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Strange Story, a — Volume 04 by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton
page 54 of 71 (76%)
same to his neighbour, and so on, till the tale has run the round of the
party. Each narrator, as soon as he has whispered his version of the
tale, writes down what he has whispered. And though, in this game, no one
has had any interest to misrepresent, but, on the contrary, each for his
own credit's sake strives to repeat what he has heard as faithfully as he
can, it will be almost invariably found that the story told by the first
person has received the most material alterations before it has reached
the eighth or the tenth. Sometimes the most important feature of the
whole narrative is altogether omitted; sometimes a feature altogether new
and preposterously absurd has been added. At the close of the experiment
one is tempted to exclaim, "How, after this, can any of those portions of
history which the chronicler took from hearsay be believed?" But, above
all, does not every anecdote of scandal which has passed, not through ten
lips, but perhaps through ten thousand, before it has reached us, become
quite as perplexing to him who would get at the truth, as the marvels he
recounts are to the bewildered reason of Fenwick the Sceptic?




CHAPTER XL.

The dead man's manuscript was gone. But how? A phantom might delude my
eye, a human will, though exerted at a distance, might, if the tales of
mesmerism be true, deprive me of movement and of consciousness; but
neither phantom nor mesmeric will could surely remove from the table
before me the material substance of the book that had vanished! Was I to
seek explanation in the arts of sorcery ascribed to Louis Grayle in the
narrative? I would not pursue that conjecture. Against it my reason rose
up half alarmed, half disdainful. Some one must have entered the room,
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