I have come to see a race of people noted for vigor of fancy and ardor of passion. Men have called me mad, but the question is not yet settled whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence. They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. In their gray visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in awakening to find that they have been upon the verge of the great secret. They learn something of the wisdom which is of good and more of the mere knowledge which is of evil. They penetrate, however, rudderless or compassless into the vast ocean of the overwhelming light and again like the adventures of the Nubian geographer.
We will say, then, that I am mad. I grant, at least, that there are two distinct conditions of my mental existence. It is the condition of a lucid reason not to be disputed and belonging to the memory of events forming the first era of my life—and a condition of shadow and doubt, relating to the present and to the recollection of what constitutes the second great era of my being. Therefore, what I shall tell of the earlier period to what I may relate of the later time, give only such credit as may seem due or doubt it altogether.
She whom I loved in youth, and of whom I now pen calmly and distinctly these remembrances was the sole daughter of the only sister of my mother long departed. Eleonora was the name of my cousin. We had always dwelled together beneath a tropical sun in the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass. No unguided footstep ever came upon that valley, for it lay away up among a range of giant hills that hung beetling around it. It was shutting out the sunlight from its sweetest recesses. No path was flattened in its vicinity and to reach our happy home, there was need of putting back with force the foliage of many thousands of forest trees, and of crushing to death the glories of many millions of fragrant flowers. Thus, it was that we lived all alone knowing nothing of the world without the valley—I, and my cousin, and her mother.
From the dim regions beyond the mountains at the upper end of our encircled domain, there crept out a narrow and deep river, brighter than all save the eyes of Eleanor. It would be winding stealthily about in courses, and it passed away at length through a shadowy gorge among hills still dimmer than those whence it had issued. We called it the “River of Silence,” for there seemed to be a hushing influence in its flow. No murmur arose from its bed and so gently it wandered along that the pearly pebbles upon which we loved to gaze far down within its bosom stirred not at all but lay in a motionless content each in its own old station shining on gloriously forever.
The margin of the river and of the many dazzling streams that glided through devious ways into its channel as well as the spaces that extended from the margins away down into the depths of the streams until they reached the bed of pebbles at the bottom. These spots, not less than the whole surface of the valley from the river to the mountains that pulled it in were carpeted all by a soft green grass, thick, short, perfectly even, and vanilla-perfumed, but so besprinkled throughout with the yellow buttercup, the white daisy, the purple violet, and the ruby-red asphodel, that its exceeding beauty spoke to our hearts in loud tones.
Note
Only spelling mistakes, if any, in the above passage have been corrected. No other corrections, including grammatical, have been made so that the originality of the passage is maintained.
