The following is the account of the case as translated by Miss Vincent. For obvious reasons the whole name was not given in the original paper, and for similar reasons the date of the event and the birthplace of the patient are not precisely indicated here.

[Giornale degli Ospitali, Luglio 21, 18-.] REMARKABLE CASE OF TARANTISM.

"The great interest attaching to the very singular and exceptional instance of this rare affection induces us to give a full account of the extraordinary example of its occurrence in a patient who was the subject of a recent medical consultation in this city.

"Signorino M . . . Ch . . . is the only son of a gentleman travelling in Italy at this time. He is eleven years of age, of sanguine-nervous temperament, light hair, blue eyes, intelligent countenance, well grown, but rather slight in form, to all appearance in good health, but subject to certain peculiar and anomalous nervous symptoms, of which his father gives this history.

"Nine years ago, the father informs us, he was travelling in Italy with his wife, this child, and a nurse. They were passing a few days in a country village near the city of Bari, capital of the province of the same name in the division (compartamento) of Apulia. The child was in perfect health and had never been affected by any serious illness. On the 10th of July he was playing out in the field near the house where the family was staying when he was heard to scream suddenly and violently. The nurse rushing to him found him in great pain, saying that something had bitten him in one of his feet. A laborer, one Tommaso, ran up at the moment and perceived in the grass, near where the boy was standing, an enormous spider, which he at once recognized as a tarantula. He managed to catch the creature in a large leaf, from which he was afterwards transferred to a wide-mouthed bottle, where he lived without any food for a month or more. The creature was covered with short hairs, and had a pair of nipper-like jaws, with which he could inflict an ugly wound. His body measured about an inch in length, and from the extremity of one of the longest limbs to the other was between two and three inches. Such was the account given by the physician to whom the peasant carried the great spider.

"The boy who had been bitten continued screaming violently while his stocking was being removed and the foot examined. The place of the bite was easily found and the two marks of the claw-like jaws already showed the effects of the poison, a small livid circle extending around them, with some puffy swelling. The distinguished Dr. Amadei was immediately sent for, and applied cups over the wounds in the hope of drawing forth the poison. In vain all his skill and efforts! Soon, ataxic (irregular) nervous symptoms declared themselves, and it became plain that the system had been infected by the poison.

"The symptoms were very much like those of malignant fever, such as distress about the region of the heart, difficulty of breathing, collapse of all the vital powers, threatening immediate death. From these first symptoms the child rallied, but his entire organism had been profoundly affected by the venom circulating through it. His constitution has never thrown off the malady resulting from this toxic (poisonous) agent. The phenomena which have been observed in this young patient correspond so nearly with those enumerated in the elaborate essay of the celebrated Baglivi that one might think they had been transcribed from his pages.

"He is very fond of solitude,—of wandering about in churchyards and other lonely places. He was once found hiding in an empty tomb, which had been left open. His aversion to certain colors is remarkable. Generally speaking, he prefers bright tints to darker ones, but his likes and dislikes are capricious, and with regard to some colors his antipathy amounts to positive horror. Some shades have such an effect upon him that he cannot remain in the room with them, and if he meets any one whose dress has any of that particular color he will turn away or retreat so as to avoid passing that person. Among these, purple and dark green are the least endurable. He cannot explain the sensations which these obnoxious colors produce except by saying that it is like the deadly feeling from a blow on the epigastrium (pit of the stomach).

"About the same season of the year at which the tarantular poisoning took place he is liable to certain nervous seizures, not exactly like fainting or epilepsy, but reminding the physician of those affections. All the other symptoms are aggravated at this time.

"In other respects than those mentioned the boy is in good health. He is fond of riding, and has a pony on which he takes a great deal of exercise, which seems to do him more good than any other remedy.

"The influence of music, to which so much has been attributed by popular belief and even by the distinguished Professor to whom we shall again refer, has not as yet furnished any satisfactory results. If the graver symptoms recur while the patient is under our observation, we propose to make use of an agency discredited by modern skepticism, but deserving of a fair trial as an exceptional remedy for an exceptional disease.

"The following extracts from the work of the celebrated Italian physician of the last century are given by the writer of the paper in the Giornale in the original Latin, with a translation into Italian, subjoined. Here are the extracts, or rather here is a selection from them, with a translation of them into English.

"After mentioning the singular aversion to certain colors shown by the subject of Tarantism, Baglivi writes as follows: "'Et si astantes incedant vestibus eo colore difusis, qui Tarantatis ingrates est, necesse est ut ab illorum aspectu recedant; nam ad intuitum molesti coloris angore cordis, et symptomatum recrudescantia stating corripiuntur.' (G. Baglivi, Op. Omnia, page 614. Lugduni, 1745.)

"That is, 'if the persons about the patient wear dresses of the color which is offensive to him, he must get away from the sight of them, for on seeing the obnoxious color he is at once seized with distress in the region of the heart, and a renewal of his symptoms.'

"As to the recurrence of the malady, Baglivi says: "'Dam calor solis ardentius exurere incip at, quod contingit circa initia Julii et Augusti, Tarantati lente venientem recrudescentiam veneni percipiunt.' (Ibid., page 619.)

"Which I render, 'When the heat of the sun begins to burn more fiercely, which happens about the beginning of July and August, the subjects of Tarantism perceive the gradually approaching recrudescence (returning symptoms) of the poisoning. Among the remedies most valued by this illustrious physician is that mentioned in the following sentence:

"'Laudo magnopere equitationes in aere rusticano factas singulis diebus, hord potissimum matutina, quibus equitationibus morbos chronicos pene incurabiles protanus eliminavi.'

"Or in translation, 'I commend especially riding on horseback in country air, every day, by preference in the morning hours, by the aid of which horseback riding I have driven off chronic diseases which were almost incurable.'"

Miss Vincent read this paper aloud to Dr. Butts, and handed it to him to examine and consider. He listened with a grave countenance and devout attention.

As she finished reading her account, she exclaimed in the passionate tones of the deepest conviction,

"There, doctor! Have n't I found the true story of this strange visitor? Have n't I solved the riddle of the Sphinx? Who can this man be but the boy of that story? Look at the date of the journal when he was eleven years old, it would make him twenty-five now, and that is just about the age the people here think he must be of. What could account so entirely for his ways and actions as that strange poisoning which produces the state they call Tarantism? I am just as sure it must be that as I am that I am alive. Oh, doctor, doctor, I must be right,—this Signprino M . . . Ch . . . was the boy Maurice Kirkwood, and the story accounts for everything,—his solitary habits, his dread of people,—it must be because they wear the colors he can't bear. His morning rides on horseback, his coming here just as the season was approaching which would aggravate all his symptoms, does n't all this prove that I must be right in my conjecture,—no, my conviction?"

The doctor knew too much to interrupt the young enthusiast, and so he let her run on until she ran down. He was more used to the rules of evidence than she was, and could not accept her positive conclusion so readily as she would have liked to have him. He knew that beginners are very apt to make what they think are discoveries. But he had been an angler and knew the meaning of a yielding rod and an easy-running reel. He said quietly,

"You are a most sagacious young lady, and a very pretty prima facie case it is that you make out. I can see no proof that Mr. Kirkwood is not the same person as the M . . . Ch . . . of the medical journal,—that is, if I accept your explanation of the difference in the initials of these two names. Even if there were a difference, that would not disprove their identity, for the initials of patients whose cases are reported by their physicians are often altered for the purpose of concealment. I do not know, however, that Mr. Kirkwood has shown any special aversion to any particular color. It might be interesting to inquire whether it is so, but it is a delicate matter. I don't exactly see whose business it is to investigate Mr. Maurice Kirkwood's idiosyncrasies and constitutional history. If he should have occasion to send for me at any time, he might tell me all about himself, in confidence, you know. These old accounts from Baglivi are curious and interesting, but I am cautious about receiving any stories a hundred years old, if they involve an improbability, as his stories about the cure of the tarantula bite by music certainly do. I am disposed to wait for future developments, bearing in mind, of course, the very singular case you have unearthed. It wouldn't be very strange if our young gentleman had to send for me before the season is over. He is out a good deal before the dew is off the grass, which is rather risky in this neighborhood as autumn comes on. I am somewhat curious, I confess, about the young man, but I do not meddle where I am not asked for or wanted, and I have found that eggs hatch just as well if you let them alone in the nest as if you take them out and shake them every day. This is a wonderfully interesting supposition of yours, and may prove to be strictly in accordance with the facts. But I do not think we have all the facts in this young man's case. If it were proved that he had an aversion to any color, it would greatly strengthen your case. His 'antipatia,' as his man called it, must be one which covers a wide ground, to account for his self-isolation,—and the color hypothesis seems as plausible as any. But, my dear Miss Vincent, I think you had better leave your singular and striking hypothesis in my keeping for a while, rather than let it get abroad in a community like this, where so many tongues are in active exercise. I will carefully study this paper, if you will leave it with me, and we will talk the whole matter over. It is a fair subject for speculation, only we must keep quiet about it."

