THE EQUINOX
this tenet should not be overlooked in our attempt to assign
its first suggestion and succeeding spread to their proper
causes.
I looked, and lo! all the celestial hemisphere was one
terrific brazen bell, which rocked upon some invisible adaman-
tine pivot in the infinitudes above. When I came it was
voiceless, but I soon knew how it was tosound. My feet were
quickly chained fast to the top of heaven, and, swinging with
my head downward, I became its tongue. Still more mightily
swayed that frightful bell, and now, tremendously crashing,
my head smote against its side. It was not the pain of the
blow, though that was inconceivable, but the colossal roar that
filled the universe, and rent my brain also, which blotted out
in one instant all sense, thought, and being. In an instant I
felt my life extinguisned, but knew that it was by annihilation,
not by death.
When I awoke out of the hasheesh state I was as over-
whelmed to find myself still in existence as a dead man of the
last century could be were he now suddenly restored to earth.
For a while, even in perfect consciousness, I believed I was
still dreaming, and to this dayI have so little lost the memory
of that one demoniac toll, that while writing these lines I
have put my hand to my forehead, hearing and feeling some-
thing, through the mere imagination, which was an echo of
the original pang. It is this persistency of impressions which
explains the fact of the hasheesh state, after a certain time,
growing more and more every day a thing of agony. It is
not because the body becomes worn out by repeated nervous
shocks; with some constitutions, indeed, this wearing may
occur; it never did with me, as I have said, even to the extent
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