midnight
I have always maintained , my dear Currier , that if a man wishes to be considered sane , and has any particular regard for his reputation as a truth-teller , he would better keep silent as to the singular experiences that enter into his life . I have had many such experiences myself ; but I have rarely confided them in detail , or otherwise , to those about me , because I know that even the most trustful of my friends would regard them merely as the outcome of an imagination unrestrained by conscience , or of a gradually weakening mind subject to hallucinations . I know them to be true , but until Mr. Edison or some other modern wizard has invented a search-light strong enough to lay bare the secrets of the mind and conscience of man , I can not prove to others that they are not pure fabrications , or at least the conjurings of a diseased fancy . For instance , no man would believe me if I were to state to him the plain and indisputable fact that one night last month , on my way up to bed shortly after midnight , having been neither smoking nor drinking , I saw confronting me upon the stairs , with the moonlight streaming through the windows back of me , lighting up its face , a figure in which I recognized my very self in every form and feature . I might describe the chill of terror that struck to the very marrow of my bones , and wellnigh forced me to stagger backward down the stairs , as I noticed in the face of this confronting figure every indication of all the bad qualities which I know myself to possess , of every evil instinct which by no easy effort I have repressed heretofore , and realized that that _ thing _ was , as far as I knew , entirely independent of my true self , in which I hope at least the moral has made an honest fight against the immoral always . I might describe this chill , I say , as vividly as I felt it at that moment , but it would be of no use to do so , because , however realistic it might prove as a bit of description , no man would believe that the incident really happened ; and yet it did happen as truly as I write , and it has happened a dozen times since , and I am certain that it will happen many times again , though I would give all that I possess to be assured that never again should that disquieting creation of mind or matter , whichever it may be , cross my path . The experience has made me afraid almost to be alone , and I have found myself unconsciously and uneasily glancing at my face in mirrors , in the plate-glass of show-windows on the shopping streets of the city , fearful lest I should find some of those evil traits which I have struggled to keep under , and have kept under so far , cropping out there where all the world , all _ my _ world , can see and wonder at , having known me always as a man of right doing and right feeling .