was passed, as I have described, in doing housework, attending the sick
with my mother, and reading a few books of a scientific and literary
character. At the end of this time, a letter came from an aunt of my
mother's, who was ill, and whose adopted daughter (who was my mother's
sister) was also an invalid, requesting me to visit and nurse them. I went
there in the fall. This was probably the most decisive event of my life.
My great-aunt had a cancer that was to be taken out. The other was
suffering from a nervous affection, which rendered her a confirmed
invalid. She was a most peculiar woman, and was a clairvoyant and
somnambulist of the most decided kind. Though not ill-natured, she was
full of caprices that would have exhausted the patience of the most
enduring of mortals.

This aunt of mine had been sick in bed for seven years with a nervous
derangement, which baffled the most skilful physicians who had visited
her. Her senses were so acute, that one morning she fell into convulsions
from the effect of distant music which she heard. None of us could
perceive it, and we fully believed that her imagination had produced this
result. But she insisted upon it; telling us that the music was like that
of the Bohemian miners, who played nothing but polkas. I was determined to
ascertain the truth; and really found, that, in a public garden one and a
half miles from her house, such a troop had played all the afternoon. No
public music was permitted in the city, because the magistrate had
forbidden it on her account.

She never was a Spiritualist, though she frequently went into what is now
called a trance. She spoke, wrote, sang, and had presentiments of the
finest kind, in this condition,--far better than I have ever seen here in
America in the case of the most celebrated mediums.