The following morning at daybreak when I awoke, a noisy cadence, to which I was unaccustomed, fell upon my ears; the neighboring weaver had already commenced, even with the dawn, to work his ancient loom, and the musical to and fro of its shuttle had roused me. Then after the first drowsy, dreamy moment I remembered, with overwhelming joy, that I was at my uncle's in the south; that this was the morning of the first day; that I had before me the prospect of a whole summer of out-of-door life and wildest liberty--had August and September, two months that at present pass as quickly as if they were but two days, but which then seemed of a fairly respectable duration. With a feeling of rapture, after I had wholly shaken off my sleep, I came into a full consciousness of myself and the realities of my life; I felt “joy at my waking.” The preceding winter I had read a story of the Indians of the Great Lakes, and one thing in it had impressed me so deeply that I always remembered it: an old Indian chief, whose daughter was pining away because of her love for a white man, had finally consented to give her to the alien so that she might once more feel “joy at her waking.” Joy at her waking! Indeed, for some time I had myself noticed that the moment of waking is always the one in which I had the most distinct and vivid impression of joy or sorrow; and it is then, at the waking hour, that one finds it so particularly painful to be without joy; my first little sorrows and remorses, my anxieties about the future, were the things that usually obtruded themselves cruelly--however the feeling of sadness vanished very quickly in those days. At a later time I had very gloomy and sad awakenings. And there are times now when I have moments of terrifying clearness of vision during which I seem to see, if I may so express it, into the depths of life; it is at such moments that life presents itself to me without those pleasing mirages that during the day still delude me; during those moments I appear to have a more vivid realization of the rapid flight of the years, the crumbling away of all that I endeavor to hold to, I almost realize the final unimaginable nothingness, I see the bottomless pit of death, near at hand, no longer in any way disguised. But that morning I had a joyful awaking, and unable to remain quietly in bed, I rose immediately. So impatient was I to be out that I scarcely took time to ask myself where I should begin my first day's round of visits.