ome contagious disease, from which
every man shrunk with alarm, and left me to perish unassisted and alone.
I asked one man and another to explain to me the meaning of these
appearances; but every one avoided the task, and answered in an evasive
and ambiguous manner. I sometimes supposed that it was all a delusion of
the imagination; till the repetition of the sensation brought the
reality too painfully home to my apprehension. There are few things that
give a greater shock to the mind, than a phenomenon in the conduct of
our fellow men, of great importance to our concerns, and for which we
are unable to assign any plausible reason. At times I was half inclined
to believe that the change was not in other men, but that some
alienation of my own understanding generated the horrid vision. I
endeavoured to awaken from my dream, and return to my former state of
enjoyment and happiness; but in vain. To the same consideration it may
be ascribed, that, unacquainted with the source of the evil, observing
its perpetual increase, and finding it, so far as I could perceive,
entirely arbitrary in its nature, I was unable to ascertain its limits,
or the degree in which it would finally overwhelm me.

In the midst however of the wonderful and seemingly inexplicable nature
of this scene, there was one idea that instantly obtruded itself, and
that I could never after banish from my mind. It is Falkland! In vain I
struggled against the seeming improbability of the supposition. In vain
I said, "Mr. Falkland, wise as he is, and pregnant in resources, acts by
human, not by supernatural means. He may overtake me by surprise, and in
a manner of which I had no previous expectation; but he cannot produce a
great and notorious effect without some visible agency, however
difficult it may be to trace that agency to its absolute author. He
cannot, like those invisible personages who are supposed from time to
time to interfere in human affairs, ride in the whirlwind, shroud
himself in clouds and impenetrable darkness, and scatter destruction
upon the earth from his secret habitation." Thus it was that I bribed my
imagination, and endeavoured to persuade myself that my present
unhappiness originated in a different source from my former. All evils
appeared trivial to me, in comparison with the recollection and
perpetuation of my parent misfortune. I felt like a man distracted, by
the incoherence of my ideas to my present situation, excluding from it
t