skin, such a "goose-flesh" shiver ran over it. It was not
fear, but what I call nervousness,--unreasoning, but irresistible; as
when, for instance, one looking at the sun going down says, "I will count
fifty before it disappears"; and as he goes on and it becomes doubtful
whether he will reach the number, he gets strangely flurried, and his
imagination pictures life and death and heaven and hell as the issues
depending on the completion or non-completion of the fifty he is
counting. Extreme curiosity will excite some people as much as fear, or
what resembles fear, acts on some other less impressible natures.

I may find myself in the midst of strange facts in this little conjurer's
room. Or, again, there may be nothing in this poor invalid's chamber but
some old furniture, such as they say came over in the Mayflower. All
this is just what I mean to, find out while I am looking at the Little
Gentleman, who has suddenly become my patient. The simplest things turn
out to be unfathomable mysteries; the most mysterious appearances prove
to be the most commonplace objects in disguise.

I wonder whether the boys who live in Roxbury and Dorchester are ever
moved to tears or filled with silent awe as they look upon the rocks and
fragments of "puddingstone" abounding in those localities. I have my
suspicions that those boys "heave a stone" or "fire a brickbat," composed
of the conglomerate just mentioned, without any more tearful or
philosophical contemplations than boys of less favored regions expend on
the same performance. Yet a lump of puddingstone is a thing to look at,
to think about, to study over, to dream upon, to go crazy with, to beat
one's brains out against. Look at that pebble in it. From what cliff was
it broken? On what beach rolled by the waves of what ocean? How and
when imbedded in soft ooze, which itself became stone, and by-and-by was
lifted into bald summits and steep cliffs, such as you may see on
Meetinghouse-Hill any day--yes, and mark the scratches on their faces
left when the boulder-carrying glaciers planed the surface of the
continent with such rough tools that the storms have not worn the marks
out of it with all the polishing of ever so many thousand years?

Or as you pass a roadside ditch or pool in springtime, take from it any
bit of stick or straw which has lain undisturbed for a time. Some little
worm-shaped masses of clear jelly containing specks are fastened to the
stick: eggs of a s