.. You see, I have failed to cheer myself up. Having
taken up a strong academic line, and set bravely out to prove to
myself the absurdity of wax-works, I find myself at the point where I
started, irrefutably arguing to myself that I have good reason to be
frightened, here in the Chapel of Abbot Islip, in the midst of these,
the Abbot's glowering and ghastly tenants. Catalepsy! death! that is
the atmosphere I am breathing.
If I were writing in the past tense, I might pause here to consider
whether this emotion was a genuine one or a mere figment for literary
effect. As I am writing in the present tense, such a pause would be
inartistic, and shall not be made. I must seem not to be writing, but
to be actually on the spot, suffering. But then, you may well ask, why
should I stay here, to suffer? why not beat a hasty retreat? The
answer is that my essay would then seem skimpy; and that you,
moreover, would know hardly anything about the wax-works. So I must
ask you to imagine me fighting down my fears, and consoling myself
with the reflection that here, after all, a sense of awe and
oppression is just what one ought to feel--just what one comes for. At
Madame Tussaud's exhibition, by which I was similarly afflicted some
years ago, I had no such consolation.
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