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owlservice · 3 years ago

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First and fourth sections of Appendix I and the third section of Appendix III of Narcotics: Nicotine, Alcohol, Cocaine, Peyote, Morphine, Ether + Appendices by Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz in their entirety

Preface

I should say up front that many might well scoff at or deride this whole chapter of my “little opus.” It may indeed be laughable, but as to its irrelevance, I can only remain doubtful (or dubious, as some might prefer – I maintain that both are correct. The latter is more striking than the former, though it is more of a linguistic monster, which should be slain outright). Of course, the chapters vary in their irrelevance. Yet as this book is intended for everyone, without exception, I can hardly be concerned that certain individuals or social groups might find nothing novel in it. I want to share some experiences or information I have gained from others who, for various reasons, could not make it public knowledge. I am fairly certain that in some moronic and scummy milieux this book will provide ample occasion to further sully my reputation, which has already been considerably blackened by said morons and scum. Tough. One man is powerless against organized idiocy and vileness. I have to gather the fruits of my entire life, in which I have always tried to say what I truly believed, regardless of how it might affect me personally.

I. On Dirt

Physical hygiene is less expensive than you might think. I am not referring to public cleanliness (houses, streets, squares, etc.) – I will not be mentioning housecleaning, though I believe this, too, can be achieved for a pittance. Even so, we often find homes hung with expensive pictures, all carpeted and upholstered, yet covered in dirt, and even exuding a kind of stench – often subtle, though quite acrid. I believe that home cleanliness and, moreover, public cleanliness are an extension of personal cleanliness. If we start in our own backyard, the rest of our environment will all gradually become clean in time, because a hygienic person simply refuses to be surrounded by dirt. It seems to me idleness and ignorance of how to maintain cleanliness are to blame for our present state of affairs, which I would like to describe and then suggest countermeasures. Why is it that the majority of those who absolutely should not stink, do stink? I am speaking of the intelligentsia, the semi-intelligentsia, and the lower strata. This is neither the time nor the place for a stenchological analysis of the lower and upper aristocracy, as I am too remote from these spheres. But with the minimal data I do possess, I feel I might contribute something on the subject. Apart from washing, we also have to consider the changing of underwear and clothing. (I warn you in advance that I will be broaching some painful topics – if you object, just put the book down.) Whatever a person's underwear/clothing situation, it will invariably be improved by proper and regular washing. In a perfect world, obviously, you would change your underclothes daily and your clothes as often as possible, but if this is beyond your means, you can take longer intervals if you are diligent about keeping your body clean.

Nations can also be classified as clean or dirty, and we shouldn’t beat around the bush – we are among the latter, so let's try to deal with it. When I read Polish, Russian, or French novels, I perpetually find myself wondering: Have the characters properly washed? This thought plagues me as I read of their trials and tribulations, it sabotages the most glorious escapades, eclipses the most sublime emotions. In English literature, despite all its flaws, I know one thing for certain – whatever the English may do, think, or feel, they are almost always clean. Russians have the advantage over other filthy nations in that, although they may not wash for an entire week, they do soak in their “baths,” scrub themselves with sponges, and flagellate themselves with branches at least on Sundays, and perhaps on Mondays, too, cleansing the pores all over their bodies, not just the parts most prone to “smelling off.” These are awful topics to discuss openly, but somebody has to. Physically speaking, humans are fairly repulsive creatures. A certain count (!) had wounded his hand and kept it in a rubber bandage that he did not unwrap for a very long time. The hand began to reek. He showed it to others, shouting emphatically: “There is no foot that stinks so horribly as my hand. Just take a whiff, dear lady.” And under many a nose he shoved his lovely, purebred, distinguished hand, which did indeed exude the subtle, though concentrated, odor of a body infused with ten centuries of good breeding. A count – think about the ordinary “upper nobility, magnificent officers, to give them their due honors,” as they used to write on circus posters during the Austrian era. Clothing produces many offensive human smells. Savages who stroll around naked (ignoring the different qualities we consider offensive, as we belong to another race) stink far less. And how lovely, in this respect, are beasts of all sorts – they are always fresh, their skin marvelously ventilated, scratched, bitten, and licked, as they say, to a hochglanz. Generally speaking, man is the world's filthiest creature, particularly in temperate and cold climes, mainly because he is forced to wear clothing. It is common knowledge that hands generally stink less than feet – and why? Because they are not swaddled up (exemplum: the count and his hand), and they are, of course, washed more frequently. You’re not allowed to walk around nude, but you can compensate by scrubbing passionately, fanatically, ferociously. The costs are minimal, and with just a bit of willpower it is easy to nab a few minutes from the jaws of sleep. So get to work, dirtbags, and in a few years we will no longer have to breathe the disgusting odors of the unwashed human swine in homes and public buildings (cinemas, theaters, waiting rooms, and such institutions), resulting in far more mutual kindness and warmth toward “our fellow man,” so sorely lacking at present. Compared to other nations, Poles are simply horrid in this department. Think how much energy we expend showing our mutual contempt in the streets. You find this nowhere else, at least not to the same degree. And the stench inside our buildings only exacerbates this rotten phenomenon. Unfortunately, every poorly washed individual fails to see that he is part of the general disfragrance, that the stench he tolerates in himself is by no means as pleasant to others as it is to himself and, perhaps, to his loved ones.

My general theory of human stench is as simple as the theory of differential equations or tensors: because the entire body is given only a cursory wash, combined with a careful scrub of select parts (the face, neck, feet, underarms, etc.), all the foulness the body has to excrete through the skin is exuded only through the parts with unblocked pores. I once knew an elegant gentleman who was forever complaining of smelly feet. He washed them three times a day, and the more fastidiously he did, the worse it got. The fact is, he was much less fastidious in washing his entire body, so the most revolting stuff escaped his body through his feet. There are, of course, medical conditions for which no remedy exists, but the moment you begin to wash yourself thoroughly, all those products advertised in newspapers to elicit a shudder of horror (“Anti-stench cream will get rid of those pesky underarm and foot odors ...”) will vanish. Ugh ... Foul stuff. Instead of wasting money on such garbage, I urge you to buy:

1. A good brand of soap, even a simple kind – this is entirely sufficient for average folk for a daily wash of their entire body.

2. Brushes – for this purpose the best are Sennebaldt Brothers brushes (Bielsko-Biała, Silesia) 29 H No. 2, 30 F No. 2, and 137Ʃ, which the company recommends for underclothes. Everyone to whom I have given these brushes (and I have handed out over two dozen to promote them) has blessed both myself and the company. The brushes are bristly and, at “first glance,” seem rather stiff. When soaked a bit in hot water they are simply splendid. I have known women who complained of chronic rough skin. After using these brushes they turned as smooth as alabaster. Pumice does nothing – it only smooths the surface. Only a brush is capable of loosening dirt from pores. Many who consider themselves clean are in fact caked in dirt like ungodly creatures. I have known so many people who were terrified by the stiffness of these brushes, and then later scrubbed their miraculously rejuvenated bodies with sheer delight, almost until they bled. Bear in mind that a brush need not be used on a daily basis (every two or three days will do), but washing your whole body with soap every day is mandatory if you want to be part of the human race. Of course, there are those who hardly stink at all even if they seldom wash. All the better for them and for others. But this does not exempt them from washing, not if they care about their health. The number of apartments with bathrooms and public baths is naturally increasing, and this is having a salubrious effect on the general promotion of cleanliness. Yet you also need to know how to use a bathroom. I have known folks from “upper social milieux” who go a whole week with a single cold shower without soap (or only for select parts of the body, and rather sparingly at that), and then dry themselves with a fluffy towel. While it may be unhealthy to take a long hot bath every day, especially for low energy types, washing yourself from top to bottom with soap and hot, and then cold, water, or at the very least only cold water, is absolutely imperative.

3. For those with no bathroom, a large tin basin will do the trick, and for travelers (who will lack the requisite facilities in most of our low-budget hotels) a collapsible rubber tub – a little pricey, but worth forgoing less essential pleasures (vodka, beer, cigarettes, dancing, a radio, cabs, cars, cinema) for a time to save up to buy one.

4. Sponges, or what the Russians call “machalki.”

This is all you really need, as well as a bit of time (which you can always find), and respect for yourself and your health, as well as for others, who, after all, are people, too. But the morning ablutions I have witnessed, the total neglect of evening washing (at least the essential parts should be washed in the evening) – this is simply monstrous. And this, I repeat, among those for whom such a practice should be a matter of course.

This is what has prompted me to write these words, which has been neither amusing nor pleasant. I imagine that more than one pair of cheeks might blush when reading them, causing a bit of shame and consternation – and hopefully they will lodge in one’s memory. Not only aesthetics are at stake, this is likewise a question of health, for the skin is ultimately the main excretory organ. We all know that a person who suddenly destroys two-thirds of his skin dies. We slowly become accustomed, however, to any sort of poisoning and to skin that has stopped functioning as it should. Our peasants hardly ever wash, but this does not kill them, and they stink less than other segments of society. This is no proof, though: they don’t stink because their clogged pores no longer excrete anything, and they don’t die of poisoning because they have acclimated to it through long years of practice, apparently producing antitoxins. What would happen if they washed? – who can say.

IV. On Hemorrhoids

My friend Xawery X. (apparently he even used to be a baron) visited me one morning, exclaiming these banal words: “Eureka! Eureka!” I ought to add, just between us, that he had long been suffering from hemorrhoids (or “haemorrhoids,” as the sophisticates prefer), and that my present exposé can hardly damage him as he perished in 1919 in the war against the Bolsheviks. He was a cavalry officer, and a good one. Those damned “lumps,” or “plums,” as he used to call them, were his torment, and he could not arrange an operation during the war. “Eureka” he cried, and the wretch danced for joy. When he had settled down, I queried: “What ho?” He immediately “retorted”: “Just think, my dear Stanisław, I went to five doctors seeking remedy, they gave me enemas, advised operations, and yet not one told me of what I discovered today on my own.” (This was in April 1918.) “A good poke – that’s the whole secret. What I once achieved in an hour of riding in a saddle I managed today in two minutes with one finger.” (Of course, I cannot swear this is absolutely accurate – yet the conversations’s been so lodged in my memory that I can only entertain minor deviations, if any, from what was actually said.) “I’ve smeared myself with oil, then bathed in cold water, yet it had never occurred to me just to give the thing a good poke. But today, practically possessed, driven by some mysterious intuition, I tried it. And wonder of wonders! It all came squishing out, without any pain, and I won’t be needing an operation. Tomorrow I’m off to the front, and I haven’t a care in the world. If I die, I’ll die happy.” And once more he began dancing, while singing an old Russian ditty:

Oh what a hero I’d already be

If not for hemorrhoids afflicting me

“Oh, why didn’t Rostopchin know this method,” he added a moment later, as he was quite well versed in history. I have recommended Xawery’s method to several of my acquaintances, and they have been simply overjoyed. Today this dreadful ailment (“samaya nepoeticheskaya bolezn’,” as a Russian writer once put it, “the most unpoetical malady”) is treated with injections. But should you lack the courage for an operation or be unable to afford the injections, I heartily recommend the method devised by the poor, departed Xawery.

III. Hemorrhoidal Update

Making a special trip to the seaside to determine the effects of Alghorin148 on hemorrhoids in 1935, the “august gentleman” (this is what I call myself when I am invited somewhere and overcompensate for my debilitating complexes) had a run-in with a particularly vicious case. The Alghorin turned out to be ineffective (i.e., not what one might have supposed), and the lanolin was a total piece of ... As a footnote to Baron Xawery’s famous theory (see, you execrable moron, you stupid boob, the section on hemorrhoids in Narcotics149), we ought to note that studies on the cases of Dziambowicz, Wygórowski, and Pęchala, which were especially acute, have furnished the following findings:

1. Apply lanolin in deep, before and after;

2. Push them hard, but you need to carefully examine the topography of the rectum and know which “plum” to press first, and which one next. Otherwise you might be in for some nasty surprises;

3. Gąsecki products (suppositories and ointment concocted by Popowski – nighttime use only)150 yield particularly effective results (according to Józek Pęchala and Staś Dziambowicz);

4. Cold water en quantité, 151 applied carefully to the most sensitive spots;

5. Sit and stand while applying pressure;

6. Abstain from meat at night, and greasy and spicy foods in general. No drinking or smoking;

7. If some substances are unavailable, then the nasal ointment with ephedrine and menthol supplied by Dr. Totwen in Zakopane might be used, and Alghorin will do in a pinch, as will eye ointment, now chiefly used for pimples and boils, with the following ingredients:

Eye ointment:

Thigenoli 0.6

Xeroformi ung. 0.5

Hydrarg. praecip. flav. 0.15

Lanolin, Vaseline ana 10.0

Totwen’s nasal ointment:

Ephetonine 0.3

Menthol 0.2

Boric acid 0.15

Eucalyptine gtt. 2

Lanolin, Vaseline ana 10.0

8. Better to avoid hemorrhoids in the first place.

If you start to feel nauseated, inhale a pinch of carbolineum off a piece of cardboard. That’s it. In fact, there are many other things, but those are my secrets to keep, I’m taking them with me to the grave – and I’ve already got one foot in it. So now it’s goodbye, or as Kiepura would say: “Later, pussycat.” Except that it’s not from the roof of a car, but from a modest room on Bracka Street 23, Apartment 42, Zakopane address: Zakopane 3. Antałówka.

#Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz

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betweentheracks · 4 years ago

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Are you willing to speculate about Yizhan? If not kindly ignore this ask. I'm just wondering from your perspective which of the "sharing clothes" pics on the internet is more likely to be actual personal choice between those two, if any?

