o sleep. I shut my eyes and
waited for sleep to come; instead of sleep, however, there came to me
a succession of curiously vivid clairvoyant pictures. There was no
light in the room, and it was perfectly dark; I had my eyes shut also.
But notwithstanding the darkness I suddenly was conscious of looking
at a scene of singular beauty. It was as if I saw a living miniature
about the size of a magic-lantern slide. At this moment I can recall
the scene as if I saw it again. It was a seaside piece. The moon was
shining upon the water, which rippled slowly on to the beach. Right
before me a long mole ran into the water.

"On either side of the mole irregular rocks stood up above the
sea-level. On the shore stood several houses, square and rude, which
resembled nothing that I had ever seen in house architecture. No one
was stirring, but the moon was there and the sea and the gleam of the
moonlight on the rippling waters, just as if I had been looking on the
actual scene.

"It was so beautiful that I remember thinking that if it continued I
should be so interested in looking at it that I should never go to
sleep. I was wide awake, and at the same time that I saw the scene I
distinctly heard the dripping of the rain outside the window. Then
suddenly, without any apparent object or reason, the scene changed.

"The moonlit sea vanished, and in its place I was looking right into
the interior of a reading-room. It seemed as if it had been used as a
schoolroom in the daytime, and was employed as a reading-room in the
evening. I remember seeing one reader who had a curious resemblance to
Tim Harrington, although it was not he, hold up a magazine or book in
his hand and laugh. It was not a picture--it was there.

"The scene was just as if you were looking through an opera-glass; you
saw the play of the muscles, the gleaming of the eye, every movement
of the unknown persons in the unnamed place into which you were
gazing. I saw all that without opening my eyes, nor did my eyes have
anything to do with it. You see such things as these as it were with
another sense which is more inside your head than in your eyes.

"This was a very poor and paltry experience, but it enabled me to
understand better how it is that clairvoyants see than any amount of
disquisition.

"The pictures were _apropos_ of nothing; they had been suggested by
nothing I had been reading or talking of; they simply came as if I had
been able to look through a glass