"Each morning I

have made the bed, thinking, perhaps, that you had been in there to lie down during the day; but this time I thought I would speak to you about it."

"Well, Katrine, make the bed once more; let us give it another trial; and then-"

I said no more, but walked away. When all was in order, I returned, bringing with me a basin of fine sand. First of all, I closed and

all round the bed with sand; shut and locked the chamber door, and left the key, under some trivial pretext, at the house of a friend in the town. Katrine was witness to all this. That

path. I was musing, and humming to myself | ter," said the old woman. some bars of a popular melody, when, all at once, I began thinking of Albert and his theories. This was, I asseverate, the first time he had even entered my mind for at least two days. Thus going along, my arms folded, and my eyes fixed on the ground, I reached the boundaries of my little domain before I knew that I had traversed half the distance. Smiling at my own abstraction, I paused to go round by the entrance, when suddenly, and to my great sur-barred the shutters; then sprinkled the floor prise, I saw my friend standing by the wicket, and looking over the river toward the sunset. Astonishment and delight deprived me at the first of all power of speech; at last-" Albert!" I cried, "this is kind of you. When did you night I lay awake and restless; not a sound disarrive?" He seemed not to hear me, and re-turbed the utter silence of the autumn night; mained in the same attitude. I repeated the not a breath stirred the leaves against my casewords, and with a similar result. "Albert, ment. look round, man!" Slowly he turned his head I rose early the next morning; and by the and looked me in the face; and then, oh, hor- time Katrine was up and at her work, I returnror! even as I was looking at him, he disap-ed from Ems with the key. "Come with me, peared. He did not fade away; he did not fall; but, in the twinkling of an eye, he was not there. Trembling and awe-struck, I went into the house and strove to compose my shattered nerves. Was Albert dead, and were apparitions truths? I dared not think-I dared not ask myself the question. I passed a wretched night; and the next day I was as unsettled as when first he left me.

It was about four days from this time when a circumstance wholly inexplicable occurred in my house. I was sitting at breakfast in the library, with a volume of Plato beside me, when my servant entered the room, and courtesied for permission to speak. I looked up, and supposing that she needed money for domestic purposes, I pulled out my purse from my pocket, and saying, "Well, Katrine, what do you want now?" drew forth a florin, and held it toward her.

She courtesied again, and shook her head. "Thank you, master; but it is not that."

Something in the old woman's tone of voice caused me to look up hastily. "What is the matter, Katrine? Has any thing alarmed you?" | "If you please, master-if it is not a rude question, has has any one been here lately?" "Here!" I repeated. "What do you mean?" "In the bed up stairs, master."

I sprang to my feet, and turned as cold as a

statue.

Katrine," I said; "let us see if all be right in the Herr Lachner's bedroom."

At the door, we paused and looked, half-terrified, in each other's faces; then I summoned courage, turned the key, and entered. The window-shutters, which I had fastened the day before, were wide open-unclosed by no mortal hand; and the daylight streaming in, fell upon the disordered bed-upon foot-marks in the sand! Looking attentively at these latter, I saw that the impressions were alternately light and heavy, as if the walker had rested longer upon one foot than the other, like a lame man. I will not here delay my narrative with an account of the mental anguish which this circumstance caused me; suffice it, that I left that room, locked the door again, and resolved never to re-enter it till I had learned the fate of my friend.

The next day I set off for Cassel. The journey was long and fatiguing, and only a portion could be achieved by train. Though I started very early in the morning, it was quite night before the diligence by which the transit was completed entered the streets of the town. Faint and weary though I was, I could not delay at the inn to partake of any refreshment, but hired a youth to show me the way to Albert's lodgings, and proceeded at once upon my search. He led me through a labyrinth of narrow, old-fashioned streets, and paused at length before a high, red

"The bed has been slept in, master, for the brick dwelling, with projecting stories and a culast four nights."

