d you more of love, or more of apprehensive genius, (for either would
give you the needed expansion and delicacy) you would command my entire
reverence. As it is, I must at times deny and oppose you, and so must
others, for you tend, by your influence, to exclude us from our full,
free life. We must be content when you censure, and rejoiced when you
approve; always admonished to good by your whole being, and sometimes by
your judgment. And so I pass on to interest myself and others in the
memoir of the Scherin von Prevorst.

Aside from Loewenstein, a town of Wirtemberg, on mountains whose highest
summit is more than eighteen hundred feet above the level of the sea,
lies in romantic seclusion, surrounded on all sides by woods and hills,
the hamlet of Prevorst.

Its inhabitants number about four hundred and fifty, most of whom
support themselves by wood-cutting, and making charcoal, and collecting
wood seed.

As is usual with those who live upon the mountains, these are a vigorous
race, and generally live to old age without sickness. Diseases that
infest the valley, such as ague, never touch them; but they are subject
in youth to attacks upon the nerves, which one would not expect in so
healthy a class. In a town situated near to, and like Prevorst, the
children were often attacked with a kind of St. Vitus's dance. They
would foresee when it would seize upon them, and, if in the field, would
hasten home to undergo the paroxysms there. From these they rose, as
from magnetic sleep, without memory of what had happened.

Other symptoms show the inhabitants of this region very susceptible to
magnetic and sidereal influences.

On this mountain, and indeed in the hamlet of Prevorst, was, in 1801, a
woman born, in whom a peculiar inner life discovered itself from early
childhood. Frederica Hauffe, whose father was gamekeeper of this
district of forest, was, as the position and solitude of her birthplace
made natural, brought up in the most simple manner. In the keen mountain
air and long winter cold, she was not softened by tenderness either as
to dress or bedding, but grew up lively and blooming; and while her
brothers and sisters, under the same circumstances, were subject to
rheumatic attacks, she remained free from them. On the other hand, her
peculiar tendency displayed itself in her dreams. If anything affected
her painfully, if her mind was excited by reproof, she had instructive
warning, or prophetic dreams.

While