Blazing strange message. Much of that wouldn’t do for you, Jerry!

I say, Jerry! You’d be in a Blazing bad way, if recalling to life was

to come into fashion, Jerry!”

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

Chapter III

THE NIGHT SHADOWS

A

wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature

is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to

every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great

city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses

encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them

encloses its own secret; that every breathing heart in the hundreds

of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret

to the heart nearest it! Something of the awfulness, even of Death

itself, is referable to this. No more can I turn the leaves of this dear

book that I loved, and vainly hope in time to read it all. No more

can I look into the depths of this unfathomable water, wherein, as

momentary lights glanced into it, I have had glimpses of buried

treasure and other things submerged. It was appointed that the

book should shut with a spring, for ever and for ever, when I had

read but a page. It was appointed that the water should be locked

in an eternal frost, when the light was playing on its surface, and I

stood in ignorance on the shore. My friend is dead, my neigh