No. 2.

A DARK NIGHT.

There are some people who seem to have the faculty which horses and dogs are said to possess,—­of seeing in the dark.  But I, alas! am blind and blundering as a beetle; I never can find my way about house in the evening, without a lamp to illumine my path.  Many smarting remembrances have I of bruised nose and black eyes, the consequences of attempting to run through a partition, under the full conviction that I have arrived at an open door.  My most prominent feature has been rudely assailed, also, by doors standing ajar, unexpectedly, which I have embraced with both outstretched arms.  Crickets, tables, chairs (especially chairs with very sharp rockers), and other movable articles of furniture, have stationed themselves, as it would seem, with malicious intent to trip me up.  Some murderous contusion makes me suddenly conscious of their presence.  Then a feeling of complete bewilderment and helplessness and timidity comes over me.  I have not the least idea in what part of the room I am.  I am oppressed with a sense of chairs, scattered about in improbable places.  I long most ardently for a lamp, or only for one gleam from a neighbor’s window.  It is no rare thing for me to discover, by a thrilling touch upon the cold glass, that I have been feeling my way exactly in the opposite direction from what I imagined.  Strange how ideas of direction and distance are lost when the sight is powerless! Touch may find out mistakes, but cannot always prevent them.  Touch may convince me that I have arrived at my bureau, but it is too careless to perceive (what the poor, straining eyes would have discovered at a glance) the open upper drawer that salutes my forehead as I stoop hastily to grasp the handles beneath.  Touch is clumsy.  It only serves to upset valuable plants, inkstands, solar lamps, &c., with an appalling crash, and then leaves me standing aghast, in utter uncertainty as to the extent of the catastrophe.  In such emergencies a rush for the stairs is the first impulse.  Ah! but those stairs!

I will pass over the startling plunge which begins my descent, the frantic snatch for the banisters, and the strange, momentary doubt as to which foot must move first, like what a child may feel when learning to walk.  All this only serves to render me so over-careful, that, when I actually arrive at the foot of the staircase, I cannot believe it, until a loud scuff, and the shock that follows the interruption of my expected descent, assure me beyond a doubt.  There is nothing more exasperating than this, unless it may be the corresponding disappointment in running up stairs, when you raise your foot high in air, and bring it down with an emphatic stamp exactly upon a level with the other.