‘Years had passed. The bright enthusiasm of youth had gone off with them. The glowing thoughts, passions, sympathies, consuming themselves in their own fire—my whole character had saddened down into the melancholy, homeless wanderer. I was no longer the sunny featured boy that had spent so many pleasant hours on the hill side—by the sandy margin of the lake that washed its base and sent up there with every wind that fanned it, a gentle lullaby—by the rivulet that in early days had caught my laughing features as I bent over it to gather water flowers—no! I was that boy no longer. The peace which had once lived in my heart, had become a worthless and withered flower, scentless as a shadow; the innocency which once gave a zest to every thing had gone from me; the gray hairs of premature age were intermingled with the dark ones of my youth—no! I was that boy no longer. I had traveled—but what was travel to me? I had been in the north and south, in the east and west; I had wandered over the solemn grounds of Corcyra, and amid the classic ruins of Italy; I had stood beneath the sky of Africa and sat me down like Marius amid the relics of her better days, and tried to wake in my heart some of that dormant enthusiasm belonging to young minds; but it was like seeking to resuscitate the dead dust in the earth beneath, or to call life into the mouldering mausoleums and temples around me—no! I was that boy no longer.
‘The time of the grain gathering had gone by, and later Autumn had fully set in; for the trees were more than half stripped of that gorgeous covering peculiar to this season; and no music came out from the forest save the whistle of a single quail, and this too in that pensive cadence which is heard only at the close of the year. I was revisiting the scenes of my childhood—a spot I had not seen for twenty years, and during which period I had been a wanderer where no tidings of the weal or wo of my family reached me. It is not necessary to recount the circumstances which had made me thus long a voluntary exile. It need only be said, I parted from home and all I held dear, in anger—angry with self—angry with man—angry with that pure and exemplary being who had borne me on her heart, and by whom I had been so often taught to kneel and pray even before I could myself frame a benediction—‘with her who taught me that God loved obedient children.’ O! that one offence! Any thing else—had it been any thing else, I had suppressed the groans over my nightly pillow, and borne it like a man while it grieved me. But she, she in whose character unkindness had no part—a blow, a damning blow—God! God! this was unmitigated misery. And yet I had suffered—God knows it, year after year, and seen it preying on my health, and felt it withering up all my finer sensibilities—and yet I would not return. I could not. I felt as if a power was upon me, against which my united energies were nothing. I felt as if it was my destiny, and strange as it may appear, I thought it right. I felt it certain that home was not for me, and though I would wake from an unrefreshing sleep, and recount for hours as a miser his gold every early association, it brought the wish but not the purpose to return. Sickness came—O! what a leveler is sickness of all the petty passions and enmities which creep into the dispositions of men! How it tears up the character, wrings out from the hardened heart the bitter gall of contrition, and forces into amendment! Sickness accomplished in me what reason and conscience could not do, and broke down that indomitable barrier which had so long interposed betwixt me and duty. I rose from my bed, a habitant rather of another world than the denizen of this, and my first thought was home. This cherished for a few weeks grew into a passion, and the fear that the grave had closed over all I loved magnified the wish a thousand fold, while every obstacle which now interposed betwixt me and a return sent a chill through me, like that which we may suppose lies on the heart of the dead. The swiftest speed seemed but delay, and it was only on the last day of my journey and I neared home that my impatience subsided, and my anxiety began to assume another form—something terrible and strange, foreboding and oppressive.
‘The tread of the post horses down the gravelly slope which led directly to the village, roused me from a lethargy I had fallen into, and I sprang to the coach window like a madman. We were opposite the village inn. The same old antiquated elm creaked before the door, and the same old sign board flapped in the blast, and upon the high step stones that led to the main body of the building, sat a human form. A staff lay on the ground beside him—his ragged scrip was at his feet—and his form was doubled up with age. I looked closely—God of Heaven!—it was my brother.
