but still marked with traces of suffering and
anxiety, and warmly thanking her friend for
what had been already done, adjured her, in the
most touching language (repeated by the
narrator with wonderful power and pathos), to
prevail upon the zealous intercessor to engage once
more—but once again—in prayer, on her behalf.
Madame L——, deeply moved, did as she was
requested, and wrote at once to——, who
happened at this time to be absent at the distance
of two days' journey.

On the third night, the spirit once more stood
by her friend's side, with an aspect of complete
tranquillity, and surrounded with angelic
radiance, declaring that all was now well.

Two days more, and—— burst into Madame
L——'s presence, pale, and greatly agitated.

"Woman, woman!" he exclaimed, "what
have you done? For no reward that could be
proposed to me would I endure such another
hour of conflict and agony as that which my
compliance with your request has caused me."
He then proceeded to relate that, having—
though with some reluctance—engaged in prayer
as he was desired, he felt as though at once
environed by all the powers of evil. Nevertheless,
with reeling brain and bursting heart, and all
but overcome, he steeled himself to the very
utmost, and, struggling on through unutterable
mental torture, at length regained his calm.
But never more, for him, such fearful championship!

Without entering more deeply into discussion
of this last example, it may be enough to hint
that a solution might probably be found in the
collision of two ardent and impressible natures,
devoted, for the moment, with intense eagerness
to a common object.

A broad distinction, of course, lies between
cases of mere cerebral excitement and such as
we have before adduced. Hallucinations are as
fully recognised, if not quite so common, as
colds in the head. Few of those who must have
noticed the twitch or toss of the head peculiar to
the late eminent counsel, Mr. B—— , were aware
that it was engendered by a perpetual vision of
a raven perched on his left shoulder. A gentleman
now residing in Broadway, New York,
transacts business daily, under the immediate
supervision of his great-uncle, who, in a laced
coat and ruffles, occupies a large arm-chair
placed expressly to receive the honoured vision.

However, the purpose of this paper being
rather to suggest than to demonstrate, enough
has been said, if we reiterate the opinion that
inquiry is better than ridicule, that the object
of relating "ghost stories" is not to propagate
idle falsehood, but to elicit philosophic truth;
and if there be among our readers one whose
nerves are not trustworthy, it may comfort that
individual to know that, in our experience, none
who have been the subject of what (until we
better comprehend their nature) must be called
extra-natural visitations, have ever, at the trying
moment, experienced the slightest agitation or
fear. The inference is that the witnesses
themselves are—albeit unconscious of the fact—
intimately concerned in the production of those
phenomena which they have been hitherto
disposed to attribute to influences entirely
independent of their own bodily and mental
organisation.

OUT IN OREGON.

"WILL you sell your horse, Harry, my boy?
I'd be glad to give a fair price for him, if you
like, and I want a second mount for the Surrey,
since old Darius got that sprain. Fifty? Sixty?
Well, seventy, then?"

I could not help laughing at my friend's ill-
concealed anxiety to become the owner of my
steed; but I still shook my head, in sign of
negation. Snowball, as I called the pretty coal-
black creature, was not for sale.

My friend, Tom Rawlinson, of the Stock
Exchange, who prides himself above all things
upon his knowledge of horseflesh, rode in silence
beside me for a while, and then broke out
again.

"I say, King, do oblige me. I've taken a
particular fancy to your nag, and I know you're
not the man to run me up because I say so.
I'll give you any fair price—name it yourself,
but let us have a deal. Why, man, you'd
get a decent hack for half what I'd give you,
and you don't hunt, and Snowball is too good
for a stupid jog-trot from Highgate to Austin
Friars, and from Austin Friars back to Highgate,
six days out of seven."

I was not to be tempted into parting with
my faithful dumb friend; but, to divert Tom's
mind from his disappointment, I told him as
we ambled homeward how I became Snowball's
master, and why and how I had grown so fond
of him.

"You recollect, Tom, that although we were
old friends and schoolfellows, and shared pretty
fairly the rice milk and canings at old
Podmore's, there was a long hiatus in our
intercourse. You, like a lucky fellow, got into a
straight groove in life, which has kept you
prosperous up to this hour, while I, through
circumstances which you partly know, had to
rough it on my journey through the world.
Canada, Australia, and South America, all saw
me in turn, and at the end of several years of
hard living and desultory work, I found myself
in one of the Western States of the Union, still
a poor man.

"It was then that the loud outcry which
followed the first discoveries of gold in British
Columbia reached my ears. I do not know
whether I should have given it any heed, but for
the advice of one to whom I was under obligations
for unexpected kindness, and on whose
experience I placed much reliance. This was a
corn-dealer in Chicago, whose book-keeper I then
was, and whose good wife had nursed me, a
lonely stranger, through one of the swamp
fevers which are not uncommon in that 'Venice
of the West,' where the houses rest on piles
driven into the muddy alluvial soil.