shock kept me dumb for a moment or two, then I said, ‘Did you come in at that door?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Did _you_ open it, or did you ring?’ ‘I rang, and the coloured man opened it.’ I said to myself: ‘This is astonishing. It takes George all of two minutes to answer the doorbell when he is in a hurry, and I have never seen him in a hurry. How _did_ this man stand two minutes at that door, within five steps of me, and I did not see him?’ I should have gone to my grave puzzling over that riddle but for that lady’s chance question last week: ‘Have you ever had a vision—when awake?’ It stands explained now. During at least sixty seconds that day I was asleep, or at least totally unconscious, without suspecting it. In that interval the man came to my immediate vicinity, rang, stood there and waited, then entered and closed the door, and I did not see him and did not hear the door slam. If he had slipped around the house in that interval and gone into the cellar—he had time enough—I should have written him up for the Society, and magnified him, and gloated over him, and hurrahed about him, and thirty yoke of oxen could not have pulled the belief out of me that I was of the favoured ones of the earth, and had seen a vision—while wide awake. Now, how are you to tell when you are awake? What are you to go by? People bite their fingers to find out. Why, you can do that in a dream. _A CURE FOR THE BLUES_ By courtesy of Mr. Cable I came into possession of a singular book eight or ten years ago. It is likely that mine is now the only copy in existence. Its title-page, unabbreviated, reads as follows: ‘The Enemy Conquered; or, Love Triumphant. By G. Ragsdale McClintock,[3] author of “An Address,” etc., delivered at Sunflower Hill, South Carolina, and member of the Yale Law School, New Haven: published by T. H. Pease, 83 Chapel Street, 1845.’ Footnote 3: The name here given is a substitute for the one actually attached to the pamphlet. No one can take up this book, and lay it down again unread. Whoever reads one line of it is caught, is chained; he has become the contented slave of its fascinations; and he will read and read, devour and devour, and will not let it go out of his hand till it is finished to the last line, though the house be on fire over his head. And after a first reading, he will not throw it aside, but will keep it by him, with his Shakspeare and his Homer, and will take it up many and many a time, when the world is dark, and his spirits are low, and be straightway cheered and refreshed. Yet this work has been allowed to lie wholly neglected, unmentioned, and apparently unregretted, for nearly half a century.