This long speech gave Lurida's perfervid brain time to cool off a little. She left the paper with the doctor, telling him she would come for it the next day, and went off to tell the result of this visit to her bosom friend, Miss Euthymia Tower.



XV

DR. BUTTS CALLS ON EUTHYMIA.

The doctor was troubled in thinking over his interview with the young lady. She was fully possessed with the idea that she had discovered the secret which had defied the most sagacious heads of the village. It was of no use to oppose her while her mind was in an excited state. But he felt it his duty to guard her against any possible results of indiscretion into which her eagerness and her theory of the equality, almost the identity, of the sexes might betray her. Too much of the woman in a daughter of our race leads her to forget danger. Too little of the woman prompts her to defy it. Fortunately for this last class of women, they are not quite so likely to be perilously seductive as their more emphatically feminine sisters.

Dr. Butts had known Lurida and her friend from the days of their infancy. He had watched the development of Lurida's intelligence from its precocious nursery-life to the full vigor of its trained faculties. He had looked with admiration on the childish beauty of Euthymia, and had seen her grow up to womanhood, every year making her more attractive. He knew that if anything was to be done with his self-willed young scholar and friend, it would be more easily effected through the medium of Euthymia than by direct advice to the young lady herself. So the thoughtful doctor made up his mind to have a good talk with Euthymia, and put her on her guard, if Lurida showed any tendency to forget the conventionalities in her eager pursuit of knowledge.

For the doctor's horse and chaise to stop at the door of Miss Euthymia Tower's parental home was an event strange enough to set all the tongues in the village going. This was one of those families where illness was hardly looked for among the possibilities of life. There were other families where a call from the doctor was hardly more thought of than a call from the baker. But here he was a stranger, at least on his professional rounds, and when he asked for Miss Euthymia the servant, who knew his face well, stared as if he had held in his hand a warrant for her apprehension.

Euthymia did not keep the doctor waiting very long while she made ready to meet him. One look at her glass to make sure that a lock had not run astray, or a ribbon got out of place, and her toilet for a morning call was finished. Perhaps if Mr. Maurice Kirkwood had been announced, she might have taken a second look, but with the good middle-aged, married doctor one was enough for a young lady who had the gift of making all the dresses she wore look well, and had no occasion to treat her chamber like the laboratory where an actress compounds herself.

Euthymia welcomed the doctor very heartily. She could not help suspecting his errand, and she was very glad to have a chance to talk over her friend's schemes and fancies with him.

The doctor began without any roundabout prelude.

"I want to confer with you about our friend Lurida. Does she tell you all her plans and projects?"

"Why, as to that, doctor, I can hardly say, positively, but I do not believe she keeps back anything of importance from me. I know what she has been busy with lately, and the queer idea she has got into her head. What do you think of the Tarantula business? She has shown you the paper, she has written, I suppose."

"Indeed she has. It is a very curious case she has got hold of, and I do not wonder at all that she should have felt convinced that she had come at the true solution of the village riddle. It may be that this young man is the same person as the boy mentioned in the Italian medical journal. But it is very far from clear that he is so. You know all her reasons, of course, as you have read the story. The times seem to agree well enough. It is easy to conceive that Ch might be substituted for K in the report. The singular solitary habits of this young man entirely coincide with the story. If we could only find out whether he has any of those feelings with reference to certain colors, we might guess with more chance of guessing right than we have at present. But I don't see exactly how we are going to submit him to examination on this point. If he were only a chemical compound, we could analyze him. If he were only a bird or a quadruped, we could find out his likes and dislikes. But being, as he is, a young man, with ways of his own, and a will of his own, which he may not choose to have interfered with, the problem becomes more complicated. I hear that a newspaper correspondent has visited him so as to make a report to his paper,—do you know what he found out?"

"Certainly I do, very well. My brother has heard his own story, which was this: He found out he had got hold of the wrong person to interview. The young gentleman, he says, interviewed him, so that he did not learn much about the Sphinx. But the newspaper man told Willy about the Sphinx's library and a cabinet of coins he had; and said he should make an article out of him, anyhow. I wish the man would take himself off. I am afraid Lurida's love of knowledge will get her into trouble!"

"Which of the men do you wish would take himself off?"

"I was thinking of the newspaper man."

She blushed a little as she said, "I can't help feeling a strange sort of interest about the other, Mr. Kirkwood. Do you know that I met him this morning, and had a good look at him, full in the face?"

"Well, to be sure! That was an interesting experience. And how did you like his looks?"

"I thought his face a very remarkable one. But he looked very pale as he passed me, and I noticed that he put his hand to his left side as if he had a twinge of pain, or something of that sort,—spasm or neuralgia,—I don't know what. I wondered whether he had what you call angina pectoris. It was the same kind of look and movement, I remember, as you trust, too, in my uncle who died with that complaint."

The doctor was silent for a moment. Then he asked, "Were you dressed as you are now?"

"Yes, I was, except that I had a thin mantle over my shoulders. I was out early, and I have always remembered your caution."

"What color was your mantle?"

"It was black. I have been over all this with Lucinda. A black mantle on a white dress. A straw hat with an old faded ribbon. There can't be much in those colors to trouble him, I should think, for his man wears a black coat and white linen,—more or less white, as you must have noticed, and he must have seen ribbons of all colors often enough. But Lurida believes it was the ribbon, or something in the combination of colors. Her head is full of Tarantulas and Tarantism. I fear that she will never be easy until the question is settled by actual trial. And will you believe it? the girl is determined in some way to test her supposition!"

"Believe it, Euthymia? I can believe almost anything of Lurida. She is the most irrepressible creature I ever knew. You know as well as I do what a complete possession any ruling idea takes of her whole nature. I have had some fears lest her zeal might run away with her discretion. It is a great deal easier to get into a false position than to get out of it."

"I know it well enough. I want you to tell me what you think about the whole business. I don't like the look of it at all, and yet I can do nothing with the girl except let her follow her fancy, until I can show her plainly that she will get herself into trouble in some way or other. But she is ingenious,—full of all sorts of devices, innocent enough in themselves, but liable to be misconstrued. You remember how she won us the boat-race?"

"To be sure I do. It was rather sharp practice, but she felt she was paying off an old score. The classical story of Atalanta, told, like that of Eve, as illustrating the weakness of woman, provoked her to make trial of the powers of resistance in the other sex. But it was audacious. I hope her audacity will not go too far. You must watch her. Keep an eye on her correspondence."

The doctor had great confidence in the good sense of Lurida's friend. He felt sure that she would not let Lurida commit herself by writing foolish letters to the subject of her speculations, or similar indiscreet performances. The boldness of young girls, who think no evil, in opening correspondence with idealized personages is something quite astonishing to those who have had an opportunity of knowing the facts. Lurida had passed the most dangerous age, but her theory of the equality of the sexes made her indifferent to the by-laws of social usage. She required watching, and her two guardians were ready to check her, in case of need.



XVI

MISS VINCENT WRITES A LETTER.

Euthymia noticed that her friend had been very much preoccupied for two or three days. She found her more than once busy at her desk, with a manuscript before her, which she turned over and placed inside the desk, as Euthymia entered.

This desire of concealment was not what either of the friends expected to see in the other. It showed that some project was under way, which, at least in its present stage, the Machiavellian young lady did not wish to disclose. It had cost her a good deal of thought and care, apparently, for her waste-basket was full of scraps of paper, which looked as if they were the remains of a manuscript like that at which she was at work. "Copying and recopying, probably," thought Euthymia, but she was willing to wait to learn what Lurida was busy about, though she had a suspicion that it was something in which she might feel called upon to interest herself.

"Do you know what I think?" said Euthymia to the doctor, meeting him as he left his door. "I believe Lurida is writing to this man, and I don't like the thought of her doing such a thing. Of course she is not like other girls in many respects, but other people will judge her by the common rules of life."

"I am glad that you spoke of it," answered the doctor; "she would write to him just as quickly as to any woman of his age. Besides, under the cover of her office, she has got into the way of writing to anybody. I think she has already written to Mr. Kirkwood, asking him to contribute a paper for the Society. She can find a pretext easily enough if she has made up her mind to write. In fact, I doubt if she would trouble herself for any pretext at all if she decided to write. Watch her well. Don't let any letter go without seeing it, if you can help it."

