One morning, when more than the usual gloom oppressed my spirits, I made an effort to arouse myself and throw off the melancholy that was settling upon me, which each day I felt to be growing more confirmed. I was sitting by a window, which stood wide open, and, just outside, a caged canary was singing and fluttering its feathers in the warm spring sunshine. The little bird was my particular property, and I regarded it with an affection which is rarely bestowed upon pets. With the exception of my young sister, a child about four years of age, this was the only living thing that I had taken any interest in since my sickness. I had trained the canary from the shell, and the little creature seemed to repay all my care, for from no other member of the family would it receive caresses. I was so much afraid of its being accidentally injured that I never allowed it to be freed from the cage, except in my presence. At my call it would fly about me, resting on my head, shoulders, or hands, and chirping in a perfect ecstasy of enjoyment.
I arose and opened the door of its prison, then, reseating myself, softly whistled while it darted into the air, wheeled once or twice, and descended upon my hand. Stroking its spotless yellow plumage, I regarded the little thing with a degree of pleasure I had not experienced for several weeks. But sudden horror almost caused my heart to cease its beatings, and the perspiration started from my forehead in great drops, for I felt my fingers slowly closing over the delicate bird. Although I made an attempt greater than the racking effort we sometimes exert in the nightmare, I had no power to restrain them. The canary fluttered in my clasp. I would have dropped it, I would have shrieked for help, but my muscles, my voice, my body, obeyed me not, and my fingers, like the steady working of machinery, gradually tightened their relentless grasp. In my agony the veins of my face protruded like lines of cordage. I heard the frail bones breaking beneath the crushing pressure, then my involuntary grip suddenly relaxed, and the bird fell upon my knee, dead and mangled!
At the same moment, I saw, through the open door, my little sister playing upon the grass-plat; and, almost before I was aware of moving, or of any volition, I found myself walking rapidly toward her, while my fingers twitched with a convulsive, clutching movement. Good Heavens! I already saw her face turn purple, and heard her gasping breath smothered by gurgling blood. With this terrible picture before my mental vision, my brain felt as if it would burst its bounds in the desperate, but unavailing effort I made to turn back, to fly from the spot. But I could not command myself. In that moment I endured suffering more intense than language can describe. Perhaps my strange and wild appearance frightened the child; for, in place of holding out her arms to me, her favorite brother, she fled crying to the nurse, who did not observe my approach, and carried her into the house. Saved! unconsciously saved—saved from a fate too terrible to contemplate.
I sank insensible upon the ground, and, when I recovered, found myself surrounded by the family, each one applying some restorative, for I had been in a long and death-like swoon. Slowly, but distinctly, the recollections of the events which had reduced me to this condition presented themselves to my memory with all their appalling horror, nearly depriving me again of consciousness.
I did not refer in any manner to the subject, which was also carefully avoided by all others in my presence, for fear that it might produce renewed excitement, and my friends had no suspicion of the circumstances which brought it about. The bird was found dead upon the floor, and the family imagined that it had met with some accident. They were evidently surprised, when the fact was communicated to me, that I made no remarks, for they had anticipated an outburst of grief.
Grief! I did not suffer from grief; grief was overpowered by the horror that racked my brain—horror for the act I had committed, and the more fearful one which had been so mercifully prevented. I had committed? No, it was not my mind or will which had prompted my hand to do the deed. I was innocent, even though my fingers had dripped with the blood of a sister; but the frightful thought filled me with a terror that wrung my soul. I pondered continually upon it. When might not this mysterious demon again assert its evil control over me? Strange as it may seem, I felt certain that it was some foreign agency—I knew not what—that mastered my will, and not the result of my own intellect, in a disordered condition.
This overpowering dread of the future, of what might happen, which took possession of me, drove me to the decision of leaving home, as the best way of avoiding danger to my friends. Perhaps, too, if my physical health became better, I might gain strength enough to defy this infernal power; for, as I have said before, I possessed a singular consciousness that, if I could once successfully resist its promptings, my soul would be liberated from thraldom. I announced my determination of making a journey, without any explanation of my sudden change, and it was greeted with delight by my friends and relatives, who were anxious to hasten my departure while the humor was upon me; but they need not have feared any change of purpose on my part, for I was haunted by this terrible dread of the future, and I gladly said farewell for a time to my home and birthplace.
The incidents of travel and of new scenes broke the monotony, and dispelled to some degree the gloom that had taken fast hold upon me. In a short period I found myself rapidly improving. Every week brought me an increase of strength, and I suffered less frequently from these frightful attacks. Although they occurred at longer intervals than formerly, they seemed to grow more severe in character; the conflict was fiercer, and my mind made a more desperate effort to gain the supremacy. My whole frame would be racked by the intense struggle which I constantly maintained, though I was constantly vanquished.
The increasing delight I took in the scenery, the continued exercise and excitement, almost drove despair from me, and hope once more brightened my countenance. I began to look forward to the time when my health would be entirely restored, and my body and mind be in unison. I did not hope vainly, for the final conflict came, and with it a strange termination of my long sufferings.
I stood upon the side of an Eastern mountain. Above my head vast rocks arose in solemn grandeur, their summits lost in canopied mists which, gray and clinging, wrapped them in obscurity. Below, a great chasm rent the mountain; a yawning, bottomless gulf. While I gazed, awed by the thought of its mysterious depths, where no human eye had seen, where no human foot had trod, a ray of light struggled in and rested on gaunt trees, on snake-like ferns, damp and cold, that clung to its slimy sides, and on one pale flower which nodded in the chill draught that came up, a palpable horror, from the blackness of darkness. I turned away. Near the western horizon dead clouds were piled one above another, and their heavy shadow lay brown and dark upon the sullen earth. No wind stirred the forests, or rustled their motionless leaves, and the awe of the unbroken silence fell, with a dread oppression, upon my heart.