“Rain, do not hurt my flowers, but gently spend Your lovely drops. Press not to smell them here; When they are ripe their odour will ascend, And at your lodging with their thanks appear.”
With many caresses, thanks, and good wishes from the children, I groped my way to my lodging with thankfulness, but in a wretched plight, suffering from my lifelong enemy—giddiness. After five minutes’ chat with my round-faced host I mounted, with a hot head, and cold wet feet, “wooden hills,” and amongst the blankets and feathers I snoozed into a fitful sleep, to be startled by wild dreams and nocturnal noises. In one of my strange flights I found myself in a dark and dismal-looking place like a chimney-sweep’s underground soot storehouse. How I got there was a mystery I have never been able to solve. The only things I remember in connection with my visit to this dark abode was, the good spirit led me through alleys, by colleges, churches, chapels, synagogues, and schools of every grade. Marks of civilization were everywhere visible on my path. There were ministers and teachers on every hand. One little narrow backway led me to a small narrow opening down some narrow, rugged steps. As soon as I entered, a small door of the colour of the walls instantly closed upon me as with a spring, and before I had time to look back at the way by which I entered, I was in worse than a Roman or gipsy maze. At first a cold, chilly sensation of fright and terror crept over me. My hair seemed to rear bolt upright in a twinkle; but this soon passed away after realizing the fact that I was among friends. There were no windows except one dismal pane, through which the moonlight gleamed. There were no candles. The grate was made up of bricks and rusty crooked old bars of iron put loosely together without mortar. The fender was of two long shin-bones, and the ends of it two thigh-bones of a man. The fire was crackling with sticks and the bones of rabbits, partridges, pheasants, and fowls. Beetles, cockroaches, toads, and spiders were as thick as they could creep and stick. A dead pig’s skin badly cured, with the bristles sticking on it in patches, was laid upon the broken stones on the floor as a hearth-rug. In a large pot over the fire there were boiling large pieces of diseased pork in a thickish liquid, which was stirred every few minutes by an old “hag” with a ham-bone. The uneven, broken walls of the room were covered with greasy grime and filth, upon which were hung pictures of skeletons, death, coffins, and cross-bones, and most horrible, murderous-looking men and women.