Page:Dealings with the dead.djvu/181

 the sense of coldness over my limbs; inch by inch the crafty hand of Mystery gained firmer hold. The feet, the limbs, the vitals, grew cold and leaden, until at last it seemed as if the ventricles of my heart and the blood within them were freezing, slowly, surely freezing; and the terrible conviction forced itself upon me that I was gradually, but positively—dying! Soon all sense of organization below the neck was lost, and the words 'limb, body, chest,' had no meaning. This was also true of the head generally, but not of a something within that head. The bodily eyes and ears were the last to yield themselves up to the influence of the strange, weird spell. "With a last, perishing effort, I strove to look forth upon, and listen to the sounds of the world, now perhaps forever being left behind. What a doleful change in a few brief hours I Where all had been serenely, calmly beautiful before, nothing was now visible but the huge, gaunt skeletons of forms I had seen glowing with living verdure but a little while ago; the sunlight was changed from silver sheen to a pale and sickly yellow, tinged with ghastly green. The overhanging branches and profuse foliage of the trees hard by had altered their every aspect, and from stately monuments of God's goodness, had become transformed into spectral obelisks, upreared on the earth to tell the future ages that He had passed that way in savage" and vindictive wrath, once upon a time. When I lay me down and gazed up into the beautiful heaven, the fleecy vapors were playing at cloud-gambols on the breast of the vault; but now they were turned into funereal palls, heavy, black, and gloomy as are the coverlets of Night; and the busy hum of myriad insects, and the gentle murmur of