I need not recur to these wonderful stories.  There is, however, one, not to be found on record elsewhere, to which I would especially call the reader’s attention.  It is that of the middle-aged man, who assured me that he could never pass a tall hall clock without an indefinable terror.  While an infant in arms the heavy weight of one of these tall clocks had fallen with aloud crash and produced an impression on his nervous system which he had never got over.

The lasting effect of a shock received by the sense of sight or that of hearing is conceivable enough.

But there is another sense, the nerves of which are in close relation with the higher organs of consciousness.  The strength of the associations connected with the function of the first pair of nerves, the olfactory, is familiar to most persons in their own experience and as related by others.  Now we know that every human being, as well as every other living organism, carries its own distinguishing atmosphere.  If a man’s friend does not know it, his dog does, and can track him anywhere by it.  This personal peculiarity varies with the age and conditions of the individual.  It may be agreeable or otherwise, a source of attraction or repulsion, but its influence is not less real, though far less obvious and less dominant, than in the lower animals.  It was an atmospheric impression of this nature which associated itself with a terrible shock experienced by the infant which became the subject of this story.  The impression could not be outgrown, but it might possibly be broken up by some sudden change in the nervous system effected by a cause as potent as the one which had produced the disordered condition.

This is the best key that I can furnish to a story which must have puzzled some, repelled others, and failed to interest many who did not suspect the true cause of the mysterious antipathy.

Beverly farms, mass., August, 1891. 
O. W. H.

A MORTAL ANTIPATHY.

First opening of the new portfolio.

INTRODUCTION.

“And why the New Portfolio, I would ask?”

Pray, do you remember, when there was an accession to the nursery in which you have a special interest, whether the new-comer was commonly spoken of as a baby?  Was it not, on the contrary, invariably, under all conditions, in all companies, by the whole household, spoken of as the baby?  And was the small receptacle provided for it commonly spoken of as a cradle; or was it not always called the cradle, as if there were no other in existence?

Now this New Portfolio is the cradle in which I am to rock my new-born thoughts, and from which I am to lift them carefully and show them to callers, namely, to the whole family of readers belonging to my list of intimates, and such other friends as may drop in by accident.  And so it shall have the definite article, and not be lost in the mob of its fellows as a portfolio.