. . . gained, and sat down like a beggar in the dust of despair. The mother, from her youth, had been a religious monomaniac—a spiritualist before the name of spiritualism was coined, and before the Rochester knockings had noised themselves into the public ear. She saw visions and dreamed dreams. During the half year preceding Victoria's birth, the mother became powerfully excited by a religious revival, and went through the process known as "sanctification." She would rise in prayer-meetings and pour forth passionate hallelujahs that sometimes electrified the worshippers. The father, colder in temperament, yet 6equally inclined to the supernatural, was her partner in these excitements. When the stroke of poverty felled them to the earth, these exultations were quenched in grief. The father, in the opinion of some, became partially crazed; he would take long and rapid walks, sometimes of twenty miles, and come home with bleeding feet and haggard face. The mother, ne. . . Read More