modes and habits, and especially with the eccentric and fantastic in
the intellectual and spiritual operations, I was tolerably familiar.
All the literature of the supernatural was as real to me as the
laboratory of the chemist, where I saw the continual struggle of
material substances to evolve themselves into more volatile, less
palpable and coarse forms. My imagination, naturally vivid,
stimulated by such repasts, nearly mastered me. At times I could
scarcely tell where the material ceased and the immaterial began (if
I may so express it); so that once and again I walked, as it seemed,
from the solid earth onward upon an impalpable plain, where I heard
the same voices, I think, that Joan of Arc heard call to her in the
garden at Domremy. She was inspired, however, while I only lacked
exercise. I do not mean this in any literal sense; I only describe a
state of mind. I was at this time of spare habit, and nervous,
excitable temperament. I was ambitious, proud, and extremely
sensitive. I cannot deny that I had seen something of the world, and
had contracted about the average bad habits of young men who have the
sole care of themselves, and rather bungle the matter. It is
necessary to this relation to admit that I had seen a trifle more of
what is called life than a young man ought to see, but at this period
I was not only sick of my experience, but my habits were as correct
as those of any Pharisee in our college, and we had some very
favorable specimens of that ancient sect.

Nor can I deny that at this period of my life I was in a peculiar
mental condition. I well remember an illustration of it. I sat
writing late one night, copying a prize essay,--a merely manual task,
leaving my thoughts free. It was in June, a sultry night, and about
midnight a wind arose, pouring in through the open windows, full of
mournful reminiscence, not of this, but of other summers,--the same