ttend to the
stimulus of external objects by any kind of violence, which it was proper
to use; these symptoms returned in this order every day for five or six
weeks.

These conversations were quite consistent, and we could understand, what
she supposed her imaginary companions to answer, by the continuation of her
part of the discourse. Sometimes she was angry, at other times shewed much
wit and vivacity, but was most frequently inclined to melancholy. In these
reveries she sometimes sung over some music with accuracy, and repeated
whole pages from the English poets. In repeating some lines from Mr. Pope's
works she had forgot one word, and began again, endeavouring to recollect
it; when she came to the forgotten word, it was shouted aloud in her ear,
and this repeatedly, to no purpose; but by many trials she at length
regained it herself.

These paroxysms were terminated with the appearance of inexpressible
surprise, and great fear, from which she was some minutes in recovering
herself, calling on her sister with great agitation, and very frequently
underwent a repetition of convulsions, apparently from the pain of fear.
See Sect. XVII. 3. 7.

After having thus returned for about an hour every day for two or three
weeks, the reveries seemed to become less complete, and some of their
circumstances varied; so that she could walk about the room in them without
running against any of the furniture; though these motions were at first
very unsteady and tottering. And afterwards she once drank a dish of tea,
when the whole apparatus of the tea-table was set before her; and expressed
some suspicion, that a medicine was put into it, and once seemed to smell
of a tuberose, which was in flower in her chamber, and deliberated aloud
about breaking it from the stem, saying, "it would make her sister so
charmingly angry." At another time in her melancholy moments she heard the
sound of a passing bell, "I wish I was dead," she cried, listening to the
bell, and then taking off one of her shoes, as she sat upon the bed, "I
love the colour black," says she, "a little wider, and a little longer,
even this might make me a coffin!"--Yet it is evident, she was not sensible
at this time, any more than formerly, of seeing or hearing any person about
her; indeed when great light was thrown upon her by opening the shutters of
the window, her trains of ideas seemed less melancholy; and when I have
forcibly held her hands, or covered her eyes, s