A Night in an Opium Den.
By the Author of "A Dead Man's Diary."
ES, I have smoked opium in Ratcliff Highway, and in the den which was visited by Charles Dickens, and through the pipe which had the honour of making that distinguished novelist sick.
"And did you have lovely dreams? and what were they like?" asks a fair reader.
Yes, I had lovely dreams, and I have no doubt that by the aid of imagination, and a skilful manipulation of De Quincey, I could concoct a fancy picture of opium-smoking and its effects, which might pass for a faithful picture of what really occurred. But, "My Lord and Jury"—to quote the historic words of Mrs. Cluppins, when cross-examined by Serjeant Buzfuz—"My Lord and Jury, I will not deceive you": what those dreams were, I could not for the life of me now describe, for they were too aërial and unsubstantial to be caught and fixed, like hard facts, in words, by any other pen than that of a Coleridge, or a De Quincey. I might as well attempt to convey to you, by means of a clay model, an idea of the prism-fires and rainbow-hues that circle, and change, and chase each other round the pictured sides of that floating fairy-sphere which we call a soap-bubble, as attempt, unassisted, to describe my dreams in words. Hence it is that in this narrative, I have confined myself strictly to the facts of my experiences.
The proprietor.
The proprietor of the den which I visited was a Chinaman named Chang, who positively grinned me over from head to foot—not only when I was first made known to him by the friend who had piloted me to the establishment, but as long as I remained within grinning range. An uninformed onlooker might not unnaturally have concluded that I was stone-deaf and dumb, and that our host was endeavouring to express, by his features, the cordiality he was unable to convey in words. In reply o every casual remark made by my companion, the Chinaman would glance up for a moment at his face, and then turn round to grimace again at me, as though I, and I only, were the subject of their conversation, and he was half afraid I might think he did not take a becoming interest in it. In the few words which I exchanged with him, I found him exceedingly civil, and he
