Jack London. Before Adam -
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fill of them. My mother set before me a dish of the berries. I
filled my spoon, but before I raised it to my mouth I knew just
how they would taste. Nor was I disappointed. It was the same
tang that I had tasted a thousand times in my sleep.
Snakes? Long before I had heard of the existence of
snakes, I was tormented by them in my sleep. They lurked for me
in the forest glades; leaped up, striking, under my feet;
squirmed off through the dry grass or across naked patches of
rock; or pursued me into the tree-tops, encircling the trunks
with their great shining bodies, driving me higher and higher
or farther and farther out on swaying and crackling branches,
the ground a dizzy distance beneath me. Snakes!--with their
forked tongues, their beady eyes and glittering scales, their
hissing and their rattling--did I not already know them far too
well on that day of my first circus when I saw the
snake-charmer lift them up? They were old friends of mine,
enemies rather, that peopled my nights with fear.
Ah, those endless forests, and their horror-haunted gloom!
For what eternities have I wandered through them, a timid,
hunted creature, starting at the least sound, frightened of my
own shadow, keyed-up, ever alert and vigilant, ready on the
instant to dash away in mad flight for my life. For I was the
prey of all manner of fierce life that dwelt in the forest, and
it was in ecstasies of fear that I fled before the hunting
monsters.
When I was five years old I went to my first circus. I
came home from it sick--but not from peanuts and pink lemonade.
Let me tell you. As we entered the animal tent, a hoarse
roaring shook the air. I tore my hand loose from my father's