.

Fresh wolf tracks were plenty all along the bank of the stream;
panthers and bears abounded in that section, and the wilderness
beyond me was never explored, and hardly penetrable, so dense was the
undergrowth of dwarf firs and swamp cedars. I had one terrible moment
of clear consciousness that if I went astray at that juncture no human
being would ever know where I was, and the absolute necessity of
recovering my sense of the points of compass was clear to me. By a
strong effort of the will, I repressed the growing panic, sat down on
a log and covered my face with my hands, and waited, I had no idea
how long, but until I felt quite calm; and when I looked out on the
landscape again I found the sun in his proper place and the landscape
as I had known it. I walked back to my boat without difficulty and
went home, and I never lost my head again while I frequented the
wilderness. I grew in time to know the points of the compass, even
when the sky was covered, and often came home from my excursions after
sunset without confusion, but I know that I then owed my escape from
the most terrible of deaths entirely to my presence of mind, and this
I probably owed then, and always, to that supreme confidence in the
protection of a superior power which never deserted me.

My studies in spiritism had developed in me another feeling which was
kin to this--a belief in a spiritual insight, the possession of which
would always, if entire confidence were placed in it, tell one at the
moment what should be done; an intuition which would guide him, but
only on the condition that it was trusted absolutely. And at that
period of my life I followed it with unfaltering trust. A curious
illustration of this state of mind and its effect had already occurred
to me in the spring, and, as it relates to this topic and involves a
very curious psychological phenomenon, I describe it in connection
with the so similar experience of the backwoods. I had made an
engagement with Mr. Brown, the sculptor, to meet him on the trout
brook that ran through my uncle's farm in Rensselaer County, New York,
a hundred and fifty miles from New York city, but I lost the last
train by which I should have met him at the appointed time,--daybreak
of the following day. Determined to keep the engagement, I took a
parallel railway, which ran through western Massachusetts and a
section of country which was entirely strange to me. From the station
at which I left the railw