three weeks intervening between the 10th and the 31st of December. So
far as mere pain of body was concerned, there was little to choose
between the agony of one day and another; but the apprehension that
insanity might set in, certainly aggravated the distress of the later
stages of the trial. When a man knows that he is practicing
self-control to the very utmost, and holding himself up steadily to
his work in spite of the gravest discouragements, the consciousness
that a large vacuum is being gradually formed in his brain is not
exhilarating.

The next day--to me a very memorable one--the fourth of January, I sat
for most of the day rocking backward and forward on a sofa or a chair,
speaking occasionally a few words in a low sepulchral voice, but with
the one bitter feeling, penetrating my whole nature, that come what
would, on that day _I would not_.

When the clock struck twelve at midnight, and I knew that for the
first time in many years I had lived for an entire day without opium,
it excited no surprise or exultation. The capacity for an emotion of
any kind was exhausted. I seemed as little capable of a sentiment as a
man well could be, this side of his winding-sheet. I knew, of course,
that in these forty days save one, I had worked out the problem, How
to leave off opium, and that I had apparently attained a final
deliverance: but it was several weeks before I appreciated with any
confidence the completion of the task I had undertaken.

Although the opium habit was broken, it was only to leave me in a
condition of much feebleness and suffering. I could not sleep, I
could not sit quietly, I could not lie in any one posture for many
minutes together. The nervous system was thoroughly deranged. Weak as