Amongst unromantically inclined people of the type who form the bulk of consumers—cultivators, coolies, artisans of all kinds, humble folk whose creed is “pice and rice”—it would be difficult (and ludicrous) to suppose that their object in taking opium is to go in their dreams to:
“Woods that wave o’er Delphi steep
Isles, that crown the Aegian deep,
Fields that cool Ilissus’ laves
Or where meander’s amber waves
In lingering lab’rinths creep.”
Possibly, they do have pleasant dreams; but the exertion and hard exercise they must undergo to earn their daily bread is known to counteract the sedative effects of opium; and as they take small quantities only, its effect is to stimulate them rather than to make them dreamy and sensuous; and I contend that, primâ facie, it is not to evoke sensuous imaginings that these people take opium. They take it because they cannot get away from it, once the pain to ease which it was given has passed. What strength of will do we expect to find in an unlettered cooly?
Without any apology I reproduce here some verses which appeared in 1894, about the time when the Royal Opium Commission came to India:
THE OPIUM-EATER’S SOLILOQUY.