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occasion he saw this, I think, and afterwards avoided, or made a show of
avoiding me.
It was about the same period, if I remember aright, that, in an
altercation of violence with him, in which he was more than usually
thrown off his guard, and spoke and acted with an openness of demeanor
rather foreign to his nature, I discovered, or fancied I discovered,
in his accent, his air, and general appearance, a something which first
startled, and then deeply interested me, by bringing to mind dim visions
of my earliest infancy--wild, confused and thronging memories of a
time when memory herself was yet unborn. I cannot better describe the
sensation which oppressed me than by saying that I could with difficulty
shake off the belief of my having been acquainted with the being who
stood before me, at some epoch very long ago--some point of the past
even infinitely remote. The delusion, however, faded rapidly as it came;
and I mention it at all but to define the day of the last conversation I
there held with my singular namesake.
The huge old house, with its countless subdivisions, had several large
chambers communicating with each other, where slept the greater number
of the students. There were, however, (as must necessarily happen in a
building so awkwardly planned,) many little nooks or recesses, the
odds and ends of the structure; and these the economic ingenuity of Dr.
Bransby had also fitted up as dormitories; although, being the merest
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