Page:Randolph, Paschal Beverly; Eulis! the history of love.djvu/167

162 Mirror Vision, you will see that it had prophesied coming trouble, to be followed by a calm; and also that I had utterly forgotten the fact for the time. About the same period in which my friend was in the trouble about the woman, that trouble was enhanced and exacerbated by the arrival of a female from California, who had crossed the continent expressly to lay seize to his heart and—passions. She was strongly sensuous; of fine presence; voluptuous, sharp, keen, practical, and totally devoid of honor and principle; yet fearfully, desperately in love with him; so that, between all the powers bearing on him, the man was entirely distraught; and that, too, at a time when from other causes he was ill, morbid, downcast, and very negative; he, therefore, had brooded on his wretched fancies till himself was half daft, and I, his friend, through sympathy, was in full rapport with him. 4th. He had entrusted the absent one with certain very important financial business, which she, in thoughtless mood, had utterly ignored and totally neglected; consequently he was angry. 5th. He wearied me with the constant recital of his troubles, while I myself was ill, tired, worn out with excessive loneliness, mental toil, and financial embarrassments, all of which combined, threw me into a very morbid physical state; and his injuries and my absurd fancies took the dreadful form they did, which state of soul was taken advantage of by the teaching dead!—the viewless powers of the empyrean, to inculcate the most solemn, if most painful lesson he or I had ever learned; for there was not, and never had been, the slightest ground for either jealousy or suspicion; for their object was as pure as the sweetest angel who flits in glory about God's eternal throne!

The lesson cured two of us of jealousy in the first place. 2d. Rid him then, and me, shortly afterward, of all vampiral influences, whether from California or elsewhere. 3d. It brought us both nearer to those to whom our hearts went out in craving, longing, yearning, for the bread of life—Womanly affection. 4th. It led us to bend our stubborn souls at the shrine of the forgiving God! 5th. It taught us the mighty lesson of God-reliance and self-control. 6th. Taught us the folly of indulging even in occasional bibulant habits. 7th. It opened the road-way to a higher possible life, though the