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he had no recollection, although it had been manifestly written by himself.
Nor was this all: essays and other articles, with which he occasionally furnished the various medical journals, were written during sleep: he had but to commence or think about one in the evening, no matter how difficult the subject, to find it completed in the monrning when he rose.
These circumstances, constantly occurring as they did, engendered a peculiar species of superstition. He imagined that he was under the influence of Genii, and this idea led him into abstruse speculations on supernatural influences in general; in which speculations, as a matter of gratitude, those Genii rendered him some powerful assistance, but only of course when their slave was asleep.
He had, however, too much knowledge to progress in the black art to any great extent: his reasoning powers were too acute to allow him to embrace that pseudo science: still he felt involved in a mystery, the solution of which he held to be beyond all human power, and while with reason he annihilated the temples of the Genii, he without reason clung to the ruins still.
But even then his somnambulism was not confined to his chambers. Sometimes he would walk when the moon was up with a lamp in his hand, which, although extinguished, he fancied illumined all around: sometimes he would rise about three o'clock, walk to the Serpentine, fast asleep, bathe for an hour, dress himself, and then return to bed; and frequently, when he had been to a ball, would he return in an hour or two, recommence dancing, and stop till the last, while all whom he met, or with whom he conversed, were unconscious of the fact of his being asleep.
On one occasion, four of his most esteemed friends called at his lodgings about five o'clock—the hour at which he invariably dined—and acted and talked precisely as if they had made up their minds to stop. He would, at any other time, have been very glad to see them; but, as he wanted his dinner, he felt their presence, then, to be extremely inconvenient; and soon began to feel most impatient for their departure. But they had not the slightest notion of starting: not they. There they were, and there they stuck, wondering what highly-important personage had been invited to meet them, for they all felt that he must be a person of great distinction, to induce Sylvester to keep them waiting so long.
"I say," inquired one of them, about six o'clock; "whom are you waiting for?"
"Whom am I waiting for! No one," said Sylvester.
Oh, I thought you were waiting for some one.
"No. What induced you to think that I was?"
"I thought so merely because it's six o'clock. That's all!"
"It is six," said Sylvester, looking at his watch, and, as he did so, he privately wished they'd be off, but of this they had not even the most remote idea; and their manifest tenacity to the place was, in his view, amazing. He couldn't understand it. They never called before at such an hour; nor had he ever known them to linger so long. Had one, or