We described Peters' condition; and I even recounted a few of the facts which Bainbridge had just imparted to me. Then I asked the question which Castleton's abrupt entry had delayed. "But," I asked, "has not Peters' imagination, owing to the administration of drugs, been unnaturally stimulated? There are drugs which it is commonly believed may have a wonderful effect in stimulating the imagination to flights of marvellous grandeur." "No," said Bainbridge. "The doctor here will say the same. No drug on earth could produce even an approach to such an effect." "Certainly not," said Castleton. "The mass of laymen are not only ignorant--excuse me, sir, but I know you want the facts--not only ignorant, but extremely and persistently ignorant on this subject. I have heard it said that Byron drank twelve--or perhaps twenty--bottles of wine the night he wrote 'The Corsair.' If he did, he simply wrote 'The Corsair' in spite of the wine. I have heard it stated that Poe was intoxicated when he wrote 'The Raven'--which is not only an untrue statement but one that could not possibly be true, and which certainly every man who ever attempted to write under the influence of an alcoholic stimulant knows to be false. Drugs--including alcohol--which are supposed to stimulate what we might term a rational imagination, only stimulate an irrational fancy. They seem to the person affected to cause a play of imagination, but they really produce only a state of nervous action which causes their subject to feel appreciation of otherwise trifling mental pictures that in themselves are flimsy nothings. Let a man so affected try to impart to another his fancies, and--well, who has not been bored by a drunken man? Did De Quincey, with that superb mind, succeed in fancying anything that even he could tell? He speaks of glowing drug-born fancies, but he describes nothings. Now Milton, the old Puritan--the cold-water man--he had fancies which he was able to transmit, and which are worthy to be forever treasured. The early Greeks were exceedingly temperate, and the men who composed the 'Nostoi' were not drunkards--Homer sang the 'Iliad' and the 'Odyssey' with a sober tongue, and a sober brain back of his utterances. The man who gets drunk to write poetry, will find it easier to write his poetry on the following morning, spite of headache, blue-devils, and all." He paused for a moment; and then this peculiar man continued: