seen about, there would be no mystery
about the loss of her locks,--the Doctor had been afraid of brain fever,
and ordered them to cut her hair.

Many things are uncertain in this world, and among them the effect of
a large proportion of the remedies prescribed by physicians. Whether it
was by the use of the means ordered by the old Doctor, or by the
efforts of nature, or by both together, at any rate the first danger was
averted, and the immediate risk from brain fever soon passed over.
But the impression upon her mind and body had been too profound to be
dissipated by a few days' rest. The hysteric stage which the wise old
man had apprehended began to manifest itself by its usual signs, if
anything can be called usual in a condition the natural order of which
is disorder and anomaly.

And now the reader, if such there be, who believes in the absolute
independence and self-determination of the will, and the consequent
total responsibility of every human being for every irregular nervous
action and ill-governed muscular contraction, may as well lay down
this narrative, or he may lose all faith in poor Myrtle Hazard, and all
patience with the writer who tells her story.

The mental excitement so long sustained, followed by a violent shock to
the system, coming just at the period of rapid development, gave rise
to that morbid condition, accompanied with a series of mental and moral
perversions, which in ignorant ages and communities is attributed to the
influence of evil spirits, but for the better-instructed is the malady
which they call hysteria. Few households have ripened a growth of
womanhood without witnessing some of its manifestations, and its
phenomena are largely traded in by scientific pretenders and religious
fanatics. Into this cloud, with all its risks and all its humiliations,
Myrtle Hazard is about to enter. Will she pass through it unharmed,
or wander from her path, and fall over one of those fearful precipices
which lie before her?

After the ancient physician had settled the general plan of treatment,
its details and practical application were left to the care of his son.
Dr. Fordyce Hurlbut was a widower, not yet forty years old, a man of a
fine masculine aspect and a vigorous nature. He was a favorite with his
female patients,--perhaps many of them would have said because he was
good-looking and pleasant in his manners, but some thought in virtue of
a special magnetic power to which certain temper