There are some people who seem to have the faculty which horses and
dogs are said to possess,--of seeing in the dark. But I, alas! am
blind and blundering as a beetle; I never can find my way about house
in the evening, without a lamp to illumine my path. Many smarting
remembrances have I of bruised nose and black eyes, the consequences
of attempting to run through a partition, under the full conviction
that I have arrived at an open door. My most prominent feature has
been rudely assailed, also, by doors standing ajar, unexpectedly,
which I have embraced with both outstretched arms. Crickets, tables,
chairs (especially chairs with very sharp rockers), and other movable
articles of furniture, have stationed themselves, as it would seem,
with malicious intent to trip me up. Some murderous contusion makes me
suddenly conscious of their presence. Then a feeling of complete
bewilderment and helplessness and timidity comes over me. I have not
the least idea in what part of the room I am. I am oppressed with a
sense of chairs, scattered about in improbable places. I long most
ardently for a lamp, or only for one gleam from a neighbor's
window. It is no rare thing for me to discover, by a thrilling touch
upon the cold glass, that I have been feeling my way exactly in the
opposite direction from what I imagined. Strange how ideas of
direction and distance are lost when the sight is powerless! _Touch_
may find out mistakes, but cannot always prevent them. Touch may
convince me that I have arrived at my bureau, but it is too careless
to perceive (what the poor, straining eyes would have discovered at a
glance) the open upper drawer that salutes my forehead as I stoop
hastily to grasp the handles beneath. Touch is clumsy. It only serves
to upset valuable plants, inkstands, solar lamps, &c., with an
appalling crash, and then leaves me standing aghast, in utter
uncertainty as to the extent of the catastrophe. In such emergencies a
rush for the stairs is the first impulse. Ah! but those stairs!
I will pass over the startling plunge which begins my descent, the
frantic snatch for the banisters, and the strange, momentary doubt as
to which foot must move first, like what a child may feel when
learning to walk. All this only serves to render me so over-careful,
that, when I actually arrive at the foot of the staircase, I cannot
believe it, until a loud scuff, and the shock that follows the
interruption of my expected descent, assure me beyond a doubt. There
is nothing more exasperating than this, unless it may be the
corresponding disappointment in running up stairs, when you raise your
foot high in air, and bring it down with an emphatic stamp exactly
upon a level with the other.
But these are mere household experiences. Sad though they are, I
esteem them as nothing in comparison with my adventures out of doors.
In a dark night, and especially in a night both dark and stormy, I
feel myself one of the most wretched beings in existence. Imagine a
vessel lost in the wide ocean, and without a compass, and you will
have some faint idea of my perplexity, discouragement, and loneliness
at such a time. I have a strange propensity for shooting off into the
gutter, or for shouldering the fences, under the impression that I am
pursuing a straight course. I go quite out of my way to trip over
chance stones, or to pick out choice bits of slippery ice. I splash
recklessly through deep puddles, stumble over unfortunate scrapers,
walk unexpectedly into open cellars, and lay my length upon wet stone
doorsteps. I start back at visions of posts looming up in the
darkness, and whitewashed fences and trees, all of which would be
quite unlikely to be standing in the middle of the sidewalk, and which
disappear at the first reasonable thought. I run into harmless
passengers as if I would knock the breath of life out of them, and
tangle our umbrellas together so fearfully that they spin round and
round some time after their separation. O that umbrella of mine!
Sometimes I hook it in the drooping branches of trees, and, losing my
hold in the suddenness of the shock, have the gratification of feeling
it tip up, and go down over my shoulder into the mud behind me. Its
bone tips tap and scratch at the windows as I go by, and scrape
against the tall fences, like fingers trying to catch at something to
hold on by, and stop my progress. It hits a low branch, and its
varnished handle slips through my woollen gloves, knocking my hat over
my eyes, and extinguishing me for the time being. As if the night were
not dark enough without!
My friends, I could go on much longer with my complaints, but I feel
that I have drawn upon your sympathies sufficiently for the
present. You will be as glad to leave me at my own house-door, as I am
to find it.