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