Page:Love and its hidden history.djvu/157

 was Madam D'Ennie, a great animated volume on love. How I listened, sitting on the floor at her feet and gazing up into her beautiful eyes, as she told me strange tales about Voudeaux love-rings; how they filled two rings with a peculiar black wax, one to be worn by each lover, and how when falsehood existed or perils beset either, the ring of the other party would grow dull and leaden; but if all was well, it would glow and shine like a black diamond; and how often have I tried the experiment to test the truth of what she then said! for on the second finger of my left hand I wear just such a charmed jewel, and don't laugh and call me "superstitious;" how often I have fancied — shall I say? — that ring never lied to me yet, for never has there been a coming pain or pleasure these seven years that it seemed to me has not been heralded by the lights and by the shadows of the ring. I knew a lady in a town in Massachusetts who had two such rings made for her, or rather she had two settings of rings removed and replaced by the sensitive material; one she wore, and put the other on the finger of her lover. One day her ring said "He is false," as plainly as it could say so. Ten days afterwards she received news of his marriage, and in forty-three days more her body was laid away in the cold, dark grave, and her spirit nestled on trusty bosoms in the far-off promised land. People surround me on all sides, yet we know not each other. My publishers see and think they know me, — mistaken mortals! Many a book have I written whereat the world stared agape and wondered, and a thousand correspondents write me and ask "How is it that you, whose life is either an unbroken calm, or a series of violent mental, moral, and social cataclysms, storms, volcanoes, tornadoes, and whirlwinds, know so much about the inner and profounder deeps of human life, yet belong not to society? Is it true that all your ideas come from spirits? It is asserted so in spiritual journals." And I answer first the spiritual part of it. It is entirely and wholly false that I ever wrote a book or a single page under the influence known as spiritual. Every thought, every line, sentence, and word of all my writings originated in my brain, except where I have quoted from others. I believe in spirits to some extent truly, but am certainly not indebted to them for the volumes of thought which I have given to the world. What I may have thought of the matter twenty