are not to be forgotten, and from circumstances connected with it I
remember that it must be referred to the autumn of 1804. During that
season I was in London, having come thither for the first time since my
entrance at college. And my introduction to opium arose in the following
way. From an early age I had been accustomed to wash my head in cold
water at least once a day: being suddenly seized with toothache, I
attributed it to some relaxation caused by an accidental intermission of
that practice, jumped out of bed, plunged my head into a basin of cold
water, and with hair thus wetted went to sleep. The next morning, as I
need hardly say, I awoke with excruciating rheumatic pains of the head
and face, from which I had hardly any respite for about twenty days. On
the twenty-first day I think it was, and on a Sunday, that I went out
into the streets, rather to run away, if possible, from my torments, than
with any distinct purpose. By accident I met a college acquaintance, who
recommended opium. Opium! dread agent of unimaginable pleasure and pain!
I had heard of it as I had of manna or of ambrosia, but no further. How
unmeaning a sound was it at that time: what solemn chords does it now
strike upon my heart! what heart-quaking vibrations of sad and happy
remembrances! Reverting for a moment to these, I feel a mystic
importance attached to the minutest circumstances connected with the
place and the time and the man (if man he was) that first laid open to me
the Paradise of Opium-eaters. It was a Sunday afternoon, wet and
cheerless: and a duller spectacle this earth of ours has not to show than
a rainy Sunday in London. My road homewards lay through Oxford Street;
and near "the stately Pantheon" (as Mr. Wordsworth has obligingly called
it) I saw a druggist's shop. The druggist--unconscious minister of
celestial pleasures!--as if in sympathy with the rainy Sunday, looked
dull and stupid, just as any mortal druggist might be expected to look on
a Sunday; and when I asked for the tincture of opium, he gave it to me as
any other man might do, and furthermore, out of my shilling returned me