I flew to the door, thrust her aside, and in a moment sprang up the staircase, and into Albert's bedroom; and there, plainly, plainly, I beheld the impression of a heavy body left upon the bed! Yes, there, on the pillow, was the mark where his head had been laid; there the deep groove pressed by his body! It was no deception this, but a strange, an incomprehensible reality. I groaned aloud, and staggered heavily back.

"It has been like this for four nights, mas

riously-carved doorway. An old man with a lantern answered my summons; and, on my inquiring if Herr Lachner lodged there, desired me to walk up stairs to the third floor.

"Then he is living!" I cried, eagerly.

"Living!" echoed the man, as he held the lantern at the foot of the staircase to light me on my way-"living! Mein Gott, we want no dead lodgers here!"

After the first flight, I found myself in darkness, and went on, feeling my way step by step, and holding by the broad balusters. As I as

"Welcome, Heinrich! Take care; there is been quite in vain. You have struggled to rea loose plank on the last step but one."

It was Albert, holding a candle in his hand-fling me at every step; yet sometimes I have as well, as real, as substantial as ever. I cleared the remaining interval with a bound, and threw myself into his arms.

"Certainly. I have even prepared a bed for my countenance, he turned ghastly pale, even you in my own apartment."

pierced at once to the essence of the doctrine, | upon yours.

"It was so," I murmured faintly.

"At the same time, my brother, I felt the most earnest desire to be once more near you,

This time, I found no resisting and, passing from the condition of patient to force opposed to mine; you yielded to my dothat of operator, became sensible of great inter- minion-you believed." nal power, and of a strength of volition which enabled me to establish the most extraordinary rapports between my patients and myself, even when separated from them by any distance, how-to hear your voice, to see your frank and friendever considerable. Shortly after the discovery ly face, to be standing again in your pretty garof this new power, I became aware of another den beside the running river. It was sunset, and a still more singular phenomenon within my- and I pictured to myself the scene from that self. In order to convey to you a proper idea spot. Even as I did so, a dullness came over of which this phenomenon is, I must beg you my senses-the picture on my memory grew to analyze with me the ordinary process of mem- wider, brighter; I felt the cool breeze from the ory. Memory is the reproduction or summon- water; I saw the red sun sinking over the far ing back of past places and events. With some, woods; I heard the vesper-bells ringing from this mental vision is so vivid, as actually to pro- the steeples; in a word, I was spiritually there. duce the effect of painting the place or thing Presently I became aware as of the approach of remembered upon the retina of the eye, so as something, I knew not what-but a something to present it with all its substantive form, its not of the same nature as myself-something lights, its colors, and its shadows. Such is our that filled me with a shivering, half compoundso-called memory-who shall say whether it be ed of fear and half of pleasure. Then a sound, memory or reality? I had always commanded smothered and strange, as if unfitted for the this faculty in a high degree; indeed, so re-organs of my spiritual sense, seemed to fill the markably, that if I but related a passage from space around-a sound resembling speech, yet any book, the very page, the printed characters, reverberating and confused, like distant thunwere spread before my mental vision, and I read der. I felt paralyzed, and unable to turn. It from them as from the volume. My recollec- came and died away a second time, yet more tion was therefore said to be wondrously faith- distinctly. I distinguished words, but not their ful, and, as you will remember, I never erred sense. It came a third time, vibrating, clear, in a single syllable. Since my recent investi- and loud-'Albert, look round, man!' Making gations, this faculty has increased in a very sin- a terrible effort to overcome the bonds which gular manner. I have twice felt as though my seemed to hold me, I turned-I saw you! The inner self, my spiritual self, were a distinct body next moment a sharp pain wrung me in every -yet scarcely so much a body as a nervous es- limb; there came a brief darkness, and I then sence or ether; and as if this second being, in found myself, without any apparent lapse of moments of earnest thought, went from me, and time or sensible motion, sitting by yonder winvisited the people, the places, the objects of ex- dow, where, gazing on the sunset, I had begun ternal life. Nay," he continued, observing my to think of you. The sound of your voice yet extreme agitation, "this thing is not wholly new rang in my ears; the sight of your face was still in the history of magnetic phenomena—but it before me; I shuddered—I tried to think that is rare. We call it, psychologically speaking, all had been a dream. I lifted my hands to the power of far-working. But there is yet an- my brow: they were numbed and heavy. I other and a more appalling phase of far-work- strove to rise; but a rigid torpor seemed to ing-that of a visible appearance out of the body weigh upon my limbs. You say that I was vis-that of being here and elsewhere at the same ibly present in your garden; I know that I was time-that of becoming, in short, a doppelgän- bodily present in this room. Can it be that ger. The irrefragable evidence of this truth I my worst fears are confirmed-that I possess a have never dared to doubt, but it has always double being?" impressed me with an unparalleled horror. I believed, but I dreaded; yet twice I have for a few moments trembled at the thought that II also may be may be- Oh rather, far, far rather would I believe myself deluded, dreaming even mad! Twice have I felt a consciousness of self-absence-once, a consciousness of self-seeing! All knowledge, all perception was transferred to my spiritual self, while a sort of drowsy numbness and inaction weighed upon my bodily part. The first time was about a fortnight before I visited you at Ems; the second happened five nights since, at the period of which you have spoken. On that second evening, Heinrich"-here his voice trembled audibly—“I felt myself in possession of an unusual mesmeric power. I thought of you, and impelled the influence, as it were, from my mind

