ARMY MEDICAL LIBRARY WASHINGTON Founded 1836 Section.. Number ..%-.??.0.Qj___ 7 Fobm 113c, W. D.. S. G. O. (Revised June 13, 1936) DUE LAST DATE i < V'-. • 0EC1 «? THE 63> HASHEESH EATER: BEING PASSAGES FROM THE LIFE OF A PYTHAGOREAN. ' "Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise." Kubla. Khan. j( i & & / 7 NEW YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE. 1857 - l.TBRj? L34S2, 1857 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred and fifty-seven, by Harper & Brothers, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York. CONTENTS, CHAPTER PAGE I. THE NIGHT ENTRANCE 15 II. UNDER THE SHADOW OF ESCULAPIUS 29 III. THE KINGDOM OF THE DREAM 34 IV. CASHMERE AND CATHAY BY TWILIGHT 44 V. THE HOUR AND THE POWER OF DARKNESS 60 VI. THE MYSTERIES OF THE LIFE-SIGN GEMINI 75 VII. THE NIGHT OF APOTHEOSIS 85 VIII. VOS NON VOBIS—WHEREIN THE PYTHAGOREAN IS A BY- STANDER 101 IX. THE SHADOW OF BACCHUS, THE SHADOW OF THANATOS, AND THE SHADOW OF SHAME 123 X. NIMIUM—THE AMREETA CUP OF UNVEILING 132 XI. THE BOOK OF SYMBOLS 149 XII. TO-DAY, ZEUS; TO-MORROW, PROMETHEUS 153 XIII. EIDOLA THEATRI AND THE PRINCE OF WHALES 161 XIV. HAIL'. PYTHAGORAS 176 XV. "THEN SEEVA OPENED ON THE ACCURSED ONE HIS EYE OF ANGER" 188 XVI. AN OATH IN THE FORUM OF MADNESS.. 203 XVII. DOWN WITH THE TIDE ... 212 XVIII. MY STONY GUARDIAN 221 XIX. RESURGAM ! 227 XX. LEAVING HIS SCHOOLMASTER, THE PYTHAGOREAN SETS UP FOR HIMSELF - 232 XXI. CONCERNING THE DOCTOR; NOT SOUTHEY'S, BUT MINE... 247 XXII. GRAND DIVERTISSEMENT 258 XXIII. THE HELL OF WATERS AND THE HELL OF TREACHERY.. 264 IS NO AD- XXIV. THE VISIONARY ; TO WHICH CHAPTER THERE MITTANCE UPON BUSINESS 269 XXV. CAVE SUCCEDANEA 280 NOTES ON THE WAY UPWARD 285 LABYRINTHS AND GUIDING THREADS.-. 290 IDEAL MEN AND THEIR STIMULANTS 330 PREFACE. I LIKE Prefaces as little as my readers can. If this so proverbially unnoticed part of the book catch any eye, the glance that it gives will of course travel no farther to find my apology for making this preface a short one. There is but one thought for which I wish to find place here. I am deeply aware that, if the suc- ceeding pages are read at all, it will be by those who have already learned to love De Quincey. Not that I dare for a moment to compare the manner of my narrative with that most wondrous, most inspired Dreamer's ; but in the experience of his life and my own there is a single common characteristic which happens to be the very one for whose sake men open any such book. The path of De Quincey led beyond all the boundaries of the ordinary life into a world of intense lights and shadows—a realm in which all the range of average thought found its conditions surpass- ed, if not violated. My own career, however far its recital may fall short of the Opium Eater's, and not- withstanding it was not coincident and but seldom parallel with his, still ran through lands as glorious, as unfrequented, as weird as his own, and takes those who would follow it out of the trodden highways of mind. In the most candid and indulgent reader who has come to my story from the perusal of the Confes- sions, I foresee that there will exist an inevitable tend- VI • PKEFACE. ency to compare the two, to seek resemblances, and perhaps, if such be found, to ascribe them to my at least unconscious imitation of the great, the elder au- thor. How much to my disparagement this would be, my natural desire for the success of this book makes unpleasant to represent even to myself. If it be possible to forestall such a state of things, let me aim at it by a few brief representations of the manner in which this work has been written. Frankly do I say that I admire De Quincey to such a degree that, were not imitation base and he inimita- ble, I know no master of style in whose footsteps I should more earnestly seek to tread ; but, in the first place, as this book asserts, it is a resume of experi- ences which, so far from being fiction, have received at my hands a delineation unsatisfactory to myself from its very inadequacy. The fact of my speaking truths, so far as they can be spoken, out of my actual memory, must shield me, if the assertion be received by any but one who has tasted my cup of Awakening, from the imputation of being a copyist of incidents. In the second place, to copy style, study, care, and frequent references to the proposed model are indis- pensable. Very well ; not one of the pages which make this