Experiences of Haschisch. 441 



at the meanness of such a performance, so far short did it come of 

 my own sense of sublimity; for I felt exalted, and had the utmost 

 consciousness that I was able to separate the false from the true, 

 though I really could not. I retraced my steps, and was accom- 

 panied home with triumphal bands of music, shouts of triumph, 

 running footmen, carrying coloured flambeaux ; and I gradually 

 quickened my pace till I ran too, only touching the ground at 

 intervals, but for the most part swimming through the air; yet 

 knowing that I walked as other people, and knowing too, that 

 the ordinary sounds and scenes of the streets were the founda- 

 tions of the whole delusion. 



I reached home, and went to my study with a sense of satis- 

 faction that I was now in a safer position than in the streets 

 under such an influence. I sat down, and began to fill a pipe 

 with Turkey tobacco. The pipe would lengthen out so that I 

 could not reach the bowl, yet I did reach it, and in like manner 

 the tobacco jar seemed deep enough to serve for one of those 

 used in "Ali Baba, or the Forty Thieves!" and it suddenly 

 became a row of jars, and out of them leaped the forty thieves, 

 with monkey's faces and red jackets on.* I lighted my pipe, 

 and as the cloud rose, I saw the party had all lighted their 

 pipes, and were all proper Arabs, and I was in the midst, about 

 to tell them a tale. 



By some strange freak they all suddenly collapsed and be- 

 came the double of myself, and yet they continued smoking. 

 I now saw in the stomach of my double a huge cake of 

 Haschisch, which presently shot up into his brain, and I felt a 

 hot throbbing of the head, and the thought occurred, " Why, 

 if he has the Haschisch, have I the burning, and how can that 

 shadow smoke so calmly with a mass of poison in his brain V 3 

 I rose and propounded to my double a problem, " How, in the 

 end, matter and spirit would be completely identified and made 

 as one V I was assured, in reply, that a sense of lightness 

 would accomplish all, and I became light as a feather ; I swayed 

 to and fro, I was lifted up, sparks flashed in my eyes, fire was 

 emitted from my fingers, my head, my stomach ; and presently 

 there was an awful crash, and I came to myself with the 

 thought that I was going mad. I saw the pipe in fragments at 

 my feet, and the burning tobacco on the hearthrug. I coolly 

 picked it up with my hand, took another pipe, dropped the 

 smoking tobacco into it, and saw my double again. This time 

 he was the body and I was the shadow. I felt myself to be 

 nothing ; I was the soul, and beside me was the body. I 

 thought I had now solved the problem of matter and spirit. I 



* I had seen a monkey on a barrel organ during my walk, and tested my 



sanity by noting all its zoological features, in order to determine its species ; but 

 I lost it suddenly. 



VOL. II.- — NO. VI. H H 



