that I was two persons, that my identity was double, began to fascinate
me with its simple solution of my experience.

I knew that I was on the verge of losing my mental balance. If I lay
there thinking, I was doomed. Diversion of some sort I must have, at
least the diversion of physical exertion. I sprang up, and, hastily
dressing, opened the door of my room and went down-stairs. The hour was
very early, it being not yet fairly light, and I found no one in the
lower part of the house. There was a hat in the hall, and, opening the
front door, which was fastened with a slightness indicating that
burglary was not among the perils of the modern Boston, I found myself
on the street. For two hours I walked or ran through the streets of the
city, visiting most quarters of the peninsular part of the town. None
but an antiquarian who knows something of the contrast which the Boston
of today offers to the Boston of the nineteenth century can begin to
appreciate what a series of bewildering surprises I underwent during
that time. Viewed from the house-top the day before, the city had
indeed appeared strange to me, but that was only in its general aspect.
How complete the change had been I first realized now that I walked the
streets. The few old landmarks which still remained only intensified
this effect, for without them I might have imagined myself in a foreign
town. A man may leave his native city in childhood, and return fifty
years later, perhaps, to find it transformed in many features. He is
astonished, but he is not bewildered. He is aware of a great lapse of
time, and of changes likewise occurring in himself meanwhile. He but
dimly recalls the city as he knew it when a child. But remember that
there was no sense of any lapse of time with me. So far as my
consciousness was concerned, it was but yesterday, but a few hours,
since I had walked these streets in which scarcely a feature had
escaped a complete metamorphosis. The mental image of the old city was
so fresh and strong that it did not yield to the impression of the
actual city, but contended with it, so that it was first one and then
the other which seemed the more unreal. There was nothing I saw which
was not blurred in this way, like the faces of a composite photograph.

Finally, I stood again at the door of the house from which I had come
out. My feet must have instinctively brought me back to the site of my
old home, for I had no clear idea of returning thithe