Three, four thousand "miles" were common figures on her lips
in describing her distance "above"; but her distance "within" never got
beyond sixty-three. Usually, she would say twenty, twenty-five. She
appeared, in relation to the future, to resemble a diver in the deep
sea, who, the deeper he strives, finds a more resistant pressure, till,
at no great depth, resistance becomes prohibition, and he can no further
strive.
'I am afraid I can't go on: though I had a good deal to tell you about
this lady. During fifteen years, off and on, I sat listening by her dim
bed-side to her murmuring trances! At last my expert ear could detect
the sense of her faintest sigh. I heard the "Decline and Fall" from
beginning to end. Some of her reports were the most frivolous nonsense:
over others I have hung in a horror of interest. Certainly, my friend, I
have heard some amazing words proceed from those wan lips of Mary
Wilson. Sometimes I could hitch her repeatedly to any scene or subject
that I chose by the mere exercise of my will; at others, the flighty
waywardness of her spirit eluded and baffled me: she resisted--she
disobeyed: otherwise I might have sent you, not four note-books, but
twenty, or forty.
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