dy" in
my father's time, but in those days the council-chamber of armed
men,--sometimes filled with soldiers; come with me, and I will show you
the "dents" left by the butts of their muskets all over the floor. With
all these suggestive objects round me, aided by the wild stories those
awful country-boys that came to live in our service brought with
them;--of contracts written in blood and left out over night, not to be
found the next morning, (removed by the Evil One, who takes his nightly
round among our dwellings, and filed away for future use,)--of dreams
coming true,--of death-signs,--of apparitions, no wonder that my
imagination got excited, and I was liable to superstitious fancies.

Jeremy Bentham's logic, by which he proved that he couldn't possibly see
a ghost is all very well-in the day-time. All the reason in the world
will never get those impressions of childhood, created by just such
circumstances as I have been telling, out of a man's head. That is the
only excuse I have to give for the nervous kind of curiosity with which I
watch my little neighbor, and the obstinacy with which I lie awake
whenever I hear anything going on in his chamber after midnight.

But whatever further observations I may have made must be deferred for
the present. You will see in what way it happened that my thoughts were
turned from spiritual matters to bodily ones, and how I got my fancy full
of material images,--faces, heads, figures, muscles, and so forth,--in
such a way that I should have no chance in this number to gratify any
curiosity you may feel, if I had the means of so doing.

Indeed, I have come pretty near omitting my periodical record this time.
It was all the work of a friend of mine, who would have it that I should
sit to him for my portrait. When a soul draws a body in the great
lottery of life, where every one is sure of a prize, such as it is, the
said soul inspects the said body with the same curious interest with
which one who has ventured into a "gift enterprise" examines the "massive
silver pencil-case" with the coppery smell and impressible tube, or the
"splendid gold ring" with the questionable specific gravity, which it has
been his fortune to obtain in addition to his purchase.

The soul, having studied the article of which it finds itself proprietor,
thinks, after a time, it knows it pretty well. But there is this
difference between its view and that of a person looking at us:--we look
from with