iar mania that she would
receive no provisions save in full dress in the presence of her
physicians, and that it was his desire to so humor her. So he had
entrusted the errand to the colored man, who had carried out the
instructions given him; and that that was all there was about it.

When she returned crestfallen to the apartments, and Bristol and Fox
had heard her story, they so derided it, claiming that the groceryman
had fallen in love with her and invented the story upon the spur of the
moment, fearing to disclose his languishing affection, she now believed
that they were innocent of complicity in the matter and seemed to lapse
into a bewildered sort of condition, where she would wander about the
rooms, suspiciously pass and repass my operatives and searchingly
scrutinize their faces, and for long periods stand at the dreary window
peering into the street as if into a dead blank, never noticing the
scurrying snow-flakes which were coming as a silent prelude to another
winter, and only occasionally breaking the silence by murmuring, "Crazy?
crazy? Yes, I _shall_ become so if these terrible things are not
stopped!"

But Mrs. Winslow had seen too much of life and was too hard a citizen
generally to be terribly borne down by these manifestations for any
great length of time, though they completely overpowered her at their
occurrence, and she was allowed to become quite cheery before being
favored with another materialization, which came in the following
manner.

They were having a pleasant little seance in the rooms one evening soon
after the colored grocery porter had accused Mrs. Winslow of being
crazy, and the several ladies and gentlemen collected there were engaged
in communing with the Spiritualistic heaven in the old and very common
table-rapping method. They were, as a rule, lank, lean people, the
ladies wearing short hair, and the gentlemen wearing long hair. This,
with a few other affectations and irregularities, was nothing against
them, had it not been equally as true that, according to my operatives'
subsequent inquiries, every member of this company was either living in
open adultery or practising all manner of lewdness without even the
convenient cloak of an assumption or pretension that the marriage
relations existed. But, good or bad as they were, they were at the
threshold of heaven, and had very appropriately darkened the room to get
as near to it as possible without being seen, and only the fain