existences
on this earth; for behind persons she often saw another being, whether
their form in the state before or after this, I know not; behind a woman
a man, equipped for fight, and so forth. Her perception of character,
even in cases of those whom she saw only as they passed her window, was
correct.

Kerner aims many a leaden sarcasm at those who despise his credulity. He
speaks of those sages as men whose brain is a glass table, incapable of
receiving the electric spark, and who will not believe, because, in
their mental isolation, they are incapable of feeling these facts.

Certainly, I think he would be dull, who could see no meaning or beauty
in the history of the forester's daughter of Prevorst. She lived but
nine-and-twenty years, yet, in that time, had traversed a larger portion
of the field of thought than all her race before, in their many and long
lives.

Of the abuses to which all these magical implements are prone, I have an
instance, since leaving Milwaukie, in the journal of a man equally
sincere, but not equally inspired, led from Germany hither by signs and
wonders, as a commissioned agent of Providence, who, indeed, has
arranged every detail of his life with a minuteness far beyond the
promised care of the sparrow. He props himself by spiritual aid from a
maiden now in this country, who was once an attendant on the Seeress,
and who seems to have caught from her the contagion of trance, but not
its revelations.

Do not blame me that I have written so much about Germany and Hades,
while you were looking for news of the West. Here, on the pier, I see
disembarking the Germans, the Norwegians, the Swedes, the Swiss. Who
knows how much of old legendary lore, of modern wonder, they have
already planted amid the Wisconsin forests? Soon, soon their tales of
the origin of things, and the Providence which rules them, will be so
mingled with those of the Indian, that the very oak trees will not know
them apart,--will not know whether itself be a Runic, a Druid, or a
Winnebago oak.

Some seeds of all growths that have ever been known in this world
might, no doubt, already be found in these Western wilds, if we had the
power to call them to life.

I saw, in the newspaper, that the American Tract Society boasted of
their agents' having exchanged, at a Western cabin door, tracts for the
Devil on Two Sticks, and then burnt that more entertaining than edifying
volume. No wonder, though, they study it