vy
twilight. The evening-bell was tolling: what a host of recollections
were awakened at the sound! Days and hours long forgotten seemed to rise
up at its voice, like the spirits of the departed sweeping by, awful and
indistinct. These impressions soon became more vivid; they rushed on
with greater rapidity: I turned from the window, and was startled at the
sudden moving of a shadow. It was a faint long-drawn figure of myself on
the floor and opposite wall. Ashamed of my fears, I was preparing to
quit the apartment when my attention was arrested by a drawing which I
had once scrawled, and stuck against the wall with all the ardour of a
first achievement. It owed its preservation to an unlucky, but
effectual, contrivance of mine for securing its perpetuity: a
paste-brush, purloined from the kitchen, had made all fast; and the
piece, alike impregnable to assaults or siege, withstood every effort
for its removal. In fact, this could not be accomplished without at the
same time tearing off a portion from the dingy papering of the room, and
leaving a disagreeable void, instead of my sprawling performance. With
the less evil it appeared each succeeding occupant had been contented;
and the drawing had stood its ground in spite of dust and dilapidation.
I felt wishful for the possession of so valuable a memorial of past
exploits. I examined it again and again, but not a single corner
betrayed symptoms of lesion: it stuck bolt upright; and the dun squat
figures portrayed on it appeared to leer at me most provokingly. Not a
slip or tear presented itself as vantage-ground for the projected
attack; and I had no other resource left of gaining possession than what
may be denominated the Caesarean mode. I accordingly took out my knife,
and commenced operations by cutting out at the same time a portion of
the ornamental papering from the wall commensurate with the picture. I
looked upon it with a sort of superstitious reverence; and I have always
thought that the strong and eager impulse I felt for the possession of
this hideous daub proceeded from a far different source than mere
fondness for the memorials of childhood. Be that as it may, I am a firm
believer in a special Providence; and that, too, as discovered in the
most trivial as well as the most important concerns of life. It was
whilst cutting down upon what seemed like wainscoting, over which the
papering of the room had been laid, that my knife glanced on something
much harder