what is vulgarly known as a ghost—shall speak, and I will abide by the result."
On his return from dinner that evening Dr. Amsden locked all the doors and darkened all the windows of his apartments. Then, after smoking a meditative cigar, he went to bed. It was barely eight o'clock in the evening when his head touched the pillow, but, as he had planned to send his image to Miss Foote at precisely nine o'clock, before that young lady should have retired to her chamber, he wished to have ample time to get himself to sleep. Besides, he was really tired and drowsy, which was certainly a favorable condition for his experiment. He had feared that lie would be excited and nervous; but already the suggestion of sleep which he had been constantly reiterating for the past hour was beginning to tell upon his brain. The formula, "I am about to go to sleep, I am becoming sleepy, I sleep," was having a most magical effect.
Dr. Amsdem dropped into the misty chasm of slumber in less than fifteen minutes after getting to bed. But that fifteen minutes had been spent in strenuous command, on the part of the objective mind, that the subjective mind should go, at precisely nine o'clock, to the home of Miss Foote, present itself in the exact and correct image of the lover, and make an ardent appeal to the affections of the lady.
In about two hours Amsden awoke, bathed in perspiration, and feeling thoroughly exhausted. He was not conscious of having dreamed at all, and yet it seemed to him as if he had just shaken off a most horrible nightmare. He arose, lit the gas, and consulted his watch. It was just ten o'clock. "Thank heaven," he cried, "I did not wake before the time!" He went back to bed, and fell instantly into the deep slumber of complete exhaustion, from which he did not wake until late the next morning.
For two days he did not see Miss Foote. Then he summoned up courage to call upon her. She came downstairs looking pale and anxious, and the moment that Amsden's eyes fell upon her his heart began to throb with suffocating violence. Undoubtedly his experiment had succeeded as far as the proposal was concerned—but should his attitude be that of the accepted or rejected lover?
Hardly noticing his stammering expressions of solicitude for
