corresponding disappointment in running up stairs, when you raise your
foot high in air, and bring it down with an emphatic stamp exactly
upon a level with the other.

But these are mere household experiences. Sad though they are, I
esteem them as nothing in comparison with my adventures out of doors.
In a dark night, and especially in a night both dark and stormy, I
feel myself one of the most wretched beings in existence. Imagine a
vessel lost in the wide ocean, and without a compass, and you will
have some faint idea of my perplexity, discouragement, and loneliness
at such a time. I have a strange propensity for shooting off into the
gutter, or for shouldering the fences, under the impression that I am
pursuing a straight course. I go quite out of my way to trip over
chance stones, or to pick out choice bits of slippery ice. I splash
recklessly through deep puddles, stumble over unfortunate scrapers,
walk unexpectedly into open cellars, and lay my length upon wet stone
doorsteps. I start back at visions of posts looming up in the
darkness, and whitewashed fences and trees, all of which would be
quite unlikely to be standing in the middle of the sidewalk, and which
disappear at the first reasonable thought. I run into harmless
passengers as if I would knock the breath of life out of them, and
tangle our umbrellas together so fearfully that they spin round and
round some time after their separation. O that umbrella of mine!
Sometimes I hook it in the drooping branches of trees, and, losing my
hold in the suddenness of the shock, have the gratification of feeling
it tip up, and go down over my shoulder into the mud behind me. Its
bone tips tap and scratch at the windows as I go by, and scrape
against the tall fences, like fingers trying to catch at something to
hold on by, and stop my progress. It hits a low branch, and its
varnished handle slips through my woollen gloves, knocking my hat over