ation, even healthy, acting in
a vacancy, is to create illusions, or, if there be a certain occult
mental activity, such as that I have alluded to in my Pittsfield
experience, to intensify its action to such a degree that it finally
usurps the function of the senses. In the solitude of the great
Wilderness, where I have passed months at a time, generally alone, or
with only my dog to keep me company, airy nothings became sensible;
and, in the silence of those nights in the forest, the whisperings of
the night wind through the trees forced meanings on the expecting ear.
I came to hear voices in the air, words so clearly spoken that even an
incredulous mind could not ignore them. I sat in my boat one evening,
out on the lake, watching the effects of the sky between the gaunt
pines which, under the prevalence of the west winds, grew up with an
easterly inclination of their tops, like that of a man walking, and
thus seemed to be marching eastward into the gathering darkness. They
gave a sudden impression of a procession, and I heard as distinctly
as I ever heard human speech, a voice in the air which said "the
procession of the Anakim." Over and over again, as I sat alone by my
camp-fire at night, dreaming awake, I have heard a voice from across
the lake calling me to come over and fetch it, and one night I rowed
my boat in the darkness more than a mile, to find no one. Watching for
deer from a treetop one day, in broad sunlight, and looking over a
mountain range, along the crest of which were pointed firs and long
level ridges of rock in irregular alternation, the eerie feeling
suddenly came over me, and the mountain-top seemed a city with spires
and walls, and I heard bands of music, and then hunting-horns coming
down with the wind, and there was a perfect illusion of the sound of a
hunting party hurrying down into the valley, which gave me a positive
panic, as if I were being pursued and must run. I remember also on
another occasion a transformation--transfiguration rather--of the
entire landscape in colors, such as neither Titian nor Turner ever
has shown me. It was a glorification of nature such as I had never
conceived and cannot now comprehend.

The fascination of indulgence in this illusory life became such that
I lingered every summer longer, and finally until November, when, in
that high and northerly locality, the snow had fallen and the lake
began to freeze, living only under a bark roof, open to the air and to