‘Would you like me to apologise?’ he asked. Captain Spofford was a weather-beaten veteran who gave little attention to fine clothes, and greatly preferred his rough jacket and[Pg 59] soft hat to what he called "Sunday gear." He was much attached to his telescope, which he had carried nearly a quarter of a century, and on the present occasion he brought it into the cabin, and held it in his hand while he narrated his whaling experiences. He explained that he could talk better in the company of his old spy-glass, as it would remind him of things he might forget without its aid, and also check him if he went beyond the truth. And then he told me about himself. He was a graduate of West Point, the only one on the brigade staff; was a widower, with a widowed brother, a maiden sister, two daughters, and a niece, all of one New Orleans household. The brothers and sister were Charlestonians, but the two men had married in New Orleans, twin sisters in a noted Creole family. The brother's daughter, I was told, spoke French better than English; the Major's elder daughter spoke English as perfectly as her father; and the younger, left in her aunt's care from infancy, knew no French at all. I wondered if they were as handsome as their white-haired father, and when I asked their names I learned that the niece, Cécile, was a year the junior of Estelle and as much the senior of Camille; but of the days of the years of the pilgrimage of any of the three "children" he gave me no slightest hint; they might be seven years older, or seven years younger, than his new clerk. The heavy curtains parted and the figure of a man emerged. He was short, yet powerfully made, with a curious twist from the hip as if he were deformed in some way. Ragged hair fringed his chin and lips. His long nose was crooked on one side; his equally long hands were covered with great orange freckles. An object of mistrust and suspicion everywhere. Here was the gas meter under the stairs as usual. Behind it was the grimy, dirty card, which showed no entry for years. It was marked "taken 5 Feb.," in other words the meter had been read the day the owner had disappeared. By reading the index Prout saw that a hundred odd cubic feet of gas had been used since. I went up to them and explained that there was no need at all to be afraid of me. They were able to give me news of the inhabitants of Villa Rustica. The owner had died a few days since, from a paralytic stroke, brought on by the emotions caused by the German horrors, whereas madame, who had heroically intervened on behalf of some victims, was probably at St. Hadelin College. “What made you cut the ignition!” snapped Sandy, working on the idea he had read in so many detective stories that a surprise attack often caused a person to be so startled as to reveal facts. “But she couldn’t get the real ones!” persisted Dick. He found Tommy Larsen much improved in health, with his nerves again steady. The man up above showed himself, and putting his hands to his mouth shouted, "Felipa!" She glared at him, but she stopped short nevertheless, and, flinging down the stone she had been holding, stood up also. "All right, then. You've done with me, I reckon. Now suppose you let me go back to the camp." "That same. She was part Mescalero, anyway." Hearing that General Cope—who had seen his blunder in leaving open the highway to the Scottish capital—after having reached Inverness, had begun a rapid march on Aberdeen, trusting to embark his army there, and reach Edinburgh in[95] time to defend it from the rebel army, Charles marched out of Perth on the 11th of September. He reached Dunblane that evening, and on the 13th he passed the fords of Frew, about eight miles above Stirling, knowing that several king's ships were lying at the head of the Firth. On their approach, Gardiner retired with his dragoons from the opposite bank. Stirling, being deserted by the troops, was ready to open its gates; but Charles was in too much haste to reach Edinburgh. Hearing that Gardiner, with his dragoons, intended to dispute the passage of Linlithgow Bridge, Charles sent on one thousand Highlanders, before break of day, under Lord George Murray, in the hope of surprising them; but they found that they had decamped the evening before, and they took peaceable possession of Falkirk and the old palace. The prince himself came up on the evening of that day, Sunday, the 15th, where the whole army passed the night, except the vanguard, which pushed on to Kirkliston, only eight miles from Edinburgh. "I think you'll pull through all right," continued the Surgeon, "if you don't have concussion of the brain. You'll have to be—" The Deacon laid down the spoon with which he had been stirring the broth, and doubling up his mighty fist, placed himself between Groundhog and the kettle, and said: bring u bAk. Ex-Lieut.-Col. Billings strode blithely along, feeling the gladsome exuberance of a man who had "struck a good thing," and turning over in his mind as to where he had best market his batch of lively recruits, how he could get around the facts of their previous enlistment, and how much he ought to realize per head. He felt that he could afford to give the boys a good breakfast, and that that would be fine policy. Accordingly, he led the way to one of the numerous large eating houses, established by enterprising sutlers, to their own great profit and the shrinkage of the pay of the volunteers. He lined the boys up in front of the long shelf which served for a table and ordered the keeper: In the corridor she took one deep breath and then another. CHAPTER VII. HoME好像里美尤利娅 ENTER NUMBET 0016lshbrl.org.cn"...entactogens [literally "to touch within"] offer a whole new mode of introspective well-being. They belie the worry that the happiness of our emotionally enriched descendants will be shallow. For the happiness of post-Darwinian superminds won't be soma-like and one-dimensional á la Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. On the contrary, their spectrum of mental superhealth promises to be rich, profound and unimaginably diverse.Contemporary states of depersonalisation and derealisation are typically associated with dysfunction of the serotonin neurotransmitter system. By contrast, drugs like MDMA ("Ecstasy") can induce in hugely exaggerated form the opposite of this syndrome. By triggering the release of a lot of extra oxytocin, serotonin and dopamine - and thereby causing post-synaptic intra-cellular cascades we still don't fully understand - the entactogens deliver an enhanced sense of self and reality, a greater sense of authenticity, and a wonderful I'm-Alive-On-The-Planet sense of this-is-the-real-me. Better still, the heightened awareness of selfhood one enjoys on MDMA and its congeners is very different from the hard-edged egotism promoted by dopaminergic "power-drugs" like cocaine and the amphetamines.
Today perhaps most of us feel relatively self-alienated. We often feel "out of touch" with ourselves - certainly by comparison to what will be normal for our succcessors. This self-alienation is not properly corrected by "psychic anaesthetisers" such as Prozac. This is because the selective serotonin reuptake-inhibitors (SSRIs) tend to flatten rather than intensify emotion. What's needed instead are analogues and enhancements of today's entactogens and empathogens. Full-blown mental health demands the development of designer-drugs that are safe, clean and sustainable i.e. act via long-term receptor re-regulation and altered gene-expression profiles rather than explosive monoamine release. Germ-line gene therapy can follow, culminating - in one scenario at least - in genetically preprogrmmed well-being for all sentient life.
By offering at once a clearer sense of self, spiritually-enriched emotion, more lucid introspection, and unprecedented self-love fused with a profound love of others, this extraordinary family of feeling-enhancing compounds opens up beautiful new modes of introspection and selfhood. Although chemically-catalysed, such new modes of existence don't feel weird. So one doesn't feel "drugged".
Today, we think of feelings of unreality as having a neurophysiological basis; but equally, one's fluctuating sense of "how real" things seem is itself chemically-based. Reality does not admit of degrees; yet our "sense of reality" certainly does. This sense can be chemically manipulated too. Thus the psyche can be redesigned so that all our states of consciousness feel more compellingly real than anything accessible to contemporary Homo sapiens..."
ABSTRACT
THE MOLECULAR BIOLOGY OF PARADISE
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MDMA
HedWeb
HerbWeb
BLTC Research
Sensualism . com
Empathogens.com
The Good Drug Guide
Utopian Pharmacology
Quora Answers (2015-23)
The Hedonistic Imperative
MDMA ( Ecstasy ) : research
Critique of Brave New World