ook-making proceeded steadily in interest and variety
until the volume was completed.

The work is now inscribed to a discriminating public, with a lively
confidence that the advanced intelligence and freedom of the age will
yield it an ingenuous reception.

HENRY J. HORN.

NEW YORK, _October 1st_, 1869.

STRANGE VISITORS.

HENRY J. RAYMOND.

_TO THE NEW YORK PUBLIC_.

I have often thought that if it should ever be my privilege to become a
ghost I would enlighten the poor, benighted denizens of the earth as to
how _I did it_, and give a more definite account of what I should see,
and the transformation that would befall me, than either Benjamin
Franklin or George Washington had been able to do in the jargon that had
been set before me by Spiritualists as coming from those worthies.

"Stuff!" I have exclaimed again and again, after looking over spirit
communications and wondering why a man should become so stilted because
he had lost his avoirdupoise.

The opportunity which I boasted I would not let slip has arrived. The
public must judge of how I avail myself of this ghostly power.

Now and then I was troubled with strange misgivings about the future
life. I had a hope that man might live hereafter, but death was a solemn
fact to me, into whose mystery I did not wish too closely to pry.

"Presentiments," as the great English novelist remarks, "are strange
things." That connection with some coming event which one feels like a
shadowy hand softly touching him, is inexplicable to most men.

I remember to have felt several times in my life undefined foreshadowings
of some future which was to befall me; and just previous to my departure
from earth, as has been generally stated in the journals of the day, I
experienced a similar sensation. An awful blank seemed before me--a great
chasm into which I would soon be hurled. This undefined terror took no
positive shape.

After the death of my son I felt like one who stood upon a round ball
which rolled from under him and left him nowhere.

The sudden death of James Harper added another shock to that which I had
already felt. I did not understand then, though I have since comprehended
it, that I was like some great tree, rooted in the ground, which could
not be dragged from the earth in which it was buried until it had
received some sudden blow to loosen its hold and make its grip less
tenacious.

But in the very midst of these feelings I sought th