. They were backward to enter into
conversation with me, and answered my enquiries with an aukward and embarrassed
air. When they met me in the street or the field, their countenances contracted
a cloud, and they endeavoured to shun me. My scholars quitted me one after
another, and I had no longer any employment in my mechanical profession. It is
impossible to describe the sensations which the gradual, but uninterrupted
progress of this revolution produced in my mind. It seemed as if I had some
contagious disease, from which every man shrunk with alarm, and left me to
perish unassisted and alone. I asked one man and another to explain to me the
meaning of these appearances; but every one avoided the task, and answered in an
evasive and ambiguous manner. I sometimes supposed that it was all a delusion of
the imagination; till the repetition of the sensation brought the reality too
painfully home to my apprehension. There are few things that give a greater
shock to the mind than a phenomenon in the conduct of our fellow men, of great
importance to our concerns, and for which we are unable to assign any plausible
reason. At times I was half inclined to believe that the change was not in other
men, but that some alienation of my own understanding generated the horrid
vision. I endeavoured to awake from my dream, and return to my former state of
enjoyment and happiness; but in vain. To the same consideration it may be
ascribed, that unacquainted with the source of the evil, observing its perpetual
increase, and finding it so far as I could perceive entirely arbitrary in its
nature, I was unable to ascertain its limits, or the degree in which it would
finally overwhelm me.
    In the midst however of the wonderful and seemingly inexplicable nature of
this scene, there was one idea that instantly obtruded itself, and that I could
never after banish from my mind. It is Falkland! In vain I struggled against the
seeming improbability of the supposition. In vain I said, Mr. Falkland, wise as
he is and pregnant in resources, acts by human and not by supernatural means. He
may overtake me by surprise and in a manner of which I have no previous
expectation; but he cannot produce a great and notorious effect without some
visible agency, however difficult it may be to trace that agency to its absolute
author. He cannot, like those invisible personages who are supposed from time to
time to interfere in human affairs, ride in the whirlwind, shroud himself in
clouds and impenetrable darkness, and scatter destruction upon the earth from
his secret habitation. Thus it was that