Hello! Sorry for the delay in getting to this, been rather chaotic on my end of things as I adjust to being home from the hospital and establishing a new routine to manage my health from now on. I’ve been thinking on this ask for a while and how I wanted to approach it and think I have finally settled on a proper way to tackle it.

First, I am not unwilling to speculate on yizhan given that I am very keen on the developments of both their careers and their perceived relationship, whatever it may be. However, I will only be comfortable discussing them from the POV of my role as a stylist and fashion worker/enthusiast. I don’t want this blog to become another rumor mill or become a look-to for “proof” of things in regards to their relationship. There is no true way to prove whether they do in fact share clothes, gift each other accessories, or purposefully “match” their looks. To do so I would have to be their personal styling manager and, dream of exactly that as I may, I am merely a fan with the eyes of someone that works in the field and can therefore only offer my own thoughts and opinions on these so-called candies hidden through their styling choices.

To avoid any further chafing like my post about the DS2 jeans created I will only speak to what I know firsthand of the operations of the Asian fashion circuit and styling industry. I can provide insight into how their trends rise and fall on a cycle, how they often use fashion and style as a means to express not only their cultures but sometimes reflect the current climate of the entertainment world, and of how China specifically all but corners the market on underground fashion and streetstyle. This would then be laid over the context of, let’s say, Wang Yibo and Xiao Zhan’s evolution of style throughout their career and highlight the key features of how their looks tend to be tailored with a subtle nuance of their status combined with their country’s current trends. You can expect a post at a later time (after some thorough investigating and proper sourcing) which will look into exactly all of this and touch specifically on the best known looks they’ve been styled in with a breakdown on how those styles were framed, layered together, and then finally restyled to give emphasis to each of their unique features and overall image promotion.

I will also provide my insights on which features are almost surely items they themselves chose, brought in, or otherwise requested be included. These are mostly accessory pieces that, to my trained eyes, do not fit or flow with the overall intended aesthetic and yet have been properly enmeshed by the style as if to blend them into the final result. My own experience lends many points of reference for artists that have comfort items they refuse to part with that I have had to later find ways to make appear to be a legitimate choice which neither clashes with nor belongs to the finished look. This extends to this ask in that this is why my answer on what my perspective on yizhan “sharing clothes” will be short.

So, what is my perspective on them sharing clothes? It isn’t outside the realm of possibility, nor is it anything I can verify from my lack of personal interaction with them or any of the rumored articles of clothes. What I am willing to comment on is that celebrities and idols, no matter where they are located, overlap in a style and fashion sense both in public spaces and platforms and also in their private lives. It’s not uncommon to buy a brand or even exact style of something and later see that someone else has it as well, and from what I have seen I can say with some degree of certainty that Yibo and Zhan have similar tastes, though still incredibly diverse.

I will later make a post speculating on which brands they each frequent and, by extent, share preference for as well the alleged gifts of accessories they are often seen to be wearing which are widely talked about. I think less of the clothing they are rumored or thought to share and lean more into the idea of them having exchanged items which would be easier to wear under the watchful gaze of public interest and also the inherently personal or intimate nature of giving someone a necklace, ring, bracelet, or set of earrings. It is also much easier to talk a stylist into making an allowance for such items since they are small and can be properly incorporated into an ensemble, or even tucked away into a pocket or beneath the high neckline of a good shirt. As I said, many artists tend to have comfort items or good luck charms or any matter of small in size items that they are hesitant to leave behind when making public appearances. Artists are still people beneath the veneer we stylists mask them in and sometimes need that little bit of themselves to take with them and be grounding in the face of media being in their personal space and making assessments of the them that is being presented.

Apologies for the overall evasive answer, but this ask really did get me thinking and rather than leaving it to sit and idle in my box and make the person asking wait until who knows when, I chose to do it this way. The ask itself is the inspiration for why I want to make the posts I mentioned - it really tripped my thinking on all of this and the fashion enthusiast in me is frothing at the mouth with the prospect of real time breakdowns to expose the amount of work that went into some of your favorite yizhan ensembles. The accessories thing also sparked from a similar desire to be as thorough as possible before I give any careless answers.

You all are very dedicated and passionate and deserve to be treated with a sense of professional courtesy in that I can give you a glimpse into understanding the styles that rendered you speechless or blew you away. Likewise, I think the only responsible way to handle any of the candies that are trademarks of BJYX fandom would be to offer you a different type of breakdown that would adhere to why certain things that you tend to perceive as candy is given context of why some things, to me, look out of place and could truly be a personal touch. This would both exonerate me from having confirm or deny topics I have no means of knowing about while offering a gratifying alternative analysis that stands neutral.

Thanks for the question! I will surely be back with more and also to let everyone know more about these posts as I get nearer to establishing them!

#racks asks #yizhan #bjyx #style #wang yibo #xiao zhan

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wonnyjang · 5 years ago

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I. Telemachus

“Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.”

Just kidding. There will be a surfeit of future opportunities for me to post entirely about Ulysses, my favorite novel, now that this blog has been created (and, in doing so, I have further sullied the Internet with my signature garrulity and pretentiousness). Instead, this post will merely dip into Joyce’s novel as a means to metaphor to justify the human rights violation that is my creation of this blog.

Until this past week, I had spent all of 2020, including These Unprecedented Times, in Chicago, away from my Boston home. Which, to be clear, isn’t something that gnawed at me terribly –– Chicago is a second home to me, I kept in regular touch with my family, and many of my friends live within a block of my apartment. But such ample time away from my home, coupled with the glut of idle time that the quarantine had bestowed upon me, engendered a state of constant and rigorous thinking (primarily out of boredom and secondarily out of a desire to justify my laziness kicking my journaling habit to the curb). And there was plenty to think about: starting from the summer of 2019, I moved into my first apartment, started my second year of college, dropped sixty pounds, went through a mental health crisis, saw the Patriots get knocked out in the first round of playoffs for the first time since 2010, and plenty more –– all before the pandemic! But it was my encounter with a specific class reading in early May that precipitated my perspective shift.

In 2004, sociologist Jamie Lew published the study “The ‘Other’ Story of Model Minorities: Korean-American High School Dropouts in an Urban Context.” As its name implies, the paper analyzes how socioeconomic backgrounds, social capital, and school resources affect Korean-American youths’ educational achievement and aspiration. Being a first-generation Korean immigrant who predominantly grew up in a lower-middle class environment and struggled with the education system as a result of institutional barriers, I found that the words of the students interviewed in Lew’s study resonated with me deeply. For over half of my life, I grew up in diverse and working-class environments, and I thus regarded wealthier people –– especially wealthier white and Asian-American people –– as distinct “others.” However, when I started to attend school in a district that was predominantly white and affluent, I found my frame of reference to be at odds with my environment and quickly came to feel less supported and more alienated. At one point in Lew’s study, a student named Ken reports that he uses “slangs” while his wealthier peers use “proper” and “white” language. He goes on to assert that the more affluent Korean-Americans that he interacts with at church are “white” because they talk and act “proper.”

This passage dredged up a vivid memory of mine from middle school, when I had just started attending school in the more affluent district. The ever-so-eager student –– boy, have times changed –– I frantically raised my hand to give an answer in history class. As I commenced with what I thought to be a prodigious display of my intellectual prowess, a white classmate of mine sharply interjected: “Why do you talk like that?”

I want to make it clear that this was not bullying. I was relatively popular among my peers because of my gregarious and jocular demeanor, and this boy’s query was posed, I believe, out of genuine yet amused confusion as opposed to prejudicial malice. Yet, that remark certainly “killed my vibe,” so to speak, and I meekly sputtered through the rest of my answer, blowing the tires on my genius analysis of the Peloponnesian War and, more importantly, my sense of “fitting in.” The way I talked –– an idiosyncratic mixture of slang and immigrant and native Bostonian dialects –– was looked upon and singled out as weird by my peers, including other Korean-American kids. I believe that, in retrospect, this was the moment that I began to make subconscious efforts to assimilate into the dominant culture. With every passing year, my circle of friends grew richer and whiter. I began to listen to their music, watch their TV shows, and go to their parties; it was like some reversed 21st century satire of Jacob Riis’s How the Other Half Lives. It followed that I was not particularly happy in high school, although I could never put my finger on why.

Going to college, I think, let me break free of this Sisyphean camouflaging act; I no longer needed to incarcerate my identity to achieve social capital. When I came back from my first year of college, I got lunch with one of my best friends from high school. She had not seen or heard me for an entire year at that point, and while we were talking, she suddenly remarked: “You talk differently.”

Cue flashbacks to middle school history class.

Sensing that she hit a nerve, she clarified. “No, it’s not in a bad or weird way. You just seem more… natural. More happy.”

All of these memories –– when my family first moved to Boston, middle school history class, my high school prison, and that summer lunch with my friend –– flooded back to me like a torrential typhoon as I pored over this class reading (remember when we first started talking about that all those paragraphs ago?).

Ever since that reading incited such a visceral response from deep within my memory and consciousness, I have been wrestling with the idea of “home” –– “home,” in the sense of something that you came from, something that you have always known, and something that you will return to. After all this time, after becoming a wayward wanderer in high school, bouncing from façade to façade, I believe that I have finally begun my journey home. I am no longer ashamed of who I am or where I’ve come from; I am running towards my roots instead of running away from them.

This is where Ulysses comes in. The whole novel is intimately intertwined with themes of recurrence, inevitability, birth, and homecoming. Leopold Bloom leaves his home on the morning of June 16 after eating “with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls” with the sinking fear that his wife Molly is inviting over a suitor for a torrid tryst. A wayward wanderer of his own, Bloom roams the streets of Dublin for the entire day as part of his own “Odyssey,” seeking out every single possible distraction from his crumbling marriage but always finding his thoughts returning to it. However, after a certain series of events –– which include a hallucinogenic dream-like sequence in a brothel in which he transforms into a woman –– Bloom comes to the realization that to fix his marriage, he must confront it head-on rather than shrink away from it forever. The last three chapters of the novel (often referred to as νόστος, or “Nostos,” alluding to the Homeric theme of returning from Troy by sea) exemplify his epiphany, as he climbs into bed with his wife at the end of the day and falls asleep peacefully, with nothing but a black dot on the page representing his tranquil singularity.

I know I’m doing nothing to alleviate suspicions of me being a pretentious douche with delusions of grandeur when I say that I believe that I, too, am now telling my “nostos.” I’m finding my way home after a long day in which I’ve been running from the inevitable, thinking about where I came from and what has made me the person I am today. Which, you know, isn’t really much, considering I’m just a normal college student. But I’m bored and, like I said, I’ve gotten too lazy to physically journal.

This blog is called “Longest Way Around” in reference to a famous quote uttered by Bloom in the novel’s “Nausicaa” chapter: “Think you’re escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.” I could’ve titled this blog “Shortest Way Home,” but I elected not to do that primarily because that’s the title of Pete Buttigieg’s autobiography and secondarily because I haven’t found my way home just yet. I’m still on the “longest way round,” so it’s a work in progress –– one that this blog will hopefully document and lend clarity to.

Also, it’s the “longest way round” because I’m a verbose ass and every post will probably be a goddamn tome.

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unsettlingshortstories · 5 years ago

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Green Tea

Sheridan Le Fanu (1872)

PROLOGUE

Martin Hesselius, the German Physician

Through carefully educated in medicine and surgery, I have never practiced either. The study of each continues, nevertheless, to interest me profoundly. Neither idleness nor caprice caused my secession from the honorable calling which I had just entered. The cause was a very trifling scratch inflicted by a dissecting knife. This trifle cost me the loss of two fingers, amputated promptly, and the more painful loss of my health, for 1 have never been quite well since, and have seldom been twelve months together in the same place.

In my wanderings I became acquainted with Dr. Martin Hesselius, a wanderer like myself, like me a physician, and like me an enthusiast in his profession. Unlike me in this, that his wanderings were voluntary, and he a man, if not of fortune, as we estimate fortune in England, at least in what our forefathers used to term "easy circumstances." He was an old man when 1 first saw him; nearly five-and-thirty years my senior. In Dr. Martin Hesselius, 1 found my master. His knowledge was immense, his grasp of a case was an vintuition. He was the very man to inspire a young enthusiast, like me, with awe and delight. My admiration has stood the test of time and survived the separation of death. I am sure it was well-founded. For nearly twenty years I acted as his medical secretary. His immense collection of papers he has left in my care, to be arranged, indexed and bound. His treatment of some of these cases is curious. He writes in two distinct characters. He describes what he saw and heard as an intelligent layman might, and when in this style of narrative he had seen the patient either through his own hall-door, to the light of day, or through the gates of darkness to the caverns of the dead, he returns upon the narrative, and in the terms of his art and with all the force and originality of genius, proceeds to the work of analysis, diagnosis and illustration. Here and there a case strikes me as of a kind to amuse or horrify a lay reader with an interest quite different from the peculiar one which it may possess for an expert. With slight modifications, chiefly of language, and of course a change of names, I copy the following.

The narrator is Dr. Martin Hesselius. I find it among the voluminous notes of cases which he made during a tour in England about sixty-four years ago. It is related in series of letters to his friend Professor Van Loo of Leyden. The professor was not a physician, but a chemist, and a man who read history and metaphysics and medicine, and had, in his day, written a play. The narrative is therefore, if somewhat less valuable as a medical record, necessarily written in a manner more likely to interest an unlearned reader. These letters, from a memorandum attached, appear to have been returned on the death of the professor, in 1819, to Dr. Hesselius. They are written, some in English, some in French, but the greater part in German. I am a faithful, though I am conscious, by no means a graceful translator, and although here and there ! omit some passages, and shorten others, and disguise names, I have interpolated nothing.

