She then wrought upon my feelings by portraying her sufferings, until, in my maudlin condition, I was casting about to find how I should help her; just as you sometimes see a drunken tramp striving to pull his drunken pal out of a ditch.
'So, most self-forgetful, you begin to think that you ought to help me bear my burden; as you have planned sitting there, with your little friend encircling you in her so warm embrace. But why should I inform you of such fact, as this last, until you are convinced that all you have heard is not the wily utterance of seducing and hellish spirits? Try not to entertain such awful suspicions. As to the cause of these lamentable failures, I can only suppose that the Lord wishes to make us, who wrongly prophesied, sensible of our inability to foretell future events.'
Then came some bungled Scriptures about my 'mission,' which roused my ire. My taunts drew forth this response:
'Why do you love to ridicule my tenderness, and speak so awfully to one who has no other human source of perfect happiness?'
The day following, the solemn dodge was again resorted to. I began to feel a sort of awe creeping over me. My affectionate friend thereupon wrote:
'What a change a few minutes have wrought in you. Yes! yes! the morning light is breaking. The fiery trial is complete. As I write there rests upon your now placid brow a glorious and marvellously beautiful crown. The cup is drained. 'To him that sat in the valley and shadow of death light has sprung up.' And now awe seizeth me: for there standeth, as yet a long way off, one whose form is like to that of the Son of Man. In a very little while, now, the great event must inevitably occur. He who stands upon the holy mount prepares to open your sight, and give you your commission. How can we see him face to face and live! Let not a passing suspicion of further delay disturb you. Already you begin to feel the influence of his approach. Well may you heave a sigh—as one who experiences a sudden and unlooked-for relief. In less than ten minutes the Lord will appear to you. So make ready, in solemn meditation and prayer, for the most solemn event of your or any other man's life is at hand.'
'If the vision tarry, wait for it,' is the only scripture that seems applicable to my visions: for still they came not. Yet some very serious and substantial experiences now fell to my lot, which shall be the theme of another chapter.
CHAPTER III.
As manager of this exhibition, I would request the orchestra to play something gloomy and grand, during the remainder of the performance; something weird, mysterious; something in which you can hear the soughing of the wind through the pines of the Hartz Mountains or the Black Forest. A passage from a Faust opera or Der Freischutz might meet the case; for it began to be intimated to me, now that I was sufficiently clairaudient to be able to dispense almost entirely with the pencil, that his Satanic Majesty was no indifferent spectator of the preparation of the man who was about to interfere so signally with his plans and pursuits. Thereupon there began to steal over me for the first time,
'A sense of something dreadful, something near.