Diary of a Drug Fiend

78 The Diary of a Drug Fiend Happiness lies within one’s self, and the way to dig it out is cocaine. But don’t you go and forget what I hope you won't mind my calling ordinary prudence. Use a little - common sense, use precaution, exercise good judgment. However hungry you may happen to be, you don’t want to eat a dozen oxen en brochette. Natura non facit saltum. It’s only a question of applying knowledge in a reasonable manner. We had found out how to work the machine, and there was no reason in the world why we shouldn’t fly from here to Kalamazoo. So I took three quite small sniffs at reasonable intervals, and I was on the job once more. I chased Lou around the suite; and I dare say we did upset a good deal of the furniture, but that doesn’t matter, for we haven't got to pick it up. The important thing was that I caught Lou; and by-and-by we found ourselves completely out of breath ; and then, confound it, just when I wanted a quiet pipe before lunch, the telephone rang, and the porter wanted to know if we were at home to Mr. Elgin Feccles. Well, I told you before that I didn’t care for the man so much as that. As Stevenson observes, if he were the only tie that bound one to home, I think most of us would vote for foreign travel. But he’d played the game pretty straight last night; and hang it, one couldn’t do less than invite the fellow to lunch. He might have a few more tips about the technique of this business anyhow. I’m not one of those cocksure fellows that imagine when they have one little scrap of knowledge, that they have drained the fount of wisdom dry. So I said, “‘ Ask him to be good enough to come up by all means.” Lou flew to the other room to fix her hair and her face and all those things that women always seem to be having to fix, and up comes Mr. Feccles with the most perfect manner that I have ever observed in