CHAP. IV.
TEE EFFECT.
7 !)
is a question; they closed up remarkably quickly, and in a fewdays I was able to move again.*
It was sufficiently dull during this time. I was chiefly occu-pied in meditating on the vanity of human wishes, and in watching
AT HKEII. (GIOMEIN).
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my clothes being washed in the tub which was turned by thestream in the front of the house; and I vowed that if an English-"man should at any time fall sick in the Val Tournanche, he shouldnot feel so solitary as I did at this dreary titne.f
* I received much attention from a kind English lady who was staying in theinn.
t As it seldom happens that one survives such a fall, it may be interesting torecord what my sensations were during its occurrence. I was perfectly consciousof what was happening, and felt each blow ; but, like a patient under chloroform,experienced no pain. Each blow was, naturally, more severe than that whichpreceded it, and I distinctly remember thinking, “ Well, if the next is harder still,that will be the end!” I,ike persons who have been rescued from drowning, Iremember that the recollection of a multitude of things rushed through my head,many of them trivialities or absurdities, which had l>een forgotten long before; ami,more remarkable, this bounding through space did not feel disagreeable. Hut Ithink that in no very great distance more, consciousness as well as sensation wouldhave been lost, and upon that I base my belief, improbable as it seems, that death bya fall from a great height is as paiidess an end as can be experienced.
The battering was very rough, yet no lames were broken. The most severe cutswere one of four inches long on the top of the head, and another of three inches on