Though the following narrative may bring upon me an infinite derision, I have long felt that it should be published, on account of the light it throws upon some of the most mysterious facts of existence. Others may have had similar experiences; but, if so, pride keeps them from confessing how utterly they have been hoodwinked and enslaved by those invisible loafers who form so large a portion of the newcomers and who are permitted--not to put on too fine a point--to do the dirty work of cleansing the modern mind of its gross Augean Sadduceeism. The only theory promotive of self-complacency that I could ever concoct, as to why I was put through such an ordeal, is, that I was suffered for my own and the general benefit to see the dangers of necromancy, and especially the awful psychodynamical methods used by spirits to obsess and gradually craze human brains. I, at least, received a scare that made me careful, ever after, how I called spirits from the vasty deep, or elsewhere. After passing perils manifold, both carnal and spiritual--having gone, torrent-borne, through the yawning chasms represented in Cole's 'Voyage of Life' pictures, I come into calmer seas, the lines fall in pleasant places; and now I sit me down, in life's high noon--having lighted on a certain place where was a den (a pleasanter than Bunyan's)--to write the strange things that befell me in the seeming long ago--the dew and freshness of my youth. And though I be reckoned of many a dreamer of dreams, he shall not, I think, go unprofited, who can rightly 'read my rede.'