Even
before he could distinguish between reality and its shadow that we
see in dreams, he used often to start up with a loud cry of fear in
the night. When a small boy he used to explain it briefly by
saying, "the men in the dark." Later he used to say, "the men
outdoors in the dark." At ten years of age he went off on a three
days' journey with the Allens. They put up in a tavern that had
many rooms and stairways and large windows. It was a while after
his return of an evening, before candle-light, when a gray curtain
of dusk had dimmed the windows, that he first told the story, soon
oft repeated and familiar, of "the men in the dark"--at least he
went as far as he knew.
"I dream," he was wont to say in after life, "that I am listening
in the still night alone--I am always alone. I hear a sound in the
silence, of what I cannot be sure. I discover then, or seem to,
that I stand in a dark room and tremble, with great fear, of what I
do not know. I walk along softly in bare feet--I am so fearful of
making a noise. I am feeling, feeling, my hands out in the dark.
Presently they touch a wall and I follow it and then I discover
that I am going downstairs. It is a long journey.
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