My Library

heard. “Gradually, and by imperceptible degrees, my prejudices began to wane; I conversed with him upon a variety of subjects, and the conference was maintained during four long hours, perhaps more; for if my memory serves me, it was nearly eleven o’clock when he arose from his seat, shook me cordially by the hand, said he was going, promised to call again ‘when he wanted to serve me,’ and then, opening the doors, passed out into the midst of one of the most fierce and vindictive tempests that ever desolated the shores of Boston Bay. A singular thing was this: in the depth of winter, this man, who refused steadily to speak concerning himself, was clad in the very thinnest summer raiment, not having enough even for a northern June, much less for such fearful weather as prevailed on the night of that 4th of February—a night when the glass in Boston told of cold twenty degrees below zero, and in New Hampshire nineteen lower still—a night so bitter that many and many a man went to eternity, borne thither on the frosty pinions of the Ice-king. “ ‘After all it is a man, and mesmerism furnishes a key to all this seeming mystery,’ thought I; and with this consoling supposition I went to bed, and there reproduced all that he had said or done. Now, although little was said in regard to himself, yet, from that little, I gathered that he