themselves to be emperors, and to have all the harems in the world at their command.  I commenced with one grain; in the course of an hour and a half it produced no perceptible effect, the coffee-house keeper was very anxious to give me an additional pill of two grains, but I was contented with half a one; and another half hour, feeling nothing of the expected reverie, I took half a grain more, making in all two grains in the course of two hours.  After two hours and a half from the first dose, I took two grains more; and shortly after this dose, my spirits became sensibly excited; the pleasure of the sensation seemed to depend on a universal expansion of mind and matter.  My faculties appeared enlarged; every thing I looked on seemed increased in volume; I had no longer the same pleasure when I closed my eyes which I had when they were open; it appeared to me as if it was only external objects, which were acted on by the imagination, and magnified into images of pleasure; in short, it was ‘the faint exquisite music of a dream’ in a waking moment.  I made my way home as fast as possible, dreading, at every step, that I should commit some extravagance.  In walking, I was hardly sensible of my feet touching the ground, it seemed as if I slid along the street, impelled by some invisible agent, and that my blood was composed of some ethereal fluid, which rendered my body lighter than air.  I got to bed the moment I reached home.  The most extraordinary visions of delight filled my brain all night.  In the morning I rose, pale and dispirited; my head ached; my body was so debilitated that I was obliged to remain on the sofa all the day, dearly paying for my first essay at opium eating.”

* * * * *

Old Poets.

* * * * *

FRIENDSHIP.

  I had a friend that lov’d me;
  I was his soul; he liv’d not but in me;
  We were so close within each other’s breast,
  The rivets were not found that join’d us first. 
  That does not reach us yet; we were so mix’d,
  As meeting streams, both to ourselves were lost. 
  We were one mass, we could not give or take,
  But from the same:  for He was I; I He;
  Return my better half, and give me all myself,
  For thou art all! 
  If I have any joy when thou art absent,
  I grudge it to myself; methinks I rob
  Thee of thy part.

DRYDEN.

* * * * *

MARRIAGE.

  As good and wise; so she be fit for me,
    That is, to will, and not to will the same;
  My wife is my adopted self, and she
    As me, to what I love, to love must frame. 
  And when by marriage both in one concur,
  Woman converts to man, not man to her.

SIR T. OVERBURY.

* * * * *

  What do you think of marriage? 
  I take’t, as those that deny purgatory;
  It locally contains or heaven or hell;
  There’s no third place in it.