Young women are much given to writing letters to persons whom they only know indirectly, for the most part through their books, and especially to romancers and poets. Nothing can be more innocent and simple-hearted than most of these letters. They are the spontaneous outflow of young hearts easily excited to gratitude for the pleasure which some story or poem has given them, and recognizing their own thoughts, their own feelings, in those expressed by the author, as if on purpose for them to read. Undoubtedly they give great relief to solitary young persons, who must have some ideal reflection of themselves, and know not where to look since Protestantism has taken away the crucifix and the Madonna. The recipient of these letters sometimes wonders, after reading through one of them, how it is that his young correspondent has managed to fill so much space with her simple message of admiration or of sympathy.

Lurida did not belong to this particular class of correspondents, but she could not resist the law of her sex, whose thoughts naturally surround themselves with superabundant drapery of language, as their persons float in a wide superfluity of woven tissues. Was she indeed writing to this unknown gentleman? Euthymia questioned her point-blank.

"Are you going to open a correspondence with Mr. Maurice Kirkwood, Lurida? You seem to be so busy writing, I can think of nothing else. Or are you going to write a novel, or a paper for the Society,—do tell me what you are so much taken up with."

"I will tell you, Euthymia, if you will promise not to find fault with me for carrying out my plan as I have made up my mind to do. You may read this letter before I seal it, and if you find anything in it you don't like you can suggest any change that you think will improve it. I hope you will see that it explains itself. I don't believe that you will find anything to frighten you in it."

This is the letter, as submitted to Miss Tower by her friend. The bold handwriting made it look like a man's letter, and gave it consequently a less dangerous expression than that which belongs to the tinted and often fragrant sheet with its delicate thready characters, which slant across the page like an April shower with a south wind chasing it.

ARROWHEAD VILLAGE, August—, 18—.

MY DEAR SIR,—You will doubtless be surprised at the sight of a letter like this from one whom you only know as the Secretary of the Pansophian Society. There is a very common feeling that it is unbecoming in one of my sex to address one of your own with whom she is unacquainted, unless she has some special claim upon his attention. I am by no means disposed to concede to the vulgar prejudice on this point. If one human being has anything to communicate to another,—anything which deserves being communicated,—I see no occasion for bringing in the question of sex. I do not think the homo sum of Terence can be claimed for the male sex as its private property on general any more than on grammatical grounds,

I have sometimes thought of devoting myself to the noble art of healing. If I did so, it would be with the fixed purpose of giving my whole powers to the service of humanity. And if I should carry out that idea, should I refuse my care and skill to a suffering fellow-mortal because that mortal happened to be a brother, and not a sister? My whole nature protests against such one-sided humanity! No! I am blind to all distinctions when my eyes are opened to any form of suffering, to any spectacle of want.

You may ask me why I address you, whom I know little or nothing of, and to whom such an advance may seem presumptuous and intrusive. It is because I was deeply impressed by the paper which I attributed to you,—that on Ocean, River, and Lake, which was read at one of our meetings. I say that I was deeply impressed, but I do not mean this as a compliment to that paper. I am not bandying compliments now, but thinking of better things than praises or phrases. I was interested in the paper, partly because I recognized some of the feelings expressed in it as my own,—partly because there was an undertone of sadness in all the voices of nature as you echoed them which made me sad to hear, and which I could not help longing to cheer and enliven. I said to myself, I should like to hold communion with the writer of that paper. I have had my lonely hours and days, as he has had. I have had some of his experiences in my intercourse with nature. And oh! if I could draw him into those better human relations which await us all, if we come with the right dispositions, I should blush if I stopped to inquire whether I violated any conventional rule or not.

You will understand me, I feel sure. You believe, do you not? in the insignificance of the barrier which divides the sisterhood from the brotherhood of mankind. You believe, do you not? that they should be educated side by side, that they should share the same pursuits, due regard being had to the fitness of the particular individual for hard or light work, as it must always be, whether we are dealing with the "stronger" or the "weaker" sex. I mark these words because, notwithstanding their common use, they involve so much that is not true. Stronger! Yes, to lift a barrel of flour, or a barrel of cider,—though there have been women who could do that, and though when John Wesley was mobbed in Staffordshire a woman knocked down three or four men, one after another, until she was at last overpowered and nearly murdered. Talk about the weaker sex! Go and see Miss Euthymia Tower at the gymnasium! But no matter about which sex has the strongest muscles. Which has most to suffer, and which has most endurance and vitality? We go through many ordeals which you are spared, but we outlast you in mind and body. I have been led away into one of my accustomed trains of thought, but not so far away from it as you might at first suppose.

My brother! Are you not ready to recognize in me a friend, an equal, a sister, who can speak to you as if she had been reared under the same roof? And is not the sky that covers us one roof, which makes us all one family? You are lonely, you must be longing for some human fellowship. Take me into your confidence. What is there that you can tell me to which I cannot respond with sympathy? What saddest note in your spiritual dirges which will not find its chord in mine?

I long to know what influence has cast its shadow over your existence. I myself have known what it is to carry a brain that never rests in a body that is always tired. I have defied its infirmities, and forced it to do my bidding. You have no such hindrance, if we may judge by your aspect and habits. You deal with horses like a Homeric hero. No wild Indian could handle his bark canoe more dexterously or more vigorously than we have seen you handling yours. There must be some reason for your seclusion which curiosity has not reached, and into which it is not the province of curiosity to inquire. But in the irresistible desire which I have to bring you into kindly relations with those around you, I must run the risk of giving offence that I may know in what direction to look for those restorative influences which the sympathy of a friend and sister can offer to a brother in need of some kindly impulse to change the course of a life which is not, which cannot be, in accordance with his true nature.

I have thought that there may be something in the conditions with which you are here surrounded which is repugnant to your feelings,—something which can be avoided only by keeping yourself apart from the people whose acquaintance you would naturally have formed. There can hardly be anything in the place itself, or you would not have voluntarily sought it as a residence, even for a single season there might be individuals here whom you would not care to meet, there must be such, but you cannot have a personal aversion to everybody. I have heard of cases in which certain sights and sounds, which have no particular significance for most persons, produced feelings of distress or aversion that made, them unbearable to the subjects of the constitutional dislike. It has occurred to me that possibly you might have some such natural aversion to the sounds of the street, or such as are heard in most houses, especially where a piano is kept, as it is in fact in almost all of those in the village. Or it might be, I imagined, that some color in the dresses of women or the furniture of our rooms affected you unpleasantly. I know that instances of such antipathy have been recorded, and they would account for the seclusion of those who are subject to it.

If there is any removable condition which interferes with your free entrance into and enjoyment of the social life around you, tell me, I beg of you, tell me what it is, and it shall be eliminated. Think it not strange, O my brother, that I thus venture to introduce myself into the hidden chambers of your life. I will never suffer myself to be frightened from the carrying out of any thought which promises to be of use to a fellow-mortal by a fear lest it should be considered "unfeminine." I can bear to be considered unfeminine, but I cannot endure to think of myself as inhuman. Can I help you, my brother'?

Believe me your most sincere well-wisher, LURIDA VINCENT.

Euthymia had carried off this letter and read it by herself. As she finished it, her feelings found expression in an old phrase of her grandmother's, which came up of itself, as such survivals of early days are apt to do, on great occasions.

"Well, I never!"

Then she loosened some button or string that was too tight, and went to the window for a breath of outdoor air. Then she began at the beginning and read the whole letter all over again.

What should she do about it? She could not let this young girl send a letter like that to a stranger of whose character little was known except by inference,—to a young man, who would consider it a most extraordinary advance on the part of the sender. She would have liked to tear it into a thousand pieces, but she had no right to treat it in that way. Lurida meant to send it the next morning, and in the mean time Euthymia had the night to think over what she should do about it.

There is nothing like the pillow for an oracle. There is no voice like that which breaks the silence—of the stagnant hours of the night with its sudden suggestions and luminous counsels. When Euthymia awoke in the morning, her course of action was as clear before her as if it bad been dictated by her guardian angel. She went straight over to the home of Lurida, who was just dressed for breakfast.

She was naturally a little surprised at this early visit. She was struck with the excited look of Euthymia, being herself quite calm, and contemplating her project with entire complacency.

Euthymia began, in tones that expressed deep anxiety.

