and bring in my newspapers and spread about me, and pull down some books to read, I can feel the nervousness through the chamber-floor. Aunt Zeruah looks in at eight, and at a quarter past, and at half-past, and at nine, and at ten, to see if I am done, so that she may fold up the papers and put a book on them, and lock up the books in their cases. Nobody ever comes in to spend an evening. They used to try it when we were first married, but I believe the uninhabited appearance of our parlors discouraged them. Everybody has stopped coming and Aunt Zeruah says it is such a comfort, for now the rooms are always in order. How poor Mrs. Crowfield lives, with her house such a thoroughfare, she is sure she can't see. Sophie never would have strength for it; but then, to be sure, some folks aʼn't as particular as others. Sophie was brought up in a family of very particular housekeepers.""

now,

My wife smiled, with that calm, easy, amused smile that has brightened up her sofa for so many years.

Bill added, bitterly,

"Of course, I could n't say that I wished the whole set and system of housekeeping women at the what-'s-hisname? because Sophie would have cried for a week, and been utterly forlorn and disconsolate. I know it's not the poor girl's fault; I try sometimes to reason with her, but you can't reason with the whole of your wife's family, to the third and fourth generation backwards; but I'm sure it's hurting her health, -wearing her out. Why, you know Sophie used to be the life of our set; and now she really seems eaten up with care from morning to night, there are so many things in the house that something dreadful is happening to all the while, and the servants we get are so clumsy. Why, when I sit with Sophie and Aunt Zeruah, it's nothing but a constant string of complaints about the girls in the kitchen. We keep changing our servants all the time, and they break and destroy so that now we are turned out of the use of all our things. We not only eat in

the basement, but all our pretty tablethings are put away, and we have all the cracked plates and cracked tumblers and cracked teacups and old buck-handled knives that can be raised out of chaos. I could use these things and be merry, if I did n't know we had better ones; and I can't help wondering whether there is n't some way that our table could be set to look like a gentleman's table; but Aunt Zeruah says that 'it would cost thousands, and what difference does it make as long as nobody sees it but us?' You see, there's no medium in her mind between china and crystal and cracked earthen-ware. Well, I'm wondering how all these laws of the Medes and Persians are going to work when the children come along. I'm in hopes the children will soften off the old folks, and make the house more habitable."

Well, children did come, a good many of them, in time. There was Tom, a broad-shouldered, chubby-cheeked, active, hilarious son of mischief, born in the very image of his father; and there was Charlie, and Jim, and Louisa, and Sophie the second, and Frank, and a better, brighter, more joy-giving household, as far as temperament and nature were concerned, never existed.

But their whole childhood was a long battle, children versus furniture, and furniture always carried the day. The first step of the housekeeping powers was to choose the least agreeable and least available room in the house for the children's nursery, and to fit it up with all the old, cracked, rickety furniture a neighboring auction-shop could afford, and then to keep them in it. Now everybody knows that to bring up children to be upright, true, generous, and religious, needs so much discipline, so much restraint and correction, and so many rules and regulations, that it is all that the parents can carry out, and all the children can bear. There is only a certain amount of the vital force for parents or children to use in this business of education, and one must choose what it shall be used for. The Aunt-Zeruah faction chose to use it

for keeping the house and furniture, and the children's education proceeded accordingly. The rules of right and wrong of which they heard most frequently were all of this sort: Naughty children were those who went up the front-stairs, or sat on the best sofa, or fingered any of the books in the library, or got out one of the best teacups, or drank out of the cut-glass goblets.

Why did they ever want to do it? If there ever is a forbidden fruit in an Eden, will not our young Adams and Eves risk soul and body to find out how it tastes? Little Tom, the oldest boy, had the courage and enterprise and perseverance of a Captain Parry or Dr. Kane, and he used them all in voyages of discovery to forbidden grounds. He stole Aunt Zeruah's keys, unlocked her cupboards and closets, saw, handled, and tasted everything for himself, and gloried in his sins.

