Experiments

“ I WISH I could hear a bat squeak,” said I, looking up from my book : “ but then I should want next to know what he was squeaking about, I suppose.”

“What hinders you?” inquired Roger.

“Why, nobody can hear him! the sound is among the inaudible ones ! ”

“ Then how do you know he does squeak ? ”

I handed my book to him. He read aloud half a page, adding, as he returned it to me: “As you say, you would be no better off for hearing the sounds, unless you could interpret them. It’s a mercy we don’t hear any more nor any greater variety of noise than we do. The quiet of home is inexpressibly comfortable, after the tumult of State Street all day long.”

Saying this, my husband slipped a little farther down the sofa, settled the cushions comfortably under his head, and in five minutes was fast asleep. As the clock struck eleven he roused himself, according to his custom, and went to bed. We breakfast early, that Roger may take the eight-o' clock train to Boston, and be at his counting-room betimes. Dining in the city, he is able to extend his business hours until the six-o’clock train out to Woodville.

The rattling, shrieking, and stifling of the half-hour ride in the cars end at the station, which is a ten minutes’ walk from his home. He finds the house behind a tall hemlock hedge, almost hidden from sight by that and the two great pine-trees. Then comes tea immediately, then a nap on the sofa through the evening; then sleeping in earnest, then waking in earnest, breakfast, and back again to Boston.

We have been married five years,— to him years of working busily and sleeping soundly. He tells me he is a perfectly happy man; but I know better.

To me these years have been filled with ennui and loneliness inexpressible.

“ Is it living ? ” I say to myself, “ or is this a dreary foretaste of a drearier eternity where there will not be even sleep to interrupt the monotony of being ? ” It was so entirely different from the life I had expected. But then, why need I have expected more ? Roger was a sensible, shrewd business man every one said, and a good man. Pleasant face, polished manners; has been all over the world, so that he is quite contented to stay at home ; and is warmly attached to his home and to me, he says. In his home he finds all he wants, — complete rest.

His fashion of happiness is, alas ! not mine. His fashion does not include the smallest sympathy or interest from his wife in business matters. His fashion is never to bring the counting-room to Woodville.

His fashion is also to keep Woodville and its cherished inmate free from the contamination of city gossip and bad scandal. He loves to feel that behind the hemlock hedge are purity, ease, and happiness. Gladly would I have tried, in those first months of our married life, to comprehend the intricacies of brokerage and percentago that so our pursuits and interests might have been drawn a little nearer together. I used sometimes to inquire who had failed, especially in what Roger called commercial crises, and often asked Roger if it had been a good day with him, and if he had made good bargains ? But I soon learned that a woman of business was my husband’s aversion, almost as much so as one of learning. So I fell back on embroidery, reading, and finally on a good many other odd things.

Was Roger thoughtless of his wife’s happiness ? Probably not more so than ninety-nine out of a hundred husbands. He knew that I had, strictly speaking, no society at Woodville, but then he knew also that I had no taste for the somewhat mixed and uncultivated collection of people that inevitably settle about a railway station and in time make into a town. Besides that, the shyness of youth still clung to me, unaffected by the social attrition of city life ; and of intimates I had literally none, having no interest in the kitchen department, nor liking much even the cat or dog. In winter I had the fire for company ; in the summer walks by myself, unbotanical and ungeological.

There was all the world for me, to be sure, as well as for the water wagtail bold ; what of that, so long as I did not lay hold on it? Roger “supposed women enjoyed pottering about their music and dresses, plants and things.” So our two lives went on like parallels, without touching.

No wonder I became morbid, restless, and most uncomfortable. Many women, situated as I was, die by inches, and say they die gladly. People around them call it religious feeling, but that is a mistake, I know. They die for want of interest in any person or thing. In all the Inquisitorial torments, none so cunning has been ever devised as “ the day before one, and no way to spend it.” The moments come to be like those fatal drops of water that falling, one after another, make the tortured victim wish for death, to escape them.

Somebody said he was ready to die, being so weary of putting on his stockings and shoes every morning. I can easily believe it.

When such women die, — such “ hothouse ” women, as they might well be called, — their husbands only are sorry. To their husbands they have been something. What is it ? Solace, — perhaps. Rest, home, somebody who will bathe the tired brows with camphor or cologne-water, that so they may the more readily go to sleep, and the more readily flee away in the morning.

If any one asks why with sufficient means a woman like this did not connect herself vitally with the world about her, with society, of which there is always enough and of good enough quality somewhere, I can only say, I did not know how to do it, and nobody told me. I had not so much animal spirits and bodily health as a redundancy of mental calibre and nervous susceptibility. Placed in a city, or even in a large country connection, inducements to activity and healthy social excitement would have oiled the wheels of life. Most people have the advantage of family ties, and keep their minds lively and interested with daily events, however trifling. But I had no brothers, sisters, or children. Anybody who has lived, even for one year, the sort of life I had for five, may see why I became as weary of it as Job was of his life, and that day and night my pillow was wet with my tears. Pleartily I agreed with him, in the question, “ Can that which is unsavory be eaten without salt ? or is there any taste in the white of an egg ? ”

It may be thought that, in my luxurious home, I had certainly no right to complain. Yet did those rose-leaves underneath fret and exasperate me continually with their doubling and crumpling.

I had not even kitchen émeutes with which to vary my days, for Sarah Foster had lived always with Roger’s mother, and now lived always with me. Barker took care of the garden and stable, and drove me when I wanted to go. But in five years one gets the drives all by heart. Once I had happened to say I was lonely, and Roger asked me, “ Why not have a companion ? ”

Everybody knows that a companion is the very last thing to be suited in. I could have bitten my tongue for saying anything about it. I could not tell Roger, what most of all I felt, that he was no companion for me ; that if I could only look forward during the day to a drive with him after tea, through the pleasant lanes, he choosing devious pathways and coming out on unexpected roads ; nay, if he would only sometimes chat with me at evening, or bring home to my seclusion the sense of fresh life, of movement and bustle that filled his own days, and so break up the dreary tranquillity of Woodville, I should want no better company.

