THE HASHEESH EATER
cient for the action of a drama; the last left me in complete
ignorance of any point far enough back in the past to date the
commencement of the sentence. Its enunciation might have
occupied years. I wasnot 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 reserved for me.
I was sitting in it at a distance of hardly three feet from the
centre table around which the members of the fantily were
grouped. Rapidly that distance widened. The whole atmo-
sphere seemed ductile, and spun endlessly out into great
spaces surrounding me on every side. We were in a vast
hall, of which my friends and I occupied opposite extremities.
The ceiling and the walls ran upward witha gliding motion as
if vivified by a sudden force of resistless 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 persons was the characteristic of the
hasheesh delirium.
In the midst of my 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 calmer being suffered with the other by
sympathy, but did not lose its self-possession.
The servant had not come.
247