At

We were both silent for some moments. last I told him the circumstances of the bed and of the footmarks on the sand. He was shocked, but scarcely surprised.

"I have been thinking much of you," he said; "and for several successive nights I have dreamed of you and of my stay-nay, even of that very bedroom. Yet I have been conscious of none of these symptoms of far-working. It is true that I have awaked each morning unrefreshed and weary, as if from bodily fatigue; but this I attributed to over-study and constitutional weakness."

"Will you not tell me the particulars of your first experience of this spiritual absence ?" Albert sat pale and silent, as if he heard not.

I repeated the question.

"Give me some more brandy," he said, "and | where he lay, beneath the weight of the fallen I will tell you." table-to throw cold water on his face and hands, to loosen his neckcloth, to open the windows for the fresh night-air.

I did so. He remained for a few moments looking at the fire before he spoke; at last he proceeded, but in a still lower voice than before. "The first time was also in this room; but how much more terrible than the second. I had been reading-reading a metaphysical work upon the nature of the soul-when I experienced, quite suddenly, a sensation of extreme lassitude. The book grew dim before my eyes; the room darkened; I appeared to find myself in the streets of the town. Plainly I saw the churches in the gray evening dusk; plainly the hurrying passengers; plainly the faces of many whom I knew. Now it was the market-place; now the bridge; now the well-known street in which I live. Then I came to the door; it stood wide open to admit me. I passed slowly, slowly up the gloomy staircase; I entered my own room; and there"

"It is of no use," said a young man, holding his head up and examining his eyes. "I am a surgeon: I live in this house. Your friend is dead."

"Dead! I echoed, sinking upon a chair. "No, no-not dead. He was he was subject to this!"

"No doubt,” replied the surgeon; "it is probably his third attack."

"Yes, yes I know it is. Is there no hope?" He shook his head and turned away. "What has been the cause of his death?" asked a by-stander, in an awe-struck whisper. "Catalepsy."

HOW THE DESTRUCTION OF TREES

AFFECTS THE RAIN.

He paused; his voice grew husky, and his WE Yankees are a race of dendrokopti. (The

face assumed a stony, almost a distorted appearance.

