The Blithedale Romance

The evening before my departure for Blithedale I was returning to my bachelor apartments after attending the wonderful exhibition of the Veiled Lady when an elderly man of rather shabby appearance met me in an obscure part of the street. Mr. Coverdale said he softly can I speak with you a moment? As I have casually alluded to the Veiled Lady it may not be amiss to mention for the benefit of such of my readers as are unacquainted with her now forgotten celebrity that she was a phenomenon in the mesmeric line; one of the earliest that had indicated the birth of a new science or the revival of an old humbug. Since those times her sisterhood have grown too numerous to attract much individual notice; nor in fact has any one of them come before the public under such skilfully contrived circumstances of stage effect as those which at once mystified and illuminated the remarkable performances of the lady in question. Nowadays in the management of his subject clairvoyant or medium the exhibitor affects the simplicity and openness of scientific experiment;