‘But my cup was not yet full. We drew up at the inn door, and I heard the guard rudely order the beggar from the spot, and curse him for an idle mendicant. This was too much for my swollen heart to bear, and leaping from the opposite side of the carriage, I took my way forward alone. I came to the small hill which ran along by the side of the village, from the top of which the immediate valley where lay my father’s dwelling appeared in view; and as I paused there for a moment, and memory ran over the thousand senseless objects that lay around me with each of which I could associate a forgotten happiness, I thought death a boon I could have prayed for. At that moment the village school poured forth its groups of noisy and innocent children. This was as it was wont to be—this seemed natural. But looking nearer, I knew them not—they were strangers. Here and there I thought I recognized a face I had once known, but it was transient and soon passed—all was strange. A celebrated ‘Retreat for the Insane’ was in our village, and reaching the summit of the hill I stood by its walls. The door was closed but not fastened; and I know not why, but an indefinable feeling led me to enter there. I know not but it was the unbreathed wish of my heart to witness some spectacle of human suffering—hoping thereby to lessen my own; perhaps I thought I might soon make it my own dwelling, and I wanted to familiarize the objects I should meet with;—but I entered. Seated upon the ground with scarce a mat to cover them, was a lot of wretched beings busied as their several dispositions prompted them. One was blowing bubbles—he said he was maturing a system of astronomy, whereby Galileo should be forgotten and the world profited. Another was heaping up sand, and hoarding it in his bosom—he called it gold. A third it seemed had been a lay preacher, and now and then he howled forth a torrent of truth and error, interlarded with imprecations and blasphemies the most horrid. And there was one there, a tall and handsome youth, with eyes as black as midnight, and his brow drawn down into the scowl of a demon—He said he was ANALYZING A HUMAN HEART. Sudden my ears were saluted with loud and piercing shrieks that made my whole frame shiver, and betwixt each scream I thought I recognized the shrill echo of a lash as applied to the naked skin. Another—and an old man came tottering round an angle of the building; and seeing me, he ran to my feet and cowered down like a whipped hound seeking for protection.
“Curse them for inhuman wretches”—groaned, or rather screamed the old man—“They chain me up like a vile beast—a dog to murder me. They drag me into that black den and shut me there, and say I’m crazed—mad. What is mad? Who?—O! yes,—my children, they broke my heart—one went from me, and the other—Ah! save me—save me”—His keepers came in sight, and in their hands were the scourges they had been using, the sounds of which had rung in my ears so appalling. “O! don’t—don’t—I’ll follow—you won’t whip me, will you master—I’m good—good”—and the old man actually knelt down, and like a beast licked the feet of his tormentors. I fell to the earth senseless.
‘A long and doleful night followed—a blank—a vacancy; so long, it seemed ten thousand eternities; so gloomy, it seemed as if the darkness was consolidated. O! what a night is that, when the helm of reason breaks—the unshackled faculties wander forth—and the maddened powers invoke images of horror, only to madden themselves the more by gazing at them! All that is grand—all that is terrible—all horrible, loathsome, fearful images, that the mind had ever while healthy repulsed, then come back on the heart like vultures that have been scared awhile from their prey, whose fasts have only whetted their ungorged appetites. At one moment, I seemed borne through the Eternal void chained to the lightnings; at another, I was dashing downward towards a tremendous barrier of cavernous rocks, and their serrated pinnacles seemed waiting to embrace me. Now I was tossed on billows of fire, and a tremendous surge would hurl me on a jagged precipice; then with its reflux suck me down through unimaginable depths, and the hot fires scorched me as they shot into my brain. Again I heard peals of laughter, and howlings of formless, shapeless beings that hovered around me; they had snakes and basilisks twisted round their foreheads, and the flames that issued from their forked mouths seemed to burn into my very soul. Then came the sense of a release—the gasping, choking, horrible consciousness, that you are struggling on the confines of two worlds, and not knowing which is to be yours—whether earth or death shall have you. Suddenly a fountain seemed tossing its cool spray over me—the fires that withered up my brain went out—the fiends that howled about me passed away—the subtlest life began to dance through my veins—and I awoke!
My first thoughts were true to their mark, and my first words, “Mother, lives she? The rest—father, brother—God of Heaven! why was I reserved for it?”
‘A form stood by me—a little maid. O! how the innocent words and kind attentions of infancy, soothe the pillow of an irritable sickness! We can’t bear the cold studied kindness of such as we are, we are jealous of them; we fear they will condole with us, curse us with their stinted pity; and that too in the measured phraseology which speaks of the head and not of the heart. But a child, a gentle child—to see its little form gliding about your couch—to feel its little arms about your pillow—to catch its warm breath on your cheek as winds breathed from flowers—and see the kind and touching solicitude of the eye unused to sights of sorrow, yet enduring it like a martyr, and for ourselves too,—these make irritable diseases tolerable—may I not say happy? for the evidence of a pure and devoted affection in a human being, makes a misanthrope (and such I then was) contented with misery. And my disease was of this nature: it was a nervousness induced by excess of suffering, and my faculties had become so exquisite, that the least thing sent a dart through me that seemed tearing flesh and soul asunder.
“Mother! is she—?” excessive weakness forbade me finish the sentence.
“Your mother lives”—but she placed her finger upon her lips in token of silence. I attempted to answer—she laid her hand upon my mouth with a sweet smile, then turned and left the room.