But this I could not say to the kindhearted fellow, who would not understand me, and could not make himself over, even to please me.

I said I fell back on several odd things. Among them was the study of spiritualism, or spiritism as some people call it. I did not care for or half believe the stories circulated and printed as evidences of the supernatural communications laid claim to by the Spiritualists. But neither did the decisions of scientific observers weigh much with me. That element of faith, which science of course derides, was one which the workers in this new field frankly claimed as necessary to success ; and they had a right to insist that the force or agency by which they wrought their wonders should not be weakened, or negatived, as they called it, by the personalities of the incredulous. It seemed to me fair that they should insist on the conditions most favorable to the success of their own experiments ; that observers should be passive, at least, and not so anxious only to prove the experiments worthless.

In a large company it was difficult, if not impossible, to preserve the favorable mental conditions. I determined, therefore, to make my own experiments in solitude, with caution and candor. I thought I could keep my mind in a state of passive expectancy, that some unknown force might act in a new way. That was faith enough, and not too much. Supposing a chair or table to go across the room with the lightest possible touch from my finger, I should be certain that it went by something besides a mechanical force. Supposing a pencil wrote down a hitherto unknown fact, or a voice distinctly to propound an entirely new proposition, or perhaps a prophecy, I should be quite certain that a force foreign to, and outside of, my own mind was acting there, however it might have been introduced.

I am sorry to say that neither chair nor table ever moved so much as half an inch. I think if there had been four hands instead of two, it would have stirred, with the influence of the “dominant idea,” as the philosophers call it, and possibly, after once going, it might have formed a habit of moving itself, or we might have got one of moving it. But I did not dare to say a word to Roger about my experiments, lest he should forbid my touching tables at all. He had said once, that it was enough to drive a person crazy.

As tables would not move, I tried spirit-writing. I sat hours at a time (I had hours enough !) with paper and pencil before me, until my muscles began to twitch from the effect of a constrained position. Between making marks with a pencil all ready pointed to the paper, and making intelligent signs, the transition was so gradual as to be imperceptible. The passivity which I had determined on became, from the nature of mind, quite impossible. I could not stop thinking for more than a quarter of a minute, do my best. Ideas, disconnected and fragmentary, but still my own, shaped themselves from the mere force of habit, against my will, into sentences ; and my determination not to think at all, but to vacate the premises as it were, ready for any foreign occupant, ended in a collection of vagaries. I could not surrender a faculty, do what I would, and I could not stop the working of my own machine. What stopped my experiment at last was sheer fright. My arms became so affected by a habit, as I may call it, of nervous excitement, that I came to have little or no control over their muscles. I knew well enough that “ a medium ” would call me in a hopeful condition. But I intended to be fair and honest with myself, and to take nobody’s opinion of my own sensations. This nervous derangement in my arms increased daily, though I never perceived it, except when sitting at the table, waiting for wonders ; but when, one day, I felt a corresponding spasmodic action in my feet, I began to see that it could have nothing to do with spirit-writing. A dreadful apprehension that I should keep on dancing forever, like Hans Andersen’s naughty child with the red shoes, seized me, and, dropping pencil and paper like a hot coal, I pushed back my experiments finally into the corner. It was not a fair trial, but I felt myself too excitable to be a fair judge, and nobody could judge for me. Perhaps it was a morbid action of the auditory nerve which, during these prolonged sittings, called my name repeatedly and distinctly. I think it was. But it was something of this sort that made me believe in the possibility, under high nervous excitement, of hearing what are generally called inaudible sounds. There are well-authenticated instances of hearing at preternatural distances. This would not be anything more wonderful.

In this book about sounds (I don’t know whose it was, — Tyndal’s perhaps, — I forget the author), he says there are many sounds, inaudible to the human ear, which probably convey impressions from one animal to another; and he cites the mysterious workings of bees in a hive, where the insects evidently act from knowledge conveyed through sounds, although they are entirely inaudible to the observer. The human ear, he thought, was susceptible to only a certain amount of vibrations. When the sound was above or below a given scale, it could not be distinguished. Examples were cited of sounds on the piano, more or less shrill, which could not be heard ; and individuals also were said to differ materially in susceptibility to particular sounds.

Making all allowance, however, for delicate organizations, and for trained senses like those of the savage, who hears and defines sounds inaudible to a civilized ear, there seemed no doubt of the existence of humanly inaudible sounds.

Reading this book attentively by a good coal-fire in the library, with literally nothing to break the utter quietness of the time, and no realities to disturb the wildest fancies, I fell to considering the practicability, under favorable circumstances, of entering this forbidden world of knowledge. I always thought Eve showed herself much brighter than Adam in her search after knowledge, and could perfectly understand, as can any scholar in the district school, the want of charm about permitted branches.

It seemed probable enough that a world of actors and talkers might be in the spaces about us, imperceptible and inaudible to us only from the coarseness of our senses. We look at the bee-hive and ant-hill, and we behold method and purpose ; therefore we believe in some directing sounds in that interesting multitude. But even if one could hear what the bees say, one would soon tire of it, for what can it all amount to but talk about housekeeping, work, and honey? Now, in the spaces immediately above and around us, perhaps even in this very room, there may be high, serene thoughts, even celestial articulations, if one had only ears fine enough to hear them. Probably if such a state of the senses could exist, it would be only under a morbid condition of the whole nervous system. Still, if such a condition could be superinduced at will, what a luxury it would be ! That it is possible for it to exist there can be no doubt. Setting aside all the claims of spiritism, natural somnambulists say and do marvellous things, — as marvellous as hearing inaudible sounds. In that “ other state ” into which they enter they develop powers unknown in this ; they sing, declaim, walk fearlessly in dangerous places, rise in the night and write sermons, or solve mathematical problems. Darkness and light are indifferent to them ; they look unwinking at the blaze of a candle or see with shut lids. Such persons are in an abnormal state, we say ; but observers cannot account for the possession of these faculties, unowned and unwished for in a natural state.

