At midnight I was roused from my dreamy abstraction; and on my return home the blood in my veins seemed to "run lightning," and I knocked down (for I had the strength of a giant at that moment) the first watchman I met. Of course there was a row, and for some minutes a battle-royal raged in New Street, the principal thoroughfare of the town, between my party and the "Charlies," who, although greatly superior in numbers, were sadly "milled," for we were all somewhat scientific bruisers--that sublime art or science having been cultivated with great assiduity at the public school through which I had, as was customary, fought my way. I reached home at two in the morning with a pair of "Oxford spectacles" which confined me to the house for a week. I slept disturbedly, haunted by terrific dreams, and oppressed by the nightmare and her nine-fold, and awoke with a dreadful headache; stiff in every joint, and with deadly sickness of the stomach which lasted for two or three days; my throat contracted and parched, my tongue furred, my eyes bloodshot, and the whole surface of my body burning hot. I did not have recourse to opium again for three days; for the strength it had excited did not till then fail me. When partially recovered from the nausea the first dose had caused, my spirits were good, though not exuberant, but I could eat nothing and was annoyed by an insatiable thirst. I went to the office, and for six months performed the services required of me without lassitude or depression of spirits, though never again did I experience the same delicious sensations as on that memorable night which is an "oasis in the desert" of my subsequent existence; life I can not call it, for the "_vivida vis animi et corporis_" was extinct.