It was dark in
the room, and to my excited imagination the serpents were no longer
under the floor, but out, gliding hither and thither over it, with
uplifted heads in a kind of mystic dance; and I often shivered to
think what my bare feet might touch if I were to thrust a leg out and
let it hang down over the bedside.
"I'm shut in a dark room with the candle blown out," pathetically
cried old Farmer Fleming, when he heard of his beautiful daughter
Dahlia's clandestine departure to a distant land with a nameless
lover. "I've heard of a sort of fear you have in that dilemma, lest
you should lay your fingers on edges of sharp knives, and if I think a
step--if I go thinking a step, and feel my way, I do cut myself, and I
bleed, I do." Only in a comparatively snakeless country could such
fancies be born and such metaphors used--snakeless and highly
civilized, where the blades of Sheffield are cheap and abundant. In
ruder lands, where ophidians abound, as in India and South America, in
the dark one fears the cold living coil and deadly sudden fang.
Serpents were fearful things to me at that period; but whatsoever is
terrible and dangerous, or so reported, has an irresistible attraction
for the mind, whether of child or man; it was therefore always a
pleasure to have seen a snake in the day's rambles, although the sight
was a startling one.
Pages:
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243