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of consumption. For some months Poe had been anxious for an opportunity of mesmerising some person in the act of death; and having told this to M. Valdemar, the latter at once agreed that the operation might be tried upon himself, and promised to send a message to Poe twenty-four hours before the time announced by the physicians as that of his decease.

One day Poe received a note from M. Valdemar that he could not hold out beyond to-morrow midnight. He immediately hastened to the dying man's chamber. This was on Saturday evening, and the medical men declared that M. Valdemar would probably die about midnight on Sunday. Valdemar was still desirous of being mesmerised; and it was arranged that Poe, with a friend (one Mr. Theodore L-1), should come to him on Sunday evening at eight o'clock. This friend was to take notes of all that should pass.

a.m.

On Sunday evening, accordingly, M. Valdemar was mesmerised, being then in the last stage of physical exhaustion. The process was completed about midnight. He remained in the mesmeric state till three Poe then asked him, M. Valdemar, are you asleep?' In an audible whisper the answer was returned, Asleep now, I am dying.' The same answer was given still more faintly a few minutes later. The physicians thought it best that he should remain in this tranquil state until death should supervene, which they anticipated in a few minutes.

Poe repeated his question, 'Are you asleep?' Even as he spoke a ghastly change passed over Valdemar,

He was

which is described with horrible minuteness. dead; and his friends were turning away, leaving him to the nurses.

Concluding that he was dead, we were turning away, when a strong vibratory motion was observable in the tongue. This continued for perhaps a minute. At the expiration of that period there issued from the distended and motionless jaws a voice-such as it would be madness in me to attempt describing. There are, indeed, two or three epithets which might be considered as applicable to it in part; I might say, for example, that the sound was harsh and broken and hollow; but the hideous whole is indescribable, for the simple reason that no similar sounds have ever jarred upon the ear of humanity. There were two particulars, nevertheless, which I thought then, and still think, might fairly be stated as characteristic of the intonation—as well adapted to convey some idea of its unearthly peculiarity. In the first place, the voice appeared to reach our ears—at least mine—from a vast distance, or from some deep cavern within the earth. In the second place, it impressed me as gelatinous or glutinous matters impress the sense of touch.

I have spoken both of sound and of voice. I mean to say that the sound was one of distinct-of even wonderfully-thrillingly distinct-syllabification. M. Valdemar spoke-obviously in reply to the question I had propounded to him a few minutes before. I had asked him, it will be remembered, if he still slept. He now said

'Yes-no-I have been sleeping; and now-and now-I am

dead.'

No person present even affected to deny, or attempted to repress, the unutterable, shuddering horror which these few words, thus uttered, were so well calculated to convey. Mr. L--l swooned. The nurses immediately left the chamber, and could not be induced to return.

In this condition, dead, yet still held in a strange connection with Poe by the mesmeric influence, M.

Valdemar continued for seven months.

Death was so

far arrested. At the end of that time it was resolved

to awaken him. Poe made the necessary passes, and

then said

'M. Valdemar, can you explain to us what are your feelings or wishes now?'

There was an instant return of the hectic circles on the cheeks; the tongue quivered, or rather rolled violently in the mouth, though the jaws and lips remained rigid as before. At length the same hideous voice which I have already described broke forth :

'For God's sake, quick! quick! -put me to sleep,—or quick! waken me!-quick!-I say to you that I am dead !’

I was thoroughly unnerved, and for an instant remained undecided what to do. At first I made an endeavour to recompose the patient; but failing in this, I retraced my steps, and earnestly struggled to awaken him. In this attempt I soon saw that I should be successful, and I am sure that all in the room were prepared to see the patient awaken.

For what really occurred, however, it is quite impossible that any human being could have been prepared.

As I rapidly made the mesmeric passes, amid ejaculations of 'Dead! dead!' actually bursting from the tongue, and not from the lips, of the sufferer, his whole frame at once-within the space of a single minute, or even less-shrunk, crumbled, actually rotted away beneath my hands. Upon the bed, before that whole company, there lay a nearly liquid mass of loathsome-of detestable putrescence.

One of Poe's most striking tales is entitled A Descent into the Maelström. It is told, like most of his stories, in the first person. In company with an old Norwegian fisherman, the writer tells us he climbed to the top of an enormous crag upon the coast of Lofoden, commanding an extensive seaview :—

We had caught no glimpse of the sea until it had burst upon

us from the summit. As the old man spoke, I became aware of a loud and gradually increasing sound, like the moaning of a vast herd of buffaloes upon an American prairie; and at the same moment I perceived that what seamen call the chopping character of the ocean beneath us was rapidly changing into a current which set to the eastward. Even while I gazed this current acquired a monstrous velocity. In five minutes the whole sea, as far as Vurrgh, was lashed into ungovernable fury; but it was between Moskoe and the coast that the main uproar held its sway. Here the vast bed of the waters, seamed and scarred into a thousand conflicting channels, burst suddenly into a frenzied convulsion-heaving, boiling, hissing-gyrating in gigantic and innumerable vortices, and all whirling and plunging on to the eastward with a rapidity which water never elsewhere assumes, except in precipitous descents.

In a few minutes more there came over the scene another radical alteration. The general surface grew somewhat more smooth, and the whirlpools one by one disappeared, while prodigious streaks of foam became apparent where none had been seen before. These streaks at length, spreading out to a great distance and entering into combination, took unto themselves the gyratory motion of the subsided vortices, and seemed to form the germ of another more vast. Suddenly-very suddenly-this assumed a distinct and definite existence, in a circle of more than a mile in diameter. The edge of the whirl was represented by a broad belt of gleaming spray; but no particle of this slipped into the mouth of the terrific funnel, whose interior, as far as the eye could fathom it, was a smooth, shining, and jet-black wall of water, inclined to the horizon at an angle of some forty-five degrees, speeding dizzily round and round with a swaying and sweltering motion, and sending forth to the winds an appalling voice, half shriek, half roar, such as not even the mighty cataract of Niagara ever lifts up in its agony to heaven.

The mountain trembled to its very base, and the rock rocked. I threw myself upon my face, and clung to the scant herbage in an excess of nervous agitation.

'This,' said I, at length, to the old man- this can be nothing else than the great whirlpool of the Maelström.'

The old man goes on to tell how he himself, in a little schooner, with two of his brothers, had been sucked into this tremendous whirl, the description of which given by Poe is, we need hardly tell our readers, very greatly exaggerated. It appears that at the turn of the tide the whirl ceases for a few minutes, and venturesome fishermen run the risk, when the wind is fair and strong, of pushing right across the Maelström. A great round is thus saved, and the finest. fish are taken in extraordinary quantity. The old man's watch had upon one occasion run down, and miscalculating the time, he and his brothers steered their little craft right upon the whirlpool. A terrible storm had uprisen suddenly, and the ström was in its most fearful power.

After flying before the wind, the schooner, on reaching the belt of foam which surrounds the whirl, suddenly turned off to one side, and flew round with tremendous velocity.

How often we made the circuit of the belt it is impossible for me to say. We careered round and round for perhaps an hour, flying rather than floating, getting gradually more and more into the centre of the surge, and then nearer and nearer to its horrible inner edge. At length we gave a wild lurch to starboard, and rushed headlong into the abyss. I muttered a hurried prayer to God, and thought all was over.

As I felt the sickening sweep of the descent I had instinctively tightened my hold upon the barrel, and closed my eyes. For some seconds I dared not open them-while I expected instant destruction, and wondered that I was not already in my death. struggles with the water. But moment after moment elapsed. I still lived. The sense of falling had ceased; and the motion of the vessel seemed much as it had been before while in the

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