was paying his attentions to any one, or that he had any matrimonial intentions. Asking my permission, he broke the seal, and read his letter in my presence. When he had done, I said to him, “‘You have there a letter from your sweetheart, the young lady to whom you are engaged to be married.’ “‘How do you know that?’ he asked in reply. “‘O that is evident,’ I replied. ‘I see it in your face. Let me see the letter, and I will tell you her character.’ “‘I would rather not,’ he answered. “‘I do not wish to read it,’ said I, ‘I only wish to look at the handwriting.’ “‘But can you tell a person’s character by seeing his handwriting.’ “‘Certainly, nothing is easier,’ I replied, although I had never tried, or even heard of such a thing before. “He then handed me the letter. I fixed my eye on the writing for a moment without reading a word of the letter, and I saw, or seemed to see, standing before me, at some six or eight feet distant, a very good-looking young lady, a little below the medium size, with an agreeable expression of face, apparently about eighteen years of age, as plainly as I see any one of you now in this room. I proceeded quietly and at my ease to describe her to my friend. I told her age, described her size, her height, her complexion, the color and texture of her hair, the colors and quality of her dress, indeed her whole external appearance, even to a hardly perceptible mole on her right cheek. My friend, you may well suppose, listened to me with surprise, astonishment, and wonder, and several times interrupted me with the question ‘Are you really the devil?’ He agreed that my description was accurate, and far more so than he could himself have given. “I then proceeded, to my friend’s equal astonishment, to describe her moral and intellectual qualities, her disposition, her education, her tastes, her habits, &c., all of which he declared were correctly described, as far as he himself knew. I had never previously seen or heard of the young lady, who lived in another State, and was actually at the moment some hundred and fifty miles distant. But this was not all. My friend married the young lady in the course of two or three months, and two years afterwards I called at his house, and was introduced to a lady whom I instantly recognized as the one whose image I had previously seen before me.[1] There is something in all this, and analogous facts related and well attested by others, that I cannot explain.” ----- Footnote 1: A literal fact, in the experience of the author. ----- We all agreed that the case was remarkable, and apparently inexplicable, on any known principles of received science. CHAPTER IV. AN EXPLOSION.