ughts, looking on but not mingling in them, I have taken the full
gauge of their hollow vanities. No, leave me to myself, or rather to
that new existence which I have entered upon, to the strange world to
which my daily opiate invites me. In society I am alone, fearfully
solitary; for my mind broods gloomily over its besetting sorrow, and I
make myself doubly miserable by contrasting my own darkness with the
light and joy of all about me; nay, you cannot imagine what a very hard
thing it is, at such times, to overcome some savage feelings of
misanthropy which will present themselves. But when I am alone, and
under the influence of opium, I lose for a season my chief source of
misery, myself; my mind takes a new and unnatural channel; and I have
often thought that any one, even that of insanity, would be preferable
to its natural one. 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. I then repelled that curiosity, for my mind was not in a situation
to gratify it. But now, since I have been talking of myself, I think I
can go on with my story with a very decent composure. In complying with
your request, I cannot say that my own experience warrants, in any
degree, the old and commonly received idea that sorrow loses half its
poignancy by its revelation to others. It was a humorous opinion of
Sterne, that a blessing which ties up the tongue, and a mishap which
unlooses it, are to be considered equal; and, indeed, I have known some
people happy under all the changes of fortune, when they could find
patient auditors. Tully wept over his dead daughter, but when he
chanced to think of the excellent things he could say on the subject,
he considered it, on the whole, a happy circumstance. But, for my own
part, I cannot say with the Mariner in Coleridge's ballad, that

"'At an uncertain hour My agony returns;

And, till my ghastly tale is told,
This heart within me burns.'"

He paused a moment, and rested his head upon his hand. "You have seen
Mrs. H------, of -------?" he inquired, somewhat abruptly. I replied in
the affirmative.

"Do you