“ Are there not moments when the least imaginative mind, the most skeptical bosom, shudders with the apprehension of a forced communion with beings og the other world? And what, unless the prompting of some viewless spirit, that with chilling influence hovers near-what is this dim dread, this mystic fear, this vague belief that such things are, but the whispering of the soul to the senses of suggestions that come to it from heaven itself? Banish then, thinking reader, that sneer of doubt from thy features. We know that there is much to stagger thy faith in what we are now revealing ”

“ Nor was this all; the very table upon which our elbows rested while watching the mysterious change going forward around us, was not exempt from its influence: sensibly could we perceive-and yet not so abruptly as to startle us-sensibly could we feel its velvet cover chilling and hardening and smoothing beneath our pressure into a slab of polished marble, while the one stout central supporter severed into four slender legs, tattooed with quaint devices eavh of which quietly slipped into a socket prepared for it under the carved head of a lion that grinned at either corner. ”

“ We feel as if we had known thee for years, and the very chambers of our heart open of themselves as to an old acquaintance, who has the privelege of entrance without knocking. We cannot, we cannot, dear reader, while our heart is thus warming toward thee, enter upon formal explanations, or drawn up here a frigid business-like agreement, as to the footing we are hereafter to be upon together. ”