The Secret

Opium dreams, as addicts know, sometimes approach a revelation of the ultimate truth. In its book reviews Punch recently plugged a book called A Modern De Quincey by Captain H. R. Robinson, onetime opium addict, who was commissioned in the British Indian Army in 1915. Said Punch's review:

"His first pipe or two disappointed him, but he persisted, hoping for the dreams of which he had read. These came eventually and one of them, which recurred over some weeks, seemed to him to contain the key to the secret of the universe. With an enormous effort he managed one night to write the secret down. The denouement, he says, was disappointing, for on the following morning he read 'The banana is great, but the skin is greater.'"

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