in describing her distance "above"; but her distance "within" never got
beyond sixty-three. Usually, she would say twenty, twenty-five. She
appeared, in relation to the future, to resemble a diver in the deep
sea, who, the deeper he strives, finds a more resistant pressure, till,
at no great depth, resistance becomes prohibition, and he can no further
strive.

'I am afraid I can't go on: though I had a good deal to tell you about
this lady. During fifteen years, off and on, I sat listening by her dim
bed-side to her murmuring trances! At last my expert ear could detect
the sense of her faintest sigh. I heard the "Decline and Fall" from
beginning to end. Some of her reports were the most frivolous nonsense:
over others I have hung in a horror of interest. Certainly, my friend, I
have heard some amazing words proceed from those wan lips of Mary
Wilson. Sometimes I could hitch her repeatedly to any scene or subject
that I chose by the mere exercise of my will; at others, the flighty
waywardness of her spirit eluded and baffled me: she resisted--she
disobeyed: otherwise I might have sent you, not four note-books, but
twenty, or forty. About the fifth year it struck me that it would be
well to jot down her more connected utterances, since I knew shorthand.

The note-book marked "I.," [1] which seems to me the most curious,
belongs to the seventh year. Its history, like those of the other three,
is this: I heard her one afternoon murmuring in the intonation used when
_reading_; the matter interested me; I asked her where she was. She
replied: "Us are forty-five miles within: us read, and another writes";
from which I concluded that she was some fifteen to thirty years in the
future, perusing an as yet unpublished work. After that, during some
weeks, I managed to keep her to the same subject, and finally, I fancy,
won pretty well the whole work. I believe you would find it striking,