The sober half of me went into fits of laughter over them, and through that laughter, my vision shifted into another scene.  I had laughed until my eyes overflowed profusely.  Every drop that fell, immediately became a large loaf of bread, and tumbled upon the shop-board of a baker in the bazaar at Damascus.  The more I laughed, the faster the loaves fell, until such a pile was raised about the baker, that I could hardly see the top of his head.  “The man will be suffocated,” I cried, “but if he were to die, I cannot stop!”

My perceptions now became more dim and confused.  I felt that I was in the grasp of some giant force; and, in the glimmering of my fading reason, grew earnestly alarmed, for the terrible stress under which my frame labored increased every moment.  A fierce and furious heat radiated from my stomach throughout my system; my mouth and throat were as dry and hard as if made of brass, and my tongue, it seemed to me, was a bar of rusty iron.  I seized a pitcher of water, and drank long and deeply; but I might as well have drunk so much air, for not only did it impart no moisture, but my palate and throat gave me no intelligence of having drunk at all.  I stood in the centre of the room, brandishing my arms convulsively, an heaving sighs that seemed to shatter my whole being.  “Will no one,” I cried in distress, “cast out this devil that has possession of me?” I no longer saw the room nor my friends, but I heard one of them saying, “It must be real; he could not counterfeit such an expression as that.  But it don’t look much like pleasure.”  Immediately afterwards there was a scream of the wildest laughter, and my countryman sprang upon the floor, exclaiming, “O, ye gods!  I am a locomotive!” This was his ruling hallucination; and, for the space of two or three hours, he continued to pace to and fro with a measured stride, exhaling his breath in violent jets, and when he spoke, dividing his words into syllables, each of which he brought out with a jerk, at the same time turning his hands at his sides, as if they were the cranks of imaginary wheels, The Englishman, as soon as he felt the dose beginning to take effect, prudently retreated to his own room, and what the nature of his visions was, we never learned, for he refused to tell, and, moreover, enjoined the strictest silence on his wife.

By this time it was nearly midnight.  I had passed through the Paradise of Hasheesh, and was plunged at once into its fiercest Hell.  In my ignorance I had taken what, I have since learned, would have been a sufficient portion for six men, and was now paying a frightful penalty for my curiosity.  The excited blood rushed through my frame with a sound like the roaring of mighty waters.  It was projected into my eyes until I could no longer see; it beat thickly in my ears, and so throbbed in my heart, that I feared the ribs would give way under its blows.  I tore open my vest, placed my hand over the spot, and tried to count the pulsations; but there were