direction and that, if haply, where I could see nothing, I might yet
come in contact with something; but my search was vain. Instinctively
then, as to the only living thing near me, I turned to the raven,
which stood a little way off, regarding me with an expression at once
respectful and quizzical. Then the absurdity of seeking counsel from
such a one struck me, and I turned again, overwhelmed with bewilderment,
not unmingled with fear. Had I wandered into a region where both the
material and psychical relations of our world had ceased to hold? Might
a man at any moment step beyond the realm of order, and become the sport
of the lawless? Yet I saw the raven, felt the ground under my feet, and
heard a sound as of wind in the lowly plants around me!

"How DID I get here?" I said--apparently aloud, for the question was
immediately answered.

"You came through the door," replied an odd, rather harsh voice.

I looked behind, then all about me, but saw no human shape. The terror
that madness might be at hand laid hold upon me: must I henceforth place
no confidence either in my senses or my consciousness? The same instant
I knew it was the raven that had spoken, for he stood looking up at me
with an air of waiting. The sun was not shining, yet the bird seemed to
cast a shadow, and the shadow seemed part of himself.

I beg my reader to aid me in the endeavour to make myself
intelligible--if here understanding be indeed possible between us. I was
in a world, or call it a state of things, an economy of conditions, an
idea of existence, so little correspondent with the ways and modes of
this world--which we are apt to think the only world, that the best
choice I can make of word or phrase is but an adumbration of what
I would convey. I begin indeed to fear that I have undertaken an
impossibility, undertaken to tell what I cannot tell because no speech
at my command will fit the forms in my mind. Already I have set down
statements I would gladly change did I know how to substitute a truer
utterance; but as often as I try to fit the reality with nearer words, I
find myself in danger of losing the things themselves, and feel like one
in process of awaking from a dream, with the thing that seemed familiar
gradually yet swiftly changing through a succession of forms until its
very nature is no longer recognisable.

I bethought me that a bird capable of addressing a man must have the
right of a man to a civil answer; perhaps, as a