It takes away my
strength; while the expression of my warm feelings can never so affect
your sturdy, much tried, trouble-scathed manhood.'
You see that the flattery is never forgotten. But adulation is an
instrument of the weak as well as of the deceitful. The utterer of this
may have been innocent of fraud, and, like myself, mesmerized into
following the will of a more powerful being. Again, the purpose of
_this_ being may have been a good one. Such, and so many, and so great,
and varied, and strange, seem to be the possibilities and dangers of the
inner life.
A systematic series of attempts seems to have been made--by some person
or persons to the deponent most emphatically unknown--to get my cool,
phlegmatic nervous system and brain excited. The two principal means
made use of to complete the obsession were, that just mentioned, and the
announcement of a succession of 'big things,' as about to occur--the
biggest kind of things--those the expectation of which was best
calculated to set my brain in a whirl. It will be seen, in the sequel,
that, failing to thoroughly accomplish their purpose by such means, my
spirit friends or fiends, as the case may be, undertook the bug-a-boo,
frightening process; which was apparently working successfully, when
their operations, in that style, were suddenly brought to a final close,
by some means which must ever, I suppose, remain unknown to me.
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