CHAPTER I

Dr. Hesselius Relates How He Met the Rev. Mr. Jennings

The Rev. Mr. Jennings is tall and thin. He is middle-aged, and dresses with a natty, old-fashioned, high-church precision. He is naturally a little stately, but not at all stiff. His features, without being handsome, are well formed, and their expression extremely kind, but also shy. I met him one evening at Lady Mary Haddock's. The modesty and benevolence of his countenance are extremely prepossessing. We were but a small party, and he joined agreeably enough in the conversation, He seems to enjoy listening very much more than contributing to the talk; but what he says is always to the purpose and well said. He is a great favourite of Lady Mary's, who it seems, consults him upon many things, and thinks him the most happy and blessed person on earth. Little knows she about him. The Rev. Mr. Jennings is a bachelor, and has, they say sixty thousand pounds in the funds. He is a charitable man. He is most anxious to be actively employed in his sacred profession, and yet though always tolerably well elsewhere, when he goes down to his vicarage in Warwickshire, to engage in the actual duties of his sacred calling, his health soon fails him, and in a very strange way. So says Lady Mary.

There is no doubt that Mr. Jennings' health does break down in, generally, a sudden and mysterious way, sometimes in the very act of officiating in his old and pretty church at Kenlis. It may be his heart, it may be his brain. But so it has happened three or four times, or oftener, that after proceeding a certain way in the service, he has on a sudden stopped short, and after a silence, apparently quite unable to resume, he has fallen into solitary, inaudible prayer, his hands and his eyes uplifted, and then pale as death, and in the agitation of a strange shame and horror, descended trembling, and got into the vestry-room, leaving his congregation, without explanation, to themselves. This occurred when his curate was absent. When he goes down to Kenlis now, he always takes care to provide a clergyman to share his duty, and to supply his place on the instant should he become thus suddenly incapacitated.

When Mr. Jennings breaks down quite, and beats a retreat from the vicarage, and returns to London, where, in a dark street off Piccadilly, he inhabits a very narrow house, Lady Mary says that he is always perfectly well. I have my own opinion about that. There are degrees of course.

We shall see.

Mr. Jennings is a perfectly gentlemanlike man. People, however, remark something odd. There is an impression a little ambiguous. One thing which certainly contributes to it, people ! think don't remember; or, perhaps, distinctly remark. But I did, almost im mediately. Mr. Jennings has a way of looking sidelong upon the carpet, as if his eye followed the movements of something there. This, of course, is not always. It occurs now and then. But often enough to give a certain oddity, as I have said, to his manner, and in this glance traveling along the floor there is something both shy and anxious. A medical philosopher, as you are good enough to call me, elaborating theories by the aid of cases sought out by himself, and by him watched and scrutinized with more time at command, and consequently infinitely more minuteness than the ordinary practitioner can afford, falls insensibly into habits of observation, which accompany him everywhere, and are exercised, as some people would say, impertinently, upon every subject that presents itself with the least likelihood of rewarding inquiry. There was a promise of this kind in the slight, timid, kindly, but reserved gentleman, whom I met for the first time at this agreeable little evening gathering. I observed, of course, more than I here set down; but I reserve all that borden on the technical for a strictly scientific paper. I may remark, that when I here speak of medical science, I do so, as I hope some day to see it more generally understood, in a much more comprehensive sense than its generally material treatment would warrant. I believe the entire natural world is but the ultimate expression of that spiritual world from which, and in which alone, it has its life. I believe that the essential man is a spirit, that the spirit is an organized substance, but as different in point of material from what we ordinarily understand by matter, as light or electricity is; that the material body is, in the most literal sense, a vesture, and death consequently no interruption of the living man's existence, but simply his extrication from the natural body --a process which commences at the moment of what we term death, and the completion of which, at furthest a few days later, is the resurrection "in power." The person who weighs the consequences of these positions will probably see their practical bearing upon medical science. This is, however, by no means the proper place for displaying the proofs and discussing the consequences of this too generally unrecognized state of facts. In pursuance of my habit, I was covertly observing Mr. Jennings, with all my caution--l think he perceived it--and I saw plainly that he was as cautiously observing me. Lady Mary happening to address me by my name, as Dr. Hesselius, I saw that he glanced at me more sharply, and then became thoughtful for a few minutes.

After this, as I conversed with a gentleman at the other end of the room, I saw him look at me more steadily, and with an interest which I thought I understood. I then saw him take an opportunity of chatting with Lady Mary, and was, as one always is, perfectly aware of being the subject of a distant inquiry and answer.

This tall clergyman approached me by-and-by; and in a little time we had got into conversation.

When two people, who like reading, and know books and places, having traveled, wish to discourse, it is very strange if they can't find topics. It was not accident that brought him near me, and led him into conversation. He knew German and had read my Essays on Metaphysical Medicine which suggest more than they actually say. This courteous man, gentle, shy, plainly a man of thought and reading, who moving and talking among us, was not altogether of us, and whom I already suspected of leading a life whose trans actions and alarms were carefully concealed, with an impenetrable reserve from, not only the world, but his best beloved friends- was cautiously weighing in his own mind the idea of taking a certain step with regard to me. I penetrated his thoughts without his being aware of it, and was careful to say nothing which could betray to his sensitive vigilance my suspicions respecting his position, or my surmises about his plans respecting myself.

We chatted upon indifferent subjects for a time but at last he said:

"I was very much interested by some papers of yours, Dr. Hesselius, upon what you term Metaphysical Medicine--I read them in German, ten or twelve years ago--have they been translated?"

"No, I'm sure they have not--I should have heard. They would have asked my leave, I think."

"I asked the publishers here, a few months ago, to get the book for me in the original German; but they tell me it is out of print."

"So it is, and has been for some years; but it flatters me as an author to find that you have not forgotten my little book, although," I added, laughing, "ten or twelve years is a considerable time to have managed without it; but I suppose you have been turning the subject over again in your mind, or something has happened lately to revive your interest in it."

At this remark, accompanied by a glance of inquiry, a sudden embarrassment disturbed Mr. Jennings, analogous to that which makes a young lady blush and look foolish. He dropped his eyes, and folded his hands together uneasily, and looked oddly, and you would have said, guiltily, for a moment.

I helped him out of his awkwardness in the best way, by appearing not to observe it, and going straight on, I said: "Those revivals of interest in a subject happen to me often; one book suggests an other, and often sends me back a wild-goose chase over an interval of twenty years. But if you still care to possess a copy, I shall be only too happy to provide you; I have still got two or three by me --and if you allow me to present one I shall be very much honored."

"You are very good indeed," he said, quite at his ease again, in a moment: "I almost despaired--I don't know how to thank you.

"Pray don't say a word; the thing is really so little worth that I am only ashamed of having offered it, and if you thank me any more I shall throw it into the fire in a fit of modesty."

Mr. Jennings laughed. He inquired where I was staying in London, and after a little more conversation on a variety of subjects, he took his departure. CHAPTER II The Doctor Questions Lady Mary and She Answers

"I like your vicar so much, Lady Mary," said I, as soon as he was gone. "He has read, traveled, and thought, and having also suffered, he ought to be an accomplished companion."

"So he is, and, better still,' he is a really good man," said she. "His advice is invaluable about my schools, and all my little undertakings at Dawlbridge, and he's so painstaking, he takes so much trouble--you have no idea wherever he thinks he can be o~ use: he's so good-natured and so sensible."

"It is pleasant to hear so good an account of his neighbourly virtues. I can only testify to his being an agreeable and gentle companion, and in addition to what you have told me, I think 1 can tell you two or three things about him," said I. "Really!" "Yes, to begin with, he's unmarried." "Yes, that's right---go on."

"He has been writing, that is he was, but for two or three years perhaps, he has not gone on with his work, and the book was upon some rather abstract subject--perhaps theology."

"Well, he was writing a book, as you say; I'm not quite sure what it was about, but only that it was nothing that I cared for; very likely you are right, and he certainly did stop--yes."

"And although he only drank a little coffee here to-night, he likes tea, at least, did like it extravagantly."

"Yes, that's quite true."

"He drank green tea, a good deal, didn't he?" I pursued.

"Well, that's very odd! Green tea was a subject on which we used almost to quarrel."

"But he has quite given that up," said I. "So he has."

"And, now, one more fact. His mother or his father, did you know them?"

"Yes, both; his father is only ten years dead, and their place is near Dawlbridge. We knew them very well," she answered.

"Well, either his mother or his father--l should rather think his father, saw a ghost," said I.

"Well, you really are a conjurer, Dr. Hesselius." "Conjurer or no, haven't I said right?" I answered merrily.

"You certainly have, and it was his father: he was a silent, whimsical man, and he used to bore my father about his dreams, and at last he told him a story about a ghost he had seen and talked with, and a very odd story it was. I remember it particularly, because 1 was so afraid of him. This story was long before he died--when I was quite a child--and his ways were so silent and moping, and he used to drop in sometimes, in the dusk, when I was alone in the drawing-room, and I used to fancy there were ghosts about him." I smiled and nodded. "And now, having established my character as a conjurer, I think I must say good-night!' said I. "But how did you find it out?"

"By the planets, of course, as the gypsies do," I answered, and so, gaily we said good-night.

Next morning I sent the little book he had been inquiring after, and a note to Mr. Jennings, and on returning late that evening, I found that he had called at my lodgings, and left his card. He asked whether I was at home, and asked at what hour he would be most likely to find me. Does he intend opening his case, and consulting me "professionally," as they say? I hope so. I have already conceived a theory about him. It is supported by Lady Mary's answers to my parting questions. I should like much to ascertain from his own lips. But what can I do consistently with good breeding to invite a confession? Nothing. I rather think he meditates one. At all events, my dear Van L., I shan't make myself difficult of access; I mean to re turn his visit tomorrow. It will be only civil in return for his polite ness, to ask to see him. Perhaps something may come of it.

Whether much, little, or nothing, my dear Van L., you shall hear.

CHAPTER III

Dr. Hesselius Picks Up Something in Latin Books

Well, I have called at Blank Street.

On inquiring at the door, the servant told me that Mr. Jennings was engaged very particularly with a gentleman, a clergyman from Kenlis, his parish in the country. Intending to reserve my privilege, and to call again, I merely intimated that I should try an- other time, and had turned to go, when the servant begged my pardon, and asked me, looking at me a little more attentively than well-bred persons of his order usually do, whether I was Dr. Hesselius; and, on learning that I was, he said, "Perhaps then, sir, you would allow me to mention it to Mr. Jennings, for I am sure he wishes to see you." The servant returned in a moment, with a message from Mr. Jennings, asking me to go into his study, which was in effect his back drawing-room, promising to be with me in a very few minutes. This was really a study--almost a library. The room was lofty, with two tall slender windows, and rich dark curtains. It was much larger than I had expected, and stored with books on every side, from the floor to the ceiling. The upper carpet-- for to my tread it felt that there were two or three--was a Turkey carpet. My steps fell noiselessly. The bookcases standing out, placed the windows, particularly narrow ones, in deep recesses. The effect of the room was, although extremely comfortable, and even luxurious, decidedly gloomy, and aided by the silence, almost oppressive. Perhaps, however, I ought to have allowed something for association. My mind had connected peculiar ideas with Mr. Jennings. I stepped into this perfectly silent room, of a very silent house, with a peculiar foreboding; and its darkness, and solemn clothing of books, for except where two narrow looking-glasses were set in the wall, they were everywhere, helped this somber feeling.

While awaiting Mr. Jennings' arrival, I amused myself by looking into some of the books with which his shelves were laden. Not among these, but immediately under them, with their backs up ward, on the floor, I lighted upon a complete set of Swedenborg's "Arcana Celestia," in the original Latin, a very fine folio set, bound in the natty livery which theology affects, pure vellum, namely, gold letters, and carmine edges. There were paper markers in several of these volumes, I raised and placed them, one after the other, upon the table, and opening where these papers were placed, I read in the solemn Latin phraseology, a series of sentences indicated by a penciled line at the margin. Of these I copy here a few, translating them into English.

"When man's interior sight is opened, which is that of his spirit, then there appear the things of another life, which cannot possibly be made visible to the bodily sight."....

"By the internal sight it has been granted me to see the things that are in the other life, more clearly than I see those that are in the world. From these considerations, it is evident that external vision exists from interior vision, and this from a vision still more interior, and so on." .... "There are with every man at least two evil spirits.".... "With wicked genii there is also a fluent speech, but harsh and grating. There is also among them a speech which is not fluent, wherein the dissent of the thoughts is perceived as something secretly creeping along within it." "The evil spirits associated with man are, indeed from the hells, but when with man they are not then in hell, but are taken out thence. The place where they then are, is in the midst between heaven and hell, and is called the world of spirits--when the evil spirits who are with man, are in that world, they are not in any infernal torment, but in every thought and affection of man, and so, in all that the man himself enjoys. But when they are remitted into their hell, they return to their former state.".... "If evil spirits could perceive that they were associated with man, and yet that they were spirits separate from him, and if they could flow in into the things of his body, they would attempt by a thousand means to destroy him; for they hate man with a deadly hatred." .... "Knowing, therefore, that I was a man in the body, they were continually striving to destroy me, not as to the body only, but especially as to the soul; for to destroy any man or spirit is the very delight of the life of all who are in hell; but I have been continually protected by the Lord. Hence it appears how dangerous it is for man to be in a living consort with spirits, unless he be in the good of faith." .... "Nothing is more carefully guarded from the knowledge of associate spirits than their being thus conjoint with a man, for if they knew it they would speak to him, with the intention to destroy him." .... "The delight of hell is to do evil to man, and to hasten his eternal ruin."