The more I thought about this matter, the more curious I became to peep into that undiscovered world which touched me at every point, yet was millions of miles away from my perceptions. It seemed possible that the senses might be so refined, so clarified, as easily to thrill to a higher scale of harmonies than had ever yet touched mortal ear. There was that harp of many strings, which anatomists say is in a cavity behind the tympanum, the number and perfectness of the strings determining probably the susceptibility and correctness of the musical ear. There is nearly as much difference between a highly trained sense of harmony in one person and the musical obtuseness of another as between hearing and deafness. Training may do much, of course not all. The dying often say they hear beautiful music. Those who stand about the bed hear nothing. It takes the half-transfigured sense to hear the celestial strain.

These considerations determined me to make the experiment of sharpening my senses through the methods of the ancient eremites ; only as I did not want to see visions or dream dreams, but to see and hear the real sights and sounds about me, I preferred to refrain even from the “ scrip with herbs and fruits supplied.” I became impatient to enter on my negative action, to polish the mirror in which I longed to see the reflection, and to gaze with cleared eyes " into the heart of things.”

It is surprising to see how difficult it is to do anything out of the beaten track. Innumerable obstacles shoot up in your way. It would seem an easy enough thing to do, to leave off eating for forty-eight hours if one desired it; but in this slight divergence from ordinary habits I was at once met with difficulties. The first meal I left untouched called forth distressful expostulations from Roger, and threats of the doctor at once. Though I fell back on a headache, which needs neither dinner nor doctor, I could not very long make that excuse. It would do only for twelve hours. How to procure a refined organization on Sarah Foster’s roast ducks and mince-pies it was not easy to see. The avoidance of her dainties, however, seemed even more difficult than their acceptance.

By the best fortune, a man came the very next evening and roused Roger from his nap to get him to go to New York for one and probably two days. Two days ! In that wonderful space of time how much might be done ! how much should be done ! I could hardly look a little sorry to have Roger go, so very glad I was to have him gone for forty-eight hours.

Looking back, it seems many years ago that I made this experiment about sounds. I cannot be sorry, on the whole, though it was a strange, wild thing for me to do, under the circumstances. But it was only, yes, only six months ago, and now it is the very last of summer. I must go back to the time when I gave Roger the book to read about “inaudible sounds,” and the February morning when Roger went away, and when I excused myself from taking an early breakfast with him, on the plea of that convenient and still lingering headache.

As soon as I heard the dying shriek of the railway whistle, I began with my preparations. I went to the winecellar, and brought therefrom two bottles of champagne. I met Sarah, who looked surprised, but made no remark. I could not explain to her that I did not intend a carouse in my husband’s absence, for in fact I did intend and expect to drink every drop of it. In the first place, it was a diet fit for angels, if one must have food ; and next, I remembered to have heard lately of several cases in which physicians had kept their patients alive on it for days, when they were incapable of receiving any other sustenance. For every reason it seemed the fittest support for my prospective condition. I felt it but too probable that the entire absence of ducks and mince-pie might end in my being more faint in sensation than vivid in perception. The first thing, however, was to obscure Sarah’s sharpsightedness ; and here I confess to entire unscrupulousness. But moralists differ about the degrees of deception in which we are warranted to indulge. Some say we have a right to make a false reply to an impertinent question. I have no excuse to make for myself, unless it may be the necessity of the case. She was very affectionate, very worrying, and very curious.

Now there came down a good, long, soft, steady snow-storm. Not that this curtain was needed to protect me from intrusion, for I had neither neighbors nor friends. I began already to feel weak and tremulous, for I had only trifled with my tea the night before, had not breakfasted, and now it was three o’clock. Sarah brought me in two slices of cold mutton, as I had desired her to do, and the same of dry toast. As soon as she went out I opened the window and threw the mutton out as far as possible. It went in a curve, for I never could throw straight, and lodged by the garden pump. “ Never mind,” I thought, “the snow will soon cover it.”

Then I began to meditate again, and to feel very weak, and, if the truth must be told, rather hungry.

That tiresome Sarah again, for the tray. “ I do wish you’d let me make you some herb tea ! ”

“Nonsense, Sarah! I shall be well to-morrow.”

“ But you look so pale ! ”

“ Sarah, if you will keep Barker from slamming the doors, I shall do.”

Then she went out, and I began again on existences and agencies ; not thinking connectedly, but only in a rambling way, how delightful life might come to be, if I could hear at will all the sounds of nature and interpret them intelligently. Then I should have the singing stars in earnest, and the talking brooks, and the laughing water ! Then I should hear what the poplar whispers among the highest branches, and what the south - wind means when it whistles so sadly.

Sarah again, and this time with a clouded brow. “ Was n’t that are mutton good, ma’am ? ”

“ Excellent. Sarah ; uncommonly tender and nice.”

“ Why could n’t you eat it then ? ”

“ Eat it ? why, what can you mean ? I ate it, every morsel, and very good it was.”

As my intention was to deceive Sarah and not myself, I did not see why I should utter a verbal truth to express a spiritual lie, which many people are very conscientious about doing. But I proved too much, for Sarah said, as if she thought I had taken leave of my senses: “Wal, ma’am, Cæsar’s come into the house, now, with them are two slices of mutton I cut off for you with my own hands ! I could swear to the jag on one of ’em, if I was to be called up. I declare, I believe we ’re all bewitched ! ”

“ I guess you are, Sarah,” said I, carelessly; “now just see that the house is quiet, and I will try to get some sleep for my headache.”

“ Do, pray ! you look as white as a sheet, and your eyes as big as saucers.”

At last she -went slowly away, looking back repeatedly, till I was half frantic with vexation. I arranged a plan by which I could dispose of my next day’s viands without suspicion, by the aid of the china-closet sink and a large tin luncheon-box ; and, very faint and weary, I went to my bed and a disturbed sleep.

