Part 6

“Laughter is indisputable and for its own sake. I proclaim the laugh for the laugh’s sake.” The English tongue is insufficient for him; he coins words of his own: “Laughfinity!” he shouts. “Laughinosity!” he screams. “The whole world is a blooming joke.”

“Which is best,” he asks innocently, “the Laughing Goddess, or the Goddess of Laughter?” “The Laughing Goddess,” answers my father. Exultation shines thru the dilated pupils of the questioner, as he responds, “I knew I would catch you. The Laughing Goddess reminds you by the association of ideas of the laughing hyena, and then instead of being the goddess presiding over the divine function of laughter, she becomes a laughing stock.”

I ask him something about figures. “Figures,” he answers, “are intellectually beneath me. In short, I would never be a great mathematician. Yet I appreciate the metaphysics of mathematics. I adore, I prostrate myself before mathematics as long as there are no figures in it.” Hearing our laughter, he explains, “Yet this isn’t so foolish as it seems. Up to a certain point in geometry there are no figures.”

“I would have talked more sensibly if Emerson had not been there.” Bangs his legs against the edge of the bed; my father asks him if he hurt himself. “Not on a material plane; it was a psychic jar of which you cannot conceive.”

Speaks in a declamatory tone: “I am all the time on the borderline between Science and Folly. Which god shall ye follow, young man?”

My father tells him he can stop laughing if he wishes. “No, sir,” comes the emphatic response, “not if you lived in my world. It is a categorical imperative in the world of hasheesh: Thou shalt laugh.”

It is already four o’clock in the morning. I am loath to leave this frolicsome dynamo of blithesomeness, this continuous current of good-cheer, this generator of joyousness, but there is a hard day’s work before me and I need a little sleep, so with a last look at his Mirthful Majesty, I leave him alone in his glory and his giggles.

Four hours later I peep in. The intellectual merry-andrew who criticizes the Concord Transcendentalist and juggles philosophic conceptions even under the effects of dope, is motionless. Lassitude has usurped the throne of laughter.

I cannot tell what effect the reading of this case will produce on others, but in me it awakens such risibility that I hope never to think of it on an occasion when silence or solemnity is enjoined; for if I do, there is danger of my being ejected as unceremoniously as was Washington Irving on the day he laughed at The Art of Book Making, in the grave sanctuary of the British Museum.

There yet remains my own case. On March 4th, 1910, I came home, feeling very tired. I found that some cannabis indica which I had expected had arrived. After supper, while finishing up an article, I began to debate with myself whether I should join the hasheesh-eaters that night. The argument ended in my taking 20 minims at 9 o’clock. I was alone in the room, and no one was aware that I had yielded to temptation. An hour later I wrote in my memoranda book: Absolutely no effect. At 10.30, I completed my article, and entered this note: No effect at all from the hemp. By this time I was exhausted, and being convinced that the hasheesh would not act, I went to bed in disappointment. I fell asleep immediately.

I hear music. There is something strange about this music. I have not heard such music before. The anthem is far away, but in its very faintness there is a lure. In the soft surge and swell of the minor notes there breathes a harmony that ravishes the sense of sound. A resonant organ, with a stop of sapphire and a diapason of opal, diffuses endless octaves from star to star. All the moon-beams form strings to vibrate the perfect pitch, and this entrancing unison is poured into my enchanted ears. Under such a spell, who can remain in a bed? The magic of that melody bewitches my soul. I begin to rise horizontally from my couch. No walls impede my progress, and I float into the outside air. Sweeter and sweeter grows the music, it bears me higher and higher, and I float in tune with the infinite--under the turquoise heavens where globules of mercury are glittering.

I become an unhindered wanderer thru unending space. No air-ship can go here, I say. I am astonished at the vastness of infinity. I always knew it was large, I argue, but I never dreamt it was as huge as this. I desire to know how fast I am floating thru the air, and I calculate that it must be about a billion miles a second.

I am transported to wonderland. I walk in streets where gold is dirt, and I have no desire to gather it. I wonder whether it is worth while to explore the canals of Mars, or rock myself on the rings of Saturn, but before I can decide, a thousand other fancies enter my excited brain.

I wish to see if I can concentrate my mind sufficiently to recite something, and I succeed in correctly quoting this stanza from a favorite poem which I am perpetually re-reading:

“Come into the garden, Maud, For the black bat, night, has flown, Come into the garden, Maud, I am here at the gate alone; And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad, And the musk of the rose is blown.”

It occurs to me that it is high honor for Tennyson to have his poetry quoted in heaven.

I turn, I twist, I twirl. I melt, I fade, I dissolve. No diaphanous cloud is so light and airy as I. I admire the ease with which I float. My gracefulness fills me with delight. My body is not subject to the law of gravitation. I sail dreamily along, lost in exquisite intoxication.

New scenes of wonder continually unravel themselves before my astonished eyes. I say to myself that if I could only record one one-thousandth of the ideas which come to me every second, I would be considered a greater poet than Milton.

I am on the top of a high mountain-peak. I am alone--only the romantic night envelops me. From a distant valley I hear the gentle tinkling of cow-bells. I float downwards, and find immense fields in which peacock’s tails are growing. They wave slowly, to better exhibit their dazzling ocelli, and I revel in the gorgeous colors. I pass over mountains and I sail over seas. I am the monarch of the air.

