spontaneously like oracles from afar, as I strode homewards with Hannah
by my side. Her, meantime, I seemed to hear; for at times I seemed and I
intended to answer her. But answer her I did not; for not ten words of
all that she said did I really and consciously hear. How I went through
that night is more entirely a blank in my memory, more entirely a
chapter of chaos and the confusion of chaos, than any other passage the
most impressive in my life. If I even slumbered for a moment, as at
intervals I did sometimes, though never sitting down, but standing or
pacing about throughout the night, and if in this way I attained a
momentary respite from self-consciousness, no sooner had I reached this
enviable state of oblivion, than some internal sting of irritation as
rapidly dispersed the whole fickle fabric of sleep; and as if the
momentary trance--this fugitive beguilement of my wo--had been conceded
by a demon's subtle malice only with the purpose of barbing the pang, by
thus forcing it into a stronger relief through the insidious peace
preceding it. It is a well-known and most familiar experience to all the
sons and daughters of affliction, that under no circumstances is the
piercing, lancinating torment of a recent calamity felt so keenly as in
the first moments of awaking in the morning from the night's slumbers.
Just at the very instant when the clouds of sleep, and the whole
fantastic illusions of dreaminess are dispersing, just as the realities
of life are re-assuming their steadfast forms--re-shaping
themselves--and settling anew into those fixed relations which they are
to preserve throughout the waking hours; in that particular crisis of
transition from the unreal to the real, the wo which besieges the brain
and the life-springs at the heart rushes in afresh amongst the other
crowd of realities, and has at the moment of restoration literally the
force and liveliness of a new birth--the very same pang, and no whit
feebler, as that which belonged to it when it was first made known.
From the total hush of oblivion which had buried it and sealed it up, as
it were, during the sleeping hours, it starts into sudden life on our
first awaking, and is to all intents and purposes a new and not an old
affliction--one which brings with it the old original shock which
attended its first annunciation.

That night--that first night of separation from my wife--_how_ it
passed, I know not; I know only _that_ it passed, I being in