Thus Ended, Sadly Enough, The Enchanting Years Of My Boyhood; And
Here, Too, The Book Should Finish:
But having gone so far, I will
venture a little further and give a brief account of what followed and
the life which, for several succeeding years, was to be mine - the
life, that is to say, of the mind and spirit.
CHAPTER XXIII
A DARKENED LIFE
A severe illness-Case pronounced hopeless-How it affected me-Religious
doubts and a mind distressed-Lawless thoughts - Conversation with an
old gaucho about religion - George Combe and the desire for
immortality.
After we had gone back impoverished to our old home where I first saw
the light-which was still my father's property and all he had left-I
continued my reading, and was so taken up with the affairs of the
universe, seen and unseen, that I did not feel the change in our
position and comforts too greatly. I took my share in the rough work
and was much out-of-doors on horseback looking after the animals, and
not unhappy. I was already very tall and thin at that time, in my
sixteenth year, still growing rapidly, and though athletic, it was
probable that some weakness had been left in me by the fever. At all
events, I had scarcely settled down to the new way of life before a
fresh blow fell upon me, a malady which, though it failed to kill me,
yet made shipwreck of all my new-born earthly hopes and dreams, and a
dismal failure of my after life.
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