A long note, written with a very sharp and fine pencil, in Mr. Jennings' neat hand, at the foot of the page, caught my eye. Expecting his criticism upon the text, I read a word or two, and stopped, for it was something quite different, and began with these words, Deus misereatur mei--"May God compassionate me." Thus warned of its private nature, I averted my eyes, and shut the book, replacing all the volumes as I had found them, except one which interested me, and in which, as men studious and solitary in their habits will do, I grew so absorbed as to take no cognisance of the outer world, nor to remember where I was. I was reading some pages which refer to "representatives" and "correspondents," in the technical language of Swedenborg, and had arrived at a passage, the substance of which is, that evil spirits, when seen by other eyes than those of their infernal associates, pre sent themselves, by "correspondence," in the shape of the beast ()fera) which represents their particular lust and life, in aspect direful and atrocious. This is a long passage, and particularises a number of those bestial forms.

CHAPTER IV

Four Eyes Were Reading the Passage

I was running the head of my pencil-case along the line as I read it, and something caused me to raise my eyes.

Directly before me was one of the mirrors I have mentioned, in which I saw reflected the tall shape of my friend, Mr. Jennings, leaning over my shoulder, and reading the page at which I was busy, and with a face so dark and wild that I should hardly have known him.

I turned and rose. He stood erect also, and with an effort laughed a little, saying: "I came in and asked you how you did, but without succeeding in awaking you from your book; so I could not restrain my curiosity, and very impertinently, I'm afraid, peeped over your shoulder. This is not your first time of looking into those pages. You have looked into Swedenborg, no doubt, long ago?"

"Oh dear, yes! I owe Swedenborg a great deal; you will discover traces of him in the little book on Metaphysical Medicine, which you were so good as to remember." Although my friend affected a gaiety of manner, there was a slight flush in his face, and I could perceive that he was inwardly much perturbed. "I'm scarcely yet qualified, I know so little of Swedenborg. I've only had them a fortnight," he answered, "and I think they are rather likely to make a solitary man nervous--that is, judging from the very little I have read---I don't say that they have made me so," he laughed; "and I'm so very much obliged for the book. I hope you got my note?"

I made all proper acknowledgments and modest disclaimers. "I never read a book that I go with, so entirely, as that of yours," he continued. "I saw at once there is more in it than is quite un folded. Do you know Dr. Harley?" he asked, rather abruptly. In passing, the editor remarks that the physician here named was one of the most eminent who had ever practiced in England.

I did, having had letters to him, and had experienced from him great courtesy and considerable assistance during my visit to England.

"I think that man one of the very greatest fools I ever met in my life," said Mr. Jennings.

This was the first time I had ever heard him say a sharp thing of anybody, and such a term applied to so high a name a little startled me.

"Really! and in what way?" I asked. "In his profession," he answered. I smiled.

"I mean this," he said: "he seems to me, one half, blind--I mean one half[ of all he looks at is dark--preternaturally bright and vivid all the rest; and the worst of it is, it seems wilful. I can't get him--I mean he won't--I've had some experience of him as a physician, but I look on him as, in that sense, no better than a paralytic mind, an intellect half dead. I'll tell you--I know I shall some time--all about it," he said, with a little agitation. "You stay some months longer in England. If I should be out of town during your stay [or a little time, would you allow me to trouble you with a letter?"

"I should be only too happy," I assured him.

"Very good of you. I am so utterly dissatisfied with Harley."

"A little leaning to the materialistic school," I said.

"A mere materialist," he corrected me; "you can't think how that sort of thing worries one who knows better. You won't tell any one--any of my friends you know--that I am hippish; now, [or instance, no one knows--not even Lady Mary--that I have seen Dr. Harley, or any other doctor.

So pray don't mention it; and, if I should have any threatening of an attack, you'll kindly let me write, or, should I be in town, have a little talk with you." I was full of conjecture, and unconsciously I found I had fixed my eyes gravely on him, for he lowered his for a moment, and he said: "1 see you think I might as well tell you now, or else you are forming a conjecture; but you may as well give it up. If you were guessing all the rest of your Iife, you will never hit on it."

He shook his head smiling, and over that wintry sunshine a black cloud suddenly came down, and he drew his breath in, through his teeth as men do in pain. "Sorry, of course, to learn that you apprehend occasion to consult any of us; but, command me when and how you like, and I need not assure you that your confidence is sacred."

He then talked of quite other things, and in a comparatively cheerful way and after a little time, I took my leave.

CHAPTER V

Dr. Hesselius is Summoned to Richmond

We parted cheerfully, but he was not cheerful, nor was I. There are certain expressions of that powerful organ of spirit--the human face--which, although I have seen them often, and possess a doctor's nerve, yet disturb me profoundly. One look of Mr. Jennings haunted me. It had seized my imagination with so dismal a power that I changed my plans for the evening, and went to the opera, feeling that I wanted a change of ideas.

I heard nothing of or from him for two or three days, when a note in his hand reached me. It was cheerful, and full of hope. He said that he had been for some little time so much better-quite well, in fact--that he was going to make a little experiment, and run down for a month or so to his parish, to try whether a little work might not quite set him up. There was in it a fervent religious expression of gratitude [or his restoration, as he now almost hoped he might call it.

A day or two later I saw Lady Mary, who repeated what his note had announced, and told me that he was actually in Warwickshire, having resumed his clerical duties at Kenlis; and she added, "I begin to think that he is really perfectly well, and that there never was anything the matter, more than nerves and fancy; we are all nervous, but I fancy there is nothing like a little hard work for that kind of weakness, and he has made up his mind to try it. I should not be surprised if he did not come back for a year." Notwithstanding all this confidence, only two days later 1 had this note, dated from his house off Piccadilly:

DEAR Sir,--I have returned disappointed. If I should feel at all able to see you, I shall write to ask you kindly to call. At present, I am too low, and, in fact, simply unable to say all I wish to say. Pray don't mention my name to my friends. I can see no one. By-and-by, please God, you shall hear from me. I mean to take a run into Shropshire, where some of my people are. God bless you! May we, on my return, meet more happily than I can now write.

About a week after this I saw Lady Mary at her own house, the last person, she said, left in town, and just on the wing for Brighton, for the London season was quite over. She told me that she had heard from Mr. Jenning's niece, Martha, in Shropshire. There was nothing to be gathered from her letter, more than that he was low and nervous. In those words, of which healthy people think so lightly, what a world of suffering is sometimes hidden! Nearly five weeks had passed without any further news of Mr. Jennings. At the end of that time I received a note from him. He wrote: "I have been in the country, and have had change of air, change of scene, change of faces, change of everything--and in everything ---but myself. I have made up my mind, so far as the most irresolute creature on earth can do it, to tell my case fully to you. If your engagements will permit, pray come to me to-day, to-morrow, or the next day; but, pray defer as little as possible. You know not how much I need help. I have a quiet house at Richmond, where I now am. Perhaps you can manage to come to dinner, or to lunch eon, or even to tea. You shall have no trouble in finding me out. The servant at Blank Street, who takes this note, will have a carriage at your door at any hour you please; and I am always to be found. You will say that I ought not to be alone. 1 have tried everything. Come and see."

I called up the servant, and decided on going out the same evening, which accordingly I did.

He would have been much better in a lodging-house, or hotel, I thought, as I drove up through a short double row of sombre elms to a very old-fashioned brick house, darkened by the foliage of these trees, which overtopped, and nearly surrounded it. It was a perverse choice, for nothing could be imagined more triste and silent. The house, I found, belonged to him. He had stayed for a day or two in town, and, finding it for some cause insupportable, had come out here, probably because being furnished and his own, he was relieved of the thought and delay of selection, by coming here.

The sun had already set, and the red reflected light of the western sky illuminated the scene with the peculiar effect with which we are all familiar. The hall seemed very dark, but, getting to the back drawing-room, whose windows command the west, I was again in the same dusky light. I sat down, looking out upon the richly-wooded landscape that glowed in the grand and melancholy light which was every moment fading. The corners of the room were already dark; all was growing dim, and the gloom was insensibly toning my mind, al ready prepared for what was sinister. I was waiting alone for his arrival, which soon took place. The door communicating with the front room opened, and the tall figure of Mr. Jennings, faintly seen in the ruddy twilight, came, with quiet stealthy steps, into the room.

We shook hands, and, taking a chair to the window, where there was still light enough to enable us to see each other's faces, he sat down beside me, and, placing his hand upon my arm, with scarcely a word of preface began his narrative.

CHAPTER VI

How Mr. Jennings Met His Companion

The faint glow of the west, the pomp of the then lonely woods of Richmond, were before us, behind and about us the darkening room, and on the stony face of the sufferer for the character of his face, though still gentle and sweet, was changed rested that dim, odd glow which seems to descend and produce, where it touches, lights, sudden though faint, which are lost, almost with out gradation, in darkness. The silence, too, was utter: not a dis tant wheel, or bark, or whistle from without; and within the de pressing stillness of an invalid bachelor's house.

I guessed well the nature, though not even vaguely the particulars of the revelations I was about to receive, from that fixed face of suffering that so oddly flushed stood out, like a portrait of Schalken's, before its background of darkness.

"It began," he said, "on the 15th of October, three years and eleven weeks ago, and two days--I keep very accurate count, for every day is torment. If I leave anywhere a chasm in my narrative tell me.

"About four years ago I began a work, which had cost me very much thought and reading. It was upon the religious metaphysics of the ancients."

"1 know," said I, "the actual religion of educated and thinking paganism, quite apart from symbolic worship? A wide and very interesting field."

"Yes, but not good for the mind--the Christian mind, I mean. Paganism is all bound together in essential unity, and, with evil sympathy, their religion involves their art, and both their manners, and the subject is a degrading fascination and the Nemesis sure. God forgive me!

"I wrote a great deal; I wrote late at night. I was always thinking on the subject, walking about, wherever I was, everywhere. It thoroughly infected me. You are to remember that all the material ideas connected with it were more or less of the beautiful, the subject itself delightfully interesting, and I, then, without a care." He sighed heavily. "I believe, that every one who sets about writing in earnest does his work, as a friend of mine phrased it, on something--tea, or coffee, or tobacco. I suppose there is a material waste that must be hourly supplied in such occupations, or that we should grow too abstracted, and the mind, as it were, pass out of the body, unless it were reminded often enough of the connection by actual sensation. At all events, I felt the want, and I supplied it. Tea was my companion-at first the ordinary black tea, made in the usual way, not too strong: but I drank a good deal, and increased its strength as I went on. I never, experienced an uncomfortable symptom from it. ! began to take a little green tea. I found the effect pleasanter, it cleared and intensified the power of thought so, I had come to take it frequently, but not stronger than one might take it for pleasure. I wrote a great deal out here, it was so quiet, and in this room. I used to sit up very late, and it became a habit with me to sip my tea--green tea--every now and then as my work proceeded. I had a little kettle on my table, that swung over a lamp, and made tea two or three times between eleven o'clock and two or three in the morning, my hours of going to bed. I used to go into town every day. I was not a monk, and, although I spent an hour or two in a library, hunting up authorities and looking out lights upon my theme, I was in no morbid state as far as I can judge. I met my friends pretty much as usual and enjoyed their society, and, on the whole, existence had never been, I think, so pleasant before.

"I had met with a man who had some odd old books, German editions in medieval Latin, and I was only too happy to be permitted access to them. This obliging person's books were in the City, a very out-of-the-way part of it. I had rather out-stayed my intended hour, and, on coming out, seeing no cab near, I was tempted to get into the omnibus which used to drive past this house. It was darker than this by the time the 'bus had reached an old house, you may have remarked, with four poplars at each side of the door, and there the last passenger but myself got out. We drove along rather faster. It was twilight now. I leaned back in my corner next the door ruminating pleasantly.

"The interior of the omnibus was nearly dark. I had observed in the corner opposite to me at the other side, and at the end next the horses, two small circular reflections, as it seemed to me of a reddish light. They were about two inches apart, and about the size of those small brass buttons that yachting men used to put upon their jackets. I began to speculate, as listless men will, upon this trifle, as it seemed. From what center did that faint but deep red light come, and from what--glass beads, buttons, toy decorations-was it reflected? We were lumbering along gently, having nearly a mile still to go. I had not solved the puzzle, and it be came in another minute more odd, for these two luminous points, with a sudden jerk, descended nearer and nearer the floor, keeping still their relative distance and horizontal position, and then, as suddenly, they rose to the level of the seat on which I was sitting and I saw them no more.

"My curiosity was now really excited, and, before I had time to think, I saw again these two dull lamps, again together near the floor; again they disappeared, and again in their old corner I saw them. "So, keeping my eyes upon them, I edged quietly up my own side, towards the end at which I still saw these tiny discs of red.

"There was very little light in the 'bus. It was nearly dark. I leaned forward to aid my endeavor to discover what these little circles really were. They shifted position a little as I did so. I began now to perceive an outline of something black, and 1 soon saw, with tolerable distinctness, the outline of a small black monkey, pushing its face forward in mimicry to meet mine; those were its eyes, and I now dimly saw its teeth grinning at me. "I drew back, not knowing whether it might not meditate a spring. 1 fancied that one of the passengers had forgot this ugly pet, and wishing to ascertain something of its temper, though not caring to trust my fingers to it, I poked my umbrella softly towards it. It remained immovable--up to it--through it. For through it, and back and forward it passed, without the slightest resistance.