I hear the songs of women. Thousands of maidens pass near me, they bend their bodies in the most charming curves, and scatter beautiful flowers in my fragrant path. Some faces are strange, some I knew on earth, but all are lovely. They smile, and sing and dance. Their bare feet glorify the firmament. It is more than flesh can stand. I grow sensual unto satyriasis. The aphrodisiac effect is astonishing in its intensity. I enjoy all the women of the world. I pursue countless maidens thru the confines of heaven. A delicious warmth suffuses my whole body. Hot and blissful I float thru the universe, consumed with a resistless passion. And in the midst of this unexampled and unexpected orgy, I think of the case reported by the German Dr. Reidel, about a drug-clerk who took a huge dose of hasheesh to enjoy voluptuous visions, but who heard not even the rustle of Aphrodite’s garment, and I laugh at him in scorn and derision.

I sigh deeply, open my eyes, and find myself sitting with one foot in bed, and the other on my desk. I am bathed in warm sweat which is pleasant. But my head aches, and there is a feeling in my stomach which I recognize and detest. It is nausea. I pull the basket near me, and await the inevitable result. At the same time I feel like begging for mercy, for I have traveled so far and so long, and I am tired beyond limit, and I need a rest. The fatal moment approaches, and I lower my head for the easier deposition of the rising burden. And my head seems monstrously huge, and weighted with lead. At last the deed is done, and I lean back on the pillow.

I hear my sister come home from the opera. I wish to call her. My sister’s name is Ellen. I try to say it, but I cannot. The effort is too much. I sigh in despair. It occurs to me that I may achieve better results if I compromise on Nell, as this contains one syllable instead of two. Again I am defeated. I am too weary to exert myself to any extent, but I am determined. I make up my mind to collect all my strength, and call out: Nell. The result is a fizzle. No sound issues from my lips. My lips do not move. I give it up. My head falls on my breast, utterly exhausted and devoid of all energy.

Again my brain teems. Again I hear that high and heavenly harmony, again I float to the outposts of the universe and beyond, again I see the dancing maidens with their soft yielding bodies, white and warm. I am excited unto ecstasy. I feel myself a brother to the Oriental, for the same drug which gives him joy is now acting on me. I am conscious all the time, and I say to myself in a knowing way with a suspicion of a smile: All these visions because of 20 minims of cannabis indica. My only regret is that the trances are ceaseless. I wish respite, but for answer I find myself floating over an immense ocean. Then the vision grows so wondrous, that body and soul I give myself up to it, and I taste the fabled joys of paradise. Ah, what this night is worth!

The music fades, the beauteous girls are gone, and I float no more. But the black rubber covering of my typewriter glows like a chunk of yellow phosphorus. By one door stands a skeleton with a luminous abdomen and brandishes a wooden sword. By the other door a little red devil keeps guard. I open my eyes wide, I close them tight, but these spectres will not vanish. I know they are not real, I know I see them because I took hasheesh, but they annoy me nevertheless. I become uncomfortable, even frightened. I make a superhuman effort, and succeed in getting up and lighting the gas. It is two o’clock. Everything is the way it should be, except that in the basket I notice the remains of an orange--somewhat the worse for wear.

I feel relieved, and fall asleep. Something is handling me, and I start in fright. I open my eyes and see my father. He has returned from a meeting at the Academy of Medicine, and surprised at seeing a light in my room at such a time, has entered. He surmises what I have done, and is anxious to know what quantity I have taken. I should have answered, with a wink, quantum sufficit, but I have no inclination for conversation; on hearing the question repeated, I answer, “Twenty minims.” He tells me I look as pale as a ghost, and brings me a glass of water. I drink it, become quite normal, and thus ends the most wonderful night of my existence.

In the morning my capacity for happiness is considerably increased. I have an excellent appetite, the coffee I sip is nectar, and the white bread ambrosia. I take my camera, and walk to Central Park. It is a glorious day. Everyone I meet is idealized. The lake never looked so placid before. I enter the hot-houses, and a gaudy-colored insect buzzing among the lovely flowers fills me with joy. I am too languid to take any pictures; to set the focus, to use the proper stop, to locate the image, to press the bulb--all these seem herculean feats which I dare not even attempt. But I walk and walk, without apparent effort, and my mind eagerly dwells on the brilliant pageantry of the night before. I do not wish to forget my frenzied nocturnal revelry upon the vast dome of the broad blue heavens. I wish to remember forever, the floating, the mercury-globules, the peacock-feathers, the colors, the music, the women. In memory I enjoy the carnival all over again.

“For the brave Meiamoun,” writes Theophile Gautier, “Cleopatra danced; she was apparelled in a robe of green, open at either side; castanets were attached to her alabaster hands.... Poised on the pink tips of her little feet, she approached swiftly to graze his forehead with a kiss; then she recommenced her wondrous art, and flitted around him, now backward-leaning, with head reversed, eyes half-closed, arms lifelessly relaxed, locks uncurled and loose-hanging like a bacchante of Mount Maenalus; now again active, animated, laughing, fluttering, more tireless and capricious in her movements than the pilfering bee. Heart-consuming love, sensual pleasure, burning passion, youth inexhaustible and ever-fresh, the promise of bliss to come--she expressed all.... The modest stars had ceased to contemplate the scene; their golden eyes could not endure such a spectacle; the heaven itself was blotted out, and a dome of flaming vapor covered the hall.”

But for me a thousand Cleopatras caroused--and did not present me a vase of poison to drain at a draught. Again I repeated to myself: “And all these charming miracles because of 20 minims of Fluidextractum Cannabis Indicæ, U. S. P.”