THE HASHEESH EATER
which I had beheld wooed me continually like an irre-
sistible sorceress. I could not shut my eyes for midday musing
without beholding in that world, half dark, half light, beneath
the eyelids, a steady procession 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 embowerment of
woods, I stood upon the banks of a broad river that curved
far off into dreamy distance, and glided 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 subdued 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 journeying 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.
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
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