Chapter 9

THE COMMENCEMENT OF WONDERS, WHICH ARE THE MORE EXTRAORDINARY ON
ACCOUNT OF THEIR TRUTH.

I dare say my head had been on the pillow fully an hour before sleep
closed my eyes. During this time I had abundant occasion to
understand the activity of what are called the "busy thoughts." Mine
were feverish, glowing, and restless. They wandered over a wild
field; one that included Anna, with her beauty, her mild truth, her
womanly softness, and her womanly cruelty; Captain Poke and his
peculiar opinions; the amiable family of quadrupeds and their
wounded sensibilities; the excellences of the social-stake system;
and, in short, most of that which I had seen and heard during the
last four-and-twenty hours. When sleep did tardily arrive, it
overtook me at the very moment that I had inwardly vowed to forget
my heartless mistress, and to devote the remainder of my life to the
promulgation of the doctrine of the expansive-super-human-
generalized-affection-principle, to the utter exclusion of all
narrow and selfish views, and in which I resolved to associate
myself with Mr. Poke, as with one who had seen a great deal of this
earth and its inhabitants, without narrowing down his sympathies in
favor of any one place or person in particular, Stunin'tun and
himself very properly excepted.

It was broad daylight when I awoke on the following morning. My
spirits were calmed by rest, and my nerves had been soothed by the
balmy freshness of the atmosphere. It appeared that my valet had
entered and admitted the morning air, and then had withdrawn as
usual to await the signal of the bell before he presumed to
reappear. I lay many minutes in delicious repose, enjoying the
periodical return of life and reason, bringing with it the pleasures
of thought and its ten thousand agreeable associations. The
delightful reverie into which I was insensibly dropping was,
however, ere long arrested by low, murmuring, and, as I thought,
plaintive voices at no great distance from my own bed. Seating
myself erect, I listened intently and with a good deal of surprise;
for it was not easy to imagine whence sounds so unusual for that
place and hour could proceed. The discourse was earnest and even
animated; but it was carried on in so low a tone that it would have
been utterly inaudible but for the deep quiet of the hotel.
Occasionally a word reached my ear, and I was completely at fault in
endeavoring to ascertain even the language. That it was in neither
of the five great European tongues I was certain, for all these I
either spoke or read; and there were particular sounds and
inflections that induced me to think that it savored of the most
ancient of the two classics. It is true that the prosody of these
dialects,