"But, my good Mr. Take-it-easy," cried I, "why take up your residence
here, of all places in the world?"

"Oh," said the loafer, with a grin, "it is very warm hereabouts, and I
meet with plenty of old acquaintances, and altogether the place suits
me. I hope to see you back again some day soon. A pleasant journey to
you."

While he was speaking the bell of the engine rang, and we dashed away
after dropping a few passengers, but receiving no new ones. Rattling
onward through the Valley, we were dazzled with the fiercely gleaming
gas lamps, as before. But sometimes, in the dark of intense brightness,
grim faces, that bore the aspect and expression of individual sins, or
evil passions, seemed to thrust themselves through the veil of light,
glaring upon us, and stretching forth a great, dusky hand, as if to
impede our progress. I almost thought that they were my own sins that
appalled me there. These were freaks of imagination--nothing more,
certainly-mere delusions, which I ought to be heartily ashamed of; but
all through the Dark Valley I was tormented, and pestered, and
dolefully bewildered with the same kind of waking dreams. The mephitic
gases of that region intoxicate the brain. As the light of natural day,
however, began to struggle with the glow of the lanterns, these vain
imaginations lost their vividness, and finally vanished from the first
ray of sunshine that greeted our escape from the Valley of the Shadow
of Death. Ere we had gone a mile beyond it I could well-nigh have taken
my oath that this whole gloomy passage was a dream.

At the end of the valley, as John Bunyan mentions, is a cavern, where,
in his days, dwelt two cruel giants, Pope and Pagan, who had strown the
ground about their residence with the bones of slaughtered pilgrims.
These vile old troglodytes are no longer there; but into their deserted
cave another terrible giant has thrust himself, and makes it his
business to seize upon honest travellers and fatten them for his table
with plentiful meals of smoke, mist, moonshine, raw potatoes, and
sawdust. He is a German by birth, and is called Giant
Transcendentalist; but as to his form, his features, his substance, and
his nature generally, it is the chief peculiarity of this huge
miscreant that neither he for himself, nor anybody for him, has ever
been able to describe them. As we rushed by the cavern's mouth we
caught a hasty glimpse of him, looking somewhat like an
ill-proportioned figure, bu