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OPIUM EATING.

An Autobiographical Sketch.

by

AN HABITUATE.







Philadelphia.
Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger,
624, 626 & 628 Market Street.
1876.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by
Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.

J. Fagan & Son,
Stereotype Founders,
Philadelphia.

Selheimer & Moore, Printers.
501 Chestnut Street.




PREFACE.


The following narration of the personal experiences of the writer is
submitted to the reader at the request of numerous friends, who are of
opinion that it will be interesting as well as beneficial to the public.

The reader is forewarned that in the perusal of the succeeding pages, he
will not find the incomparable music of De Quincey's prose, or the
easy-flowing and harmonious graces of his inimitable style, as presented
in the "Confessions of an English Opium Eater;" but a dull and trudging
narrative of solid facts, disarrayed of all flowers of speech, and
delivered by a mind, the faculties of which are bound up and baked hard by
the searing properties of opium--a mind without elasticity or fertility--a
mind prostrate. The only excuse for writing the book in this mental
condition was, and is, that the prospect of ever being able to write under
more favorable circumstances appeared too doubtful to rely upon; I felt
that I had