last I plunged, feet foremost, into
the dark hole below. For a moment I held my breath, expecting to be
dashed to pieces; and oh, how many things I thought of in that short
minute! It seemed as if every thing that I had ever done came back to
me, especially all the _bad_ things; and how I wished then that I had
lived a better life! I thought, too, of my poor mother and my little
brother and sister at home, and how they would wait breakfast for me
that morning; and how they would keep on waiting and waiting, hour after
hour and day after day; and how the neighbors would all turn out and
search for me; and how I should never be found, and nobody would ever
know what had become of me. And then I wondered whether Mr. Simpson,
who employed me to distribute the papers, would suppose that I had run
away somewhere, to sell them on my own account; and so I went on
thinking and wondering, until it seemed as if there was no end to the
time. And yet I didn't strike the bottom of the cave, but just went on
falling and falling, faster and faster, in the darkness, and sometimes
just grazing the sides, and still not so as to hurt me much. My great
trouble was to breathe; when it occurred to me to lay the sleeve of my
coat across my mouth: and then I found that I could breathe through the
cloth with tolerable ease. After a while, I recovered my senses; and
though I continued to fall on still faster and faster, I experienced no
great inconvenience. How long this continued, I cannot tell; it
appeared to be an age; and I must have been falling for several hours,
when I began to feel as though I was not sinking as fast as I had been;
and after a while, it seemed as if I were rising up, rather than
tumbling down. As I was now able to breathe much more freely than I had
done, I began to think calmly about my condition; and then the thought
flashed across my mind, that perhaps I had passed the centre of the
earth, and was gradually rising to the surface on the other side. This
gave me hope; and when I found that I continued to move slower and
slower, I tried to collect my faculties, so that I might know just what
it would be best to do, if I should be so fortunate as to reach the
other end of the hole into which I had tumbled. At last, looking down,
I saw a little speck of light, like a very faint star; and then, I tell
you, my heart bounded with joy. At this moment it suddenly occurred to
me that it would not do to come out of the hole _feet fo