But now comes a
different era. Move on, if you please, reader, to 1813. In the summer
of the year we have just quitted I have suffered much in bodily health
from distress of mind connected with a very melancholy event. This event
being no ways related to the subject now before me, further than through
the bodily illness which it produced, I need not more particularly
notice. Whether this illness of 1812 had any share in that of 1813 I
know not; but so it was, that in the latter year I was attacked by a most
appalling irritation of the stomach, in all respects the same as that
which had caused me so much suffering in youth, and accompanied by a
revival of all the old dreams. This is the point of my narrative on
which, as respects my own self-justification, the whole of what follows
may be said to hinge. And here I find myself in a perplexing dilemma.
Either, on the one hand, I must exhaust the reader's patience by such a
detail of my malady, or of my struggles with it, as might suffice to
establish the fact of my inability to wrestle any longer with irritation
and constant suffering; or, on the other hand, by passing lightly over
this critical part of my story, I must forego the benefit of a stronger
impression left on the mind of the reader, and must lay myself open to
the misconstruction of having slipped, by the easy and gradual steps of
self-indulging persons, from the first to the final stage of opium-eating
(a misconstruction to which there will be a lurking predisposition in
most readers, from my previous acknowledgements).
Pages:
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96