are evil
in to a divine thrusting on," we had better return at once to our old
demonology, and reinstate the Leader of the Lower House in his
time-honored prerogatives.

As fiction sometimes seems stranger than truth, a few words may be needed
here to make some of my characters and statements appear probable. The
long-pending question involving a property which had become in the mean
time of immense value finds its parallel in the great De Haro land-case,
decided in the Supreme Court while this story was in progress (May 14th,
1867). The experiment of breaking the child's will by imprisonment and
fasting is borrowed from a famous incident, happening long before the
case lately before one of the courts of a neighboring Commonwealth, where
a little girl was beaten to death because she would not say her prayers.
The mental state involving utter confusion of different generations in a
person yet capable of forming a correct judgment on other matters, is
almost a direct transcript from nature. I should not have ventured to
repeat the questions of the daughters of the millionaires to Myrtle
Hazard about her family conditions, and their comments, had not a lady of
fortune and position mentioned to me a similar circumstance in the school
history of one of her own children. Perhaps I should have hesitated in
reproducing Myrtle Hazard's "Vision," but for a singular experience of
his own related to me by the late Mr. Forceythe Willson.

Gifted Hopkins (under various alliasis) has been a frequent correspondent
of mine. I have also received a good many communications, signed with
various names, which must have been from near female relatives of that
young gentleman. I once sent a kind of encyclical letter to the whole
family connection; but as the delusion under which they labor is still
common, and often leads to the wasting of time, the contempt of honest
study or humble labor, and the misapplication of intelligence not so far
below mediocrity as to be incapable of affording a respectable return
when employed in the proper direction, I thought this picture from life
might also be of service. When I say that no genuine young poet will
apply it to himself, I think I have so far removed the sting that few or
none will complain of being wounded.

It is lamentable to be forced to add that the Reverend Joseph Bellamy
Stoker is only a softened copy of too many originals to whom, as a
regular attendant upon divine worship from my