became evident that no opium meant no dinner, and a little later, that
dinner or no dinner the opium was still a necessity. A half grain I
thought might carry me through the day, but in this I was mistaken. As
I lay upon my friend's sofa, suffering from a strange medley of
hunger, pain, and weakness, it seemed that years must elapse before
the system could regain its tone or the bodily sensations become at
all endurable. Soon after dinner I felt obliged to take another
half-grain. My humiliation in failing to triumph when and how I had
resolved to do, was excessive. In spite of the strongest resolutions,
I was still an opium-eater. I somehow felt that after all I had gone
through I ought, to have succeeded. I was in no mood to speculate
about the causes of the failure; it was enough to know that I had
failed, and what was worse, that apparently nothing whatever had been
gained in the last four days. While I certainly felt no temptation to
give in, I thought it possible that some of the functions of the body,
from the long use of opium, might have completely lost their powers of
normal action, and that I should be obliged to continue a very
moderate use of the drug during the remainder of my life. I saw, in
dismal perspective, that small fractional part of the opium of years
which was now represented by a single grain, looming up in endless
distance, not unlike that puzzling metaphysical necessity in the
perpetual subdivision of a unit, which, carried as far as it may be,
always leaves a final half undisposed of. But in this I did myself
injustice. I had really gained much in these few days, and the proof
of it lay in the use of but half a grain on the day which succeeded
New Year's. The third day of January, greatly to my surprise, a
quarter-grain I found carried me through the twenty-four hours with
apparently some slight remission of suffering.

As I now look back upon it, the worst of the experiment lay in the