The next day I carried my plans into execution, and, affecting to be nearly recovered, desired that I might not be interrupted in my writing, which “was a vital matter to have finished,” I told Sarah. Very unnecessarily stated, also, for I forgot to put writing-materials in juxtaposition, so that when she brought my dinner into the library, as I directed, no appearance of writing was to be seen. Only myself, lying on the sofa.

“You hain’t wrote, after all; you must be sick.”

“ Not sick, only stupid. You can come in in a few minutes.” Then she went out, and I stored away the things in the luncheon-box as before.

Sitting by the fire and looking into it, I had the following dream, as I suppose. In thinking of it, I cannot realize that it was one.

I dreamed that I was sitting before the fire in the library chair, just as I really was. This library is just what one should be, not too large, and with a bay-window, over which falls a dark crimson curtain. A table and three easy-chairs, with Roger’s couch, complete the furniture, with the exception of some good engravings on the walls, and a cast of the Venus of Milo in the west corner. I loved to look at this beautiful statue, which had a mirror behind it, and I was never tired of its variety of noble expression. In my dream I rose from my chair to look at its reflection in the glass. After admiring as usual the lovely turn of the neck, I raised my eyes, and above it saw, not my own features, but those of a stranger; not two faces, but only one ; and that one of a dark-complexioned girl, with black, floating hair and the eyes of an Indian savage. These eyes glittered with a metallic lustre and with unspeakable hatred. Heavens ! can I be transformed ? and into this awful-looking girl ? My own eyes and hair are light brown, but where, then, are they ? This stranger must have intruded herself into the room, and got between me and my own reflection somehow. Surprised and offended, I turned around to rebuke her, supposing it might be one of the gypsy gang which I knew had settled near the station; but on looking behind me I saw nothing whatever. In the mirror the figure still stood, fronting me defiantly and with disdainful curves of the red mouth. All at once the unnaturalness, the horror of it, struck me. Instead of being paralyzed by this horror, I felt that I had a power within me of dismissing the figure. It must, I was sure, be a mere vagary of the brain, induced by my long tast. It depended on myself, of course, whether it should stay or not. Thus reasoning, I turned to the mirror and signified by a gesture my wish that the hateful shadow should depart. It did not move, but seemed very, very near me, and I saw, what I had not before perceived, that there was a frightful deformity on one cheek.

Now it occurred to me for the first time that there might be ugly sights, as well as sounds, of which the healthy mortal senses take no cognizance, and from which their obtuseness is a merciful protection. Possibly something in the quicksilver at the back of the glass might give apparent body to the form there, while on the air of the room there would be no impression. I made repeated attempts to reconcile this discrepancy, as I glanced sharply about the room, taking in the fire, the furniture, the pictures, and every object, which, looking as usual, showed that this figure was probably only an hallucination. Whether it was that, or a phantasm whose existence could be known only in a morbid condition of the eyes, it was of no use to reason any longer about it, but to dismiss it with a resolute firmness that should admit no evasion or trifling. It would be well to signify also that the dismissal was final and permanent.

As I turned towards the mirror the Indian met my look with a sneer so familiar and derisive, that it was clear she had read my thoughts and despised my plans. I determined to banish her with one word. But, alas ! this one word I could not utter, nor could I move any more than if I had been dead. Then I saw, in its full horror, into what an unknown realm of existences I had entered, only to become the powerless sport of its detestable occupants. Then I saw why the air is a merciful veil over these loathsome objects, as the blue and silver of the sea curtains the formless monsters below. Terrified by my subjection, and possibly induced by the bestial contortions of the Indian face, I howled at it as my dog Cæsar would have done. It was the only power of utterance or movement left to me, and the figure sprang at me with a responsive howl a thousand times more terrible than my own. Then came a struggle for life and breath. It might have been moments, though it seemed hours, before my good Sarah Foster got me well shaken up into life and reality. She had been “ so worried,” she said. She had come softly to the door to see if I was really asleep. O, what would she have thought to see that terrible, that hideous phantom ?

As soon as I could get rid of my kind tormentor, I walked straight to the mirror and looked coolly and derisively into it. There was myself, only myself. A great comfort it was. Recovered from my tremor, I drank my first glass of wine, which soothed and sustained me. What a spiritual sort of diet champagne was ! I began to wonder in what form the invisible and inaudible world could manifest itself, and whether the perception would remain after being once acquired. It seemed very doubtful. I might live on fruits and vegetables, perhaps, for weeks, and perhaps Roger would n’t notice. I think I expected to obtain a sort of key or open sesame to the new realm, by which I could visit it occasionally.

My dream troubled me somewhat, as the night shadows thickened, and made me less hopeful. It seemed a warning vision sent to check my wanderings. I said to myself: “ Perhaps God does not choose us to see the evil, which yet for reasons of his own he permits. He has certainly provided us witn protective antipathies against some, and hidden from our sight much more. How could we rejoice in the warm sunshine and tropical fragrance of the earth, if we were continually cognizant of the millions of serpents and scorpions that bask also in its pleasant heat? Better to be content with the sights that mortal eyes take in, and the quiet of daily life, than to ask for a resounding roar from oceans of insects and animals that will only bewilder and fatigue.”

That sounded sensible, but was by no means convincing. Roger would be back by to-morrow morning, and then adieu to opportunity. I had fasted forty-eight hours, and felt myself clearheaded and capable, if only the revelation would come. Ringing for that inconvenient Sarah, I told her I would not have supper, that the headache still continued, and that abstinence and repose would be the best cure. Sarah shook her unbelieving head, but was only eloquently silent; while I meditated on the curious way in which people are inevitably related and entangled, so that independent action was almost impossible. All the falsehoods I had spoken and acted had been useless, for Sarah evidently suspected me of deception, if not a softening of the brain. What we call firmness sustained me, however, and I went to bed from mere inability to sit up.

