her feelings were deep and tender, looked at me sadly and kindly and
told me to sleep in peace, as she was going to remain in the house some
time. Then she left the room, and I lay in the darkness, but with a new
light brighter than sunshine in the hope that the miserable life with my
father had at length come to an end. It had only been six months in all,
but it had seemed longer than any half-dozen years gone through before
or after.

If this book were a novel, a very effective chapter might be written to
describe my father's sufferings during his week of delirium, and all the
dreadful fancies by which his disordered brain was oppressed and
tortured; but I prefer to skip that week altogether, and come to a
morning when his recovery was thought to be assured. He was no longer
delirious, but apparently quite calm, though his manner was hard and
imperious. He ordered me to be sent up to him, and I went almost
trembling with the old dread of him, and with a wretched feeling that
after my single week of respite the tyranny was to begin again. Such may
have been the feelings of an escaped slave when he has been caught and
brought back in irons, and stands once more in his master's presence. I
tried to congratulate my master on his recovery in a clumsy childish
way, but he peremptorily ordered me to fetch the "Times" and read to
him. I began, as usual, one of the leading articles on the politics of
the day, and before I had read many sentences my hearer declared that I
was reading badly and made the article nonsense. Why had I put in such
and such words of my own? he asked. His own precept that I was always to
tell the truth under any circumstances had habituated me to be truthful
even to him, so I answered boldly that I had not inserted the words
attributed to me. Then I read a little farther, and he accused me of
inserting something else that was not and could not be in the text; I
said it was he who was mistaken, and he flew into an uncontrollable