rteen long years, passed amid the horrors and darkness of
my Pennsylvania nightmare. * * * Methinks the days of miracles are not
past. They say that nineteen hundred years ago a man was raised from the
dead after having been buried for three days. They call it a great
miracle. But I think the resurrection from the peaceful slumber of a
three days' grave is not nearly so miraculous as the actual coming back
to life from a living death of fourteen years duration;--'tis the
twentieth century resurrection, not based on ignorant credulity, nor
assisted by any Oriental jugglery. No travelers ever return, the poets
say, from the Land of Shades beyond the river Styx--and may be it is a
good thing for them that they don't--but you can see that there is an
occasional exception even to that rule, for I have just returned from a
hell, the like of which, for human brutality and fiendish barbarity, is
not to be found even in the fire-and-brimstone creeds of our loving
Christians.

It was a moment of supreme joy when I felt the heavy chains, that had
bound me so long, give way with the final clang of the iron doors behind
me and I suddenly found myself transported, as it were, from the dreary
night of my prison-existence into the warm sunshine of the living day;
and then, as I breathed the free air of the beautiful May morning--my
first breath of freedom in fourteen years--it seemed to me as if a
beautiful nature had waved her magic wand and marshalled her most
alluring charms to welcome me into the world again; the sun, bathed in a
sea of sapphire, seemed to shed his golden-winged caresses upon me;
beautiful birds were intoning a sweet paean of joyful welcome;
green-clad trees on the banks of the Allegheny were stretching out to me
a hundred emerald arms, and every little blade of grass seemed to lift
its head and nod to me, and all Nature whispered sweetly "Welcome Home!"
It was Nature's beautiful Springtime, the reawakening of Life, and Joy,
and Hope, and the spirit of Springtime dwelt in my heart.

I had been told before I left the prison that the world had changed so
much during my long confinement that I would practically come back into
a new and different world. I hoped it were true. For at the time when I
retired from the world, or rather when I _was_ retired from the
world--that was a hundred years ago, for it happened in the nineteenth
century--at that time, I say, the footsteps of the world were faltering
under the heavy c