"I have read your letter, my dear, and admired its spirit and force. It is a fine letter, and does you great credit as an expression of the truest human feeling. But it must not be sent to Mr. Kirkwood. If you were sixty years old, perhaps if you were fifty, it might be admissible to send it. But if you were forty, I should question its propriety; if you were thirty, I should veto it, and you are but a little more than twenty. How do you know that this stranger will not show your letter to anybody or everybody? How do you know that he will not send it to one of the gossiping journals like the 'Household Inquisitor'? But supposing he keeps it to himself, which is more than you have a right to expect, what opinion is he likely to form of a young lady who invades his privacy with such freedom? Ten to one he will think curiosity is at the bottom of it,—and,—come, don't be angry at me for suggesting it,—may there not be a little of that same motive mingled with the others? No, don't interrupt me quite yet; you do want to know whether your hypothesis is correct. You are full of the best and kindest feelings in the world, but your desire for knowledge is the ferment under them just now, perhaps more than you know."

Lurida's pale cheeks flushed and whitened more than once while her friend was speaking. She loved her too sincerely and respected her intelligence too much to take offence at her advice, but she could not give up her humane and sisterly intentions merely from the fear of some awkward consequences to herself. She had persuaded herself that she was playing the part of a Protestant sister of charity, and that the fact of her not wearing the costume of these ministering angels made no difference in her relations to those who needed her aid.

"I cannot see your objections in the light in which they appear to you," she said gravely. "It seems to me that I give up everything when I hesitate to help a fellow-creature because I am a woman. I am not afraid to send this letter and take all the consequences."

"Will you go with me to the doctor's, and let him read it in our presence? And will you agree to abide by his opinion, if it coincides with mine?"

Lurida winced a little at this proposal. "I don't quite like," she said, "showing this letter to—to" she hesitated, but it had to come out—"to a man, that is, to another man than the one for whom it was intended."

The neuter gender business had got a pretty damaging side-hit.

"Well, never mind about letting him read the letter. Will you go over to his house with me at noon, when he comes back after his morning visits, and have a talk over the whole matter with him? You know I have sometimes had to say must to you, Lurida, and now I say you must go to the doctor's with me and carry that letter."

There was no resisting the potent monosyllable as the sweet but firm voice delivered it. At noon the two maidens rang at the doctor's door. The servant said he had been at the house after his morning visits, but found a hasty summons to Mr. Kirkwood, who had been taken suddenly ill and wished to see him at once. Was the illness dangerous? The servant-maid did n't know, but thought it was pretty bad, for Mr. Paul came in as white as a sheet, and talked all sorts of languages which she couldn't understand, and took on as if he thought Mr. Kirkwood was going to die right off.

And so the hazardous question about sending the letter was disposed of, at least for the present.



XVII

Dr. BUTTS'S PATIENT.

The physician found Maurice just regaining his heat after a chill of a somewhat severe character. He knew too well what this meant, and the probable series of symptoms of which it was the prelude. His patient was not the only one in the neighborhood who was attacked in this way. The autumnal fevers to which our country towns are subject, in the place of those "agues," or intermittents, so largely prevalent in the South and West, were already beginning, and Maurice, who had exposed himself in the early and late hours of the dangerous season, must be expected to go through the regular stages of this always serious and not rarely fatal disease.

Paolo, his faithful servant, would fain have taken the sole charge of his master during his illness. But the doctor insisted that he must have a nurse to help him in his task, which was likely to be long and exhausting.

At the mention of the word "nurse" Paolo turned white, and exclaimed in an agitated and thoroughly frightened way,

"No! no nuss! no woman! She kill him! I stay by him day and night, but don' let no woman come near him,—if you do, he die!"

The doctor explained that he intended to send a man who was used to taking care of sick people, and with no little effort at last succeeded in convincing Paolo that, as he could not be awake day and night for a fortnight or three weeks, it was absolutely necessary to call in some assistance from without. And so Mr. Maurice Kirkwood was to play the leading part in that drama of nature's composing called a typhoid fever, with its regular bedchamber scenery, its properties of phials and pill-boxes, its little company of stock actors, its gradual evolution of a very simple plot, its familiar incidents, its emotional alternations, and its denouement, sometimes tragic, oftener happy.

It is needless to say that the sympathies of all the good people of the village, residents and strangers, were actively awakened for the young man about whom they knew so little and conjectured so much. Tokens of their kindness came to him daily: flowers from the woods and from the gardens; choice fruit grown in the open air or under glass, for there were some fine houses surrounded by well-kept grounds, and greenhouses and graperies were not unknown in the small but favored settlement.

On all these luxuries Maurice looked with dull and languid eyes. A faint smile of gratitude sometimes struggled through the stillness of his features, or a murmured word of thanks found its way through his parched lips, and he would relapse into the partial stupor or the fitful sleep in which, with intervals of slight wandering, the slow hours dragged along the sluggish days one after another. With no violent symptoms, but with steady persistency, the disease moved on in its accustomed course. It was at no time immediately threatening, but the experienced physician knew its uncertainties only too well. He had known fever patients suddenly seized with violent internal inflammation, and carried off with frightful rapidity. He remembered the case of a convalescent, a young woman who had been attacked while in apparently vigorous general health, who, on being lifted too suddenly to a sitting position, while still confined to her bed, fainted, and in a few moments ceased to breathe. It may well be supposed that he took every possible precaution to avert the accidents which tend to throw from its track a disease the regular course of which is arranged by nature as carefully as the route of a railroad from one city to another. The most natural interpretation which the common observer would put upon the manifestations of one of these autumnal maladies would be that some noxious combustible element had found its way into the system which must be burned to ashes before the heat which pervades the whole body can subside. Sometimes the fire may smoulder and seem as if it were going out, or were quite extinguished, and again it will find some new material to seize upon, and flame up as fiercely as ever. Its coming on most frequently at the season when the brush fires which are consuming the dead branches, and withered leaves, and all the refuse of vegetation are sending up their smoke is suggestive. Sometimes it seems as if the body, relieved of its effete materials, renewed its youth after one of these quiet, expurgating, internal fractional cremations. Lean, pallid students have found themselves plump and blooming, and it has happened that one whose hair was straight as gnat of an Indian has been startled to behold himself in his mirror with a fringe of hyacinthine curls about his rejuvenated countenance.

There was nothing of what medical men call malignity in the case of Maurice Kirkwood. The most alarming symptom was a profound prostration, which at last reached such a point that he lay utterly helpless, as unable to move without aid as the feeblest of paralytics. In this state he lay for many days, not suffering pain, but with the sense of great weariness, and the feeling that he should never rise from his bed again. For the most part his intellect was unclouded when his attention was aroused. He spoke only in whispers, a few words at a time. The doctor felt sure, by the expression which passed over his features from time to time, that something was worrying and oppressing him; something which he wished to communicate, and had not the force, or the tenacity of purpose, to make perfectly clear. His eyes often wandered to a certain desk, and once he had found strength to lift his emaciated arm and point to it. The doctor went towards it as if to fetch it to him, but he slowly shook his head. He had not the power to say at that time what he wished. The next day he felt a little less prostrated; and succeeded in explaining to the doctor what he wanted. His words, so far as the physician could make them out, were these which follow. Dr. Butts looked upon them as possibly expressing wishes which would be his last, and noted them down carefully immediately after leaving his chamber.

"I commit the secret of my life to your charge. My whole story is told in a paper locked in that desk. The key is—put your hand under my pillow. If I die, let the story be known. It will show that I was—human—and save my memory from reproach."

He was silent for a little time. A single tear stole down his hollow cheek. The doctor turned his head away, for his own eyes were full. But he said to himself, "It is a good sign; I begin to feel strong hopes that he will recover."

Maurice spoke once more. "Doctor, I put full trust in you. You are wise and kind. Do what you will with this paper, but open it at once and read. I want you to know the story of my life before it is finished—if the end is at hand. Take it with you and read it before you sleep." He was exhausted and presently his eyes closed, but the doctor saw a tranquil look on his features which added encouragement to his hopes.



XVIII

MAURICE KIRKWOOD'S STORY OF HIS LIFE.

I am an American by birth, but a large part of my life has been passed in foreign lands. My father was a man of education, possessed of an ample fortune; my mother was considered, a very accomplished and amiable woman. I was their first and only child. She died while I was yet an infant. If I remember her at all it is as a vision, more like a glimpse of a pre-natal existence than as a part of my earthly life. At the death of my mother I was left in the charge of the old nurse who had enjoyed her perfect confidence. She was devoted to me, and I became absolutely dependent on her, who had for me all the love and all the care of a mother. I was naturally the object of the attentions and caresses of the family relatives. I have been told that I was a pleasant, smiling infant, with nothing to indicate any peculiar nervous susceptibility; not afraid of strangers, but on the contrary ready to make their acquaintance. My father was devoted to me and did all in his power to promote my health and comfort.

