THE MAN OF TWO LIVES. CHAPTER I. I AM ignorant whether any other being ever imagined or possessed the gift which has been mine. To enjoy and abuse the usual gift of life, inestimable though it be, is common enough; and vainly to wish for opportunity to correct its errors, naturally attends even our own partial review of existence. How far a second life, if granted, might produce a result so desirable, may be left as a matter of speculation to the moralist. When the bourn is once passed from which no traveller returns, our reckoning with man at least is finally closed-we can neither do nor suffer more upon the earth. I have a thousand times struggled against the singular conviction of my own mind, against the positive evidence of my senses. In a strain of unaffected humility I have exclaimed: "Who am I, that I should be singled out as a mark so striking, and alone possess an unexampled privilege?" Often in tears I have suspected that I was the victim of some mental delusion."Does madness claim me," said I," with the Philosopher in Rasselas, or will ridicule, immortal as its author, class me among the Strulbrugs of Gulliver?" All this I know should be beyond my care. I am faithfully to record the convictions of my experience,-I have only yielded to such evidence, as the reader will see could not be resisted. If consciousness alone establishes our identity, (for our body is in a constant state of change,) that principle in me might render other proof unnecessary. I need only express my consciousness that one and the same mind has animated and directed two distinct persons, was intimate with their growth and their decay, their pleasures and their pains, their mental and moral discipline, their hopes and their fears. I am the man now writing his present history, and am equally sure that I was that other being whose life I also record, because I know it to have been mine. As this life resembles, in fact, no other that has ever been written, it should commence in a manner utterly unlike every other biography. The reader, therefore, will allow me to tell him, in the outset, that I died at the early age of forty-five, in the City of Frankfort on the Maine. I distinctly remember the last expres sions that I used, as life was ebbing fast away. After a rapid survey of a mispent existence, I suddenly clasped my hands together, and exclaimed with convulsive energy-" O, that I could return again into the womb of my mother, and spring once more into a world in which I have trifled with time, and abused the blessings of my condition! I have suffered much, and deserved to suffer; never having promoted the happiness of others, I of necessity poisoned my own." At that agonizing moment, did I fancy a voice of more than human sweetness, or did really some immortal spirit speak to my mind, rather than to an ear stiffening into clay, the words which follow?UNHAPPY MIND, THY WISH IS GRANTED; THOU SHALT ONCE MORE ANIMATE A HUMAN FORM. The deliquium into which I had fallen, was to my thought like the soft spell that consigns the living man to slumber; the objects of sense are withdrawn, and pure intellect itself seems for an instant to repose. My mind, divested of corporeal senses, was as a library, whose doors are closed, a memory upon which no call is made. But I found myself, after an inter val, which successive ideas only could have enabled me to measure, united to a helpless infant, frequently in pain, and goaded by frequent wants; these were constantly supplied, and by the gentlest means; the sweetest odours ascended my nostrils; I turned towards the fountain of my gratification, and found its taste more than answerable to its perfume. But I soon discovered that I was not permitted merely to enjoy and be at rest. Hands, to which I became accustomed, compressed, but did not hurt, my tender substance-a refreshing coolness often flowed around me; and, after a compulsory exertion of my infant limbs, which wearied the elastic power that it called into action, I sunk into a slumber not undelightful, and my last waking sensation was the pressure of the lips of fondness, which shed a honied dew as they departed. It is by no means my wish to describe the growing pleasures which every opening sense afforded to my consciousness; as to light itself, and the flood of glory which is its essence, it must be now as then veiled to the inadequacy of my powers; an equivalent for such description, if existing, can only be found in the soar◄ ing blindness of the bard of Paradise, whose rapture has styled it the coeternal beam of Deity, in which he dwelt from eternity, and must ever dwell. |