After my mock breakfast I went back to the library, where I somehow felt certain that a revelation would take place in the course of the day. There I could command seclusion and perfect quiet. It had been a very painful night to me. Though no supernatural revealings had come, nor horrible visions, yet I heard with painful distinctness the common sounds about the house, and the shutting of the barn door forty rods away. But, in fact, Sarah, in her great desire to keep the house quiet, left me nothing to complain of. Only the roaring of the wind in the chimney, and the starting of the nails, which every now and then sounded like pistol-shots, kept me alert and wakeful. I swallowed eagerly the champagne, which I was glad I had allowed myself, and wondered why it was that Sarah’s viands were no longer tempting to me. Starving people, it is said, are tormented with visions of long tables groaning under every sort of luxury. I had only an eager thirst, without the smallest appetite for food ; and this thirst I was resolved to appease only at regular intervals. Let the brain have its vividest action, its keenest perception ; no clouding nor bewildering by any accident.

The storm had passed on, leaving three feet of snow. The earth, as far as I could see, seemed asleep under a white blanket ; only the hiding hemlock hedge had a dark bar of green at its foot. Every twig on the pine-trees was covered with rime and sparkled in the sun like fairy jewelry. The baywindow was half covered with thick frost.

I sat down close by it, looking curiously at the building that was formed on the pane next to me. It appeared very much like that engraving of the Cologne Cathedral over the mantelpiece ; the pinnacles pointed and fretted like that, and the sparkle of the sun tinting them with rainbow beauty. Was there any possibility of forms being reproduced in that way by the reflection of light from the originals ? The window seemed to act like a mirror. Presently it all faded, and I was glad to go back to the fire. The chair in which I sat was embroidered by my own hands ; so was the brioche ; so was the cricket; so was Roger’s couch. Birds, beasts, flowers, and fishes, what a menagerie of needlework ! how many hours of weariness had I filled with this barefaced deception called industry ! Roger called me ingenious and “so industrious.” They all looked at me,—these animals, — with the queer eyes I had created for them, and seemed to say they wished themselves under a plain green covering, just as I had so often wished in my weariness and despair for myself.

On the window-pane there were new scenes now. Why should that be ? I questioned, since the air of the room is not changed ; with the same temperature, it is strange that the landscapes seem coming and going like dissolving views, unless — unless — they are in some way the reflection and imprint of shapes existent though unseen in the atmosphere immediately connected with them. There was a curious convertibility of sight and sound in the room. The forms on the pane faded and filled again, with a sort of pulsating light, like the auroral light; but these pulsations, as I watched them, corresponded accurately with the beats of the clock, and, likewise strangely enough, with the steady throbs of my own heart. I continued to look steadily at these pictures, and to speculate on their causes and changes, until I was quite certain that the basis of this crystallized reflection must be either in the room or else just outside. If in the room, it must be reflections from the projected fancies of unseen beings.

Now it was a forest; now a stream, fringed by sorrowful alders ; oftenest a shadow of stately architecture, like those pinnacles of beauty and supernal aspiration on the wall. I tried to detect the mysterious law of form which lay under all this shifting ; remembering, meanwhile, how the stalactites in that cave in Virginia extended their crystals into floral shapes and even into folds of drapery ; remembering the “curtain-room,” where the rich festoonings of marble are caught up and fastened with stone lilies, so wondrously like the sculptor’s work that one would say, Nature had reversed her own order and copied art, instead of being its original.

Presently I discerned the law, or thought I did. The vaporous particles, in congealing, crystallized in hexagons, though of such infinite variety of size that they showed to the eye something like the finish of fine Roman mosaic ; while, by the continuous pressure of the surfaces, the sharp angles were softened into curves. If one looked carefully, it was easy to discern the six-petalled flower in the wreath, or the six-sided pillar in the temple. Under all the figures, constantly changing as they were, there seemed always the genius of beauty and luxurious abandonment. They melted off, reformed, clustered in a thousand graceful shapes, or indicated in silver lines the distant landscape. These were not reflections from my mind, certainly.

The short winter day wore on without incident of any sort. I wrought out my daily work of trying to delude Sarah Foster, and afterwards watched constantly the creations on the window. How long they lasted I don’t know, nor whether the twilight began to fade into evening. The hues and shifting lines were clearly visible under the fire-glow, but I was quite certain that I need not be indebted to daylight nor any light for the revelations on the window-pane. If they were to come, they would come.

When the voice called “ Samuel ! ” in the Hebrew story, he answered, “ Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth ! ” This was in my mind, while I sat quietly looking and waiting for what might be revealed. Nothing I could do would hasten it, but I knew that my vision had already become so sharpened, that I should be able to see its character.

I swallowed the last glass of my two bottles of champagne ; not too much sustenance for over seventy hours.

It looks like nothing I ever saw,— waterfalls over alpine peaks; forests which stretch away for miles beyond the silvery pillars in the front: altogether a study of perhaps a particular character of scenery, but such as might be in fairyland or dreamland. It wants the real, live look of even a copy from a real landscape. But what a waste of creative power! All this tracery, so wondrously fine, so elaborately finished, so graceful, so fantastic, — if I heap a little coal on the fire all this fairy beauty is transmuted or lost. Is it real at all ?

What infinitude of energy there must be in the Creator, when the silent night works all these transcendent results ! As I thought this with a swelling heart (for the contemplation of nature always makes one devout, I think), a strange thing happened to me, — something I did not expect, and was not at all thinking of. I have said that Roger and I were childless ; but this was a subject on which we never spoke to each other. I knew by something I had once heard him say, how strongly he desired children, but he never intimated so much to me, nor would allow that we were not perfectly happy as we were. I have said before, how far from happy I was. Fathers and mothers, who perhaps forget to be grateful for their blessings, even because of their profusion, cannot guess at the long drought of natural sympathies, the parching thirst with which the childless look on family groups.