"I can't, in the least, convey to you the kind of horror that I felt. When I had ascertained that the thing was an illusion, as I then supposed, there came a misgiving about myself and a terror that fascinated me in impotence to remove my gaze from the eyes of the brute for some moments. As I looked, it made a little skip back, quite into the corner, and I, in a panic, found myself at the door, having put my head out, drawing deep breaths of the outer air, and staring at the lights and tress we were passing, too glad to reassure myself of reality. "I stopped the 'bus and got out. I perceived the man look oddly at me as I paid him. I dare say there was something unusual in my looks and manner, for I had never felt so strangely before."

CHAPTER VII

The Journey: First Stage

"When the omnibus drove on, and I was alone upon the road, I looked carefully round to ascertain whether the monkey had fol lowed me. To my indescribable relief ! saw it nowhere. I can't describe easily what a shock I had received, and my sense of genuine gratitude on finding myself, as I supposed, quite rid of it.

"I had got out a little before we reached this house, two or three hundred steps. A brick wall runs along the footpath, and inside the wall is a hedge of yew, or some dark evergreen of that kind, and within that again the row of fine trees which you may have remarked as you came. "This brick wall is about as high as my shoulder, and happening to raise my eyes I saw the monkey, with that stooping gait, on all fours, walking or creeping, close beside me, on top of the wall. I stopped, looking at it with a feeling of loathing and horror. As I stopped so did it. It sat up on the wall with its long hands on its knees looking at me. There was not light enough to see it much more than in outline, nor was it dark enough to bring the peculiar light of its eyes into strong relief. I still saw, however, that red foggy light plainly enough. It did not show its teeth, nor exhibit any sign of irritation, but seemed jaded and sulky, and was observing me steadily. "I drew back into the middle of the road. It was an unconscious recoil, and there I stood, still looking at it. It did not move.

"With an instinctive determination to try something--any thing, I turned about and walked briskly towards town with askance look, all the time, watching the movements of the beast. It crept swiftly along the wall, at exactly my pace.

"Where the wall ends, near the turn of the road, it came down, and with a wiry spring or two brought itself close to my feet, and continued to keep up with me, as I quickened my pace. It was at my left side, so dose to my leg that I felt every moment as if I should tread upon it.

"The road was quite deserted and silent, and it was darker every moment. I stopped dismayed and bewildered, turning as 1 did so, the other way--I mean, towards this house, away from which I had been walking. When I stood still, the monkey drew back to a distance of, I suppose, about five or six yards, and remained stationary, watching me. "I had been more agitated than I have said. I had read, of course, as everyone has, something about 'spectral illusions,' as you physicians term the phenomena of such cases. I considered my situation, and looked my misfortune in the face.

"These affections, I had read, are sometimes transitory and sometimes obstinate. I had read of cases in which the appearance, at first harmless, had, step by step, degenerated into something direful and insupportable, and ended by wearing its victim out. Still as I stood there, but for my bestial companion, quite alone, I tried to comfort myself by repeating again and again the assurance, 'the thing is purely disease, a well-known physical affection, as distinctly as small-pox or neuralgia. Doctors are all agreed on that, philosophy demonstrates it. I must not be a fool. I've been sitting up too late, and I daresay my digestion is quite wrong, and, with God's help, I shall be all right, and this is but a symptom of nervous dyspepsia.'

Did I believe all this? Not one word of it, no more than any other miserable being ever did who is once seized and riveted in this satanic captivity. Against my convictions, I might say my knowledge, I was simply bullying myself into a false courage.

"I now walked homeward. I had only a few hundred yards to go. I had forced myself into a sort of resignation, but I had not got over the sickening shock and the flurry of the first certainty of my misfortune.

"I made up my mind to pass the night at home. The brute moved dose betide me, and 1 fancied there was the sort of anxious drawing toward the house, which one sees in tired horses or dogs, sometimes as they come toward home.

"I was afraid to go into town, I was afraid of any one's seeing and recognizing me. I was conscious of an irrepressible agitation in my manner. Also, I was afraid of any violent change in my habits, such as going to a place of amusement, or walking from home in order to fatigue myself. At the hall door it waited till I mounted the steps, and when the door was opened entered with me.

"I drank no tea that night. I got cigars and some brandy and water. My idea was that I should act upon my material system, and by living for a while in sensation apart from thought, send myself forcibly, as it were, into a new groove. I came up here to this drawing-room. 1 sat just here. The monkey then got upon a small table that then stood there. It looked dazed and languid. An irrepressible uneasiness as to its movements kept my eyes always upon it. Its eyes were half closed, but I could see them glow. It was looking steadily at me. In all situations, at all hours, it is awake and looking at me. That never changes.

"I shall not continue in detail my narrative of this particular night. I shall describe, rather, the phenomena of the first year, which never varied, essentially. I shall describe the monkey as it appeared in daylight. In the dark, as you shall presently hear, there are peculiarities. It is a small monkey, perfectly black. It had only one peculiarity--a character of malignity--unfathomable malignity. During the first year looked sullen and sick. But this character of intense malice and vigilance was always underlying that surly languor. During all that time it acted as if on a plan of giving me as little trouble as was consistent with watching me. Its eyes were never off me. I have never lost sight of it, except in my sleep, light or dark, day or night, since it came here, excepting when it withdraws for some weeks at a time, unaccountably.

"In total dark it is visible as in daylight. I do not mean merely its eyes. It is all visible distinctly in a halo that resembles a glow of red embers, and which accompanies it in all its movements.

"When it leaves me for a time, it is always at night, in the dark, and in the same way. It grows at first uneasy, and then furious, and then advances towards me, ginning and shaking, its paws clenched, and, at the same time, there comes the appearance of fire in the grate. I never have any fire. I can't sleep in the room where there is any, and it draws nearer and nearer to the chimney, quivering, it seems, with rage, and when its fury rises to the high est pitch, it springs into the grate, and up the chimney, and 1 see it no more.

"When first this happened, I thought I was released. 1 was now a new man. A day passed--a night--and no return, and a blessed week--a week--another week. 1 was always on my knees, Dr. Hesselius, always, thanking God and praying. A whole month passed of liberty, but on a sudden, it was with me again."

CHAPTER VIII

The Second Stage

"It was with me, and the malice which before was torpid under a sullen exterior, was now active.

It was perfectly unchanged in every other respect. This new energy was apparent in its activity and its looks, and soon in other ways.

"For a time, you will understand, the change was shown only in an increased vivacity, and an air of menace, as if it were always brooding over some atrocious plan. Its eyes, as before, were never off me."

"Is it here now?" I asked.

"No," he replied, "it has been absent exactly a fortnight and a day--fifteen days. It has sometimes been away so long as nearly two months, once for three. Its absence always exceeds a fortnight, al though it may be but by a single day. Fifteen days having past since I saw it last, it may return now at any moment."

"Is its return," I asked, "accompanied by any peculiar manifestation?"

"Nothing--no," he said. "It is simply with me again. On lifting my eyes from a book, or turning my head, I see it, as usual, looking at me, and then it remains, as before, for its appointed time. I have never told so much and so minutely before to any one."

I perceived that he was agitated, and looking like death, and he repeatedly applied his handkerchief to his forehead; I suggested that he might be cured, and told him that I would call, with pleasure, in the morning, but he said: "No, if you don't mind hearing it all now. I have got so far, and I should prefer making one effort of it. When I spoke to Dr. Harley, I had nothing like so much to tell. You are a philosophic physician. You give spirit its proper rank. If the thing is real----"

He paused looking at me with agitated inquiry.

"We can discuss it by-and-by, and very fully. I will give you all I think, " I answered after an interval.

"Well--very well. If it is anything real, I say, it is prevailing. little by little, and drawing me more interiorly into hell. Optic nerves, he talked of. Ah! well--there are other nerves of communication. May God Almighty help me! You shall hear. "It is power of action, I tell you, had increased. Its malice became, in a way, aggressive. About two years ago, some questions that were pending between me and the bishop having been settled, I went down to my parish in Warwickshire, anxious to find occupation in my profession. I was not prepared for what happened, although I have since thought I might have apprehended something like it. The reason of my saying so is this--"

He was beginning to speak with a great deal more effort and reluctance, and sighted often, and seemed at times nearly overcome. But at this time his manner was not agitated. It was more like that of a sinking patient, who has given himself up.

"Yes, but I will first tell you about Kenlis my parish.

"It was with me when I left this place for Drawlbridge. It was my silent traveling companion, and it remained with me at the vicarage. When I entered on the discharge of my duties, another change took place. The thing exhibited an atrocious determination to thwart me. It was with me in the church--in the reading desk--in the pulpit--within the communion rails. At last, it reached this extremity, that while I was reading to the congregation, it would spring upon the book and squat there, so that I was unable to see the page. This happened more than once.

"I left Drawlbridge for a time. I placed myself in Dr. Harley's hands. I did everything he told me. he gave my case a great deal of thought. It interested him, I think. He seemed successful.

For nearly three months I was perfectly free from a return. I began to think I was safe. With his full assent I returned to Drawlbridge.

"I traveled in a chaise. I was in good spirits. I was more--I was happy and grateful. I was returning , as I thought, delivered from a dreadful hallucination, to the scene of duties which I longed to enter upon. It was a beautiful sunny evening, everything looked serene and cheerful, and I was delighted, I remember looking out of the window to see the spire of my church at Kenlis among the trees, at the point where one has the earliest view of it. It is exactly where the little stream that bounds the parish passes under the road by a culvert, and where it emerges at the roadside, a stone with an old inscription is placed. As we passed this point, I drew my head in and sat down, and in the corner of the chaise was the monkey.

"For a moment I felt faint, and then quite wild with despair and horror, I called to the driver, and got out, and sat down at the road-side, and prayed to God silently for mercy. A despairing resignation supervened. My companion was with me as I reentered the vicarage. The same persecution followed. After a short struggle I submitted, and soon I left the place. "I told you," he said, "that all the beast has before this become in certain ways aggressive. I will explain a little. It seemed to be actuated by intense and increasing fury, whenever I said my prayers, or even meditated prayer. It amounted at last to a dreadful interruption. You will ask, how could a silent immaterial phantom effect that? It was thus, whenever I meditated praying; It was always before me, and nearer and nearer. "It used to spring on the table, on the back of the chair, on the chimney-piece, and slowly swing itself from side to side, looking at me all the time. There is in its motion an indefinable power to dissipate thought, and to contract one's attention to that monotony, till the ideas shrink, as it were, to a point, and at last to nothing--and unless I had started up , and shook off the catalepsy I have felt as if my mind were to a point of losing itself. There are no other ways," he sighed heavily; "thus, for instance, while I pray with my eyes closed, it comes closer and closer and closer, and I see it. I know it is not to be accounted for physically, but I do actually see it, though my lids are closed, and so it rocks my mind, as it were, and overpowers me, and I am obliged to rise from my knees. If you had ever yourself known this, you would be acquainted with desperation."

CHAPTER IX

The Third Stage

"I see, Dr. Hesselius, that you don't lose one word of my statement. I need not ask you to listen specially to what I am now going to tell you. They talk of the optic nerves, and of spectral illusions, as if the organ of fight was the only point assailable by the influences that have fastened upon me--l know better. For two years in my direful case that limitation prevailed. But as food is taken in softly at the lips, and then brought under the teeth, as the tip of the little finger caught in a mill crank will draw in the hand, and the arm, and the whole body, so the miserable mortal who has been once caught firmly by the end of the finest fibre of his nerve, is drawn in and in, by the enormous machinery of hell, until he is as 1 am. Yes, Doctor, as I am, for a while I talk to you, and implore relief, I feel that my prayer is for the impossible, and my pleading with the inexorable."

1 endeavoured to calm his visibly increasing agitation, and told him that he must not despair.

While we talked the night had overtaken us. The filmy moon light was wide over the scene which the window commanded, and I said: "Perhaps you would prefer having candles. This light, you know, is odd. I should wish you, as much as possible, under your usual conditions while I make my diagnosis, shall I call it--otherwise I don't care."

"All lights are the same to me," he said; "except when 1 read or write, I care not if night were perpetual. I am going to tell you what happened about a year ago. The thing began to speak to me."

"Speak! How do you mean--speak as a man does, do you mean?" "yes; speak in words and consecutive sentences, with perfect coherence and articulation; but there is a peculiarity. It is not like the tone of a human voice. It is not by my ears it reaches me-it comes like a singing through my head.

"This faculty, the power of speaking to me, will be my undoing. It won't let me pray, it interrupts me with dreadful blasphemies. I dare not go on, I could not. Oh! Doctor, can the skill, and thought, and prayers of man avail me nothing!"

"You must promise me, my dear sir, not to trouble yourself with unnecessarily exciting thoughts; confine yourself strictly to the narrative of facts; and recollect, above all, that even if the thing that infests you be, you seem to suppose a reality with an actual in dependent life and will, yet it can have no power to hurt you, unless it be given from above: its access to your senses depends mainly upon your physical condition--this is, under God, your com fort and reliance: we are all alike environed. It is only that in your case, the 'parties,' the veil of the flesh, the screen, is a little out of repair, and sights and sounds are transmitted. We must enter on a new course, sir,---be encouraged. I'll give to-night to the careful consideration of the whole case."

"You are very good, sir; you think it worth trying, you don't give me quite up; but, sir, you don't know, it is gaining such an influence over me: it orders me about, it is such a tyrant, and I'm growing so helpless. May God deliver me!"

