But now, please, tell me a
little more of this alarm you experienced, and how it affected you."
"It's not the disappearing and reappearing _per se_ that I mind,"
continued Mr. Mudge, "so much as certain other things. It's seeing
people and objects in their weird entirety, in their true and complete
shapes, that is so distressing. It introduces me to a world of monsters.
Horses, dogs, cats, all of which I loved; people, trees, children; all
that I have considered beautiful in life--everything, from a human face
to a cathedral--appear to me in a different shape and aspect to all I
have known before. I cannot perhaps convince you why this should be
terrible, but I assure you that it is so. To hear the human voice
proceeding from this novel appearance which I scarcely recognise as a
human body is ghastly, simply ghastly. To see inside everything and
everybody is a form of insight peculiarly distressing. To be so confused
in geography as to find myself one moment at the North Pole, and the
next at Clapham Junction--or possibly at both places simultaneously--is
absurdly terrifying.
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