I was still a babe, often carried in arms, when the event happened which changed my whole future and destined me to a strange and lonely existence. I cannot relate it even now without a sense of terror. I must force myself to recall the circumstances as told me and vaguely remembered, for I am not willing that my doomed and wholly exceptional life should pass away unrecorded, unexplained, unvindicated. My nature is, I feel sure, a kind and social one, but I have lived apart, as if my heart were filled with hatred of my fellow-creatures. If there are any readers who look without pity, without sympathy, upon those who shun the fellowship of their fellow men and women, who show by their downcast or averted eyes that they dread companionship and long for solitude, I pray them, if this paper ever reaches them, to stop at this point. Follow me no further, for you will not believe my story, nor enter into the feelings which I am about to reveal. But if there are any to whom all that is human is of interest, who have felt in their own consciousness some stirrings of invincible attraction to one individual and equally invincible repugnance to another, who know by their own experience that elective affinities have as their necessary counterpart, and, as it were, their polar opposites, currents not less strong of elective repulsions, let them read with unquestioning faith the story of a blighted life I am about to relate, much of it, of course, received from the lips of others.

My cousin Laura, a girl of seventeen, lately returned from Europe, was considered eminently beautiful. It was in my second summer that she visited my father's house, where he was living with his servants and my old nurse, my mother having but recently left him a widower. Laura was full of vivacity, impulsive, quick in her movements, thoughtless occasionally, as it is not strange that a young girl of her age should be. It was a beautiful summer day when she saw me for the first time. My nurse had me in her arms, walking back and forward on a balcony with a low railing, upon which opened the windows of the second story of my father's house. While the nurse was thus carrying me, Laura came suddenly upon the balcony. She no sooner saw me than with all the delighted eagerness of her youthful nature she rushed toward me, and, catching me from the nurse's arms, began tossing me after the fashion of young girls who have been so lately playing with dolls that they feel as if babies were very much of the same nature. The abrupt seizure frightened me; I sprang from her arms in my terror, and fell over the railing of the balcony. I should probably enough have been killed on the spot but for the fact that a low thorn-bush grew just beneath the balcony, into which I fell and thus had the violence of the shock broken. But the thorns tore my tender flesh, and I bear to this day marks of the deep wounds they inflicted.

That dreadful experience is burned deep into my memory. The sudden apparition of the girl; the sense of being torn away from the protecting arms around me; the frantic effort to escape; the shriek that accompanied my fall through what must have seemed unmeasurable space; the cruel lacerations of the piercing and rending thorns,—all these fearful impressions blended in one paralyzing terror.

When I was taken up I was thought to be dead. I was perfectly white, and the physician who first saw me said that no pulse was perceptible. But after a time consciousness returned; the wounds, though painful, were none of them dangerous, and the most alarming effects of the accident passed away. My old nurse cared for me tenderly day and night, and my father, who had been almost distracted in the first hours which followed the injury, hoped and believed that no permanent evil results would be found to result from it. My cousin Laura was of course deeply distressed to feel that her thoughtlessness had been the cause of so grave an accident. As soon as I had somewhat recovered she came to see me, very penitent, very anxious to make me forget the alarm she had caused me, with all its consequences. I was in the nursery sitting up in my bed, bandaged, but not in any pain, as it seemed, for I was quiet and to all appearance in a perfectly natural state of feeling. As Laura came near me I shrieked and instantly changed color. I put my hand upon my heart as if I had been stabbed, and fell over, unconscious. It was very much the same state as that in which I was found immediately after my fall.

The cause of this violent and appalling seizure was but too obvious. The approach of the young girl and the dread that she was about to lay her hand upon me had called up the same train of effects which the moment of terror and pain had already occasioned. The old nurse saw this in a moment. "Go! go!" she cried to Laura, "go, or the child will die!" Her command did not have to be repeated. After Laura had gone I lay senseless, white and cold as marble, for some time. The doctor soon came, and by the use of smart rubbing and stimulants the color came back slowly to my cheeks and the arrested circulation was again set in motion.

It was hard to believe that this was anything more than a temporary effect of the accident. There could be little doubt, it was thought by the doctor and by my father, that after a few days I should recover from this morbid sensibility and receive my cousin as other infants receive pleasant-looking young persons. The old nurse shook her head. "The girl will be the death of the child," she said, "if she touches him or comes near him. His heart stopped beating just as when the girl snatched him out of my arms, and he fell over the balcony railing." Once more the experiment was tried, cautiously, almost insidiously. The same alarming consequences followed. It was too evident that a chain of nervous disturbances had been set up in my system which repeated itself whenever the original impression gave the first impulse. I never saw my cousin Laura after this last trial. Its result had so distressed her that she never ventured again to show herself to me.

If the effect of the nervous shock had stopped there, it would have been a misfortune for my cousin and myself, but hardly a calamity. The world is wide, and a cousin or two more or less can hardly be considered an essential of existence. I often heard Laura's name mentioned, but never by any one who was acquainted with all the circumstances, for it was noticed that I changed color and caught at my breast as if I wanted to grasp my heart in my hand whenever that fatal name was mentioned.

Alas! this was not all. While I was suffering from the effects of my fall among the thorns I was attended by my old nurse, assisted by another old woman, by a physician, and my father, who would take his share in caring for me. It was thought best to keep—me perfectly quiet, and strangers and friends were alike excluded from my nursery, with one exception, that my old grandmother came in now and then. With her it seems that I was somewhat timid and shy, following her with rather anxious eyes, as if not quite certain whether or not she was dangerous. But one day, when I was far advanced towards recovery, my father brought in a young lady, a relative of his, who had expressed a great desire to see me. She was, as I have been told, a very handsome girl, of about the same age as my cousin Laura, but bearing no personal resemblance to her in form, features, or complexion. She had no sooner entered the room than the same sudden changes which had followed my cousin's visit began to show themselves, and before she had reached my bedside I was in a state of deadly collapse, as on the occasions already mentioned.

Some time passed before any recurrence of these terrifying seizures. A little girl of five or six years old was allowed to come into the nursery one day and bring me some flowers. I took them from her hand, but turned away and shut my eyes. There was no seizure, but there was a certain dread and aversion, nothing more than a feeling which it might be hoped that time would overcome. Those around me were gradually finding out the circumstances which brought on the deadly attack to which I was subject.

The daughter of one of our near neighbors was considered the prettiest girl of the village where we were passing the summer. She was very anxious to see me, and as I was now nearly well it was determined that she should be permitted to pay me a short visit. I had always delighted in seeing her and being caressed by her. I was sleeping when she entered the nursery and came and took a seat at my side in perfect silence. Presently I became restless, and a moment later I opened my eyes and saw her stooping over me. My hand went to my left breast,—the color faded from my cheeks,—I was again the cold marble image so like death that it had well-nigh been mistaken for it.

Could it be possible that the fright which had chilled my blood had left me with an unconquerable fear of woman at the period when she is most attractive not only to adolescents, but to children of tender age, who feel the fascination of her flowing locks, her bright eyes, her blooming cheeks, and that mysterious magnetism of sex which draws all life into its warm and potently vitalized atmosphere? So it did indeed seem. The dangerous experiment could not be repeated indefinitely. It was not intentionally tried again, but accident brought about more than one renewal of it during the following years, until it became fully recognized that I was the unhappy subject of a mortal dread of woman,—not absolutely of the human female, for I had no fear of my old nurse or of my grandmother, or of any old wrinkled face, and I had become accustomed to the occasional meeting of a little girl or two, whom I nevertheless regarded with a certain ill-defined feeling that there was danger in their presence. I was sent to a boys' school very early, and during the first ten or twelve years of my life I had rarely any occasion to be reminded of my strange idiosyncrasy.

As I grew out of boyhood into youth, a change came over the feelings which had so long held complete possession of me. This was what my father and his advisers had always anticipated, and was the ground of their confident hope in my return to natural conditions before I should have grown to mature manhood.

