belief in the spiritual source of the phenomenon; she ascribed it to some obscure and morbid action of the minds of the spectators upon her own mind; and the process was so distasteful to her, that, after experimenting a week or two, the matter was finally abandoned, with the cordial concurrence of Mr. Hawthorne and Mr. Browning, who had both abominated it from the beginning. The medium used to say that she never knew beforehand what the communication was going to be, but that, if she fixed her attention upon what was going forward, she could generally tell each word just before it was written down. The names which were signed to the communications were limited in number, and almost all of them belonged to deceased friends of one or other of the persons present. It was soon possible to distinguish each of the vis itants, the moment he or she began to write (through the medium), by the character of the chirography, the style of thought and expression, and even the peculiar physical movement by which the writing was effected.

One day, in the midst of some heavenly-minded disquisition from the dead mother of one of the onlookers, the medium's hand seemed to be suddenly arrested, as by a violent though invisible grasp, and, after a few vague dashes of the pencil, the name of "Mary Rondel" was written across the paper in large, bold characters. Nothing followed the name, which was unknown to every one present; and at last somebody put the question, who Mary Rondel was? Here

upon the medium's hand was again seized as before, and some sentences were rapidly dashed off, to the effect that Mary Rondel had no rest, and demanded the sympathy of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Subsequent inquiries elicited from Mary Rondel the information that she had been, in her lifetime, connected in some way with the Hawthorne family; that she had died in Boston about a hundred years previous, and that nothing could give her any relief but Nathaniel Hawthorne's sympathy. Mr. Hawthorne was amused, and perhaps somewhat impressed, by this reiterated and vehement appeal, and assured Mary Rondel that although, so far as he could remember, he had never heard of her before, she was welcome to as much of his sympathy as she could avail herself of.

From this time forth, Mary Rondel, violent, headstrong, often ungrammatical, and uniformly eccentric. in her spelling, was the chief figure among the communicants from the other world. She would descend upon the circle like a whirlwind, at the most unexpected moments, put all the other spirits unceremoniously to flight, and insist upon regaling her audience with a greater or less number of her hurried, confused, and often obscure utterances. But the burden of them all was, that at last, after her long century of weary wandering, she was to find some relief and consolation in the sympathy of Nathaniel Hawthorne. The other spirits resented Mary's intrusion, and would denounce her as a disorderly, mischievous person, in whom it was impossible to place confidence, inasmuch as she

was an inveterate liar, and, in general, no better than she should be. Nevertheless, and whatever the frailty of her moral character, which, indeed, she never attempted to defend, there was something so genuine, so human, and so pathetically forlorn about poor Mary Rondel, that nobody could help regarding her with a certain compassionate kindliness. Liar though she doubtless was, she produced a more real and consistent impression upon her mortal audience than did any of her disembodied associates; and though she was often unruly and troublesome, and occasionally even deficient in propriety, we forgave her for the sake of the strong infusion of human nature which characterized her even in her spiritual state.

Before long, however, the seances were discontinued, as above stated. Mr. Hawthorne moved his family to Rome, where other interests soon put Mary Rondel and the rest of her tribe out of their heads. In 1859 Hawthorne returned to England, whence, after a year's sojourn, he sailed for America; and there, in 1864, he died. The governess (whose acquaintance, by the way, we had made for the first time in 1857) had left us while we were still in England, to marry the man to whom she had been for several years betrothed. All this while, Mary Rondel's name had not been mentioned, and she was practically forgotten. But after Nathaniel Hawthorne's death his son came into possession of a number of letters, documents, manuscripts, books, and other remains, some of which had all along been in possession