hum of the wheel, most mournfully hopeless sound that ever fell on mortal ear.  Since childhood it has haunted me.  All this time I wrote, and I could hear distinctly the scratching of the pen upon the paper.  But she stood behind me (why I did not turn my head I never knew), pacing backward and forward by the spinning-wheel, just as I had a hundred times seen her in childhood in the old kitchen on drowsy summer afternoons.  And I heard the step, the buzz and whirl of the spindle, and the monotonous and dreary hum of the mournful wheel.  Whether her face was ashy pale and looked as if it might crumble at the touch, and the border of her white cap trembled in the June wind that blew, I cannot say, for I tell you I did not see her.  But I know she was there, spinning yarn that had been knit into hose years and years ago by our fireside.  For I was in full possession of my faculties, and never copied more neatly and legibly any manuscript than I did the one that night.  And there the phantom (I use the word out of deference to a public prejudice on this subject) most persistently remained until my task was finished, and, closing the portfolio, I abruptly rose.  Did I see anything?  That is a silly and ignorant question.  Could I see the wind which had now risen stronger, and drove a few cloud-scuds across the sky, filling the night, somehow, with a longing that was not altogether born of reminiscence?

In the winter following, in January, I made an effort to give up the use of tobacco,—­a habit in which I was confirmed, and of which I have nothing more to say than this:  that I should attribute to it almost all the sin and misery in the world, did I not remember that the old Romans attained a very considerable state of corruption without the assistance of the Virginia plant.

On the night of the third day of my abstinence, rendered more nervous and excitable than usual by the privation, I retired late, and later still I fell into an uneasy sleep, and thus into a dream, vivid, illuminated, more real than any event of my life.  I was at home, and fell sick.  The illness developed into a fever, and then a delirium set in, not an intellectual blank, but a misty and most delicious wandering in places of incomparable beauty.  I learned subsequently that our regular physician was not certain to finish me, when a consultation was called, which did the business.  I have the satisfaction of knowing that they were of the proper school.  I lay sick for three days.

On the morning of the fourth, at sunrise, I died.  The sensation was not unpleasant.  It was not a sudden shock.  I passed out of my body as one would walk from the door of his house.  There the body lay,—­a blank, so far as I was concerned, and only interesting to me as I was rather entertained with watching the respect paid to it.  My friends stood about the bedside, regarding me (as they seemed to suppose), while I, in a different part of the room, could hardly repress a smile at their mistake, solemnized