his knife to it, let it down, and, when he feels a change in the weight, to draw it up again. He lets down the slender silk; he draws up with it a twine, such as the silk could bear, with that a whipcord, such as the twine could bear, until at length in a great rope-ladder he holds Liberty in his hand. The principle is perfect for any extent that silk thread could have drawn up, by going through the gradations, stairways of iron and granite. It is perfect, too, for any department. We must take our little thing and draw away until the larger and stronger thing comes. Please God, if we can send into a single window of Superstition's Dark Tower where a Human Soul is imprisoned, an arrow which bears a tie to freedom, it will be worth all our labor.

DR. EINBOHRER AND HIS PUPILS.

CHAPTER IV.-PARENTHESIS.,

INSTEAD of a lecture from Dr. Einbohrer, the Editor proposes to He trusts that no one will report a communication from the Devil. be incredulous as to the possibility of conversation with the inferior orders of creation or even the infernal,—as he has one yet to report from an ape.

He will only premise that he has been several times in his life in a state of trance. He does not claim for these states the dignity of the raptures of the Sybils and Pythonæ, or of Platinus, Paul, Behmen or Swedenborg; neither are they the results of opium or hasheesh. At moments when he least expects such visitations there comes upon him something like a cool breath on the forehead, which then forms into a current along the spine; a flush then flows over the face, and every sense seems refined intensely; then usual objects seem to become framework or vista for a new set of beautiful visions.

The following is from his Diary:

"On the present occasion I had gone out in the afternoon to a favorite shade to meditate on the subject of the morning's lecture— the Human Hand. I lay down on the grass, leaning my head on The one hand as a pillow, the other stretched out before me.

summer was just intimating its approach in the fresh feathering of the wood willow, whereon a thousand little honey-bee Gabriels sounded their trumpets in token of its advance. A small stream could just be overheard scolding, like a child interrupted at play, at a stick which had fallen across it, over which it must fall in turn. Now all these sounds seemed to retreat to an infinite distance. I felt the cool breath on my forehead. The steps of some extraordinary thing approaching echoed along my brain like the statue visiting Don Giovanni. Lo! uprose before me a huge Hand. It was at some distance, and was approaching as if pushed along by some one concealed behind it. As it came closer, I saw with dismay that what I supposed a hand was a living monster wearing the shape of a hand: the thumb was one arm, the little finger another; the first and third fingers were legs and feet, the second was a long tail with the finger-nail cut into the shape of a dreadful spear-head. A whiff of brimstone swept over me. This strange being bore a musical instrument shaped like a hand with middle finger stretched out to hold the strings. He began to sing, whilst this instrument yielded a truly diabolical accompaniment. At the end of each stanza came a chorus yelled from the depths of the earth. The song was a celebration of the hand as admirably adapted to all villainous works the chorus being thus :

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The hand, it is the handsomest

Of Nature's handiwork –

Universal pocket-picker,

Made to steal and dirk.

'Perhaps,' he said at last, you'd prefer that I should proceed with these fine statements in prose rather than song.'-' Very much,' said I, 'I hate poetry, and yours makes me especially nervous. But who-"-"Really, now, you don't mean to say you don't know who I am? I am the Devil.'

"Strangely enough, I did not feel any great emotion at this announcement. The dent and inkblot are still shown the tourist where Luther threw his inkstand at the Devil. I fear I did not hate this Devil so much; I certainly did not find him so black as he had been painted, nor feel disposed to give him so ungracious a reception. I remembered rather the pathetic appeal of Burns to Auld Nickie Ben:

Ah! wad ye tak a thought an' mend'—

the Bohemian blessing: He that is spoken against befriend

you,' ‚'— Göthe's description of him as one that all men gladly name,' and Carlyle's, as the Great Second Best.' So I sat myself serenely to give him his due, and see if I might not learn something from the Devil. He proceeded thus:

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You see it

The lecture of Einbohrer this morning was good as Science, but did not deal sufficiently with the moral and infernal bearings of the topic. I alone can speak ex cathedra on that. is a fact not generally known that the Devil is a Hand. When the Bible asserts that men's days are as a handbreadth, it mystically affirms that men are diabolical rascals generally. A thousand years I wandered until it was permitted me to take some one of all forms. I selected this. The hand is the centre of power, and so long as it is the Devil's realm he must have a hand in everything done on earth. When was there any beautiful or valuable crime in which the hand was not concerned? The fine old Romances of the Otranto School knew this, when, instead of introducing the Devil personally into their stories (which would have been too much for any but persons of rare culture), they only cause a great Hand to appear. It was in order to familiarize men with this that I once left the print of myself in the stone which gave name to the castle of Greifenstein, or the Clutched Stone, where Richard Cœur de Leon was imprisoned and found by Blondel. We who dwell below watch with interest the growth of men into the mysterious relations of the hand. The Italian may say much with impunity, but a certain arrangement of the fingers at one is the last insult, which death alone can atone for. In the olden time, in quizzing, the thumb was carried to the mouth. So in Shakspere we find, "Bite not thy thumb at me." In America it is carried to the nose instead. It was the custom of the ancient Norseman to keep off the evil eye by holding out the first and little fingers, and pressing the others against the palm. That was really a devil's pitchfork. The Germans maintain that the Devil has a horse's foot; the English, a cloven hoof. These are but fingerless hands, as has been proved by the few instances in which hoofs have developed fingers. The Spanish, always pretty well acquainted with my dominions, know that villainy does not reside in the head or heart, but the hand; so they do not behead their executed criminals, but behand them,— and as one enters Spanish cities he sees large numbers of human hands nailed to the city walls for warning. The recipe of witchcraft was this: Take two or more dead men's fingers, pound

them when dried; mix the skin of a toad pulverized; pour on the tears of a child or the blood of a cat; then let one drop fall on the hand of the person you would affect.' You know, too, that the poisonous part of a crab is called 'dead men's fingers.'

"Thus for a long time the instincts and superstitions of the vulgar went on discovering that the Devil was in the Hand. The Idea entered the Laws at last. The earliest Gothic code, perhaps, was the Faust reicht, or Fist Laws. In the old Saxon Law-Book, Sachsenspiegel, we find the Hand is peculiarly guarded - especially a lady's hand. Two heifers are the fine for squeezing a lady's forefinger; a sheep is to be added for the second or third; squeezing the whole hand was considered worth six heifers and a bull; kissing the hand could only be redeemed by endowing her with all one's worldly goods," etc. This shows that those old Saxons had an instinctive suspicion of your Dr. Einbohrer's theory that fingers and toes were but upper and under teeth in a lower sphere: so that the pressure of a hand was an approach of teeth to teeth, and attended with all the perils of a kiss in the higher sphere to which we know it easily leads. So Shakspere in Romeo and Juliet,

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Palm to palm is Palmer's kiss.'

So also in actual life we find that when a youth makes a serious demand for kissing a young woman ad libitum, he does not ask her for her heart, neither does he ask her for her head or her feet, but for her hand. He does not place the wedding-ring in her ears, nor around her ancles, nor in her nose,- but on her finger. And in Rome, other cases of Life and Death were decided by the raising or pressing of the thumb by the Judges.

"Hush! Know you why of all other forms I, Satan, should have selected this of the hand? Because it is the token of man, his signmanual, the symbol of his ability to re-create with his hand he would presently re-fashion Eden. But in our councils we said, There will we press our siege! However high man's thought shall soar, the deed of the hand shall be evil. The power to grasp shall be a perpetual temptation! Where Heaven sets the implement of industry, we shall set a sword and poignard: the arms of Evil shall be as long as the arms of Good.'

For once let the thought pass into the deed, and God triumphs over us in the deed the aspiration of man takes form and life, and becomes an active power and Genius of Good. By an external

deed he is committed to what it serves it is a bond signed with his blood. Let us get the hand, and we can baffle the heart: so did we with that wretch, thrice imprisoned for theft, who on finishing his last term rushed to the mill, and placing both his hands under a huge knife worked by machinery, had them cut off at the wrists. They shall not conquer me again,' he said.

"But, alas, we must be conquered soon as the hand rays forth fingers, the fingers ray forth implements of use and mercy; and these demand the higher radiation, the heart putting forth fingers of love and friendship; the soul radiating aspiration and everlasting hope. What can we do with a hand like Cranmer's, which, for truth's sake, he can hold in flame till it becomes à cinder, or with that of Galileo, still preserved at Milan, with finger pointing upward?'

"The Devil seemed thoughtful. What a solemn Devil you are,' said I. Pshaw,' he cried, I was nodding as even Jove is said to do some times. It was a lie. Man's hand was made for robbing hen-roosts and picking pockets. The wrists are made small that handcuffs shall sit well on them. The thumb is admirably contrived for my grand discovery, the Holy Screw.'

"Then he quickly left me, and I heard in the distance only the refrain of his song: