven, and as assuredly as if Heaven had spoken it, that that priestly multitude were the last of human kind that should ever endure my presence. My com- panion abhorred me, and nothing but his sense of duty forced him to accede to my request that he should lead page: 198-199[View Page 198-199]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 198-199 198 THE H1ASHEESH EATER. me to my room. On the way back we passed a radi- ant and balmy knoll, whereon, amid a tropical excess of flowers and foliage, a group of Burmese children were dancing to stringed instruments. They saw me, and instantly rushed out of sight in precipitate agony of loathing. Reaching home, I entered my room. Wherever, upon tables or chairs, on the bed or on the floor, there I was any possible space, stood a coffin, with lid let down, ' disclosing the face of some one among the well-remem- bered dead. Though I never feared death, I always t; knew well the feeling of our ancient sire, who prayed the sons of Heth, saying, "Give me a burying-place with you, that I may bury the dead out of my sight." Yet at this moment I crouched between the coffins as in an asylum, a demon, indeed, in nature, yet exulting in the security of possessing a hiding-place among the 1 ruins which had once held holy souls. My God! could the dead still know ime and my dreadful state? Over every one of those cold faces passed a ripple of dire agony! They feared me, after having been life- :i less for many years! Distinctly I saw them convulsed ! with a tremendous shudder. One by one they turned : upon their faces, and eagerly snatched with their hands behind them to close the lids which let in my accursed I sight. And now the two most loving friends who remained I to me alive came walking toward me with tears stream- ,1 ing from their eyes. They had come on foot from a } far city to fall upon their knees and beseech me, by all f that I held sacred in the dearness of our relation, by X the most precious future of my soul, to abandon ha- - /I CTHEN SEEVA OPENED," ETC. 199 sheesh. The moment that their faces met my own, with a piercing cry of pain they fled out of my sight. I ran out of my room and came to the house of an old and intimate companion. In a work-shop which he had fitted up as the place for his recreation he was busily engaged, as I came in, upon some mechanical contrivance, commenced when I had last seen him. His back was turned, and, to attract his attention, I called him by name, "Edward!" Suddenly he faced me, smiling to recognize my voice; but, as the change of horror came over his fea- tures, he flung the hammer which he held in his hand at my head. It just missed its aim, and I saw that he had delivered the weapon, not in anger, but as the last boon he could give me to deprive me of my infernal life. The next moment he leaped through the lofty window of the room, and fathoms below I heard him crushed upon the pavement. In a former agony I had suddenly obtained relief from the view of a certain name- written in soft tints upon the sky. It was the name of a beautiful, good, and beloved girl; and as I saw it, it represented to me such lovely qualities of innocence, that beneath it I took sweet refuge as under an segis. In an instant I grew calm, and the devil-voices that boomed after me died away. Remembering this, I now bethought me to image that protectress' name in the same way as before, and therefrom promised myself speedy comfort. I sought to picture it before me, a name as simple as it was beautiful both in itself and its associations. It was "Mary," and I fled to it as never hlunted murderer fled page: 200-201[View Page 200-201]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 200-201 200 THE HASHEESH EATER. to grasp the skirts of Our Lady, the holy namesake of this most pure child. In the first place, I tried to set the whole word be- fore my eyes. This I found impossible. Then my endeavor was, letter by letter, to behold it in succes- sion. I tried to get the first letter. And now came the inexplicable affliction of a perfect capability to think of the one which I wanted without being able to represent its form even to my inner sight. Backward and forward I boxed the whole alphabet. With in- conceivable rapidity, every character beginning with A flew past me, but when the flight came to L there was one inevitable void between it and N. At Z I took the trail of the alphabetic whirl; in the same way, from N the letters leaped to L. At length, after a countless multitude of trials, I madly dashed myself upon the ground before that rushing demon font of type, and cried to Heaven, "An M! an M! for the love of my soul, grant me an M!" My prayer was not heard, but without warning I was lifted from the earth, and on a burning wind waft- ed like a dry leaf into the sky. Whither and where- fore I was going I knew not until a dreadful voice hissed close beside my ear, c"On earth thou didst tri- umph in superhuman joys-now shalt thou ring their knell. It is thine to toll the summons to the Judg- ment." I looked, and lo! all the celestial hemisphere was one terrific brazen bell, which rocked upon some invis- ible adamantine pivot in the infinitudes above. When I came it was voiceless, but I soon knew how it was to sound. My feet were quickly chained fast to the "THEN SEEVA OPENED," ETC. 201 top of heaven, and, swinging with my head downward, I became its tongue. Still more mightily swayed that frightful bell, and now, tremendously crashing, my head smote against its side. It was not the pain of the blow, though that was inconceivable, but the co- lossal roar that filled the universe, and rent my brain also, which blotted out in one instant all sense, thought, and being. In an instant I felt my life extinguished, but knew that it was by annihilation, not by death. When I awoke out of the hasheesh state I was as overwhelmed to find myself still in existence as a dead man of the last century could be were he now sudden- ly restored to earth. For a while, even in perfect consciousness, I believed I was still dreaming, and to this day I have so little lost the memory of that one demoniac toll, that, while writing these lines, I have put my hand to my forehead, hearing and feeling some- thing, through the mere imagination, which was an echo of the original pang. It is this persistency of impressions which explains the fact of the hasheesh state, after a certain time, growing more and more ev- ery day a thing of agony. It is not because the body becomes worn out by repeated nervous shocks; with some constitutions, indeed, this wearing may occur; it never did with me, as I have said, even to the ex- tent of producing muscular weakness, yet the univer- sal law of constantly accelerating diabolization of vis- ions held good as much in my case as in any others. But a thing of horror once experienced became a "T'rj : a f d&is," an inalienable dower of hell; it was certain to reproduce itself in some-to God be the thanks if not in all-future visions. I had seen, for instance, I2 page: 202-203[View Page 202-203]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 202-203 202 THE HASHEESH EATER. in one of my states of ecstasy, a luminous spot on the firmament, a prismatic parhelion. In the midst of my delight in gazing on it, it had transferred itself myste- riously to my own heart, and there became a circle of fire, which gradually ate its way until the whole writh- ing organ was in a torturous blaze. That spot, seen again in an after vision, through the memory of its former pain instantly wrought out for me the same ac- cursed result. The number of such remembered fag- ots of fuel for direful suggestion of course increased proportionally to the prolonging of the hasheesh life, until at length there was hardly a visible or tangible object, hardly a phrase which could be spoken, that had not some such infernal potency as connected with an earlier effect of suffering. Slowly thus does midnight close over the hasheesh- eater's heaven. One by one, upon its pall thrice dyed in Acheron, do the baleful lustres appear, until he walks under a hemisphere flaming with demon lamps, and upon a ground paved with tiles of hell. Out of this awful domain there are but three ways. Thank God that over its alluring gateway is not written, "Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch' entrate!" The first of these-exits is insanity, the second death, the third abandonment. The, first is doubtless often- est trodden, yet it may be long ere it reaches the final escape in oblivion, and it is as frightful as the domain it leaves behind. The second but rarely opens to the wretch unless he pries it open with his knife; ordina- rily its hinges turn lingeringly. Toward the last let him struggle, though a nightmare torpor petrify his AN OATH IN THE FORUM OF MADNESS. 203 limbs-though on either side of the road be a phalanx of monstrous Afreets with drawn swords of flame- though demon cries peal before him, and unimaginable hlouris beckon him back -over thorns, through fur- naces, but into-Life! XVI. Sn (DatOl in tD forrunt of Alabnvoo. HAVING been threatened many times with an utter isolation from human kind, it now became my prac- tice, the moment that I began to feel the hasheesh change come over me, to run for sympathy to some congenial friend, and thus assure myself that the sen- tence had not yet been carried out. I entered his room. I told him of my state; and, before increasing delirium had any power to pervert my thoughts, pledged him to care for me, never to leave me, always to inter- est himself in my welfare to the end. Frequently this step prevented any under-current of horror from breaking up through my delightful tides of vision. Frequently, when I beheld the fearful Afreet invade the sanctity of my rejoicing with drawn cimeter, was that remembered pledge to me as the ring of Abdal- dar, and straightway "There ceased his power; his lifted arm, Suspended by the spell, Hung impotent to strike." The penal renunciation of me by God and man was the grand prevailing shadow which now lowered about page: 204-205[View Page 204-205]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 204-205 204 THE HASHEESH EATER. the horizon of my visions, and thrice happy was I when, in this way, I could keep it from blackening the whole sky. I mean more by this word " blackening" than mere metaphor, for, fully awake and at unclouded noonday, I have seen both heavens and air grow sable suddenly with a supernatural eclipse, and I walked by no beacon save that of fiery eyes which " glared upon me through the darkness." Yet the spell was not always powerful. There oc- curred seasons when I was beyond the power of man, and, as I thought, also an outcast from man's league with God. Man could not, God would not, keep faith with me. In the ecstasy of a serene uplifting I came one after- noon to the room of an acquaintance who had often expressed a wish to witness the hasheesh state in some walk with me while I was under the influence of the drug. By the pledge of sympathy I bound him, and felt assured--doubly assured; for, as he prepared to accompany me out, without premonition there flashed into my mind that grand line of Festus, "'Tis not my will that evil be immortal." Not only did this line suggest to me a great future of good and happiness throughout my hasheesh eternity, but I saw the triumphant reign of right established forever among men. A sublime emancipation from the thraldom of the ages had been declared to earth, and in visible and audible joy Creation leaped and sang. Should I not, then, be happy, since God had pronounced it? I had no fears. Taking the arm of my friend, I passed into the-open air. AN OATH IN THE FORUM OF MADNESS. 205 We had hardly gone fifty feet whllen I heard the dreadful voice distinctly speak to me: "This is an imaginative man; if you are happy, he will powerfully sympathize with you; he will be fascinated, he will become like yourself a hasheesh-eater. To save him from this, it is necessary that you should become an exemplar of agony. Are you content?"Knowing well what should ensue, aware of the tortures that lay prepared in the intimate abyss of the hasheesh hell, could I, as aught less than a God, say "Yes?" lUn- able to bring myself to this height of superhuman he- roism, I only forced my lips to murmur, "The will of God be done." Then the voice answered, "Horribly shalt thou suf- fer, suffer, suffer, more than tongue can tell, more than thou hast dreamed." I clenched my fists, I shut my teeth, I nerved my whole being for the flood of agony which was about to pour upward on me from the depths. I felt within me the prophecy of such pangs as would bring me to the very portals of nothingness. The sentence began to be fulfilled. From the fence beside which we walked came hot blasts, as from a furnace, and, looking at its base, I saw fiery rifts in the ground whence the tornado issued. I withered to a parchment sack, which bound in my heart as the sen- sitive fuel for more torments. And now through that heart glided a delicate saw, of innumerable blades, each sharpened to the ultimate thinness of steel, and each glowing with a red heat. Slowly as a marble-saw the dreadful engine passed back and forth, hissing through the writhing muscle, page: 206-207[View Page 206-207]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 206-207 206 THE HASHEESH EATER. and, as I pressed my hand upon my breast, it was scorched by the intense heat of the laminas. From the walls of houses, black talons darted forth to clutch my skirts; they left a scar like the touch of moxa. And still I burned unquenchably. For a while I kept silence, shutting my mouth with Promethean self-control. Not only did my acquired habit of suffering speechlessly restrain me, but my pride could not endure the thought of acknowledging to him who walked by my side the vengeful infliction which had fallen upon me, in place of the mantle of rapture which my promise had prepared him to see. The voice then said, "Confess! confess!"In des- peration, I set my lips like a vice, and in my soul re- plied, "No! I will not!" "Wilt thou not confess?" wrathfully the voice re- turned. "Thou shalt then know bitterer agonies." Now in my brain, moved by the same hellish ma- chinery which was driving the saws through my heart, a murderous red-hot auger began turning round. Its speed increased, and with it a tremendous roar that shook my being. In every nerve I was agonized with an agony such as no martyr can ever have known. Head and heart both flaming, both riven by steel, the heavens looking wrathfully down, the earth opening up dreadful views of her demon-peopled deeps.- Oh, here was a hell in which how could I live! To the man at my side I whispered my confession. I told him all. I revealed to him the reasons of my punishment. I adjured him by all my own immortal tortures never to tamper with the insane spell. AN OATH IN THE FORUM OF MADNESS. 207 And then, in piteous accents, I besought him to put out my fire. To the first restaurant at hand we hastened. Pass- ing in, I called for that -only material relief which I have ever found for thes(e spiritual sufferings--some- thing strongly acid. In the East the form in use is sherbet; mine was very sour lemonade. A glass of it was made ready, and with a small glass tube I drew it up, not being able to bear the shock of a large swal- low. Relief came but very slightly-very slowly. Before the first glass was exhausted I called most imperatively for another one to be prepared as quickly as possible, lest the flames should spread by waiting. In this way I kept a man busy with the composition of lemonade after lemonade, plunging my tube over the edge of the drained tumbler into the full one with a precipitate haste for which there were mortal reasons, until six had been consumed. And now, almost entirely restored, I assured myselt that I had expiated my full penal term, and passed out rejoicing. Baseless hope! In a moment my heart caught fire again, and now it was a huge cathedral organ wrapped in a garment of flame, and played upon mysteriously by the fingers of the element which was burning it up. Every stop that could sound like the despairing shrieks and groans of a human soul was open; nay, it was human; it lived in this slow and cruel death, and I felt its torture. A devil-choir sang anthems of mockery to its accompaniment, and I grew phrensied as I recognized the voices which ages back in the measureless past had blasphemed over my white- hot cradle and rocked me with the lullaby of hell. page: 208-209[View Page 208-209]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 208-209 208 THE HASHEESH EATER. As we came along the broad terrace which extends be- fore the colleges, I looked into heaven, and lo! upon rosy coursers serene angels were riding like an army, with incredible swiftness, upon some expedition of succor. Behind them trailed on winds that blew from the gates of Paradise resplendent garments of cloud ermine dotted with stars. In an ecstasy which upbore me above my demoniac pangs, I clasped my hands and shouted, , It is I whom they are coming to save!" Just then a black hand parted the top of heaven and shook at me menacingly. Talk not to me of faces instinct with spiritual expression; that hand, slowly brandished and then withdrawn, held more expression than the most facile face. It told me all things of terror and of doom. Until we arrived at the door of my entry I was speechless. Here my companion left me, and once more I gathered strength to burst into a bitter cry, OO God, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me." I used the prayer of the Divine One with a-most rev- erent soul, and hoping that the remembered words of his Son might move the heart of the Father. I added also a promise, "I Save me, and I will never take hasheesh again." Once more the voice spoke and answered me, "Many a time hast thou promised this before. Speak! how hast thou kept thy vow?" This was true. Repeatedly during the seasons of my suffering I had resolved, yes, sworn, that if I ever escaped with life and reason from the then present de- lirium, I would abjure the weed of madness forever. On returning to the natural state I always recollected having made the promise, but regarded it as the act AN OATH IN THE FORUM OF MADNESS. 209 of an unphilosophic fear in irresponsible circumstances, and moved by a suffering which it was perfectly pos- sible to prevent by sufficient attention to general health and spirits as elements materially modifying the effect of the drug. Holding it, therefore, not at all binding, I had broken it as I would if it had been made in some terrific dream. Yet always when the hasheesh suffer- ing brought me into the same court before whose awful bar I had bound myself at my last similar trial, I was charged by the prosecuting voice with my breach of faith, convicted, sentenced by my own soul, and after that the pangs were sharp with the blade of Nemesis. I writhed not under affliction, but under penalty. At this moment I answered the voice, "I have not kept my vow, but for this once be merciful, and I will sin no more." Again my accuser spoke: "Once more shalt thou go free-remember-once!" I accepted this promise as the safe-conduct of De- ity; my pain ceased, and I walked fearlessly. But, oh unbearable! In an instant it seized me again, and I groaned out, "Hath even faith perished in the Divine? O God, hast thou broken faith with me?" I received no reply. For a few moments I paced up and down an empty room into which I had entered, with my hand upon my struggling heart, and feeling its mighty beats blend with the throbs of the devilish enginery. Then I came out into the entry. From the oppo- site door a man was approaching me. I stood still, and he also stopped. I walked forward, and he came to meet me. I turned away, and he followed behind page: 210-211[View Page 210-211]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 210-211 210 THE HASHEESH EATER. me. I faced him-we were foot to foot-it was my- self! Yes, there stood my double, resembling me as face answereth to face in water. Another being for whose crimes I had to answer, whose wrathful portion I should suffer! It was too much to endure. I fell upon my knees, and called out to Heaven, "6 Oh! do I not dream? Tell me, tell me, am I indeed more than one?" I was answered, "Thou art Legion!" I looked away toward the stairs. Crouching upon a step, glaring upon me between the posts of the balus- trade, clutching at me like a tiger-cat, sat-myself again! I rushed toward the door of another room; I would lock myself in from my multitude of being. At that door, tearing his hair, gnashing his teeth, smil- ing with a maniac smile of pain, stood once more my- self! The remainder of my personalities I was spared from seeing. One more would have driven me forever mad. For the last time I cried to Heaven, "How shall I be saved?"I was now finally answered, "Thy good- ness extendeth not to God. To man must thou re- pay thy fault in that thou hast sought to lift thyself above humanity. Go find a man who will believe thy promise, and thou shalt be saved." Hard condition. So many of my friends had known the former vows, and seen how I had kept them, that I bitterly feared I should never be able to ful- fill it. But as in this lay my last hope, I rushed up the staircase to find the man who would accept my secu- rity. The first I met was at the top of the farthest AN OATH IN THE FORUM OF MADNESS. 2" stairs. There he was sitting, as if in anticipation that I should come, on the throne of a solemn tribunal. Yet not a tribunal of severe and unrelenting justice. The courtly appanage of the scene which surrounded him was necessary for my very sense of security, since, in bringing my case to any other than the most au- gust judication, I should have felt that I was trifling with immeasurable destiny. Moreover, the man was my bosom friend. In his truthful and serene eyes nothing but love for me had ever sat, nothing but most brotherly pity was in them now. I loved him for himself-I reverenced him for what he was, the calm, the thoughtful, the wise, the sincere. Heaven had sent him now to hear me, and both in his affection and his character I put my trust. "Robb, my dear, my priceless friend, have pity on me. Accept my pledge. I will take hasheesh no more." I spoke to him as if he knew what he did not know, my previous suffering. So he replied sadly, "6 Ah! you have said that many times before." I be- gan to fear he might refuse me. I looked around, and standing not three paces off stood a cold shadow, and with its lip and finger it mocked me, saying plain- ly without words, "You are mine; he will not believe you." It was Insanity. Once more I turned, and looking at him as such a sight alone could make one look, I simply said, "Be- lieve me/"This was all, but the intensity of that ' one expression contained in it enough meaning to show what a dire spiritual necessity there was that he should grant my request. With emphasis he answered, "I page: 212-213[View Page 212-213]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 212-213 212 THE HASHEESH EATER. do believe you." With a look of baffled hellish mal- ice the shadow fled away. After this I was but once more in pain. As a great chimney, I had grown hundreds of feet into the air; with pitch and fagots of wood, with all things inflam- mable, I was completely filled. Suddenly some one approached and held a lighted torch to the draught be- low. In an instant, from basement to cope, with a tremendous roaring whirl, I took fire. Out of every pore shot spiral jets, my head was crowned with flame and plumed with smoke, and far down in the middle of the blazing mass my heart lay cracking and sing- .ing in agony. "Water!"I shouted; "I am on fire! Help, for the love of heaven!"They tore my clothes from me in the most precipitous haste. From head to foot they deluged me with water. I heard within me the coals hiss and the cinders fall down dead into the grate below, as in an extinguished furnace. And then I grew calm. XVII. Down iitt the tibe. I FOR days after the last-mentioned suffering I ad- hered sacredly to my vow. Fortified by the sympa- thy of my friends, nerved by the images of a fearful memory, staying myself on the Divine, I battled against the fascinations of the drug successfully. At last there came a time when nothing but superhuman endurance could withstand and conquer. DOWN 'WITH T1HE TIDE. 213 As I have frequently said, I felt no depression of body. The flames of my vision had not withered a single corporeal tissue nor snapped a single corporeal cord. All the pains induced by the total abandon- ment of hasheesh were spiritual. From the ethereal heights of Olympus I had been dropped into the midst of an Acherontian fog. My soul breathed laboriously, and grew torpid with every hour. I dreaded an ad- vancing night of oblivion. I sat awaiting extinction. The shapes which moved about me in the outer world seemed like galvanized corpses; the living soul of Nature, with which I had so long communed, had gone out like the flame of a candle, and her remaining ex- terior was as poor and meaningless as those wooden trees with Which children play, and the cliffs and cha- lets carved out of box-wood by some Swiss in his winter leisure. Moreover, actual pain had not ceased with abandon- ment of the indulgence. In some fiery dream of night, or some sudden thrill of daylight, the old pangs were reproduced with a vividness only less than amounting to hallucination. I opened my eyes, I rubbed my forehead, I arose and walked: they were then per- ceived to be merely ideal; but the very necessity of this effort to arouse myself, a necessity which might occur at any time and in any place, became gradually a grievous thraldom. But harder to endure than all these -was a sudden flash of that supernatural beauty which had so often tinged my past experience-a quick disclosure of the rosy hasheesh sky let in upon me by some passing wind which fanned aside the dense vapors of my pres- page: 214-215[View Page 214-215]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 214-215 214 THE TTASTTRRESH EATER. ent life-a peal of the remembered mighty music pour- ing through the gratings of my voiceless prison, and -dying sadly away against its granite walls. Ah! well may the most rigid moral critic forgive me, if, looking upward to my former peak of vision, I spoke to my past self as if it were still sitting there. "So mayst thou watch me where I weep, As unto vaster motions bound, The circuits of thine orbit round A higher height, a deeper deep." Like Eblis, I refused to worship earth when I had seen heaven, and once more dared to assume his pride even with his pangs. I returned to hasheesh, but only when I had become hopeless of carrying out my first intention-its utter and immediate abandonment. I now resolved to aban- don it gradually-to retreat slowly from my enemy, until I had passed the borders of his enchanted ground, whereon he warred with me at vantage. Once over the boundaries, and the nightmare spell unloosed, I might run for my life, and hope to distance him in my own recovered territory. This end I sought to accomplish by diminishing the doses of the drug. The highest I had ever reached was a drachm, and this was seldom necessary except in the most unimpressible states of the brain, since, according to the law of the hasheesh operation which I have stated to hold good in my experience, a much less bolus was ordinarily sufficient to produce full effect at this time than when I commenced the indulgence. I now reduced my daily ration to ten or fifteen grains. The immediate result of even this modified resump- DOWN WITH THE TIDE. 215 tion of the habit was a reinstatement into the glories of the former life. I came out of my clouds; the outer world was reinvested with some claim to interest, and the lethal torpor of my mind was replaced by an airy activity. I flattered myself that there was now some hope of escape by grades of renunciation, and felt as- sured, moreover, that since I now seldom experienced any thing approaching hallucination, I might pass through this gradual course without suffering on the way. I did not reveal to my friends the fact of my once more eating hasheesh. To no one who had not par- ticipated in my sufferings could I have shown ade- quate reasons for doing so. I should have pleaded an excuse which none but myself could feel; I should have been answered by the earnest entreaty to cleave to my first purpose-perhaps by the expressed or tacit distrust of my intention to abjure the indulgence at all. But I felt no danger of betraying myself, since from the meditations and the ecstasies in which I now sat I could arouse myself at need, talk and act naturally, or perform any of the duties to which I might be called. I do not think there was a person beside myself who once suspected, at this time, my return to the indul- gence. I was not even questioned upon the subject. Once, and once only, was I in peril of making known my secret. With two or three of my friends I had made an agreement that on a certain afternoon, as was our wont, we should speak in turn, and subject to each other's criticism, for the sake of improvement in ora- tory. When the time arrived, I found myself not only adequate to any amount of speech-making, but liable page: 216-217[View Page 216-217]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 216-217 216 THE HASHEESH EATER. to adorn my sentences with an Oriental luxuriance of imagery which would infallibly disclose the fact of my having taken hasheesh two hours before, for the dose, although not extending in size beyond the boundary I had set myself, had still operated with an unusual power. When my friends called for me I knew not what to do. There was no sickness to plead-the animation with which every word was uttered would have belied that; other engagement I had not, for the appoint- ment had been made unconditionally and some time before. If I went with them, it amounted almost to a physical certainty that I would break forth into some rapture which would let me out. Yet there was no time to be lost. I resolved to go, and giving into the hand of Will the curb of Passion, started with them down the street. The struggle which"I made to keep silent, or, at furthest, to talk in a practical way, was among the hardest of my lifetime. There is a game of forfeits, to most of my readers no doubt well enough known, which consists in walking three times diagonally across a room, bearing a lighted candle, and repeating the most absurd formula to a person who meets you similarly furnished, without moving a muscle of the face. There is also a legend, woven into the Arabian Nights, of a young man who, in fulfillment of some enterprise, de- scended through a demon-haunted cavern where, though assailed on every side by sights of astound- ment most provocative of speech, he was compelled to seal his lips under pain of a terrible retribution. The nature only, and not the degree of self-control DOWN WITH THE TIDE. 217 demanded by my circumstances, is foreshadowed by these illustrations. I was assailed with every possible temptation to laughter and to open amazement. At the very commencement of my walk, for the first time in several months I was in China. All the roofs turn- ed up at the corners, and amorphous dragons flaunted in red, green, and gold from their peaks. The air smelt of orange-blossoms, and boys hawked fruit about the streets in the dialect of Whampoa. But the Chinese hallucination did not long continue. I presently remembered the old familiar town in which I was walking, yet what a singular change in manners had passed over it! Every house had been to dan- cing-school, and returned educated into the most ex- cruciating politeness. They were all paying me their salutations as I passed with a knowledge of good- breeding absolutely overwhelming., A spruce brick tenement, evidently a new-comer, and, on account of the insecurity of his social position, particularly anxious to ingratiate himself with the ha- bitues, made me a profound bow, even unto his door- step. A respectable old house, that had been there since the last war, looked stiffly over the walls which flanked his chimneys, and slightly inclined himself with a rigid courtliness-a very Roger de Coverley in stone and mortar. A fast-looking house of a particularly vivid color, conscious of containing all the modern improvements, and profusely ornamented in gingerbread-carved work- manship, took upon himself to be easy in his address as a soi-disant fashionable, and nodded to me familiar- K page: 218-219[View Page 218-219]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 218-219 218 THE HASHEESH EATER. ly, at the same time saying at his front door, "How are you, old fellow?" "Curse his impudence!" said I to myself, and walked on. The next was a maidenly little cottage, who modest- ly dropped her second-story window-sashes, and blush- ed up to her eaves-trough as we came by, at the- same time courtesying clear into her back yard. A church smiled condescendingly on me from its belfry, bowed forward, and immediately took it back by making another bow backward, with a look which said, c"I hope you take care of yourself, young man." A shop bowed blandly and inquiringly, with a what- d'ye-buy air, and even a poor little lawyer's office abased its cornice cautiously, as if it feared to commit itself. In all these salutations there was something which gave me a half-consciousness that after all it was only an emblematical show, yet it required all my self-constraint to refrain from returning the compliment in a succession of bows. I mentally represented to myself my circumstances as nearly as I could make them natural. I painted the necessity of keeping still with all the picturesqueness of which I was capable, and so succeeded in controlling all outhreaks of my feeling. At length we arrived at the place of our appoint- ment (a church to which we had the key), and one aft- er another my friends spoke, and I listened quietly un- til my own turn came. With a terrible effort I held myself in, and walked to the platform still guiltless of my own betrayal. If I could resist a few moments more, I was safe. Hardly had I uttered my first sentence before I DOWN WITH THE TIDE. 219 awakened to the consciousness that I was Rienzi pro- claiming freedom to enthralled Rome. I portrayed the abased glories of the older time; I raised both the Catos from their graves to groan over the present slav- ery; I hurled fiery invective against the usurpations of Colonna, and pointed the way through tyrant blood up to an immortal future. The broad space below the tribune grew populous with a multitude of intense faces, and within myself there was a sense of towering into sublimity, as I knew that it was my eloquence which swayed that great host with a storm of indigna- tion, like the sirocco passing over reeds. Strange to say, I did not even here reveal my state. That vigilant portion of my duality which had control- led me hitherto, guarded me from any unwarrantable excess even in the impassioned character of Rienzi. For a number of weeks I continued this moderate employment of hasheesh, sometimes diminishing the doses, then returning to the boundary, but never be- yond it. As the diminutions went on by a tolerably regular but slow ratio, I flattered myself that I was advancing toward a final and perfect emancipation. But the progress was not that painless one with which I had flattered myself. There was much less to en- dure than in the worst part of the former period of in- dulgence, yet it could have been many times dimin- ished in intensity without descending to the plane of ordinary physical or spiritual suffering. One of the most bitter experiences of hasheesh oc- curred to me about this time, and since it is the only one which in my memory stands in peculiar distinct- ness of outline from the vague background of alternat- page: 220-221[View Page 220-221]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 220-221 220 THE HASHEESH EATER. ing lights and shadows, I give it as a powerful and recompensing contrast to the formerly-detailed vision in which I triumphed as the millennial king. It was now with Christ the crucified that I identified myself. In dim horror I perceived the nails piercing my hands and my feet, but it was not this which seemed the burden of my suffering. Upon my head, in a tre- mendous and ever-thickening cloud, came slowly down the guilt of all the ages past and all the world to come. By a dreadful quickening, I beheld every atrocity and nameless crime coming up from all time on lines that centred in myself. The thorns clung to my brow, and bloody drops stood like dew upon my hair, yet these were not the instruments of my agony. I was withered like a leaf in the breath of a righteous venge- ance. The curtain of a lurid blackness hung be- tween me and heaven; mercy was dumb, and I bore the anger of Omnipotence alone. Out of a fiery dis- tance demon chants of triumphant blasphemy came surging on my ear, and whispers of ferocious wicked- ness ruffled the leaden air about my cross. How long I bore this vicarious agony I have never known; from the peculiarity of the time in such states, it would be impossible to know. But, in general, while feeling the full effect of the dose, I sat in solitude, with closed eyes, enjoying the tranquil procession of images, especially those of scen- ery, which I could dispel at will, since they did not reach the reality of hallucination. Or, if my quiet was broken by the entrance of others, by an effort conversa- tion was possible with them, so long as care was taken to prevent the introduction of any powerfully-agitating MY STONY GUARDIAN. 221 subject. This care I found to be extremely necessary, as the peculiar sensitiveness to impression which is in- duced by hasheesh made sympathy so deep as to be painful. In one instance this fact discovered itself with sufficient clearness to warn me ever afterward. To comply with the request of a friend, I read him some verses of a piece upon doubts of human immor- tality. Upon arriving at a passage where one of our ; primeval fathers is introduced as speaking in agony-of his dread of advancing death, I felt that agony becom- ing, by sympathy, so strongly my own emotion, that, lest I should completely identify myself with the suf- ferer, I was forced to lay down the manuscript, and plead some excuse for not continuing the reading. XVIII. Ad %ton (aartian. IT was during this period that I spent a short time at Niagara. In the hurry of setting out upon my journey thither, I left behind that traveling companion, which was more indispensable than any article or all possible articles of luggage, my box of boluses. Too late to repair the error, too late for my own serenity, I found out that my staff of life was out of reach at a place on Lake Ontario where the most concentrated cannabine preparation is the jib-stay of a fore-and- after. At the Falls, however, and once grown enthusiastic, I fared much better than I had expected. The only page: 222-223[View Page 222-223]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 222-223 222 THE HASHEESH EATER. trace of suffering at first perceptible was left in the shape of a somewhat nervously-written name on the entry-book of the hotel. The excitement of a sublim- ity which, to say the least, is extra-natural, for a while sustained me above pain for the loss of the super- natural. Moreover, a material support came in to augment the spiritual. As lemon-juice had been sometimes an effectual cure for the sufferings of excess, I now dis- covered that a use of tobacco, to an extent which at other times would be immoderate, was a preventive of the horrors of abandonment. Making use of this knowledge, I smoked incessantly when out of the im- mediate presence of the waters-never could I bring myself, however needy, to puff in the face of Niagara- a blasphemy of deed only second to one of word which came to my notice during this visit. For an hour of one glorious morning I had been looking down from the balcony of the Goat Island tower upon the emerald crown in all the luxury of solitude. A heavy footstep from within sounded upon the staircase, breaking up my dream, and the next mo- ment flashed upon the platform a man who had come to '" do" the falls, with the odors of the metropolis still cleaving to his garments, and rotund in all the pleni- tude of corporeal well-being-an Omphalopsychite by necessity, since he- found it impossible to look down at all without resting his eyes upon that portion of his I individuality tangent to the lower border of the, waist- coat. The utmost that I could ask from this adipose formation was to keep silence: he did not even do that. Turning his face toward the wind to get its full MY STONY GUARDIAN. 223 tonic effect, for a while he drank it in copious draughts, and then enthusiastically broke forth to me, "What a splendid thing to give a man appetite for his dinner!" Sensitive as my state made me at that moment, I so far controlled myself as to answer nothing. It was well that I had not been hasheesh-glorified when he made his assault, or, notwithstanding he no way lack- ed in the bodily, he might not have been heard of again till he was fished out of Ontario. It has always been surprising to me that the Falls are so much the theme of lovers of the sublime to the almost entire exclusion of the Rapids. The Rapids have a majesty of their own, which, to my own mind, has never yielded at all to the very different one of the Falls. Trying to resolve this difference by an analysis, it seems to be this: in the precipitous brink over which takes place the final leap of the waters, we find a reason for the grand power of the descent. Higher up the river the slope of the flood is compara- tively imperceptible; the headlong crash of the waves becomes to us a result of some inner will rather than of soulless gravity; and by the putting forth of power from this mysterious will we are overwhelmed, seem- ing to find our cause in spirit and not in matter. Quite as holy a place does the upper point of the Island ap- pear to me, looking forth, as it does, upon the oceanic wrath of that resistless billowy soul, from the silent eddy where it cleaves itself for the last maddening throes, far up to the line of its trembling in the first consciousness of ingathered strength against the far- ther sky, quite as holy as any station beside the shift- ing pavement of flecked and molten porphyry below page: 224-225[View Page 224-225]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 224-225 224 THE HASHEESH EATER. the Fall, where the spray is forever floating back upon the headlong wall like marble-dust wind-driven from the floor of the Great Sculptor.' There is still another element in the sublimity of the place too little noticed, or noticed only as a curi- osity. This is the Profile Rock, in the edge of the American Fall nearest to Goat Island. So little is it known, that many persons go there unaware of its ex- istence, and come away without having had it pointed out to them. Indeed, by a mere superficial looker at, and not a student of Niagara, it would be, in all prob- ability, passed over. Were I not near-sighted, I should be ashamed to confess that I did not see it myself un- til my eyes were called to it by a -most sincere and ar- dent lover of all that is noble in nature, a very near and dear friend, whom I was so fortunate as to have beside me in most of my walks. i Sustaining the weight of those vast waters upon his half-bowed head, the stony figure stands, visible under the veil, or visible at least above the waist, yet no more is needed than the face, with its look of calm en- durance, to suggest for him a whole history of Fate. At that time of which I have been speaking, I myself felt enough need of fortitude to give me an intense yearning toward this emblem of heroic patience, and as I looked upon him I more and more felt myself lov- ing him even humanly. In many a vision afterward did he appear to me as a silent consoler, when Niagara itself had become an affliction to my memory; and as side by side we stood, he under his flood, I under mine, I gathered strength from his moveless eye to bear unto the end all which should finally be given to the triumph of resignation. MY STONY GUARDIAN. 225 Alone and unable to sleep, though the late night heard nothing to break its stillness but the ceaseless rush of the river, I felt myself thus " flowing in words" to that mute face of forbearance: Niagara! I am not one who seeks To lift his voice above thine awful hymn; Mine be it to keep silence where God speaks, Nor with my praise to make his glory dim. Yet unto thee, shape of the stony brow, Standing forever in thine unshared place, The human soul within me yearneth now, And I would lay my head beside thy face King, from dim ages of God set apart To bear the weight of a tremendous crown, And feel the robes that wrap thy lonely heart Deaden its pulses as their folds flow down; What sublime years are written on the scroll Of thine imperial, dread inheritance, Man shall not read until its lines unroll In the great hand that set thy stony trance. Perchance thy moveless adamantine look For its long watch o'er the abyss was bent Ere the thick gates of primal darkness shook, And light broke in upon thy battlement. And when that sudden glory lit thy crown, And God lent thee a rainbow from His throne, E'en through thy stony breast flashed there not down Somewhat of His joy also made thine own? i Who knoweth but He gave thee to rejoice Till man's ,hymn sounded through the time to be, And when our choral coming hushed thy voice, Still left thee something of humanity? Still seemest thou a priest-still the veil streams Before thy reverent eyes, and hides His light, And thine is as the face of one who dreams Of a great glory now no more his right. K 2 page: 226-227[View Page 226-227]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 226-227 226 THE HASHEESH EATER. Soon shall I pass away; the mighty psalm Of thine o'ershadowing waters shall be heard In memory only; but thy speechless calm I-ath lessons for me more than many a word, Teaching the glory of the soul that bears Great floods, a veil between him and the sun, And, standing in the might of Patience, dares To bide His finishing who hath begun. I have said that Niagara itself became an affliction to me. More especially was this the case after my total abandonment of hasheesh; but I must not an- ticipate. Every one of sensitive mind has noticed the permanency of impressions left by grand scenery, of none more so than Niagara. Indeed, I have acquaint- ances who for months, in all their day-dreams as well as those of sleep, were haunted by the Falls in a manner almost like optical illusion. Their visions were always delightful. Fancy now a mind, naturally very impressible by scenery, rendered numberless times more sensitive by a process which left it a per- fect photographic plate, and then exposed to such lights as those reflected from that supernatural river: you will then have the condition in which I left Niag- ara-a condition continuing for many a month after- ward. So slowly did the traces of that imagery fade on my mind, that I have never, even now, wholly lost them. At times the terrors of the brink and the cat- aract still echo in dreams with a hasheesh mystery, and appall me as the presence of their real danger could hardly appall. Upon returning to a place where hasheesh was with- in reach, I fled to it for relief as into an ark. By con- siderable self-government, I conquered the tendency to RESURGAD. 227 excess produced by long deprivation of the stimulus, and indulged in it within my stated boundaries only. I now began to find that gradual was almost as dif- ficult as instant abandonment. The utmost that could be done was to keep the bolus from exceeding fifteen grains. From ten and five, which at times I tried, there was an insensible sliding back to the larger allow- ance, and even there my mind rebelled at the restric- tion. While there was no suffering from absolute in- tellectual lassitude, there still, ever and anon, arose a longing more or less intense for the former music and ecstatic fantasia, which could not be satisfied by a mere panoramic display of internal images, however beauti- ful, dissolved in a moment by opening my eyes. Yet I struggled strenuously against the fascination to a more generous ration, and hoped against hope for some indefinite time at which the dangerouA spell might be entirely unbound. XTrX. U{esurgtam ONE morning, having taken my ordinary dose with- out yet feeling its effect, I strolled into a bookseller's to get the latest number of Putnam's. Turning over its leaves as it lay upon the counter, the first article which detained my eyes was headed ("The Hasheesh Eater." None but a man in my circumstances can realize the intense interest which possessed me at the sight of these words. page: 228-229[View Page 228-229]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 228-229 228 THE HASHEESH EATER. F]or a while I lingered upon them with an inexpli- cable dread of looking farther into the paper. I shut the book, and toyed with my curiosity by examining its cover, as one who receives a letter directed in some unfamiliar hand carefully scrutinizes the postmark and the envelope, and dallies with the seal before he finally breaks it open. I had supposed myself the only ha- sheesh-eater upon this side of the ocean; this idea of utter isolation had been one element in many of my horrors. That some one among my acquaintance had been detailing a fragment of my own experience, as viewed by him from without, was my first hypothesis. Although, in itself considered, there was nothing very improbable in the acquirement of the habit by another person, the coincidence of my having fallen upon this article, with the hasheesh force still latent within me, seemed so remarkable that I could not believe it. Then I said to myself, I will not read this paper now. I will defer it until another time; for, if its recital be one of horrors, it may darken the complexion of my awaited vision. In pursuance of this purpose, I pass- ed out of the shop and went down the street. I was not satisfied. Whichever way I turned I was followed by a shadow of fascination. By an irresisti- ble attraction I was drawn back to the counter. If the worst were there, I must know it. I returned, and there, as before, lay the unsealed mystery. With a trembling hand I turned to the place; again I scruti- nized the caption, to see if some unconscious illusion of a- hasheesh state, which had ensued before I was aware, had not made objective the words which so many a day had stamped upon my brain. No; plain- RESURGOAM. 229 ly as eyes could read them, they stood upon the page. I would read the article from beginning to end. This resolution, once formed, was shaken, but not broken, by an unavoidable glance ahead, which told me that the recital was one of agonies. It was only a moment before I found that I was not this hasheesh-eater. Yet as, with the devouring gaze of a miser, I read, dwelt upon, and re-read every line, I found such startling analogies to my own past expe- rience that cold drops started upon my forehead, and I exclaimed, "This man has been in my own soul." We both had been abandoned of Heaven; had climbed up into the prerogatives of Deity, thence to be cast down; had drawn the accursed knife at the whispers of a frightful temptation; had been the disowned, the abominated, the execrated of men. Should I carry the parallel further? He hAadforever abandoned hasAeesAh. How terribly this question shook my soul! In an in- stant, like some grand pageant, the glories of the en- chantment streamed before my eyes. Out of the past came Memory, swinging delicious censers; upon the fragrant vapor, as it floated upward, was traced a sub- limer heaven, a more beauteous earth, from the days gone by, than ever Sorcery painted upon the Fate- compelling smoke for a rapt gazer into Futurity. There the pangs of the old time had no place; all was serenity, ecstasy, revelation. Should I forego all this forever? So help me God, I would! The author of that article I did not know. Of his name I had not even the faintest suspicion. Yet for him I felt a sympathy; yes, though it be unworldly, page: 230-231[View Page 230-231]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 230-231 230 THE HASHEESH EATER.. an affection such as would move me to the highest office of gratitude. Into my hitherto unbroken lone- liness he had penetrated; unconscious of each other's presence, we had walked the valley of awful shadows side by side. As no other man upon the earth could feel for me, he could feel. As none other could coun- sel me, he might counsel. For the first time in all the tremendous stretch of my spell-bound eternity heard I the voice of sympathy or saw I an exemplar of escape. Though I might never look upon his face on earth, disenthralled from the bodily I should know him immediately, for I was bound to him by ties spun from the distaff of a supernatural hand. I returned homeward, bearing in my mind almost the exact words of that vivid and most truthful recital. So powerfully did its emotion possess me as to sup- plant entirely that of the drug, whch did not once render itself perceptible. There is a rich lesson of deep springs of human ac- tion taught by the old history, wherein he who in after years was to make the name of Carthage glorious among the peoples uplifted his hand of adjuration in the presence of his father. From him out of whose original fount he came, and in whose depths his earli- est waves of being found their noblest, their truest echo of response, most naturally did lie draw that full tide of strength which through all barriers was to bear him on until he whelmed in the deluge of inherited vengeance the territory of his foe. No Hannibal was I, but the struggling sufferer un- der long soldered thrall of sorcery, groaning for a de- liverance which I just dared to tempt; no Hamilcar RESURGAM. 231 wert thou, my father, for the hands with which thou supportedst mine in their final vow of liberty were wet, not with the blood of war, but the tears of a most precious compassion; and as before thee, on that last night of my bondage, I took the oath which opened up my prison-doors, from thy presence I won a sustain- ing force of will which, through many a day of fray and weariness, was to press me on (in all reverence to the majestic memorials of past time) against a might- ier, a subtler enemy than Rome! After thus sealing my deliverance, my next step ,was to discover the author of the article in Putnam's, which had determined me to it at first. This, through the kind courtesy of some of its presiding minds, I was in a few days enabled to do. To the author I then wrote, trusting to no other introduction than that of our common ground and the sympathies of human nature. I asked counsel upon the best means of soft- ening the pathway of my escape, for I had seen enough in my former effort to assure me that it would be a very hard one. Moreover, the simple possession of a letter from one who had been so instrumental in orig- inally effecting my release would be a powerful aid toward rendering it permanent. A very short time elapsed before I received an an- swer to my inquiries. My anxiety could not have made it more full than it was of information and assist- ance; my gratitude could not have exaggerated the value of its sympathy and encouragement. But for the sacredness which to a mind of any refinement in- vests a correspondence of such nature, I could not re- frain from here giving it publicity. It strengthened page: 232-233[View Page 232-233]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 232-233 232 THE HASHEESH EATER. my resolution, it opened for me a cheering sky of hope, it pointed me to expedients for insuring success, it mitigated the sufferings of the present. It is, and ever will be, treasured among the most precious ar- chives of my life. Thus supported humanly, and feeling the ever-near incitement and sustenance of a Presence still higher, I began to feel my way out of the barathrum of my long sojourn, and its jaws closed behind me, never since then, never hereafter till there be no more help in heaven, to open for my ingress. Out of its tremen- dous Elysium, its quenchless Tartarus, its speechless revelations, I came slowly into a land of subdued skies amid heavier atmosphere. The jet of flame and fount- ain grew dimmer behind me in the mists of distance; broader, in the land from which I had long wandered, ' before me grew the -shadows of the present life. Yet among all the lights which, unobscured by vapor, from afar led me on my way, was one which gleamed with a promise that in the days hereafter, the soul, purified from the earthy, should once more, painlessly, look on the now abandoned glories of its past apocalypse. XX. tatving the 1rloolmaster, the e thlajgorvan sets up for himself. DURING the progress of the events which have hith- erto occupied my narrative, I had become a graduate of my college. Willing for a while to defer the prose- cution of more immediately professional studies, I cast "EAVING THE SCHOOLMASTER, ETC. 233 about for some employment which for a year might en- gage a portion of my efforts, and leave, at the same time, a reasonable amount of leisure for private read- ing. As is the case with so many of our newly-fledged American alumni, my choice fell upon the assumption of the pedagogic purple. There were doubtless, some- where in the States, candidates for induction into the mysteries of the Greek and Latin tongues-some youths of promise who burned for an acquaintance with the arts of address, and who would not scorn to receive, even from the hands of an own countryman, the crumbs of literature which fall from the Gallic table. If my horoscope had not failed me, I could find them out. Accordingly, at the bar of my college, whither peti- tions for instruction very frequently came in from the benighted world, I lodged an application for the most eligible situation of the kind above stated which should present itself. Before long a letter reached me, offer- ing a post of teachership, situated somewhere between the Hudson and Fort Laramie, in a village glorified with some name of Epic valor, mighty in the appanage of ten dwelling-houses and a post-office, and, like all places sanctified by the presence of the educational genius, "refined, salubrious, and highly religious." As to the first item in this latter statement, there was ev- ery reason to be satisfied of its truth, since the writer of the letter was evidently a gentleman, and, to judge from the size of the place, he was a very large integral portion of its population. Upon the second point it was rather more difficult to be assured, since any num- ber of deaths possible to the dimensions of the village page: 234-235[View Page 234-235]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 234-235 234 THE HASHEESH EATER. might have occurred there without their wave of agita- tion reaching the shore that acknowledges the jurisdic- tion of bills of mortality. Finally came the question of "(highly-religiousness." On this head, nothing could have given my doubts a more decisive quietus than the fact that the community wanted a teacher, since, just then looking through the Lorraine-glass of enthusiasm for a chosen occupation, I saw a peculiar force and beauty in the words, "Science, the hand- maid of Religion." Yet one thing there was which stood as a slight obstacle in the way of accepting the position. I had determined, for the year to come, to be independent for a support of all aid save my own ex- ertions. Entire self-sustenance was a very dear proj- ect with me. Could I hope for it there? My correspondent informed me that no very great pecuniary inducements could be offered, but seductive- ly added that, to a young man of excellent principles, who desired to establish himself as a moral centre in the community, no opening could be more promising. As he did not go on to advise me whether, in his por- tion of the country, " moral centres" were gratuitous- ly fed, lodged, and clothed, besides being generously presented, as a slight token of popular esteem, with their laundry-bills, fuel, lights, and stationery, I con- cluded not to close with his offer, thus forever losing, for the basest of earthly considerations, the priceless opportunity of radiating circular waves of an unctuous excellence through it is impossible to tell how large an area of uninhabited timber-region. Whether any sufficiently self-sacrificing incumbent has been found to fill the rejected vacancy, from want of data is uncertain; "EAVING THE SCHOOLMASTER, ETC. 235 if not, the place with the Homeric name wanders in heathen ignorance to this day. Another application which came to me, seeming in all points satisfactory, was accepted. -In the town of W--, in the State of New York, a cry had gone up for a teacher, who might be absorbent as well as ra- diant, and one, moreover, who might indulge the hope of moderate leisure for his own self-disciplinary pur- poses. There, as I began arranging matters for my depart- ure from home, I flattered myself that a stated occupa- tion should absorb me from regrets over the loss of my old indulgence; quiet, books, and a regular life should create in me a new stimulus and energy. The department of pedagoguery over which I was to be in- stalled was congenial to long-consolidated tastes-the ancient and the English classics. Thus I should grad- ually emerge out of shadows into a being with new motives, and by moderate cares blunt the pains of progress. How far I harvested my hope the sequel wrill show. Having reached the scene of my labors, I found my- self associated with a teacher who, like myself, was a new-comer, yet not, like myself, a neophyte in the pro- fession, for he had grown venerable in the priesthood of M1inerva, having, in all probability, during his pre- vious life, offered up numerous hecatombs of youthful victims, both male and female, upon her altar. At the same time that I congratulated myself upon possess- ing the aid of his experience, I discovered that I must look elsewhere for congenial sympathies, since he was one of those persons whose metal is not annealed. In page: 236-237[View Page 236-237]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 236-237 236 THE HASHEESH EATER. youth he had indulged a happy disposition, but now saw the folly of it. Through some fault of my own early training, I was unable to discover the necessary connection between sanctity and acridity, a heart like Enoch and a face like Sphinx. Yet upon external sympathy I did not expect to be very dependent. The institution in which I was res- ident offered that invaluable advantage, a large and vell-selected library, where I hoped to find all those choice attachments which from without my position ' might deny me. In a good library how swiftly time melts away! Not merely in the sense of its rapid passage through our absorption in other interests, but as an element in any consideration, it becomes entirely neglected. In practical business the present is our only actuality; the past has been cast down like a ladder whose rounds have helped us up to a height whence we never again expect to descend. Among books, all temporal suc- cessions are obliterated; Plato and Coleridge walk arm-in-arm; genial Chaucer and loving Elia shake hands; with them, with all, we stand enraptured upon the same plane of time, in one age, the ceaseless age of the communion of souls. Well did Heinsius say, as he locked himself into the library of Leyden, Nune sum in gremio sceculorum /--, Now I am in the lap of eternity!" But gradually the increasing pressure of duties con- nected with my new vocation more and more deprived me of leisure for enjoying any other literature than that of text-books. Long after the last noisy foot had pattered down the front steps of the school building "EAVING THE SCHOOLMASTER, ETC. 237 did my table groan with incorrigible exercises which demanded correction, one leaf of which, laid upon the grave of any worthy-- Moliere, for instance- who spoke the language which it assassinated, would have brought up as deep a groan from the depths below as when the mandrake is uprooted. I had promised myself regular habits; but the wan- derer who was so unfortunate or so eccentric as to be shelterless at that hour, might have seen, at two or three o'clock of almost every morning, the light of my lamp shining through one of the tall windows that looked upon the street. Not that I rose early, but that I retired early-in the morning. It was not the mere sense of duty and responsibility which impelled me to such labors for the school, although, indeed, these had their just, perhaps their exorbitant weight with me. An element more selfish entered into the considera- tion-the dread of being haunted on the morrow by unappeased ghosts of business. The accumulative nature of work distressed me; the slightest thing left unfinished at the close of one day added itself to the labors of the next, land it had grown mightily during the night. There are some people so constituted that they can not slur matters if they would. No one else may notice the mint, anise, and cummin which they have forborne to tithe, but they can no more them- selves overlook the deficiency than if they had neglect- ed the weightier matters of the law. It will be easily understood that late hours, hard work, and an almost total cessation from bodily exer- cise were not the best means that could have been taken to restore tone and elasticity to a mind strug- page: 238-239[View Page 238-239]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 238-239 238 THE HASHEESH EATER. gling with the horrors of an abandoned stimulus. Without cares of some kind, I had doubtless been at this time a most unhappy being; yet, under such pressure as I then felt, an overtasked mind had no op- portunity to recover itself, but rather grew sensitive daily to the loss of its former support. Perhaps, how- ever, even such a state of things was better than an absence of all absorbing employment; for, although I dreaded a return to hasheesh as an upright man dreads the violation of his most sacred oath, I had not reach- ed a point at which I could utterly execrate the drug. The only feat of righteous indignation which was then possible was to think ill of it, as the lover of a faith- less mistress whom he must abandon, or as the patriot of his fatherland, swayed by vile rulers, when, "fallen upon evil times," he flies it in voluntary exile. Un- employed with daily and perplexing duties, I might have heard the former siren-voice floating into my care- less quiet, and, step by step, have been almost uncon- sciously led back into the old snares. As it was, the fascinations of the past were hard enough to resist. If ever for a moment I granted my- self leisure to sit still and think--if, especially, I re- signed myself with closed eyes to the train of medita- tions set in motion by good music, I was infallibly borne back into the hasheesh world, and placed face to face with its now irretrievable glories. In quick flash- es the old empurpled heights for a moment broke upon me, or amid cloud battalions in their rainbow armor I floated through a tremendous heaven. Or the far windings of some wondrous river allured me into the luxuriant shadows which trembled over its brink, and "EAVING THE SCHOOLMASTER, ETC. 239 I sighed for an instant with an unutterable yearn- ing as I thought that its waves were never more to upbear my shallop of gramarye. The embodied temptation of exquisite houris swam in ethereal dance down a garden of Gul: never more were their rosy arms to embrace me. Grand temples reared their spotless pediments into a sapphire sky; a lake that answered back in its own hue the look of heaven, kissed, dimpling with a fairy laughter, the steps that ascended to their portals-portals eternally barred on me. And sometimes, more solemnly alluring than all these, for an instant I caught a view of that light wherein I had of old read the sublime secrets of things by unbearable apocalypse. At such a season, well- oh! unspeakably-well was it that hundreds of miles stretched between me and the nearest box of hasheesh, for, had I possessed the means, I should have rushed to the indulgence, though it were necessary to swim a whirlpool on the way. I made acquaintances at W who could play cunningly upon an instrument, that universal one, the piano, especially. Knowing that there was no possi- bility of yielding to the allurement, I, often as possi- ble, had them play for me, while I sat almost uncon- scious of any thing outward, abandoning myself to music-inspired visions. Yet even then, perfectly as- sured that I had no power to gratify the hasheesh ap- petite, I have started up from my seat to dispel by walking and the sight of familiar objects a rapture which was enchanting me irresistibly. Constantly, notwithstanding all my occupation of mind, the cloud of dejection deepened in hue and in page: 240-241[View Page 240-241]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 240-241 240 THE HASH!RESH EATER. density. My troubles were not merely negative, sim- ply regrets for something which was not, but a loathing, a fear, a hate of something which was. The very exist- ence of the outer world seemed a base mockery, a cruel sham of some remembered possibility which had been glorious with a speechless beauty. I hated flowers, for I had seen the enameled meads of Paradise; I cursed the rocks because they were mute stone, the sky be- cause it rang with no music; and earth and sky seemed to throw back my curse. An abhorrence of speech or action, except toward the fewest possible persons, possessed me. For the sake of not appearing singular or ascetic, and so crip- pling my power for whatever little good I might do, I at first mingled with society, forcing myself to laugh and to talk conventionalities. At last associa- tions grew absolutely unbearable; the greatest effort was necessary to speak with any but one or two to whom I had fully confided my past experience. A footstep on the stairs was sufficient to make me trem- ble with anticipations of a conversation; every morn- ing brought a resurrection into renewed horrors, as I thought of the advancing necessity of once more com- ing in contact with men and things. Any man who has felt the pangs of some bitter bereavement can un- derstand this experience when he remembers how many a time he awoke after his affliction, and for a moment remained forgetful that it had fallen upon him. Then suddenly gathering a fearful strength, the knowl- edge of the reality flashed upon him, and he groaned aloud as if some fresh arrow had entered his soul. At times the awakening was so terrible an experience to ' /,'1 "EAVING THE SCHOOLMASTER, ETC. 241 me that from any other than my own hand I would have courted death as a mercy. The death which was but another birth and possible, the death which was utter extinction and an impossibility, seemed ei- ther of them preferable to that illusion into which the light aroused me, which men called life, but which was, after all, but death in its most horrible form, death vivified, stalking about in hollow pageantry, breath- ing meaningless utterances, interchanging salutations, mocking spirit by gestures without spirit, and unable to return to its legitimate corruption. Aware as I was that this terrible state was the re- venge of the rejected sorceress, and feeling it grow bitterer every day to bear, I began to struggle against two temptations, yielding to either of which seemed to offer some change of suffering, if not a permanent re- lief. One of these was self-destruction, the other re- turn to hasheesh, and I can hardly pronounce which of the two was the most abhorrent idea. Either of them ultimately led in the same direction. My argu- ment with myself was, that there must be some turn- ing point, some lowest depth to the abyss which I was descending; the hope I could not see, but faith clung to it desperately, and ever kept repeating, "Behold! we know not any thing; I can but trust that good shall fall At last-far off-," But, though day was terrible, night was often as much so. While indulging in hasheesh, none of its images had ever been reproduced in dreams, provided that I retired to sleep thoroughly restored from the last dose. Indeed, it is a singular fact, that although, previously s page: 242-243[View Page 242-243]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 242-243 242 THE HASHEESH EATER. to acquiring the habit, I never slept without some dream more or less vivid, during the whole progress of the hasheesh life my rest was absolutely dreamless. The visions of the drug entirely supplanted those of nature. Now the position of things was transposed. Day- was a rayless blank, night became frightful with fire. The first phenomenon which I began to notice, as I en- tered this condition, was the peculiar susceptibility of the brain to its last impression before my chamber was darkened. Did I look at the flame of the lamp before putting it out?-for an hour afterward I lay tossing and sleepless, because one fiery spot burned unquench- ably upon the surrounding blackness. Did I shut the pages of a book immediately before lying down?-the last sentence I had read was as distinctly printed on the dark as it could have been upon a scroll, and there for half the night I read it till it grew maddening. Well was it for me if the words were not of gloomy import, for I could endure with measurable patience even the wearily monotonous assurance of good cheer; but one night I was forced to rise and relight my lamp to blot out the sight of such an awful sentence as this: "Depart, ye cursed!" At length I used the habitual precaution, borrowed from my former usage in the hasheesh state, of keep- ing one wick of my lamp burning while I slept. At first this was very painful to my eyes; but so much better was any pain than the horror of that perma- nency of the final impression, that I bore it willingly. Gradually my rest began to be broken by tremen- "EAVING THE SCHOOLMASTER, ETC. 243 dous dreams, that mirrored the sights and echoed the voices of the former hasheesh life. In them I faith- fully lived over my past experience, with many addi- tions, and but this one difference. Out-of the reality of the hasheesh state there had been no awakening possible; from this hallucination of dreams I awoke when the terrors became too superhuman. What has been said in an earlier part of this narra- tive upon the indelible characteristic of all the impres- sions of our life seemed to find illustration here. Doomed to re-read the old, yet, though sometimes for- gotten, never obliterated inscriptions, I wandered up and down the halls of sleep with my gaze fixed upon the mind's judicial tablets. Not always were the memories in themselves painful; where of old I had felt ecstasy, in the same place I rejoiced wildly now; yet the close of that season of rejoicing was often tinged with mosltmelancholy dye, for, from my recol- lection of the former order of succession, I could infal- libly tell what was coming next, and many a time was it a vision of pain. All the facts of a recalled experience took their reg- ular relative position save one-I never dreamed of taking hasheesh. I was always seized suddenly by the thrill; it came upon me unexpectedly, while walk- ing with friends or sitting alone. This ignorance of any time when I took the dose did not, however, ab- solve me from self-convicting pangs. Invariably my first cry was, "I have broken my vow! Alas! alas! Then followed furious exultancy. I rushed like a Maenad through colossal scenery; I leaped unhurt down measureless cataracts; I whirled between sides /' page: 244-245[View Page 244-245]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 244-245 244 THE HASHEESH EATER. and oceans, both shining in fiery sapphire; I stood alone amid ruined piles as vast as the demon-built palaces of Baly. Then an undefined horror seized me. I fled from it to find my -friends, but there were none to comfort me. Finally, reaching the climax of pain, I caught fire, or saw the approach of awful presences. Then I awoke. But not always into the delicious comfort of a calm reality--I may almost say, never; ordinarily to cry out to Heaven for the boon of an un- peopled darkness; always to find the beating of my heart either;totally stopped, or so swift and loud that I could hear it with the utmost distinctness, like a rapid, muffled hammer; frequently to discover that the idea of fire had some ground in a raging fever, which parched my lips, and swelled the veins upon my fore- head till they projected in relief. At such times my course was to rise and walk the floor for an hour, if need were, at the same time bathing my head until the heat was assuaged. If memory, still blunted by the body, could thus clearly and faithfully read her old records, in what as- tonishing apocalypse shall they stand forth at the un- erring wand of the disembodying change! I have spoken of additions to the original scroll of visions. It remains to mention some of them. The region about W is a limestone formation, tunneled in one place by a rather extensive and re- markable cave. I have never found there any of those lofty halls and vast stalactites which render certain other caverns famous; the calcareous depositions are very much in miniature, but some of them of a most delicate beauty. One, in particular, is a most perfect "EAVING THE SCHOOLMASTER, ETC. 245 statuette (if the term may be allowed in such a connec- tion) of Niagara Falls; the Rapids, Goat Island, with its precipitous battlement toward the lower river, the American Fall, the Horse-shoe, all are there, exquisite- ly carved, on a scale of not quite an inch to the foot. Another is a Gothic monastery, with its shrine and Madonna just outside the grille, and a cresset hanging from the point of the portal's arch. The chambers are often narrow and- sinuous; there is nothing there to astound any one who has visited Weyer's Cave or the Mammoth; but as this was the only one that I had ever seen, it was there that I found my cavernous ideal. My guide through it was a young man of the neigh- borhood, whose gratification in obliging a stranger was the only recompense which he would not refuse; yet dear enough was the price which I paid for my visit. It was no less than the punishment of being cav- ern-haunted for weeks. Nightly was I compelled to explore the most fearful of subterraneous labyrinths alone. Now climbing crags which gave way behind me, hanging to round projections of slippery limestone, while I heard the dislodged debris go bounding down from ledge to ledge of a yawning pit of darkness and reaching no bottom. Now crawling painfully like a worm, pushed on through winding passages no wider than a chimney, by a Fate whose will I doubted ever to bring me back. Now beholding far above my head the rifted ceiling tremble with the echo of my least footstep, in momentary agony to see it fall. Now joy- fully hastening toward at glimpse of daylight, coming up to it, and falling backward just in time to save my-, page: 246-247[View Page 246-247]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 246-247 246 THE HASHEESH EATER. self from plunging down some sheer wall of measure- less height, upon which the labyrinth opened. From that visit to the W cave I suffered that which only the hasheesh-eater and a soul in the other hell can suffer. In time, however, I slowly outgrew its memory, but only to replace it by others almost as fearful. I cite but one more in this place. I had been sitting upon the window-sill one day, with my body partly outside, for the purpose of per- forming some repair upon the sash. My sleep there- after was scared by a vision of a house supernaturally high, upon whose topmost window-sill I stood, hold- ing on by a projecting cornice with one hand, while with the other I sought to perform some impossible purpose, which prevented it from assisting its mate. Still the cornice kept crumbling. I grasped it by a fresh projection. That also gave way; another, and that was broken by my grasp. This position was brought to a crisis in several ways. Sometimes by a powerful impulse I swayed myself inside, and the cur- rent of the dream changed. Sometimes, without my knowing how, the vision passed utterly away; Once the whole building on whose side I stood from base- ment to cap-stone took fire in an instant; I leaped to the more merciful, to avoid the more cruel death, and, awaking, found myself upon the floor in one of those feverish states of which I have spoken. That night I slept no more. At dawn I laid my- self down for an hour of disturbed slumber, to awake again to a day which was as much to be dreaded as the night. CONCERNING THE DOCTOR, ETC. 247 / XXT. (oncerninfl the Mortor; not 2gouthlea'R, but mint. AT the time of my greatest need, I was so fortunate as to make the acquaintance of one man whose sym- pathy was, for months of trial, one of my strongest supports. Half discouraged in my attempts at self- rescue, I passed an hour in conversation with him, and fortitude came to me anew; for soul and its con- nection with the body had so long been his study that he knew how, with the utmost delicacy, to turn thought out of unwholesome channels; moreover, he had the heart as well as the brain for doing good. I need not say that he was a doctor. I can not resist the temptation to a digression in this place for the purpose of giving my testimony, for the highest that it is worth, to one fact of past experi- ence. It is this: if I have ever met a man before un- known to me, whose sympathies flowed instinctively toward distress, whose self-sacrifice had become an in- separable part of nature, whose comprehensive interest in all that might ennoble our kind was equaled only by his loving patience with its present infirmities, I have called him (" doctor," and, nine times in ten, have not been mistaken. Society has now grown old enough, for the sake of self-respect at least, to despise and abandon those stale jokes upon doctors which tickled her childish ear. With her superstition of the value of a horse-shoe as page: 248-249[View Page 248-249]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 248-249 248 THE HASHEESH EATER. prophylactic against witches, let her also put aside the inanities which she talks, in her less sombre mood, of the physician in league with the sexton, and the so- lemnity of mock-learning which reigns over a circle of gold-headed canes. When fiightened, she is ever ready to send for the doctor; she stops joking as soon as she is parturient, apoplectic from last night's surfeit, or appalled at the consequences of having swallowed a button. True, there are empirics in medicine. There are men who tamper with the delicate springs of life upon no other authority than that of a 'possunt quia posse videntur." We have all seen the advertisement of one "whose sands of life have nearly run out," and as we marvel at the length of time during which those sands have been just on the verge of their final down-flow, we are led to ask if, for the sake of that world upon which an incalculable benefit in cases of consumption imay be conferred for the price of one shilling, the benevolent possessor of the recipe may not occasionally have tipped up his hour-glass or diminished its aperture. We all --know the quack in medicine. We are not blind to the thousand astonishing cures of as many desperate maladies, to the placards on the highways, the columns of the press, the almanacs, the guides, the angels that come down in a hurry from heaven, calling through a trumpet to the moribund to hold on till they get there, .with a bottle of sirup under each arm which shall restore peace to his afflicted family. All these things we know; yet are there no other CONCERNING THE DOCTOR, ETC. 249 quacks than quacks in medicine? Are there no quacks of divinity? no quacks at law? no political quacks, that dose a diseased nation? no literary quacks, who break down the aesthetic constitution of the people? But, because Brigham Young points out the road to future blessedness through a phalanstery of wives, shall we no more go to church? Because Jeffreys was a villain, must no more causes be adjudicated? And are we to abjure all faith in the science of government in- asmuch as some placeman theorizes to the mob in fus- tian during a campaign, or anathematize all authors in that somebody has befouled the pool of reading- mind by a volume of the Rag-picker's Nephew? If we hold faith in gold, notwithstanding base met- al, let us be assured that nowhere is that gold found at a higher percentage of purity than among doctors. Where one Faun hath stolen the mantle of Esulapius, as the good sire lay sleeping, there are a hundred upon whom he has dropped it as upon worthy children. Of all men, the doctor is to be peculiarly cherished. Let us not forget that there was one season, very early in all our lives, when without him we might not have been. Let us remember how often, uncomplainingly, he has deprived himself of sleep, of meat and drink, of all those social endearments which beautify the world to us, that we might be set at ease upon some whimsical ailment, some pulse too little or too much. When the hour of a real need calls for him, with what anxiety he watches every flush of cheek and wander- ing of eye, with what strategic skill he brings to an issue the battle between the forces of life and death, with what calm earnestness he throws his own ener- L 2 page: 250-251[View Page 250-251]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 250-251 250 THE HASHEESH EATER. gy upon our side, how with very parental anxiety he watches hour after hour at the painful bed, with what eye of suspense he beholds the crisis come, and now, when he knows that a Greater than he has come silent- ly into the consultation, waits until an unseen finger has touched the clogged fount of life, and given him reason- to rejoice with them that do rejoice. In a deep sympathy, in tenderness, in allowance for human frailties, there is no man who meets us on the ways of life that more resembles that mightier Physi- cian whose cures are felt in all the arteries of the world. Like Him, the doctor is compassionate, because, meas- urably with Him, 6' he knoweth our frame, he remem- bereth that we are dust." And, last of all, yet not least, be it not forgotten that there is waiting for us an hour of shadow in the Hereafter, when, all- medicine failing us, save that grand one which is to cure us of the body which hath afflicted for years, the voices of farewell, mixed with weeping that shall be heard around our pillow, will not lack one tone which hath cheered us on through so many remediable distresses, but among the last whom our closing eye shall gather in before it looks on the grand mysteries will be he who, yielding us up unwillingly to the Stronger, re- mains to help the beloved whom we can help no more -the doctor. It is hard to- understand how any man who, like the physician, from morning till night, and often from night till morning again, is occupied with enginery and the repair of this complicated system of forces, the body, should rest contented with a mere external survey of the levers and pulleys of its machine, or the chemical CONCERNING THE DOCTOR, ETC. 251 phenomena of its laboratory. If he be the true man of science which his profession imperatively demands, he can not help perceiving, in a multitude of instances, that some intangible agent is working out processes for good or ill which do not array themselves under any material classification. Changes are taking place which do not seem to originate in the specific function operated upon; new elements enter the consideration of death or cure which can not be referred to food or medicine. The true physician will not be contented until he has gone back of the wheels, and investigated the nature of that strange imponderable force which is energizing them. To him the spiritual in his art is of even more importance than the bodily. I have not, after all, been making a very wide di- gression, since it has just led me into the description of my friend the doctor-to me, the doctor by emi- nence, since, spiritually, he did for my recovery that which none else could, in a life-time, have accomplish- ed for it corporeally. All his life he had been communing with the great and beautiful thinkers to whom our mysterious double nature was a beloved study. Yet no man perfected in mere book-lore was he. Without seeking apologies wherewith to excuse himself from following in the train of the dogmatists of any age, he had thought for himself, and, in the possession of an inner world thus acquired, he was independent of other resources to an extent which was equaled only by my hasheesh king- ship, and by that only in degree and not in perma- nency. With him the spirit of all things was as much a felt presence as their gross embodiment is to mate- rial men. 1 i. page: 252-253[View Page 252-253]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 252-253 252 THE HASHitEESH EATER. From the commencement of our acquaintance I was as much with him as the pressure of cares would al- low me to be, and, when my own life had become to me a vague and meaningless abstraction, by participa- tion with his thought and sympathy I somehow grad- ually drew into it an injected -energy which made its juiceless pulses throb again, and awoke me opt of the lethargy into which I was sinking, deeper with every day. For months, but for him, the allotted course of my duties had been a mechanical round; a galley- slave, a mill-horse, could not have labored with less interest or more weariness. As the mountain of exercises and compositions grew gradually more and more level with the plane of my table, and the evening wore on toward night, I was wont to soliloquize, One("hour more, and I will go to see the Doctor." Once at his rooms, and the iron mantle of pedagogic restraint fell off; I was in the hu- man character again; nay, more, I seemed to take off my body and sit in my soul. This very resumption of naturalness and freedom by one whose position de- manded all day a peculiar self-control and reticence, will be understood by those whom fortune (or misfor- tune) has placed in like circumstances to be the most delicious privilege for which the tired mind can yearn. The ceasing to seem to be what he is not must always be an untold relief to any one- who has not, by long training in the necessary caution of a responsible place, utterly ceased to be what he was. Yet the benefit conferred upon me by my acquaint- ance with the doctor was something more than could be comprehended in this mere exchange of the tech- CONCERNING THE DOCTOR, ETC. 253 nical for the natural, the life of a profession for the life of humanity. A most kind and lively interest did he bestow upon all that pertained to my past enchant- ed existence, and never with more gentleness and care than-he did could an own brother have supported me through the horrors wherein I was painfully journey- ing on my way to complete disenthrallment. By con- dolence, by congenial converse, by suggestion of bright- er things, by indication of a certain hope in the dis- tance if I would but press on, in a thousand ways did this friend nerve me to persistent effort, and close more tightly behind me the gates of return. It was through his labors chiefly that I began once more to take an interest in the world, not through any renewed affection for its mere hollow forms, but for the sake of that inner essence which they embodied. Henceforth forever, after abandoning hasheesh, was all endurance with the external creation to be denied me unless I could penetrate deeper than its mere outside. I had known the living spirit of nature; in its husks I no longer found any nourishment, but rather the ma- terial for a certain painful loathing to expend itself upon. In my then present condition, I beheld as lit- tle beauty in the best of external things, I granted as little admiration, as any old Athenian whose eyes last fell on the divine and spirit-breathing master-pieces of Phidias, revivified to pass judgment upon some elaborately-carven gate-post. Through the aid of the doctor I began slowly to per- ceive the possibility of penetrating deeper than the shard of things without the help, so dearly bought, of hasheesh. Taking up, for instance, the subject of a page: 254-255[View Page 254-255]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 254-255 254 THE HASHEESH EATER. spirit which works throughout all creation, by which the most microscopic plant-filament, no less than the grandest mountain, is inwrought and informed, we often talked together in parables, which, however, were never obscure to us, since we possessed that best dictionary of meanings, the bond of a close, congenial sympathy. Let no one accuse us rashy of Pantheism, since it is not affirmed that we ascribed to that spirit of things divine, or in any way self-conscious attributes. Thus, as we were one day standing side by side before a win- dow exquisitely arabesqued with trees by the noise- less graver of the frost, did the doctor discourse upon its process and its reasons: "That the thing which men call dead matter has not wrought out this beauty is evident. The matter is here, but a more subtle force has moulded it accord- ing to hidden laws. The very necessary and primor- dial condition of matter is inertia, and without the touch of human hands inertia has here been overcome. Look at that palm-tree. We might shut out from our eyes its artificial frame, and all the other surroundings which connect it with man's workmanship, and, as we gazed upon its articulate trunk, and the plumy shoots spreading from the expanded bud which forms the cap- ital of the shaft, believe ourselves upon an oasis of Araby. "Wherein differs this palm-tree from its brothers of the desert, the tropical garden, and the bank of Nile? In this only. The spirit of a palm has been viewlessly wandering from zone to zone in search of a body. It reaches a warm land, and there, -from ammoniacal soils, from water-atoms, from numberless CONCERNING THE DOCTOR, ETC. 255 elements, it slowly builds about itself, in conformance to its inner laws, roots, trunk, and branches, until some way-worn Howadji throws himself down under its shadow, saying, ' Blessed be Allah! another palm- tree.' "A second palm-spirit, in its ethereal journeyings, comes not to the earth, but hither to this window-pane. Here it finds no soils, but only the water-drops, which all day long have been collecting from the atmosphere. Its visit is by night, and when we draw near the win- dow in the morning, lo! the spirit has erected for itself a body of purest crystal, shaping it faultlessly, by its own unerring law, into the palm-tree which we see here. "To-morrow the spirit of the Alga may float hither for its incarnation, and on the day after the spirit of the Fern." Had I possessed any part in the origination of this idea, I should not venture to characterize it as I now do, singularly beautiful; yet I believe that I shall not speak without hope of sympathy in saying that such it did certainly seem to me. It chanced that in the long and severe winter which we passed together at W , my friend and I had many opportunities of beholding the verification of his prophecy, for to our windows did come frequently both Fern and Alga, with many another spirit from the universal Flora, whose filaments and petals bitter blasts only breathed into more finished perfectness, and whose fragrance was-a better, a more enduring one than that of odor, since it was exhaled to the soul without mediation of corruptible organs. \ . I page: 256-257[View Page 256-257]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 256-257 256 THE HASHEESH EATER. ,As we looked upon the frost-glorified panes, our minds meanwhile tinged with this poetic theory, it was impossible to refrain from carrying up the analogy into a field which is vaster, and orbed by higher desti- nies than those of the unconscious creation. To a certain body of the palm alone is the breath of winter fatal. In the higher zones an incarnation reared of soils and earthy juices perishes and droops away; yet the spirit of the palm is not dead. Wafted away, it collects for itself other materials to dwell in, and crystallizes around itself a form which shall only be beautified and confirmed by that very power which destroys its other embodiment. There is another wind in Araby, called Sarsar, the icy wind of death, which blows not upon the tree, but on the man. At its chill the bodily drops off, but the soul has never felt it. Set free by the same breath which was lethal to its shell, it voyages into another region, it crystallizes around itself "a more glorious body." Who shall say that, to this new creation which it has informed, those very influences which worked the dismemberment of its ancient covering- labor, pain, attrition, and all the thousand forces of decay, shall not the more through all the ages act to ennoble the soul, to make it a grander, better, and more harmonious being? Shall he who so clothes the grass of the field, and much rather clothes us, though of lit- tle faith, grant good uses of ill destiny to unconscious and not to conscious being? As a legitimate and by no means unexpected con- sequence of our living somewhat in seclusion, and hold- ing both-opinions and converse which were not abso- CONCERNING THE DOCTOR, ETC. 257 lutely universal, there were not wanting those who dubbed us visionary, the severest epithet of reproach which can be hurled by A., whose horizon of interests is bounded by beef and clothes, at B., who inquires within a wider scope. I do not remember that we ever writhed very convulsively under this fearful thunder- bolt, but bore it as became not altogether annihilated, good-humored martyrs. As we talked of this subject upon a certain evening, thus spake the doctor in parable: "Once upon a time there abode in a bar of iron two particles of electricity. Now one of these particles, being of an investigating temperament, to the great discredit of his family, and the shame and confusion of face of all who held high seats in the electric syna- gogue, set out upon a wild voyage of discovery. For a long time he was absent, and, as no tidings came from him, it was supposed he had perished ignomini- ously at the negative pole. In the mean while, the other particle of electricity, who staid at home and minded his own business, by gradual accretions had secured to himself size and dynamic consideration in the community. After the lapse of several seconds (which must be known is a long period to individual- ities, which travel as rapidly as the electric) the erratic particle returned, and visiting his friend, the particle who had attained a position of high respectability, happened to let fall in conversation this remark: ' I have discovered in my journeyings that we are not the only beings extant, but that, in fact, we live in and are surrounded by a body called iron, which, from our difference of state, it possessing a far greater density than we, we do not perceive.' page: 258-259[View Page 258-259]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 258-259 258 THE HASHEESH EATER. "Thereat the other particle waxed wroth, and mut- tered something like 'humbug!' But the traveler, pressing the claim of his new fact, did so excite his respectable friend that he broke forth thus: ' Do you pretend to belie the evidence of my senses? All my life I have been going up and down about my busi- ness, and have never yet seen, heard, smelt, tasted, or felt such a thing as iron in the whole time. Why don't I run my head against it?' Since that day, it is credibly stated that whenever the practical particle stands on 'Change talking with other practical parti- cles, and the inquiring particle comes along, the former shakes his head, and says to his friends, (Unreliable- talks nonsense about a crotchet which he calls iron--- visionary, very visionary.' " XXTT. (ranb iiuertisiement. As the months went on, the fervor of my longing toward the former hasheesh life in some measure pass- ed away, and in general the fascination to return did not present itself so much in the form of pining for an affirmative as loathing of a negative state. It was not the ecstasy of the drug which so much attracted me, as its power of disenthrallment from an apathy which no human aid could utterly take-away. Yet even now there were seasons of absolute struggle in which I fought as against a giant, or more truly to the nature of things should I say, in which I resisted as against GRAND DIVERTISSEMPNT. 259 a demon houri, for my tempter was more passing lovely than any thing on earth. As in the earlier period of my warfare, I now and then caught glimpses of ravishing delight, which, through some rift in the thick cloud elsewhere com- pletely enveloping my daily life, broke in upon me for a moment, yet lasted long enough to prove that I could not yet write myself secure, that my integrity was not yet beyond corruption. Some of my readers will doubtless be amused, oth- ers pained, and a few disgusted at the childlike expe- dients to which I found it necessary to resort for the purpose of appeasing this renewed appetite for visions without a return to hasheesh. There were three dif- ferent sets of circumstances which almost infallibly brought on the longing. It was never suggested by dark and stormy weather, since this was too much in consonance with my habitual mood to demand more than a passing notice. The man who has lost an in- timate friend does not pay much attention to murk and mist; it is sunshine which seems to mock his melancholy. So in my own case did it happen. The season of most intense longing was a day of clear sky and brilliant light. That beauty which filled the heart of every other living thing with gladness, only spoke of other suns more wondrous rolling through other heavens of a more matchless dye. I looked into the sky, and missed its former unutterable rose and sap- phire; no longer did the whole dome of the firmament sound with grand unwritten music. It was a pain to look into that desert wilderness of blue which of old my sorcery had peopled for me with page: 260-261[View Page 260-261]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 260-261 260 THE HASHEESH EATER. innumerable celestial riders, with cities of pearl and symphony-haunted streams of silver. I shut my eyes, and in a moment saw all that I had lost. A night of brilliant moonlight brought me other repentings after my enchanted life, whose tone was not so high as those of the sunshine, but deeper and more enduring. Wrapped in a melancholy which could not be imparted, I wandered by the hour through the beam- ing streets, and looked sadly around me to see the meanest object by the wayside Y "Change Into something rich and strange." The stones beneath my feet gleamed like unhewn crys- tals. The frosty retwork on the panels of doors which I passed, at the touch of the divine Moon-Alchemist became exqiisite filigrees of silver. The elm-trees and the locust, shedding sparkles of radiance from their ice-incased twigs, might well have been those trees of gleamy ore which Allah buried when man was cast out of Paradise. Yet mournfully I thought of the old days, when I would have walked down these shining ways as through an ever-lengthening vista of glories, when the moon- light would have fallen on me mysteriously empurpled, when over all the wondrous domain I had felt myself unquestioned sovereign, and out of the beauteous re- cesses of earth and sky sprite voices had musically hailed me to my kingdom. As I thought upon these things, now forever irre- trievably abandoned to the past, I have wept-yes, though it be unmanly, I have wept to find myself a discrowned king, a sorcerer ravished of his wand, a GRAND DIVERTISSEMENT. 261 god shorn of his glories. I am not ashamed to re- member that I did this; for if there be any ecstasy possible which we do not now feel imparted to us, if any excellency in things which does not now make itself tangible, it is no more ignominious to lament over it perished than to sigh after it tarrying. There was another, a bodily condition, which I al- ways found it necessary to avoid if I would not be smitten with repinings after the hasheesh life. It was the nervous sensitiveness induced by deprivation of tobacco. In smoking, if in nothing else, could I boast regu- larity of habit. To be sure, for this regularity neither an unusually developed organ of order nor the possi- bility of any thing like a systematic arrangement in my multiplicity of labors was to be pre-eminently thanked. To defer for an hour the nicotine indulgence was to bring on a longing for the cannabine which was actual pain. When circumstances have occurred which made it impossible to smoke before entering my daily round of duties, until they closed I have hardly dared to shut my eyes, lest I should be borne incon- tinently out of the actual life into which necessity called me to a land of colossal visions. If for a mo- ment I yielded to the impulse, I was straightway in the midst of sky and landscape whose splendors were only less vivid than the perfect hallucinations of the fantasia. But I have not yet spoken of those expedients to which I resorted for relief and to avoid the necessity r of resuming the use of hasheesh. Certainly, in them ingenuity, so far as I possessed any, was tortured to its ut iost endurance, page: 262-263[View Page 262-263]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 262-263 262 THE HASHEESH EATER. Sometimes I spent the few moments of leisure which during the day could be snatched from business in- mention it not confidentially in Gath, breathe it not to the friend of thy bosom in Askelon--blowing soap- bubbles. Not that there is aught deserving of con- tempt in the enjoyment of that which has been made a philosophic toy by one of the greatest of Anglo- Saxon sages-not that the pleasure of rare beauties from humble elements is of necessity an aesthetic her- esy, but because the hasheesh-eater is well aware of the existence of critics, to whom all that is childlike is also childish, who quarrel with men for being per- versely happy on moderate means, and with their Cre- ator because he has not made all the little hills as high as Cotopaxi. Yes, throwing down the wand of professional majes- ty, degrading myself to the level of the most callow neophyte of an infant class, did I take up the pipe, and, going into the presence of the nearest sunbeam (a course which, by the way, might well be followed by those who for their light go farther and fare worse), did I create sphere after sphere, not, as the grotesquely but unintentionally blasphemous old poet hath it, snapping them off my fingers into space, but with care- ful hand taking rest over the back of a chair to coun- teract the tremulousness of over-anxiety not to trem- ble, did I inflate them to the maximum, and then sit wrapped up in gazing at their luxuriant sheen until they broke. There I found some faint actualization of my re- membered hasheesh-sky, and where the actual failed there did the ideal, thus stimulated, come in to com- GRAND DIVERTISSEMENT. 263 plete the vision. iad time allowed me, I could have consumed hours in watching the sliding, the rich in- termingling, the changes by origination, and the changes by reaction of those matchless hues, or hues at least so matchless in the real world that to find their parallel we must leave the glories of a waking life, and go floating through the firmament of some ir- idescent dream. Verily, he who would be meet for the participation in any joys must robe himself in hu- mility and become as a little child. There was one other way in which I measurably reproduced the past for my innocent satisfaction. Had I permitted, at certain seasons, any foreign eye to in- vade the sanctity of my room, it would have fallen, possibly with some surprise, upon a singular arrange- ment of the books upon my table into a formn some, what resembling those houses which children build at their play. Yet the stranger would have very little suspected a clew to the mystery in the fact that I had thus been embodying to myself my ideal of the ancient cavern or the resplendent temple in which many a day ago I had exulted through a whole evening, while the rocks echoed with strange music, or oracular voices spoke to me out of the inner shrine. Had he asked me the secret, he had probably not been much the wiser for my answer. There is still another method, and by far the most efficient of all, by which I gratified the visionary pro- pensity without returning to the old indulgence. I had been advised by the counselor to whose article I originally owed my emancipation, whenever the fasci- nation of the drug came upon me with peculiar power, page: 264-265[View Page 264-265]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 264-265 264 THE HASHEESH EATER. to evade it by re-enacting some former vision upon paper. A truly wise and well-considered counsel did I find this, and one which, whenever the possibility existed from any gap in my daily occupation, I follow- ed scrupulously. As would have resulted from once more superinducing the hasheesh delirium, my visions, marshaled out of memory, marched past beneath va- rying banners; some of them banded under hell-black flags, and others carrying the colors of a rainbow of the seventh heaven. From this reproduction of the past in the order in which it had occurred, I gained a double benefit, the pleasure of appeasing the fascination without increas- ing it, and the salutary review of abominable horrors without any more than the echo of a pang. In this way some portion of the present narrative was sketch- ed at first, but of necessity a very small one, since the pressure of business made my abode, even in the most innoxious dream-land, that only of a wayfaring man who turneth aside but for a night. XXTTL. alb bell of Wtaters anb the Cell of itearbet. IT is not to be supposed, however,- that, with all these expedients, I was now leading a life of-quite tol- erable calm; on the whole, rather enviable for its ideal diversions, and free from most of those sufferings which, at its abandonment, if not before, Nature sets as her unmistakable seal of disapprobation upon the THE TTIT,T, OF WATERS, ETC. 265 use of any unnatural stimulus. If, from a human dis- taste of dwelling too long upon the horrible, I have been led to speak so lightly of the facts of this part of my experience that any man may think the returning way of ascent an easy one, and dare the downward road of ingress, I would repair the fault with whatever of painfully-elaborated prophecy of wretchedness may be in my power, for through all this time I was indeed a greater sufferer than any bodily pain could possibly make me. For many a month my nights, or whatever portion of them was given to sleep, were tormented with ter- rific visitations. After a time Niagara began again especially to haunt me. In every variety of danger- ous posture, helpless, friendless, frequently deserted utterly of every living being, I hung suspended over the bellowing chasm, or slid down crumbling cliffs to- ward the treacherous pavement of ever-shifting emer. aid. But one consolation ever broke in upon my dis- tress; it was that stony face, which mutely shared with me, beneath its everlasting veil, the terror of the waters. Could I but crouch beside it in my dream, one element was wanting to my utter isolation. Yet it was not invariably for myself alone that I feared. Sometimes a tremendous ship came floating up the river without a sign of life upon its decks of man or beast. Against the current it made headway without wheels or sails, but on coming to a certain place always stood still. I soon learned to foretell what was next coming, so that I groaned in the con- sciousness of an infallible prophecy of evil. A shud- der shook the river, as if some dire convulsion was page: 266-267[View Page 266-267]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 266-267 '266 THE HASHEESH EATER. breaking up from its measureless abysses, and then slowly did the giant vessel begin to sink, bow fore- most. Slowly she settled till her fore-chains were out of sight; then came a tumultuous surging outcry of despair; the decks, the shrouds, the stays were popu- lous with human beings, unseen until that moment of ruin, and still clinging with iron clutch to those vain supports for the life which could not last. I saw them, one by one, lapped in as the green water mounted, and with the last bubble of their dying breath the main truck disappeared, and a moment more saw the river sliding onward as before. I have no idea how many times sleep rang changes of horror upon that dreadful dream, but often enough, indeed, to make me shudder with a speechless pang whenever water flowed or a ship drifted into the vast area of my nightly vision. Gradually it grew the habitual tendency of my dreaming state to bring all its scenes, whether of pleas- ure or of pain, to a crisis through some catastrophe by water. Earlier in the state which ensued upon my abandonment of hasheesh I had been affrighted par- ticularly by seeing men tumble down the shafts of mines, or, as I have before detailed, either dreading or suffering some fall into abysses on my own part; yet now, upon whatever journey I set out, to cross the At- lantic or to travel inland, sooner or later I inevitably came to an end by drowning, or the imminent peril of it. It seemed singular to me, in the waking state, that I never made use of past experience, during ter- rific dreams, to assure myself that a certain danger was only imaginary. Before abandoning hasheesh, in nat- THE HELL OF WATERS, ETC. 267 ural dreams I had frequently employed the power of logical deduction-which, in the case of many persons, remains tolerably active during sleep-saying to my- self, "You were frightened by this same danger before, and it turned out to be only ideal after all ;" upon which I immediately awoke, or beheld the danger pass away. Aware of this fact, I often determined, in the day- time, to rouse myself from the distresses of the night by the same expedient, but when they came it was never once thought of. That law of hasheesh opera- tion by which all existence is merged in the present, and there is no memory of having ever lived in a pre- vious state, was most consistently obeyed by the sleep- ing horrors of abandonment. There was no way so much as conjectured by which the spell of reality might be broken, and the determination of the day be- ing thoroughly ignored, the only remedy was to endure unto the end. Yet there was one most agonizing vision, whose close proved an exception to the ordinary watery catastro- phe, and which stamped itself upon my mind with a vividness lingering, even while I was awake, for many days. It also, like so many of the rest, was connect- ed with Niagara. On a cliff below the Fall, elevated to a height above the water such as only hasheesh can give, I found my- self seated upon a broad flat stone. Beside me, and resting her hand upon my own, sat a person whom I well knew, when awake, as ahqueen- ly woman of the world, who caressed society and was caressed by it in return. So far as man has a right page: 268-269[View Page 268-269]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 268-269 268 THE HASHEESH EATER. to weigh his neighbor in the scales of private judg- ment, she was. utterly hollow, selfish, and politic al- most for policy's sake. Indeed, I felt this, when awake, acting so powerfully as a repulsion, that had I, in ac- tual life, found her so near me, I should have arisen and walked away for fear of showing her my true dis- like. Now, however, I did not stir, for a singular fas- cination held me, Presently she spoke, and called my attention to some object which was going down the river. I turn- ed to look, but almost immediately heard a grinding sound beneath me, and felt the stone on which I sat slowly sliding toward the edge of the cliff. Facing about in an instant, I saw the woman gazing earnest- ly in another direction. Soon again she called me to look at some appearance in the river. Strangely reck- less, I obeyed her. The stone slipped forward once more. This time I turned quick enough to detect her hand just moving away from the side. I sprang up; I caught her by the arm; I glared into her beautiful icy eyes; I cried out, "Woman! accursed woman! is this your faith?"Now, casting off all disguise, she gave a hollow laugh, and spoke: "Faith! do you look for faith in hell? I would have cast you to the fish- es." My eyes were opened. She said truly. We were indeed in hell, and I had not known it until now. Wearing the same features, with the demoniac instead of the human soul speaking through them--wandering about the same earth, yet aware of no presence but de- mons like -ourselves-lit by the same sky, but hope spoke down from it no more. I left the she-fiend by the river-brink, and met an- THE VISIONARY, ETC. 269 other as well known to me in the former life. Bland- ly she wound to my side as if she would entrap me, thinking that I was a new-comer into hell. Knowing her treachery, as if to embrace her I caught her in my arms, and, knitting them about her, strove to crush her out of being. With a look of awful malignity, she loosed one hand, and, tearing open her bosom, dis- closed her heart, hissing hot, and pressed it upon my own. "The seal of the love I bear thee, my chosen fiend!" she cried. Beneath that flaming signet my heart caught fire; I dashed her away, and then, thank God, awoke. XXIV. e;11 bisionary; to vaith dthapter tlere is no 2b- mittance npon jBuineso. THERE are those philosophers who, in running the boundary-line between the healthful and depraved pro- pensities of our-nature, have left the longing for stim- ulus upon the condemned side. Notwithstanding all that I have suffered from the most powerful stimulant that. the world possesses, I can not bring myself to agree with them. Not because the propensity is de- fensible on the ground of being universal. True, the Syrian has his hasheesh, the Chinaman his opium; he must be a poverty-stricken Siberian who lacks his ball of narcotic fungus, an impossible American who goes without tobacco, and over all the world liquor travels and domesticates itself, being of all stimulants page: 270-271[View Page 270-271]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 270-271 270 THE HASHEESH EATER. the most thoroughly cosmopolitan. Yet, if we make this fact our basis, we are equally committed to the defense of the quite as catholic propensities toward lying, swearing, and hating one's rival. But there is one ground upon which the righteous- ness of the tendency toward stimulants may be up- held without the fear of any dangerous side-issues, namely, the fact that it proves, almost as powerfully as any thing lower than direct revelation, man's fitness by constitution and destiny by choice, for a higher set of circumstances than the present. Let it, however, be understood what, in this instance, is meant by the tendency to stimulus. We do not mean that mere bodily craving which, shared equally in common by the most bestial and the most spiritual of men not disembodied, urges them alike to some expedient which will send their blood throbbing with a livelier thrill of physical well-being, blind them to the consideration of disagreeable truths, and eclipse all thought by the dense shadow of the Animal. That of which we speak is something far higher- the perception of the soul's capacity for a broader be- ing, deeper insight, grander views of Beauty, Truth, and Good than she now gains through the chinks of her cell. It is true that there are not many stimuli which possess the power in any degree to satisfy such yearnings. The whole catalogue, so far as research has written it, will probably embrace only opium, hasheesh, and, acting upon some rarely-found combi- nations of temperament, liquors. Ether, chloroform, and the exhilarant gases may be THE VISIONARY, ETC. 271 left out of the consideration, since but very few people are enthusiastic or recldess enough in the pursuit of remarkable emotions to tamper with agents so evan- escent in their immediate, so fatal in their prolonged effects. But, wherever the yearning of the mind is toward gratifications of this nature-where it is calling earn- estly for a nobler excellence in all its objects, nay, even wearied, discontented with those it now has, shall we pronounce this state a right or a wrong one? Let us see what verdict we would give upon certain other yearnings. When the poor man fences in for himself a little spot of waste land, he first erects a dark and low cabin, that his household gods may not be shelterless. Pleased for a while by the hovel life, greatly better as it is than camping out upon the roof- less moor, he feels all his aim satisfied, and insphered within the attainment of Nature's response to sheer physical necessities. By-and-by, after the pleasures of not being cold, wet, exposed to suspicious eyesight, nor hungry (since he has a little potato-patch behind the cabin), have become somewhat old to him, he happens to think, "How would a few flowers look before my door? There is something inside of me which seems to ap- prove of flowers; I think they would do me good." So the poor man wanders out into the wood, and there, in that most ancient and incense-breathing temple of our God, he kneels down on the turfy hassock, which Spring, that ever-younig opener of the cathedral doors, has laid for him, and gently, without unearthing a fibre of their roots, lifts a clump of violets. page: 272-273[View Page 272-273]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 272-273 272 THE HASHEESH EATER. When, a day or two afterward, we come along past the rude cabin, and as we lean over the fence to ask the tenant how he fares, what do we do when our eyes fall upon a little dot here and there of something more than ground, or grass, or vegetables--azure faces look- ing brotherly up at the same-colored heaven? Do we shake our heads, draw down our brows, purse -our mouths, and say, "Ah! dissatisfied with your circum- stances, I see. Restless where Providence has placed you; grasping after visionary happiness; morbidlyr craving for what you have not; depraved taste!" and all that sort of thing? I had really flattered myself that I was going to make a pretty cogent combination out of this, of the a fortiori and reductio ad absurdum arguments, but I am afraid I have failed. I fear that there are some people who would say exactly this. Yet I will restrict the " we" to you and to myself, my reader, since I know that you have not the ability nor I the will to be guilty of so gross a speech. We, then, certainly shall not say it. Let us finish the analogy. A man who, during his childish (not his childlike) years, was growing up into all that compacts, rounds out, and confirms the animal, has in that time attended solely to those claims of na- ture which have a reference to assimilation and secre- tion. With meat, drink, and raiment he was satisfied. Practical men cherished him as ao sort of typical fact of that other broader fact, the respectable community. Just at the moment that hopes of his "'making something of himself" are at their widest (I will not say 6' highest," since there is no height to hopes of this THE VISIONARY, ETC. 273 kind, as ordinarily understood), he discovers that he has some other need hitherto unsuspected, and not coming under any caption in the catalogue of bodily well-being. His soul wants beauty; its yearning will not be repressed. For a while he is content with the discovery of that which springs up between his feet in this really very beautiful world. Absorbed in other aims, he had never noticed it before, and now it breaks upon him as from a new heaven and a new earth. By-and-by he thinks that, since all this loveliness is transitory, liable to be obscured by clouds and be- draggled by storms, uprooted utterly or made distaste- ful by the presence of a bad association which will not be exiled, his soul, as immortal and expansive, may find grander views in another region. This other is the region of stimulus. What shall we say to this man?"You are morbid; you are de- praved; your yearnings are unnatural and sinful; you must contract your wishes, or, at least, extend your arms sideways farther into the dark, not upward higher into the light?" No; a thousand times no! Let us rather say thus: "Man, in this your longing, you have the noblest tes- timony to the endless capacity for growth of that germ, your soul. You can not believe more of her than she is, for you can not believe more of her than God be- lieves, and He was assured that He had made her in His own image. You do not, therefore, flatter your- self with the privilege of looking into things too high for you; there is nothing which you can conceive of as possible to your view which shall not be actual. Your wish is approved by Heaven, for from Heaven 5M 2 page: 274-275[View Page 274-275]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 274-275 274 THE HASJF:SH EATER. came the constitution which made you capable of such a wish. Your Creator does not condemn you, neither do we condemn you." If that man therefore departs, and becomes addicted to the indulgence in opium, hasheesh, or whatever other spell may in his case possess the power of pry- ing open for him the gates to more wondrous glories, shall not the blood of the man and the tears of ruined or bitterly sympathizing friends be upon our skirts? Nay, most just and noble-hearted reader, for that which we have said to him should be only the ex- ordium to another, a longer address. It is not the Author's will more than his province to be dictative, yet be indulgent if he shortly sketches it here. "You sin not in your yearnings. Yet may you sin grievously, even against the grand aim of those yearnings, by a certain suicidal gratification of them. Were hasheesh, or opium, or aught else of kindred na- ture between the poles the only alternative to your for- mer gross life in mere meat and drink, the only alterna- tive even to remaining within the limits of your first acquired beauty, it were better indeed to use them than to dishonor your soul by following mere material aims, or by crippling, her energies of expansion. "Yet this is not the alternative. In Nature there is yet undiscovered glory, a spirit which gradually will interpenetrate you as you commune with-her. She is not a mockery, a sham, for a truthful essence indwells, informs her. Be this communing- one stimulus to you! "In Art there is also a spirit which you have not yet read. As the spirit of Nature is the ideal of God, THE VISIONARY, ETC. 275 so is the spirit of Art the ideal of man, the mind which God has made. With this also commune. In your actions upon it, in its reactions upon you, you will rejoice in perceptions of a meaning in life which you never felt; you will have one more stimulus. "Around you are the starving to be fed, the naked to be clothed, the captive to be set free, the persecuted to be overshadowed by your wing, the benighted to be enlightened, the vile to be cleansed. Do good as you have opportunity, and find one more stimulus in that. "The Infinite One is communing with this illimita- ble soul of yours to lift it higher. At a hundred doors -he comes in to you continually. There are breath- ings within you which are not of yourself. Do you find yourself lower than you would be? Straightway the standard of true height is shown to you, held in a hand which can help you up to it. Are you obscured by the shadow of a misused past? To you, when you muse in the twilight, come angels, like the two who came even to Sodom at evening. There is hope of a better growth, a grander life; the light of a resur- rection which shoots in from the time to come through the chinks of that sepulchre, your body. Wait pa- tiently-ah! for howr few moments, and that sepulchre shall be a cenotaph. Let that hope of an advancing future, with all its unveiling of mysteries, its impulse along the path of an ever more and more glorious ca- reer,; its exhaustless Beauty, and Truth, and Good, be your last, your noblest, your unfailing stimulus, until the Ideal and the Actual become the same, and it be needed no longer. "But of the stimulus of drugs, of potions, beware. page: 276-277[View Page 276-277]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 276-277 276 THE HASHEESH EATER. For the sake of that very majesty with which you justly wish to aggrandize your soul, beware. Their fountains will be presently exhausted, and then you shall helplessly beat your breast, as without possibil- ity of arising from the brink you draw in their foul, their maddening lees, and curse yourself for slaying those noble powers which it was your longing to strengthen, to nourish, and to clarify." Let this illustration be pardoned if, in spite of other intentions, it has become a sermon. The hasheesh- eater knows full well that not only in the world, but in our own country, shamelessly vilified as it is by the ignorant of other lands with the opprobrium of an all-absorbing aim at gain, there are many of those spirits who can not steep themselves in oblivion of all but physical ends, who can not rest in the mere knowl- edge that they are getting so many houses, so many acres of land, so much respectable consideration, to be possessed while a wind is passing by, while a twilight is fading. There are men who pine restlessly for riches which shall satisfy higher obligations of their being, shall endure longer, shall in themselves possess a nobler and more expansive essence. They are right in this pining. Yet if there be one voice which can A speak from the gateway of a dangerous avenue to its satisfaction, that can say, "Ho there! pass by; I I have tried this way; it leads at last into poisonous wildernesses," in the name of Heaven let it be raised. " And thus I excuse my sermon. There are those, no doubt, who in reading it will; say, "(Is it not inconsistent to advise this possible i 'hasheesh-eater to 'feed the hungry and clothe the THE VISIONARY, ETC. 2" naked,' after inveighing so much against practical aims just before?"With a desire to anticipate this objec- tion, I would here say that it is not against practical aims, but the making them the chief, the controlling ones. Or, rather, even more boldly, not against prac- tical aims at all, but against pseudo-practical. Para- doxical as it may be, there is no man more thoroughly, more purely practical than he who is most truly ideal. It is needless to suggest that the word "practical" is a derivative from the Greek verb " to do," and is there- fore most properly applied to the man who "' does" the best for himself. Now which of two beings thus does the best for himself, he who does it particularly for that part of him which, in a few days, he is to abandon forever, or he who does it to the part which is eter- nally to abide by him? O practical men, judge ye. The most perfect spirituality of aim, moreover, is not violated by any decent and orderly attention to the claims of the body. Only let the house be not more beautified than the tenant, the servant fed and adorned above his master, and then no one in his senses can quarrel because either the servant or the house is well sustained for the master's highest good. It is, no doubt, the perversion of this principle which has caused the word "visionary," most righteously belonging, by its first title, to souls of the grandest in- sight, to be held, together with the idea which it con- veys, in contempt even by serious and thoughtful men. Shallow persons, urging that claim to notoriety through extravagance, which they were aware they could not press to celebrity by greatness, have been disgusting humanity with their absurdities from the time that Di- page: 278-279[View Page 278-279]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 278-279 278 THE HASHEESH EATER*. ogenes coiled himself in his tub down to the era of the last apostle who blew his trumpet through Broadway., They have all glorified themselves with the name "vis- ionary;" when the radiant mantle fell from -the shoul- ders of the last ascending prophet who had worn it in reverence, it was snatched by the ancestor of all the unseemly clan-it cloaked the rags of his spiritual beggary during his lifetime, and at his decession it was handed down through every succeeding generation of impostors. No better proof could be adduced for its primeval authentic dignity than the fact that there has never, within the memory of man, been a pseudo-poet, pseudo-philanthropist, or a pseudo- with any other termination, who has not tenaciously clung to the epi- thet as his birthright, his mark of the elect, his cross of the Legion of Honor. We can not wonder at the astonishment expressed by Rogers, that most substantial banker of a most substantial country, when, after Byron -had dined with him, for the sake of the spiritual man, upon one pota- to and a glass of water, refusing all the English cheer set prodigally before him, the moneyed man finds that, within the next hour, his brother bard has dispatched a steak and a bottle of Port at his club-house! Yet this assumption of the spiritual where it does not exist---this' counterfeit presentment of the true vis- ionary, certainly ought not, among thinking men' at least, to discredit the real fact. There are, doubtless, more than one who, when they have heard this fine- word rung mournfully from -some old watchi-tower of conventional respectability, as the knell of all confidence, all position; all esteem among THE VISIONARY, ETC. 279 men, or echoing portentously from the tripod of Sir Oracle, big with evil omen to an unendorsed theory, have sighed for the ancient days when it beautified the threnody over a dead seer, or pealed from the lips of harpers as they sang the forecast of a living sage. To its old place the "visionary" will never be re- stored until knaves cease to make it their claim to spurious reverence, or good men refrain from looking at every theory as unsafe which does not base its re- quest for their attention upon some tendency to promote a bodily good or explain a bodily fact. If the former can not, is it possible that the latter may not be? For him who shall reinstate that word there is a noble meed waiting in the future. The man who leaps into a stream and brings his drowning brother safe to shore is rewarded by the Humane Society with a medal, which he is proud to hand down to his children as their best inheritance. If we are true men, Truth is brother to us all, and the representative of a great and good idea is Truth. Help! then, help! until some one comes who shall plunge even into the waves of shame, wherein this word is sinking, and draw it aland to its old place in the reverence of just thinkers. Yerily he shall not lose his reward. But he must be a man of calm nerve as well as bold stroke; as able to take full in his face the outrageous pelting of the spray, as to wear the medal when he has wiped off the drops. Then shall the soul be held worthier than the body, not only in-, but outside of the pale of speculative theology, and "Then comes the statelier Eden back to man; Then springs the crowning race of human kind May these things be!" 1' * page: 280-281[View Page 280-281]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 280-281 280 THE TASHEERSH EATER. XXV. QCate iucrrebanea. I Mr not aware of the existence of any in this part of the world who are now in the habit of using ha- sheesh. Those persons to whom, at their request, I formerly administered it, for experiment's sake, were satisfied with the one trial, upon my assuring them that any prolonged indulgence would infallibly lead to horrors. Yet, since it is not at all impossible that these pages may meet the eye of those who, unknown to me, are incipient hasheesh-eaters, or who, having tested to the full the powers of the drug, now find its influence a slavery, yet are ignorant of the proper means of eman- cipation, I will not let this opportunity pass for sug- gesting, through a somewhat further narrative of my own case, a counsel which may chance to be salutary. The hasheesh-eater needs particularly to resist the temptation of retreating, in the trials of his slow disen- thrallment, to some other stimulus, such as liquors or opium. Against such a retreat I was warned by the same adviser whose article in the Magazine had been my prime motor to escape. As in an early part of this narrative it has been mentioned, strong experimental tendencies had led me, long before the first acquaintance with hasheesh, to in- vestigate the effect of all narcotics and stimulants, not so much with a view to pleasure as to the discovery CAVE SUCCEDANEA. 281 of new phases of mental life. Among these research- es had been opium. This drug never affected me very powerfully, not in one instance producing any thing like hallucination, but operating principally through a quiet which no external circumstances could disturb- slightly tinged, when my eyes were shut, with pleas- ing images of scenery. Its mild effect was probably owing to 'some resistant peculiarity of constitution, since I remember having once taken a dose, which I afterward learned, upon good authority, to have been sufficient to kill three healthy men, without any re- markable phenomena ensuing. Several considerations operated with me to prevent my making opium an ha- bitual indulgence, besides this fact of its moderate po- tency. This, of itself, might not have been sufficient, since the capability which I acquired in its use of sustaining the most prolonged and severe fatigue was in my case unexampled. In the first place, I was secured from enslavement by the terrors of De Quincey's suffering. I felt as- sured that he had not unmasked the half of it, since his exquisite sense of the refined and the appropriate in all communion with the public, showing itself in a thousand places throughout his works, had evidently withheld him, in his confessions, from giving to the painful intaglio that deep stroke of the graver which he thought that good taste would not permit, even un- der sanction of truth. Again, a consideration of more narrow prejudice withheld me-the impossibility, if I should use opium, of concealing the fact from my associates, some of whom were pliysicians, and hardly any of them so un- page: 282-283[View Page 282-283]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 282-283 282 THE HASHEK-sH EATER. observing as not to be attracted curiously to the pecu- liarities of the opium eye, complexion, and manner. At this time the reputation of being an opium-eater was one very little desirable in the community which included me, had its further abominable consequences been recklessly put aside. It was impossible for any one known to have used the drug to make any intel- lectual effort whatever, speech, published article, or brilliant conversation, without being hailed satirically as Coleridge le petit, or De Quincey in the second edi- tion. That this was not altogether a morbid condi- tion of public sentiment in the microcosm where I dwelt, may be inferred from a fact which, occurring a few months before I entered it, had no doubt acted to tinge general opinion. A certain person, in reading "The Confessions," had gathered from them (it would be hard to say how, since their author every where expresses the opium state as one whose serenity is repulsive to all action for the time being) that he should be able to excel De Quincey upon his own field if he wrote while at the height of the effect. Setting apart one evening for the English opium-eater's literary discomfiture, he drank his laudanum, and locked himself into his room alone with the awful presence of a quire of foolscap. On the following morning, his friends, knocking at the door repeatedly, received no answer, and, fearful of some accident, broke in the lock. Lo! our De Quin- cey in petto was seated in his chair, with pen in hand, and his forehead resting upon a blank mass of paper, in all the abandon of innocent repose! After the final abandonment of hasheesh, however, CAVE SUCCEDANEA. 283 at times, when distress had reduced me to- the willing- ness to test any relief save that of return, I once or twice tried the effect of opium. It was invariably bad, not operating, as a renewal of the hasheesh indulgence would have done, to lift me into the former plane of pleasurable activity and interest in things about me, but singularly combining with whatever of the ha- sheesh force might be remaining in my system to cover me once more with the pall which made the worst parts of the old life so painful. Insane faces glared at me; dire voices of prophecy spoke to me even when wide awake; I was filled with foreboding of some im- pending wrathful visitation, and learned to my sor- row that I was only exchanging one bitter cup for an- other. As the opium-influence never approximated the authority of a fascination over me, I willingly and finally abjured it as an impossible relief. It was some time after this that my constitution, broken down by hard work, which, corporeally, to use an intensely idiomatic term, was much more "cruel on me" than hasheesh had been at its most nerve- racking stages, demanded not only rest, but something immediately tonic. The former was easily attained by closing my connection with the educational "Knight of the Rueful Countenance"--a connection which all the while had not been chemical, like that of an acid with a base, but mechanical, like that of a force with a lever. The latter (the tonic) was to be found ulti- mately in exercise; but, for the sake of more instan- taneous relief from debility, at the advice of a physi- cian, I had recourse to spirits. A very short trial of their effect having convinced me that their stimulus page: 284-285[View Page 284-285]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 284-285 284 THE HASHEESH EATER. was as dangerous as opium, I abandoned this also as a means of relief. The experiment made with it re- newed, sometimes for two days together, the clarity, though not the exquisite beauty of the hasheesh vision- ary state, and repeated, in due succession, its ideal sufferings of night and daylight. Thus taught that every possible stimulus of any power must invariably act as auxiliary to the partially routed forces of my foe, I called -in no more treacher- ous helps from without, but went single-handed to the fight, armed only with patience and friendly sym- pathies. Since learning this lesson, the progress into recov- ery has been by slow degrees, yet a progress after alL Ever and anon, a return of the former suffering has made it necessary to spend half the night in, walking; but the sense that every step forward was also a step, however infinitesimal, upward, is a greater relief than the possibility of once more journeying through the rosiest realms of the former hasheesh happiness. At least for the present-as a proviso to the proposition let this be added--for he who has once looked upon great glories can not but hope to behold them again, when nature is freed from all the grossness which makes them painful in the present state, and they shall come to him, not through walls which they must melt to make a passage-way, but like the sunlight, which, falling joyously and harmlessly, bathes the fore- head of the little child asleep. NOTES ON THE WAY UPWARD, IT is the author of "The Golden Dagon," one of our most original and interesting American books of travel, who gives to Boodh, as the deity of eternal ab- sorption, the most appropriate title with which he has ever, to my knowledge, been glorified. He calls him "The Stagnant Calm."' As I read it, such peculiar relevancy did this title seem to hold to one part of my own experience, that, but for occasional twinges of re- maining humanity, remembered as having afflicted me about that time, I should have yielded to the convic- tion that I had myself then been an incarnation of Boodh. Hitherto my narrative has been of spell and counter-spell; of ecstasies bought on this side of Ache- ron, where the market was low, and paid for on the other side, where the rate of exchange is diabolic; of the checkered days of'indulgence, and the one starless night of abandonment. It was during this latter pe- riod that the Boodhist state occurred. For many a month before I had been bathed in the springs of a fiery activity. I had lived in ether. Every sense had been worked at its highest power, the sense of the body; and the unspeakably more energetic sense of the imagination. Now the exalting agency was removed. I have said how I suffered, affirmatively, from its lack in preter- page: 286-287[View Page 286-287]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 286-287 286 THE HASHEESH EATER. natural nightmares, in disgust at what seemed to me the lifeless forms of the outer world, in countless modes of pain and weariness, whose detail would be only less disagreeable to my reader than originally grievous to me. Far be it from me to recount these things again; indeed, for the past I have sometimes feared that I owed an apology, and might be expected to say, with him who had reduced courtliness to a science, "Pardon me, gentlemen, that I am so long in dying." But, negatively, as the months of trial went on, I came into a state which, had it been pain, would have made me fear less for myself. Gradually, after hav- ing for a long time known what it was to say, "Now I Am perfectly wretched," occurred seasons whose in- tervals constantly lessened when I said, "Now I am totally null." It was not happiness any more than the rolling of a ball is sustained motion; like it, I went on mechanically by the not utterly extinct momentum of a removed force. This force, too, was an hourly retarded one. There was constantly less and less hope, less volition, less interest, and the only offset to this negation was the opposite negation of disagreeable emotions. I did not despair, because there seemed nothing to despair of. What should I do-? Often (for this state of non- entity was only occasional as yet) I was visited by stern self-reprovings, admonitions to bestir myself spir- itually as well as mechanically, threatenings of a final absorption into utter listlessness unless I resorted to some immediate means for quickening the pulses of thought and action. Good people told me to sleep; Nature was reading NOTES ON THE WAY UPWARD. 287 me a lesson upon the curative properties of quiet. Good people, I could not sleep. I should never wake up again. Moreover, I attended another church of Nature's, where the lesson for the day was, "He that will not work, neither let him eat ;" and the margin was illuminated, not with cherubs like Raphael's, who have nothing to do except to rest their chins upon their palms, but with certain others, sitting in rows upon a bench, diversifying their hopeless stare at the topmost pippins of the tree of knowledge by the fur- tive conveyance, from pocket to pocket, of a baser vari- ety of apple, smuggled into school for the stay and con- solation of the outer man which perisheth with the using, This being the exact state of things until I left be- hind me, with my fulfilled responsibilities, that por- tentous and uncomfortable ghost, in whom my previ- ous relations had forced me to behold Duty most ec- centrically making herself incarnate, there were strong reasons for activity, besides its necessity as an energy of existence. In dissolving my connection with the portent, the latter reason still remained, and the ques- tion was how to satisfy it. There was no further possibility of seeking activity in a research through supernatural passages. Stimu- lus had been abjured; the accumulation of mental facts, to serve as food for wonder, under its influence, was finished. Reason, Right, Will, all asserted this. There remained for me but one expedient. This was to take the facts already secured, and dis- cover, if possible, their meaning, their relations to each other; to crystallize them around the axis of some page: 288-289[View Page 288-289]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 288-289 288 THE HASHEESH EATER. hypothesis, and determine what they taught of the op- erations of their source, the mind. It was in this way that I kept up the vital heat of thought for months, and battled against an all-benumb- ing lethargy. The results of this practice I now go on to give, without any pretension to group them into a system; not only lack of time, but of a sufficiently broad basis of experiment having prevented that. If I shall seem to have fixed the comparative positions of even a few outposts of a strange and rarely-visited realm, I shall think myself happy. To travel farther into the, interior, even for the sake of science, would have required a heroism wearing the guise, as looked at in different directions, of the martyr or the suicide. Of the first of these titles I did not hold myself worthy, nor of the last desirous. How far hasheesh throws light upon the most in- telior of the mental arcana is a question which will be dogmatically decided in two diametrically opposite ways. The man who believes in nothing which does not, in some way, become tangent to his bodily organs will instinctively withdraw himself into the fortress of what he supposes to be antique common sense, and cry "-madman!" from within. He will reject all of experience under stimulus, and the facts which it -has professedly evolved as truth, with the final and unan- swerable verdict of insanity. There is another class of men which has its type in him who, while acknowledging the corporeal senses as very important in the present nutriment and muniment of our being, is convinced that they give him appeare ances alone; not things as they are in their essence NOTES ON THE WAY UPWARD. 289 and their law, classified harmoniously with reference to their source, but only as they affect him through the different adits of the body. This man will be prone to believe that Mind, in its prerogative of the only self- conscious being in the universe, has the right and the capacity to turn inward to itself for an answer to the puzzling enigmas of the world. Mind, infinite Mind, to be sure, created them and must have known their law; as an inference, Mind, though finite, may still in- terrogate its own phenomena for the reasons of outer existences which, however grand, are far less majestic than itself, and may obtain a clew proportionally per- feet. Arguing thus, the man, albeit a visionary, will rec- ognize the possibility of discovering from mind, in some of its extraordinarily awakened states, a truth, or a col- lection of truths, which do not become manifest in his every-day condition. From this man, a few such pages as these may hope for a candid reading, if not for total assent. Nor am I anxious to repel the charge of insanity which may be brought against the facts evolved by a hasheesh delirium. Indeed, the exaltation, in this nar- rative, has been repeatedly called an insanity. I only wish- to be- understood as believing that into some sub- jects the insane man can look farther than the sane. Let not idiocy here be confounded with insanity. The former is the extinction of all faculties ; the latter, the extraordinary development of one faculty or a group of faculties, while the others lie comparatively dor- mant. In the same way, therefore, that the characteristics page: 290-291[View Page 290-291]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 290-291 290 THE HASHEESH EATER. of the plant are sought, not in the microscopic fila- ments and tissues of the germ (although they truly ex- ist there), but in the expanded individual of the spe- cies, we may, more legitimately and with muchl better hope of success, search out the law of a given mental organ in its unusually than its usually developed state. fabnrintl4s anb (Gibing 1reabzo. GENTLE reader- not to make this one of my specu- lations more labyrinthine than nature, for I hate un- natural mysteries-I will not, after the manner of an oracle, leave my title undefined until the sequel, but will here tell thee that the " labyrinths" are our bodily senses through which the outer world wanders in to commune with the soul. For a little while let us wander in together after the manner of the world, and if the clew of my speculation bring us not to the pen- etralia as surely as that of Ariadne, we may at least promise ourselves a safe-conduct out again. Let us try to discover the kind of communion which the world and the soul are holding together, and the manner in which they hold it. Long before I had known hasheesh, and walked its weird uplands in pursuit of the secrets of mind, a revelation flashed upon me which, by its powers of amazement and perplexity, made the time and place of its occurrence forever memorial within me. It was a revelation in the same way that lightning is a revela- tion, clear in itself, yet showing hitherto unknown hills of unbroken midnight in the distance. While yet a "ABYRINTHS AND GUIDING THREADS. 291 mere boy, I was standing one afternoon by the side of two thinkers who talked metaphysics without taking me into their counsels, for they had no thought of my busying myself with any thing but the outside of na- ture as I met her laughing in my rambles. "Yes, it is beyond dispute that our senses give us only appearances and not things-certain qualities of the- essence, not the essence out of which they rise." In these words there was nothing to frighten a mind of ordinarily reflective habits; no barricade of " sub- jective" and "objective," or any thing else technical which I had not yet learned to scale. I was smitten with a sudden interest; I did not perfectly appreciate the meaning of the sentence, but wandered to a little distance to sit down and think it over till I had made it mine. There was a meaning there which held out the strongest fascinations to discovery. "Our senses give us only appearances, qualities, and not things." Perhaps, thought I, this is only a sophism hurled down as a sort of challenge for argu- ment. These metaphysicians love to argue. Of course, I did not have to look far for a test. I was leaning against a tree, and Sense, in the support given me by its trunk, seemed to be triumphantly as- serting her acquaintance with things--stanch and, stout things at that. But hold! I said to myself; what do I find out in leaning here, which makes me think that I have found a thing? Why, resistance, hardness, to be sure. And it is a fact, these are qualities only. But this is noth- ing but feeling; let me try the senses of smell and taste. By applying nose and tongue to the tree, I per- page: 292-293[View Page 292-293]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 292-293 292 THE HASHFRESH EATER. ceived a fresh woody savor-quality stifl! I put my ear to the tree and struck it: still nothing but quality resulted, the capability to beget sound. I began to be alarmed for the dignity of the Sense, as I saw her chance of proving herself worthy of my past consider- ation narrowed down to one single organ--the eye. Alas for her! Quality still-a brown tint, a faculty of transmitting certain rays of light, and absorbing others. It seems strange now, but it is true that, with my knife, I began blazing the side of the tree, with a sort of fond flattery of the Sense that, though the qual- ities lay in the bark, , the thing" was to be detected lurking underneath. In a moment, however, I laughed perplexedly, realizing that I could make the matter no better if I hacked the tree through. Here ended my first lesson upon the domain of the senses. I know that this incident in itself can claim no such interest as to make it part of an experience which one man, without obtrusiveness, may press upon another's ear; but I have related it, believing that it may recall to some reader here and there the circum- stances under which he made the same discovery. Still further, I mention it, since it may be a sort of common ground of sympathy between author and read- er, upon which will be better understood something which I wish to say upon the philosophic sufferings of a great mind which it is our duty to appreciate as well as (and indeed in order to) pity. David Hume, after having been feted, buried, and reviewed, has been quietly laid upon the shelf by many serious men of the present century, in that especial niche devoted to " celebrated infidels." According to "ABYRINTHS AND GUIDING THREADS. 293 our different acceptance of the term, this verdict will be just or unjust. If just, a careful and discriminat- ing generation ought to manifest their coincidence with it by permitting him to lie under the index of obloquy. If unjust, the sentence will, sooner or later, infallibly be reversed, and whatever light, however slight a pen- cil any man possesses for the illustration of the mat- ter, is due no less to truth than to the shade of a phi- losopher. Infidelity properly classifies itself under two divi- sions-infidelity of the heart and infidelity of the in- tellect. The first of these is a malignant displeasure at truth for the obligations which it imposes upon life. It begins in a powerfully-felt repulsion between right- eousness and the selfish will; it sometimes goes avow- edly no farther, but leaves a man unjust, licentious, and in all respects, where the prudence of selfishness does not itself curb him, totally iniquitous. In the case, however, of those who have carried on the offensive warfare of infidelity, one step farther has been taken, an utter and public rejection, namely, of the claims of truth upon self-interest. With this step has been conferred the degree, if I may so speak, of Grand Master of the Order of Heart Infidelity. It is not necessary that the man thus advanced should be pre-eminent, even above believers, in the prodigal grati- fication of passion and interest; temperament, society, a multiplicity of circumstances may serve as steering oars to his course, but circumstances only will direct him. The impelling force to any imaginable excess is present with him, and the certain compass of a felt ob- ligation is gone. According to circumstances, he will 1,. page: 294-295[View Page 294-295]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 294-295 294 THE HASHEESH EATER. go large before the wind with the graceful curvetings of a Bolinghroke, -or -stagger in a drunken sea like Paine. The infidelity of the intellect is an entirely different thing. It arises, not from a hatred, but from an incor- rect apprehension of truth. ! When we remember how fundamental a part of hu- man nature it is to systematize the dicta both of the written and the unwritten revelations, to build up the fragmentary formulas which express the manifold rela- tions of our being into something like an orderly edi- fice, we must wonder, not so much that error infallibly vitiates to an extent more or less fatal some part of the workmanship, as that any structure so far resists gravity as not to tumble down. Not that this imperfec- tion is to be ascribed to the habit of systematizing, but to the fact that it is human nature which systematizes -human nature, which never in any one age sweeps all truth in a comprehensive view and realizes at once the tendencies of opinions, but of necessity looks at half truths through a distorting medium, and sees only the present result of speculations. A corner-stone laid awry, some premise whose falsity is unnoticed because -it has the sanction of antique opinion, may render tile whole superstructure out of line and unstable, although it be reared by the most cautious workmen with un- sparing scrutiny of square and plummet. In a former century, while men were contented merely with the foundation walls of a system, it mattered little whether every block was laid with perfect accuracy; there was as yet no edifice to be affected in its permanency by the error of the ground-work. But when, in the course * "ABYRINTHS AND GUIDING THREADS. 295 of time, " other men builded thereon," accepting it with perfect faith as the careful structure of a master whose name was spoken reverently among men, what wonder that they pointed afterward to the marks of consider- ateness and caution with which they had built up their secondary walls of inference into a philosophy, as a proof that they must necessarily be stable and faultless, however much some of their compeers doubted it, though refusing to acknowledge any fault in the foundation? The infidels of intellect have as often resulted from arguing logically upon some falsehood, hitherto univer- sally accepted as a truism, as from any distortion of real truths or sophistical deductions from good grounds. That, if Hume was an infidel, he became one thus, we think it easy to show. Almost as easy is it to prove that, properly speaking, he was not an infidel at all. As a central point for the consideration of Hume's infidelity, let us take the year 1746, the year in which he stood candidate for the Edinburgh chair of Moral Philosophy, and by the vote of the authorities (no doubt with the most perfect propriety) was defeated on ac- count of his views of religion. Against the action which excluded him from a professorship so rigorously demanding an incumbent of Spartan principles upon the subject which was to be his speciality, certainly no thinking man can have aught to say. The fact of the exclusion is mentioned merely for the sake of determ- ining some date when his bias was generally recog- nized among the people, who had treated with such neg- lect his "Treatise on Human Natture," published nine years before. In 1746, then, he had reaped the title of infidel. page: 296-297[View Page 296-297]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 296-297 296 THE HASHEESH EATER. For at least half a century previous, the speculative mind of the greater part of Europe (dynamically as well as numerically greater) had been under the domin- ion of John Locke, whose "Essay upon the Human Understanding" had been brought to light in 1690. It is perhaps rather an insincere compliment to speak of any mind as " speculative" which expatiated mere- ly within his prescribed area. The system which bore his name is too well known to ask a statement, es- pecially within these limits. Its parent he could hard- ly be called; certainly not with any more justice than we could ascribe to the man who casually remarks that it is a cloudy day the parentage of that meteor- ological phenomenon. His system consists mainly hi the discovery that people generally get such and such ideas about their thinking faculty; that the said peo- ple have pretty nearly hit the nail on the head, and that he is glad to tell them so; all authenticated by John Locke, his mark. The majority of mankind at- tend to the knowledge secured through their bodily or- gans more closely than to any other; they elaborate truth by thinking upon this knowledge; and thus all truth comes to us through the organs, modified to a greater or less extent by reflection. In fine, sense, and reflection on its data, the sources of all knowledge, form the governing principle, the "articulum stantis aut cadentis ecclesime" of the Lockian philosophy. Into this philosophy Hume, like all the other con- temporary minds of his nation, was born as regularly as into the monarchical form of government. It was the nursery of his childhood and the school of his youth; his mind, when it wanted exercise, must run "ABYRINTHS AND GUIDING THREADS. 297 out and play in John Locke's small back yard, or not stretch its limbs at all. Now there came a time when David Hume arrived at the very same point of speculation which I have previously mentioned as reached, on my supposition, by most of us who think. Let us see how he reason- ed. Suppose him in soliloquy: "I find that my senses give me nothing but the phenomena of things-tell me merely how objects act upon me. My eye acquaints me with color and out- line; my ear with vibrations of diverse intensities; and so on with all the rest of the organs. All give qualities of things, operations which things have a capability to perform on me, appearances of things, but never things themselves. How do I know that they do not? By reflection, certainly; reflection on the data afforded by sense. But why do we all believe, and act upon the belief, that we see, hear, feel, smell, and taste things? It must no doubt be sense that tells us so; that is the only conjoint source of knowl- edge with reflection. Then I have within me, and so has every one else, two exactly opposite verdicts. I do lmow things, and I do not know them. Now which is the lie?" Hume did not decide. He did not pretend to stand arbiter between these two conflicting juries, which Locke fifty years before had impanneled to settle in- fallibly, and without appeal, all the questions of hu- man science. He only hung in perfect equipoise be- tween the reality and the nonentity of all being, him- self necessarily included. He became, as a strictly logical consequence of that teaching which he had N 2 page: 298-299[View Page 298-299]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 298-299 298 THE HASHEESH EATER. drunk with his mother's milk, and which he would have rejected as much in peril of being called an un- natural son by all his contemporaries, a Pyrrhonist, a universal doubter. And who, in the name of all can- dor, was the -parent of his Pyrrhlonism? Who but John Locke, who, while a believer himself, because he did not bowl far enough in his own direction, had nev- ertheless opened up an easy track to the most compre- hensive system of skepticism in the universe. There may be those who will think that we have made out no better case for Hume by proving him a skeptic than an infidel. What difference exists, they ask, between doubting and disbelieving? Every pos- sible difference. Belief and unbelief are often wrongly taken as antipodes merely on account of their antago- nistic sound, and doubting is often confounded with the latter. Unbelief is, in fact, the same mental act as belief, directed by evidence or passion to a different set of statements. Doubt recognizes an equiponder- ance of evidence, or a total lack of evidence on both sides. Now the impulses of hate, pride, and a thou- sand others may bear a man's belief one way or an- other, and so vitiate the sincerity of a judgment which ought to found itself calmly on proof. Doubt, where it is real, can never be thus produced by impulse. To sit upon the exact centre of the beam, it must be calm. Therefore, so far as any man is a sincere skeptic, so far is he proved guiltless of the charge of hostility to either side. I do not assert this perfect calm for Hume. In the present imperfect condition of humanity we act so uni- versally frpm intricately mixed motives, that it would "ABYRINTHS AND GUIDING THREADS. 299 not be safe to assert a purely ideal sincerity for any one. Doubtless Hume was influenced in the after maintenance of his Pyrrhonist principles by many of those partisan considerations which weigh with us all. But in the first susception of his doubt, acting, as he did, upon the every-where' acknowledged basis that Locke was right, no man could have been more logical, more calmly, philosophically sincere. Ratiocination, and not hostility to religion, was the original cause of his skepticism. It is particularly unfortunate for a man when he is thrown into the society of those who, by flattering that in him which his better nature feels to be a blem- ish and a disadvantage, if not a crime, lull his pain at -its existence, and even persuade him to believe that it is his honor. We have to observe an exemplification of such misfortune in Hume, who, but for being lauded and feted as the Coryphaeus of infidels, for whom he felt no cordial attraction, might have outlived his skep- ticism through draughts of a better philosophy, or, at least, have kept it to himself as his most mournful secret. Allowing himself to be applauded as the infidel which he was not, he fortified within himself the skep- tic which he was; but that he never made a whole- hearted consecration of himself, as some would misrep- resent him, to the cause of a malignant and offens- ive unbelief, is evident from many facts in his history; such, for instance, was his indignant rebuff of the pert wife of the atheist Mallet, who took the liberty of in- troducing herself to him at a soiree: "We free-think- ers ought to know each other, Mr. Hume." "I am no page: 300-301[View Page 300-301]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 300-301 300 THE- HASHEESH EATER. free-thinker, madam ;" and, turning on his heel, he strode angrily away, There is a letter of his, also, which I only quote from memory, in which he exhibits the man he would have been if left alone, declaring that he never sat down to a game of chess with a friend, and thus threw off his logical panoply, without feeling his doubts vanish and the reality of things return. Yet this very letter has been quoted in evidence of his insincerity, because, it is said, he was forced to reason that he might support his doubts. But what if reasoning infallibly sustain- ed them? Was he to trust in Hume playing chess or in Hume reasoning? By his unnatural conjunction with infidels, he sub- jected himself to bear the obloquy of their praise. By their praise, an antagonist spirit of denunciation was excited in the society of believers. Denounced, he must reply, for the sake of his pride and his partisans. And thus, from the sincerely perplexed doubter, he came to be considered, and in a certain, though a far less degree to be, the sneering foe of Christianity. I have dwelt thus long upon Hume and the circum- stances which have tended to give him his present rep- utation, and to set upon him the stamp of an odium in many respects unjust, because he is an example not less striking than painful of the evil which may be wrought for a man by some unnoticed error in his men- tal philosophy. How easily an error which is the germ of all things hurtful may escape the notice of. men who accept without examining, can be seen from the fact that the good John Locke (for he was good) was qrever advised of the skeptical inference from his "ABYRINTHS AND GUIDING THREADS. 301 doctrine, but died as perfectly satisfied with it as he had lived. Most gratefully do I remember that, at the time of my first discovery of the legitimate domain of the senses, I was not left, like many others in similar case, and Hume-as the representative of them all, to retreat hopelessly into a negation of all knowledge. It is the privilege and the glory of this day that its dominant philosophy is Transcendental. Much as this word, like its kindred visionary, is in the mouth of hawkers of theological small ware-much as it has been applied, by a perversion, to all systems of error and nonsense-much as it has been branded for a -stig- ma upon the forehead of thinkers who would not travel in a go-cart, the idea which it represents has been the regeneration of speculative philosophy. The Trans- cendentalists are, indeed, climbers over, as their name signifies, yet not over sound reasoning nor the definite principles of truth, but over that ring-fence of knowl- edge brought in through mere physical passages, with which a tyrannous oligarchy of reasoners would cir- cumscribe all our wanderings in search of facts and laws. Older than its oldest historic supporting names, Transcendentalism still found champions in the more enfranchised minds of Greece, and from them we come per saltum to its German champions of the latter half of the last, and the elapsed half of the present century. Kant, awakened, as there is some reason to think, by the very perplexity which set boundaries to the mind of IIume, stands forth as the resurrectionist of the long- buried idea, and is followed, with more or less non- page: 302-303[View Page 302-303]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 302-303 302 THE HASHEEStH EATER. I essential departure from his main track, by Fichte, Hiegel, and Schelling; for, although the first of the trio! may be styled a pure idealist, he follows Kant pre-em- inently in ,the assertion of far higher grounds of knowl- edge than the sense. It is complained that these men,I and chief of all Kant, are unintelligible; that their phraseology is cumbrous and obscure. It is not dif-i ficult, however, for any mind in charity with the di- P rection of their efforts to see abundant reason why it - I should be so. In the first place, while their language (when they did not write in Latin, and when they did their Ger-X man modes of thought still went with them) is the most plastic in the world to all the moulds of mind, while it admits of endless word-compounding to give roundness or definiteness to ideas, still, from this very fact, it tends toward obscurity, for the reason that the compounds so lengthen a sentence as to make it very difficult to carry the meaning from beginning to end. In the second place, it is to be remembered that the ideas which these men had to communicate were to a great extent new-new even to one who looked at them fragmentarily--new particularly in their combinations as a system. They who set them forth were the pi- oneers of Transcendentalism; they had nothing ready to their hand, nothing open or clear; and the first en- trance into a territory is always of necessity by a rug- ged path; it is for those who enter into their labors, who come in upon the ground which they have opened, to attend to grading the causeway. First the military road, after that the turnpike. As well may we quar- rel with Captain John Smith for not laying a railway, "ABYRINTHS AND GUIDING THREADS. 303 through the forests of Virginia, as with Kant for not smoothing the passage into a philosophy through which j he was the first traveler. It was enough for him that he had grappled with great ideas and fixed them; let X his successors attend to polishing their surface. Third, it has been put out of sight by the prevalence of a philosophy which calls itself that of common sense, but is much worthier of being named that of common- place, that metaphysics is as true and distinct a sci- ence as chemistry, with its own peculiar and inaliena- ble ideas, and in virtue of that prerogative demands, both as necessity and right, symbols to express its ideas which shall be its own exclusive property. Let the phrases of distinction, " objective" and "( subject- ive," be an example. "Objective" is every thing i which, in the processes of mind, is not myself, but ex- traneous to me; " subjective," all that is myself, and my own individual part of the operation. Now the sense philosophy could have no possible use for any such words as these, since it recognizes nothing but - paper distinction between a man and his objects for all purposes of perception, all his knowledge being gained through sense, and flowing into him as its passive re- ceptacle. So sense philosophy sneers at such tech- nical phraseology as pedantic. But, supposing it capa- ble of requiring some symbols- for such ideas, it would most likely adopt "outward" and "inward." For speculations, or rather assertions, so little analytic and accurate as its own, these might do well enough; but how inert, how useless, how vague would they be where any subtle mental fact was to be definitely ex- pressed. We wish to give the idea of the mind as ex- i page: 304-305[View Page 304-305]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 304-305 304 THE HASHEESH EATER. amined by itself.' Transcendentalists call this treat- ing the mind '( objectively." Our sense men would be compelled to say, treating it "outwardly." How definite would be the idea conveyed in that! When we complain of the sailor for speaking of his masts as spars, instead of calling them sticks, to meet the comprehension of some land-lubber who will not take the pains to learn practical navigation--when the chemist is sneered at for saying crucible instead of pot -when, in fine, public opinion shall compel all men to talk of the delicacies of their arts in street slang or boudoir twaddle, then, and not till then, will it be time to deride the science, wherein, more than all others, rigorous exactitude of expression is required, for hav- ing a peculiar, even though it be not a universally in- telligible language. This talk about the pedantry of metaphysics is something which the age should be ashamed of as behind it, yet even now we occasion- ally light upon some reviewer who; in strains of touch- ing pathos, laments to the public that he finds it im- possible to read Hickok's Rational Psychology to his wife of an evening on account of the doctor's pedantic technicality, which makes him a sealed book even to that gifted woman. In general, it is safe to lay down this proposition as a rule: first look cursorily over a book upon Mind, to see whether its general character for neatness and sys- tem proves that its author is neither fool nor sloven; and then, reading it through carefully and with can- dor, you will find that in proportion to its technical- ity is it the repository of new and deeper truths. This, of course, is to -be understood of those books on Mind "ABYRINTHS AND GUIDING THREADS. 305 which, according to De Quincey's division in his cri- tique on Pope, belong to the literature of knowledge, and not the literature of power. The same habit of mental indolence, which is loosening the cords of our American literature-the loving such books as read themselves to us while we lie half asleep on a sofa; the greed for dainties which may be swallowed whole, and which tickle at a moment's warning-this habit-it is which has deprived of nine tenths of his legitimate number of readers such a man, for instance, as Hickok. Almost the only real metaphysician of America, per- haps the greatest now living any where, and worthy to be classed with the strongest and deepest thinkers of any age or land, he has, in his own country, about as many intelligent and appreciative readers as Pythag- oras had of esoteric disciples. There is reason to fear that men love better to investigate how muslins, hay-rakes, and, above all and inclusive of all, money may be made, than how their own minds are con- structed. One might almost be content to leave them and their preference alone, on the ground that they are the best judges of the respective value of their own several commodities. Great reason have I to be thankful,--again I say, that I was suckled at the breast of Transcendentalism. I am doubtless not without sympathy in others when I say that the first moment when it flashed upon me how in the Reason might be found the laws and the essences of things, and that we were not confined for our knowledge to the mere ungrouped and unsettled appearances of the Sense, was like a revelation; it ex- page: 306-307[View Page 306-307]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 306-307 306 THE HASHEESH EATER. panded and dignified the soul with a sudden access of glories such as no earthly kingship could give. At that moment spirit appeared to me for the first time something more than the hopeless bond-slave of mat- ter. For the sake of experiencing that feeling again in its full force of grand joyousness, I would like to exchange places with Locke, at the instant of his dis- embodiment, when he found out that he was mistaken. In having gone astray as a philosopher, he suddenly had all the more glorious surprise as a soul. There was one question, however, which for a long time troubled me, but to which I at length got a satis- factory, although, perhaps, most men may disagree with me in the belief that it is a true answer. This is the question, How does the outer world ever become apparent to the spirit? I could see very easily how in the Reason the lawconditioning an outer world might be found, but how did-the appearances themselves be- come known? The manner of intercourse between matter and matter, between spirit and spirit, or be- tween any two individualities of the same kind, was plain enough, or at least such an intercourse was rea- sonable. But with our views of matter and spirit, two existences in their very essence utterly dissimilar, how could they ever become tangent? Take, for instance, such a case as this: I am hit by a stone. The thrill conveyed along its appropriate nerve runs up to the brain, and here we trace its ulti- mate footprint on the material -organism. Yet an in- finitesimal instant more, and my mind has learned it, is moved to anger, and reasons for revenge or remedy. I could not see the connection by which the fact of the "ABYRINTHS AND GUIDING THREADS. 