How shall I describe the conflicts of those dreamy, bewildering, dreadful years? Visions of loveliness haunted me sleeping and waking. Sometimes a graceful girlish figure would so draw my eyes towards it that I lost sight of all else, and was ready to forget all my fears and find myself at her side, like other youths by the side of young maidens,—happy in their cheerful companionship, while I,—I, under the curse of one blighting moment, looked on, hopeless. Sometimes the glimpse of a fair face or the tone of a sweet voice stirred within me all the instincts that make the morning of life beautiful to adolescence. I reasoned with myself:

Why should I not have outgrown that idle apprehension which had been the nightmare of my earlier years? Why should not the rising tide of life have drowned out the feeble growths that infested the shallows of childhood? How many children there are who tremble at being left alone in the dark, but who, a few years later, will smile at their foolish terrors and brave all the ghosts of a haunted chamber! Why should I any longer be the slave of a foolish fancy that has grown into a half insane habit of mind? I was familiarly acquainted with all the stories of the strange antipathies and invincible repugnances to which others, some of them famous men, had been subject. I said to myself, Why should not I overcome this dread of woman as Peter the Great fought down his dread of wheels rolling over a bridge? Was I, alone of all mankind, to be doomed to perpetual exclusion from the society which, as it seemed to me, was all that rendered existence worth the trouble and fatigue of slavery to the vulgar need of supplying the waste of the system and working at the task of respiration like the daughters of Danaus,—toiling day and night as the worn-out sailor labors at the pump of his sinking vessel?

Why did I not brave the risk of meeting squarely, and without regard to any possible danger, some one of those fair maidens whose far-off smile, whose graceful movements, at once attracted and agitated me? I can only answer this question to the satisfaction of any really inquiring reader by giving him the true interpretation of the singular phenomenon of which I was the subject. For this I shall have to refer to a paper of which I have made a copy, and which will be found included with this manuscript. It is enough to say here, without entering into the explanation of the fact, which will be found simple enough as seen by the light of modern physiological science, that the "nervous disturbance" which the presence of a woman in the flower of her age produced in my system was a sense of impending death, sudden, overwhelming, unconquerable, appalling. It was a reversed action of the nervous centres,—the opposite of that which flushes the young lover's cheek and hurries his bounding pulses as he comes into the presence of the object of his passion. No one who has ever felt the sensation can have failed to recognize it as an imperative summons, which commands instant and terrified submission.

It was at this period of my life that my father determined to try the effect of travel and residence in different localities upon my bodily and mental condition. I say bodily as well as mental, for I was too slender for my height and subject to some nervous symptoms which were a cause of anxiety. That the mind was largely concerned in these there was no doubt, but the mutual interactions of mind and body are often too complex to admit of satisfactory analysis. Each is in part cause and each also in part effect.

We passed some years in Italy, chiefly in Rome, where I was placed in a school conducted by priests, and where of course I met only those of my own sex. There I had the opportunity of seeing the influences under which certain young Catholics, destined for the priesthood, are led to separate themselves from all communion with the sex associated in their minds with the most subtle dangers to which the human soul can be exposed. I became in some degree reconciled to the thought of exclusion from the society of women by seeing around me so many who were self-devoted to celibacy. The thought sometimes occurred to me whether I should not find the best and the only natural solution of the problem of existence, as submitted to myself, in taking upon me the vows which settle the whole question and raise an impassable barrier between the devotee and the object of his dangerous attraction.

How often I talked this whole matter over with the young priest who was at once my special instructor and my favorite companion! But accustomed as I had become to the forms of the Roman Church, and impressed as I was with the purity and excellence of many of its young members with whom I was acquainted, my early training rendered it impossible for me to accept the credentials which it offered me as authoritative. My friend and instructor had to set me down as a case of "invincible ignorance." This was the loop-hole through which he crept out of the prison-house of his creed, and was enabled to look upon me without the feeling of absolute despair with which his sterner brethren would, I fear, have regarded me.

I have said that accident exposed me at times to the influence which I had such reasons for dreading. Here is one example of such an occurrence, which I relate as simply as possible, vividly as it is impressed upon my memory. A young friend whose acquaintance I had made in Rome asked me one day to come to his rooms and look at a cabinet of gems and medals which he had collected. I had been but a short time in his library when a vague sense of uneasiness came over me. My heart became restless,—I could feel it stirring irregularly, as if it were some frightened creature caged in my breast. There was nothing that I could see to account for it. A door was partly open, but not so that I could see into the next room. The feeling grew upon me of some influence which was paralyzing my circulation. I begged my friend to open a window. As he did so, the door swung in the draught, and I saw a blooming young woman,—it was my friend's sister, who had been sitting with a book in her hand, and who rose at the opening of the door. Something had warned me of the presence of a woman, that occult and potent aura of individuality, call it personal magnetism, spiritual effluence, or reduce it to a simpler expression if you will; whatever it was, it had warned me of the nearness of the dread attraction which allured at a distance and revealed itself with all the terrors of the Lorelei if approached too recklessly. A sign from her brother caused her to withdraw at once, but not before I had felt the impression which betrayed itself in my change of color, anxiety about the region of the heart, and sudden failure as if about to fall in a deadly fainting-fit.

Does all this seem strange and incredible to the reader of my manuscript? Nothing in the history of life is so strange or exceptional as it seems to those who have not made a long study of its mysteries. I have never known just such a case as my own, and yet there must have been such, and if the whole history of mankind were unfolded I cannot doubt that there have been many like it. Let my reader suspend his judgment until he has read the paper I have referred to, which was drawn up by a Committee of the Royal Academy of the Biological Sciences. In this paper the mechanism of the series of nervous derangements to which I have been subject since the fatal shock experienced in my infancy is explained in language not hard to understand. It will be seen that such a change of polarity in the nervous centres is only a permanent form and an extreme degree of an emotional disturbance, which as a temporary and comparatively unimportant personal accident is far from being uncommon,—is so frequent, in fact, that every one must have known instances of it, and not a few must have had more or less serious experiences of it in their own private history.

It must not be supposed that my imagination dealt with me as I am now dealing with the reader. I was full of strange fancies and wild superstitions. One of my Catholic friends gave me a silver medal which had been blessed by the Pope, and which I was to wear next my body. I was told that this would turn black after a time, in virtue of a power which it possessed of drawing out original sin, or certain portions of it, together with the evil and morbid tendencies which had been engrafted on the corrupt nature. I wore the medal faithfully, as directed, and watched it carefully. It became tarnished and after a time darkened, but it wrought no change in my unnatural condition.

There was an old gypsy who had the reputation of knowing more of futurity than she had any right to know. The story was that she had foretold the assassination of Count Rossi and the death of Cavour.

However that may have been, I was persuaded to let her try her black art upon my future. I shall never forget the strange, wild look of the wrinkled hag as she took my hand and studied its lines and fixed her wicked old eyes on my young countenance. After this examination she shook her head and muttered some words, which as nearly as I could get them would be in English like these:

Fair lady cast a spell on thee, Fair lady's hand shall set thee free.

Strange as it may seem, these words of a withered old creature, whose palm had to be crossed with silver to bring forth her oracular response, have always clung to my memory as if they were destined to fulfilment. The extraordinary nature of the affliction to which I was subject disposed me to believe the incredible with reference to all that relates to it. I have never ceased to have the feeling that, sooner or later, I should find myself freed from the blight laid upon me in my infancy. It seems as if it would naturally come through the influence of some young and fair woman, to whom that merciful errand should be assigned by the Providence that governs our destiny. With strange hopes, with trembling fears, with mingled belief and doubt, wherever I have found myself I have sought with longing yet half-averted eyes for the "elect lady," as I have learned to call her, who was to lift the curse from my ruined life.

Three times I have been led to the hope, if not the belief, that I had found the object of my superstitious belief.—Singularly enough it was always on the water that the phantom of my hope appeared before my bewildered vision. Once it was an English girl who was a fellow passenger with me in one of my ocean voyages. I need not say that she was beautiful, for she was my dream realized. I heard her singing, I saw her walking the deck on some of the fair days when sea-sickness was forgotten. The passengers were a social company enough, but I had kept myself apart, as was my wont. At last the attraction became too strong to resist any longer. "I will venture into the charmed circle if it kills me," I said to my father. I did venture, and it did not kill me, or I should not be telling this story. But there was a repetition of the old experiences. I need not relate the series of alarming consequences of my venture. The English girl was very lovely, and I have no doubt has made some one supremely happy before this, but she was not the "elect lady" of the prophecy and of my dreams.

