danced; she was apparelled in a robe of green, open at either
side; castanets were attached to her alabaster hands.... Poised on
the pink tips of her little feet, she approached swiftly to graze
his forehead with a kiss; then she recommenced her wondrous art,
and flitted around him, now backward-leaning, with head reversed,
eyes half-closed, arms lifelessly relaxed, locks uncurled and
loose-hanging like a bacchante of Mount Maenalus; now again active,
animated, laughing, fluttering, more tireless and capricious in her
movements than the pilfering bee. Heart-consuming love, sensual
pleasure, burning passion, youth inexhaustible and ever-fresh, the
promise of bliss to come--she expressed all.... The modest stars had
ceased to contemplate the scene; their golden eyes could not endure
such a spectacle; the heaven itself was blotted out, and a dome of
flaming vapor covered the hall.”
But for me a thousand Cleopatras caroused--and did not present
me a vase of poison to drain at a draught. Again I repeated to
myself: “And all these charming miracles because of 20 minims of
_Fluidextractum Cannabis Indicæ_, U. S. P.”
By the afternoon I had so far recovered as to be able to concentrate
my mind on technical studies. I will not attempt to interpret my
visions psychologically, but I wish to refer to one aspect. Spencer,
in _Principles of Psychology_, mentions hasheesh as possessing the
power of reviving ideas. I found this to be the case. I spoke about
air-ships because there had been a discussion about them at supper;
I quoted from Tennyson’s _Maud_ because I had been re-reading it;
I saw mercury-globules in the heavens because that same day I had
worked with mercury in preparing mercurial plaster; and I saw the
peacock-tails because a couple of days previous I had been at the
Museum of Natural History and had closely observed a magnificent
specimen. I cannot account for the women.
All poets--with the possible exception of Margaret Sangster--have
celebrated Alcohol, while Rudyard Kipling has gone so far as to
solemnize delirium tremens; B. V. has glorified Nicotine; DeQuincy
has immortalized Opium; Murger is full of praise for Caffeine; Dumas
in _Monte Cristo_ has apotheosized Hasheesh, Gautier has vivified
it in _Club des Hachichins_, Baudelaire has panegyrized it in
_Artificial Paradises_, but as few American pens have done so, I have
taken it upon myself to write a sonnet to the most interesting plant
that blooms:
Near Punjab and Pab, in Sutlej and Sind,
Where the cobras-di-capello abound,
Where the poppy, palm and the tamarind,
With cummin and ginger festoon the ground--
And the capsicum fields are all abloom,
From the hills above to the vales below,
Entrancing the air with a rich perfume,
There too does the greenish Cannabis grow:
Inflaming the blood with the living fire,
Till the burning joys like the eagles rise,
And the pulses throb with a strange desire,
While passion awakes with a wild surprise:--
O to eat that drug, and to dream all day,
Of the maids that live by the Bengal Bay!
APPENDIX
Mr. Courtenay Lemon has written the following memorandum of the
subjective features of his experience:
The first symptom which told me that the drug was beginning to
take effect was a feeling of extreme lightness. I seemed to be
hollowing out inside, in some magical manner, until I became a mere
shell, ready to float away into space. This was soon succeeded,
in one of the breathless intervals of my prodigious laughter, by
a diametrically opposite sensation of extreme solidity and leaden
weight. It seemed to me that I had changed into metal of some sort.
There was a metallic taste in my mouth; in some inexplicable way
the surfaces of my body seemed to communicate to my consciousness a
metalliferous feeling; and I imagined that if struck I would give
forth a metallic ring. This heavy and metallic feeling travelled
rapidly upwards from the feet to the chest, where it stopped, leaving
my head free for the issuance of the storms of laughter. Most of
the time my arms and legs seemed to be so leaden that it required
Herculean effort to move them, but under any special stimulus, such
as the entrance of a third person, the vagrant conception of a
new idea, or an unusually hearty fit of laughing, this feeling of
unliftable heaviness in the limbs and torso would be forgotten and I
would move freely, waving my arms with great vigor and enthusiasm.
Thruout the experiment I experienced a peculiar double consciousness.
I was perfectly aware that my laughter, etc., was the result of
having taken the drug, yet I was powerless to stop it, nor did I
care to do so, for I enjoyed it as thoroly as if it had arisen from
natural causes. In the same way the extension of the sense of time
induced by the drug was in itself indubitable and as cogent as any
normal evidence of the senses, yet I remained able to convince myself
at any moment by reflection that my sense of time was fallacious.
