The opportunity which I boasted I would not let slip has arrived. The
public must judge of how I avail myself of this ghostly power.

Now and then I was troubled with strange misgivings about the future
life. I had a hope that man might live hereafter, but death was a solemn
fact to me, into whose mystery I did not wish too closely to pry.

"Presentiments," as the great English novelist remarks, "are strange
things." That connection with some coming event which one feels like a
shadowy hand softly touching him, is inexplicable to most men.

I remember to have felt several times in my life undefined foreshadowings
of some future which was to befall me; and just previous to my departure
from earth, as has been generally stated in the journals of the day, I
experienced a similar sensation. An awful blank seemed before me--a great
chasm into which I would soon be hurled. This undefined terror took no
positive shape.

After the death of my son I felt like one who stood upon a round ball
which rolled from under him and left him nowhere.

The sudden death of James Harper added another shock to that which I had
already felt. I did not understand then, though I have since comprehended
it, that I was like some great tree, rooted in the ground, which could
not be dragged from the earth in which it was buried until it had
received some sudden blow to loosen its hold and make its grip less
tenacious.

But in the very midst of these feelings I sought the society of friends,