"Don't you know, Tom," said the nurse to him once, "if you are so noisy and rude, you'll disturb your dear mamma? She's sick, and she may die, if you 're not careful.”

"Will she die?" said Tom, gravely.

"Then," says Tom, turning on his heel," then I'll go up the front-stairs."

As soon as ever the little rebel was old enough, he was sent away to boardingschool, and then there was never found a time when it was convenient to have him come home again. He could not come in the spring, for then they were house-cleaning, nor in the autumn, because then they were house-cleaning; and so he spent his vacations at school, unless, by good luck, a companion who was so fortunate as to have a home invited him there. His associations, associates, habits, principles, were as little known to his mother as if she had sent him to China. Aunt Zeruah used to congratulate herself on the.rest there was at home, now he was gone, and say she was only living in hopes of the time when Charlie and Jim would be big enough to send away too; and meanwhile Charlie and

care

Jim, turned out of the charmed circle which should hold growing boys to the father's and mother's side, detesting the dingy, lonely play-room, used to run the city-streets, and hang round the railroaddepots or docks. Parents may depend upon it, that, if they do not make an attractive resort for their boys, Satan will. There are places enough, kept warm and light and bright and merry, where boys can go whose mothers' parlors are too fine for them to sit in. There are enough to be found to clap them on the back, and tell them stories that their mothers must not hear, and laugh when they compass with their little piping voices the dreadful litanies of sin and shame. In middle life, our poor Sophie, who as a girl was so gay and frolicsome, so full of spirits, had dried and sharpened into a hard-visaged, angular woman,ful and troubled about many things, and forgetful that one thing is needful. One of the boys had run away to sea; I believe he has never been heard of. As to Tom, the oldest, he ran a career wild and hard enough for a time, first at school and then in college, and there came a time when he came home, in the full might of six feet two, and almost broke his mother's heart with his assertions of his home rights and privileges. Mothers who throw away the key of their children's hearts in childhood sometimes have a sad retribution. As the children never were considered when they were little and helpless, so they do not consider when they are strong and powerful. Tom spread wide desolation among the household gods, lounging on the sofas, spitting tobacco-juice on the carpets, scattering books and engravings hither and thither, and throwing all the familytraditions into wild disorder, as he would never have done, had not all his childish remembrances of them been embittered by the association of restraint and privation. He actually seemed to hate any appearance of luxury or taste or order,— he was a perfect Philistine.

As for my friend Bill, from being the pleasantest and most genial of fellows, he

Of all the mental epidemics that have visited Europe, beyond question the most remarkable, and in some of its features the most inexplicable, is that which prevailed in Paris some hundred and thirty years ago, among what were called the Convulsionists of St. Médard.

The celebrated Jansenius, Bishop of Ypres, during his life the opponent and enemy of the Jesuits, whom he caused to be excluded from the theological schools of Louvain, left behind him, at his death, a treatise, posthumously published in 1640, entitled, “Augustinus,” in which he professed to set forth the true opinions of St. Augustine on those century-long disputed questions of Grace, Free-Will, and Predestination. Taking ground against the Molinists, he contended for the doctrine of Predestination antecedent and absolute, a gift purely gratuitous, of God's free grace, independent of any virtue or merit in the recipient soul. This doctrine, set forth in five propositions, was condemned, in the middle of the seventeenth century, by Popes Innocent X. and Alexander VII.; and against it, when revived by Father Quesnel in the beginning of the eighteenth century, there was fulminated, in 1713, by Pope Clement XI., the famous Bull Unigenitus.

From this Bull, accepted in France after long opposition, the Jansenist party

appealed to a future Papal Council, thence deriving their name of Appellants. Among these, one of the most noted and zealous was the Diacre Pâris, who refused a curacy, to avoid signing his adhesion to what he regarded as heresy, consumed his fortune in works of charity, and his health in austerities of a character so excessive that they abridged his life. Dying, as his partisans have it, in the odor of sanctity, and protesting with his last breath against the doctrines of the obnoxious Bull, his remains were deposited, on the second of May, 1727, in the small church-yard of St. Médard, situated in the twelfth arrondissement of Paris, on the Rue Mouffetard, not far from the Jardin des Plantes.

