in a forest, shewed me in perspective
the deserted countryside through which a traveller would be hurrying
towards the nearest station: the path that he followed being fixed for
ever in his memory by the general excitement due to being in a strange
place, to doing unusual things, to the last words of conversation, to
farewells exchanged beneath an unfamiliar lamp which echoed still in his
ears amid the silence of the night; and to the delightful prospect of
being once again at home.

I would lay my cheeks gently against the comfortable cheeks of my
pillow, as plump and blooming as the cheeks of babyhood. Or I would
strike a match to look at my watch. Nearly midnight. The hour when an
invalid, who has been obliged to start on a journey and to sleep in a
strange hotel, awakens in a moment of illness and sees with glad relief
a streak of daylight shewing under his bedroom door. Oh, joy of joys!
it is morning. The servants will be about in a minute: he can ring,
and some one will come to look after him. The thought of being made
comfortable gives him strength to endure his pain. He is certain he
heard footsteps: they come nearer, and then die away. The ray of light
beneath his door is extinguished. It is midnight; some one has turned
out the gas; the last servant has gone to bed, and he must lie all night
in agony with no one to bring him any help.

I would fall asleep, and often I would be awake again for short snatches
only, just long enough to hear the regular creaking of the wainscot, or
to open my eyes to settle the shifting kaleidoscope of the darkness,
to savour, in an instantaneous flash of perception, the sleep which lay
heavy upon the furniture, the room, the whole surroundings of which I
formed but an insignificant part and whose unconsciousness I should very
soon return to share. Or, perhaps, while I was asleep I had returned
without the least effort to an earlier stage in my life, now for ever
outgrown; and had come under the thrall of one of my childish terrors,
such as that old terror of my great-uncle's pulling my curls, which was
effectually dispelled on the day--the dawn of a new era to me--on which
they were finally cropped from my head. I had forgotten that event
during my sleep; I remembered it again immediately I had succeeded in
making myself wake up to escape my great-uncle's fingers; still, as a
measure of precaution, I would bury the whole of my head in the pillow
before returning to the world of