A second time I thought myself for a moment in the presence of the destined deliverer who was to restore me to my natural place among my fellow men and women. It was on the Tiber that I met the young maiden who drew me once more into that inner circle which surrounded young womanhood with deadly peril for me, if I dared to pass its limits. I was floating with the stream in the little boat in which I passed many long hours of reverie when I saw another small boat with a boy and a young girl in it. The boy had been rowing, and one of his oars had slipped from his grasp. He did not know how to paddle with a single oar, and was hopelessly rowing round and round, his oar all the time floating farther away from him. I could not refuse my assistance. I picked up the oar and brought my skiff alongside of the boat. When I handed the oar to the boy the young girl lifted her veil and thanked me in the exquisite music of the language which

'Sounds as if it should be writ on satin.'

She was a type of Italian beauty,—a nocturne in flesh and blood, if I may borrow a term certain artists are fond of; but it was her voice which captivated me and for a moment made me believe that I was no longer shut off from all relations with the social life of my race. An hour later I was found lying insensible on the floor of my boat, white, cold, almost pulseless. It cost much patient labor to bring me back to consciousness. Had not such extreme efforts been made, it seems probable that I should never have waked from a slumber which was hardly distinguishable from that of death.

Why should I provoke a catastrophe which appears inevitable if I invite it by exposing myself to its too well ascertained cause? The habit of these deadly seizures has become a second nature. The strongest and the ablest men have found it impossible to resist the impression produced by the most insignificant object, by the most harmless sight or sound to which they had a congenital or acquired antipathy. What prospect have I of ever being rid of this long and deep-seated infirmity? I may well ask myself these questions, but my answer is that I will never give up the hope that time will yet bring its remedy. It may be that the wild prediction which so haunts me shall find itself fulfilled. I have had of late strange premonitions, to which if I were superstitious I could not help giving heed. But I have seen too much of the faith that deals in miracles to accept the supernatural in any shape,—assuredly when it comes from an old witch-like creature who takes pay for her revelations of the future. Be it so: though I am not superstitious, I have a right to be imaginative, and my imagination will hold to those words of the old zingara with an irresistible feeling that, sooner or later, they will prove true.

Can it be possible that her prediction is not far from its realization? I have had both waking and sleeping visions within these last months and weeks which have taken possession of me and filled my life with new thoughts, new hopes, new resolves.

Sometimes on the bosom of the lake by which I am dreaming away this season of bloom and fragrance, sometimes in the fields or woods in a distant glimpse, once in a nearer glance, which left me pale and tremulous, yet was followed by a swift reaction, so that my cheeks flushed and my pulse bounded, I have seen her who—how do I dare to tell it so that my own eyes can read it?—-I cannot help believing is to be my deliverer, my saviour.

I have been warned in the most solemn and impressive language by the experts most deeply read in the laws of life and the history of its disturbing and destroying influences, that it would be at the imminent risk of my existence if I should expose myself to the repetition of my former experiences. I was reminded that unexplained sudden deaths were of constant, of daily occurrence; that any emotion is liable to arrest the movements of life: terror, joy, good news or bad news,—anything that reaches the deeper nervous centres. I had already died once, as Sir Charles Napier said of himself; yes, more than once, died and been resuscitated. The next time, I might very probably fail to get my return ticket after my visit to Hades. It was a rather grim stroke of humor, but I understood its meaning full well, and felt the force of its menace.

After all, what had I to live for if the great primal instinct which strives to make whole the half life of lonely manhood is defeated, suppressed, crushed out of existence? Why not as well die in the attempt to break up a wretched servitude to a perverted nervous movement as in any other way? I am alone in the world,—alone save for my faithful servant, through whom I seem to hold to the human race as it were by a single filament. My father, who was my instructor, my companion, my dearest and best friend through all my later youth and my earlier manhood, died three years ago and left me my own master, with the means of living as might best please my fancy. This season shall decide my fate. One more experiment, and I shall find myself restored to my place among my fellow-beings, or, as I devoutly hope, in a sphere where all our mortal infirmities are past and forgotten.

I have told the story of a blighted life without reserve, so that there shall not remain any mystery or any dark suspicion connected with my memory if I should be taken away unexpectedly. It has cost me an effort to do it, but now that my life is on record I feel more reconciled to my lot, with all its possibilities, and among these possibilities is a gleam of a better future. I have been told by my advisers, some of them wise, deeply instructed, and kind-hearted men, that such a life-destiny should be related by the subject of it for the instruction of others, and especially for the light it throws on certain peculiarities of human character often wrongly interpreted as due to moral perversion, when they are in reality the results of misdirected or reversed actions in some of the closely connected nervous centres.

For myself I can truly say that I have very little morbid sensibility left with reference to the destiny which has been allotted to me. I have passed through different stages of feeling with reference to it, as I have developed from infancy to manhood. At first it was mere blind instinct about which I had no thought, living like other infants the life of impressions without language to connect them in series. In my boyhood I began to be deeply conscious of the infirmity which separated me from those around me. In youth began that conflict of emotions and impulses with the antagonistic influence of which I have already spoken, a conflict which has never ceased, but to which I have necessarily become to a certain degree accustomed; and against the dangers of which I have learned to guard myself habitually. That is the meaning of my isolation. You, young man,—if at any time your eyes shall look upon my melancholy record,—you at least will understand me. Does not your heart throb, in the presence of budding or blooming womanhood, sometimes as if it "were ready to crack" with its own excess of strain? What if instead of throbbing it should falter, flutter, and stop as if never to beat again? You, young woman, who with ready belief and tender sympathy will look upon these pages, if they are ever spread before you, know what it is when your breast heaves with uncontrollable emotion and the grip of the bodice seems unendurable as the embrace of the iron virgin of the Inquisition. Think what it would be if the grasp were tightened so that no breath of air could enter your panting chest!

Does your heart beat in the same way, young man, when your honored friend, a venerable matron of seventy years, greets you with her kindly smile as it does in the presence of youthful loveliness? When a pretty child brings you her doll and looks into your eyes with artless grace and trustful simplicity, does your pulse quicken, do you tremble, does life palpitate through your whole being, as when the maiden of seventeen meets your enamored sight in the glow of her rosebud beauty? Wonder not, then, if the period of mystic attraction for you should be that of agitation, terror, danger, to one in whom the natural current of the instincts has had its course changed as that of a stream is changed by a convulsion of nature, so that the impression which is new life to you is death to him.

I am now twenty-five years old. I have reached the time of life which I have dreamed, nay even ventured to hope, might be the limit of the sentence which was pronounced upon me in my infancy. I can assign no good reason for this anticipation. But in writing this paper I feel as if I were preparing to begin a renewed existence. There is nothing for me to be ashamed of in the story I have told. There is no man living who would not have yielded to the sense of instantly impending death which seized upon me under the conditions I have mentioned. Martyrs have gone singing to their flaming shrouds, but never a man could hold his breath long enough to kill himself; he must have rope or water, or some mechanical help, or nature will make him draw in a breath of air, and would make him do so though he knew the salvation of the human race would be forfeited by that one gasp.

This paper may never reach the eye of any one afflicted in the same way that I have been. It probably never will; but for all that, there are many shy natures which will recognize tendencies in themselves in the direction of my unhappy susceptibility. Others, to whom such weakness seems inconceivable, will find their scepticism shaken, if not removed, by the calm, judicial statement of the Report drawn up for the Royal Academy. It will make little difference to me whether my story is accepted unhesitatingly or looked upon as largely a product of the imagination. I am but a bird of passage that lights on the boughs of different nationalities. I belong to no flock; my home may be among the palms of Syria, the olives of Italy, the oaks of England, the elms that shadow the Hudson or the Connecticut; I build no nest; to-day I am here, to-morrow on the wing.

If I quit my native land before the trees have dropped their leaves I shall place this manuscript in the safe hands of one whom I feel sure that I can trust; to do with it as he shall see fit. If it is only curious and has no bearing on human welfare, he may think it well to let it remain unread until I shall have passed away. If in his judgment it throws any light on one of the deeper mysteries of our nature,—the repulsions which play such a formidable part in social life, and which must be recognized as the correlatives of the affinities that distribute the individuals governed by them in the face of impediments which seem to be impossibilities,—then it may be freely given to the world.

But if I am here when the leaves are all fallen, the programme of my life will have changed, and this story of the dead past will be illuminated by the light of a living present which will irradiate all its saddening features. Who would not pray that my last gleam of light and hope may be that of dawn and not of departing day?

The reader who finds it hard to accept the reality of a story so far from the common range of experience is once more requested to suspend his judgment until he has read the paper which will next be offered for his consideration.



XIX.

THE REPORT OF THE BIOLOGICAL COMMITTEE.