book has ever been rewritten. It has been printed from the first draft, and that, through neces- sities of other occupation, illness, and care, compelled to be thrown off, though on its author's part unwilling- ly, currente calamo. Moreover, out of particular jeal- ousy against the risk of burlesquing the inimitable, I have refrained from looking at the Confessions from the beginning to the end of my undertaking. PEEFACE. vii My memory, however, tells me that occasionally there are actual resemblances both in incident and method. As an incident-resemblance, I instance the perception, in both experiences, of the inerasible char- acter of the mind's memorial inscriptions—as De Quin- cey grandly has it—the Palimpsest characteristic of memory. Acknowledging the resemblance, I only say that we both saw the same thing. The state of insight which he attained through opium, I reached by the way of hasheesh. Almost through the very same symbols as De Quincey, a hasheesh-maenad friend of mine also saw it, as this book relates, and the vision is accessible to all of the same temperament and degree of exaltation. For a place, New York for instance, a stranger accounts, not by saying that any one of the many who testify to its existence copied from another, but by acknowledging "there is such a place." So do I account for the fact by saying " there is such a fact." As a resemblance in method, by which I mean me- chanical arrangement, I am aware only of this, viz., that I divide my narrative into use and abandonment of hasheesh, and speculations upon the phenomena after abandonment, which latter, for the sake of antic- ipating the charge, I say might perhaps be compared as to its order with the Suspiria; but the most per- fect Zoilus among hypercritics would be aware that in this arrangement I follow Nature, who begins, goes on, and finishes, and reflects the past in her progress, so that I should seem no copyist on that score. But, at any rate, if influenced by the memory of the great Visionary's method in any sense (and it is true Via PREFACE. that I might have made my course more dissimilar by neglecting the order of time), I feel that the influence must necessarily have "been "beneficial to my own ef- forts. As the "bard who would sing of heroes follows the "blind old harper of Ionia along that immortal corridor of resounding song which first made Greece imperish- able, and tells his battles in the Epic, not the Elegy, so must every man hereafter, who opens the mysteries of that great soul within him, speak, so far as he can, down the channels through which Thomas de Quincey has spoken, nor out of vain perversity refuse to use a passage which the one grand pioneer has made free to all. If in any way, therefore, except servilely, I seem to have followed De Quincey, I am proud of it. If there be any man who does not feel the grace which the mantle of that true poet's influence confers upon every thinker and scholar who loves truth, beauty, and the music of the English tongue, I ask that he will trans- fer unto me his share thereof, and at once the Preface and the Prayer of THE HASHEESH EATER, TUE SON OF PYTnAGORAS, are ended. INTRODUCTION. The singular energy and scope of imagination which characterize all Oriental tales, and especially that great typical representative of the species, the Arabian Nights, were my ceaseless marvel from earliest child- hood. The book of Arabian and Turkish story has very few thoughtful readers among the nations of the West, who can rest contented with admiring its bold nights into unknown regions of imagery, and close the mystic pages that have enchanted them without an in- quiry as to the influences which have turned the hu- man mind into such rare channels of thought. Sooner or later comes the question of the producing causes, and it is in the power of few—very few of us—to an- swer that question aright. We try to imitate Eastern narrative, but in vain. Our minds can find no clew to its strange, untrodden by-ways of speculation ; our highest soarings are still in an atmosphere which feels heavy with the reek and damp of ordinary life. We fail to account for those storm-wrapped peaks of sublimity which hover over the path of Oriental story, or those beauties which, like rivers of Paradise, make music beside it. We are all of us taught to say, "The children of the East live under a sunnier sky than their Western brethren ; they A2 X INTRODUCTION.