not be forgotten that hitherto I have been only a dilettante eater of
opium; eight years' practice even, with a single precaution of allowing
sufficient intervals between every indulgence, has not been sufficient to
make opium necessary to me as an article of daily diet. But now comes a
different era. Move on, if you please, reader, to 1813. In the summer
of the year we have just quitted I have suffered much in bodily health
from distress of mind connected with a very melancholy event. This event
being no ways related to the subject now before me, further than through
the bodily illness which it produced, I need not more particularly
notice. Whether this illness of 1812 had any share in that of 1813 I
know not; but so it was, that in the latter year I was attacked by a most
appalling irritation of the stomach, in all respects the same as that
which had caused me so much suffering in youth, and accompanied by a
revival of all the old dreams. This is the point of my narrative on
which, as respects my own self-justification, the whole of what follows
may be said to hinge. And here I find myself in a perplexing dilemma.
Either, on the one hand, I must exhaust the reader's patience by such a
detail of my malady, or of my struggles with it, as might suffice to
establish the fact of my inability to wrestle any longer with irritation
and constant suffering; or, on the other hand, by passing lightly over
this critical part of my story, I must forego the benefit of a stronger
impression left on the mind of the reader, and must lay myself open to
the misconstruction of having slipped, by the easy and gradual steps of
self-indulging persons, from the first to the final stage of opium-eating
(a misconstruction to which there will be a lurking predisposition in
most readers, from my previous acknowledgements). This is the dilemma,
the first horn of which would be sufficient to toss and gore any column
of patient readers, though drawn up sixteen deep and constantly relieved
by fresh men; consequently that is not to be thought of. It remains,
then, that I _postulale_ so much as is necessary for my purpose. And let