At length Moses manfully resolves on a pilgrimage to the hallowed spot which holds the object of his adoration. Accordingly he starts from his rural home, and, with infinite toil, wends his way in solitude beneath the silvery light of the twinkling stars, through tangled thickets and thorny fields; floundering through bogs and briers, and tumbling over snake-fences, with thoughts so delicious that, could they have escaped from his bosom and taken a beautiful embodiment, they would have planted his pathway with flowers as sweet as if steeped in the honeyed dews of Hymettus. And now he comes in view of the mansion in which dwells the lovely idol of his worship. He stands beneath the spreading boughs of the trees which shade the sacred spot. He sees the lights within the neatly-furnished parlor. He even hears the siren song of the enchantress, giving utterance to the sweet emotions of her soul, as if magnetically informed of his approach and inviting him to enter. But he pauses. His faculties are seized with a sudden panic, like raw recruits when first brought into action. His heart palpitates, and, with a pit-a-pat motion, comes mounting up to his mouth. His joints tremble. He walks to and fro under the trees, like a fellow sent upon a fool's errand, who has forgotten his message. Finally the lights disappear, and the fair Juliet has retired to rest, while the toil-worn swain proceeds homeward, breathless, and faint, and leaning upon his hickory cudgel. Moses made many nightly pilgrimages in the same manner, and with similar results; until, one morning, he accidentally heard that Juliet was married to Romeo.
The unfortunate Moses now became intimately acquainted with misery. Sleep forsook his pillow, and after several nights of wakefulness, he began to meditate upon the various methods of putting one's self to death; but for a number of days his conclusions were unsatisfactory. He put the muzzle of a pistol in his mouth, but there was a mutiny among his fingers, and they rebelliously refused to obey his will, and pull the trigger. He seated himself on a beam in his father's barn, with one end of a rope around his neck and the other securely fastened to the beam, when he suddenly recollected that a man who is hanged usually turns black in the face and presents a hideous appearance. He stood on a brow of a precipice, overhanging a deep and turbid stream, and was about to leap into the water below, when he recoiled with horror at the prospect of being eaten by the fishes, and thus deprived of decent sepulture.
Moses now wisely determined to pass away without any unnecessary suffering. He supposed that on the shelves of the apothecary, in Mapleton, were potent drugs which would put him in a condition of somnolency, during which he could easily glide out of this sublunary state of existence. So he proceeded to the town, and having procured the proper material for his purpose, was hurrying homeward with deadly intent, when he inadvertently ran against a man who was standing in the street reading a newspaper to a crowd of people. The rapidity with which Moses was walking caused him to collide with great force, and nearly overthrew the reader of the paper. The man turned round, and, grasping Moses by the collar, shook him fiercely.
"I beg pardon!" exclaimed Moses, aroused, by the rude shaking he had received, to a consciousness of his surroundings,—"I beg pardon! I did not see."
"Did not see!" said the man. "Where are your eyes that you can't see a whole crowd of people?"
"I beg pardon!" reiterated Moses, meekly.
"It is granted; but mind how you walk next time!" And with this admonition, the man resumed the reading of the paper, as follows:
"Immense discoveries in the placers! Captain M. reported to have already fifteen barrels buried!"
"Fifteen barrels of what?" asked Moses of a man standing near him, and who happened to be M. T. Pate.