head.
She turned with a wild start "Where,—whereabouts?"
"A blue-eyed boy," he continued, "over your head. He cries,—he says, Mamma, mamma!"
The effect of this on the woman was unpleasant. She stared about her for a moment, and, exclaiming, "I come,—I am coming, Alfy!" fell in hysterics on the floor.
Two or three persons raised her, and aided her into an adjoining room; but the rest remained at the table, as though well accustomed to like scenes.
After this, several of the strangers were called upon to write the names of the dead with whom they wished to communicate. The names were spelled out by the agency of affirmative knocks when the correct letters were touched by the applicant, who was furnished with an alphabet card upon which he tapped the letters in turn, the medium, meanwhile, scanning his face very keenly. With some, the names were readily made out. With one, a stolid personage of disbelieving type, every attempt failed, until at last the spirits signified by knocks that he was a disturbing agency, and that while he remained all our efforts would fail. Upon this some of the company proposed that he should leave, of which invitation he took advantage with a sceptical sneer at the whole performance.
As he left us, the sergeant leaned over and whispered to the medium, who next addressed himself to me, "Sister Euphemia," he said, indicating the lady with large eyes, "will act as your medium. I am unable to do more. These things exhaust my nervous system."
"Sister Euphemia," said the doctor, "will aid us. Think, if you please, sir, of a spirit, and she will endeavor to summon it to our circle."
Upon this, a wild idea came into my head. I answered, "I am thinking as you directed me to do."
The medium sat with her arms folded, looking steadily at the centre of the table. For a few moments there was silence. Then a series of irregular knocks began. "Are you present?" said the medium.
The affirmative raps were twice given.
"I should think," said the doctor, "that there were two spirits present."
His words sent a thrill through my heart.
"Are there two?" he questioned.
A double rap.
"Yes, two," said the medium. "Will it please the spirits to make us conscious of their names in this world?"
A single knock. "No."
"Will it please them to say how they are called in the world of spirits?"
Again came the irregular raps,—3, 4, 8, 6; then a pause, and 3, 4, 8, 7.
"I think," said the authoress, "they must be numbers. Will the spirits," she said, "be good enough to aid us? Shall we use the alphabet?"
"Yes," was rapped very quickly.
"Are these numbers?"
"Yes," again.
"I will write them," she added, and, doing so, took up the card and tapped the letters. The spelling was pretty rapid, and ran thus as she tapped in turn, first the letters, and last the numbers she had already set down:—
"United States Army Medical Museum, Nos. 3486, 3487."
The medium looked up with a puzzled expression.
"Good gracious!" said I, "they are my legs! my legs!"
What followed, I ask no one to believe except those who, like myself, have communed with the beings of another sphere. Suddenly I felt a strange return of my self-consciousness. I was re-individualized, so to speak. A strange wonder filled me, and, to the amazement of every one, I arose, and, staggering a little, walked across the room on limbs invisible to them or me. It was no wonder I staggered, for, as I briefly reflected, my legs had been nine months in the strongest alcohol. At this instant all my new friends crowded around me in astonishment. Presently, however, I felt myself sinking slowly. My legs were going, and in a moment I was resting feebly on my two stumps upon the floor. It was too much. All that was left of me fainted and rolled over senseless.
I have little to add. I am now at home in the West, surrounded by every form of kindness, and every possible comfort; but, alas! I have so little surety of being myself, that I doubt my own honesty in drawing my pension, and feel absolved from gratitude to those who are kind to a being who is uncertain of being enough himself to be conscientiously responsible. It is needless to add, that I am not a happy fraction of a man; and that I am eager for the day when I shall rejoin the lost members of my corporeal family in another and a happier world.
ON TRANSLATING THE DIVINA COMMEDIA
I enter, and see thee in the gloom
Of the long aisles, O poet saturnine!
And strive to make my steps keep pace with thine.
The air is filled with some unknown perfume;
The congregation of the dead make room
For thee to pass; the votive tapers shine;
Like rooks that haunt Ravenna's groves of pine
The hovering echoes fly from tomb to tomb.
From the confessionals I hear arise
Rehearsals of forgotten tragedies,
And lamentations from the crypts below;
And then a voice celestial that begins
With the pathetic words, "Although your sins
As scarlet be," and ends with "as the snow."
THE GREAT DOCTOR
A STORY IN TWO PARTS
"Hello! hello! which way now, Mrs. Walker? It'll rain afore you git there, if you've got fur to go. Hadn't you better stop an' come in till this thunder-shower passes over?"
"Well, no, I reckon not, Mr. Bowen. I'm in a good deal of a hurry. I've been sent for over to John's." And rubbing one finger up and down the horn of her saddle, for she was on horseback, Mrs. Walker added, "Johnny's sick, Mr. Bowen, an' purty bad, I'm afeard." Then she tucked up her skirts, and, gathering up the rein, that had dropped on the neck of her horse, she inquired in a more cheerful tone, "How's all the folks,—Miss Bowen, an' Jinney, an' all?"
By this time the thunder began to growl, and the wind to whirl clouds of dust along the road.
"You'd better hitch your critter under the wood-shed, an' come in a bit. My woman'll be glad to see you, an' Jinney too,—there she is now, at the winder. I'll warrant nobody goes along the big road without her seein' 'em." Mr. Bowen had left the broad kitchen-porch from which he had hallooed to the old woman, and was now walking down the gravelled path, that, between its borders of four-o'clocks and other common flowers, led from the front door to the front gate. "We're all purty well, I'm obleeged to you," he said, as, reaching the gate, he leaned over it, and turned his cold gray eyes upon the neat legs of the horse, rather than the anxious face of the rider.
"I'm glad to hear you're well," Mrs. Walker said; "it a'most seems to me that, if I had Johnny the way he was last week, I wouldn't complain about anything. We think too much of our little hardships, Mr. Bowen,—a good deal too much!" And Mrs. Walker looked at the clouds, perhaps in the hope that their blackness would frighten the tears away from her eyes. John was her own boy,—forty years old, to be sure, but still a boy to her,—and
