The
dignity of science is all very well, but I think somehow I must have the
monopoly of the stuff for, say, ten years. I don't see why _all_ the
fun in life should go to the dealers in ham."
My own interest in the coming drug certainly did not wane in the time. I
have always had a queer little twist towards metaphysics in my mind. I
have always been given to paradoxes about space and time, and it seemed to
me that Gibberne was really preparing no less than the absolute
acceleration of life. Suppose a man repeatedly dosed with such a
preparation: he would live an active and record life indeed, but he would
be an adult at eleven, middle-aged at twenty-five, and by thirty well on
the road to senile decay. It seemed to me that so far Gibberne was only
going to do for any one who took his drug exactly what Nature has done for
the Jews and Orientals, who are men in their teens and aged by fifty, and
quicker in thought and act than we are all the time. The marvel of drugs
has always been great to my mind; you can madden a man, calm a man, make
him incredibly strong and alert or a helpless log, quicken this passion
and allay that, all by means of drugs, and here was a new miracle to be
added to this strange armoury of phials the doctors use! But Gibberne was
far too eager upon his technical points to enter very keenly into my
aspect of the question.
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