It
is painful to say so, but sincerely, if I had the power, at this
moment, to turn you, by magic, into a bottle of old port wine, so
corrupt is my nature, that really I fear lest the exchange might, for
the moment, strike me as agreeable.' Such a mood, I apprehend, is apt
to revolve upon many of us, at intervals, however firmly married to
temperance. And the propensity to it has a root in certain analogies
running through our nature. If the reader will permit me for a moment
the use of what, without such an apology, might seem pedantic, I would
call it the instinct of _focalizing_, which prompts such random
desires. Feeling is diffused over the whole surface of the body; but
light is focalized in the eye; sound in the ear. The organization of a
sense or a pleasure seems diluted and imperfect, unless it is gathered
by some machinery into one focus, or local centre. And thus it is that
a general state of pleasurable feeling sometimes seems too
superficially diffused, and one has a craving to intensify or brighten
it by concentration through some sufficient stimulant. I, for my part,
have tried every thing in this world except '_bang_,' which, I
believe, is obtained from hemp. There are other preparations of hemp
which have been found to give great relief from _ennui_; not
ropes, but something lately introduced, which acts upon the system as
the laughing gas (nitrous oxide) acts at times.
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