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.