truggled
against the earthly weight that pressed out my soul and palsied my
bursting heart, with superhuman strength; but every effort to free
myself from my prison of clay was made in vain. My lips were
motionless; my tongue clave to the roof of my mouth and refused to send
forth a sound. Hope was extinct. I was beyond the reach of human aid;
and that mental agony rendered me as powerless, as a moth in the grasp
of a giant.

I have stood upon the edge of the volcano, and listened to the
throbbings of Nature's fiery heart; and heard the boiling blood of
earth, chafing and roaring far below; while my eyes vainly endeavoured
to explore its glowing depths. Anon, by some fatal necessity, I was
compelled to cross this terrible abyss--my bridge, a narrow plank
insecurely placed upon the rounded stems of two yielding, sapling
trees. Suddenly, frightful cries resounded on every side, and I was
pursued by fiend-like forms in the shape of animal life. I put my foot
upon the fearful bridge, I tried its strength, and felt a horrid
consciousness that I never could pass over it in safety; my
supernatural enemies drew nearer--I saw their blazing eyes--heard their
low muttered growls; the next moment I leaped upon the plank--with a
loud crash it severed--and with the velocity of thought, I was plunged
headlong into the boiling gulf--down--down--down--for ever whirling
down--the hot flood rushed over me. I felt the spasmodic grasp of death
upon my throat, and awoke struggling with eternity upon the threshold
of time.

Most persons of a reflective character, have kept a diary of the
ordinary occurrences of life. I reversed this time-honoured mental
exercise; and for some months, noted down what I could remember of the
transactions of the mind, during its sleeping hours.

So wild and strange were these records, so eccentric the vagaries of
the soul during its nocturnal wanderings, that I was induced to abandon
the task, lest some friend hereafter, might examine, the mystic scroll,
and conclude that it was written by a maniac.

It happened, that on the present night, I was haunted by a dream of
more than ordinary wildness.

I dreamt that I stood in the centre of a boundless plain of sand, which
undulated beneath my feet like the waves of the sea. Presently, I heard
the rushing of a mighty wind, and as the whirl-blast swept over the
desert, clouds of sand were driven before it, and I was lifted off my
feet, and carried along the tide