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'Here nobody ever works, and all eat opium, said a gendarme; and Ah Fu knew a woman who ate a dollar's worth in a day. The successful thief will give a handful of money to each of his friends, a dress to a woman, pass an evening in one of the taverns of Tai-o-hae, during which he treats all comers, produce a big lump of opium, and retire to the bush to eat and sleep it off.
All was still and wrapped in a sweet twilight. The delightful odor of orange blossoms filled the place; which, like the subtle vapor of opium, intoxicated her senses. Breathless with fear and expectation she entered the grotto; her eyes were blinded by the sudden darkness, and she sank to the ground. "Thank God," she murmured softly, "I am alone, he is not here!
It is drawn, as it were, out of itself; and I realize in my own experience the fable of Pythagoras, of two distinct existences, enjoyed by the same intellectual being. "My first use of opium was the consequence of an early and very bitter disappointment. I dislike to think of it, much more to speak of it. I recollect, on a former occasion, you expressed some curiosity concerning it.
As he himself told me, he had come to the conclusion to emancipate himself because opium eating was a horrible mental bondage. The physical power of the drug over him he not only realized when attempting its abondonment. Its spiritual thraldom was his hourly misery. He was connected by blood and marriage with several of the best families in the land.
Secondly, the peculiar qualities which this singular mental constitution derived from his use of opium, qualities which, although they did not increase, or even give direction to his meditative power, at least magnified it, both optically, as to its visual capacity, and creatively, as to its constructive faculty.
A pity it is that we must content ourselves with empty descriptions of this nature. Here, doubtless, if anywhere, opium was an auxiliary to Coleridge.
When the boys entered and closed the door again, it was four o'clock and they decided not to go back to bed again that night. "How'd you know there was some one there?" Sandy asked of Will. "I heard the window sash rattle, then a strong perfume something like opium or hasheesh was forced into the room, then the fellow on the outside began to work his hypnotic spell."
At length the Chinese government, finding that silver alone was given in exchange for opium, was afraid that the country would be drained of that precious metal, and resolved to put a stop to the importation of the drug.
"And fifty," from Jim, with a little nervous titter. And with one consent they returned to the old pace, only now it was Bellairs who took the hundreds, and Jim who did the fifty business. But by this time our idea had gone abroad. I could hear the word "opium" pass from mouth to mouth; and by the looks directed at us, I could see we were supposed to have some private information.
It has no windows and is very dark, but in the centre is a small charcoal fire whose lurid glow lights up the faces of nine or ten human beings, men and women, lying on the floor. A young girl some fifteen years of age has charge of each room, fans the fire, lights the opium pipe, and holds it in the mouth of the last comer, till the head falls heavily on the body of his or her predecessor.
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