ssive order. The work itself opened with the narration of my early
adventures. These, in the natural order of succession, led to the opium as
a resource for healing their consequences; and the opium as naturally led
to the dreams. But in the synthetic order of presenting the facts, what
stood last in the succession of development, stood first in the order of
my purposes.

At the close of this little work, the reader was instructed to
believe--and _truly_ instructed--that I had mastered the tyranny of opium.
The fact is, that _twice_ I mastered it, and by efforts even more
prodigious, in the second of these cases, than in the first. But one error
I committed in both. I did not connect with the abstinence from opium--so
trying to the fortitude under _any_ circumstances--that enormity of
exercise which (as I have since learned) is the one sole resource for
making it endurable. I overlooked, in those days, the one _sine qua non_
for making the triumph permanent. Twice I sank--twice I rose again. A
third time I sank; partly from the cause mentioned, (the oversight as to
exercise,) partly from other causes, on which it avails not now to trouble
the reader. I could moralize if I chose; and perhaps _he_ will moralize
whether I choose it or not. But, in the mean time, neither of us is
acquainted properly with the circumstances of the case; I, from natural
bias of judgment, not altogether acquainted; and he (with his permission)
not at all.

During this third prostration before the dark idol, and after some years,
new and monstrous phenomena began slowly to arise. For a time, these were
neglected as accidents, or palliated by such remedies as I knew of. But
when I could no longer conceal from myself that these dreadful symptoms
were moving forward for ever, by a pace steadily, solemnly, and equably
increasing, I endeavoured, with some feeling of panic, for a third time to
retrace my steps. But I had not reversed my motions for many weeks, before
I became profoundly aware that this was impossible. Or, in the imagery of
my dreams, which translated every thing into their own language, I saw
through vast avenues of gloom those towering gates of ingress which
hitherto had always seemed to stand open, now at last barred against my
retreat, and hung with funeral crape.

As applicable to this tremendous situation, (the situation of one escaping
by some refluent current from the maelstrom roaring for him in the
distance, who finds sudde