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 ever 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. Now-a-days, in the management of his subject, clairvoyant or
medium, the exhibitor affects the simplicity and openness of scientific
experiment; and even if he profess to tread a step or two across the boundaries
of the spiritual world, yet carries with him the laws of our actual life, and
extends them over his preternatural conquests. Twelve or fifteen years ago, on
the contrary, all the arts of mysterious arrangement, of picturesque
disposition, and artistically contrasted light and shade, were made available in
order to set the apparent miracle in the strongest attitude of opposition to
ordinary facts. In the case of the Veiled Lady, moreover, the interest of the
spectator was further wrought up by the enigma of her identity, and an absurd
rumor (probably set afloat by the exhibitor, and at one time very prevalent)
that a beautiful young lady, of family and fortune, was enshrouded within the
misty drapery of the veil. It was white, with somewhat of a subdued silver
sheen, like the sunny side of a cloud; and falling over the wearer, from head to
foot, was supposed to insulate her from the material world, from time and space,
and to endow her with many of the privileges of a disembodied spirit.
    Her pretensions, however, whether miraculous or otherwise, have little to do
with the present narrative; except, indeed, that I had propounded, for the
Veiled Lady's prophetic solution, a query as to the success of our Blithedale
enterprise. The response, by-the-by, was of the true Sibylline stamp,
nonsensical in its first aspect, yet, on closer study, unfolding a variety of
interpretations, one of which has certainly accorded with the event. I was
turning over this riddle in my mind, and trying to catch its slippery purport by
the tail, when the old man, above-mentioned, interrupted me.
    »Mr. Coverdale! - Mr. Coverdale!« said he, repeating my name twice, in order
to make up for the hesitating and ineffectual way in which he uttered it - »I
ask your pardon, sir - but I hear you are going to Blithedale tomorrow?«