What is very singular, I now lost sight of my 'prima donna.' It would seem natural that a Delilah would, at least, have come with a jeering 'The Philistines be upon thee, Samson.' But no, not till this great tribulation was over did I hear from 'her.'
That evening and night were spent, mostly, in showing me that I was no longer my own master. There was not, however, that continuous hell-blast upon me that so scorched my soul on the following afternoon. The cats were tossing me in their velvet paws—only occasionally protruding a sharp claw as a reminder, until they could feel surer of their victim. They would say to me: 'Now we will exalt you to heaven;' and up I went, higher, higher, higher into the empyrean, until I heard the music of the spheres, and all things were ablaze with light and glory. Again they would say: 'Now go down into hell;' and the scene changed as suddenly as do those of a ten-cent panorama, when a midnight storm at sea or a volcanic eruption is about to be rolled in view: I went down ad imis—'down to the bottom of the sea—the earth with her bars was around me forever.' Blank horror and anguish seized me. Hope fled to its impregnable corner of my heart, till the calamity was overpast. A hushed agony was upon me, as before I had known its boundless bliss. And thus variously I fared through all that second night of sleeplessness. They probably sent me up and down this scale of sensation twenty times during eight hours. This night I was not at all sleepy. A few more such would have finished the business; and there would have been 'another awful effect of the spiritual delusion' to chronicle. The honest verdict of the first century would have been: 'Another possessed of devils or devil-crazed.' The wretches well knew that insomnia is an excellent preparation for insanity.
Toward morning a new scheme was invented. Some ostensible good friend informed me, in a business-like way, that the work of the morrow for me—the new Saul of Tarsus—was to set out for a certain town in Vermont, where I should find my Ananias; who 'would show me what things I should do.' So the faithful slave of the genii prepared to obey. I packed a carpet bag, and went early to the residence of a medical friend, who had been dabbling in the same arcana. I gave him a sketch of what I had experienced; yet, for some reason, did not start for Vermont, but remained with him all the morning. My invisible monitors sent me out into the street several times, to find people who could not be found. (Anything to keep up their influence.)
Toward noon the fact came plainly to me that an effort was being made to disturb, if not destroy, my reason. I began to find my ideas becoming incoherent in spite of hugest effort. I called my friend, and said to him, through set teeth, but as coolly as possible:
'I find myself to be thoroughly and utterly a magnetic subject, an abject subject of mischievous spirits. They are striving to derange my faculties. I am exceedingly alarmed to find that they are trying, with much success, to render my ideas incoherent. It is only by a very great effort of will that I am enabled to speak these words distinctly to you. As far as my private power of resistance is concerned, I am gone. Do exert your powerful magnetism; perhaps you can drive them off.'
He was much distressed, and exerted himself mightily (he was a professed electrician), combining will power with that ancient agent, prayer, to exorcise the evil influence. But his efforts were useless, as the vagabonds well knew, before they brought me there on exhibition. They had not spent the week in vain. I had sold myself to them as squarely as fools ever did in German legend.
When dinner was announced, the doctor wished me to accompany him. I refused, and he left me, to take a hasty meal. Finding, when he was gone, that I was growing worse, I went into the street, determined that if I was to be crazed, I would not sit there and let him watch the operation. I walked on, vowing that I would not turn toward home until my faculties were restored; and execrating my folly in permitting the enslavement! On, on I rushed, my head all ablaze with 'od' that had no business there, and praying as I never had prayed before. I took the Gowanus road toward Greenwood. Perhaps it was some defunct rogue there interred, who was leading me on to 'rave among the tombs.'
Arrived at a spot where a little tree-capped promontory overhangs the beach, I turned aside, beneath the projection, and sat down on a log—like Jonah under the gourd—and, gazing out on the rippling waves of the bay, desired that death or relief might come. I was determined to sit there until God or Satan made good his claim upon me. Suddenly relief came. The fierce onset upon my intellect ceased. I was made whole. I 'leaped and walked.' The means of my relief I never knew.
But my lesson was not complete. I had but just informed my medical friend of my deliverance (he had scoured the neighborhood, and informed several of the cause of his fears), when there were mutterings and growlings of another approaching storm. The messengers of Satan sent to baffle me gave me to understand that they had not abandoned their prey, but were sure of it yet. They poured the wrath of hell upon my defenceless head that afternoon. I have not, hitherto, attempted to offer much direct proof to the uninitiated that my experiences, in this connection, were other than hallucination. That which now occurred is, as it seems to me, in the nature of such proof. Here was I thoroughly alarmed for my safety, and extremely anxious to get rid of my tormentors. Yet, not for a single moment now, could I close my mental ears to their horrid clangor of threats and imprecations; for, throwing off all restraint, they flooded me with Billingsgate. They cursed and damned me, and all persons, things, and ideas esteemed by me, in the most approved style. Indeed, the swearing exceeded anything I ever heard on the Mississippi and Alabama river boats, when forced, for lack of room, to sleep on the floor of the saloon, almost under the feet of the chivalry, during their midnight gambling carousals.
The mode of speech is not easily described. Sometimes the words came slowly and distinctly. Again there would be merely thought-panorama presented. A complete statement or view of things can be flashed into the mind in an instant. Therefore the language of spirits is of vastly greater compass than that of men. These immortal blackguards could vomit more oaths and other blasphemy in five minutes, than a mortal one could in an hour. If it is difficult to translate from one earth-language into another, how much harder must it be to bring the ideas of an inner sphere into outward forms of expression!