NOTE. It should be said that at the time of the departure of him to whose memory this little book is consecrated, the work was already far advanced in printing; and that these pages owe more to his criticism than can be acknowledged here. GLOUCESTER, MASSACHUSETTS: E. S. P. BEYOND THE GATES. I. I HAD been ill for several weeks with what they called brain fever. The events which I am about to relate happened on the fifteenth day of my illness. Before beginning to tell my story, it may not be out of place to say a few words about myself, in order to clarify to the imagination of the reader points which would otherwise involve numerous explanatory digressions, more than commonly misplaced in a tale dealing with the materials of this. I am a woman forty years of age. My father was a clergyman; he had been many years dead. I was living, at the time I refer to, in my mother's house in a factory town in Massachusetts. The town need not be more B |