f stealing away from her friends at night, to weep over his
grave. These melancholy visits had the effect of giving a new
impetus to her malady, making her for a time the victim of any fancy
that chanced to enter her mind.

On the night of our story she imagined that the young farmer was her
husband, and awaited his approach with great exhilaration of
spirits, determined to give him an affectionate greeting.

The fright came near costing the young man his life. He was taken
from his saddle to his bed, where he lay for weeks prostrated by a
high nervous fever.

An eminent writer, after relating the above authentic story,
remarks:--

"If this woman had dropped from the horse unobserved by the rider,
it would have been very hard to convince the honest farmer that he
had not actually performed a part of his journey with a ghost behind
him."

True. Teviotdale churchyard would have obtained the reputation of
being haunted, and would have been a terror to weak-minded people
for many years to come.

The ignorant and simple are not alone subject to illusions of fancy.
The great and learned Pascal, than whom France has produced no more
worthy philosopher, believed that an awful chasm yawned by his side,
into which he was in danger of being thrown. This dreadful vision,
with other fancies as gloomy, cast a shadow over an eventful period
of his life, and gave a dark coloring to certain of his writings.
Yet Pascal, on most subjects, was uncommonly sound in judgment. How
unfavorable might have been the influence, had his disorder assumed
a different form, and placed before him the delusion of a ghost!

Before giving credit to stories of supernatural events, even from
sources that seem to be trustworthy, I hope my young friends will
consider duly how liable to error are an unhealthy mind and an
excited imagination. Every man is not a knave or a cheat who claims
to have witnessed unnatural phenomena, but the judgment of very
excellent persons is liable to be infected by illusions of the
imagination.

I do not say that we may not receive impressions from the spiritual
world. As the geologist, the botanist, the chemist, sees things in
nature that the unschooled and undeveloped do not see, so it may be
that a spiritually educated mind may know more of the spiritual
world than the gross and selfish mind. I will not enlarge upon this
topic or discuss