6 too weak to support me, and I fell backward on my bed. Let none do me the injustice to suppose that my alarm grew out of fears for my personal safety. I had braved danger and death in every possible shape, and what man dare' I am sure that I dared. But there was something so horribly unnatural in this heart-piercing scream-and yet it was not a scream, but a wild sepulchral howl, which had it not been so fearfully articulate, I might have thought to be the nearly suffocated yell of some savage beast of prey-there was something in it, I repeat, so unearthly and so ominous, that I could no more resist the agonies of fear which rushed over me than if I had been paralysed and crushed by the influence of demoniac possession. I lay for near an hour before I could rebuke the terrors which oppressed me; and when my fears had so far vanished that I began to be ashamed of having felt them, I was forced again to undergo all the terrors of alarm. There came, curdling my blood, and penetrating, as it were, my very soul, a second cry, in the same wild, unearthly and unnatural accent as the first. All that I suffered, I cannot, and if I could, I would not describe; for either I should not be believed, or else I should be stigmatized as the veriest craven who ever heard the coward beatings of his heart. If I could for a moment have supposed that the miserable victim was screaming from the force of mortal agonies-that the excruciating pangs of disease, or the steel of the midnight assassin, had extorted this heart-rending cry, I could have rushed with strong nerves and stout heart to the succour of the sufferer. But the hand of some demon seemed upon me, and I lay shuddering and spell-bound on my couch. I prayed fervently to God that I might be spared the agony of a third trial of my agitated senses; for I felt a horrid certainty that my reason could scarcely stand the shock. My prayers were not heard. It came again! that cry! and again, and then again, shooting with a fearful concentration of effect through my tortured and agonizing brain. Suddenly the door of the stranger's room opened. He rushed swiftly to the head of the staircase. "Caroline!" he said, in a voice of the deepest anxiety. I summoned all my scattered energies, rose from my bed, and groped my way as far as to the door-" Caroline!" he repeated in a tone of the wildest impatience. I raised the latch of the door with feverish and oppressive agitation. "Caroline," a third time he reiterated with the accent of despair and unutterable anguish. I staggered wildly forth into the hall, and listened, as, upon the dreadful day of doom, the trembling sinner will listen to his sentence.-"Caroline! girl!"--the words are writ in lines of fire upon my brain "don't you hear! come up here, right away! Molly's 'most crazy with the pain of her tooth, and I am agoin' to try to get it OUT!" DIGRESSIONS. Part First. I. It is a long while since I tried a rhyme- To mend my pen-shake up my faded ink- II. Already is the itch of scribbling on me, Six lines are written, and three couplets chime; And versify e'en Dalzel's Collectanea, Comes o'er my thoughts with twice the same old mania. And in my hand my very goosequill seems To have caught a portion of the same velocity, The perished tokens of my mind's precocity, IV. But now where are they? I have an old box, With the dim spectres of my visions gone, Each hope the present moment that employs. There lie they many a blotted manuscript Prized in its time o'er Homer, Milton, Dante, In guise unseemly and in place most scanty,- Then as her hands, unreverendly scatter, Without a thought beyond the just dimension Which then employs her classical attention, VII. Speeches-which once in college chapels told Sonnets-whose fire made Petrarchs love seem cold, VIII. I watch her at her devastating work, And rushing visions of the past throng o'er me; IX. There lie they-in one indiscriminate mass Fading and vanishing, the joys of youth, X. But self-love then again is gratified, That my lot's but an 18mo. epitome Of the great folio of all human pride; And that the world has never been a whit to me Or to my merits blind, more than to others Whose infant muse each critic monthly smothers. XI. It surely is encouraging to vanity That this sad fate falls not alone on me, That thousands have experienced this insanity, This yearning after fame, this thirst to be Named with the glorious-only to be foiledHave dream'd, and woke to find their hearts despoil'd. XII. This is meant for philosophy-though I Will in the reader's ear a moment whisper, That though on paper it shows plausibly, There's not a ten year old girl who can lisp her First elements of feeling, but knows better And would despise such thoughts-would fashion let her. XIII. For in our early days, when life is new, And the warm tears of feeling fondly gush XIV. The pangs of others but augment our pain The kindly feelings which the young heart pours To weep o'er our own woes, nor mourn when others mourn; XV. But though the fountains of the heart are froze Treachery of friends-the thousand griefs that close XVI. Still it is mere indifference which ensues, Not hate-our sympathies are checked and changed, But are not quite reversed-our hearts refuse To be from their young thoughts so wide estrangedThe fount of feeling may be chilled-and blackDried up or poisoned-but it ne'er rolls back. XVII. And so I think upon reflection that It does not make my case a pin the better, That other's hopes have oft been prisoned at The self same gaol-where I remain a debtor, Owing so much to Heaven for gifts, and yet Cannot refuse the gifts-nor pay the debt. XVIII. But all this is digressive, and is meant to I beg the public will take this example XIX. The point which I digressed from, I believe, (God willing and the publishers) by showing XX. I said that I began to feel the passion Of scribbling on me-and in all such cases, As my rule is to balk no inclination, I mount my pegasus to try his paces. Under the spur of this poetic rabies, XXI. I will translate-in charity to those Who cannot construe Latin-this last phrase. Shrink not fair reader-nothing here is meant To impatient feeling when we're in a hurry, XXIII. And here it simply means, I'm in such haste Did I deliberate much and oft to find More polished modes of speech or rhymes more proper— XXIX. And if I should be voted in minority On this important question, I can plead I had the courtly Horace's authority, Which will weigh something; we the learned, indeed, XXV. After these flourishing preliminaries, I think I'll state what 'tis that I intend The purport and the aim of these vagaries What they discourse of, and when they shall end. I will narrate a tale of my own times. |