these bottles and so tired of rolling over these everlasting
beer-barrels, that I abandoned the wall and plunged boldly into space.
I had barely started, when, looking up, I saw the sky above me: a star
was twinkling just above my head. Had I been wide awake, and had the cow
stopped bellowing for just one minute, I should have guessed that somehow
or another I had got into a chimney. But as things were, the wonder and
the mystery of it all appalled me. “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”
would have appeared to me, at that moment, in the nature of a guide to
travellers. Had a rocking-horse or a lobster suddenly appeared to me I
should have sat and talked to it; and if it had not answered me I should
have thought it sulky and been hurt. I took a step forward and the star
disappeared, just as if somebody had blown it out. I was not surprised
in the least. I was expecting anything to happen.
I found a door and it opened quite easily. A wood was in front of me. I
couldn’t see any cow anywhere, but I still heard her. It all seemed
quite natural. I would wander into the wood; most likely I should meet
her there, and she would be smoking a pipe. In all probability she would
know some poetry.
With the fresh air my senses gradually came back to me, and I began to
understand why it was I could not see the cow. The reason was that the
house was between us. By some mysterious process I had been discharged
into the back garden. I still had the milking-stool in my hand, but the
cow no longer troubled me. Let her see if she could wake Veronica by
merely bellowing outside the door; it was more than I had ever been able
to do.
I sat down on the stool and opened my note-book. I headed the page:
“Sunrise in July: observations and emotions,” and I wrote down at once,
lest I should forget it, that towards three o’clock a faint light is
discernible, and added that this light gets stronger as the time goes on.
It sounded footling even to myself, but I had been reading a novel of the
realistic school that had been greatly praised for its actuality. There
is a demand in some quarters for this class of observation. I likewise
made a note that the pigeon and the corncrake appear to be among the
earliest of Nature’s children to welcome the coming day; and added that
the screech-owl may be heard, perhaps at its best, by anyone caring to
rise for the purpose, some quarter of an hour before the dawn. That was
all I could think of just then. As regards emotions, I did not seem to
have any.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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