- description
- # Escape from the House and Initial Journey
## Overview
This subsection, titled "Escape from the House and Initial Journey," is a textual component extracted from the file [israel_potter.txt](arke:01KG89J1DKC9HHJRKY25JZBEXW). It spans lines 3283 to 3319 of the source text and details a character's departure from a mansion and subsequent reflections during their journey.
## Context
This subsection is part of [CHAPTER XIII. HIS ESCAPE FROM THE HOUSE, WITH VARIOUS ADVENTURES FOLLOWING.](arke:01KG8AJJ261FWJ1RK528BTY9AX), a chapter within a larger work found in the [Melville Complete Works](arke:01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW) collection. It follows the subsection [Attempting to Leave the Room](arke:01KG8AK5MYSMGNZEEJA189TTF5), which describes the character's initial efforts to exit the house and the reactions of those inside. This section is immediately succeeded by [Encounter with the Scarecrow](arke:01KG8AK5MYMCE5PDJ72BHGY454), which continues the narrative of the character's journey.
## Contents
The subsection describes the protagonist, Israel, as he successfully leaves the mansion on a moonlight night, observed by terrified faces in the windows. As he crosses the grounds and descends a slope, he encounters a landscape of hilly meadows, cut grass, and a grove of dwarfish trees, which he perceives as magically reproducing the scene of Bunker Hill, Charles River, and Boston on June 16th. Sitting on a haycock, Israel falls into reverie but is roused by the realization that his disguise, effective for escaping the house, could endanger him in public by day, leading him to lament not having worn the Squire's clothes over his own.
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- 2026-01-30T20:48:44.153Z
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- description_title
- Escape from the House and Initial Journey
- end_line
- 3319
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- 2026-01-30T20:47:55.385Z
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- 3283
- text
- In a few minutes more he had reached the main door of the mansion, and
withdrawing the chain and bolt, stood in the open air. It was a bright
moonlight night. He struck slowly across the open grounds towards the
sunken fields beyond. When-midway across the grounds, he turned towards
the mansion, and saw three of the front windows filled with white
faces, gazing in terror at the wonderful spectre. Soon descending a
slope, he disappeared from their view.
Presently he came to hilly land in meadow, whose grass having been
lately cut, now lay dotting the slope in cocks; a sinuous line of
creamy vapor meandered through the lowlands at the base of the hill;
while beyond was a dense grove of dwarfish trees, with here and there a
tall tapering dead trunk, peeled of the bark, and overpeering the rest.
The vapor wore the semblance of a deep stream of water, imperfectly
descried; the grove looked like some closely-clustering town on its
banks, lorded over by spires of churches.
The whole scene magically reproduced to our adventurer the aspect of
Bunker Hill, Charles River, and Boston town, on the well-remembered
night of the 16th of June. The same season; the same moon; the same
new-mown hay on the shaven sward; hay which was scraped together during
the night to help pack into the redoubt so hurriedly thrown up.
Acted on as if by enchantment, Israel sat down on one of the cocks, and
gave himself up to reverie. But, worn out by long loss of sleep, his
reveries would have soon merged into slumber’s still wilder dreams, had
he not rallied himself, and departed on his way, fearful of forgetting
himself in an emergency like the present. It now occurred to him that,
well as his disguise had served him in escaping from the mansion of
Squire Woodcock, that disguise might fatally endanger him if he should
be discovered in it abroad. He might pass for a ghost at night, and
among the relations and immediate friends of the gentleman deceased;
but by day, and among indifferent persons, he ran no small risk of
being apprehended for an entry-thief. He bitterly lamented his omission
in not pulling on the Squire’s clothes over his own, so that he might
now have reappeared in his former guise.
- title
- Escape from the House and Initial Journey