ect, and added that his business was to find
out about the well-being of some friends in Minnesota, and to
ascertain particulars about some other trifles necessary to his
peace of mind.

Hereupon Mr. Hayes, with a growl like a sulky rhinoceros, opened
the door which cut off the pot-and-kettle Babel of the other
room, and commanded his wife to come, and that estimable lady,
who is evidently in a state of excellent subordination, instantly
writhed herself into the room. She sat down in an armchair, and
began to evolve a most remarkable series of inane smiles, each
one of which began somewhere down her throat, rose to her mouth
by jerks, and finally faded away at the top of her head and the
tips of her ears. It was a purely spasmodic thing of disagreeable
habit, without a particle of geniality or feeling about it.

While this curious process was going on, the Doctor had drawn
down the window-shades, thus darkening the room, and now
approached for the purpose of unhooking from its earthly
tabernacle the soul that was to step up to Minnesota and bring
back word to his customer "how all the folks got along." This he
accomplished by a few mysterious mesmeric passes, and when the
trance was induced, and the spirit had, so to speak, tucked its
breeches into its boots ready for the muddy journey, he placed in
the hand of Johannes that of the corpus which still remained in
the armchair, and said to the disembodied spirit:

"Now, I want you to go with this gentleman to Brooklyn and take a
fair start from there, and then go where he tells you to, and
tell him what things there is there that you see."

Having delivered this injunction in a tone so indescribably
savage that he had better a thousand times have struck her in the
face, this amiable animal retired to the Babel, taking with him
the fried-onion atmosphere.

Then the woman in the chair began to speak, in a style the most
disagreeable and affected that anybody ever listened to. It was
more like that sickening gibberish that nurses call "_baby-talk_,"
than anything else in the world. She spoke with a detestable
whine, and pronounced each syllable of every word separately, as
if she feared a two-syllable word might choke her. Sick at the
stomach as was her visitor at the whole babyish performance, he
so far controlled his qualms as to note down the words hereunder
written.

Whoever has heard this woman in a professional way can testify to
the verbatim truth of this sk