oning you on some points upon which I desire
information I cannot otherwise obtain. I would not trouble you, if I
could find any person or books competent to enlighten me on some of these
singular matters which have so excited me. The leading doctor here is a
shrewd, sensible man, but not versed in the curiosities of medical
literature.

I proceed, with your leave, to ask a considerable number of
questions,--hoping to get answers to some of them, at least.

Is there any evidence that human beings can be infected or wrought upon
by poisons, or otherwise, so that they shall manifest any of the
peculiarities belonging to beings of a lower nature? Can such
peculiarities--be transmitted by inheritance? Is there anything to
countenance the stories, long and widely current, about the "evil eye"?
or is it a mere fancy that such a power belongs to any human being? Have
you any personal experience as to the power of fascination said to be
exercised by certain animals? What can you make of those circumstantial
statements we have seen in the papers, of children forming mysterious
friendships with ophidians of different species, sharing their food with
them, and seeming to be under some subtile influence exercised by those
creatures? Have you read, critically, Coleridge's poem of "Christabel,"
and Keats's "Lamia"?--If so, can you understand them, or find any
physiological foundation for the story of either?

There is another set of questions of a different nature I should like to
ask, but it is hardly fair to put so many on a single sheet. There is
one, however, you must answer. Do you think there may be
predispositions, inherited or ingrafted, but at any rate constitutional,
which shall take out certain apparently voluntary determinations from the
control of the will, and leave them as free from moral responsibility as
the instincts of the lower animals? Do you not think there may be a
crime which is not a sin?

Pardon me, my dear Sir, for troubling you with such a list of notes of
interrogation. There are some very strange things going on here in this
place, country-town as it is. Country-life is apt to be dull; but when
it once gets going, it beats the city hollow, because it gives its whole
mind to what it is about. These rural sinners make terrible work with
the middle of the Decalogue, when they get started. However, I hope I
shall live through my year's school-keeping without catastrophes, though
there are qu