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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1897 edition. Excerpt: ...face upon my elbow; my thoughts were unmethodically wandering in the midst of multiplying perplexities; I closed my eyes as a weary child, and slept. CHAPTER XXVII. SLEEP, DREAMS, NIGHTMARE.--"STRANGLE THE LIFE FROM MY BODY." I know not how long I sat wrapped in slumber. Even if my body had not been wearing away as formerly, my mind had become excessively wearied. I had existed in a state of abnormal mental intoxication far beyond the period of accustomed wakefulness, and had taxed my mental organization beyond endurance. In the midst of events of the most startling description, I had abruptly passed into what was at its commencement the sweetest sleep of my recollection, but which came to a horrible termination. In my dream I was transported once more to my native land, and roamed in freedom throughout the streets of my lost home. I lived over again my early life in Virginia, and I seemed to have lost all recollection of the weird journey which I had lately taken. My subsequent connection with the brotherhood of alchemists, and the unfortunate letter that led to my present condition, were forgotten. There came no thought suggestive of the train of events that are here chronicled, and as a child I tasted again the pleasures of innocence, the joys of boyhood. Then my dream of childhood vanished, and the scenes of later days spread themselves before me. I saw, after a time, the scenes of my later life, as though I viewed them from a distance, and was impressed with the idea that they were not real, but only the fragments of a dream. I shuddered in my childish dreamland, and trembled as a child would at confronting events of the real life that I had passed through on earth, and that gradually assuming the shape of man approached and stood before me, ...