drifted the tall masts of a schooner. It looked strangely like a
view I had seen of some foreign harbor,--Amalfi, perhaps,--with a
vine-clad balcony and a single human figure in the foreground. So
real and startling was the sight that at first it was not easy to
resolve the whole scene into its component parts. Yet it was
simply such a confused mixture of real and reflected images as
one often sees from the window of a railway carriage, where the
mirrored interior seems to glide beside the train, with the
natural landscape for a background. In this case, also, the frame
and foliage of the picture were real, and all else was reflected;
the sunlit bay behind us was reproduced as in a camera, and the
dark figure was but the full-length image of myself.

It was easy to explain all this to Severance, but he shook his
head. "So cool a philosopher as yourself," he said, "should
remember that this image is not always visible. At our last
visit, we looked for it in vain. When we first saw it, it
appeared and disappeared within ten minutes. On your mechanical
theory it should be other-wise."

This staggered me for a moment. Then the ready solution occurred,
that the reflection depended on the strength and direction of the
light; and I proved to him that, in our case, it had appeared and
disappeared with the sunshine. He was silenced, but evidently not
convinced; yet time and common-sense, it seemed, would take care
of that.

Soon after all this, I was called out of town for a week or two.
If Severance would go with me, it would doubtless complete the
cure, I thought; but this he obstinately declined. After my