“I had my own grief to bear, I had to endure the tortures of my own remorse and utter despair, and to face the grief, silent, but deep, of her father, and the rage of her mother, who cursed me, cursed me as only a mother in the violence of her wrath and grief can curse. How I lived through that dreadful night I know not. The relations agreed to conceal the circumstances of Isabel’s death. I followed her to the tomb, and returned to my own home, blasted, withered, worse than dead. “All this was bad enough, but worse followed. The day after the funeral, while sitting alone in my office, I saw, at a few feet from me, partly behind me, a grayish appearance, without any sharply defined outline. I looked at it for a moment, and it assumed then the well-known form of her I the day before followed to the grave, and, horror of horrors, with that fearful expression of face with which she had died. It came nearer to me, I receded; it followed, I rushed into the street; it pursued, I turned aside my face, it turned as I turned, so as to be always within my view. From that day to this has it haunted me; I have scarcely a moment’s respite. Day or night, light or dark, with my eyes opened or closed, always does it stand before me, and glare on me with that terrible look. I cannot sleep; I cannot eat; I have no rest. The only few moments of quiet I have had are those since I have been with you in this room. I do not see it now. O, it was a sad day for me when I chose Animal Magnetism for a plaything!” I was much affected by Jack’s sufferings. I was not surprised at the fatal effects of mesmerism on the young lady; for death, I had been assured, is no unfrequent result of what the physicians who practise it call its injudicious use. The form which haunted him gave me no uneasiness, as it was, in my opinion, clearly a case of hallucination, a species of monomania, well known to the physicians of our lunatic hospitals, and our writers on mania or insanity. The shock my young friend had received had probably produced some slight lesion of the brain, and the imagination gave shape to the deceptive appearance, as in dreams we see often reproduced, following us, preceding us, or dancing around us, the shapes and images which had deeply impressed us when awake. But I was fond of poor Jack, and my great anxiety was to console him, and to prevent what might be only a temporary hallucination from becoming a confirmed insanity. Finding him better when with me, I persuaded him, with the consent of his family, who understood very little of his case, and feared for his reason, to accompany me to my home in Western New York, and to place himself under my care.