THE HASHEESH EATER
put itto my lips. Ha! asurprise! 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 mantled in the cups of the
Valhalla.
Hasheesh I called the “ drug of travel,” and I had only to
direct my thoughts strongly toward a particular part of the
world previously to swallowing my bolus to make my whole
fantasia in the strongest possible degree topographical.
There are two facts which I have verified as universal by
repeated experiment, which fall into their place here as aptly
as they can in the course of my narrative. First: 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 produce
diametrically opposite effects. Still further, I have taken at
one time a pill of thirty grains, which hardly gavea perceptible
phenomenon, and at another, when my dose had been but half
that quantity, I have suffered 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 employed Hope as its
advocate, and won the suit. Secondly: If, during the ecstasy
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