I heard late at night in my
little neighbor's apartment? It had come to that pass that I was truly
unable to separate what I had really heard from what I had dreamed in
those nightmares to which I have been subject, as before mentioned. So,
when I walked into the room, and Bridget, turning back, closed the door
and left me alone with its tenant, I do believe you could have grated a
nutmeg on my skin, such a "goose-flesh" shiver ran over it. It was not
fear, but what I call nervousness,--unreasoning, but irresistible; as
when, for instance, one looking at the sun going down says, "I will
count fifty before it disappears"; and as he goes on and it becomes
doubtful whether he will reach the number, he gets strangely flurried,
and his imagination pictures life and death and heaven and hell as the
issues depending on the completion or non-completion of the fifty he is
counting. Extreme curiosity will excite some people as much as fear, or
what resembles fear, acts on some other less impressible natures.

I may find myself in the midst of strange facts in this little
conjurer's room. Or, again, there may be nothing in this poor invalid's
chamber but some old furniture, such as they say came over in the
Mayflower. All this is just what I mean to, find out while I am looking
at the Little Gentleman, who has suddenly become my patient. The
simplest things turn out to be unfathomable mysteries; the most
mysterious appearances prove to be the most commonplace objects in
disguise.

I wonder whether the boys who live in Roxbury and Dorchester are ever
moved to tears or filled with silent awe as they look upon the rocks
and fragments of "puddingstone" abounding in those localities. I have
my suspicions that those boys "heave a stone" or "fire a brickbat,"
composed of the conglomerate just mentioned, without any more tearful or
philosophical contemplations than boys of less favored regions expend on
the same performance. Yet a lump of puddingstone is a thing to look at,
to think about, to study over, to dream upon, to go crazy with, to beat
one's brains out against. Look at that pebble in it. From what cliff was
it broken? On what beach rolled by the waves of what ocean? How and
when imbedded in soft ooze, which itself became stone, and by-and-by
was lifted into bald summits and steep cliffs, such as you may see on
Meetinghouse-Hill any day--yes, and mark the scratches on their faces
left when the boulder-carrying glaciers planed th