I divided these impressions into hasheesh-time and real time. But
in their alternations, so rapid as to seem simultaneous, both these
standards of time seemed equally valid. For instance, once or twice
when my friend spoke of something I had said a second before, I was
impatient and replied: “What do you want to go back to that for? That
was a long time ago. What’s the use of going back into the past?”
At the next moment, however, I would recognize, purely as a matter
of logic, that he was replying to the sentence before the last that
I had uttered, and would thus realize that the remark to which he
referred was separated from the present only by a moment’s interval.
I did not, however, at any time on this occasion, attain the state
sometimes reached in the second stage of hasheesh intoxication in
which mere time disappears in an eternity wherein ages rush by like
ephemera; nor did I experience any magnification of the sense of
space, my experiences in regard to such extensions being confined to
an intermittent multiplication of the sense of time.
When my laughter began it seemed for an instant to be mechanical, as
if produced by some external power which forced air in and out of
my lungs; it seemed for an instant to proceed from the body rather
than from the mind; to be, in its inception, merely physical laughter
without a corresponding psychic state of amusement. But this was only
momentary. After the first few moments I enjoyed laughing immensely.
I felt an inclination to joke as well as to laugh, and I remember
saying: “I am going to have some reason for this laughing, so I will
tell a story; if I have to laugh anyway, I’m going to supply good
reasons for doing so, as it would be idiotic to laugh about nothing.”
I thereupon proceeded to relate an anecdote. Altho I knew that my
condition was the result of the drug, I was nevertheless filled with
a genuine sense of profound hilarity, an eager desire to impart
similar merriment to others, and a feeling of immense geniality and
mirth, accompanied by sentiments of the most expansive good-will.
Against the effects of the drug, much as I enjoyed and yielded to
it, there was opposed a preconceived intention. I had determined
to tell my friend Victor Robinson, who was taking notes of my
condition, just how I felt; had determined to supply as much data
as possible in regard to my sensations. The result was that I
repeatedly summoned all the rational energy that remained to me, and
fought desperately to express the thoughts that came to me, whether
ridiculous or analytical. Sometimes when I felt myself slipping
away again into laughter or dreaminess I summoned all my strength
to say what I had in mind, and would lose the thread of my thought
and could not remember what I wanted to say, but would return to it
again and again with the utmost determination and tenacity until I
succeeded in saying what I wished to--sometimes an observation about
my sensations, often only a jest about my condition. I believe that
this acted as a great resistant to the effect of the drug. The energy
of the drug was dissipated, I think, in overcoming my will to observe
and analyze my sensations, and it was probably for this reason that
I did not pass very far on this occasion into the second stage
in which laughter gives place to grandiose visions and charming
hallucinations.
After my friend Victor and his father turned out the light and left
the room, my laughter gradually subsided into a few final gurgles of
ineffable mirth and benevolence, and after a period of the amorous
visions sometimes induced by this philtre from the land of harems,
I fell into a sound sleep after my three hours of continuous and
exhausting laughter.
I awoke next morning after seven hours sleep, with a ravenous
appetite, which I think was probably as much due to the great
expenditure of energy in laughing as to any direct effect of the drug
itself. I was also very thirsty and my skin was parched and burning.
Altho I immediately dressed and went down to breakfast, I felt very
drowsy and disinclined to physical exertion or mental concentration.
And while no longer given to causeless laughter, I felt a lingering
merriment and was easily moved to chuckling. I slept several hours in
the afternoon and after dinner I slept all evening, awaking at 11
P. M., when I arose feeling very much refreshed and entirely normal,
and went out to get another meal, being still hungry. I should say
that the immediate after-effect, the reaction from the stimulation
of hasheesh, is not much greater, except for the drowsiness, than
that following the common or beer garden variety of intoxication. My
memory of what I said and did while under the hasheesh was complete
and accurate.
Transcriber’s Note:
Words and phrases in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like
this_. Those in bold are surrounded by equal signs, =like this=.
Obsolete and alternative spellings were retained. Nine misspelled
words were corrected; a missing accent was added to “Médecine;” one
instance of “DeMuth” was changed to Demuth.