es were tied around me, and horses were hitched to them to
drag me from the deeps, but in trying to draw me out the ropes would snap
asunder and I was left imbedded in the clay. They could not move me,
because Christ had commanded me to stand there. A little while before the
break of day the Savior appeared and told me to go. I started to run, but
when I got alongside the old depot there burst from it the combined screams
of millions of incarnate devils. I can hear in fancy still the avalanche of
voices which rolled from those lost myriads. I ran into the first house to
which I came. Its saw at a glance what was the nature of my terrible
trouble, but he had no power to help me. I beheld the face of a black fiend
grinning on me through a window. In the center of his forehead was an
enormous and fiery eye, and about his sinister mouth the grin which I at
first saw became demoniacal. He called the fiends, and I heard them come as
a rushing tornado, and surround the house. Everything I attempted to do was
anticipated by them. If I thought of moving my hand I heard them say,
"Look! he is going to lift his hand." No matter what I did or thought of
doing, they cursed me.

When daylight at last came--and oh, what an age of dying agony lay behind
it in the vast hollow darkness of the night!--the horrid objects
disappeared, but the voices remained and talked with me all day. You who
read, imagine yourselves alone in a room, or walking deserted streets, with
voices articulating words to you with as clear distinctness as words were
ever spoken to you. Many of the voices were those of friends and
acquaintances whom I knew to be in their graves, and yet they--their
voices--were conversing with, or talking to me, during the whole of that
long, long, terrible day. I was tortured with fears and a dread of
something infinitely horrible. I went to my office--the voices were there!
I stepped to the window, and on the street were men congregating in front
of the building. I could hear their voices, and they were all talking of
hanging me. I had committed an appalling crime, they said. I knew not where
to go or whither to fly. Now and then I could hear strains of music. The
dreaded night came on, and with it the fiends returned. In the excitement
of breaking from my office, I forgot to put on my overcoat. The moment I
got on the street the freezing wind drove me back, but hundreds of voices
gathered around me and threatened me with death if I