18 THE BOY. 



death, suspecting no evil and anticipating no bad tidings, 

 about midnight she saw a wonderfully bright light like 

 a ball of electric fire flit about the room, and linger first 

 on one object of furniture and then on another. She 

 sat up in bed to watch its progress. At last it alighted, 

 when, just as she wondered, with her eyes fixed on it, 

 Avhat it might portend, it was suddenly quenched, did 

 not die out, but, as it were, extinguished itself in a mo- 

 ment, leaving utter blackness behind, and on her frame 

 the thrilling effect of a sudden and awful calamity/ The 

 power of distinguishing between visions seen when the 

 eyes were shut, and actual phenomena seen when the 

 eyes were open, had manifestly been impaired in this 

 woman ; and we cannot believe that the influence of so 

 superstitious a mother upon Hugh Miller was not 

 powerful, merely because he has refrained from saying 

 much about her in the Schools and Schoolmasters. Had 

 he completely emancipated himself from that influence, 

 we might have had a full statement of its nature and 

 extent ; but, though he evidently believed some of the 

 ghostly sights of his childhood to have been preter- 

 natural, he would instinctively shrink from the con- 

 fession that his notions of the night-side of nature, 

 and of the boundary line between the visible and the 

 invisible world, were to the last modified by what he had 

 learned at his mother's knee. It is fair to her to add 

 that her power of enchaining the attention of listeners, 

 while she told her tales, was quite extraordinary, and 

 that her son assuredly owed to her, in part at least, his 

 genius for narrative. 



