LIVING BACKWARDS 



I had reached that condition, I would have gone 

 to sleep like Charlie, and not thought about it at 

 all. But the man who has for years packed all 

 his excitement, his society, and his indulgences 

 into his nights is not going to wrap the drapery 

 of his couch about him like a proper yokel at 

 eight o clock, and lie down to pleasant dreams. 

 Night, as I knew her, was a luxurious Ethiope, 

 who not only &quot; wore so many jewels on her face 

 you could not see twas black,&quot; but carried a good 

 many dulcimers in her hand. The night that I 

 had come into was undoubtedly the original insti 

 tution, made to sleep in. I made up my mind 

 that it was absolutely barren of anything else, and 

 then a June bug hit me, biff, in the forehead, and 

 fell over dead on the Doctor s letter, as if he had 

 given up his life in the attempt to prove me a 

 liar. All that I could see of the night was a 

 square, velvety black space where the window 

 was. It was fretted by some dim flying wings 

 that microscopically glistened in the vagrant star 

 light, like tiny threads woven into the blackness. 

 Out of this mystery of the dark crept all kinds 

 of shadow sounds and occult breathings. I could 

 hear the dog barks dying off in a vanishing per 

 spective, but marking the dim distances and the 

 solitude with their grading accents. Along the 

 ground at regular intervals came the throb of a 

 bass viol as some bullfrog twanged his string over 

 at the milldam. 



A man cannot fool with night when she is in 

 puris naturalibus. It is only the wanton night 



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