While smoking he removed the opium, going through the same process as before, and it all took about fifteen minutes.

What the old man's feelings were he did not tell us, but he seemed very contented, as if then he cared for nothing, as if he had no concern for the world and its trials.

But one must read the graphic pages of Thomas De Quincey in his "Confessions of an English Opium Eater," in order to know what are the joys and what the torments of him who is addicted to the use of the pernicious drug.

It was while De Quincey was in Oxford that he came under its tyranny.

At first taken to allay neuralgic pain, and then resorted to as a remedy on all occasions of even the slightest suffering, it wove its chain around him like a merciless master who puts his servant in bonds.