A quick association of ideas made
me shudder from head to foot; and again, like an evil spirit,
bringing up reminiscences of a man's sins, I whispered a question in
Hollingsworth's ear,--"What have you done with Priscilla?"
He gave a convulsive start, as if I had thrust a knife into him,
writhed himself round on his seat, glared fiercely into my eyes, but
answered not a word.
The Professor began his discourse, explanatory of the psychological
phenomena, as he termed them, which it was his purpose to exhibit to
the spectators. There remains no very distinct impression of it on
my memory. It was eloquent, ingenious, plausible, with a delusive
show of spirituality, yet really imbued throughout with a cold and
dead materialism. I shivered, as at a current of chill air issuing
out of a sepulchral vault, and bringing the smell of corruption along
with it. He spoke of a new era that was dawning upon the world; an
era that would link soul to soul, and the present life to what we
call futurity, with a closeness that should finally convert both
worlds into one great, mutually conscious brotherhood. He described
(in a strange, philosophical guise, with terms of art, as if it were
a matter of chemical discovery) the agency by which this mighty
result was to be effected; nor would it have surprised me, had he
pretended to hold up a portion of his universally pervasive fluid, as
he affirmed it to be, in a glass phial.
At the close of his exordium, the Professor beckoned with his hand,--
once, twice, thrice,--and a figure came gliding upon the platform,
enveloped in a long veil of silvery whiteness.
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