Never
before or since have I seen anything like so passionate a revulsion
from the depths of despair to exultant, triumphant, uncontrollable joy.
He flashed and darted hither and thither as if fairly demented,
screaming and shouting, swirling round and round in giddy loops and
circles like a leaf in a whirlwind, lying down, and rolling over and
over, sidewise and heels over head, and pouring forth a tumultuous flood
of hysterical cries and sobs and gasping mutterings. When I ran up to
him to shake him, fearing he might die of joy, he flashed off two or
three hundred yards, his feet in a mist of motion; then, turning
suddenly, came back in a wild rush and launched himself at my face,
almost knocking me down, all the time screeching and screaming and
shouting as if saying, "Saved! saved! saved!" Then away again, dropping
suddenly at times with his feet in the air, trembling and fairly
sobbing. Such passionate emotion was enough to kill him. Moses' stately
song of triumph after escaping the Egyptians and the Red Sea was nothing
to it. Who could have guessed the capacity of the dull, enduring little
fellow for all that most stirs this mortal frame? Nobody could have
helped crying with him!
But there is nothing like work for toning down excessive fear or joy.
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