u will see a hand not clearly visible
to the outside world--a very beautiful hand it is too, as I ought to
know--that will beckon you to your doom: you will hear a voice whose
silvery music will drown all fears, all scruples, all world-sick
longings for your woman-hating moods, all memories of your lost Lenore
of long ago, and tell you that resistance and delay are vain. What the
details of the process may be, and whether joy or woe will tip the
scales for one who takes things as seriously as you do, I cannot tell;
but it is coming, and it is coming presently. You may not like it: you
are not used to it as I am; but you cannot help yourself. Farewell to
the old life, the old delusions, the old fancied knowledge: you will
find yourself a small boy in primary school, beginning the world anew.
You think you are locked up in steel, defended by your indifference,
your disgust, your unbelief in Life. These glittering generalities will
fall into dust before the wand of a magician who has some eminently
particular business with you. You have sounded the depths, and found
them shallow; you have tested values, and they are less than nothing,
and vanity; you have emptied the pincushion, and only bran is there. My
skeptical friend, a sharp needle is there yet, and it will prick your
finger: there are depths that you know nothing about, and heights too,
it may be: there are thrills of life that will go through all your
veins, and show you that you are not as near dead as you supposed. You
were but a boy when that girl gave you your quietus, as you imagined;
you are a man now, with more in you than you fancy, and another girl may
bring you to life. Still in your ashes live their ancient fires, and I'm
mistaken if they don't start a superior blaze before long. Well, well,
I hope it will make a man of you.

X.

ON THE CLIFFS.

I was betrayed into the above apostrophe by the violence of my
sympathies; but the lucid and graphic sentences which precede this
moralizing ably sum up the situation during the first week of Hartman's
visit. A good deal of wisdom was in circulation: I said some things
myself which deserve to be remembered, and the others occasionally dropt
a remark which showed how the ball was moving. You will want the chief
of these outpourings in order of time, as landmarks in this history.

Clarice took me apart the first day and began to cross-examine me: that
is, she told me to go outside and wait for her, and