beginning of every subject which has ever been thought of;
but it never went further than the beginning; it was touch
and go; it fled from topic to topic with a frantic speed.
At the end of an hour my head was in a perfect whirl and I
was dead tired, fagged out.
The fatigue was so great that it presently began to make some
head against the nervous excitement; while imagining myself
wide awake, I would really doze into momentary unconsciousness,
and come suddenly out of it with a physical jerk which nearly
wrenched my joints apart–the delusion of the instant
being that I was tumbling backward over a precipice.
After I had fallen over eight or nine precipices and thus
found out that one half of my brain had been asleep eight
or nine times without the wide-awake, hard-working other
half suspecting it, the periodical unconsciousnesses
began to extend their spell gradually over more of my
brain-territory, and at last I sank into a drowse which
grew deeper and deeper and was doubtless just on the very
point of being a solid, blessed dreamless stupor, when–what was
that?
My dulled faculties dragged themselves partly back to life
and took a receptive attitude. Now out of an immense,
a limitless distance, came a something which grew and grew,
and approached, and presently was recognizable as a sound–
it had rather seemed to be a feeling, before. This sound
was a mile away, now–perhaps it was the murmur of a storm;
and now it was nearer–not a quarter of a mile away;
was it the muffled rasping and grinding of distant
machinery? No, it came still nearer; was it the measured
tramp of a marching troop? But it came nearer still,
and still nearer–and at last it was right in the room: it
was merely a mouse gnawing the woodwork. So I had held my
breath all that time for such a trifle.
Well, what was done could not be helped; I would go
to sleep at once and make up the lost time. That was
a thoughtless thought. Without intending it–hardly
knowing it–I fell to listening intently to that sound,
and even unconsciously counting the strokes of the mouse’s
nutmeg-grater. Presently I was deriving exquisite suffering
from this employment, yet maybe I could have endured
it if the mouse had attended steadily to his work;
but he did not do that; he stopped every now and then,
and I suffered more while waiting and listening for
him to begin again than I did while he was gnawing.
Along at first I was mentally offering a reward
of five–six–seven–ten–dollars for that mouse;
but toward the last I was offering rewards which were
entirely beyond my means. I close-reefed my ears–
that is to say, I bent the flaps of them down and furled
them into five or six folds, and pressed them against
the hearing-orifice–but it did no good: the faculty
was so sharpened by nervous excitement that it was become
a microphone and could hear through the overlays without trouble.
My anger grew to a frenzy. I finally did what all persons
before me have done, clear back to Adam,–resolved to
throw something. I reached down and got my walking-shoes,
then sat up in bed and listened, in order to exactly locate
the noise. But I couldn’t do it; it was as unlocatable
as a cricket’s noise; and where one thinks that that is,
is always the very place where it isn’t. So I presently
hurled a shoe at random, and with a vicious vigor.
It struck the wall over Harris’s head and fell down on him;
I had not imagined I could throw so far. It woke Harris,
and I was glad of it until I found he was not angry;
then I was sorry. He soon went to sleep again,
which pleased me; but straightway the mouse began again,
which roused my temper once more. I did not want to wake
Harris a second time, but the gnawing continued until I
was compelled to throw the other shoe. This time I broke
a mirror–there were two in the room–I got the largest one,
of course. Harris woke again, but did not complain,