ate that up to this present writing,
January 13, 1886, I have heard nothing at all from the spirits
aforesaid, and that the family key is as mysterious as ever. My own
reasonable explanation of the medium's half true guesses is that she
might have read my own dim thoughts about the matter: naturally I would
think of my dead mother and brother and myself; and thought-reading is a
form of animal magnetism which some people possess more than others.

Of late, as we all know, Mr. Cumberland and others have exhibited their
mysterious powers of perceiving and expounding the secret thoughts of
those who chose to be thus mentally vivisected: and I myself have this
small experience to record. Asked in a drawing-room to think of
something, the hostess answered my thought by "I don't know what it
means, but there's a great deal of green with a white star going round
and round in it." "Quite true," was my reply, "I was thinking of Ewhurst
windmill."

In my anonymous prophetic ode, "Things to Come" (Bosworth, 1852, long
out of print), at its eleventh section, thought-reading and other like
metaphysicals are strangely anticipated, ending with--

"Into some other wicked man's mind
His foolish brother is peeping to find,
Caught in foul excitement's snare,
The Lying Future there!"

CHAPTER XLV.

FICKLE FORTUNE.

Ever since Schiller wrote his famous song about a poet's heritage (ay,
and long before that, as it will be long years hence), authorship has
been noted for anything rather than wealth; albeit, nowadays, we have
had such fortunate scribes as Dickens and Thackeray and Trollope, who
severally have left piles of well-earned money behind them; though they
all had encountered previous mischances before. Accordingly, in this
true record of my life, I must not omit its reverses, for, though born
with a silver spoon in my mouth (perhaps a bismuth one, such as in my
chemical days I melted in hot tea), and always having had plentiful
surroundings, there has been often much also of financial embarrassment,
though not always nor usually from the author's fault. I am not going to
accuse others any more than myself, only hinting that it has been costly
to be a sleeping-partner, especially when the chief fails; that it is
discouraging to economic thrift when the investments wherein you place
your savings come to an untimely end; that in particular the Albert Life
Insurance was a notorious swindle, wherein more th