However it was managed, from this moment till the end of this phase of life I am narrating, I had an almost constant sense of the presence of 'genii of the pit,' of vast intelligence, cruel as ever Satan was imagined, relentless as fate, cold as Dante's ice hells could make them. At first, some influence led me to review the traditional history and prospects of my supposed distinguished visitor, at some length. I discussed the state of his case with no little unction, though shaking in my boots, and in momentary expectation of being gobbled up, body and soul, and whisked off in sulphurous smoke, with only a sulphur-burnt hole in the carpet to mark the spot where I saw the last of earth.
Presently my inseparable companion broke in with:
'He hears you! he hears you! and never may it be my lot again to look upon—' ... 'There he is again, glaring with inexpressible rage upon the comparatively insignificant man who just now so plainly revealed to him 'the true state of the case.' I am almost afraid to look upon that awful visage. 'The state of the case is it?' he exclaims. 'We will see what is the state.''—
There is a break here in the manuscript, which is resumed thus: 'You have conquered! frantic with rage he has fled, never, I trust, to return.'
How will I remember what happened during that awful pause? It was spent, I suppose, in a hand-to-hand conflict with the Prince of Darkness; the agreeableness of which was not enhanced by my vivid recollection of the 'bit of a discooshin' between Christian and Apollyon depicted in the old family Pilgrim's Progress. We are truly 'the stuff that dreams are made of.' What mattered it to me, on that bland summer afternoon, since I was of this opinion, whether it was Beelzebub himself or some departed 'blazing tinman,' with a suit of his majesty's old clothes on, while himself, all snug at home,
'Sat in his easy chair,
Drinking his sulphur tea.'
That was certainly one of the most awful moments of my life, in which I felt the first dreadful rush of this invisible tiger. It seemed as if he swooped toward me to annihilate me in a moment; but was restrained by a higher power. His coming was like the rush of a fifteen-inch shell past one's head.
As soon as I saw that the first onset did not destroy me, I gathered strength to face the monster; for a tongue combat seemed all that was permitted him. He put me through my theological paces at an awful rate—using the Socratic dialectic—growling out questions in the tones of a cathedral organ, that made me shiver. Oh that I could remember that fearful catechism! It would make a tract for which the Tom Paine Association would pay a high price. He drove me—partly, I suppose, by magnetic force—step by step, from my cherished religious opinions. My reasons for believing in the cardinal doctrines of Christianity seemed to burn like straw before his fiery rhetoric, and to turn to dust beneath the ponderous blows of his iron logic. He pushed me away from all I had esteemed reliable in the universe, till I seemed to stand on the verge of creation. There I hung with the strength of terror. Then I found poet Campbell true to nature, where he speaks of hope standing intact ''mid Nature's funeral pyre.' I insisted upon 'hoping,' in spite of all his fiery hail.
After he had beaten down all my defences, he began to jeer at me with fierce sneers and goblin laughter that froze my blood. 'So I was the contemptible manikin who dared to entertain the idea of equality with him—the Star of the Morning—one breath of whose nostrils would wither me into nonentity. So I presumed to stand up and face him, who had, in his time, scattered the hosts of heaven! If it were not for those cursed, white-livered things (angels) that stood in the way, he would swoop down and destroy me in an instant.'
Having found and maintained foothold for several minutes on the rock of hope, I began to consider how weak things had of erst confounded the things that were mighty, and soon the wirepullers behind the scenes (whoever they were) had me smiting him hip and thigh. I 'began in weakness, but ended in power.' At first a few muttered remonstrances, but finally whole Ironsides broadsides, with the result above named. The words of my antagonist, during this encounter, rang through my brain with awful distinctness. For a day or two I had been communicating partly with the pencil, and partly by clairaudience, eked out by writing in the air with my forefinger. But this demon, or demon pro tem., needed not to write his words: his 'trumpet gave no uncertain sound.'