"It orders you about--of course you mean by speech?"

"Yes, yes; it is always urging me to crimes, to injure others, or myself. You see, Doctor, the situation is urgent, it is indeed. When I was in Shropshire, a few weeks ago" (Mr. Jennings was speaking rapidly and trembling now, holding my arm with one hand, and looking in my face), "I went out one day with a party of friends for a walk: my persecutor, I tell you, was with me at the time. I lagged behind the rest: the country near the Dee, you know, is beautiful. Our path happened to lie near a coal mine, and at the verge of the wood is a perpendicular shaft, they say, a hundred and fifty feet deep. My niece had remained behind with me--she knows, of course nothing of the nature of my sufferings. She knew, however, that I had been ill, and was low, and she remained to prevent my being quite alone. As we loitered slowly on together, the brute that accompanied me was urging me to throw myself down the shaft. I tell you now--oh, sir, think of it!--the one consideration that saved me from that hideous death was the fear lest the shock of witnessing the occurrence should be too much for the poor girl. I asked her to go on and walk with her friends, saying that I could go no further. She made excuses, and the more I urged her the firmer she became. She looked doubtful and frightened. 1 suppose there was something in my looks or manner that alarmed her; but she would not go, and that literally saved me. You had no idea, sir, that a living man could be made so abject a slave of Satan," he said, with a ghastly groan and a shudder.

There was a pause here, and I said, "You were preserved nevertheless. It was the act of God. You are in His hands and in the power of no other being: be therefore confident for the future."

CHAPTER X

Home

I made him have candles lighted, and saw the room looking cheery and inhabited before I left him. I told him that he must regard his illness strictly as one dependent on physical, though subtle physical causes. 1 told him that he had evidence of God's care and love in the deliverance which he had just described, and that I had perceived with pain that he seemed to regard its peculiar features as indicating that he had been delivered over to spiritual reprobation. Than such a conclusion nothing could be, I insisted, less warranted; and not only so, but more contrary to [acts, as disclosed in his mysterious deliverance from that murderous in fluence during his Shropshire excursion. First, his niece had been retained by his side without his intending to keep her near him; and, secondly, there had been infused into his mind an irresistible repugnance to execute the dreadful suggestion in her presence.

As I reasoned this point with him, Mr. Jennings wept. He seemed comforted. One promise I exacted, which was that should the monkey at any time return, I should be sent for immediately; and, repeating my assurance that 1 would give neither time nor thought to any other subject until I had thoroughly investigated his case, and that to-morrow he should hear the result, 1 took my leave.

Before getting into the carriage I told the servant that his master was far from well, and that he should make a point of fre quently looking into his room. My own arrangements 1 made with a view to being quite secure from interruption. I merely called at my lodgings, and with a traveling-desk and carpet-bag, set off in a hackney carriage for an inn about two miles out of town, called "The Horns," a very quiet and comfortable house, with good thick walls. And there I resolved, without the possibility of intrusion or distraction, to devote some hours of the night, in my comfortable sitting-room, to Mr. Jennings' case, and so much of the morning as it might require. (There occurs here a careful note of Dr. Hesselius' opinion on the case, and of the habits, dietary, and medicines which he prescribed. It is curious--some persons would say mystical. But, on the whole, I doubt whether it would sufficiently interest a reader of the kind I am likely to meet with, to warrant its being here reprinted. The whole letter was plainly written at the inn where he had hid himself for the occasion. The next letter is dated from his town lodgings.) I left town for the inn where I slept last night at half-past nine, and did not arrive at my room in town until one o'clock this after- noon. 1 found a letter m Mr. Jennings' hand upon my table. It. had not come by post, and, on inquiry, I learned that Mr. Jennings' servant had brought it, and on learning that I was not to return until to-day, and that no one could tell him my address, he seemed very uncomfortable, and said his orders from his master were that he was not to return without an answer.

I opened the letter and read:

Dear Dr. Hesselius.--It is here. You had not been an hour gone when it returned. It is speaking. It knows all that has happened. It knows every thing-it knows you, and is frantic and atrocious. It reviles. I send you this. It knows every word I have written--I write. This I promised, and I therefore write, but I fear very confused, very incoherently. I am so interrupted, disturbed.

Ever yours, sincerely yours,

ROBERT LYNDER JENNINGS.

"When did this come?" I asked.

"About eleven last night: the man was here again, and has been here three times to-day. The last time is about an hour since."

Thus answered, and with the notes ! had made upon his case in my pocket, I was in a few minutes driving towards Richmond, to see Mr. Jennings. I by no means, as you perceive, despaired of Mr. Jennings' case. He had himself remembered and applied, though quite in a mistaken way, the principle which I lay down in my Metaphysical Medicine, and which governs all such cases. I was about to apply it in earnest. I was profoundly interested, and very anxious to see and examine him while the "enemy" was actually present. I drove up to the sombre house, and ran up the steps, and knocked. The door, in a little time, was opened by a tall woman in black silk. She looked ill, and as if she had been crying. She curtseyed, and heard my question, but she did not answer. She turned her face away, extending her hand towards two men who were coming down-stairs; and thus having, as it were, tacitly made me over to them, she passed through a side-door hastily and shut it.

The man who was nearest the hall, I at once accosted, but being now close to him, I was shocked to see that both his hands were covered with blood.

I drew back a little, and the man, passing downstairs, merely said in a low tone, "Here's the servant, sir."

The servant had stopped on the stairs, confounded and dumb at seeing me. He was rubbing his hands in a handkerchief, and it was steeped in blood.

"Jones, what is it? what has happened?" I asked, while a sickening suspicion overpowered me.

The man asked me to come up to the lobby. I was beside him in a moment, and, frowning and pallid, with contracted eyes, he told me the horror which I already half guessed.

His master had made away with himself.

I went upstairs with him to the room--what I saw there I won't tell you. He had cut his throat with his razor. It was a frightful gash. The two men had laid him on the bed, and composed his limbs. It had happened, as the immense pool of blood on the floor declared, at some distance between the bed and the window. There was carpet round his bed, and a carpet under his dressing. table, but none on the rest of the floor, for the man said he did not like a carpet on his bedroom. In this sombre and now terrible room, one of the great elms that darkened the house was slowly moving the shadow of one of its great boughs upon this dreadful floor.

I beckoned to the servant, and we went downstairs together. I turned off the hall into an old-fashioned paneled room, and there standing, I heard all the servant had to tell. It was not a great deal.

"! concluded, sir, from your words, and looks, sir, as you left last night, that you thought my master was seriously ill. I thought it might be that you were afraid of a fit, or something. So I attended very close to your directions. He sat up late, till past three o'clock. He was not writing or reading. He was talking a great deal to him self, but that was nothing unusual. At about that hour 1 assisted him to undress, and left him in his slippers and dressing-gown. I went back softly in about half-an-hour. He was in his bed, quite undressed, and a pair of candles lighted on the table beside his bed. He was leaning on his elbow, and looking out at the other side of the bed when I came in. I asked him if he wanted anything, and he said No. "I don't know whether it was what you said to me, sir, or some thing a little unusual about him, but I was uneasy, uncommon uneasy about him last night.

"In another half hour, or it might be a little more, 1 went up again. 1 did not hear him talking as before. I opened the door a little. The candles were both out, which was not usual. I had a bedroom candle, and I let the light in, a little bit, looking softly round. I saw him sitting in that chair beside the dressing-table with his clothes on again. He turned round and looked at me. I thought it strange he should get up and dress, and put out the candles to sit in the dark, that way.

But I only asked him again if I could do anything for him. He said, No, rather sharp, I thought. He said, 'Tell me truth, Jones; why did you come again--you did not hear anyone cursing?' 'No, sir,' I said, wondering what he could mean.

"'No,' said he, after me, 'of course, no;' and I said to him, 'Wouldn't it be well, sir, you went to bed? It's just five o'clock;' and he said nothing, but, 'Very likely; good-night, Jones.' so I went, sir, but in less than an hour I came again. The door was fast, and he heard me, and called as I thought from the bed to know what I wanted, and he desired me not to disturb him again. I lay down and slept for a little. It must have been between six and seven when I went up again. The door was still fast, and he made no answer, so 1 did not like to disturb him, and thinking he was asleep, I left him till nine. It was his custom to ring when he wished me to come, and I had no particular hour for calling him. I tapped very gently, and getting no answer, I stayed away a good while, supposing he was getting some rest then. It was not till eleven o'clock I grew really uncomfortable about him--for at the latest he was never, that I could remember, later than half past ten. I got no answer. I knocked and called, and still no answer. So not being able to force the door, I called Thomas from the stables, and together we forced it, and found him in the shocking way you saw."

Jones had no more to tell. Poor Mr. Jennings was very gentle, and very kind. All his people were fond of him. I could see that the servant was very much moved. So, dejected and agitated, I passed from that terrible house, and its dark canopy of elms, and I hope I shall never see it more. While I write to you I feel like a man who has but half waked from a frightful and monotonous dream. My memory rejects the picture with incredulity and horror.

Yet I know it is true. It is the story of the process of a poison, a poison which excites the reciprocal action of spirit and nerve, and paralyses the tissue that separates those cognate functions of the senses, the external and the interior. Thus we find strange bed-fellows, and the mortal and immortal prematurely make acquaintance.

CONCLUSION

A Word for Those Who Suffer

My dear Van L--, you have suffered from an affection similar to that which 1 have just described. You twice complained of a re turn of it. Who, under God, cured you? Your humble servant, Martin Hesselius. Let me rather adopt the more emphasized piety o[ a certain good old French surgeon of three hundred years ago: "I treated, and God cured you."

Come, my friend, you are not to be hippish. Let me tell you a fact. 1 have met with, and treated, as my book shows, fifty-seven cases of this kind of vision, which 1 term indifferently "sublimated," "precocious," and "interior." There is another class of affections which are truly termed- though commonly confounded with those which I describe--spectral illusions.

These latter I look upon as being no less simply curable than a cold in the head or a trifling dyspepsia. It is those which rank in the first category that test our promptitude of thought. Fifty-seven such cases have I encountered, neither more nor less. And in how many of these have I failed? In no one single instance.There is no one affliction of mortality more easily and certainly reducible, with a little patience, and a rational confidence in the physician. With these simple conditions, 1 look upon the cure as absolutely certain. You are to remember that 1 had not even commenced to treat Mr. Jennings' case. 1 have not any doubt that 1 should have cured him perfectly in eighteen months, or possibly it might have ex tended to two years. Some cases are very rapidly curable, others extremely tedious. Every intelligent physician who will give thought and diligence to the task, will effect a cure. You know my tract on "The Cardinal Functions of the Brain." I there, by the evidence of innumerable facts, prove, as I think, the high probability of a circulation arterial and venous in its anism, through the nerves. Of this system, thus considered, the brain is the heart. The fluid, which is propagated hence through one class of nerves, returns in an altered state through another, and the nature of that fluid is spiritual, though not immaterial, any more than, as 1 before remarked, light or electricity are so. By various abuses, among which the habitual use of such agents . as green tea is one, this fluid may be affected as to its quality, but it is more frequently disturbed as to equilibrium. This fluid being that which we have in common with spirits, a congestion found on the masses of brain or nerve, connected with the interior sense, forms a surface unduly exposed, on which disembodied spirits may operate: communication is thus more or less effectually established. Between this brain circulation and the heart circulation there is an intimate sympathy. The seat, or rather the instrument of exterior vision, is the eye. The seat of interior vision is the nervous tissue and brain, immediately about and above the eyebrow. You remember how effectually I dissipated your pictures by the simple application of iced eau-de-cologne. Few cases, how ever, can be treated exactly alike with anything like rapid success. Cold acts powerfully as a repellant of the nervous fluid. Long enough continued it will even produce that permanent insensibility which we call numbness, and a little longer, muscular as well as sensational paralysis.

I have not, 1 repeat, the slightest doubt that 1 should have first dimmed and ultimately sealed that inner eye which Mr. Jennings had inadvertently opened. The same senses are opened in delirium tremens, and entirely shut up again when the overaction of the cerebral heart, and the prodigious nervous congestions that attend it, are terminated by a decided change in the state of the body. It is by acting steadily upon the body, by a simple process, that this result is produced--and inevitably produced--l have never yet failed. Poor Mr. Jennings made away with himself. But that catastrophe was the result of a totally different malady, which, as it were, projected itself upon the disease which was established. His case was in the distinctive manner a complication, and the com plaint under which he really succumbed, was hereditary suicidal mania. Poor Mr. Jennings I cannot call a patient of mine, for I had not even begun to treat his case, and he had not yet given me, I am convinced, his full and unreserved confidence. If the patient do not array himself on the side of the disease, his cure is certain.

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derin-bilgiler · 8 years ago

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Darwinism is a supersititous belief that disparages women

http://harunyahya.com/en/works/240840/Darwinism-is-a-supersititous-belief-that-disparages-women

The alleged scientific support that Social Darwinism provided for racism, fascism and imperialism, as well as communism, is a widely known subject that has been much written about. But one lesser known fact is that a great many Darwinists, including Charles Darwin himself, have believed in the fallacy that women are both biologically and mentally inferior to men.

