"Hearken to my pleadings. Listen to my allegation. You stood on the edge of the brook spring in Kentucky, your back to the darkness of that gloomy cavern, and I voluntarily gave you my hand as to a guide; I turned from the verdure of the earth, the sunshine of the past, and accompanied you into as dismal a cavern as man ever entered. I have since alternately rebelled at your methods, and again have trusted you implicitly as we passed through scenes that rational imagination scarce could conjure. I have successively lost my voice, my weight, my breath, my heart throb, and my soul for aught I know. Now an unknown future awaits me on the one hand, in which you say my body is to disappear, and on the other you are standing, the only link between earth and my self-existence, a semi-mortal it may be, to speak mildly, for God only knows your true rank in life's scale. Be you man or not, you brought me here, and are responsible for my future safety. I plead and beg of you either to go on with me into the forthcoming uncertainty 'Within the Unknown Country' to which you allude, or carry me back to upper earth." He shook his head again, and motioned me onward, and his powerful will overcoming my feeble resistance, impelled me towards that mysterious shore. I floated helpless, as a fragment of camphor whirls and spins on a surface of clear, warm water, spinning and whirling aimlessly about, but moving onward. My feet rested on solid earth, and I awkwardly struggled a short distance onward and upward, and then stepped upon the slope that reached, as he had said, inward and upward towards the unrevealed "Inner Circle." I had entered now that mysterious third circle or sphere, and I stood on the very edge of the wonderful land I was destined to explore, "The Unknown Country." The strange, peaceful being whom I had observed on the shore, stepped to my side, and clasped both my hands, and the guide of former days waved me an adieu. I sank upon my knees and imploringly raised my arms in supplication, but the comrade of my journey turned about, and began to retrace his course. Suspended in vacancy, he seemed to float as a spirit would if it were wafted diagonally into the heavens, and acquiring momentum rapidly, became quickly a bright speck, seemingly a silver mote in the occult earth shine of that central sphere, and soon vanished from view. In all my past eventful history there was nothing similar to or approaching in keenness the agony that I suffered at this moment, and I question if shipwrecked sailor or entombed miner ever experienced the sense of utter desolation that now possessed and overcame me. Light everywhere about me, ever-present light, but darkness within, darkness indescribable, and mental distress unutterable. I fell upon my face in agony, and thought of other times, and those remembrances of my once happy upper earth life became excruciatingly painful, for when a person is in misery, pleasant recollections, by contrast, increase the pain.