This is what came to me. The view on the pane, — for the picture was confined to one pane, and the mullion gave it quite the effect of a frame,—this view, which was a forest, a garden of flowers, or a pillared sanctuary, as the lines melted and formed anew, became suddenly alive with a thousand children. These shapes bounded, sported, swam, dived, flew, climbed, more like birds than anything, only they were not winged nor angelic, but only lovable, lovely children. Their forms were quite transparent; for as one of them came near the front, to the foot-lights, as it were, I distinctly traced the outlines of others through his figure. All of them seemed quite independent of gravity, bounding and shooting in all directions, without effort and with ineffable grace. The boy in front seemed to be drawn unwillingly toward me, and I felt sure that a power went from my eager eyes which he could not resist, for he advanced slowly, like a magnetized person, until his plump little feet rested on the line next the windowsash. His blue eyes looked full into mine, and his rose-bud mouth dimpled out these words distinctly, but, oddly enough, like the rhythmic beats of the clock on the mantel-piece.

“ We are souls ! ” he said, in a pure, metallic tone, the quality of which I recall more vividly than even his words. " Do not think we shall be lost or melted away when the frost-work that makes us visible to you is gone. We are wills, created by the Supreme Will, which orders and governs all. Whenever that Will shall connect us with your human vital forces, we shall begin our earth life and take on ourselves loves, cares, and sorrows. Till then we live in all natural forces, and revel in every form of elemental beauty. Though we are not yet born into your world, you may see us and such as we are in every childish face you meet, though in filthy gutters, though in slimy pools — ”

The clock rung out the hour, the baby eyes ceased to look at me, the form faded off among others and floated into distant cloud-shapes. I looked vainly for it to come back, and turned, weeping, to the room of silence and vacuity.

I had listened to the inaudible sounds at last; and this was what they told me, filling me with tenfold sadness. But one thing I was sure of, — I breathed a purer ether than that of earth ; I had discoursed with pure intelligences. My rarefied, clarified senses at last had illuminated the invisible. All the mystery of life will be revealed to me at last ! plant-life, star-life, and the airworld about us, all will henceforth be intelligently related to me! all the silences will be filled with melody, every grass-blade have a meaning beyond form and color, every leaf whisper its true-love stories, and all existences above, around, or below me give me a keen delight in their contemplation. Time passed rapidly, until, confused with the infinitude of my coming enjoyments, I felt their multitudinous pressure, like the rushing sound of the night-winds. It was dreadfully full, after all, this space, where the whole of life was crowded so ! where past, present, and future would be always sparkling, clambering, floating, like those wondrous forms just now! It was only confusing to think about it; and closing the shutter, I sat once more before the window-pane, which now stood dark and unrevealing. I hushed every sense of the outward, gazing hungrily and vainly for the blue-eyed baby that had stood there so lately and talked to me. Then it grew darker and darker, and I knew something more was forming for me.

Some rafters crossed over the top of the pane. The perspective, at first dim, was soon clearly apparent, and I found myself looking into a long attic room lighted at the remote end by a small skylight. A young girl under the light sat on a soap-box and leaned against a scantily covered cot-bed, with a slate in her lap, on which she was casting up sums. She looked inexpressibly weary, and every minute pressed her forehead as if her head ached. Another box was in the room, holding a few garments and books. On a nail by the window hung a bonnet and veil, and the girl herself wrapped a woollen plaid shawl about her closely, and shivered, as I could see, even at that distance.

I remembered the face at once. She was the daughter of a townswoman of mine, Mildred Fay, who at sixteen had married Richard Ream, on a three days’ acquaintance, because he was a handsome fellow, who professed to love her distractedly. She had an idea that no man can be known much before marriage. A long acquaintance served no purpose, she said. Men would always conceal their faults before marriage. She would take her chance. Three sorrowful years brought her to her life’s end. She was very glad to go from her worthless and regardless husband, and to leave little Marion to the care of her aunt. I had heard about this, and that the aunt had died, leaving all her property to Marion Ream. The all could not be much, judging by what I saw now. She was trying to keep a school ; but she had only two scholars. I don’t know how I knew this ; I must have heard it somewhere. She looked very cold, though she had two red spots on her cheeks, as handsome Mildred Fay had. Her pocket-book of shabby leather lay on the floor; so did an old leather card-case.

I remembered my early companion and schoolmate, and saw her living likeness in the plain, poor girl before me. In fact, I had once or twice met her somewhere, and once asked her to call on me. When she did come she had that identical old card-case in her hand. She was very proud looking, very sensitive, perhaps ; and when I asked her what her plans were for the future, answered me coldly that she was teaching school. When she went away I asked her to repeat her visit, but she said, with great curtness, that she had no time for visiting; and that was really the last I had seen of her. That was six weeks ago.

A bright shaft of light showed the bareness and utter desolation within the attic. The girl looked up from her figures on the slate, as if she saw me gazing at her. As if she saw me, she fixed those angry, hollow eyes on mine, and through the moving lips I heard her say distinctly : “ You selfish, selfindulgent, hard-hearted woman ! I hope you may live to know not how or where you are to get the next crust like this ! ”

Then she turned her back to me, and I heard her white teeth crunching at the hard bread in her lap. I remembered, then, that Mildred had always hoped that in her prosperous old schoolmate and friend her orphaned daughter might find protection and sympathy. I wondered how I had forgotten it. The old aunt had written it to me once, and in my answer I had enclosed a tendollar bill. After that I had heard nothing more, until she came to see me.

