anner
possible to convey to the mind of the merely general reader, an adequate
idea of that nervous _intensity of interest_ with which, in my case,
the powers of meditation (not to speak technically) busied and buried
themselves, in the contemplation of even the most ordinary objects of
the universe.

To muse for long unwearied hours, with my attention riveted to some
frivolous device on the margin, or in the typography of a book; to
become absorbed, for the better part of a summer's day, in a quaint
shadow falling aslant upon the tapestry or upon the floor; to lose
myself, for an entire night, in watching the steady flame of a lamp,
or the embers of a fire; to dream away whole days over the perfume of a
flower; to repeat, monotonously, some common word, until the sound, by
dint of frequent repetition, ceased to convey any idea whatever to the
mind; to lose all sense of motion or physical existence, by means of
absolute bodily quiescence long and obstinately persevered in: such
were a few of the most common and least pernicious vagaries induced by a
condition of the mental faculties, not, indeed, altogether unparalleled,
but certainly bidding defiance to anything like analysis or explanation.

Yet let me not be misapprehended. The undue, earnest, and morbid
attention thus excited by objects in their own nature frivolous, must
not be confounded in character with that ruminating propensity common
to all mankind, and more especially indulged in by persons of ardent
imagination. It was not even, as might be at first supposed, an extreme
condition, or exaggeration of such propensity, but primarily and
essentially distinct and different. In the one instance, the dreamer,
or enthusiast, being interested by an object usually _not_ frivolous,
imperceptibly loses sight of this object in a wilderness of deductions
and suggestions issuing therefrom, until, at the conclusion of a day
dream _often replete with luxury_, he finds the _incitamentum_, or first
cause of his musings, entirely vanished and forgotten. In my case, the
primary object was _invariably frivolous_, although assuming, through
the medium of my distempered vision, a refracted and unreal importance.
Few deductions, if any, were made; and those few pertinaciously
returning in upon the original object as a centre. The meditations were
_never_ pleasurable; and, at the termination of the reverie, the first
cause, so far from being out of sight, had attained that supernat