because, notwithstanding the stoicism of which I boast, I felt quite
uncomfortable enough to write to my correspondent by the return of post,
urging him to make one more endeavour to complete my business without my
aid, and to spare, if possible, my personal attendance. I gave no reason
for this wish. I did not choose to tell a falsehood, and I had hardly
honesty to acknowledge, even to myself--the truth. I failed, however, in
my application, and with any but a cheerful mind, I quitted London on my
journey. Thirty years before I had travelled to ---- in a stupendous
machine, of which now I recollect only that it seemed to take years out
of my little life in arriving at its destination, and that, on its broad,
substantial rear, it bore the effigy of "_an ancient Briton_." Locomotion
then, like me, was in a state of infancy. On the occasion of my second
visit to the city, I had hardly time to wonder at the velocity with which
I was borne along. Distance was annihilated. The two hundred miles over
which _the ancient Briton_ had wearisomely laboured, were reduced to
twenty, and before I could satisfy myself that our journey was more than
begun, my horseless coach, and fifty more besides, had actually gone over
them. I experienced a nervous palpitation at the heart as I proceeded
from the outskirts of the city, and grew more and more fidgety the nearer
I approached the din and noise of the prosperous seat of business. I
could not account for the feeling, until I detected myself walking as
briskly as I could, with my eyes fixed hard upon the ground, as though
afraid to glance upon a street, a house, an object which could recall the
past, or carry me back to the first dark days of life. Then it was that I
summoned courage, and, with a desperate effort to crush the morbid
sensibility, raised myself to my full height, gazed around me, and awoke,
effectually and for ever, from my dream. The city was not the same. The
well-remembered thoroughfares were gone; their names extinct, and
superseded by others more euphonic; the buildings, which I had carried in
my mind as in a book--the thought of meeting which had given me so much