strengthless clutchings at the blanket with his long, slender fingers.

But we delay too long over the external man, seeing that our avowed
business is with the internal. A sleeping man is truly a helpless
creature. They say that, if you take his hand in yours and ask him
questions, he has no other choice than to answer--or to awake. The
Doctor--as we know by virtue of the prophetic advantages just remarked
upon--will stay asleep for some hours yet. Or, if you are clairvoyant,
you have but to fall in a trance, and lay a hand on his forehead, and
you may read off his thoughts,--provided he does his thinking in his
head. But the world is growing too wise, nowadays, to put faith in old
woman's nonsense like this. Again, there is--or used to be--an odd
theory that all matter is a sort of photographic plate, whereon is
registered, had we but eyes to read it, the complete history of
itself. What an invaluable pair of eyes were that! In vain, arraigned
before them, would the criminal deny his guilt, the lover the soft
impeachment. The whole scene would stand forth, photographed in fatal
minuteness and indelibility upon face, hands, coat-sleeve,
shirt-bosom. Mankind would be its own book of life, written in the
primal hieroglyphic character,--the language understood by all. Vocal
conversation would become obsolete, unless among a few superior
persons able to discuss abstract ideas.

We speak of these things only to smile at them; far be it from us to
insult the reader's understanding by asking him to regard them
seriously. But story-tellers labor under one disadvantage which is
peculiar to their profession,--the necessity of omniscience. This
tends to make them top arbitrary, leads them to disregard the modesty
of nature and the harmonies of reason in their methods. They will
pretend to know things which they never could have seen or heard of,