, wait for it,' is the only scripture that seems
applicable to my visions: for still they came not. Yet some very serious
and substantial experiences now fell to my lot, which shall be the theme
of another chapter.

CHAPTER III.

As manager of this exhibition, I would request the orchestra to play
something gloomy and grand, during the remainder of the performance;
something weird, mysterious; something in which you can hear the
soughing of the wind through the pines of the Hartz Mountains or the
Black Forest. A passage from a _Faust_ opera or _Der Freischutz___ might
meet the case; for it began to be intimated to me, now that I was
sufficiently clairaudient to be able to dispense almost entirely with
the pencil, that his Satanic Majesty was no indifferent spectator of the
preparation of the man who was about to interfere so signally with his
plans and pursuits. Thereupon there began to steal over me for the first
time,

'A sense of something dreadful, something near.

However it was managed, from this moment till the end of this phase of
life I am narrating, I had an almost constant sense of the presence of
'genii of the pit,' of vast intelligence, cruel as ever Satan was
imagined, relentless as fate, cold as Dante's ice hells could make them.
At first, some influence led me to review the traditional history and
prospects of my supposed distinguished visitor, at some length. I
discussed the state of his case with no little unction, though shaking
in my boots, and in momentary expectation of being gobbled up, body and
soul, and whisked off in sulphurous smoke, with only a sulphur-burnt
hole in the carpet to mark the spot where I saw the last of earth.

Presently my inseparable companion broke in with:

'He hears you! he hears you! and never may it be my lot again to look
upon--' ... 'There he is again, glaring with inexpressible rage upon the
comparatively insignificant man who just now so plainly revealed to him
'the true state of the case.' I am almost afraid to look upon that
awful visage. 'The state of the case is it?' he exclaims. 'We will see
what is the state.''--

There is a break here in the manuscript, which is resumed thus: 'You
have conquered! frantic with rage he has fled, never, I trust, to
return.'

How will I remember what happened during that awful pause? It was spent,
I suppose, in a hand-to-hand conflict with the Prince of Darkness; the
agreeableness of which was not enhanced by my vivid