Note B — ASSASSINATION.

The word assassin, according to that eminent Orientalist Sylvestre de Sacy, is derived from hashish, being the liquid preparation on which the Old Man of the Mountain used to intoxicate his operators, and which appears to have been an uncommonly powerful tipple. The men whom he thus drugged, or hocused, when they were to commit murder, "were called, in Arabic, Hashishin in the plural, and Hashishi in the singular." The Crusaders brought the word from the East. The ancients had not the word, but they had the thing, as the English suffer from ennui, but have no name for it. A temperance lecturer might turn this connection between blind drunkenness and reckless murder to some good purpose.