A murmur of applause followed the appearance of Clifton upon the platform,--yet it was only a murmur; for the flock, long pastured upon delicate delusions, received as matter of course whatever shepherding chance offered. Did not the face of the medium wear an expression of earthly disappointment at this slender recognition? Could it be that there was needed the hot-house heat of a carnal "success" to favor this exquisite flowering of the spirit? Can we suppose that this whole matter was no other than some Yankee patent to avoid the awful solitude in which each human soul must enter into relations with the unseen? Slowly and in dreamy heaviness the discourse began. The inspirational claims seemed to lie in the manifest improbability of a man of Clifton's cultivation being so dull and diffuse in a natural condition. Yet, as the message wore on, it cannot be denied that a strange influence was at work. The words followed each other with greater fluency and in richer abundance. The meaning, to be sure, was still vague enough; and whenever some commonplace truth or plausibility protruded from the general washiness, it was seized upon and beaten and stretched to the last degree of tenuity. Phrases upon phrases of gorgeous dreaminess. A soothing delight,--yet such delight as only the bodily senses demanded. A joyful deliverance from the bondage of intellectual life. Hints that our human consciousness of sin was a vain delusion from which the "developed" man was happily delivered. "Come up here," said the preacher, in substance, "and escape from this moral accountability which sits so heavily upon you. Here is a sensuous paradise, sweet and debilitating, offering varied delights to the eclecticism of personal taste. All angular and harsh things may be dissolved in copious floods of words, and washed into a ravishing, enervating Universe." An hour--two hours--passed. The air was thick and poisonous. Attention had been strained to the utmost. Other things were to be noted by those accustomed to regard mental disorder from a physiological point of view.