acter. At the end of this time, a letter came from an aunt of my
mother's, who was ill, and whose adopted daughter (who was my mother's
sister) was also an invalid, requesting me to visit and nurse them. I went
there in the fall. This was probably the most decisive event of my life.
My great-aunt had a cancer that was to be taken out. The other was
suffering from a nervous affection, which rendered her a confirmed
invalid. She was a most peculiar woman, and was a clairvoyant and
somnambulist of the most decided kind. Though not ill-natured, she was
full of caprices that would have exhausted the patience of the most
enduring of mortals.

This aunt of mine had been sick in bed for seven years with a nervous
derangement, which baffled the most skilful physicians who had visited
her. Her senses were so acute, that one morning she fell into convulsions
from the effect of distant music which she heard. None of us could
perceive it, and we fully believed that her imagination had produced this
result. But she insisted upon it; telling us that the music was like that
of the Bohemian miners, who played nothing but polkas. I was determined to
ascertain the truth; and really found, that, in a public garden one and a
half miles from her house, such a troop had played all the afternoon. No
public music was permitted in the city, because the magistrate had
forbidden it on her account.

She never was a Spiritualist, though she frequently went into what is now
called a trance. She spoke, wrote, sang, and had presentiments of the
finest kind, in this condition,--far better than I have ever seen here in
America in the case of the most celebrated mediums.

She even prescribed for herself with success, yet was not a Spiritualist.
She was a somnambulist; and, though weak enough when awake, threatened
several times to pull the house down, by her violence in this condition.
She had strength like a lion, and no man could manage her. I saw the same
thing in the hospital later. This aunt is now healthy; not cured by her
own prescriptions or the magnetic or infinitesimal doses of Dr. Arthur
Lutze, but by a strong emotion which took possession of her at the time of
my great-aunt's death. She is not sorry that she has lost all these
strange powers, but heartily glad of it. When she afterwards visited us in
Berlin, she could speak calmly and quietly of the perversion to which the
nervous system may become subject, if managed wrongly; and could not t