ng successfully, when
their operations, in that style, were suddenly brought to a final close,
by some means which must ever, I suppose, remain unknown to me. The
startling events stated as imminent were generally made dependent upon
the clairvoyant opening that had been promised me.

The first beatific vision that was to greet my gaze would be, of course,
that one which I was to behold most frequently throughout the aeons
without end--even the face of that radiant being who had gone before, to
await me in the angelhood; where, beaming seraphic upon me forever, it
was to be to me the embodiment of all ideals of loveliness, grace,
refinement, love. In its every lineament I was to read and decipher an
endless series of ever fresh and most celestial arcana--was continually
to find new proof of love and wisdom, and of the divine ability to adapt
human to human. Since the love of the mate is next to the love of the
Maker, it is no profanity to say that,

'When I'd been there ten thousand years,
Bright, happy as the sun,
I'd have no less days to sing its praise
Than when I first begun.'

Instead of through a fast-waning honeymoon of love, that face was to
entrance me while the sun of heaven stood in the zenith of heaven--and
we read that there is _no_ night there, forevermore. Was not this
promised sight a sufficient cause for excitement? What prospect--save
that of a vision of Deity--could be better adapted to arouse the
loftiest and most exquisite emotions? What better fitted to gather into
one all long-cherished feelings of admiration and reverence for the
noble of the other sex--to aggregate and revive all those chivalrous,
gallant, elevating, purifying, tender thoughts which we have ever had,
with regard to them, in our highest moments?

Some reader may say: 'Why will you thus attempt to dignify ideas that
you acknowledge were excited in a confused brain, by apparently
mischievous or irresponsible spirits?' I answer, that even if the
immediate exciting cause of this current of ideas was some ill-designing
being, the ideas themselves were not, necessarily, either evil or
undignified; and that only such portion of the brain was addled as would
be likely to rebel against the obsession.

Waiting the appointed hour, I sat imagining the scene. I saw _myself_
suddenly rising ('sudden Ianthe rose') from the prone body and all
circumjacent grossness--rising, through clouds and darkness, to some
delightsome plan