elm branches to the sky. In a moment all that was behind me--the
house, the people, the sound--seemed to disappear and to leave me
alone. Involuntarily I drew a long breath, then I breathed slowly.
My thought, or inner conscience, went up through the illumined sky,
and I was lost in a moment of exaltation. This lasted only a very
short time, only a part of a second, and while it lasted there was no
formulated wish. I was absorbed. I drank the beauty of the morning.
I was exalted."

One is reminded of Tennyson's verses:--

"Moreover, something is or seems,
That touches me with mystic gleams,
Like glimpses of forgotten dreams--

"Of something felt, like something here;
Of something done, I know not where;
Such as no knowledge may declare." {149}

"Ah!" says the medical man, with a wise shake of the head, "this mental
condition is a common enough phenomenon, though only on rare occasions
does it express itself in literature. It is simple hysteria."

The transcendentalist who has regarded this state of mind as a spiritual
revelation, and looked upon its possessor as one endowed with special
powers of intuition, is indignant with this physiological explanation.
He is more indignant when the medical man proceeds to explain the
ecstatic trances of saints, those whom one may call professional mystics.
"Brutal materialism," says the transcendentalist.

Now although hysteria is commonly regarded as a foolish exhibition of
weakness on the part of some excitable men and women, there is absolutely
no scientific reason why any stigma should attach to this phenomenon.
Nor is there any reason why the explanation should be considered as
derogatory and necessarily connected with a materialistic view of the
Universe.

For what is hysteria? It is an abnormal condition of the nervous system
giving rise to certain physiological and psychical manifestations. With
the physiological ones we are not concerned, but the psychical
manifestation should be of the greatest interest to all students of
literature who are also presumably students of life. The artistic
temperament is always associated with a measure of nervous instability.
And where there is nervous instability there will always be a tendency to
hysteria. This tendency may be kept in check by other faculties. But it
is latent--ready to manifest itself in certain conditions of health or
under special stress of exci