A JOURNEY TO NATURE 



myself, I rushed into the street, only to find 

 everything beating and moving in the same meas 

 ure, even the vehicles swelling and collapsing as 

 if with the working of a great internal bellows ; 

 and the sound of far-away subterranean explosions 

 seemed to set the increasing pace. Then sud 

 denly the sense of an advancing catastrophe, of 

 which all this rhythm was the mere footfall ; a 

 world-wide terror, inexplicable but certain, creep 

 ing like a fog over humanity. In the numb 

 ecstasy of it I woke, and sitting up in bed, lis 

 tened to the same drum beat and rhythm going 

 on within me. 



This was cruelly discouraging when I found 

 out what it was. I got up and lit my lamp, 

 determined to sleep no more on the edge of a 

 precipice. I sat there in the gloom a thoroughly 

 disheartened, if not a frightened man, saying to 

 myself: &quot; So this is the end of the Doctor s 

 Nature cure. Here I am with this infernal dis 

 turbance breaking out again. What a jolly fool 

 I have been making of myself liable to die in 

 that bed, and not a soul within a mile, and that 

 child must get up some morning and discover me 

 cold and stiff.&quot; 



What would I not have given to hear an am 

 bulance bell just for company, or to have grasped 

 a telephone fraternally ? But it was no use. I 

 looked out into the night and listened. An owl 

 far down in the woods was making sepulchral 

 moans, and I thought if I had died and gone to 

 Tartarus, it would not have been more spectral 



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