none of the conventional machinery of the melo-
drama, with no background of horrible or
threatening scenery, with no hysterical lan-
guage, this story made my blood chill, my spine
curl, and every individual hair to stand on end.
When I told the author exactly how I felt while
reading it, and thanked him for giving me sen-
sations that I thought no author could give me
at my age, he said that he was made happy by
my testimony. "For," said he, "I meant to
scare the whole world with that story; and you
had precisely the emotion that I hoped to arouse
in everybody. When I wrote it, I was too ill
to hold the pen; I therefore dictated the whole
thing to a Scot stenographer. I was glad to
try this experiment, for I believed that I should
be able to judge of its effect on the whole world
by its effect on the man who shoul000d hear it
first. Judge of my dismay when from first to
last page this iron Scot betrayed not the slight-
est shade of feeling! I dictated to him sen-
tences that I thought would make him leap from
his chair; he short-handed them as though they
had been geometry, and whenever I paused to

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