To the tomb of one whom they regarded as a martyr to their cause the Jansenist Appellants habitually resorted, in all the fervor of religious zeal, heated to enthusiasm by the persecution of the dominant party. And there, after a time, phenomena presented themselves, which caused for years, throughout the French capital and among the theologians of that age, a fever of excitement; and which, though they have been noticed by medical and other writers of our own century, have not yet, in my judgment, attracted, either from the medical profession or from the

Of these phenomena a portion were physical, and a portion were mental or psychological. The former, first appear ing in the early part of the year 1731, consisted (as alleged) partly of extraordinary cures, the apparent result of violent convulsive movements which overtook the patients soon after their bodies touched the marble of the tomb, sometimes even without approaching it, by swallowing, in wine or water, a small portion of the earth gathered from around it, the effect being heightened by strict fasting and prayer,-partly of what were called the "Grands Secours," literally "Great Succors," consisting of the most desperate, one might say murderous, remedies, applied, at their urgent request, to relieve the sufferings of the Convulsionists.

These measures, called of relief, and carried to an incredible excess, were of such a character, that, during any normal state of the human system, they would have destroyed, not one, but a hundred lives, if the patient, or victim, had been endowed with so many. Those who regarded this marvellous immunity from what seemed certain immolation as a miraculous interposition of God were called Succorists; their opponents, ascribing such effects to the interference of the Devil in protection of his own, or (a somewhat rare opinion in those days) to natural agency, went by the name of Anti-Succorists. (Secouristes and Anti-Secouristes.)

Some of these alleged cures, but more especially some of these so-called succors, were of a nature so far passing belief, that one would be tempted to cast them aside as sheer impostures, were not the main facts vouched for by evidence, not from the Jansenists alone, but from their bitterest opponents, so direct, so overwhelmingly multiplied, so minutely circumstantial, that to reject it would amount to a virtual declaration, that, in proof of the extraordinary and the improbable, we will accept no testimony whatever, let its weight or character be what it may. Accordingly, we find dis

others, while minding us, as well they may, that enlightened observers of these strange phenomena were lacking,* and while properly suggesting that we ought to make allowance for exaggeration in some of the details, yet admitting as incontestable realities the substantial facts related by the historians of St. Médard.

Among these historians the chief is Carré de Montgéron, a magistrate of rank and high character, Counsellor of the Parliament of Paris. An enthusiast, and a weak logician, as hot enthusiasts generally are, Montgéron's honesty is admitted to be beyond question. Converted to Jansenism on the seventh of September, 1731, in the church-yard of St. Médard, by the strange scenes there passing, he expended his fortune, sacrificed his liberty, and devoted years of his life, in the preparation and publication of one of the most extraordinary works that ever issued from the press. It consists of three quarto volumes, of some nine hundred closely printed pages each. Crowded

"Les observateurs éclairés manquaient en 1737 pour suivre la transformation des phénomènes morbides."- Calmeil, De la Folie, Tom. II. p. 317.

↑ La Vérité des Miracles opérés par l'Intercession de M. de Pâris et autres Appellans démontrée; avec des Observations sur le Phénomène des Convulsions, par Carré de Montgéron, Conseiller au Parlement de Paris. 3 vols. 4to. 2d ed. Cologne, 1745.

The first edition, consisting, however, of a single volume only, appeared in 1737, and was presented to the King in person at Versailles, by M. de Montgéron, on the twenty-ninth of July of that year. The work was translated into German and Flemish; and besides several editions which appeared in France, one was published in Germany and two in Holland. It is illustrated with costly engravings.

