gave me strength of mind; and so I gradually began to get cheerful. At last I said, "Hang it, I will be happy." I threw off the coverlet and jumped out of bed on to the floor, when I began to hop about again like a ball. This elastic life coming so soon after my serious thoughts and sorrows made me feel that hopping about without being able to settle down, was a position of the most ridiculous absurdity. I thought to myself how I would laugh at seeing any one going through this operation. I tried to keep grave, but could not for the life of me do so; I fairly gave way, and burst out in a regular jolly old side-splitting, neck-cracking laugh, in fact a laugh of my own people, that the Recorder termed "the Ancients." The loudness of my laugh was something terrible; I tried hard to modify it; but every time I hopped on the floor, out it would come again and again. In the middle of my performance in rushed the two Recorders, who looked at me in astonishment, holding their ears, but this only made me laugh the more.