As the evolutionist scientist John R. Durant also acknowledges, racism and sexual discrimination are the two main consequences of the theory of evolution. Durant verbalized the fallaciousness in Darwin’s stance regarding women as follows:

… Darwin extended this placement by analogy to include not only children and congenital idiots but also women, some of whose powers of intuition, of rapid perception, and perhaps of imitation were "characteristic of the lower races, and therefore of a past and lower state of civilization."[i]

The errors made by Darwin that Durant referred to appear in The Descent of Man, as follows:

It is generally admitted that with women the powers of intuition, of rapid perception, and perhaps of imitation, are more strikingly marked than in man; but some, at least, of these faculties are characteristic of the lower races, and therefore of a past and lower state of civilisation. [ii]

It is clearly obvious that Darwin looked down on women even while he explains why marriage is useful:

… children—constant companion, (friend in old age) who will feel interested in one, object to be beloved and played with—better than a dog anyhow—Home, and someone to take care of house—Charms of music and female chit-chat. These things good for one's health.[iii]

Darwin states that he – in his twisted way - regards marriage as necessary using the reasoning which predicates that "a woman's friendship is better than a dog's," yet his statements about marriage made no reference at all to features such as friendship, affection, love, devotion, loyalty, closeness, sincerity and trust between two people who spend their lives together. About marriage, Darwin also had this to say:

… loss of time—cannot read in the evenings—fatness and idleness—anxiety and responsibility—less money for books, etc.,—if many children, forced to gain one's bread ... perhaps my wife won't like London; then the sentence is banishment and degradation with indolent idle fool. [iv]

In The Descent of Man, Darwin also claims that men are superior to women:

The chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shown by man's attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than can women—whether requiring deep thought, reason, or imagination, or merely the use of the senses and hands. If two lists were made of the most eminent men and women in poetry, painting, sculpture, music, ... history, science, and philosophy ... the two lists would not bear comparison. We may also infer, from the law of the deviation from averages, so well illustrated by Mr. Galton, in his work on "Hereditary Genius" that if men are capable of a decided pre-eminence over women in many subjects, the average of mental power in man must be above that of women. [v]

Of course, all of Darwin’s negative opinions regarding women and the misogynistic discourses of some other Darwinists, the samples of which will be given as we proceed, are diametrically opposed to the moral values described in the Qur’an. In the Qur’an, God commands us to be very compassionate, respectful and protective towards women. Furthermore, He cites women with superior morality such as Mary and the wife of the Pharoah as role models. Superiority in the Sight of God is not according to one’s race, gender or rank but according to their closeness to God and their faith. In many verses of the Qur’an God informs us that all those who believe- without any discrimination between man and woman- will be rewarded with what they have done:

Anyone who acts rightly, male or female, being a believer, We will give them a good life and We will recompense them according to the best of what they did. (Surat An-Nahl, 97)

Examples of the nonsensical remarks of Darwinism regarding women

Darwin’s misogynistic statements are very clear and many scientists are well aware of this fact. Dr. Jerry Bergman, who is against the evolution theory and who explains the negative impacts of Darwinism on social life in his more than 800 published works and more than 20 books, says the following in his book titled The Dark Side of Charles Darwin:

Darwin himself concluded that the differences between human males and females were so large that it was surprising “such different beings belong to the same species” and that “even greater differences” had not evolved. Natural and sexual selection were at the core of Darwinism, and human female inferiority was both a major proof and a chief witness of this theory.

Darwin concluded that men shaped women’s evolution the male’s liking by sexual selection, just as animal breeders shaped animals to the needs of humans. Conversely, war tended to prune the weaker men, allowing only the more fit to return home and reproduce. Men were also the hunters, another activitiy that pruned weaker men. Women, in contrast, were not subject to these selection pressures because they “specialized in the ‘gathering’ part of the primitive economy” that did not require the strength or stamina of war or hunting.” [vi]

The major (and mistaken) justifications Darwin gave for his female inferiority conclusions are summarized in his classic work, The Descent of Man. In this book, Darwin argued that adult females of most species resembled the young of both sexes and that “males are more evolutionarily advanced than females.” He (mistakingly) concluded that since female evolution progressed at a slower rate than male evolution, a woman was “in essence, a stunted man”. This degrading view of women rapidly spread to Darwin’s scientific and academic contemporaries.

For example, Darwin’s contemporary and disciple, anthropologist McGrigor Allan, states that women are less evolved than men and that “physically, mentally and morally, woman is a kind of adult child… it is doubtful if women have contributed one profound original idea of the slightest permanent value to the world.” [vii]

Of course, Darwin had no scientific basis for proposing these fallacies, but his biased and prejudiced claims about women spread rapidly among his scientific contemporaries.

For example, the materialist Carl Vogt, a professor of natural history at the University of Geneva, accepted all the conclusions drawn by Darwin, without subjecting them to any scientific analysis, and claimed that "the child, the female, and the senile white" all had the intellectual features and personality of the "grown -up Negro,” and that consequently they were inferior. [viii]

Herr Vogt went even further and brought forward the lie that they were actually closer to animals than men. According to Vogt, a woman was "a stunted man" whose development had been obstructed because her evolution had come to a premature halt. [ix] Vogt even claimed that the gap between males and females increases with civilization's progress and is greatest in the advanced societies of Europe. [x] Darwin was greatly influenced by Vogt's rantings, and stated that he was honored to count him among his most important supporters. [xi]

Evolutionist Paul Broca (1824-1880) of the Faculty of Medicine in Paris was particularly interested in the skull differences between men and women. Broca misconstrued the relatively smaller brain in women and came up with the fallacy that women were intellectually inferior to men. Of course, that is a very irrational claim; today it has been concluded that there is no relationship between human intelligence and the size of the brain. It is absolutely impossible to come to a truthful conclusion simply by looking at the weight of the brain.

Many other evolutionists following the fallacies of Darwin and continued to claim that women are biologically and intellectually inferior to men. Furthermore, some evolutionists even classified men and women as two different psychological species. According to this fallacy, men are classified as homo-frontalis and women as homo-parietalis. Again an evolutionist writer, Elaine Morgan stated that Darwin encouraged men to work on the reasons why women were "manifestly inferior and irreversibly subordinant."( EIaine Morgan, The Descent of Woman, New York: Stein and Day, 1972, p. 1)

Being a woman or a man would not make one superior to the other

Obviously, Darwin's theses were based not on science, but on the culture and primitive scientific understanding of the Victorian Era he lived in. These theses gave way to harmful behavior, violence towards women and caused women to be regarded as inferior beings in many societies. Philosophies such as fascism and communism that disparage women, basically embrace Darwin’s misguided understanding regarding women.

The intellectual characteristics that Darwinists use as criteria are abilities given by Allah, irrespective of gender. In one verse, God reveals: "You who believe! If you fear [and respect] God, He will give you a standard (of right and wrong)..." (Surat al-Anfal, 29) As this verse reveals, judgment-and thus, intellect-develops not according to gender, but according to fear of God.

According to the Qur'an, men and women are equal, and superiority is defined by heedfulness.

God has imposed equal responsibilities on both, and holds both responsible for the same matters. Whether one is a male or female does not make a person superior in the Sight of God, but fear and deep love of and devotion to Him, and proper moral values do. In one of His verses, our Lord reveals that regardless of gender, those who exhibit the best behavior will receive the best reward for their moral values:

Anyone, male or female, who does right actions and is a believer, will enter the Garden. They will not be wronged by so much as the tiniest speck. (Surat an-Nisa', 124)

Their Lord responds to them "I will not let the deeds of any doer among you go to waste, male or female..." (Surah Al 'Imran, 195)

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sagencoffeebeeens · 6 years ago

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Fortune Horoscope for the week!

If you are not familiar with the theme of “Forune telling/Tarot horoscope” (There might be a proper term, which I couldn’t find.) then you may have some questions. First off, I make those analysis by myself with mainly my notes on astrology, tarot and such! Though I have been doing this for 7 years, I am just a 19 year old guy doing this for fun. For sake of anything, please do not belittle or speak over what I may say! If you point mistakes, I will surely edit them. With this I present my first analysis of the week!

AIRIES ♈️ : IX Pentacles : This week should be good for you, financials and outward goals will leave you content!

TAURUS ♉️ : III Swords : This week might be hard on you, this card represents the negative, sorrow and disappointment, delay as well. You might have to choose between your head or your heart, most likely choosing the former.

GEMINI ♊️ : V Pentacles : This week shall be comforting for you! A spiritual warmth will come to you, if you are suffering financially or physically. Don’t worry your hardships will pay off!

CANCER ♋️ : VI Pentacles : This week will bring you prosperity, your generosity will be paid back you! A coffe? A service? Maybe some help! Wherever your good sense comes from, it will be paid back to you!

LEO ♌️ : VII Wands : This week comes with challenge! Your morals or principles might be looked down on or be invalidated by your adversaries or competitors. Your courage of stick to your core will become your advantage over the situation.

VIRGO ♍️ : Knight of Wands : This week might be confusing? You mfind yourself wondering or questionning where your beliefs and choices really come from. Your path may be unknown, some residental changes might happen to you, wether it’s changing desk or houses.

LIBRA ♎️ : IV Wands : This week is giving you a cornucopia! Your efforts are rewarded, your seeds come full to harvest. It comes with wealth, peace and harmony. Depending on your faith, peace may lack with some.

SCORPIO ♏️ : II of Cups : Your week will come with a partner. Either in dates, in friends or in acquaintances, mutual union set on respect and understanding will be what you’re looking for. Keep eyes open, for some may fall for fake!

SAJITARIUS ♐️ : III of Pentacles : This week brings rewarding thoughts to you. Your studious works for earnest labor is your trophy, enjoy those moments. You may be apprentice, but right now you are in the best position! One who is immature or much petty, might go by less rewarding thoughts without noticing the mediocrity.

CAPRICORN ♑️ : Knight of Pentacles : This week may come off as slow. You have reached a great potential and have made efforts to gain the skills you have today. An exam, job interview or assignment may show as your next task, for which you are ready! If you cannot work towards your goals you may find yourself careless, stagnant and idle.

AQUARIUS ♒️ : Queen of Cups : This week comes with a new clarity. Warmth comes, loving and generous feelings are yours! An emotional depth makes your vision and thought clearer regarding emotions. You might find yourself giving an ear or shoulder this week. A smile even goes a long way with you! But be careful, too much good is vain for one and lack of trust makes people fail to you.

PISCES ♓️ : VII of Cups : This week is curious and hungry. While your thoughts are clear and good, your search for more and attainment might fail you as it comes more with modre imagination than rational and reality. For some, tough, this comes with much progress towards the completion of a project!

GOOD LUCK THIS WEEK!

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thenakedinvestor · 7 years ago

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Selling

(This is written entirely in the context of dividend stocks. I have not thought sufficiently on pure capital gain stocks or even unicorns to discuss those buying, and much less selling strategies.)

TAKING PROFIT

Sell your dividend stock (so far all your stocks are dividend stocks) when:

1. There has been a solid 20 - 25% capital gain (excluding dividends received);

2. Sell on the way up or shortly on the way down.

3. There are no upcoming dividends within the next 4 - 5 months - This gives you time to buy back. If there are upcoming dividends which you are foregoing, you need to adjust the TP accordingly.

[4. There is an impending downtrend.] This is too hard to spot that it should not be one of the conditions.

What if the share price increases after selling? It will...

Duh. You will never be able to sell at the peak, only otw up.

When should I buy back?

1. There is a drop of 20 - 25% since the last peak.

2. The price is lower than your last sale price.

3. Before the next dividend.

What if the conditions can’t be met within the next 4 - 6 months, e.g. price never drops below last sale price again?

Life happens, review as a fresh acquisition. If the price is rallying it could suggest market recognition of strong fundamentals and consider afresh if it is worthy or fair to invest again based on the new entry point and any new facts. Alternatively deploy the money to different counters or opportunities.

Avoid leaving the cash idle for more than 6 months.

CUTTING LOSSES

This strategy is very hard to employ and frankly, if the buying decision was made properly to begin with, there will not be a need to "cut loss”.

Cut loss in respect of your dividend stock when:

1. The company is garbage; or has become garbage since buying.

2. There are no upcoming dividends within the next 4 - 5 months.

What if the share price has fallen significantly?

In the context of dividend stocks, if the company is not reduced to garbage (have the fundamentals changed?), we do not cut loss simply because the share price has fallen. Some strategists advocate cutting loss once you have recorded a capital loss of 7 - 8%. In our situation, on the basis that at the buying stage, proper analysis was done to identify the target company as a healthy and viable investment based on the relevant factors, we do not exit when price is falling.

In a downtrend:

1. Hold and collect dividends.

[2. Do not add.] I need to revisit this point. Averaging downwards can produce mixed results.

#selling #takingprofit #cuttingloss

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kelsusit · 7 years ago

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Graphic Processing Unit (GPU) Sales Market Evaluation, Guidelines Overview And Upcoming Trends Forecas

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ronaldmrashid · 8 years ago

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The Financial Samurai Investment Tracker Spreadsheet

One of the great things about following a financial game plan is that if you stick with it long enough you’ll be surprised at how much you’ll end up accumulating. Conversely, those who don’t follow a financial game plan will wake up one day wondering where all their money went!

For the past several years, my goal was to invest between $5,000 – $20,000 a month in order to generate enough passive income to take care of a family. I define investments as anything I put new money towards that has the potential of increasing my net worth e.g. paying down debt, buying an S&P 500 ETF, building a municipal bond portfolio, venturing into real estate crowdsourcing, expanding a home, and so forth.

With a $5,000 – $20,000 a month investing cadence, I figure my net worth should grow by at least $60,000 – $240,000 a year. If I stay disciplined over 20 years, then I could finally retire in Hawaii and do nothing instead of grind so much with all of you!

Everybody should at least max out your 401k so that worst case, you’ll end up a millionaire after a lifetime of contributions. Time in the market is truly an investor’s best friend.

