r." and "Lord,"
and he overwhelms you with his knowledge of women and their wicked
ways. Clever Ouida, with her tawdry splendours, her guardsmen, her
peers, her painters and her Aspasias, and the "society papers," with
their confidences and their personalities, have much to answer for in
the case of this would-be man of the world.

No. XL

SOME OCCULT PHENOMENA

[October 21, 1880.]

There were thirteen of them, and they sat down to dinner just as the
clock in the steeple chimed midnight. The sheeted dead squeaked and
gibbered in their graves; the owl hooted in the ivy. "For what we are
going to receive may the Secret Powers of Nature and the force of
circumstances make us truly thankful," devoutly exclaimed the domestic
medium. The spirits of Chaos and Cosmos rapped a courteous
acknowledgment on the table. _Potage a la sorciere_ (after the famous
recipe in Macbeth) was served in a cauldron; and while it was being
handed round, Hume recited his celebrated argument regarding miracles.
He had hardly reached the twenty-fifth hypothesis, when a sharp cry
startled the company, and Mr. Cyper Redalf, the eminent journalist,
was observed to lean back in his chair, pale and speechless. His whole
frame was convulsed with emotion; his hair stood erect and emitted
electro-biological sparks. The company sat aghast. A basin of soup
dashed in his face and a few mesmeric passes soon brought him round,
however; and presently he was able to explain to the assembled
carousers the cause of his agitation. It was a recollection, a tender
memory of youth. The umbrella of his boyhood had suddenly surged upon
his imagination! It was an umbrella from which he had been parted for
years: it was an umbrella round which had once centred associations
solemn and mysterious. In itself there had been nothing remarkable
about the umbrella. It was a gingham, conceived in the liberal spirit
of a bygone age; such an umbrella as you would not easily forget when
it had once fairly bloomed on the retina of your eye; yet an everyday
umbrella, a commonplace umbrella half a century ago; an umbrella that
would have elicited no remark from our great-grandmothers, hardly a
smile from our grandmothers; but an umbrella well calculated to excite
the affections and stimulate the imagination of an impulsive,
high-spirited, and impressionable boy. It was an umbrella not easily
forgotten; an umbrella that necessarily produced a large and deep
impression