On such a fine frosty night, with no wind and the thermometer
below zero, the brain works with much vivacity; and the next
moment I had seen the circumstance transplanted from India
and the tropics to the Adirondack wilderness and the
stringent cold of the Canadian border. Here then, almost
before I had begun my story, I had two countries, two of the
ends of the earth involved: and thus though the notion of
the resuscitated man failed entirely on the score of general
acceptation, or even (as I have since found) acceptability,
it fitted at once with my design of a tale of many lands; and
this decided me to consider further of its possibilities.
The man who should thus be buried was the first question: a
good man, whose return to life would be hailed by the reader
and the other characters with gladness? This trenched upon
the Christian picture, and was dismissed. If the idea, then,
was to be of any use at all for me, I had to create a kind of
evil genius to his friends and family, take him through many
disappearances, and make this final restoration from the pit
of death, in the icy American wilderness, the last and the
grimmest of the series. I need not tell my brothers of the
craft that I was now in the most interesting moment of an
author's life; the hours that followed that night upon the
balcony, and the following nights and days, whether walking
abroad or lying wakeful in my bed, were hours of
unadulterated joy.
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