short. I
experienced, however, no tendency to sleep, and my mind was perfectly
calm and unexcited. My cousin was satisfied with his experiment so
far, but we both concluded it had better end here. So he made the
reverse passes, in order to undo the knot he was beginning to tie in
my nerves. He did not, however, entirely succeed in untying it. I was
a healthy subject, and the magnetism continued to affect my nerves, in
spite of the untangling passes.

Soon after, I rose and took my leave. I was strangely excited, but it
was a purely physical, and not a mental excitement. Thinking that a
walk would quiet me, I went through street after street, until I
reached the outskirts of the city. It was a mild September evening.
The fine weather and the sight of the trees and fields tempted me to
continue my walk. It was near sunset, and I strolled on and on,
watching the purple gray and ruddy gold of the clouds, until I had got
fairly into the country.

As I rambled on, I was suddenly seized with a fancy to climb a tree
which stood by the roadside, and rest myself in a convenient notch
which I observed between two of the limbs. I was soon seated in among
the branches, with a canopy of leaves around and over me,--feeling, in
my still nervous condition, as I leaned my back against the mossy
bark, like a magnified tree-toad in clothes.

The air was balmy and fragrant, and against the amber of the western
sky rose and fell numberless little clouds of insects. The birds were
chirping and fluttering about me, and made their arrangements for
their night's lodging, in manifest dread of the clothed tree-toad who
had invaded their leafy premises.

The peculiar nervousness which had taken possession of me was now
passing off, to be replaced by a species of mental exaltation. I was
becoming conscious of something approaching semi-clairvoyance, and yet
not in the ordinary form. Sensation, emotion, thought were
intensified. The landscape around me was dotted with farm-houses,
pillowed in soft, dark clumps of trees. One by one, the lights began
to appear at the windows,--soft rising stars of home-joys. The
glorious September sunset was fading, but still resplendent in the
west. The landscape was pervaded with a deeper repose, the glowing
clouds with a diviner splendor than that which filled the eye. Then
thronging memories awoke. My remembrances of all my past life in the
crowded cities of America and Europe rose vividly before me. In the