307 blow, however refined by its passage, was prolonged from matter into spirit. The books said that, on reaching the brain, the fact became a tertium quid, a third something, neither matter nor spirit, but so ethe- realized that the mind could read it. What, however, was that tertium quid? In the process of time, and by the aid of that ever to be blessed Transcendentalism which had helped me out of my earliest perplexity, I came to the conclusion that the tertium quid was a humbug, a metaphysical Mrs. Harris, upon whom the responsibility of all things impossible to be done or conceived was laid by psy- chological Mistresses Gamp. The answer which sat- isfied me was this: that there are only two kinds or modes of existence in the universe-the one, self-con- scious spirit; the other, the acts of such spirit. From these data arose such a theory of the universe as the following: The Supreme Being, as Creator of all things, is ever inactivity, according to certain eternal and universal laws of right and truth. Whatever else of self-con- scious Being exists, came forth originally as an efflux from him, but is now in its will, though not for the continuance of its separate existence, independent of his direct action. As spirit, man is capable of com- munion with the supreme spirit. Since, however, spir- it itself is in its very essence imperceptible to senses, the communion makes itself perceptible by appear- ances. These appearances, whose cause we call( "mat- ter," are therefore, in reality, but the effects of spirit's action upon spirit. In no sense, then, does any such thing as dead matter exist. It is God's thinking felt by us. page: 308-309[View Page 308-309]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 308-309 308 THE HASHEESH EATER, If it shall be said that there is no difference between this and Pantheism, let me be allowed to show how the two systems differ toto collo. I do not assert that matter is God. I say that the actor is God, and the effects of his action upon other spirit, which we call matter, are" neither God, nor in any sense self-con- scious. To make it clear, let my reader suppose him. self striking a blow. He here appears as the self-con- scious actor; yet how great an absurdity would it ap- pear to him to call the blow itself after his name, or to attribute self-consciousness to it. He would say, The act of striking is an abstract idea, to which the other idea of self-consciousness can not be pertinent. To carry out the parallel for further illustration, let us suppose this blow to fall upon the cheek of a by- stander. The man struck would gain, from the effect produced on him, a pretty correct idea of the state of the striker's feeling, notwithstanding he did not sup- pose that the blow was the striker, nor that it thought for itself. * Similarly in kind, let us suppose that the Deity is forever acting out through all the universe the princi- ples of his infinite and righteous mind. By the effects of this action he becomes known to his spiritual crea- tures, and in reality manifests the state of his mind toward them.' By such: action, in its effect upon us known as matter, he attains the only incarnation of himself for reciprocal communion which could make him known. I have said that this resolution of the problem of the Universe is the only one which ever satisfied me. The deductions which I made from it served to keep "ABYRINTHS AND GUIDING THREADS. 309 my own activity alive through many a day of suffer- ing; and thus from it, in its satisfaction and its ener- gizing, I received a double good. I will state some of the deductions. Let me be permitted, for the sake of consonance with my theory, to speak, where accuracy is wanted, of matter, known in this light as the effect of the di- vine action, under the name of Force. I do not em- ploy it in its mere mechanical sense, but as expressive of the manner of communion between two spiritual be- ings, to an extent metaphorically meaning something analogous to what in matter would be called the result of impingement. 1. In our bodily organism is one of the most cogent proofs of the Supreme good-will toward us. By his own act he has insphered us within a force, the body, which not only resists many other forces and preserves its own integrity, but, what is of much greater import- ance, modifies our reception of knowledge from with- out, and blunts the acuteness of our action within to such an extent that truth does not come to us with a fatal shock, but gradually and softened, until we are able to bear it. Viewed as a counteractive force, the body is thus one of the highest proofs of God's benig- nity, since, left in our present state of spiritual infancy without it, no lidless eyeball beneath a noonday sun might be more agonized. It is as much cause for thanksgiving as for aspiration to something clearer, that we now "see through a glass darkly." Let us not repine, for there is a reason in these half opaque and tinged panes. A sun as consuming as he is won- drously glorious is shining just outside. page: 310-311[View Page 310-311]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 310-311 310 THE HASHEESH EATER. 2. We may here find a further illustration of that which in the previous pages has been said of the sym- bolization, by every existence of the world, of some spiritual fact. The incarnation is as the essence; the universe is as it is because God lives as he lives. He is making himself felt in the effects of his communion with us. A thousand times in the year do we hear it said that every plant is an evidence of God's goodness; yet how much more amply, more nobly is this true than men generally suppose! Whatever of horror or de- formity exists in the unconscious creation, is but the manifestation of Creative displeasure at our wrong; whatever of beauty (and how prodigally is it spread abroad!) is a testimony, rich with meaning, of that benevolence which mixes its displeasure with pity, and the return of wondrous good for an evil which is only less boundless. The continuance of Niagara, with its wealth of ennobling influences, is. as speaking a proof to every man of God's good feeling to him as the con- tinuance of his life. In the millennium to which men are looking forward, how easily conceivable is it that the whole face of earth and heaven may be glorified by the literal fulfillment of our grandest prophecies and hopes; that an unblemisheda scenery, an illimita- ble luxuriance of greenness in the fields, an inspiration of beauty by every visible thing, may be the exponent of the gladness in the Great Heart above us at the res- toration into perfectness of his filial race. But our philosophy does not limit us to an analytic gaze upon the earth alone. The firmament, from our eyes onward ii all directions forever, is full of stars. "ABYRINTHS AND GUIDING THREADS. 3" Some of these, perhaps all of them, there is reason to believe are peopled; but, granting that they roll on in utter loneliness, what of that? They are there, and as they are, because God is acting grandly, wisely, and righteously, and that it is all-satisfying to know. Even now they teach us lessons nightly, speaking both of Beauty and Truth. But what if they may be, also, carrying on their far-off orbits some incarnation of an attribute of God, which, in our present state, we are not sufficiently strong to bear? It is the characteristic of the written revelation to be comprehensive. Doubtless all of God is there in the germ; yet how many a line is drawn purposely in deep shadow! We are not ready for it yet. The natural revelation, the universe, is in itself as comprehensive; but, since we can never see it all at once, to us it must necessarily be fragmentary. Thus we- now have Earth to read from; yet when we are disembodied and purified - when the incarnation through which the Divine is to come to us may with safety be made less gross than its form in the present matter, we shall learn through the stars, which have been kept waiting for us, sublimer and still sublimer truths of spirit throughout an ascending life. Well may the man who, while his utmost gaze now catches them only as gleaming points, yet rejoices in the assurance of their significant harmony, break forth, "O yet uninterpreted symbols, from afar I hail you as the promise of a truth which it is for Immor- tality to drink in! Beautiful, strange, yet not inex- plicable; even now are ye beaming links of that chain which binds me to Deity; ye shall hereafter draw me page: 312-313[View Page 312-313]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 312-313 312 THE HASHEESH EATER. close to his presence in a grander communion. Await me brightly while I calmly long for you." In the closest circle of earthly fellowship wherein I have known what it is for heart to be knit with heart, it has ever been the beautiful custom to write the dead, who, though absent, were still one with the living brotherhood, under this title, "Qui fuerunt, sed nunc ad astra." How grand a meaning may there be in this! 3: Upon the ground that all knowledge through sense may be resolved into the idea of force, there are some reasons for supposing that this force may in itself be simple, and only varied by its approach to the soul through the differently modifying organs. In fine, that sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell may be ef- fects, to speak after the common nomenclature, of the same object, or one grand effect divided into several by transmission. An inspection of the analogies of science must con- vince us that this proposition, if not apriori necessa- rily true, is, at any rate, extremely probable. The progress of philosophical research is invariably from the complex to the simple. The myriad phenomena of chemistry' are all traceable -to the action and reac- tion in various combinations of a very limited number of elements; these elements are still farther resolva- ble in their composition into still fewer and more ethe- real bodies. In the same way,0^ll the mechanical op- erations are due to differing applications of six motors; and these, by still further analysis, arrange themselves under the head of physical force. These are but two "ABYRINTHS AND GUIDING THREADS. 313 instances out of the multitude which prove the great law of simplification by research. In many a field of inquiry the philosopher has re- duced the agents effective for a given result to two or three; the next step would bring him to the all-com- prehensive unity; but no, that step can not be taken, for nature here so suddenly subtilizes the springs of her activity, that she may float just before the face of her hierophant, and laugh invisibly at baffled micro- scope and hypothesis. Yet enough is known in all departments/of investigation to prove that the tenden- cy of discovery is invariably from the vast periphery of facts inward to one single central law. Yet let us not leave the theory of the all-compre- hensive oneness of sense to -base its plausibility upon a general analogy. We are able to particularize. What reason, then,-have we, from known facts, to sup- pose all the senses directly referable to force? A brief analysis will discover most of the evidence we have. And, 1st. Touch, simply considered as the organ for determining the hardness, weight, and form of bodies. The two former will be seen to be directly resolvable into force, viz., the force of resistance, in the one case A particularized as cohesion, in the other as gravitation. The distinction of form may be also comprehended as an idea of force by the following statement. I move my hand in all directions in the plane of the horizon, and, finding it every where resisted by an equal force from below, say, "This is a flat surface." The resistance, in another instance, occurs in a dif- ferent -direction,. and I express this fact by saying sphere, cone, ellipsoid, etc., as the case may be. O page: 314-315[View Page 314-315]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 314-315 314 THE HASHEESH EATER. 2d. Sight. It is, no doubt, well known to many of my readers that, in modern times, two theories have obtained upon the action of light, or, more properly, its origination. Both of them arose or were resuscitated from antiquity in the seventeenth century, but that which bears the namd of Huygens is by a few years the earlier. This philosopher held that all luminous bodies are in a state of almost infinitely rapid, though infinitesimally small vibration; that this vibration propagates itself in all directions with an undulatory motion through an exceedingly subtle and elastic fluid, known as ether, which fills all space; that these un- dulations, impinging against any material body, bound back, or, in usual parlance, are reflected to the eye, and, striking upon the retina, give through the optic nerve, of which it is an expansion, the sensation of sight. The second theory is that of Newton, who supposed that luminous bodies are continually giving off infin- itesimal radiant particles, which, through the ethereal medium, impinge upon the eye in the. same manner and with the same effect as the light-waves of Huy- gens' theory. The former hypothesis (viz., Huygens) is that at this day entertained by the majority of savans, but the discovered laws of optics accord equally well with either. No further dissertation is necessary to show that in either case the conception of sight is resolva- ble into the idea of a perceived force. 3d. Hearing. Upon this sense there is certainly no need of enlarging, it being universally known that sound is the offspring of vibration, and therefore a "ABYRINTHS AND GUIDING THREADS. 315 force, subject in its transmission, reflection, etc., to laws precisely analogous to those of light, modified merely by the nature of the medium, viz., air or gross- er bodies, through which it travels, in contradistinction to the infinitely subtle ether which propagates light. There is, however, one analogy upon which we may dwell for a short time, which would seem greatly to strengthen the general theory that all sensations are, in their essential agency, one. The relationship between light and sound does not terminate in the fact, of itself sufficiently striking, that they both obey similar conditions of transmission and reflection. True, they each pass to the human organ, not by one unbroken leap, but by a series of waves. Literally, lightning no more darts upon the eye than the faintest beam of dawn; thunder comes undulating to the ear as truly as the softest sigh; and the light cast upon us from a mirror is only an echo through ether instead of air, But there is a far more intricate affiliation between them. In the very possibilities of their existence they are the same. Every ray of light can be com- prehended within the range of seven radical colors and the combinations of them. This law of but seven possible colors is not an accident, but a primeval and necessary accompaniment of the manner of transmis- sion. Every possible sound likewise lies between the two termini of a gamut whose number of root sounds is seven, and this septenary law of sound is as necessary as that of light. The universality with which these laws are practi- page: 316-317[View Page 316-317]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 316-317 316 THE HASHEESH EATER. cally known by means of the prism and the octave, take off, as is the case in so many other habitual mys- teries, the edge of our legitimate wonder. Yet when, for a' moment, we reflect calmly upon the fact that we may analyze light of any possible kind with the most rigid scrutiny without adding a single principal color to a fixed range of seven; that we may utter any con- ceivable sound without escaping from the same mystic boundaries; that in both cases our only changes must be rung by reduplication or blending within those ad- amantine gamut walls; when we reflect, I say, on these two truths, each fit food in itself for wonder, and find that in fact they are but one truth, and that a character- istic of sensations which we have always treated as es- sentially different, we shall have reason to confess, with amazement, a far more intimate union between sight and hearing than any of outer-coincidence. Indeed, excepting the before-mentioned difference, which their several media of travel impress upon them, philosophy can not find a mark of distinction between sight and sound. How strong a claim to interior oneness this law of seven bestows can be fully felt only by realizing how essential a law it is. So essential is it that probably, in the whole universe, it may be impossible to find a complete range of any operations which does not, in its internal nature, submit to it. I say this perfectly aware that there are insuperable obstacles, while we enjoy no more than our present development of mind, to proving this to a logical certainty. Yet the vast probability which appears to me in the proposition rests upon one fact which I have never seen noticed in "ABYRINTHS AND GUIDING THREADS. 317 connection with these senses. Doubtless it has been noticed, however, 'for from time immemorial the sig- nificancy of the number seven has employed the re- searches of philosophers and theologians. The fact is this: In the Divine philosophy of Creation, which is, at the same time, the most reverend also for age, there is a stress laid upon the importance of this num- ber as exponent of some law of completion, of perfect- ness, which, unless it be granted deeply significant, can be treated upon no middle ground between that and a puerility partaking of imposture. The sevent/h day as the one whose advent expressly witnessed the completion of the Kosmos (whatever of length we may give to the days of the creation); the impress of some secret import upon seven, by countless ceremo- nial symbols, inculcated to that people who, during the whole period of the Theocracy, held more direct communion with the Divine source of all Truth than any nation before or since; the constant recurrence, in the Word, of prophetic uses of the number, and such a phrase as this: "Wisdom hath builded her house; she hath hewn out her seven pillars:" all these seem to indicate, beyond the possibility, in my mind at least, of conceiving the contrary possible, that this number is a fundamental law of perfectness in the Universe. As such, therefore, and comprehending under its rule the two senses of sight and hearing, it proves a oneness in their essential conditions which seems ir- refutable. In some of the more intensely awakened hasheesh states, there was a great light thrown upon this subject, but, with many other views gained like page: 318-319[View Page 318-319]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 318-319 318 THE HASTFEESH EATER. it, through symbolization, on my return to the natural state it passed away from my mind forever. 4. Smell. Within the last ten years an attempt has been made by some Frenchman of speculative mind, whose name I forget, to determine for this sense a septenary gamut also, in which the only two tones that have not escaped me, to the -best of my knowl- edge, were citron and rose. If the natural existence of such a gamut could be accurately determined, it would be a great auxiliary, certainly, to our argument; but I fear that our knowledge of the catalogue and re- lations of all possible odors is so very imperfect as to make the research only a fanciful recreation. From the great variety of the objects, and the lack -of scien- tific delicacy of the sense of smell, it is a very diffi- - cult one to deal with. He who investigates it through its own instrumentality, which, of course, is the only possible method for an inductive science, is very much at the disadvantage of him who should try to dissect an animalcule with his finger nail. Yet there is, even with such obstacles in the way, a possibility of proving odor ultimately resolvable into that force which we have discovered as the common idea of the preceding senses. I have held the opin- ion, whether original with me or not I can not say, that odor, like light and sound, may be propagated by undulations; if not as the only mode, at least as one of two modes, the other of which is immediate chem- ical action upon the organ. As an argument in favor of this, I would instance the grain of musk, which, without losing weight at all appreciably, will for years renider the room in which it- is kept intolerable to its enemies. "ABYRINTHS AND GUIDING THREADS. 319 But, granting that the chemical action is its only one, this fact, so far from precluding the idea of force which we seek to make general, only illustrates it. The very chemical action is itself a force. As an ex- ample, notice the effect of some such odorous agent as makes its effect particularly marked; let us say helle- bore, which, when smelled, causes odic action of the nerve, in some cases only less powerful than that ap- propriate to galvanism. The flower of the catalpa pro- duces a similar effect upon myself, sufficiently severe to cause very troublesome bleeding; and I know sev- eral persons affected in like manner by the carnation pink and eglantine. 5. Taste. The theory supported by some physi- cists upon the operation of this very little scientific- ally understood sense is something such as this. The tongue, upon a foundation'of muscular fibre, carries a nervous membrane, not wholly smooth even in the most delicate species, but bristling, more or less com- pactly, with highly sensitive minute nervous tufts, known to physiology under the name of!"papillae, " literally, "4little teats," from their peculiar form. Sapid substances being dissolved by the saliva, and thus re- solved into their ultimate particles, in the form of these particles penetrate the papille. By something analo- gous to an exquisitely-refined sense of touch, these papillae detect the peculiar form characteristic of every ultimate particle of the given sapid substance, and thus define it as a certain taste. If this be the correct explanation of the taste-phle- nomena, they resolve themselves into a perceived force of form, and thus come within our law. But I imag- page: 320-321[View Page 320-321]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 320-321 320 THE HASHEESH EATER. ine that the operation is still more subtile; and that in every substance possessing sapidity, there is,' pro- ducing the sensation, a force by itself, possessing as true an individuality as the electric, and in each case bearing a specific characteristic which gives it its pe- culiar taste. Perhaps it may be akin to the galvanic fluid. This seems to be suggested by the result of an experiment very easily made, viz., placing a circle of zinc upon one side of the tongue and of copper on the other, when the curious possibility will be mani- fest of actually " tasting galvanism." 6. Feeling. I have made this distinction between feeling and touch for the reason that, although their sensations may be propagated along the same sets of nerves, the strongly-marked difference in nature be- tween the facts which they separately apprehend ren- ders it more philosophical to treat them apart. By feeling is meant here the sense of heat and its absence, pain of all kinds, and the sensuous pleasure not in- cluded under previously analyzed senses. In the lat- ter part of this category, for instance, are included sex- ual gratification, the soothing effect of manipulation, whatever it may be styled, mesmeric. or otherwise, and pre-eminently the exhilaration of narcotics and other stimuli. The only argument which I shall adduce to prove the comprehension of the feeling-phenomena within the general, idea of force will be simply to call to my reader's milthe fact that -all such phenomena are spasmodic. Their idea is that of an injected energy of motion, manifest not only in the nerve, but in the brain, by contraction or relaxation of both, or the alternation of the two states of either "ABYRINTHS AND GUIDING THREADS. 321 Having endeavored, as briefly as an analysis at all satisfactory would permit, to test the truth of my the- ory with respect to each division of the sense, let me, in a few words, sum up the substance of that which has been sought to be proved. It is this. That the soul in itself is capable of re- ceivifig all the impressions of all the senses from the action of the object which produces an impression upon a single sense; that in the bodily organs only and the media of transmission, which are relevant to the organs alone, lies the necessity for a divisory action; and, finally, as a consequence of these propositions, that the soul, either wholly freed from its present gross body, or so awakened, by any cause, as to be partially independent of the intervention of the corporeal or- gans, may behold the manifold impression from an object which now gives it only the fractional, thus see- ing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and feeling in the most exquisite degree the thing which, in the state of bodily dominance, was the source of but one of these. An opinion similar to this was held by Coleridge; and I can not but believe that it was suggested to him by some intimation of its truth which he received while in the exaltation of opium. Certainly there is no corroboration greater than he might have thus ac- quired for it, if the effect of that drug ever reached with him the intensity which hasheesh reached with me. By evidence of the most startling character was I re- peatedly, while using the indulgence, put beyond all doubt upon the point. Indeed, at this day it lies be- fore me in the light of as distinct a certainty as any fact of my being. Because, from the very nature of O2 2 page: 322-323[View Page 322-323]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 322-323 322 THE HASHEESH EATER. its source, I could not transfer that certainty, in kind, to the mind of my reader, I have made the attempt to approximate it by the preceding argument, not because I felt at all the need of strengthening myself in the faith. As, some distance back, I have referred to my own experience upon the subject, asserting my ability at times tofeel sights, see sounds, &c., I will not attempt to illustrate the present discussion by a narrative of additional portions of my own case. It might be re- plied to me, "Ah! yes, all very likely; but probably you are an exception to the general rtle; nobody else might be affected so." This was said to me quite fre- quently when, early in the hasheesh life, I enthusias- tically related the most singular phenomena of my fantasia. But there is no such thing true of the hasheesh ef- fects. Just as inevitably as two men taking the same direction, and equally favored by Providence, will ar- rive at the same place, will two persons of similar temperament come to the same territory in hasheesh, see the same mysteries of their being, and get the same hitherto unconceived facts. It is this characteristic which, beyond all gainsaying, proves the definite ex- istence of the most wondrous of the hasheesh-disclosed states of mind. The realm of that stimulus is no va- gary; it as much exists as England. We are never so absurd as to expect to see insane men by the dozen all holding to the same hallucination without having had any communication with each other. As I said once previously, after my acquaintance with the realm of witchery had become, probably, about "ABYRINTHS AND GUIDING THREADS. - 323 as universal as any body's, when I chanced to be call- ed to take care of some one making the experiment for the first time (and I always was called), by the faintest word, often by a mere look, I could tell ex- actly the place that my patient had reached, and treat him accordingly. Many a time, by some expression which other by-standers thought ineffably puerile, have I recognized the landmark of a field of wonders wherein I had traveled in perfect ravishment. I understood the symbolization, which they did not. Particularly was this the case in the hasheesh ex- periment of a friend of mine, made not three months ago, spontaneously on his part, and unknown to me until I was " sent for." Not only was it for ecstasy and wonderful phenomena the most remarkable I ever had the care of, but so clear a light did it shed on the investigation of the few preceding pages, that I will give it here in place of any thing additional of my own, which, as I have said, I will not give. B , this friend of mine, for four hours supposed that he was in heaven. Infinite leagues below him he heard the old, remembered bells of the world, and their sound, as it came floating, diminished up through the immense sky beneath him, seemed the only tie which bound him to any thing not celestial. As I sat by the side of the sofa on which he was lying, and held his hand for a greater part of the time, I became a convert to all the most marvelous articles of the mesmeric creed. The connection which his pe- culiar state of sensitiveness had established between us, made us, for all purposes of sensation and percep- tion, wholly one. I was able to follow him through page: 324-325[View Page 324-325]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 324-325 324 \ THE HASHEESH EATER. all his ecstatic wanderings, to see what he saw, feel what he felt, as vividly as it is possible without my- self having taken hasheesh. This, however, as you will say, was nothing wonderful. It might have hap- pened, and no doubt, in part, did happen, from my former thorough acquaintance with all such states. But the connection did not end here. I drank a glass of water, and B. felt it as distinctly as if he had taken it himself. H6' experienced the spasm of the muscles of the throat, which always accompanies drink- ing in the hasheesh state, so vividly that he really sup- posed he was drinking himself, and implored me to: give him no more water. For another person in the room he had always felt strong sympathies; they were now developed to an extent most surprising. This person had a habit, when in a brown study, of industriously rubbing his forehead after a fashion painful to look upon. Sud- denly I heard B. exclaim, ", Oh, Bob, stop thinking! stop thinking! you don't Iknow how it distresses my head!"My eyes had been upon B. all the time; his own had not once been opened; how could he have known!that his friend was thinking? I looked around, and lo! Bob, in medio brown-studio, polishing his fore- front with the usual assiduity. Merely by the sym- pathy between them B. had known it all. This may be laughed at, but, if necessary, I would willingly file my affidavit that B., with his outer eyes, had seen nothing for half an hour previous. I had not taken my eyes from his face once during that time. But I will go on to the facts which more immedi- ately bear on piy theory. While, as I have said, lhe "ABYRINTHS AND GUIDING THREADS. 325 had not the remotest consciousness of the place in which he really was, he still conversed freely with us on the basis of his celestial locale. To him, we all seemed to be together " in excelsis." Naturally he was a loving and gentle spirit; this char- acteristic the upper atmosphere brought out more fully. In terms which it would not be modest for any of us to have repeated for ourselves, he expressed his sense of the congenialities which bound us together. But this sense, no less ethereal than in the ordinary state, was something far more visible. "I fele," said he, "that we have many mutual ties of fellowship, but, more than that, I see them. I know you are feeling kindly to me now, for there are a thou- sand golden and azure cords which ruA between us, making a network so exquisite that it is unspeakable delight to look thereon." "Are you not fancying it?" said somebody. "Fan- cying it? how can I fancy that which is immediately before my eyes? Besides that, I realize that it is true; it can not be false; it is a part of each of us delicate- ly prolonged. I see all our characteristics blended in it-oh, it is beautiful--beautiful!" Here was that inner -sense, to which, as most in- tuitive, we have given by analogy the name of "feel- ing," shown to be reciprocal, or, rather, one with sight. But the oneness of the outer senses was also to receive corroboration. B. looked at us, and as ou'r countenances changed in the course of conversation,"that change was embod- ied to him in tones, "Do you know," said he, "that all your faces, your forms, have a musical idea? I page: 326-327[View Page 326-327]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 326-327 326 THE HASHEESH EATER. hear you distinctly, in harp-like notes; each one of you, as you look upon me, has his melody; together your appearance is a harmony. Do you yourselves hear the music which you are?" While he lay with closed eyes we still talked to him. Now, every sound which we uttered had its being to him, not only in music, but in visible form. Indeed, as he afterward assured me, when in a state to philos- ophize upon the subject, he read in figures, while we were speaking, every idea as distinctly as from a book. Landscapes, temples, lakes, processions of all kinds of being, passed before him, borne with our voices, and impressed, not with the artificial letter-symbols of our meaning, but with the meaning itself, as in my own case I have expressed it, like an essence made incar- nate. i The only sense which was not tested in this expe- rience was that of odor. I have deeply regretted the deficiency ever since, for I am convinced that its one- ness with all the others would have been exhibited as clearly as that of the others among themselves. Taste we did try with the fullest result. After much per- suasion (for it seemed a degradation of his celestial nature), we prevailed upon him to eat a small piece of an apple. I took a piece of it myself, and if I, who was in heaven, could eat, he might also. Its taste he expressed as giving him likewise the idea of a tone. It was winter, and not a flower of any fragrance was within reach; but I know from my former experience, as well as the fullness of his own in every other re- spect, that he would have emblematized it in music immediately. "ABYRINTHS AND GUIDING THREADS. 327 I would that every man whose eye is met by this recital, instead of reading it from my pen, and saying as coldly as is the custom at the present day, " mar- velous, but doubtful," with a shake of the head, could have sat as I did by that sofa, and have learned the truth of this strange theory by an eye-witness as de- lightful as it was convincing. In not one single lin- eament of this case have I poetized; indeed, I feel deep- ly my most signal failure to satisfy my own ideal of what I there saw and felt. I am not aware of any recompense which would tempt me, if I could, to blot out the memory of that most exquisite lesson which I learned at the side of B. Yet it may be said, "Your own experience had probably been pretty well known to him already, and these perceptions of his were but re-embodiments of things he had heard from you." I assure you, my dear reader, that of my own experience upon the sub- ject of this unity of sense I had not said a word to him, not even to any person in the place where he lived. His views, from this fact, were perfectly spon- taneous, as, indeed, any one present could have seen from the manner of their natural and irrepressible out- flowing in his words. The only possible explanation of such perceptions, occurring as they have in several other cases besides his without any acquaintance with my experience, is that they apprehend real truths, common to all our humanity, and needing but some instrument of intense insight to bring them forth. Within a few days of this literally clinical lecture upon my theory occurred another case, in some re- spects almost as singular. Another person, making page: 328-329[View Page 328-329]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 328-329 328 THE, HASHFFSH EATER. the hasheesh experiment for the first time, showed the following strange characteristic in the effect of its in- fluence. Though as perfectly conscious as in his nat- ural state, and capable of apprehending all outer real- ities without hallucination, he still perceived every word which was spoken to him in the form of some visible symbol which most exquisitely embodied it. For hours every sound had its color and its form to him as truly as scenery could have them. The fact, never witnessed by me before, of a mind in that state being able to give its phenomena to another and philosophize about them calmly, afforded me the means of a most clear investigation. I found that his case was exactly analogous to those of B. and myself; for, like us, he recognized in; distinct inner types every possible sensation, our words making a visible emblematic procession before his eyes, and every perception, of whatever sense, becoming tangi- ble to him as form, and audible as music. There-is something more than the mere fascinating activity of speculation in knowing such things as these. The excellency of their office consists in acquainting us with the fact that in our minds we possess a far greater wealth than we have ever conceived. Such a discovery may do much for us in every way, making material ends seem less valuable to us as ultimate aims, and encouraging us to live well for the sake-of a spirit which possesses fathomless capacities for hap- piness no less than knowledge. There is a condition in which the soul may exist, which is possible (and when we have proved any thing possible for a soul, we have,.at the same time, proved "ABYRINTHS AND GUIDING THREADS. 