“—bed—bed—delicious bed,
That heaven or earth to the weary head,”
were never more convincing than when we sought ours.
Next morning breakfast at nine, and an immediate return to them.
At once, on dragging and throwing myself upon mine, the vision began.
I was back at Put-in-Bay. It was a crystal world. The island, hotels, houses, people, the distant shores with their villages, the various vessels, all, everything, I could see in and through, as I floated around in a lovely little sail-boat of crystal, and looked down through its bottom into the crystal depths of the lake.
But there was no time to be lost in wonder. In the twinkling of an eye, I was standing in space surrounded by gigantic mountains that rose to the very firmament. They were of countless shapes, some cloven into rifts and clefts, others smooth as velvet lawns, and so precipitous I felt what the dizziness would be to dare to look down. Presently my gaze was fixed by one just in front of me. There was a monstrous fissure in which, carved as it were, was a giant knee, slightly crooked or bent. Years before I had read the anecdote about Cuvier; his positive conviction and assertion that fossil man would be found, and his reply when asked from time to time, “pas encore.” I exclaimed under my breath: “Why, there is Cuvier’s fossil man.” In a breath I was in a subterranean chamber of vast proportions, with lofty ceiling and octagonal in shape. The walls were studded with the richest jewels, and it was lighted by a soft yet clear radiance—an opaline mist of exquisite tints. At intervals were placed large caskets on pedestals, these, too, incrusted with gems.
On my approaching, in succession, one after another, some unseen agency lifted each cover, revealing all the most celebrated stones I had ever read of. The Kohinoor lay in a dull mass on a velvet cushion. The green diamond flashed into tempered light. Orlaff shone as it might have if it ever was the eye of an Indian idol. The Regent blazed till I could look no longer. Suddenly such a lovely brilliant! “Oh! this is the Great Rosy diamond of the fairy story I read so long ago!” I cried, bending over eagerly. To find myself seated on a throne of mother-of-pearl, and being borne onward by some invisible force, swift as light, through an arcade of sea-shells. “Why, this is like Bayard Taylor’s arcade of rainbows—as beautiful! as beautiful!” I commented. Shells such as I had never seen, different in shape, color and luster, but uniform in size, were fitted together from a height far overhead to a depth far below. On and on, dazzled, enchanted, bewildered, yet commenting without pause, till I was gazing, transfixed, on such a spectacle as would have lifted the apocalyptic John into the Seventh Heaven!
Then rose before me Jerusalem on its hill, the holy city of the Jews, with its sacred temple, the city of the Crusades, the city of pilgrimages, the city of the New Testament. And beyond and above it, the heavens were opened, and the New Jerusalem was revealed in all the glory of its prophecies, traditions and beliefs. The Promise and the Fulfillment! Awe-struck, almost blinded, I was gazing from one to the other, saying to myself: “How can I ever describe what I have seen? How explain it? Where find words to express it? There is nothing, nothing, I can compare it to or with”—
A repeated tapping at my door, which I heard but could make no response to. Then I knew the maid had gone away. Presently, another rap; then the door unclosed and my name called; finally, a touch and gentle shaking roused me as if from a nightmare. It was half-past two. I had not lost consciousness for a moment, but I had not moved or spoken aloud. When I described the above to a learned friend, he said it was caused by the preceding extreme fatigue. I accepted the explanation.
