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The Research Magnificent by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
page 18 of 450 (04%)

A different sort of fear that also greatly afflicted Benham was due
to a certain clumsiness and insecurity he felt in giddy and unstable
places. There he was more definitely balanced between the
hopelessly rash and the pitifully discreet.

He had written an account of a private struggle between himself and
a certain path of planks and rock edges called the Bisse of Leysin.
This happened in his adolescence. He had had a bad attack of
influenza and his doctor had sent him to a little hotel--the only
hotel it was in those days--at Montana in Valais. There, later,
when he had picked up his strength, his father was to join him and
take him mountaineering, that second-rate mountaineering which is so
dear to dons and schoolmasters. When the time came he was ready for
that, but he had had his experiences. He had gone through a phase
of real cowardice. He was afraid, he confessed, before even he
reached Montana; he was afraid of the steepness of the mountains.
He had to drive ten or twelve miles up and up the mountain-side, a
road of innumerable hairpin bends and precipitous banks, the horse
was gaunt and ugly with a disposition to shy, and he confesses he
clutched the side of the vehicle and speculated how he should jump
if presently the whole turnout went tumbling over. . . .

"And afterwards I dreamt dreams of precipices. I made strides over
precipices, I fell and fell with a floating swiftness towards remote
valleys, I was assailed by eagles upon a perilous ledge that
crumbled away and left me clinging by my nails to nothing."

The Bisse of Leysin is one of those artificial water-courses which
bring water from some distant source to pastures that have an
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