A TRAMP ABROAD By Mark Twain

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,