I Straightened Myself In My Stirrups, And
Strived To Persuade My Understanding That This Was Real Egypt, And
That Those Angles Which Stood Up Between Me And The West Were Of
Harder Stuff, And More Ancient Than The Paper Pyramids Of The Green
Portfolio.
Yet it was not till I came to the base of the great
Pyramid that reality began to weigh upon my mind.
Strange to say,
the bigness of the distinct blocks of stones was the first sign by
which I attained to feel the immensity of the whole pile. When I
came, and trod, and touched with my hands, and climbed, in order
that by climbing I might come to the top of one single stone, then,
and almost suddenly, a cold sense and understanding of the
Pyramid's enormity came down, overcasting my brain.
Now try to endure this homely, sick-nursish illustration of the
effect produced upon one's mind by the mere vastness of the great
Pyramid. When I was very young (between the ages, I believe, of
three and five years old), being then of delicate health, I was
often in time of night the victim of a strange kind of mental
oppression. I lay in my bed perfectly conscious, and with open
eyes, but without power to speak or to move, and all the while my
brain was oppressed to distraction by the presence of a single and
abstract idea, the idea of solid immensity. It seemed to me in my
agonies that the horror of this visitation arose from its coming
upon me without form or shape, that the close presence of the
direst monster ever bred in hell would have been a thousand times
more tolerable than that simple idea of solid size.
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