concrete things which had been used by the personages he
described. There were the chairs they sat on, the beds they slept on,
the piano they played on, all as they had been left. It was impossible
for me to conceive that there was yet no connection between these things
and the old family. The pictures, too, were still there, in the various
rooms, some of them in my bed-room. The light of my eyes seemed to have
disenchanted these silent staring personages. They came forth and
occupied themselves as they had been wont before they became pictures.
The chair of the first of the late Mr. Bernard's two wives--that "angel
whose look was an eternal smile," as Francis poetically described
her--appeared to have the power of drawing her down into it; but then
the attraction was not less for the second wife, "whose fate was a
terrible mystery;" and thus would I get confused. Then, to which of
these did the little dark fellow on the south wall belong--he who seemed
to have been scorched by too strong a sun--and the girl beside them, who
looked as if she had been blanched by too bright a moon--which of the
two was her mother?

At last I got out of bed, and rummaged for some stray volume to
disenchant me out of the imaginary world of these Bernards. I drew out
one or two drawers, which had been so long shut that they had lost their
allegiance to the hand. I peered into an escritoire, and another old
cabinet, which creaked and groaned at being disturbed by a hand not a
Bernard's. All was empty. There was one drawer which refused to come
out to the full extent. Something seemed to be jammed between it and
the back of the escritoire. Man is an enterprising animal; a little
resistance sets his energies a-spring. I would not be baulked. I
would know what the impediment was and work out the solution of the
difficulty. By pulling hard the obstacle gave way. The drawer followed
my hand, while my body fell back on the floor. Psha! some stray leaves
of an old pamphlet fluttered about. I had dismembered the obstacle, and
would now collect the fragments. I had got for my pains an old brochure,
embellished by dreadful woodcuts, of the old Newgate calender style, and
entitled, "The true and genuine history of the murderer, Jane Grierson,
who poisoned her mistress, and thereby became the wife of her master,
Josiah Temple;" the date 1742. I was no fancier of awful histories of
murderers, yet I would read myself asleep amidst horrors rather than
lie