ther I wrote or not. I had come to this
wisdom too late. I fully believe that, as far as my ability to prevent
the catastrophe was concerned, I was then and there a possessed
person--_a slave of spirits_--as utterly bound to do the will of my
magnetizers as ever a 'subject' was. Though I cannot be persuaded that
all these beings, from whom unseen I had heard so much, were 'only evil
continually,' no 'harmonialist' can persuade me that those who now began
to play with me, as a cat plays with a mouse, were other than evil. In
all imaginable ways, they strove to show me how utterly I had lost
self-command and self-control. (I am esteemed obstinate by nature.)

What is very singular, I now lost sight of my 'prima donna.' It would
seem natural that a Delilah would, at least, have come with a jeering
'The Philistines be upon thee, Samson.' But no, not till this great
tribulation was over did I hear from 'her.'

That evening and night were spent, mostly, in showing me that I was no
longer my own master. There was not, however, that continuous hell-blast
upon me that so scorched my soul on the following afternoon. The cats
were tossing me in their velvet paws--only occasionally protruding a
sharp claw as a reminder, until they could feel surer of their victim.
They would say to me: 'Now we will exalt you to heaven;' and up I went,
higher, higher, higher into the empyrean, until I heard the music of the
spheres, and all things were ablaze with light and glory. Again they
would say: 'Now go down into hell;' and the scene changed as suddenly as
do those of a ten-cent panorama, when a midnight storm at sea or a
volcanic eruption is about to be rolled in view: I went down _ad
imis_--'down to the bottom of the sea--the earth with her bars was
around me forever.' Blank horror and anguish seized me. Hope fled to its
impregnable corner of my heart, till the calamity was overpast. A hushed
agony was upon me, as before I had known its boundless bliss. And thus
variously I fared through all that second night of sleeplessness. They
probably sent me up and down this scale of sensation twenty times during
eight hours. This night I was not at all sleepy. A few more such would
have finished the business; and there would have been 'another awful
effect of the spiritual delusion' to chronicle. The honest verdict of
the first century would have been: 'Another possessed of devils or
devil-crazed.' The wretches well knew that insomnia is an excellen