MAKING A NIGHT OF IT WITH MONTE CHRISTO'S DRUG.

Thames Star, Volume XIV, Issue 4409, 20 February 1883, Page 2

MAKING A NIGHT OF IT WITH MONTE CHRISTO'S DRUG.

"A well known English Physician," who is at present in New. York,' recently gave a hashish party a la Monte Christo, to an American doctor, a musical composer, and a reporter of the New York Tribune. After having supped they each swallowed half a tea spoonful of " a dark green viscid mass, mixed'with yellowish particles, and partly enveloped in withered rose leaves/ which the Englishman h d received from Persia. The naturally bitter taste was concealed.-by the sugar and crashed almonds with which it had been mixed. It was a fpU boor befo.e the drug look effect. Then the musical composer began 'to - fcei happy and jovial, (he American, doctor became lethargic, and the English physician talked rapidly end incoherently c«d laughed violently. Th« following is the account given by the reporter of his own experience:— The reporter also began to ' be conscious'of a strange physical drowsiness. He believes that he did not close his eyes; and his senses were all, to a certain extent, awake, for he saw the musical gentlem a walk by a circuitous route to the piano. So strangely light and unmaterml did he feel at this time that he remembers reflecting that, had he wished to cross the room he would have floated, and could have done so by a mere' exercise of the will. He remembers, too, hearing the musician play something, but what it was he cannot say,' for it; seemed too wonderful to have been composed by mortal man. It sounded as if it' were produced by an immense orchestra, or a hugo aud perfect organ, played beneath r. vastdome. The senses, indeed, seemed to have betome supoinaturdly acute. Evpry sound was magnified, sometimes even 1< t*n almost alarming extent; nn'd visible object s were, apparently, increased ]>eyos2(l their real size, and were rendered disloK tl and monstrous, as if by an j intervening plate of inferior window-glifss.-Everything assumed a strange and fantastic shape, and the physician and his guests appeared like gigantic earthmen but of the German mythology. Out of the shadows, too, in the more distant. cor.iers of the ream, strange figures ' seemed to rise aud st?".l about the floor, either crawling dejectedly, or rolling as if in pent-up l.iughter; and othev figures, do less grotesque, danced with queer antics and extraordinary agility. None of these apparitions, however, were et all terrifying, or even unpleasant. Each imp, op matter how con to-.-ted end monstrous his body might be, had a feee jovial and ridiculous. Nor was there any monotony. Every moment changes took place, and erery change I was an incentive to laughter. All, how* ever, appeared at the time to be perfectly natural. It was, in fact, quite natural th it everything should be un* naiural. It. wagf natural that a bu<je hen should come out of tbe gloom, ci?e vent to a cry lilie that of a donkey, and then ", laugh with ever-widening beak, and it was natural that every chair should be , alive, and that everything in the room should have a roucd, red, \ grinning, laughter- prbvoki\uj he:-. Sometimes, however, the visitors assumed a purely beautiful type; and lovely . valleys, d:st:.nt mountains tinned with the glow of t'»e get irq sun, and glorious calaracis tumbling hitbei' and thither ii focmiug wrath, came successively before the eye like tbe scenes of a ma*ie»lenterp:. ' But ev6;y'hing was red. i£ach scene was one that could apparently be lived in and enjoyed ; and ill eve was nothing in any of, r them like the flatness and comparative " coloui'lessjess of a picture. From ten o'clock onward, ne.rly all through the uight, the hoars as they struck were audible, but on each occasion they assault! some new disgnke—now the voice o^ some merry giant, and now the gcou*^ humour.'d r^ir of some fantastic beast. v Gradually, however, the effects of, the - drug grew weaker, and tbo vividness of. tie hr'luoinations weakened proportion* ately. Then sleep came, s • - ■