It was at night, however, that the suffering from this change of habit became most unendurable. While the day-light lasted it was possible to go out-of-doors, to sit in the sunlight, to walk, to do something to divert attention from the exhausted and shattered body; but when darkness fell, and these resources failed, nothing remained except a patient endurance with which to combat the strange torment. The only disposition toward sleep was now limited to the early evening. Double dinners, together with the disuse of tobacco, began at this time to induce a fullness of habit in spite of bodily pain. In addition to this, the liver was seriously affected--which seems to be a concomitant of the rapid disuse of opium--and a tendency to heavy drowsiness resulted, as usually happens when this organ is disordered. As early as six or seven o'clock an unnatural heaviness would oppress the senses, shutting out the material world, but not serving wholly to extinguish the consciousness of pain, and which commonly lasted for an hour or two. For no longer period could sleep be induced upon any terms. During these wretched weeks the moments seemed to prolong themselves into hours, and the hours into almost endless durations of time. The monotonous sound of the ticking clock often became unendurable. The calmness of its endlessly-repeated beats was in jarring discord with my own tumultuous sensations. At times it seemed to utter articulate sounds. "Ret-ri-bu-tion" I recollect as being a not uncommon burden of its song. As the racked body, and the mind, possibly beginning to be diseased, became intolerant of the odious sound, the motion of the clock was sometimes stopped, but the silence which succeeded was even worse to the disordered imagination than the voices which had preceded it. With the eyes closed in harmony with the deadly stillness, all created nature seemed annihilated, except my single, suffering self, lying in the midst of a boundless void. If the eyes were opened, the visible world would return, but peopled with sights and sounds that made the misty vastness less intolerable. There appeared to be nothing in these sensations at all approaching the phenomena exhibited in delirium tremens. On the contrary, the mind was always and perfectly aware, except for the instant, of the unreal nature of these deceptions and illusions.