ad been too profound to be dissipated
by a few days' rest. The hysteric stage which the wise old man had
apprehended began to manifest itself by its usual signs, if anything can
be called usual in a condition the natural order of which is disorder and
anomaly.

And now the reader, if such there be, who believes in the absolute
independence and self-determination of the will, and the consequent total
responsibility of every human being for every irregular nervous action
and ill-governed muscular contraction, may as well lay down this
narrative, or he may lose all faith in poor Myrtle Hazard, and all
patience with the writer who tells her story.

The mental excitement so long sustained, followed by a violent shock to
the system, coming just at the period of rapid development, gave rise to
that morbid condition, accompanied with a series of mental and moral
perversions, which in ignorant ages and communities is attributed to the
influence of evil spirits, but for the better-instructed is the malady
which they call hysteria. Few households have ripened a growth of
womanhood without witnessing some of its manifestations, and its
phenomena are largely traded in by scientific pretenders and religious
fanatics. Into this cloud, with all its risks and all its humiliations,
Myrtle Hazard is about to enter. Will she pass through it unharmed, or
wander from her path, and fall over one of those fearful precipices which
lie before her?

After the ancient physician had settled the general plan of treatment,
its details and practical application were left to the care of his son.
Dr. Fordyce Hurlbut was a widower, not yet forty years old, a man of a
fine masculine aspect and a vigorous nature. He was a favorite with his
female patients,--perhaps many of them would have said because he was
good-looking and pleasant in his manners, but some thought in virtue of a
special magnetic power to which certain temperaments were impressible,
though there was no explaining it. But he himself never claimed any such
personal gift, and never attempted any of the exploits which some thought
were in his power if he chose to exercise his faculty in that direction.
This girl was, as it were, a child to him, for he had seen her grow up
from infancy, and had often held her on his knee in her early years. The
first thing he did was to get her a nurse, for he saw that neither of the
two women about her exercised a quieting influence upon her nerves. S