Explore "The Hashish Eater" by Fitz Hugh Ludlow on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Having been threatened many times with an utter isolation from human kind, it now became my practice, the moment that I began to feel the hashish change come over me, to run for sympathy to some congenial friend, and thus assure myself that the sentence had not yet been carried out. I entered his room. I told him of my state; and, before increasing delirium had any power to pervert my thoughts, pledged him to care for me, never to leave me, always to interest himself in my welfare to the end. Frequently this step prevented any undercurrent of horror from breaking up through my delightful tides of vision. Frequently, when I beheld the fearful Afreet invade the sanctity of my rejoicing with drawn cimeter, was that remembered pledge to me as the ring of Abdaldar, and straightway
"There ceased his power; his lifted arm, / Suspended by the spell, / Hung impotent to strike. "