Part 5

“I had a good thought, but I don’t know what’s best: to stick to the thought or stick to the laughter?”

“If Chauncey Depew should be wrecked in the New York Central, wouldn’t that be funny? Would it be poetic justice? No, it would be the justice of laughter. Oh, it would be the laughter of the gods!” He raises himself and swings his arm dramatically. Laughter leaps from his insides as if it were a geyser spouting up, and rushes from his lips as if it were a cataract bounding down a boulder.

He theorizes about egoism and Max Stirner, but I can not jot down the reflection in its entirety.

He says I have no sense of humor to sit there taking notes, instead of joining him in laughing.

“Of course you understand why I am laughing. But your old cook--if she hears me, she’ll send for the police.”

“It’s too bad that when I’m having such a good time, I should be troubled by a dry taste in the mouth. It’s another evidence that the world was created by a damn fool or a lunatic. There is always some little thing that interferes.”

Talks sensibly awhile, and then says impatiently: “I want to stop all this talking, and get to laughing again. I’m not complaining about the effects from hasheesh, because I consider it worth everything.”

“Oh, tell me, pretty maiden, why can’t a little canary bird whistle a symphony, for instance, Tchaykovsky’s Le Pathetique?” Whistles, waves his hand fantastically. “As damn little as I know about music, not having been gifted by nature in that direction”--twists his arms in a grotesque manner--“I’m able to get a bunch out of Tchaykovsky. I don’t mean Comrade Tchaykovsky, the revolutionist in Russia, I mean Peter Ilitch Tchaykovsky. The itch of that Ilitch--it seems like a personal ailment, it sounds insulting.”

Throws a piece of paper at me, but says, “Don’t be afraid, I’ll break no bones.”

I ask him to tell the time. He gazes intently at the clock, and says, “I want to get it exactly on the fraction of a second. But it changes so quickly, I can’t.” Gives it up in disgust.

Claims a heavy feeling is creeping over him, and wonders if it is due to increased blood-pressure. “But what am I beginning to talk serious for? I could keep on laughing for a couple of weeks, except that I don’t want to keep you up.”

“If Spencer had been more of a sport and had taken some of this stuff, he would have had material for his essay, The Physiology of Laughter.” To see a man drugged with hasheesh quoting the profoundest of synthetic philosophers is too much for my gravity, and for a moment my scream of laughter eclipses even his.

“Ah, I’m beginning to get light again. It’s much nicer to be light and delicate. To be a filmy butterfly, and float in fancy,”--his face assumes an expression of poetic beauty, and he speculates whether man should live a life of beauty or of duty.

“Oh, I’m willing to laugh....” Throws off the blankets and cries, “Throw off the bonds of all existence!”

I ask him what day it is. “I hope,” says he, with a melodramatic wave of the hand, “I will express the modest hope, that in accordance to my wishes, and in conformity to my desires, it is Sunday night! Sunday night! Sunday night!”

Sits up, looks at me roughishly and laughs.

“I feel a metalliferous touch within me.” “I’d rather have a cramp in my leg than in my brain. Some people would call this a brain-cramp, wouldn’t they?” Laughs, kicks up his legs.

“If you got erotic while laughing, wouldn’t it be blasphemy? Worse than laughing in church.”

“Have no illusions of death yet. I am still in a position to laugh death in the face, to laugh death in the face, to laugh ...”--and he proves it. He claps his hands together merrily.

Has a lucid moment, looks at the clock, and says simply and correctly, “10 to 3.”

Imitates a Frenchman most admirably, accent, gestures, etc.

The door opens, and my father--who has found it impossible to sleep with a roaring volcano in the house--enters. I ask Mr. Lemon to tell my father about Chauncey Depew and the Grand Central. Mr. Lemon is highly pleased, and repeats the story with intense zest. He enlarges it, and claims Depew has got Elbert Hubbard beat as a hypocrite. He says all who believe Depew deserves to be killed should signify it by saying Aye, and then he himself, as if he were a whole assembly, shouts out, Aye! Aye! Aye! “The Ayes have it,” he announces with the air of a man who has just won an important victory. My father and I laugh heartily. There is no limit to Mr. Lemon’s happiness. “That’s right,” he says, “it’s good, take it down, old man.”

He cannot bear a moment’s abstinence from laughter. “Cast aside all irrelevant hypotheses, and get to the laughing. I proclaim the supremacy of the laugh, laughter inextinguishable, laughter eternal, the divine laughter of the gods.”

My father leaves the room. “Everything has a comic element if you look at it right. It seemed to me that your father went down into the cellar because he couldn’t sleep on account of my damn foolishness.” He wallows in amusement, but at the same time expresses sincere regret that he is preventing my father and me from sleeping, and says next time he will take hasheesh in the daytime.

My father re-enters, and desires to feel his pulse. At first Mr. Lemon objects vehemently to being touched, but then smiles the sweetest of smiles, and with the demeanor of a martyred Bruno marching to the stake, stretches forth his hand, saying, “In the interests of science I am willing.” But after a few seconds Mr. Lemon pulls his hand impatiently away, and exclaims angrily, “You’ve been holding it half an hour.” His pulse is about 100.

“Come on in, the hasheesh is fine! You laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh like an imbecile. Who can laugh in more ways than me? Not any fellow that I can see.”

Begins to philosophize about savages, but loses the thread of his thoughts. I remind him what he was talking about; he thinks a moment, taps his forehead significantly, and says, “There was a laugh there before, and now I’ve lost it.”

“Every tick of the clock is another instant that you’re wasting time over this damn foolishness.”