On the same principle, I tell my
critic
that the whole course of
this
narrative resembles, and was meant to resemble, a caduceus wreathed about with meandering
ornaments, or the shaft of a tree's stem hung round and surmounted with
some vagrant parasitical plant. The mere medical subject of the opium answers to the dry withered pole, whcih shoots all
the rings of the flowering plants, and seems to do so by some dexterity of
its own; whereas, in fact, the plant and its tendrils have curled round
the sullen cylinder by mere luxurience of theirs. Not the flowers
are for the pole, but the pole is for the flowers. The true object in my
"Opium Confessions" is not the naked physiological theme -- on the
contrary, that is the ugly pole, the murderous spear, the halbert
-- but those wandering musical variations upon the
theme -- those parasitical thoughts, feelings, digression, which climb up
with bells and blossoms round about the arid stock;
ramble away from it at times with perhaps too rank a luxuriance; but at
the same time, by the eternal interest attached to the subjects of
these digressions, no matter what were the execution,
spread a glory over incidents that for themselves would be -- less than
nothing.