chairs (especially chairs with very sharp rockers), and other movable
articles of furniture, have stationed themselves, as it would seem,
with malicious intent to trip me up. Some murderous contusion makes me
suddenly conscious of their presence. Then a feeling of complete
bewilderment and helplessness and timidity comes over me. I have not
the least idea in what part of the room I am. I am oppressed with a
sense of chairs, scattered about in improbable places. I long most
ardently for a lamp, or only for one gleam from a neighbor's
window. It is no rare thing for me to discover, by a thrilling touch
upon the cold glass, that I have been feeling my way exactly in the
opposite direction from what I imagined. Strange how ideas of
direction and distance are lost when the sight is powerless! _Touch_
may find out mistakes, but cannot always prevent them. Touch may
convince me that I have arrived at my bureau, but it is too careless
to perceive (what the poor, straining eyes would have discovered at a
glance) the open upper drawer that salutes my forehead as I stoop
hastily to grasp the handles beneath. Touch is clumsy. It only serves
to upset valuable plants, inkstands, solar lamps, &c., with an
appalling crash, and then leaves me standing aghast, in utter
uncertainty as to the extent of the catastrophe. In such emergencies a
rush for the stairs is the first impulse. Ah! but those stairs!

I will pass over the startling plunge which begins my descent, the
frantic snatch for the banisters, and the strange, momentary doubt as
to which foot must move first, like what a child may feel when
learning to walk. All this only serves to render me so over-careful,
that, when I actually arrive at the foot of the staircase, I cannot
believe it, until a loud scuff, and the shock that follows the
interruption of my expected descent, assure me beyond a doubt. There
is nothing more exasperating than this, unless it may be the