If a person when in this condition had any human feelings or aspirations, he might resist and go on, if of constitution sufficient; but the difficulty is, it is necessary for the poor wretch to take opium to have natural feelings, or to place any reliance upon the future. It is generally the case, at this stage, that the opium eater would wade through blood for opium. All else in the world is nothing to him without it, and for it he would exchange the world and all there is in it. He yields to the irresistible demand for his destroyer; and with a heart the depth of whose despair the plummet of hope never sounded. I fear I may have entirely failed to give the reader any idea of the vitiating power of opium in making itself a "necessary evil," and in burning out of the human system all natural feelings, hopes, and aspirations. I am unable to explain it better; that it has such power, I know but too well. An opium eater learned in medicine, physiology, and metaphysics, might explain the subject scientifically, giving reasons why this and that is so, etc.; "it is beyond my practice." After the foregoing, it may be unnecessary for me to refer to an attempt of my own, made some years ago; however, I will relate it briefly. I was but a couple of years deep in opium; nevertheless the habit was firmly fastened. The manacles were beyond the strength of my slender constitution, even then. I cannot state just how many hours I had gone without opium when the serious pains began. I had taken none that day, but I do not know at what time I had taken the last dose on the day previous. At any rate, it was in the middle of the night, and at least thirty hours after taking any opium, when the most terrible pain set in. During the most of the day I had sat in a dejected state, a prey to the most trying melancholy. Though up to that date my feelings were not so frozen but that I could weep, and I had not yet been forced, as I since have been, to cry with Hamlet, the noble Dane, "Oh! that this too, too solid flesh would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew;" during this attempt, as during all near that time (I have since made none), weeping would come upon me in floods. It seemed as if I was the victim of a heart-rending grief,--and so I was. The consciousness of my predicament,--an opium eater,--with all the humiliations and failures caused by being so, came upon me with irresistible power.