It must then have been nearly midnight: but so slowly did I creep along, that I heard a clock in a cottage strike four before I turned down the lane … - Thomas De Quincey

we sat down; not wishing to part in the tumult and blaze of Piccadilly. I had told her again that she should share in my good fortune, if I met with any; and that I would never forsake her, as soon as I had power to protect her.

I, having my previous impressions of awe deepened by these solemn trophies of chance and change amongst mighty nations, had suddenly been surprised by a dream, as profound as at present, in which a thought that often had persecuted me figured triumphantly. This thought turned upon the fatality that must often attend an evil choice. As an oracle of fear I remembered that great Roman warning, Nessit vox missa reverti (that a word once uttered is irrevocable), a freezing arrest upon the motions of hope too sanguine that haunted me in many shapes. Long before that fifteenth year of mine, I had noticed, as a worm lying at the heart of life and fleeting its security, the fact that innumerable acts of choice change countenance and are variously appraised at varying stage of life - shift with the shifting hours. Already at fifteen, I had become deeply ashamed of judgements which I had once pronounced, of idle hopes that I had once encouraged, false admirations or contempts with which once I had sympathized. And, as to the acts which I surveyed with any doubts at all, i never felt sure that after some succession of years I might not feel withering doubts about them, both as to principle and as to inevitable results.

some years ago, on passing through Manchester, I was informed by several cotton-manufacturers that their work-people were rapidly getting into the practice of opium-eating; so much so, that on a Saturday afternoon the counters of the druggists were strewed with pills of one, two, or three grains, in preparation for the known demand of the evening. The immediate occasion of this practice was the lowness of wages, which, at this time, would not allow them to indulge in ale or spirits: and, wages rising, it may be thought that the practice would cease: but, as I do not readily believe that any man, having once tasted the divine luxuries of opium will afterwards descend to the gross and mortal enjoyments of alcohol.