Never Had I Felt Confinement Less - I Who
Feel, When I Am Out Of Sight Of Living, Growing Grass, And Out Of
Sound Of Birds' Voices And All Rural Sounds, That I Am Not Properly
Alive!
On the second day of my illness, during an interval of comparative
ease, I fell into recollections of my childhood, and at once I had
that far, that forgotten past with me again as I had never previously
had it.
It was not like that mental condition, known to most persons,
when some sight or sound or, more frequently, the perfume of some
flower, associated with our early life, restores the past suddenly and
so vividly that it is almost an illusion. That is an intensely
emotional condition and vanishes as quickly as it comes. This was
different. To return to the simile and metaphor used at the beginning,
it was as if the cloud shadows and haze had passed away and the entire
wide prospect beneath me made clearly visible. Over it all my eyes
could range at will, choosing this or that point to dwell on, to
examine it in all its details; and, in the case of some person known
to me as a child, to follow his life till it ended or passed from
sight; then to return to the same point again to repeat the process
with other lives and resume my rambles in the old familiar haunts.
What a happiness it would be, I thought, in spite of discomfort and
pain and danger, if this vision would continue!
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