recollection of the
'bit of a discooshin' between Christian and Apollyon depicted in the old
family Pilgrim's Progress. We are truly 'the stuff that dreams are made
of.' What mattered it to me, on that bland summer afternoon, since I was
of this opinion, whether it was Beelzebub himself or some departed
'blazing tinman,' with a suit of his majesty's old clothes on, while
himself, all snug at home,

'Sat in his easy chair,
Drinking his sulphur tea.'

That was certainly one of the most awful moments of my life, in which I
felt the first dreadful rush of this invisible tiger. It seemed as if he
swooped toward me to annihilate me in a moment; but was restrained by a
higher power. His coming was like the rush of a fifteen-inch shell past
one's head.

As soon as I saw that the first onset did not destroy me, I gathered
strength to face the monster; for a tongue combat seemed all that was
permitted him. He put me through my theological paces at an awful
rate--using the Socratic dialectic--growling out questions in the tones
of a cathedral organ, that made me shiver. Oh that I could remember that
fearful catechism! It would make a tract for which the Tom Paine
Association would pay a high price. He drove me--partly, I suppose, by
magnetic force--step by step, from my cherished religious opinions. My
reasons for believing in the cardinal doctrines of Christianity seemed
to burn like straw before his fiery rhetoric, and to turn to dust
beneath the ponderous blows of his iron logic. He pushed me away from
all I had esteemed reliable in the universe, till I seemed to stand on
the verge of creation. There I hung with the strength of terror. Then I
found poet Campbell true to nature, where he speaks of hope standing
intact ''mid Nature's funeral pyre.' I insisted upon 'hoping,' in spite
of all his fiery hail.

After he had beaten down all my defences, he began to jeer at me with
fierce sneers and goblin laughter that froze my blood. 'So _I_ was the
contemptible manikin who dared to entertain the idea of equality with
him--the Star of the Morning--one breath of whose nostrils would wither
me into nonentity. So _I_ presumed to stand up and face him, who had, in
his time, scattered the hosts of heaven! If it were not for those
cursed, white-livered _things_ (angels) that stood in the way, he would
swoop down and destroy me in an instant.'

Having found and maintained foothold for several minutes on the rock of
hope, I began