514 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



sea of nothingness again. I clasped my hands in wild entreaty ; I was 

 shaken by horrible convulsions — so, at least, it seemed to me at the 

 time — but, beyond a slight quivering of the fingers, no movement was 

 discernible by the others. I was unable to account for the apathy 

 with which my dearest friends regarded my violent movements, and 

 could only suppose it was because my condition was so hopeless that 

 they knew any effort to help me would be futile. 



For five hours I remained in the same condition — short intervals 

 of half-consciousness, and then long lapses into the agonizing experi- 

 ence I have described. Six times the door of time seemed to close on 

 me, and I was thrust shuddering into a hopeless eternity, each time 

 falling, as at first, into that terrible abyss wrapped in the fearful 

 dread of the unknown. Always there were the same utter helpless- 

 ness and the same harrowing desire to rest upon something, to stop, 

 if but for an instant, to feel some support beneath ; and through all 

 the horrors of my sinking the same solemn and remorseful certainty 

 penetrated my consciousness that, had I not in life questioned the 

 power of Christ to save, I should have felt under me the " everlast- 

 ing arms " bearing me safely to an immortality of bliss. There was 

 no variation in my trances ; always the same horror came, and each 

 time when sensibility partially returned I fought against my fate and 

 struggled to avert it. But I never could compel my lips to speak, 

 and the violent paroxysms my agonizing dread threw me into were 

 all unseen by my friends, for in reality, as I was afterward told, I 

 made no motion except a slight muscular twitching of the fingers. 



Later on, when the effect of the drug was lessening, although the 

 spells or trances recurred, the intervals were long, and in them I seemed 

 to regain clearer reasoning power and was able to account for some of 

 my hallucinations. Even when my returns to consciousness were very 



partial, Dr. G had made me inhale small quantities of nitrite of 



amyl to maintain the action of the heart, which it was the tendency of 

 the excess of hasheesh to diminish. Coming out of the last trance, I 

 discovered that the measured rending report like the discharge of a 

 cannon which attended my upward way was the throbbing of my own 

 heart. As I sank I was probably too unconscious to notice it, but 

 always, as it made itself heard, my falling ceased and the pain of my 

 ascending began. The immense time between the throbs gives me as 

 I remember it an idea of infinite duration that was impossible to me 

 before. 



For several days I had slight relapses into the trance-like state I 

 have tried to describe, each being preceded by a feeling of profound 

 dejection. I felt myself going as before, but by a desperate effort of 

 will saved myself from falling far into the shadowy horrors which I 

 saw before me. I dragged myself back from my fate, faint and ex- 

 hausted and with a melancholy belief that I was cut off from human 

 sympathy, and my wretched destiny must always be unsuspected by 