While I recalled these facts, with a little shudder at the maledictory character of the girl’s face, the face itself was gone, and the soap-box. The rafters melted into a roof and the front of a block of four-story houses. The house nearest me had evidently been once quite a palatial residence, for the flight of granite steps was surmounted by two great granite lions, and the street itself was broad and lined with fine old trees. I perceived that I was looking at a house in a once fashionable quarter of the city, but now occupied only by a foreign and poor population. The windows of all the houses were so closely filled with heads, there was such a swarming multitude of every age, that it did not surprise me to hear mingled murmurs of vulgar quarrelling and profanity. Every room was as crowded as a bee-hive. In the cellar of the first house was a sick family. The father had been lying in the corner on straw and rags for the last two weeks, and the children, who were more or less ailing, fretted and teased the draggled and exhausted mother. The air here was stifling and the odors unspeakable. That strange hallucination which we all have at times, that the scene before us is not new, but has been experienced before, came over me now, as I looked at this suffering group. Before I spoke to the woman, I knew what her answer would be. I said : “ Why don't you open a window, and let in a breath of fresh air? Such an atmosphere as this is enough, of itself, to keep you sick.”

“ O, an’ indade, mem! it 'll do for them that can buy coals and them fifteen dollars a ton, to open their windys, mem ! Sure, it’s hard enough to kape warm wid the ould stove here, let alone openin’ dures and windys ! ”

“There is sense in that,” said I to myself.

“ If any leedy now would give us some coal,” muttered the woman, as she caught up one child after another, trying to hush their wailings, “ if they ’d send us some coal instead of expariencin’ about the air, it would be a blessin’, God save us ! ”

It began to rain, and the sleet sounded sharp on the window-pane, — my window-pane, I mean. Through it I could see the woman diligently stuffing the holes and cracks about the windows and broken floor, with aprons and rags. There were many cracks, and, I should say, many clothes also. Improvidence, untidiness, and wretchedness every way. What use was it to help such people to-day, when to-morrow would find them just as helpless, shiftless, and uncomfortable ?

A woman crossed the street at this moment, and in looking at her I lost sight of the family in the cellar. For these scenes were like the motes in one’s eye, — you cannot fix them, only follow them ; and here it was necessary for me to follow closely, or how could I see ? So many varieties of human experience crowded before me, that I was obliged to select and confine the vision somewhat. It was discouragingly indefinite too, for how could I know whether what I saw was the past or the present ; whether, indeed, it might not be something in the future, where the curtain of fate is drawn up a little way, for our instruction or our faith ; or whether it were a clairvoyance on my part, which might hereafter possess me, even against my will, like Zschokke’s extra faculty or insight ? He saw the past lives of people in their faces, disagreeable and painful to both parties as it might be. He could not get rid of his clairvoyance.

The woman I saw was an activestepping little person, with brown hair and cordial gray eyes, with pleasant features, and what would be called a patient and persistent rather than an energetic expression in them. As I looked, I felt a dim recognition of the face. Where could I have seen her ? I struggled vainly to recall where.

Dressed in a waterproof suit, with stout boots, a felt bonnet, and holding a large umbrella, she walked steadily and quickly up the street. At a house three or four doors beyond the one I had been looking at she stopped, let herself in with a latch-key, and went up stairs.

With an effort of my will, like pulling the slide on a stereoscope to bring the picture closer to the eye, I was able to discern, even through the walls of this large house, the slight figure passing from room to room, without knocking, and seeming to be quite at home; stopping now here, now there; talking with first one, then another; and always keenly observing everything about her; finally, going out of the house with eight children from six to twelve years old, all tidily dressed with cloaks and hoods, and each with a basket on her arm.

As they slid away out of sight, I had a clearer view of the interior of the house, which I could not get before, being, perhaps, somewhat confused with too numerous impressions. The house looked fully inhabited, but was quiet and in good order; the floors were clean, and on some of the walls were gayly-colored pictures, mostly of a religious sort. The whole house, of four stories, contained eight families. No one lived in the cellar, which had eight partitions for fuel and stores, each room locked and numbered for the family to which it belonged. In the first house I looked at, I counted seventy-two persons. This house had forty in it, including sixteen babies.

I marvelled much what the little woman had to do with it all. Listening attentively, I heard several women grumbling about the strict way in which they were kept to their agreements of cleanliness, order, and quiet; and also at the unavoidable punctuality with which they were held to their rent-payments. They agreed she was a good landlady, and wonderful about drainage and air, but thought her very sharp very particular, — indeed, decidedly over-particular. They would prefer throwing slops out of window. They wished she would n’t concern herself so immediately with their daily affairs, or at least would let them know what days she was coming. They wished she would n’t insist on the children’s going to school, and a dozen things more they objected to, being in all equally stupid and ungrateful.

While I was thinking how little sense poor people have, and that, in this woman’s place, I should no longer trouble myself for such a thankless, unreasonable set, the house filed off to the left, and I saw the little figure, followed by the eight children, enter a handsome house facing the Common. The rain had stopped some time before.

The sight of a large, cheerful-looking breakfast-room, with a bright wood-fire and Turkey carpet, had, I confess, a most soothing effect on my nerves. I was aware of a sort of pleasant savor, in place of the noisome atmosphere with which I had lately been familiar. I do think I have a natural distaste for the wretchedness, filth, and squalor that always seem to come in the train of poverty. To odors, particularly, I have always been extremely sensitive, and the unrefined, coarse, unpicturesque aspect of poverty in our own country had always something so repulsive and distasteful to me, that I was quite certain my mission was never among poor people here. Perhaps it is different in foreign countries. In fact, I could not endure to go near our poor. We shall be on an equality in heaven, they say ; but there the poor will be out of their bodies, which will make a difference.

