my mother and brother William) much wish it.  I gave no sort of clues, but the medium guessed at my father’s character, and at the long lapse of time since the loss of the chest, and at the hiding of it in some ’bank,’—­whether underground or at a banker’s did not appear.  The medium’s ’attendant spirit’—­one ’Daisy, an Indian papoose’—­says it is ‘in a dark place, like a vault, and mouldy.’  I am urged to inquire further.  Miss Hudson, a common-looking but respectable woman of about thirty,—­living in a lodging near Bloomsbury Square,—­utterly ignorant who I was and all about me,—­said (in her spirit voice) that I was a writer of books, and did great good, and was inspired by two spirits, one of the fair and lively sort all in white, and the other an old philosopher—­a strange guess at my mixed medley of writings.  Miss Hudson promised me that I should soon know the secret of the key, because the spirits wished it, and because there was a blue magnetic circle round the key.”

* * * * *

P.S.—­It is only proper to state that up to this present writing, January 13, 1886, I have heard nothing at all from the spirits aforesaid, and that the family key is as mysterious as ever.  My own reasonable explanation of the medium’s half true guesses is that she might have read my own dim thoughts about the matter:  naturally I would think of my dead mother and brother and myself; and thought-reading is a form of animal magnetism which some people possess more than others.

Of late, as we all know, Mr. Cumberland and others have exhibited their mysterious powers of perceiving and expounding the secret thoughts of those who chose to be thus mentally vivisected:  and I myself have this small experience to record.  Asked in a drawing-room to think of something, the hostess answered my thought by “I don’t know what it means, but there’s a great deal of green with a white star going round and round in it.”  “Quite true,” was my reply, “I was thinking of Ewhurst windmill.”

In my anonymous prophetic ode, “Things to Come” (Bosworth, 1852, long out of print), at its eleventh section, thought-reading and other like metaphysicals are strangely anticipated, ending with—­

    “Into some other wicked man’s mind
    His foolish brother is peeping to find,
    Caught in foul excitement’s snare,
    The Lying Future there!”

CHAPTER XLV.

FICKLE FORTUNE.

Ever since Schiller wrote his famous song about a poet’s heritage (ay, and long before that, as it will be long years hence), authorship has been noted for anything rather than wealth; albeit, nowadays, we have had such fortunate scribes as Dickens and Thackeray and Trollope, who severally have left piles of well-earned money behind them; though they all had encountered previous mischances before.  Accordingly, in this true record of my life, I must not omit its