ir insane 'short stories', and
is at the root of their worship of what they call 'strength', a
cowardly craving for protection, or the much more despicable
fascination of brutality. For my part I have always disregarded it as
something impure and devilish, unworthy of a Christian. Fear I think,
indeed, to be in the nature of things, and it is as much part of my
experience to be afraid of the sea or of an untried horse as it is to
eat and sleep; but terror, which is a sudden madness and paralysis of
the soul, that I say is from hell, and not to be played with or
considered or put in pictures or described in stories. All this I say
to preface what happened, and especially to point out how terror is in
the nature of a possession and is unreasonable.

For in the crossing of this bridge there was nothing in itself
perilous. The sleepers lay very close together--I doubt if a man
could have slipped between them; but, I know not how many hundred feet
below, was the flashing of the torrent, and it turned my brain. For
the only parapet there was a light line or pipe, quite slender and low
down, running from one spare iron upright to another. These rather
emphasized than encouraged my mood. And still as I resolutely put one
foot in front of the other, and resolutely kept my eyes off the abyss
and fixed on the opposing hill, and as the long curve before me was
diminished by successive sharp advances, still my heart was caught
half-way in every breath, and whatever it is that moves a man went
uncertainly within me, mechanical and half-paralysed. The great height
with that narrow unprotected ribbon across it was more than I could
bear.

I dared not turn round and I dared not stop. Words and phrases began
repeating themselves in my head as they will under a strain: so I know
at sea a man perilously hanging on to the tiller makes a kind of
litany of his instructions. The central part was passed, the
three-quarters; the tension of that enduring effort had grown
intolerable, and I doubted my ability to complete the task. Why? What
could prevent me? I cannot say; it was all a bundle of imaginaries.
Perhaps at bottom what I feared was sudden giddiness and the fall--

At any rate at this last supreme part I vowed one candle to Our Lady
of Perpetual Succour if she would see that all went well, and this
candle I later paid in Rome; finding Our Lady of Succour not hung up
in a public place and known to all, as I thought She would be, but