329 it probable), in which every object of our perception shall infuse into us all the delight of whose modifica- tions now but one alone trickles in parsimoniously through a single sense. With a more ethereal organi- zation, the necessity for dividing our perception into the five or six modes now known may utterly pass away, and the full harmony of all qualities capable of teaching or delighting us may flow in at once to rav- ish the soul. In the cases which I have mentioned, hasheesh had nearly perfected this etherealization already. Yet hasheesh must be forborne; we have no right to suc- ceed to the inheritance till we come of age. In our longing for that spiritual majority which is to invest us with our title, we may stay ourselves on prophecies as well as patience. Perchance we may listen to some such prophecy as this: There is a land, oh dreamer, on which the sun rises in music, and his rays are heard sounding sym- phony to the greeting of Memnon. The ever-shifting tints of cloudland forever rise into brightness and an- thems, and fall back again to softness and lullabies. The fingers of the harper paint exquisite green fields with the pencil of a tone, and the child that sings by his side -fills the soul with Claude Lorraine sunsets. v The clasp of a brother's hand returning from over sea is felt in a rosy heaven, or the light of one more star and a thrill of glad-hearted song. The meaning of the brotherhood between wine and carols is known by a strain of music from the terraces of Rhine and the vineyards of Xeres, bathing the lips of the poet in added melody. With the fall of the sun upon empur- page: 330-331[View Page 330-331]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 330-331 330 T-HE HAIASHKESH EATER. pled cloud-banks of the west, the fragrance of the flowers floats to him in a hymn of good-night, and the wind from his portals rings a curfew upon lily and rose. Land twice blessed, where all things are man- ifold in their melodies, harmonious in difference! Thus did I prophesy to myself, as, according to my wont, with closed eyes I sat listening to a sonata of Beethoven. Within me the prophecy was even now half fulfilled, for I was dreaming in a land of palaces builded of tones, a country whose rivers ebbed and flowed with the modulations of the outer music. Are we persuaded of these things that we may be deceived? is our hope vain? There is nothing too beautiful to believe of the soul. If its visions seem falsified by matter, it is only because they are above matter; because in prophetic gazings it mirrors a high- er, a more ethereal incarnation of the Creative Spirit than yet communes with it through the passages of the fleshy sense. Dbeal Men anb tleir Stimulants. OF all the infinitely plastic shapes of language, per- haps the most Protean is that word "The World." Monosyllable as it is, it bears upon its back a load of incongruous meanings immense enough to have crush- ed into nothingness a dozen of the statelier sesquipe- dalia, which do not draw the marrow of their stubborn reality from so stanch a Saxon genealogy, nor plant their feet so firmly upon the usages of our hard, every- day life. In that word we see the triumph of Saxon- IDEAL MEN AND wTHEIR STIMULANTS. 331 ism, for it is astonishing how any word which means so many things has not finally come to mean nothing definite at all, a "vox et praterea nihil." While it has held its place, many other words have been ban- ished from the common parlance -of men, or are allow- ed only when they can be explained by their context, or when vagueness itself is an especial desideratum. Not to multiply instances, let the English "good" and the French "vertu" be examples. The first of these who ever thinks of using (we limit its reference to human attributes) when he wishes to express some- thing defined of the character of another? The poets only, for they, indeed, from the picturesque necessities of their art, have preserved its original outlines clear, and give it always its noble, radical force; the good man, with them, is the man of developed heart as dis- tinguished from his clever brother of the developed in- tellect. But in common conversation, to say that a man is good tells about as much of him as to ascribe to him the possession of a nose. He may be, for all we know, a sour Pharisee, held righteous in proportion to the number of things which he considers sins, an easy soul who does or does not pay his little bills, a kindly person of fluent sympathies, or OVA good-humored dunce with the best of intentions?' To the word!"good," a man with the bump of Caus- ality prominent must always reply "How?" and then come a host of particularizations on the other side to round out the idea. In like manner has "vertu" passed utterly out of the universal sparkling'Gallic mouth, not only for the page: 332-333[View Page 332-333]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 332-333 332 THE HASHF'FSH EATER. reason that the ideaI which it embodies -exists in a somewhat misty (as well as musty) state in the na- tional brain, but because, very likely as a necessary outflow from this fact, it has been dissolved under the pressure of its numerous meanings into free vapor. The person who cultivates "la vertu" may be con- ceived of as a man who prefers reading the Constitu- tionnel of an evening to his wife, in slippers, to the so- ciety of Loiettes at the Bal au Masque; or again, for aught that we know, he may this moment be looking for medallions of Claudius in green spectacles and Pompeii . F But " the world," word as truly as thing, has held its course. We do not confound "the man of the world" with Humboldt, who has traveled all over it, nor " the ways of the world"' with relations to its tum- bling around from day to night, and from peri- into aph-elion. We understand every man in the speciali- ty of meaning which he chooses to stamp upon the word, and pass on without further questioning. With the Geographer it means-no matter, we know what it means, not having in early youth blasphemed to no purpose the American idea of universal enlight- enment over an Atlas. With the Ethnologist it is an affiliation of human manners; with the Philologist, a brotherhood of tongues. The man of society says "the world," and straightway it paints to him, if transatlantic, a vision of Almacks and the Clubs; if cisatlantic, a prodigality of entrees on the Avenue. A circle of spinsters whisper the mystic symbol over souchong, and lo! at uncontaminating distance, a dream of deluded souls dancing into inevitable de- IDEAL MEN AND THEIR STIMULANTS. 333 struction to a Redowa discoursed from Dodworth's balefully-fascinating tubes. Yet, by a more catholic appreciation than we give to any other word, in each case we catch the full force of the particular idea. O world, as word alone, truly there is no "transit" to thy "gloria." Yet, from the very ease with which it carries its multiplicity of meaning, we are apt to forget how man- ifold they really are. We thus lose sight of a truth, than which there is none more actual, that, though we intermarry, walk, talk, and transact business together, we are each of us, this moment, living in a different world. Even as a mere bald question of the bodily senses, this is beyond a doubt. A is a near-sighted man, and has a very defective power of discriminating col- ors. Like several men whom I know, he may be ut- terly unable to distinguish the strawherry from its leaf, or, like certain others, to discriminate between the fly on his spectacles and the eagle in the firmament. B, on the other hand, sees ships in the offing before the signal-man has got the focus, and pronounces dog- matically, at a glance, between two shades of blue which do not differ from each other by a tenth. A and B live in two absolutely different sight-worlds. Again, C perceives no difference between sounds or harmonies. He is, let us say, a celebrated divine whom, I have the honor to know. Some years ago, when "Oh Susannah" was triumphantly ushering in the Ethiopian school of composition to popular favor, a roguish daughter of the gentleman happened to be playing that exquisite air upon the piano, and (much page: 334-335[View Page 334-335]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 334-335 334 THE HASHEESH EATER. as I regret to state it) upon a Sunday morning also. Her father, struck with the novel beauty of the music, although he had heard it fifty times before, asked what it was, and was answered, with a sense of security which based itself upon his peculiar auricular failing, that it was ("Greenland's icy mountains." In the evening all the family were assembled in the parlor, and Dr. asked the fair rogue to play the piece that had so much pleased him in' the morning. Of course, by the family, '"Oh Susannah" was reckon- ed among secular melodies, and, to speak popularly, would not "go down." Without a moment's hesita- tion, Miss awoke the instrument to "Greenland," and the doctor was as perfectly satisfied as he had been ten hours before. Such a one we will say is C. D, on the contrary, recognizes fifteen gradations between F and G of the natural scale, and whistles every: air in Trovatore on his way home from its first performance at the Acad- emy. If an itinerant miller of music, " knowing the wally of peace and quietness," refuses to move under a shilling, he makes over the additional sixpence, and thinks it clear gain. The sound-worlds of C and D are as truly twain as Mars and Jupiter. But I will not consume the letters of the alphabet in any further analysis of a statement so apparent to the slightest thought. Just briefly, in their relations to the remaining senses, let me set the opposite types apart. - In Touch, on one side stands the artisan who, with his finger, can measure that convexity in a lens which IDEAL MEN AND THEIR STIMULANTS. 0335 few men could determine by the eye; on the other, the person who scarcely, by his hand, discovers any in- eqiuality in a board, provided it be planed. In con- nection with the former, I might mention such a case as that of Giovanni Gonelli, of Volterra, who, in the seventeenth centuryr gave to the world the spectacle of a man entirely blind, yet a most accurate sculptor, not alone of his own ideals, but of faces which he only knew by passing his hand over them. Among the likenesses which he left were those, both faithful and beautiful, of Cosmo di Medici, Pope Urban VIII., and the first Charles of England. Yet, though I have re- frained, on account of the exceptional nature of this case, I might well adduce other instances of blind dex- terity and delicacy of touch far from exceptional. Again, in Smell, there are innumerable grades be- tween the person in whom it is an absolute lack and the one to whom, our world being unfortunately not a universal spice-grove, it is a source of constant misery. At this moment I am writing but a few feet from a lady who, a day or two ago, assured me that if, by any operation, however painful, she could eradicate her sense of smell without danger, she would willingly submit to it, even though it cost her those rose and jasmine odors in which she delights with more in- tensity than practical people do in a good dinner. In Taste we may shade off humanity between the two extremes of an Apicius, desole on account of the one quarter grain of ambergris more than the receipt in his soup of flamingos' tongues, and the Scotchman who, outside of his herring and his bannocks, is at sea upon all delicate questions of gustative interest. page: 336-337[View Page 336-337]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 336-337 336 THE HASHEESH EATER. In Feeling, as defined in the preceding note, the sense, to speak in general terms, of pains and pleasures not comprehended by other organs, the grades are al- most innumerable. There is a case on record of a lada. exqisitely constituted in this respect that the- rcital of anoth- er's pain in any particular member immediately made her feel it acutely in her own. I might {offset to this the instance of a person who avowed to me that the extraction of the largest molar gave her as little suf- fering as the scratch of a pin, and she dreaded no pos- sible operation to such an extent as to care to use an anaesthetic. Since she was at all times characteris- tically matter of fact, and never adorned the blank re- ality of her ideas with fiction, I had no reason to doubt that she rigorously meant what she said. Here, then, we see both nature and cultivation mak- ing infinite variety in individual acuteness and range of all the senses. In the words of the great Chad- band, "What does this teach us?" There is, no doubt, an objective world, a something external to our perception, and outside of our origina- ting energy, which produces the effects by us called collectively " the world." Yet, in order to become a thing perceived, that something must undergo a mod- ification by our organs, which, after all, makes us as truly actors in the being of the world, for all purposes of perception, as if we had helped to create it. Ac- cordingly as- the senses vary, so also will the world vary, becoming all things to all men, and literally the same thing to no two men. So, not metaphorically at all, but in the most restricted sense, every human be- IDEAL MEN AND THEIR STIMULANTS 337 ing of us has his own world which no other man has any conception of, and this, too, with all our senses wide open, and, if you please, looking in the same di- rection. Only upon abstract mathematical truths, or on the forum of axioms, do we ever come exactly to- gether, and do business with each other by the same balances. Once off of this common ground, and, though we talk about things the same in words, we mean something which we see and feel very different- ly. The husband does not know exactly how his voice sounds to his wife, nor the wife whether to her husband her face looks precisely as it does to herself in the glass. All that they can be tolerably sure of in their intercourse with one another is that they hit the same general and necessary facts. But if in the mere bodily senses we find such differ- ent worlds, how much} more is it the case in our spir- itual organism. From the characteristic of this vari- ation we utterly exempt that faculty of direct insight which beholds truths that are necessary and therefore universal. This, which may be called the Intuition of Truth, is not only the same in its perceptions, but pretty nearly equal in its scope among all men. None but idiots, of whatever land or tribe, could fail to see that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points, and in the field of ideas to which that be- longs there is at present a small harvest of similar facts, and none but men preternaturally exalted have reaped any more from richer heights. Leave this plane, and we are all irreconcilable again. That which is one man's darling goal in life is the loathing or hatred of his neighbor. We are astonished p page: 338-339[View Page 338-339]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 338-339 338 THE HASHEESH EATER. at each other's attachments; and while we forget the old "de gustibus" aphorism, we forget also another thing whose remembrance would be much more apt to keep us calm than any dogmatic assertion of a fact without its reasons, like that of the proverb. My dear sir, the object of your friend's attachment you do not perceive in the slightest. With the index of a word out of your common dictionary he points in a certain direction. You look, and see something which does not please you. Do not growl for that fact; if he had your spiritual eyes, he would see something that did not please him; had you his, you would see an object as lovable as he himself sees. The importance of a proposed measure, the value of a certain end to be secured, are utterly different with different individual judgments. The majority which wins the day must not be understood as a body of men who all think alike. Each individual mind compos- ing it sees the question in a light varying by inex- pressible shades from that which illuminates each of his colleagues. The majority is nothing more nor less than a collection of minds who, seeing one proposition in certain connections, varying in each case, think they all understand it as the same, and consent to let go their minor views with relation to it for the sake of carrying through that which on the whole they believe to be the best, though for very different ends. There are philosophers who seriously lament over this infinite variance of perceptions, judgments, and feelings, as if it were the grand obstacle in the track of human perfection. Deferentially, though candidly, I acknowledge that IDEAL MEN AND THEIR STIMULANTS. 339 I think this a mistake. Indeed, the problem of our humanity standing as it does thus-Given our present ,nature, and the necessity arising out of it that investi- gation should be the instrument of acquiring wisdom, what is the best possible contrivance for furthering the operation? I would reply, this very state of omnipres- ent variance; Supposing that suddenly, and just at the point in all science which we have now reached, the law of mind should change, and, a great average being struck, we should all, not to make an extreme case- by saying throughout the world, but merely over its civilized area, henceforward see every thing pre- cisely alike, and precisely alike be affected by every thing which we saw-it seems to me that a worse calamity could not happen to mankind. The wheels of our spiritual progress now roll somewhat erratic- ally, it is true, as the impulse of the hosts who urge on the chariot is stronger now on this side, now on that, but the resultant of all the forces is a rapid and a forward motion.- The check which would ensue to that progress from the coming in of an entire uniform- ity would be sufficient to retard for centuries the mil- lennium of mind. True, all would push in one direc- tion, but the grand nisus, the energy of ambition, would be lost. In the contests-yes, even in the quarrels of opin- ion, we have a guarantee for the development of truth. Fertility is not the characteristic of unbroken plains; they become the torrid desert or the icy steppe; but it bestows itself upon a grouping of entire opposites; the peaks catch the clouds, and with them water the valleys. As the collision of flint and steel gives fire, page: 340-341[View Page 340-341]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 340-341 340 THE HASHEESH EATER. so from the crashing together of many adverse views comes out Truth, the bright, the beautiful, the eternal. Let us thank God that human thought and human feeling are not one vast stagnant lake, but a sea whose ever-struggling and colliding waves keep their mass pure, and cleanse the intellectual atmosphere. Our great need is not a reducing to uniformity, but a purging from all acrimony in our contests, the infu- sion of a willingness to permit and a readiness to ap- preciate all those differences of form, which, in every one of our neighbors, opinion must necessarily take. We have not all to bow down at the same shrine, but to respect those of all other men while we worship at our own; to put down the iconoclastic hammer, though not pretending to burn incense before one great aver- age god of sentiment. This tolerance is yet to be learned, for it is not a remarkably flourishing virtue even of the nineteenth century. Our great advance at this day has been made in- the direction of refining our intolerance. For the stake and the dungeon have been substituted the taunt and the sneer, an invective which burns more lingeringly than the former, and a neglect which sur- passes the latter in its fatal chill. We have yet to open our ears to the Past, which, up to our present st/rmit of enlightenment and vision, is calling forever, in sad and earnest litany, "By Smithfield and the Lol- lards' Tower, by the poverty of confiscation and the weariness of banishment, by the blood of Savonarola, and Galileo shut up in prison from his stars, be mer- ciful-be tolerant!" There is one excellent result of this great multi- IDEAL MEN AND THEIR STIMULANTS. 341 plicity of worlds which we seldom value as we ought. Who that of a morning walks up Broadway, in one of the two currents of that hurrying life, does not wonder that all the thousands who are rushing on, each for the sustenance or gratification of self, do not oftener jostle through that very selfishness, that the crowds do not interpenetrate each other with more friction? As a fact, we see them tolerably calm, obliging, and self-continent. As a problem, supposing it given to a philosopher who calculated only upon the data of our well-known human selfishness, could he solve it? Something else is requisite for the solution. We are none of us aiming at precisely the same mark. With no two men do the points on the target exactly coin- cide. The most similar of us still aim a hair's-breadth out of each other's way, and thus, in the great match, unless intentionally we tread on each others' kibes, there is room for us all. If we wished to make a general distinctive classifi- cation which, in one way or another, would comprehend our whole humanity, living in its different worlds, there are perhaps no two divisions which would so nearly comprehend it all as those of Ideal and Non-Ideal. Each of these forms is a Kosmos by itself, which, from its great interior diversity, might, even as thus coag- gregated, be properly translated rather system than world; but for our uses the narrower rendering will do, since all the grander laws of each Kosmos are the same for each of its inhabitants. By these terms, Ideal and Non-Ideal, we mean very much the same ideas that a poet would get from"Vis- ionary" and ,Practical;" but these phrases are not of page: 342-343[View Page 342-343]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 342-343 342 THE HASHEESH EATER. sufficiently catholic interpretation, the former not just- ly embodying that sneer, nor the latter that praise, which the language of conversation conveys in them. We have spoken of the intuitional perception as a common ground for all men, limiting, however, the as- sertion to that branch of the intuitional which has its object in universal truth, and thus meaning that every body acknowledges an equal force in axioms; and, however we may dispute on other points, all agree that the whole, for instance, is equal to all its parts. Yet there are two other fields of the intuitional, which, so far from their being equally expatiated in by all men, are to some merely known by glimpses, to others, we might almost believe, entirely shut. These are Beauty and Good, higher than Truth, and therefore neither so much needed in our lower affairs, nor so much opened to all mankind by nature or cultivation. Both the Good and the Beautiful forming each an ideal by itself, for our present purpose we need only treat with the latter. It is in relation to the Beautiful particularly that we wish to exemplify this classifica- tion of the Ideal and Non-Ideal. That beauty is really an ideal, something of the thought inner to us, and not coming in through the passages of the sense from without, is too little per- ceived in our inaccurate every-day thought, and too little granted even in our moods of calmer philosophy. For this, as for so many of our other perversions, we have to thank the sense-theories.- We may examine the matter without a very pain- ful analysis. Treading reverently and softly, as be- cometh umbrae who intrude upon the privacy of great IDEAL MEN AND THEIR STIMULANTS. 343 men, let us steal into Abbotsford, and stand by the chair of Walter Scott, who is looking at a sunset. By his side, upon the floor beneath us, lies that faithful companion of his strolls among the heather, Maida. Since the test we are about to institute demands fair- ness, we will free our comparison from all imputation of artifice by placing together with the noblest speci- men of man the noblest specimen of beast. Both the poet and the greyhound are looking west- ward. The same tints fall through the panes upon the faces of both; far up, toward the springs of Tweed, they see the same hills bathed in a dying light, and the clouds that shift above them. Does it surprise us to hear Sir Walter bursting forth in enrapturement; or, truer still, as a meed of the heart to beauty, see him silently gazing toward the sundown with a face which glows and changes, telling more than a thou- sand lips? But would we be astonished or not if Maida should suddenly give vent to a lyric bark of ecstasy, or even should she refuse to be wheedled from the glories of that view by the whistle of a keeper im- memorially associated with dog-meat? .Not in the least, you will say; and most people would agree with you; for a hound who appreciated sunsets would be as great a sensation, even in our most nil admirari world, as a cow, who, like Landor, should write feelingly upon, green grass, and publish it. He would have the entree of all literary circles; dinners would be pressed upon him ; he would be presented with services of plate; not an album would be without the autograph of this veritable Prince di Canino. Eclipsed in the blinding glory of his eclat, the learned pig would commit sui- page: 344-345[View Page 344-345]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 344-345 344 THE HASHTFISH EATER. cide by surfeit, and the accomplished fleas end their mortification with their own poison. But why? A cat may look at a king, why not a i dog at a sunset?"Hath not a dog eyes? Hath not a dog paws, organs, dimensions, senses-?" Yet, with I quite as much astonishment as Shylock asked, - "Hath a dog money? is it possible A cur can lend three thousand ducats?" do we all inquire, "Can a dog see beauty in a sun- set?" Anatomically we dissect his eyes, and (especially if he be a gaze-hound) find them far better calculated than man's for length and breadth of vision. In all I respects they will compare favorably with the same piece of human organism, granting the latter even at the rarest point of development. Far deeper than any sense lies this subtle appreci- ation. There is a something in the outer world which does not impress itself on the retina, and of which the mere visual image is but a type. That which delights us is the peculiar essences of things, and the intangi- ble relation of harmony which the essences, manifold in unity, bear to each other and ourselves. In lakes, and mountains, and sky there is beauty to us, because the same Creator lies behind and continues us all. Sprung from the same source, we have a fitness for each other, arising out of the very fact that in our own souls and the world also creative spirit is making itself manifest; in the tangency of the two there is a de- lightful communion between spirit and spirit, and for the beast this does not exist, since he is not spirit. This very capability which we possess of expressing IDEAL MEN AND THEIR STIMULANTS. 345 i this communion in language, shows that it is not through sense that the Beautiful flows in, for what can be conceived as more' cruel, more in every way un- natural, than that the hound, with senses like our own, should still be dumbly shut up to an impossibility of i expression, if, while standing by our side, he was over- i burdened with the same loveliness as we? The idea is indeed horrible. .,1 Yet doubtless we may wrong the animal upon the other side. Few of us being willing to carry out the jli sense philosophy to its ultimate conclusions by giving j the dog perception of Beauty equally with ourselves, we often go to the opposite extreme, and rather pity Ii him as a being without gratifications beyond the pres- ent bone, hearth-rug, or exciting chase. He very like- ly enjoys contemplation as much, proportionally to his I kind, as we do. Not the contemplation of the beauti- ful in nature indeed, but of some other characteristic, } which has as true a fitness to his constitution as Beau- ty has to ours. What this is, of course, from the en- tire difference of our-plane of being, we can only con- jecture. It may be something such as this: in the creation there is a capability of sustaining animal life through food, atmosphere, and a variety of means. To us this capability seldom appears except as a logical deduc- tion, in the form of statistics or agricultural history. To the animal it may appear stamped upon all sur- rounding things; it may be for him the essential truth which they embody, and in trees, herbage, fruitage, he may feel the symbolized principle which prophesies the sustenance of his highest life as our ideals proph- P2 2 page: 346-347[View Page 346-347]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 346-347 346 THE HASHEESHt EATER. R esy ours. The Creator, who careth even for sparrows, and will not let them feel themselves unsupported in this great lonely world, may on this lower basis com- mune with the beast, and by it give him a suggestion of His good-will toward him, which in his case may be the source of an enjoyment measurably keen with our own. But througli the Beautiful He talks with man only, and to him alone the fitness of the conscious and un- conscious creations are expressed in this way. It is a memory of the elder time to be cherished, even though it be the memory of something heard only in dreams, that all men long ago, in ages however primeval, real- ized Beauty, and answered back its thrill with glad- ness and hymns. Such a remembrance--yes, if you will say so, even such a dream-is like some not yet extinguished echo of the Creation strophe and anti- strophe, when, on the one side, " the morning stars sang together," and, on the other, " all the sons of God shouted for joy." Sadly enough, many of the latter band of singers have been struck dumb since that day. It might be painful to read a census, could we get such a thing, of the persons who love or even recognize Beauty, by it- self and for its own unmarketable sake. The bulk of such a document would probably depend upon the style of man who went around through humanity to compile it. A poet would make sad work. His best ques- tions would be so analytic as either to render him un- intelligible or obnoxious. At some houses he would be answered, "No, I am no visionary;" and at others, t"Clear out! Do you mean to insult me? Can not I IDEAL MEN AND THEIR STIMULANTS. 347 see Beauty ? Isn't this a beautiful day, to be sure, with the sun shining so bright that I can get in all my hay?"At all events, he would come home, without having found it necessary to purchase another valise for the conveyance of his papers. Whatever may be the reason, it can not be doubted that there is a great difference between men in the ap- preciation of the subtle characteristic, and in some it seems to be entirely lacking. There is one class of men who exult in beauty, who live in it, whose ex- treme representatives are willing even to commit all sorts of practical extravagances for its sake. There is another, whose members look at a statue of Phidias, and then at a gate-post, and in both see only some-, thing hard, white, and tall. Yet they both have to live in what is geographical- ly the same world. It is of the ideal man, as repre- sentative of the former class, and of some of his rela- tions to that world, that we have to speak. A greater breadth of these relations than might at first sight be supposed is included in the question, Why do ideal men often use narcotics? Indisputably it is ideal men. The fact is there, however great a pity it may be. Let us seek, for a while, an answer to the question. The wants of the ideal man, while in number less than those of his opposite, in degree are far greater. Dives, as the type of the pure worldly life, is as incap- able as guiltless of those vague, unsatisfied longings which he so much censures in a neighbor and discour- ages in a dependent. All things out of which he can extort pleasure coin themselves for him in a perfectly tangible shape. He is fully satisfied, his wishes need page: 348-349[View Page 348-349]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 348-349 348 THE HASHEESH EATER. no additional fulfillment to make a complete orb, if his balance strikes accurately at the counting-room, if he can go home behind his own horses when too tired to walk, his dinner is good, his wife handsome, his house comfortable, his daughters well settled, his sons imi- tating their father. All these requisitions he can lay his hand on; if he could not, his longings would not be vague; he would know what he wanted, and, un- der ordinary circumstances, could get it in time. Ariel, on the other hand, is contented with a cata- logue of enjoyments in numerical and money value far less. It was not he who originated that sneer upon love in a cottage. ie was filled with infinitely more than the mere satisfaction of their material by the woodbine which clambered around his windows, the roses leading from the door-step to the gate, the lake below him, the mountains on the other side, the fruit and the loaf upon his table, and the other cleanly and kindly answers to his domestic needs. But the tax-gatherer came to spy out the land, the insatiate genius of mill-building looked at the brook which ran by his garden, and pronounced it a ,local tion." Presently the waters began to run foul with dye and sawdust, gigantic band-wheels spun and hummed where birds had sung; there was a creaking, a dust, a baleful fire night and day, which invaded his library and his dreams. Provisions rose; the simplest fare upon which he had kept together soul and body now stood just where his labors could reach it upon tiptoe. So strongly, while it does cling, does the body pull upon the soul, that, though we may be spiritually hap- IDEAL MEN AND THEIR. STIMULANTS. 349 py without being sumptuous, we can not, at the same time, be spiritual and hungry. At least most of us can not. Into what a glory, looked at through such a fact, does the AIassinger tower who, with one hand stiffly holding the wolf at arm's length, with the other can indite the Virgin Martyr. Yes, there have been some such souls after all. But our Ariel, being of less muscular make, is not among them. His " mind to him a kingdom is," but he is expatriated from it on a foraging expedition; through the jaws of Scylla and Charybdis, starvation on the one hand, and the premature old age of over- wrought energies, he is voyaging in a supply-ship. If even now he could sit still in an occasional lull, and grow better by drinking in beauty, and make other men happier by imparting it to them through words, writing, or kindly offices, he sees only money-utility stamped upon the rivers, and the whole face of nature is staked off into building-lots or manufactory-sites. The features of his goddess have become the " desira- ble features" for a paper-speculation town. There are a thousand ways in which his neighbors can evaporate the essence which is all in all to him, while they at the same time give to his scenery, a pon- derable value which to them is worth far more. Perhaps, like Southey, he now out and out curses the mills. But this is wrong; for Southey, though a noble poet in spite of the insolence of Byron, was still no great political economist, notwithstanding the opinion of himself. --Perhaps, therefore, he only sighs, and moves his household gods to another hearth-it may be where loneliness will better secure him from page: 350-351[View Page 350-351]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 350-351 350 THE HtASHEESH EATElR. disturbance, it may be where labors of his particular kind yield fuller sustenance to the crying wants of life. The pangs of such a moving are little known to any one but himself, or, if he has God's crowning gift in a deep-feeling and congenial wife, to her alone beside him. The men of the world can -not hear the groans of the uprooted mandrakes. There is the hill-top, upon which, first of all visible things, his eyes for so many years have lighted in awaking. It has grown to be to him the only sum- mit over which it could be conceived possible for the sun to rise. There is the lake along whose shores he has led his children, calling them to watch its hues and dimples at evening; along those same shores, mayhap, his father led him. Every tree, as far as the skirt of the horizon, is known to him; he has wan- dered over every slope; he has dreamed or written suggestions in his note-book upon every crag. The whole scenery has been to him his school, his gym- nasium, his holiday-ground. He must leave it all. And his house-it was there that he felt upon his forehead, in blessing, the hands of the now long dead; here, many a year ago, he knew man's only peace ex- cept death, childhood--knew it for a little time, while his locks were sunny and the grave shadows yet tar- ried from his face-then vanished it away. Hither he led home his new-made wife; here, "(into something rich and strange," blossomed that mystic, intangible relation of delights when a child was born to the bosoms which are twain, yet one; here, with his chil- dren, in the firelight gambols he kindled the dampened torch of the younger time, and for one evening was a child a'ain. IDEAL MEN AND THEIR STIMULANTS. 