Though the King (Louis XV.) received M. de Montgéron in an apparently gracious manner, yet, the very night after his reception, as he had himself foreseen, he was arrested and cast into the Bastille. Thence he was transferred from one place of confinement to another; and at the time he was preparing the second edition of his work, he was still (in 1744) a prisoner in the citadel of Valence. (See Advertisement to that edition, note to page vii.) He died in exile at Valence, in 1754.

with repetitions, and teeming with false reasoning, these volumes nevertheless contain, backed by certificates without number, such an elaborate aggregation of concurrent testimony as I think human industry never before brought together to prove any contested class of phenomena.

Not less zealous, if less voluminous, were the writers opposed to what was called "the work of the convulsions." Of these one of the chief was Dom La Taste, Bishop of Bethléem, author of the "Lettres Théologiques," and of the

Mémoire Théologique," in both of which the extravagances of the Convulsionists are severely handled; a second was the Abbé d'Asfeld, who, in 1738, published his "Vains Efforts des Discernans," in the same strain; and another, M. Poncet, who put forth an elaborate reply to the Succorists, entitled "Réponse des Anti-Secouristes à la Réclamation."

The convulsions, commencing in the year 1731, almost immediately assumed an epidemical character, spreading so rapidly that in a few months the affected reached the number of eight hundred. These were to be found not only on the tomb and in the cemetery itself, but in the streets, lanes, and houses adjoining. Many, after returning from the exciting scenes of St. Médard, were seized with convulsions in their own dwellings.

The numbers and the excitement went on increasing, and conversions to Jansenism were counted by thousands; the scenes became daily more extravagant, and the phenomena more extraordinary, until the King, moved either by the representations of physicians or by the remonstrances of Jesuit theologians, caused the cemetery to be closed on the twentyninth of January, 1732.*

Not for such interdiction, however, did the phenomena, once in progress, inter

Voltaire, with his usual wit and irreverence, proposed that the notice, proclaiming the royal command, to be affixed to the gate of the church-yard should read as follows:-

"De part le Roi, défense à Dieu
De faire miracle en ce lieu."

mit. For fifteen years, or longer,* the symptoms continued, with more or less violence. Indeed, the number of Convulsionists greatly increased after the cemetery was closed, extending to those who had no ailment or bodily infirmity.†

The symptoms, though varying in different individuals, were of one general character, partaking, especially as to the muscular phenomena, of the nature of hysteria, or hystero-catalepsy. The patient, soon after being placed on the revered tomb, or on the ground near it, was commonly attacked by a tumultuous movement of all his members. Contractions exhibited themselves in the neck, shoulders, and principal muscles all over the body. The nervous system became dreadfully excited. The heart beat violently, and the patient, sometimes retaining partial consciousness and suffering extreme pain, could not restrain violent cries. He usually experienced, also, a tingling or pricking sensation in any discased member. Those who from birth had been afflicted with paralysis, or partial paralysis, of a limb, or one side of the body, felt the convulsions chiefly in that limb or side. The convulsions were often so violent that numerous assistants

Hecker alleges that "the insanity of the Convulsionnaires lasted, without interruption, until the year 1790," that is, for fifty-nine years, and was only interrupted by the excitement of the French Revolution; also, that, in the year 1762, the "Grands Secours" were forbidden by act of the Parliament of Paris. — Epidemics of the Middle Ages, from the German of I. F. C. Hecker, M. D., translated by B. G. Babington, M. D., F. R. S., London, 1846, p. 149.

There were published by Renault, parish priest at Vaux near Ancerre, two pamphlets against the Succorists, one entitled "Le Secourisme détruit dans ses Fondemens," in 1759, and the other, "Le Mystère d'Iniquité," as late as 1788, an evidence that the controversy was kept up for at least half a century.

"A peine l'entrée du tombeau eût elle été fermée, qu'on vit le nombre des Convulsionnaires s'accroître extraordinairement. Les convulsions commencèrent à s'étendre jusqu'à des personnes qui n'avaient ni maladie ni infirmité corporelle."- Euvres de Colbert, Tom. II. p. 203. (This is Colbert, Bishop of Montpellier, and nephew of Louis XIV.'s minister.)