Perhaps it is too much to expect a reader who wishes to be entertained, excited, amused, and does not want to work his passage through pages which he cannot understand without some effort of his own, to read the paper which follows and Dr. Butts's reflections upon it. If he has no curiosity in the direction of these chapters, he can afford to leave them to such as relish a slight flavor of science. But if he does so leave them he will very probably remain sceptical as to the truth of the story to which they are meant to furnish him with a key.

Of course the case of Maurice Kirkwood is a remarkable and exceptional one, and it is hardly probable that any reader's experience will furnish him with its parallel. But let him look back over all his acquaintances, if he has reached middle life, and see if he cannot recall more than one who, for some reason or other, shunned the society of young women, as if they had a deadly fear of their company. If he remembers any such, he can understand the simple statements and natural reflections which are laid before him.

One of the most singular facts connected with the history of Maurice Kirkwood was the philosophical equanimity with which he submitted to the fate which had fallen upon him. He did not choose to be pumped by the Interviewer, who would show him up in the sensational columns of his prying newspaper. He lived chiefly by himself, as the easiest mode of avoiding those meetings to which he would be exposed in almost every society into which he might venture. But he had learned to look upon himself very much as he would upon an intimate not himself,—upon a different personality. A young man will naturally enough be ashamed of his shyness. It is something which others believe, and perhaps he himself thinks, he might overcome. But in the case of Maurice Kirkwood there was no room for doubt as to the reality and gravity of the long enduring effects of his first convulsive terror. He had accepted the fact as he would have accepted the calamity of losing his sight or his hearing. When he was questioned by the experts to whom his case was submitted, he told them all that he knew about it almost without a sign of emotion. Nature was so peremptory with him,—saying in language that had no double meaning: "If you violate the condition on which you hold my gift of existence I slay you on the spot,"—that he became as decisive in his obedience as she was in her command, and accepted his fate without repining.

Yet it must not be thought for a moment,—it cannot be supposed,—that he was insensible because he looked upon himself with the coolness of an enforced philosophy. He bore his burden manfully, hard as it was to live under it, for he lived, as we have seen, in hope. The thought of throwing it off with his life, as too grievous to be borne, was familiar to his lonely hours, but he rejected it as unworthy of his manhood. How he had speculated and dreamed about it is plain enough from the paper the reader may remember on Ocean, River, and Lake.

With these preliminary hints the paper promised is submitted to such as may find any interest in them.

ACCOUNT OF A CASE OF GYNOPHOBIA.

WITH REMARKS.

Being the Substance of a Report to the Royal Academy of the Biological Sciences by a Committee of that Institution.

"The singular nature of the case we are about to narrate and comment upon will, we feel confident, arrest the attention of those who have learned the great fact that Nature often throws the strongest light upon her laws by the apparent exceptions and anomalies which from time to time are observed. We have done with the lusus naturae of earlier generations. We pay little attention to the stories of 'miracles,' except so far as we receive them ready-made at the hands of the churches which still hold to them. Not the less do we meet with strange and surprising facts, which a century or two ago would have been handled by the clergy and the courts, but today are calmly recorded and judged by the best light our knowledge of the laws of life can throw upon them. It must be owned that there are stories which we can hardly dispute, so clear and full is the evidence in their support, which do, notwithstanding, tax our faith and sometimes leave us sceptical in spite of all the testimony which supports them.

"In this category many will be disposed to place the case we commend to the candid attention of the Academy. If one were told that a young man, a gentleman by birth and training, well formed, in apparently perfect health, of agreeable physiognomy and manners, could not endure the presence of the most attractive young woman, but was seized with deadly terror and sudden collapse of all the powers of life, if he came into her immediate presence; if it were added that this same young man did not shrink from the presence of an old withered crone; that he had a certain timid liking for little maidens who had not yet outgrown the company of their dolls, the listener would be apt to smile, if he did not laugh, at the absurdity of the fable. Surely, he would say, this must be the fiction of some fanciful brain, the whim of some romancer, the trick of some playwright. It would make a capital farce, this idea, carried out. A young man slighting the lovely heroine of the little comedy and making love to her grandmother! This would, of course, be overstating the truth of the story, but to such a misinterpretation the plain facts lend themselves too easily. We will relate the leading circumstances of the case, as they were told us with perfect simplicity and frankness by the subject of an affection which, if classified, would come under the general head of Antipathy, but to which, if we give it a name, we shall have to apply the term Gynophobia, or Fear of Woman."

Here follows the account furnished to the writer of the paper, which is in all essentials identical with that already laid before the reader.

"Such is the case offered to our consideration. Assuming its truthfulness in all its particulars, it remains to see in the first place whether or not it is as entirely exceptional and anomalous as it seems at first sight, or whether it is only the last term of a series of cases which in their less formidable aspect are well known to us in literature, in the records of science, and even in our common experience.

"To most of those among us the explanations we are now about to give are entirely superfluous. But there are some whose chief studies have been in different directions, and who will not complain if certain facts are mentioned which to the expert will seem rudimentary, and which hardly require recapitulation to those who are familiarly acquainted with the common text-books.

"The heart is the centre of every living movement in the higher animals, and in man, furnishing in varying amount, or withholding to a greater or less extent, the needful supplies to all parts of the system. If its action is diminished to a certain degree, faintness is the immediate consequence; if it is arrested, loss of consciousness; if its action is not soon restored, death, of which fainting plants the white flag, remains in possession of the system.

"How closely the heart is under the influence of the emotions we need not go to science to learn, for all human experience and all literature are overflowing with evidence that shows the extent of this relation. Scripture is full of it; the heart in Hebrew poetry represents the entire life, we might almost say. Not less forcible is the language of Shakespeare, as for instance, in 'Measure for Measure:'

"'Why does my blood thus muster to my heart, Making it both unable for itself And dispossessing all my other parts Of necessary fitness?'

"More especially is the heart associated in every literature with the passion of love. A famous old story is that of Galen, who was called to the case of a young lady long ailing, and wasting away from some cause the physicians who had already seen her were unable to make out. The shrewd old practitioner suspected that love was at the bottom of the young lady's malady. Many relatives and friends of both sexes, all of them ready with their sympathy, came to see her. The physician sat by her bedside during one of these visits, and in an easy, natural way took her hand and placed a finger on her pulse. It beat quietly enough until a certain comely young gentleman entered the apartment, when it suddenly rose infrequency, and at the same moment her hurried breathing, her changing color, pale and flushed by turns, betrayed the profound agitation his presence excited. This was enough for the sagacious Greek; love was the disease, the cure of which by its like may be claimed as an anticipation of homoeopathy. In the frontispiece to the fine old 'Junta' edition of the works of Galen, you may find among the wood-cuts a representation of the interesting scene, with the title Amantas Dignotio,—the diagnosis, or recognition, of the lover.

"Love has many languages, but the heart talks through all of them. The pallid or burning cheek tells of the failing or leaping fountain which gives it color. The lovers at the 'Brookside' could hear each other's hearts beating. When Genevieve, in Coleridge's poem, forgot herself, and was beforehand with her suitor in her sudden embrace,

"'T was partly love and partly fear, And partly 't was a bashful art, That I might rather feel than see The swelling of her heart'

"Always the heart, whether its hurried action is seen, or heard, or felt. But it is not always in this way that the 'deceitful' organ treats the lover.

"'Faint heart never won fair lady.'

"This saying was not meant, perhaps, to be taken literally, but it has its literal truth. Many a lover has found his heart sink within him,—lose all its force, and leave him weak as a child in his emotion at the sight of the object of his affections. When Porphyro looked upon Madeline at her prayers in the chapel, it was too much for him:

"'She seemed a splendid angel, newly drest, Save wings, for heaven:—Porphyro grew faint, She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from earthly taint.'

"And in Balzac's novel, 'Cesar Birotteau,' the hero of the story 'fainted away for-joy at the moment when, under a linden-tree, at Sceaux, Constance-Barbe-Josephine accepted him as her future husband.'

"One who faints is dead if he does not I come to,' and nothing is more likely than that too susceptible lovers have actually gone off in this way. Everything depends on how the heart behaves itself in these and similar trying moments. The mechanism of its actions becomes an interesting subject, therefore, to lovers of both sexes, and to all who are capable of intense emotions.

"The heart is a great reservoir, which distributes food, drink, air, and heat to every part of the system, in exchange for its waste material. It knocks at the gate of every organ seventy or eighty times in a minute, calling upon it to receive its supplies and unload its refuse. Between it and the brain there is the closest relation. The emotions, which act upon it as we have seen, govern it by a mechanism only of late years thoroughly understood. This mechanism can be made plain enough to the reader who is not afraid to believe that he can understand it.