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- 6011
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T07:57:55.413Z
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- structure-extraction-lambda
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- 5992
- text
- charmed isles; and remember the sudden glimpses of dusky shells, and
long languid necks protruded from the leafless thickets; and again have
beheld the vitreous inland rocks worn down and grooved into deep ruts
by ages and ages of the slow draggings of tortoises in quest of pools
of scanty water; I can hardly resist the feeling that in my time I have
indeed slept upon evilly enchanted ground.
Nay, such is the vividness of my memory, or the magic of my fancy, that
I know not whether I am not the occasional victim of optical delusion
concerning the Gallipagos. For, often in scenes of social merriment,
and especially at revels held by candle-light in old-fashioned
mansions, so that shadows are thrown into the further recesses of an
angular and spacious room, making them put on a look of haunted
undergrowth of lonely woods, I have drawn the attention of my comrades
by my fixed gaze and sudden change of air, as I have seemed to see,
slowly emerging from those imagined solitudes, and heavily crawling
along the floor, the ghost of a gigantic tortoise, with “Memento * * *
* *” burning in live letters upon his back.
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