351 Here, too, is his library-that cave in the rock above the world's high tide, set farther in than the surges beat or the winds blow. The tide has reached it now. There are waves and sea-weed on the floor at flood-they do not all go out at ebb. Where can he read but at that window? Where can he write but on that desk and against that wall? How can the old familiar animus of the place be left behind, unless his own soul, which had grown its twin, stays with it? Yet how can the animus be transported? No, no, it can not. It knows no luggage trains; it is not a thing of drays. Every where the tentacles of his root must give way with a wrench; the necessity being granted, the pain is inevitable; the only remedy, a manly patience under the irremediable -the ' Quicquid corrigere est nefas.' Now if he were to tell Dives all this, taking him into his confidence, would he not laugh? 4 What is the sense," would be the reply of that satisfied person,!"in fashing your beard about one place or another? If you are going to town, you will probably take a far better house than this trumpery cottage-four stories Figh, free-stone front, all the modern improvements, :and eligible situation. Why, my dear sir, you must be mad! Think what an exchange-gas instead of spermaceti; bathing apparatus, with warm, cold, and shower cocks, instead of this portable concern you have here, or perhaps instead of a mere swim in your two- penny lake; the market within ten minutes' staging; shopping conveniences for your wife; a daily laid, still page: 352-353[View Page 352-353]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 352-353 352 THE HASHEESH EATER. wet, on your door-step - every thing imaginable, .in place of this uncultivated, mountainous, windy, woody situation, out of call of express-wagons and solid re- spectability. Or, if you are going still farther into the woods (which, I own, is' very foolish, since you might stay here and put up a saw-mill on your own part of the brook, which would make you one of our first manufacturers), there' is still no such cause as you seem to think for sorrow at moving. Probably, where you will settle, vegetables and all provisions are far cheaper-you can get your wood for almost noth- ing-and certainly those are advantages that a man need not pull a long face over. Be a man. Satisfy yourself with the world, as I do." Ah! unction not in Ariel's pharmacopoeia! He is hurt where such salves will not heal him. In many a way may the sources of his enjoyment be dried up or imbittered which the world knows not of. The ideal nature is indeed a harp of many won- drous strings, but the airs that play upon it in this life are seldom of the gentlest. The one-stringed Ha- waiian guitar of the non-ideal man is easily thrum- med, and never lacks tone save when its proper back- bone of material well-being is temporarily lax. If any of us, even the most tender and spiritually appreciative, could understand the various intensity with which this law works out its office in other men of the same nature, we would be much kinder in our judgment of the man who runs to narcotics and other stimulants for relief, while we regarded the habit as no less grievous. Could we, for example, enter thor- oughly into the constitution of such a one as Coleridge; IDEAL MEN AND THEIR STIMULANTS. 353 could we realize his temptations to the full extent; understand his struggles,.and weigh all the forces of the mind which gave him, from his very birth, a peril- ous tendency, how much oftener with tears than with denunciations of his indolence, his neglect of duties, would we read such memorials of him as have been published, much as the most of those seem directed to bias us the contrary way. For it seems as if there has never been a real "Life" of Coleridge. We have had, in abundance, sketches of what he himself might have called his " phenom- enal existence." We have the changes of place which he made; the towns in which he lectured; the letters from home which he did not open, and the correspond- ences for aid from starvation which he did open; the worth, in pounds sterling, of the laudanum which he drank per week; the number of bottles of brandy which he emptied in the same time; the extravagances of his expenditure; his repentings, his concessions to Southey and Cottle. All these are phenomenal-yea, even the last three. We have external events-move- ments of which we do not see the motor. Perhaps it would be impossible to see it from any thing but an autobiography so full, so ab intra, that pain and hu- miliation would deter him from writing it, were he living. This would be a "Life" of Coleridge; the others are mere results of that life. Perhaps the best substitute for such a work is to be found in his brief and fragmentary prose works; for, although they have almost nothing of that narrative style which is supposed to be necessary to the legiti- mate memoirs, they still shrow us, to a degree une- page: 354-355[View Page 354-355]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 354-355 354 THE HASHEESH EATER. qualed by any thing extant, Coleridge, the Man and the Mind. A man he was to whom the world of his imagina- tion and his reason was far more than that wherein he reaped his honors and his daily bread. Sensitive as a child to that intangible yet infinite meaning which is expressed in frowns and smiles, in love, scorn, and neglect; by nature gifted with an insight into her ex- cellencies which cultivation and the other circum- stances of his progressive being made at times even morbidly acute; living, by the very necessity of his particular inborn law of life, at the very summit of his energies, he had worn out nerve and elasticity at an age when, according, to all ordinary judgments which base themselves on insurance averages and statistics of longevity, he should have been in the prime of life, and battling his way with fortitude to a competency. He exhausted by mighty drafts all his credit at the bank of healthful life, and that is a corporation which never permits us to overdraw. Up to the very last deposit of blood and sinew, nerve and spirit, prompt payment will meet every demand; then comes the crash, and the bankrupt nature is no longer known on 'Change. If all that we know of Coleridge from with- out, the statement of himself and his contemporaries, did not intimate to us that such was the case with him, we might determine that it would necessarily happen so, a priori, from that which we know of the mental constitution of the man. He tells us through his memorializer, Cottle, and the others who have written about him, that he first used opium as a remedy for disease-a painful disease IDEAL MEN AND THEIR STIMULANTS. 355 of the legs-that he found its effects a delicious and perfect relief. Furthermore, that he abandoned it with the completion of his cure, but resumed it upon his finding, with the abandonment, the pains return. That he made several attempts to free himself with the same termination, and at last settled down into the opium-eater which he was for it is impossible to say how many years of his life. All this we have no reason to doubt. As an alle- viative to severe pain the narcotic first became known to him. Yet the secret of its excessive use, the rap- idly increasing doses, beyond all the demands of the body for relief-what was that? Ah! the poet him- self would confess that to his mind the indulgence spoke with a fascination far greater than to his phys- ical nature. It was, in fact, the very thing necessary for the replenishment of his exhausted capability of enjoyment. How is it, we must ask, that opium acts upon the whole organism of a susceptible man? Physically the books of medicine tell us how--that is, to a cer- tain distance they mark its pathway through diges- tion, circulation, the sympathetic nerves, and, where it causes death, leave it in an engorgement of the brain. Probably all these phenomena are the merely ex- ternal ones; they do not at all give us the mode of its action, after all. At one time, in the course of some experiments, I thought I had reached a little deeper principle of its operation; some singular facts led me to form a theory upon the subject. I will not give it here, since there is not yet a basis of tests broad enough for it to rest upon philosophically. Of all page: 356-357[View Page 356-357]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 356-357 356 THE HASHEESH EATER. specific actions, that of narcotics is conceded by phys- icists universally to be one of the most recondite. Hardly any thing is really known about it by the practitioner more than by his unscientific patient. We have mere facts ungrouped about their governing prin- ciple. But mentally we know its working better. Opium supersedes, and, by long continuance in its indulgence, actually extirpates that vital force out of which arise hope, insight into excellencies, fortitude, volition, and volition made permanent in perseverance. It is an artificial energy destructive to all natural; men habit- uated to it live on when what is called the nervous life is perfectly extinct. That Coleridge could not have continued to live at all without such energy in some form is evident from the whole constitution of the man. Without the ever- present sensitive perception of spiritual beauty for which such an energy was necessary, houses, lands, comfortable family arrangements, the remunerative place in the Quarterly which his friends procured, him would have seemed mere eidola. He hungered and thirsted for the spiritual. The world of dreams which he had built up in his "Pantisocracy" had been ex- haled under the pressure of daily-bread necessities when to his fortuneless bosom he took a portionless wife. It is impossible that such a nature as his, emp- tied of the ideal Utopia, should be long void of some- thing else as ideal. And so through all his life we see him forgetting hunger in dreams till it bites him to the. heart. Then he starts up to spasmodic exertion, to sleep again in visions when the foe is driven to a re- IDEAL MEN AND THEIR STIMULANTS. 357 spectful distance. Call this wrong, call it undutiful to relationships which he was bound to respect, yet you can not call it indolence. iHe was not fitted by nature to do the work of a material life, yet higher obligations called him to change his element, and he should have obeyed, against nature. In his own world he was a diligent, a glorious worker-he was not indolent--he only wrought out life according to his tendency, his constitutional fitness, and there he sinned. Yet, oh man of the world! you who are so ready to sneer at Coleridge, let the comparison between him and yourself be put upon fair grounds before we join you in denunciation of the sin. The way in which you state the comparison is this: "Here am I, fight- ing the world in its roughest forms for a livelihood; there was Coleridge, who would not brace his muscles and fight like me." In another way let us state the case. Suppose yourself and Coleridge translated to that spiritual world where there are no actualities of the precise kind which you cope with. Grant that you each retained the same natural constitution as on earth, with how much ease or willingness would you change your element and labor in his province? It would then be his right to be called the actor; you would be the dreamer, and your dreams would be of things which as little suited his every-day activity as in this world his suited your own. You would be called with stentorian voices to awake to the reality of things-to dismiss the visionary figments of com- merce, manufactures, credit, and capital, and to strive boldly in the arena of thought and art, and other spir- itual excellences. page: 358-359[View Page 358-359]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 358-359 358 THE HASHEESH EATER. Do you say, "But every man's business is with the world in which he is placed for the time being?" I acknowledge that; but it is a misfortune, an imper- fection of the present state. The greatest harmony is that wherein every mind works out most fully its own office. Still, the higher obligation, the moral, called Coleridge to an uncongenial activity, and in not going he was wrong. Remember in an analogous case what you would do; think what a hard thing is the change of element, and then denounce if you can. Interpreting the opium passage of Coleridge's life by marginal references from all the pages previous, we shall see him more justly, and therefore more gen- tly than by any light thrown upon it as an isolated paragraph, from severe commentaries framed accord- ing to a personal and unappreciative standard. We shall see him first as the boy. The child, as the cut-and-dried biographies have it, of poor but highly respectable parentage, that very strict economy which is so erroneously supposed to educate families into practical habits, cultivated his ideal tendency un- til it became exquisite. The necessity of a careful use of means in a household is the last of all things to rear its children practically. Extreme poverty, no doubt, from stimulating the very primitive activities of existence, may make a progeny which is intellectu- ally too active to remain in the condition into which it was born, sharp-witted, cautious, provident, busi- ness-like in every respect. This fact is frequently to be observed in poor families, where sloth and vicious- ness do not prevent its occurrence.. But the man with moderate means, who in his household affairs must be o IDEAL MEN AND THEIR STIMULANTS. 359 continually regulating expenditure, has reason to be- lieve that his children, especially the more mentally active of them, will grow up, unless great care is taken, into very unpractical views. The reasoning is some- thing like this: From- earliest consciousness they will be thrown upon their own resources for enjoyment. The ex- pensive toy, the luxurious recreation, will be entirely out of their reach. Yet, as the outwelling child-life must have some outlet, they will not be without toys, without recreations of one kind or another, and they will invent them for themselves. Out of the imagin- ation they will fashion for themselves a domain where the simplest tilings have some rich meaning, glorified by an ideal excellence, and where all the most extrav- agant wishes are realized. In their plays they will be kings and queens of a garden-spot, transact weighty diplomatic business on the backs of old letters, and make boundless purchases of territory with pebbles or shells. In this cheap kingdom they will live as all- absorbing a life as the dignitaries whom they counter- feit live in theirs; and, still more, they will contract a bias very difficult to alter as increased years make it necessary. The boy who suddenly awakes to find himself a man finds it hard to believe that his old ideal efforts and ideal pleasures can not, by an eleva- tion of their plane, be made sufficient for the satisfac- tion of a life-time. More particularly is this true when, as in the pres- ent age, the world of books offers an additional asylum to the active child, to which, unless, both in mind and money, he is very poor indeed, he may retreat for the page: 360-361[View Page 360-361]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 360-361 360 THE HASHEESH EATEnR. enjoyment which an outer world does not supply. He is thus reared in an ideal atmosphere until it becomes the nutriment of his very being. From such a state as this, and through his rough experience of human mercies at the hands of Dr. Bow- yer, of Christ's Hospital, we may follow Coleridge on till we find him at Cambridge. How little he was fitted by nature to cope with the stern substantialities of an English University course is to be read in his final abandonment of its honors under the pressure of pecuniary difficulties, and the despair of an impossible attachment, and his enlistment into the Dragoons as a desperate indication of a desperate state of mind. Then succeed the Pantisocracy, marriage without the means of a livelihood, editorship without patrons, and without a single natural qualification for the office ex- cept the proverbially unremunerative one of out-speak- ing sincerity; literary labors of all kinds, from the volume of poems to the political leader, travels upon a pension, communion with German mind in books and men, of all ideal things the most ideal. At length, by these steps, with here and there a rep- etition, we reach the period when his opium life com- menced. In all fairness, what sort of a training had his whole previous existence been for a calm looking at the dangers of the fascinating indulgence, for a re- jection of its temptation? I dare to affirm that there is many a man who, when jaded by the day's labor, throws himself down to be refreshed by music, who in such an indulgence is com- mitting no greater sin of intention than Coleridge com- mitted when, coming weary from a life-time, he aban- IDEAL MEN AND THEIR STIMULANTS. 361 doned himself to the enjoyment of that dangerous beauty which absolute necessities and spent vitality forbade him to' look for in the external world. You and I, my reader, should we abandon ourselves to the opium indulgence, would know fully the wrong we were committing; Coleridge had not any definite idea. Bitterly did he repent it afterward; but his sorrow arose rather out of the terrible results of his course than from any self-recrimination, even in his sensitive mind, of malice aforethought. But whether, in the case of any opium-eater, the habit be or be not contracted with a full knowledge of its evil, there is but one view which we can take of tlre fruitlessness of struggles made for disenthrallment at a later period of his career. That fruitlessness is not to be treated with contempt as evidence of a cowardly lack of self-denial which prevents the man from break- ihg the meshes of a bondage grown delightful to him. We are called rather to look upon the agonies of one who, in a nightmare-dream of fearful precipices, has not the power of volition to draw himself from the edge; we must pity-deeply pity. The protracted use of opium, not by any metaphor, but in a sense as rig- orous as that of paralysis, utterly annihilates the pow- er of will over action. It is no mere cloak of apology which I would throw over those unfortunates who, after ineffectual attempts at being free, have subsided again into indulgence; it is actual fact that, in the horrors and the debility re- sulting from the disuse of the narcotic, its sufferers are no more responsible for their acts than the insane. When every man is a Scavola, and can hold his hand Q page: 362-363[View Page 362-363]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 362-363 362 THE HASHEESH EATER. in the flames till it is consumed, then may we expect men to endure the unrelieved tortures of opium-aban- donment to their end in enfranchisement. Who of us would hold himself responsible for withdrawing his ,hand from the fire? I fancy the best of our martyrs, willing as they were to die for their cause, would have leaped out if they had not been chained among the fagots. So far from extenuating the wrong of narcotics and stimulants, I believe myself only proclaiming (and I would it were with a thousand tongues) the perils into which they lead, as the most striking exponent of that wrong. This very emasculation of the will itself, while it may not produce the sensation of a detail of horrible visions, is in reality the most terrible charac- teristic of the injury wrought by these agents. A spir- itual unsexing as it is, it vitiates all relations of life which exist to its victim; by submitting to it he sows a harvest of degradation, which involves in its mildew- ed sheaves manly fortitude, hopefulness, faith of prom- ises, all the list of high-toned principles which are the virile-yes, still more broadly-the human glory. To this truth let a spirit so essentially noble as Coleridge witness, agonizea by the shame of those subterfuges which were necessary sometimes to pro- cure the indulgence that had become to him the very nutriment of his being. It is vain for us to shut our eyes to the fact that opium-eating in all countries is an immense and grow- ing evil. In America peculiarly it is so, from the constitution of our national mind. An intense devo- tion to worldly business in our representative man oft- IDEAL MEN AND THEIR STIMULANTS. 363 en coexists with a stifled craving for something high- er. Beginning, for the sake of advancement, at an age when other nations are still in the playground or the schoolroom, he continues rising early and lying down late in the pursuit of his ambition to a period when they have retired to the ease of travel or a villa. Yet from the very fact that his fathers have done this be- fore him, he inherits a constitution least of all fitted to bear these drafts upon it. The question of his breaking down is only one of time. Sometimes it happens very early; and then not only does an exhausted vitality require to be re- plenished, but the long-pent-up craving for a beauty of which business activity has said, "It is not in me," rises from its bonds, and, with a sad imperativeness, asks satisfaction. How hard is it now to unlearn that habit of hasty execution which had been the acquirement of his whole previous life! The demands of business had always met from him with rapid dispatch; this complex crav- ing must be answered as rapidly. The self-denial of recreation, abandonment of care, well-regulated regi- men, might gradually restore to him health, and, with it, the elastic capacity for receiving happiness. He can not wait; the process is too slow. And the only. immediate infusion of energy must be the artificial; the devil stands at his ear, and suggests opium. From that moment begins the sad, old, inevitable tale of the opium-eater's life. Alas! it is no rare one with us. The inhabitant of the I smallest village need hardly go out of his own street to hear it, and the unknown wretched who hide page: 364-365[View Page 364-365]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 364-365 364 THE tASHEESH- EATER. their shame, first in sad family hearts, last in the un- whispering grave, are even more in number, doubtless, than the known. The only effort which can be made by a man of good feeling to his race is to suggest some means of escape to those who feel their bondage. For the terror of be- ginners, enough both of precept and example has been diffused widely at the present day, if that would do any good. I would not be satisfying my convictions of right did I not add to any denunciation of the hab- it some index toward freedom; for I believe there are many men, perhaps some who will read these words, who would escape from the opium slavery at any ex- pense of effort, provided that the lethal stupor of their energies could be removed. Where there is one man who, like De Quincey, can at last get free by his own unaided struggle, there are a thousand to whom help from without is an absolute necessity. It was my happiness, very soon after breaking away from the hasheesh thraldom, to make the acquaintance of a gentleman whose experience of narcotics from eye- witness in their particular mother-countries, added to the capabilities which he possessed, as a medical man, for philosophizing upon such experience, interested me much in speaking with him. It had been his good fortune to meet with some singularly inordinate opium- eaters, who were in utter despair of recovery, and, still better, it was his blessing to effect a permanent and radical cure. In one case with which I became ac- quainted, the patient had reached a higher point of daily indulgence than De Quincey at his most desper- ate stage, and had seemingly lost all constitutional IDEAL MEN AND THEIR STIMULANTS. 365 basis for restoration to work upon. Yet the restora- tion was effected. I owe it not less to a proper good- will to humanity than to gratitude on the part of men to say who this physician was. Sincerely desirous of being in some way instrumental in the cure of a bondage which, if not my own, was, at least, so near akin to it that I can deeply sympathize with its op- pressed, I give a name whose betrayal in these pages violates no secrecy to the public, while it may do a great good-Dr. J. W. Palmer, of Roslyn, Long Island, the author-surgeon, late of the Honorable East India Company's Service, and of "The Golden Dagon," to which I have referred.* * Appendix, Note B. \ page: 366-367[View Page 366-367]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 366-367 - r! APPENDIX. Note A, page 20. TVE work referred to is a monograph upon Trance and human Hybernation, by Dr. James Braid, of Edinburgh, and published by John Church, Princes Street, Soho, London. Besides the copy now in my hands, through the kindness of my friend Dr. Rosa, of Watertown, I have never seen any other, although it probably exists in medical libraries in this country. Aware, at any rate, that the book is inac- cessible, except by considerable painstaking, to general readers, I will state the authority upon which the phenomenon of the fakeer's interment and trance is related, in order that it may rest upon a stronger basis of proof than the testimony of an exceedingly credu- lous and superstitioruspeople like the natives of Lahore. Sir Claude Wade, formerly of her majesty's service, and, at the date of Dr. Braid's writing, residing in Ryde, on the Isle of Wight, assures the doctor by letter that he was present at Lahore during the period lJle fakeer's inhumation, and witnessed his disinterment. By this gentleman, Sir C. E. Trevelyan, and Captain Osborne, all that is stated of the fakeer by Dr. Braid is authenticated, and, in- deed, through them did the doctor obtain the materials for his narra- tive. By as strong a conjunction of testimony, therefore, as could be de- sired for the proof of the most startling assertion, is this recital put beyond the possibility of being an imposture. Note B, page 365. Among a number of articles written at various times by this au- thor upon the subject of the narcotic fascinations, is one, published some time ago over his own signature in the New York Tribune, rel- ative to the employment of hasheesh in India both as a gratification and a remedy. My knowledge of his thorough acquaintance with: the habits of the ultra Oriental people, among whom he so long page: 368-369[View Page 368-369]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 368-369 368 APPENDIX. dwelt, together with a number of astonishing cures of the opium bane which he effected when, as I have said, all hope of restoration seemed forever gone, makes me particularly desirous to give the ar- ticle of which I speak in full, as supplementary, through its specific value, to that which I have written of my own experience of ha- sheesh. Except" as an antispasmodic in a very limited number of diseases, the Cannabis is known and prized very little among our practitioners, and I am persuaded that its uses are far wider and more important than has yet been imagined. Urged by this conviction, I have therefore transcribed the article of i-r. Palmer, and offer it here to the thoughtful attention which it deserves from all, whether professional or lay, who wish to add a most beneficial agent to their pharmacopoeia. It is entitled HASHEESH IN HYDROPHOBIA. To the Editor of the New York Tribune: SIR,-In your journal of Friday last appeared a timely paper on hydrophobia, from Dr. Griscom, of the New York Hospital, being a report of the interesting case of Edward Bransfield, with the inevita- bly fatal termination. Allow me to add to the communication of Dr. Griscom another on the same subject, which may be deemed im- portant. It is the result of medical observation in the East on the use and effects of hasheesh (Cannabis Indica). In thus writing for the public I shall avoid technicalities. The Radda and Coolee bazars of the Black Town of Calcutta are the Borroboola-Ghas of heathendom-the back slums of Budhism- where the people smoke gunjah, and pray and swear by Brahma and bucksheesh--where the most abject of helots and a very Herod among cruel heathen are presented in the same person-whither the flannel shirts and small-tooth-combs of'the Rev. Aminriadab Sleek are sent every Friday night from Burton's Theatre, but never reach. It is there you must go to procure your hasheesh fresh from the fields, and see your living subject try experiments on himself. If you have a lively case of Rabies in your compound, and carry a copy of Monte Cristo* in, your pocket, so much the better-you are posted in the phenomena. You will find dirty, dreadful-looking shops, redolent of petroleum and the hubble-bubble,t and prolific in Pariah dogs, ochre-colored urchins (which, as they flounder about on their bellies, "For the benefit of those who have not read this novel of Dumas, let me say that in it quite a lively hasheesh-vision is recorded. t Indice for water-pipe. APPENDIX. 369 always a shade or two lighter than the rest, oddly resemble young crocodiles), and every other living thing which should make those small-tooth combs lively in the market. And, amid these essentially Oriental surroundings, you will find a fat old gentleman, with the least possible clothing, to compromise between decency and the cli- mate, who is either galvanic like Uriah Heep, or asleep like the Pat Boy, as you happen to catch him just before or after his pipe, and who is licensed to dispense to the denizens of that quarter churrus, gunjah, and bhang, in the name of the Lord Dalhousie, the most no- ble the Governor General in Council. At the season of flowering, a resinous substance exudes and con- cretes on the slender stalks, leaves, and tops of the hemp plant in In- dia, a sticky gum which causes the young stems to adhere together te- naciously in the bundles of gunjah. Men, now dressed all in leather, are sent into the fields to run to and fro, sweeping the plants with their garments, from which afterward they diligently gather the resin that has adhered. This is tlfe churrus, wherein is all the narcotic virtue of the herb, all the seventh heaven of hasheesh intoxication i for the Hindoo and the Arab. The most potent of it comes from Nepaul. Bhang, or subjee, is the larger leaves and capsules of the Cannabis compressed in balls and sticky layers, with here and there some flowers between. Infused with water, it forms an intoxicating brew, to which, however, the Hindoos are not commonly addicted. Gunjah, mixed with tobacco and smoked in a pipe, is the shape of the drug which they popularly affect, and it is as gunjah that it is commonly sold in the shops. This comes in bundles, twenty-four of the plants entire, stalks, leaves, capsules, and tops undisturbed, and from which their resin has not been separated, adhering. tenaciously. Gunjah, indeed, is the term proper to Hindostan, hasheesh being Ar- abic, and used to denote the tops and tenderest parts of the plant, sun-dried and powdered. Romantic extravagances have been written and told about the magic and the marvels of hasheesh, and Indian Coleridges and Do Quinceys have been pressed into service to furnish forth characteris- tic stories for Oriental annuals and spectacles of the Monte Cristo kind. These are for the most part fictitious, though, to be sure, your kidmudgar, if he happens to be a gunjah-wallah, is apt at times to indulge in splendid fancies, to make you a grand salaam instead of a sandwich, and offer you a houri when you merely demanded a red herring. But Dr; O'Shaughnessy, the present distinguished su- perintendent of the Indian telegraph, who formerly administered a s page: 370-371[View Page 370-371]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page 370-371 370 APPENDIX. model system of discipline among the native hospitals, and from his Eastern look-out has added here and there a new light to the firma- ment of science, who was the first to pursue this subject with well- directed researches, and procure from it definite results, describes the uniform effect of this agent on the human economy as consisting in a prompt and complete alleviation of pain; a singular power of controlling inordinate muscular spasms, especially in hydrophobia and traumatic tetanus; " as a soporific or hypnotic in conciliating sleep;" inordinate augmentation of appetite; the decided promotion of aphrodisiac desire; and sudden cerebral exaltation, with perfect mental cheerfulness, in no case followed by the painful nervous " un- stringing," the constipation and suppression of secretions which at- tend the use of opium. Having daily under his eyes, in the streets of Calcutta, examples of this marvelous power of the gunjah, Dr. O'Shaughnessy iproceeded, in a succession of judicious experiments, to apply it in several dis- eases attended with much muscular convulsion. Its action he dis- covered to be primarily on the motor nerves, promptly inducing com- plete loss of power in almost all the muscles; hence its timeliness in the spasms of tetanus, in the cramp of Asiatic cholera, in the sharp constriction of the muscles of deglutition in hydrophobia. In teta- nus especially he met with signal success, even in his earliest exper- iments perfectly restoring ten cases in fourteen, and since then, to my personal knowledge, a still larger proportion. In the summer of 1852 it was administered with convincing success in cases of Asiatic cholera among the Company's troops in Burmah, even in the col- lapsed stage, subduing cramp and restoring warmth to the surface. Under its influence alone, that peculiar blueness and shriveling of the nails and fingers, familiarly known as " washerwoman's hands," has been rapidly dispersed, the flesh plumping out rosily again, like a decayed apple under an air-pump. Every intelligent physician will perceive that there is nothing in the kind of virtue manifested in these cases which has not a direct bearing, and by the same modus operandi, on the phenomena of hy- drophobia, since it has been ably contended, especially in India, that the three diseases are of a kindred type; that their phenomena are purely nervous and functional, and that no local inflammations are necessary to their definition. In an occasional contribution to the British and Foreign Medical Review, and in some excellent monographs published in Calcutta, Dr. O'Shaughnessy has given the results of his experiments since APPENDIX. 371 1850, by which it appears that in almost every case, with the Canna- bis alone, he has succeeded in procuring perfect alleviation of pain, complete control of the spasm, and its attendant apprehension and infernal imagination-indeed, an utter routing of all the horrors of the disease; and claiming, with a saving clause, one or two cures, he makes it evident that in every instance a painless, tranquil, conscious termination is attainable. His patients have swallowed water with avidity, paddled in it and made merry with it, and been friendly with it to the end. That it has thus overcome the horrors of Rabies and all the dread- fulness of such a death-bed, should procure for the Cannabis more consideration than it has met with at the hands of the profession in this country. The objection, hitherto valid, that its preparations are of unequal strength, and that the drug loses all its virtues by change of climate, is conclusively met and defeated at last by the admirable alcoholic extract of Mr. Robinson. The writer of this has seen a sepoy of the 40th Rifles, an hour before furiously hydrophobic, under the influence of the Cannabis not only drinking water freely, but pleasantly washing his face and hands. In conclusion, I would invoke for the Cannabis Indica the interest of American writers and practitioners by research and experiment. J. W. PATMRT M D. THE END.