2016 Investment Summary

For the first time, I’ve decided to do an analysis of all the investments I’ve made in a year to see if I actually followed through with my $5,000 – $20,000 a month investing goal. When we’re not diligently tracking our finances, I’ve found our expectations are quite different from reality. Through tracking, I also wanted to see if I could observe any bad habits in order to make improvements.

I’d like everybody to list their monthly investments for the year and make some observations as well. Here are mine:

January: Bought $5,000 of VYM, (Vanguard High Yield Dividend ETF) in my after-tax investment account. I stuck with accumulating one equity ETF all year in my after tax investment account to simplify. VYM has a dividend of roughly 3.2%.

February:

1) Bought $10,000 of VYM.

2) Bought $5,000 of AMZN (Amazon, wish I bought so much more) in my after-tax investment account.

March: Bought $5,000 of VYM.

April: Bought $5,000 of VYM.

May:

1) Bought $5,000 of VYM.

2) Venture debt capital call of $14,250 (Fund I).

VYM outperformed the S&P 500 in 2016.

June: Opportunity knocks

1) Bought $10,000 in VYM post Brexit. Actually put to work a total of $76,500 in idle cash, but took profits after a 4% rebound, hence why there’s only $10,000 in net new investments. I was very cautious the first half of the year and was just waiting for an opportunity that finally came

2) Venture debt capital call $750 (Fund II).

July: Venture debt capital call $2,150 (Fund II). Pretty slow month. Went to Hawaii for a first half business offsite. July was the one month I didn’t reach my $5,000 minimum investment cadence. Instead, I took some profits on an investment I made in 2012 to pay for my deck.

August: Focused on debt pay down

1) Refinanced a 2.625% 5/1 ARM that was set to expire in 2017 down to 2.375%. New expiration is 2021.

2) Paid down $3,380 of extra principal on the 2.375% mortgage.

3) Paid down $6,400 of principal on a 2.5% mortgage.

4) Paid down $2,000 of principal on a 4.25% mortgage.

5) Venture debt capital call $4,150 (Fund II)

September: Rare equity offering, felt like I was going to miss a rally

1) Invested $50,000 in a S&P 500 structured note with 150% upside participation and a 30% downside barrier in my after-tax investment account. $40,000 of the $50,000 came from a called Netflix structured note that got called after one year. It’s too bad because the note was paying a 14% annual dividend and was way in the money. Net new investment amount = $10,000.

2) Deployed 100% of my remaining $150,000 in cash sitting in my rollover IRA in the 150% S&P 500 upside participation note as well. It definitely didn’t feel like a no brainer investing a total of $200,000 in this structured note at the time, but the terms of the structure note were just too attractive. Net new investment amount = $0 since I just used idle cash.

3) Invested $15,000 in this principal guaranteed (can’t lose money unless Citibank goes out of business) structured not that returns the average returns of the S&P 500, EuroStoxx 50, and Aggregate Bond Index after 5.5 years. In retrospect, this was a overly conservative investment that’s probably not going to return much at all.

$200K in the S&P 500 and $15K in a basket of S&P 500, EuroStoxx 50, and Aggregate Bond Market

4) Invested $10,000 via RealtyShares in a Conshy, Pennsylvania commercial property with a target IRR of 18% over five years. Don’t let me down East Coast!

5) Paid down $6,600 of principal on a 2.375% mortgage.

6) Paid down $1,000 of principal on a 2.5% mortgage.

7) Paid down $12,000 of principal on a 4.25% mortgage.

8) Bought $5,000 shares of VYM.

October:

1) Paid down $5,500 of principal on a 2.375% mortgage

2) Contributed $18,000 to my self-employed 401k and invested the money 50/50 in DVY, the iShares Select Dividend Equity ETF, and IEF, the iShares 7-10 Year Bond ETF. I view this self-employed 401k as a bonus fund to build on the side with my side hustle income. I do some occassional corporate consulting to stay connected to society on top of my main business where I have a SEP IRA.

3) Paid down $2,500 on a 2.5% mortgage.

November:

1) Invested $50,000 in the California Muni Bond fund, CMF post presidential election.

2) Invested $20,000 in my SEP IRA and invested half in DVY and half in IEF. SEP IRA was also started on Jan 1, 2014. Should have started it in January 1, 2013, but I didn’t know better.

3) Paid down $2,000 of principal on a 2.375% mortgage.

4) Paid down $3,000 of principal on a 2.5% mortgage.

5) Paid down $2,000 of principal on a 4.25% mortgage.

6) Venture debt capital call $3,600 (Fund II)

Aggregate bond market (AGG) performance. Started aggressively buying bonds in Nov and Dec.

December:

1) Bought $60,000 of California Muni Bond, CMF.

2) Bought $24,000 of five different California zero coupon bonds.

3) Bought $20,000 of MUB (iShares Municipal Bond Fund) to diversify.

4) Paid down $5,000 on a 4.25% mortgage.

Investment Spreadsheet Overview

Click to download your own blank copy

I’m probably missing an investment or I mistook some new money for existing money, but to the best of my knowledge, the above chart encapsulates the amount of new money I invested in 2016.

At one point in early 2015 I got down to about $35,000 in cash after paying off my condo rental property. It didn’t feel great having that little cash even though paying off a mortgage felt amazing. Then I got up to about $300,000 in cash in order to amass a large enough downpayment by the winter of 2017/2018 or winter of 2018/2019 to buy another property. But it felt bad earning only a 0.2% money market return, so I decided to start investing more aggressively in September.

Here’s what I’ve learned this exercise:

1) Underestimated my monthly investment cadence of $5,000 – $20,000. My real monthly average investment cadence is roughly $29,273. I’m basically investing the large majority of my earnings each month because I’m addicted to investing. Once food, shelter, and transportation covered, all I can think about is what to invest in. Not a month went by where I didn’t put some capital to work.

2) Stock investments were front loaded in the first half of the year. When the market was tanking in February, I pressed a little more with a $15,000 equity investment. I tried to be opportunistic during the Brexit sell-off in June, but foolishly didn’t hold on to my $76,500 new money investment after a 4% rebound. If I held on, I’d be up another 5%+. Perhaps every year there’s this irrational optimism during the new year to invest in equities that I need to watch out for.

3) Started late with paying down my mortgage. I didn’t start a regular mortgage pay down cadence until August because my last refinance took almost four months, starting in March. I paid down $130,000 in principal to qualify for a 2.375%, $850,000 5/1 ARM. The $130,000 came mostly from money earned in 2015 and random asset sales. Each time I refinance, I like to pay down a chunk of principal to at least ensure I’m making good progress. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have been so aggressive in paying down my mortgage given rates increased and the stock market rocketed higher.

4) Irrationally paid down lower interest rate mortgages. I should be focused on paying down my highest interest rate mortgage of 4.25% with the smallest balance. But I didn’t because it reminds me of the bad timing I made buying my Lake Tahoe vacation property in 2007. I thought I was getting a deal when I bought it for 12% less than the previous owner, but then it proceeded to plunge in value by 30% – 40% during the financial crisis! I’m finally above water, but still down from my purchase price. At least this property has given me wonderful memories and I never plan to sell anyway. The condo serves as a great reminder never to confuse brains with a bull market. Always carefully analyze every single investment beforehand. I plan to always write about big purchases on FS before making a decision from now on.

5) The total amount invested in stocks and bonds is roughly $265,000. The new money investment split is 35% stocks and 65% bonds after going aggressive into bonds in November and December. The ideal timing would have been to invest $265,000 into the S&P 500 when it was down 10% in February. But timing the bottom is a fool’s game. For the new year, I plan to methodically invest in a 40% stocks and 60% bonds ratio to be more defensive. I’ve also rebalanced my portfolio to a 40/60 ratio as well.

Related: The Proper Asset Allocation Of Stocks And Bonds By Age

6) Venture debt slowdown. After investing $120,000 in my first venture debt fund, I decided to only invest $50,000 in my second venture debt fund because I’m worried about my friend’s ability to make his target returns of 15%+. Due to large startup costs, the return for the first venture debt fund is closer to 8% if there are no more workouts in the portfolio. The amounts you see in the chart are capital calls. When you commit $50,000, you don’t send the $50,000 right away. Instead, you pay as you go when the General Partners find new investment opportunities. Capital calls are good in a way that it forces me to invest. If it wasn’t for a capital call in July, I would have invested in anything.

7) New asset class investment. I finally got my ears wet by investing $10,000 in a 5-year, 18% target IRR, commercial real estate deal in Conshy, Pennsylvania via RealtyShares. The process was a lot easier than expected since everything was done electronically. I’ve earmarked another $10,000 for another deal, and plan to continue working my way up to building a $250,000+ real estate crowdsourcing portfolio this year. I’m hoping that with the historical 9% – 15% returns, and a rise in the required returns due to a rise in interest rates, I’ll be able to easily clear my modest 4% growth target with a diversified portfolio of 10 or so RE crowdsourced investments.

8) I have a dumbbell approach to investing. On the one hand, I like to invest smaller amounts when I first get started e.g. $10,000 in real estate crowdsourcing, P2P lending, etc. On the other hand, I have no problems swinging for the fences when I strongly believe in a particular investment, e.g. $178,000 in muni bonds in November and December, and two S&P 500 investments totaling $200,000. That said, I’ve gotten in trouble in the past by buying too much, too soon. Therefore, I should spread my investment tranches further.

How can I give Rhino up with such parking abilities?

9) Stayed away from wants and desires. Given I invested a large majority of my income each month, I didn’t leave room for buying anything unnecessary. I came very close to spending $60,000 – $70,000 on a mid-life crisis car three times this year, but didn’t because I always thought about how much I could have 5-10 years if I invested wisely today. After every close call, I gave Rhino, my handsome 2015 Honda Fit, a good wash. Then all of a sudden my desire for a new car would fade.

10) Back-end loaded investments. Roughly 85% of my new investments were made in the second half of the year due to the presidential election. In other words, my investments are event-driven in nature because that’s when opportunities arise the most. I was very cautious the first half of the year because the job market and real estate market were slowing here in SF. For 2017, my biggest worry is that Trump creates too much foreign backlash due to incendiary rhetoric. I pray nothing terrible happens this year, but it feels like an inevitability.

Related: Practice A Better Dollar Cost Average Investment Strategy

11) Compare the ratio of new investments with existing investments. The higher your ratio, the more active you are in growing your net worth. My goal is to try and grow my net worth by 10% a year. It gets harder to do as your net worth grows and your risk tolerance declines. This year, existing investments went up by ~8%, and new money investments went up by ~6%. In other words, my public equity/fixed income investments underperformed the S&P 500, but outperformed my investment target of 4% – 6% a year. However, it’s possible my real estate investments outperformed the S&P 500 (~40% of net worth) and I know my business value (20% – 30% of net worth) grew by much greater than 10% due to a 35% increase in top line revenue.

12) Keep on stretching. I’m now upping my monthly investment cadence to $20,000 – $35,000 a month on average. With this goal in mind, I now feel the pressure to keep on saving, earning, and grinding. I want to be like Mr. Zhang, the $271,000 a year janitor who challenges himself every day by not letting his $58,000 base pay or occupation get in the way. My prior minimum monthly investment target of $5,000 put absolutely zero pressure on me to try harder. With family responsibilities, the need for income is more important than ever.

Overall Insight

New investments + existing investments in a bull market = net worth acceleration. When times are good, it’s important to press as much as you comfortably can because good times don’t last forever. Eventually something bad will happen if you live long enough. When that time comes, we’ve got to rely on all our efforts during the good times to see us through.

My fear lies in missing out on investment gains instead of having nice toys to show off to my friends. Besides a mid-life crisis car, there’s nothing more I really want. Instead, it feels fantastic to continue practicing Stealth Wealth while ensuring that nobody in my family has to go back to work or struggle financially. Taking care of my family is now the most important duty I have.

Although ~$352,000 is a good amount to put to work, it’s smaller than the paper gains from existing investments. I was expecting a ~$300,000 decline in the value of my existing assets at the beginning of 2016. Such dumb luck is why I’m happy with paying down debt and building a muni bond portfolio for more modest returns. Dumb luck is also the reason why I want to actively contribute as much as possible so that I can rely less on luck to survive each year.

Track Your Investments Already

Everybody should already be tracking their net worth online. The easier it is to track your investments, the more you will pay attention to your money. Come up with your net worth goals and talk them over with your close friend, partner, or loved ones. You’ll learn something about your risk tolerance, your investing habits, and whether your actions are congruent with the way you think. Only then will you become a more disciplined investor over time.

In addition to leveraging the latest technology to grow your wealth, I’ve put together an Investment Tracker Spreadsheet for you to download. Input your own numbers to see how much you’ve contributed this year. Go through the same exercise I went through in this post to find out your tendencies. Feel free to change the categories or include all your financial investments, instead of just new money investments. I’m pretty sure that once you input all your numbers you’ll be surprised by the takeaways.

Achieving financial independence is all about developing a system and following through for a long enough period of time. Don’t be the donkey who frivolously spends everything he or she makes during a bull market, thereby missing out on incredibly lucky returns. Let’s try to maximize the good times for as long as possible!

Related: A Do It Yourself Investment Checkup Guide

I’d love to know what type of investments you made last year and how you plan to allocate your capital this year. Find any surprises to what you thought you invested and what you actually did? Let me know if my spreadsheet doesn’t work properly and I’ll fix it. What’s your outlook for the stock and bond market?

from http://www.financialsamurai.com/the-investment-tracker-spreadsheet/

#Financial Samurai

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