lars laugh, although we were
sorry for the poor girl, who cried bitterly over her unfortunate,
ungovernable limbs. I was comforted, however, on finding that I could
control the motion of my fingers at pleasure; but my imagination was too
active to stop there. What if I should forget how to direct my hands?
What if they should refuse to obey me? What if my knees, which were just
as still as the hymn-books in the rack before me, should cease to bend,
and I should sit there forever? These very questions seemed to produce a
temporary paralysis of the will. As my right hand lay quietly on my
knee, and I asked myself, with a stupid wonder, "Now, can I move it?" it
lay as still as before. I had only questioned, not willed. "No I cannot
move it," I said, in real doubt I was conscious of a blind sense of
exertion, wherein there was yet no proper exertion, but which seemed to
exhaust me. Fascinated by this new mystery, I contemplated my hand as
something apart from myself,--something subordinate to, but not
identical with, me. The rising of the congregation for the hymn broke
the spell, like the snapping of a thread.

The reader will readily understand that I carried these experiences much
farther. I gradually learned to suspend (perhaps in imagination only,
but therefore none the less really) the action of my will upon the
muscles of my arms and legs; and I did it with the greater impunity,
from knowing that the stir consequent upon the conclusion of the
services would bring me to myself. In proportion as the will became
passive, the activity of my imagination was increased, and I experienced
a new and strange delight in watching the play of fantasies which
appeared to come and go independently of myself. There was still a dim
consciousness of outward things mingled with my condition; I was not
beyond the recall of my senses. But one day, I remember, as I sat
motionless as a statue, having ceased any longer to attempt to control
my dead limbs, more than usually passive, a white, shining mist
gradually stole around me; my eyes finally ceased to take cognizance of
objects; a low, musical humming sounded in my ears, and those creatures
of the imagination which had hitherto crossed my brain as _thoughts_ now
spoke to me as audible voices. If there is any happy delirium in the
first stages of intoxication, (of which, thank Heaven, I have no
experience,) it must be a sensation very much like that which I felt.
The death of external an