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She was a bright intelligent and obedient little girl, and I soon became very fond of her. She told me one day that her grandmother was a Christian, and that she had been baptized and attended a Christian school. Her father, however, was an opium-smoker, and had pawned everything he had, and finally when her grandmother was absent had taken her and sold her to get money to buy opium.
For a habitual opium-smoker to abstain when the fumes of chandu actually reach his nostrils is a feat of will-power difficult adequately to appraise. An ordinary tobacco smoker cannot remain for long among those who are enjoying the fragrant weed without catching the infection and beginning to smoke also.
Before the end of the third day he had revealed himself as a confirmed opium-smoker, a gambler, a most audacious thief, and a first-class sprinter. When he departed at the top of his speed with thirty-two golden sovereigns of my own hard-earned savings it was the last straw. I had reserved that money in case my difficulties came to the worst. Now it was gone I felt as poor and naked as a fakir.
The Chinese smoke opium in specially-made pipes. A small pea of opium is pressed into the bowl of the pipe and held over the flame of a lamp. The smoke is inhaled in a couple of deep breaths. Another pellet is treated in the same way. Soon the opium-smoker falls into a trance full of dreams and beautiful visions. He forgets himself, his cares and his surroundings, and enjoys perfect bliss.
With the beatific smile of an opium-smoker, he would accept the impetuous caress of her lips, the entwining of her arms, strangling him like marble boas. "Ulysses, my master!... The moments that separate me from you weigh upon me like centuries!" He, on the other hand, had lost all notion of time. The days were all confused in his mind, and he had to keep asking in order to realize their passing.
"Only once before, M. Gaston, have I compared notes with a fellow opium-smoker, and he, also, was a patron of Madame Jean; he, also, met in his dreams that Eastern Circe, in the grove of apes, just as I"... "Morbleu! Yes?" "As I meet her!" "But this is astounding!" cried Max, who actually thought it so. "Your fancy your superstition was this: that only habitues of Rue St.
Nor, as far as that goes, do I. But, of course, I have no experience of legal matters." "You can never tell beforehand," said Thorndyke, "what facts may turn out to be of moment, so that it is best to collect all you can get. By the way, were you aware that your uncle was an opium-smoker?" "No, I was not.
It must be remembered, however, that every man who smokes opium is not what we understand by an "opium-smoker," and that between the man who takes his daily pipe of opium after his supper, and the unhappy opium-slave who reduces himself to imbecility in such dens as I saw in Canton, there is just as much difference as there is in England between the "moderate drinker" and the "habitual drunkard."
Because they recognize that opium is ruining the lives of many of their people, and lessening the efficiency of many others, because they regard it as a source of weakness to their country and danger to their sons, it has become a matter of shame for a man to be known as an opium-smoker, even "in moderation."
The opium-smoker understood these poetic flights; he had the key of the palace where those two sensuous imaginations were wandering. The doctor, too, tried to understand, and he understood, for he was one of the Pleiades of genius belonging to the Paris school of medicine, from which a true physician comes out as much a metaphysician as an accomplished analyst.
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