The little woman led the children up the broad staircase, and past a niche where the bronze statue of Achilles held a gas-burner. She stopped to tell them about Achilles, which I thought quite unnecessary, and afterward explained the method of bronze-casting, which was tiresome, as I had lately read about it. Then she took them through a wide upper passage to a back sitting-room, where the sun shone in at the windows. A work-table and cutting-board, a book-case and writingdesk, with slates and pencils, and several chairs, were the only furniture. It seemed devoted to these children, who took off their wrappings and presently removed from their covered baskets each one a garment, on which they diligently sewed. Leaving the children at their silent employment, I looked after the little woman, who had gone into the front chamber, and was making rather an elaborate toilet. Her streetwear was put away, and after she had taken a bath, and reappeared with fresh, costly raiment on, I should not have known her as the same person who passed swiftly up South Street, under the wet umbrella. Having inspected the children’s work, she read aloud while they sewed ; looking sharply after them, and not allowing them to dawdle or stop work for a moment. They were taught what I should call double tasks from the first, and it seemed cruel to me, who always take off my thimble when I begin to speak. I noticed she read memoirs and stories of real people to them, and not fairy-tales, by which I concluded she was not an imaginative person. When they had sewed an hour, she set them to cutting out garments of the simplest fashion after paper patterns, showing them how to make the most out of the materials, and offering them certain inducements for skill in shaping and contriving. I observed that these children were clean, and that even their teeth and nails were carefully attended to.

“Any one point of personal niceness, or any new quickness to the sense of beauty, elevates their standard of taste, and tends to civilize them, you know,” she said, turning towards me with a confidential nod. She seemed to count on my sympathy, and to feel that I could perceive the good sense at the basis of what she was doing. But when they had finished their sums in addition and subtraction, she set them to drawing on their slates, from a picture over the fireplace.

“This is really absurd,” I thought; “ what possible advantage can it be to a parcel of wild Irish children to cultivate a taste for art ? ”

“It all helps,” said the woman, with a pleasant smile; “ they will learn to write more easily, if nothing else, and besides, they enjoy it. It is only for the children I have much hope. Their parents will not change their old habits essentially, I am afraid.”

When these children left the room, they walked out backwards, as if from the Queen’s presence, saying, “ Good morning ! ” and altogether behaving as nicely as Beacon Street children. Left alone, the woman went into the parlor, where she practised Bach’s music ; and then read a volume of Spanish ballads diligently, until company interrupted her. I was convinced that she did not resemble either Mrs. Pardiggle or Mrs. Jellyby in the smallest degree.

I afterwards discovered that this rich, childless woman carried out a great scheme of benevolent activity in the simplest way, by her personal interest and superintendence ; that she really lived out what other people only thought out, and without sacrificing a single domestic duty or household grace. She had hired this large house in South Street as an experiment; underletting it to a limited number of families, under stringent conditions of order and neatness, and giving them pecuniary inducements to the observance of her rules. She hoped and expected that, once put well in train, these families might be seed-grain for many more. The children in that house she called her own in an affectionate way, and really seemed to be interested in them as a near relation rather than a mere benefactress. I remember seeing them one evening at the theatre, all the eight together in a box with her. It seemed to me a dreadfully unwise proceeding, but perhaps it was not. This woman’s husband was in active business, as active as my Roger, but it seemed his heart safely trusted in her, for he gave her carte-blanche for her charities, and sympathized heartily in her ideas

I wondered whether Roger would feel so too ; and just then a man’s voice in the next room said distinctly, “Yes, I would ! ”

What was very odd, I recognized the voice at once. It was Roger’s, in a loud, hearty tone, as if he would like nothing better.

While I gazed on the surface of the darkened window, I felt the room suddenly fill with gigantic pinions which flapped their shadows to and fro, so as wellnigh to suffocate me. Then they gathered closely above, around, and under me, and I floated off into insensibility.

The first real, live, healthy sound was Roger’s own joyous voice at my opening my eyes. He had just entered the house, and found me lying dead on the sofa. The open window, the fresh life of a February sun, the rush of cold, healthy air, rejoiced me. So did the sight of Roger, who had been chafing my hands and holding ammonia to my nose, with such vehemence that I was glad to come to life to escape being killed. He was pouring wine into a glass, in answer to Sarah Foster’s asseveration that I “hadn’t eat enough to keep a fly alive since he went away, and she hoped he would n’t go again ! ” (Had she put it on the ground of sentiment ?)

All I could say, and that in a very weak voice, was, “ Milk porridge ! ”

It is astonishing now to think what a vast amount of common sense entered my system with that sustenance !

“ What a good comfortable world it is ! ” I said, after Roger had told me about his journey, and of the heavy snow-storm that had delayed the trains, and of his horror at finding me lying senseless in the library ; and had finally gone away to Boston.

I remembered that my last thought among the rush of shadowy pinions which bore me off into darkness had been a prayer for life, and a new life. Was this world, in which so much stood waiting on one side to be done, and on the other side, the rich whom God had given means and opportunity to help, to be no better for my being in it? Was not the gulf to be bridged over by such as were unfettered by domestic cares and responsibilities ? How plainly one’s duty seemed pointed out ! Why had I never read it, not even one word before ?

Life had come back to me, and I would try. True, I expected to make miserable work of it. I always had ; never gave to the right person, and always did the wrong and injudicious thing. So I had long ago stopped doing. But there were people enough who would n’t do the wrong thing; judicious, experienced, discriminating, — everything that I was not. They should have my money, my interest, and my own sympathy.

Thinking of this, and pacing to and fro with the window still open and the sun shining in, for it was yet only midday, and wrapped in my warm shawl, I heard sleigh-bells ring in the distance.

“ And so, because I am tired of driving, forsooth ! I have forgotten about the many people who can never drive at all, who would be so glad to go ! Let me do something, before I die, for some one besides myself,” said I, contemptuously, to that other most contracted, most despicable self, whom I felt the stronger for abusing.

“ Tell Barker to bring the horse and sleigh round ; and just bring me one more bowl of your delicious, delicious milk-porridge ! ” said I to the gratified Sarah.

I drove to the house where Marion Ream kept her little school, taking with me (remembering the cold attic) a woolwadded cloak and hood, and insisting that she should put it on and drive with me. Afterwards, she was with me very often, sometimes for weeks ; she taught me much, and I hope I did her some good in return. I have not yet accomplished any great matter in the world, but I find life very full of work to do, and the days only too short. Little children have been better off for me, I hope ; and their angels no longer accuse me before the Father. In the last six months I have not had a dreary moment, nor been tempted, even once, to starve myself by way of occupation.

C. A. H.