"And there you saw," I urged, "you saw-" Myself! Myself, sitting in this very chair. Yes, yes; myself stood gazing on myself! We looked-we looked into each-each other's eyes -we-we-we-"

word is tolerably fair Greek, and sounds better than its English equivalent, "tree-cutters.") To cut down trees and shoot Indians seems our national instinct. The narrow-bladed Yankee ax is more destructive to the forests than Sharp's rifle and Colt's revolver are to their red-skinned denizens. We suppose this instinct His voice failed; the hand holding the wine- was implanted for a good purpose. When every glass grew stiff, and the brittle vessel fell upon foot of land was covered by trees, and when bethe hearth, and was shattered into a thousand hind every tree lurked an Indian, it was quite fragments. necessary to shoot and chop indiscriminately. "Albert! Albert!" I shrieked, "look up. Oh, Civilized men must be suffered to live, and corn heavens! what shall I do ?"

must be permitted to grow, Indians and trees to the contrary notwithstanding. But our destructive instincts should be brought under the control of reason; and passing by for the pres

show good reasons why the indiscriminate slaughter of trees should cease.

I hung franticly over him; I seized his hands in mine; they were cold as marble. Suddenly, as if by a last spasmodic effort, he turned his head in the direction of the door, and look-ent the Indian question, we hope to be able to ed earnestly forward. The power of speech was gone, but his eyes glared with a light that was more vivid than that of life. Struck with an appalling idea, I followed the course of his gaze. Hark! a dull, dull sound-measured, distinct, and slow, as if of feet ascending. My blood froze; I could not remove my eyes from the doorway; I could not breathe. Nearer and nearer came the steps-alternately light and heavy, light and heavy, as the tread of a lame man. Nearer and nearer-across the landing -upon the very threshold of the chamber. A-a scarcity of fuel and a scarcity of water. sudden fall beside me, a crash, a darkness! Albert had slipped from his chair to the floor, dragging the table in his fall, and extinguishing the lights beneath the débris of the accident.

The old Greeks were wise men in their day, and with them the word dendrokopein, “to cut down trees," meant also to destroy, ravage, and utterly ruin a country. We, or those who come after us, shall find to our cost, some of these days, that the Greeks were philosophers in so using the word. By cutting down the trees upon mountain sides and ravines, we are inevitably entailing two great evils upon posterity

The former evil is the more obvious, but the latter is equally certain and far more formidable. The lack of wood for fuel may be supplied from our abundant accumulations of coal; but no art or labor can supply a substitute for water.

The hidden fountains of all our springs and rivers are in the atmosphere. Every drop of fresh water is drawn, in the form of dew or rain, from these inexhaustible, ever-renewed reser

Forgetting instantly every thing but the danger of my friend, I flew to the bell and rang wildly for help. The vehemence of my cries, and the startling energy of the peal in the midnight silence of the house, roused every creature there; and in less time than it takes to relate, the room was filled with a crowd of anx-voirs. Trees act in many ways in regulating ious and terrified lodgers, some just roused from sleep, and others called from their studies, with their reading-lamps in their hands.

The first thing was to rescue Albert from

and distributing the supply of moisture. In certain localities they even produce a sensible effect upon the amount of moisture deposited from the atmosphere. Thus, in the Island of Saint

Helena, great attention has been paid within the last quarter of a century to the planting of trees upon the steep bare hillsides; and it has been found that the fall of water has almost doubled since the time when Napoleon was a prisoner there. The reason seems obvious. The temperature of trees, in hot climates, is always lower than that of the surrounding atmosphere. The winds, loaded with moisture exhaled from the ocean over which they have past, sweep over the island. The trees condense this, and it is deposited in dew or rain. Still more remarkably is this shown by the famous fountain trees on Ferro, one of the Canary Islands. So great is their condensing power that they seem to be always wrapped in a vapory cloud, and the moisture collects in drops upon the leaves, trickles down the branches and stems, and collecting into a reservoir at their feet, forms a perpetual fountain. It is a repetition on a larger scale of the phenomenon which occurs when a jug of iced water is brought into a heated

room.

