he fourth man, and all the
sayings, doings, and demeanings of the same, to have been simply so many
visible and palpable outward manifestations of the inner consciousness
of the souls of the three, and more notably of that of the elderly
senior of the party, in a succession of vino-alcoholic trances.

My friend O'Kweene is, of course, welcome to such credit as may attach
to this attempted solution of mine.

THE SPIRIT'S WHISPER.

Yes, I have been haunted!--haunted so fearfully that for some little
time I thought myself insane. I was no raving maniac; I mixed in society
as heretofore, although perhaps a trifle more grave and taciturn than
usual; I pursued my daily avocations; I employed myself even on literary
work. To all appearance I was one of the sanest of the sane; and yet all
the while I considered myself the victim of such strange delusions that,
in my own mind, I fancied my senses--and one sense in particular--so far
erratic and beyond my own control that I was, in real truth, a madman.
How far I was then insane it must be for others, who hear my story, to
decide. My hallucinations have long since left me, and, at all events, I
am now as sane as I suppose most men are.

My first attack came on one afternoon when, being in a listless and an
idle mood, I had risen from my work and was amusing myself with
speculating at my window on the different personages who were passing
before me. At that time I occupied apartments in the Brompton Road.
Perhaps, there is no thoroughfare in London where the ordinary
passengers are of so varied a description or high life and low life
mingle in so perpetual a medley. South-Kensington carriages there jostle
costermongers' carts; the clerk in the public office, returning to his
suburban dwelling, brushes the laborer coming from his work on the
never-ending modern constructions in the new district; and the ladies of
some of the surrounding squares flaunt the most gigantic of _chignons_,
and the most exuberant of motley dresses, before the envying eyes of the
ragged girls with their vegetable-baskets.

There was, as usual, plenty of material for observation and conjecture
in the passengers, and their characters or destinations, from my window
on that day. Yet I was not in the right cue for the thorough enjoyment
of my favorite amusement. I was in a rather melancholy mood. Somehow or
other, I don't know why, my memory had reverted to a pretty woman whom I
had not seen for m