Jack London. Before Adam -
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and springy bushes.
Usually, my falls destroy my dreams, the nervous shock
being sufficient to bridge the thousand centuries in an instant
and hurl me wide awake into my little bed, where, perchance, I
lie sweating and trembling and hear the cuckoo clock calling
the hour in the hall. But this dream of my leaving home I have
had many times, and never yet have I been awakened by it.
Always do I crash, shrieking, down through the brush and fetch
up with a bump on the ground.
Scratched and bruised and whimpering, I lay where I had
fallen. Peering up through the bushes, I could see the
Chatterer. He had set up a demoniacal chant of joy and was
keeping time to it with his teetering. I quickly hushed my
whimpering. I was no longer in the safety of the trees, and I
knew the danger I ran of bringing upon myself the hunting
animals by too audible an expression of my grief.
I remember, as my sobs died down, that I became interested
in watching the strange light-effects produced by partially
opening and closing my tear-wet eyelids. Then I began to
investigate, and found that I was not so very badly damaged by
my fall. I had lost some hair and hide, here and there; the
sharp and jagged end of a broken branch had thrust fully an
inch into my forearm; and my right hip, which had borne the
brunt of my contact with the ground, was aching intolerably.
But these, after all, were only petty hurts. No bones were
broken, and in those days the flesh of man had finer healing
qualities than it has to-day. Yet it was a severe fall, for I
limped with my injured hip for fully a week afterward.
Next, as I lay in the bushes, there came upon me a feeling
of desolation, a consciousness that I was homeless. I made up