hand, and floods on the other. When the forests on hillsides and ravine slopes are cut down, the rain slides off from them as from a roof. A sudden shower swells every rivulet into a torrent. Every tiny brook pours its accumulation at once into the rivers, whose channels are inadequate to carry off the sudden accession, hence disastrous inundations, followed at short intervals by low water. The supply of water that should have been distributed over weeks is exhausted in hours. That which should have bubbled up in springs and flowed through rivulets, making the meadows green, is carried at once through the great rivers to the ocean, to be again taken up by evaporation only to go again through the same round. The volume of the great rivers, the Danubes, the Mississippis, the Niles, the Rhines, and the Connecticuts may undergo no change from age to age; for they derive their waters from a wide extent of country, and droughts in one section are balanced by showers in another. But the smaller rivers diminish, the rivulets dry up, and the We have of late years heard much of drought springs fail, except immediately after rains, and consequent famine in the Cape de Verd when they are greatly swollen. Thus by the Islands. The soil is of a peculiarly porous na-operation of one law, the destruction of forture, and therefore requires a constant supply ests causes the two opposite evils of floods and of moisture as an indispensable condition of fer- droughts. tility. For a long time the climate has been constantly growing less and less humid. The Socorridos, the largest river in Madeira, formerly had a sufficient depth of water to float timber down to the sea. It is now a mere rivulet, whose waters, except in flood time, are scarcely discoverable as they trickle along its pebbly bed. This diminution of moisture can be traced directly to the destruction of the forests that formerly covered the mountain sides. The Portuguese government were early aware of this, and laws were framed prohibiting the cutting down of trees near springs and sources of streams. But timber was valuable, and the land was wanted for vineyards. Portuguese laws were powerless against the demands of immediate interest. So the trees were cut down, the springs failed, and fountains dried up. Hence came drought, famine, and destitution. Present gain must sometimes be purchased by future loss. It is not good policy kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.

Humboldt appears to have been the first to call public attention to the probable consequences of the destruction of forests. In 1800 he visited the Lake of Valencia, in South America. By careful observation he found that, in the course of the preceding century, the level of its waters had fallen five or six feet, and its shores had receded a number of miles. The neighboring mountains, he says, had been formerly covered with dense forests, and the plains with thickets and trees. As cultivation increased, the trees were cut down, evaporation from the surface was accelerated, the springs and fountains dried up, and the shores being low and flat, the surface of the lake rapidly contracted. Some years after his visit, the War of Liberation broke out; men betook themselves to fighting instead of farming; the tropical vegetation, no longer kept in check by man, again overspread the hills and plains. The rain-water, no lontoger taken from the surface into the atmosphere, sought out its ancient fountains; the rivulets reappeared, the waters of the lake began to rise and overflow the plantations that had been formed upon its banks.

It is a well-known fact, that the lakes in the valley of Mexico have lately contracted since the old Aztec times. The city of Mexico occupies its ancient site, but it is now some distance in

Trees regulate the supply of moisture in many ways, even where we can not suppose that they affect its absolute amount. The evaporation from their leaves is considerable, and this, diffused through the atmosphere, is wafted over wide tracts of country. They shelter the ground beneath them, and thus prevent the water that falls from being carried off by evaporation, al-shore instead of on an island, as formerly. This lowing it to penetrate the earth, keeping the springs and fountains in perpetual flow in the driest seasons. Their roots and interlacing fibres penetrate the soil, preventing it from being washed away by sudden showers, and forming a sort of sponge that absorbs the water, and gives it out slowly and uniformly, thus equalizing its flow, preventing droughts on the one

is to be ascribed to the felling of the forests that formerly clothed the adjacent hills. In the mining district of Popayan it had been observed that the streams which put in motion the stamping-mills were diminishing in volume from year to year, although observations showed that the fall of rain had not diminished. Still that which found its way to the wheels of the stamping-mills