"I'm Shut In A Dark Room With The Candle Blown Out," Pathetically
Cried Old Farmer Fleming, When He Heard Of His Beautiful Daughter
Dahlia's Clandestine Departure To A Distant Land With A Nameless
Lover.
"I've heard of a sort of fear you have in that dilemma, lest
you should lay your fingers on
Edges of sharp knives, and if I think a
step - if I go thinking a step, and feel my way, I do cut myself, and I
bleed, I do." Only in a comparatively snakeless country could such
fancies be born and such metaphors used - snakeless and highly
civilized, where the blades of Sheffield are cheap and abundant. In
ruder lands, where ophidians abound, as in India and South America, in
the dark one fears the cold living coil and deadly sudden fang.
Serpents were fearful things to me at that period; but whatsoever is
terrible and dangerous, or so reported, has an irresistible attraction
for the mind, whether of child or man; it was therefore always a
pleasure to have seen a snake in the day's rambles, although the sight
was a startling one. Also in the warm season it was a keen pleasure to
find the cast slough of the feared and subtle creature. Here was
something not the serpent, yet so much more than a mere picture of it;
a dead and cast-off part of it, but in its completeness, from the
segmented mask with the bright unseeing eyes, to the fine whip-like
tail end, so like the serpent itself; I could handle it, handle the
serpent as it were, yet be in no danger from venomous tooth or
stinging tongue.
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