Spiritual vampirism: The history of Etherial Softdown, and her friends of the "New Light"

In a mean and sterile district of Vermont, which shall be nameless, but which exhibits on every side stretches of bare land, with here and there the variety of clumps of gnarled...

In Barclay Street, New York, years ago, flourished, at No. 63, that famous caravansarie of all the most rabid wild animals on the Continent, who styled themselves Reformers and...

The woman continued, with calm, regular breathings, to sleep for several hours. The dusk of evening had now closed in, and yet her patient guardian sat silently watching her mot...

That the world has dealt hardly by its heroes, is a truism we need not insist upon at this late day. But whether the world knows who its heroes are, is another question, and one...

The bowels of Boanerges Phospher, the Spiritual Professor, were possessed of such extraordinary capacity for yearning over the fallen and lost condition of his brothers of manki...

Thou hast thews Immortal, for thou art of heavenly race; But such a love is mine, that here I chase Eternally away from thee all bloom Of youth, and destine thee towards a tomb....

Take we a glimpse now of another interior scene in the strange, mingled life of the great metropolis. In a bare and meanly-furnished but roomy parlor of a house in Tenth Street,...

We will now enter one of the upper rooms of the notorious Graham House, with the interior of which we have before been familiarised, and which had been reopened, on a modified b...

An hour after the last scene, Manton returned to his room, and, seeming greatly hurried, lit his lamp, and throwing himself into a chair, seized his pen, muttering between his t...

Poor Manton was not permitted to remain in peace at his labors long. On the afternoon of the same day, Doctor E. Willamot Weasel, scarcely taking time to announce himself by a s...

Manton had reckoned without his host, in supposing that his self-constituted patroness had any idea whatever of being frozen off: on the contrary, her benevolent ardor had been...

And under fair pretence of friendly ends, And well-placed words of glozing courtesy, Baited with reasons not unplausible, Wind me into easy-hearted man, And hug him into snares....

In a good-sized, neatly-furnished apartment, of a large house in Bond Street, about two weeks after the incidents which were related in the last chapters, a group was assembled,...

Transparent as is the meaning of the foregoing scene, it conveyed to Manton, who knew none of these things which have been revealed to the reader, a tremendous shock. Mind and s...

Turn we now to that large and mysterious house, to which we have before referred, near the corner of Broadway and Eighth Street. We will pass the greasy lintels, into the wide a...

The evening was closing in when Manton made his way through a heavy, drifting snow-storm, to the number of the new address, near the corner of Broadway and Eighth Street, which...

It would be well for sinners were there no to-morrow. At least it would be well for them so far as impunity in the enjoyment of sin was concerned. But it may not be; the inevita...

But even in the black abysses of the hell down which he had fallen, a flower could grow to the eye of Manton. It was the strange birth of a wizard evil place; yet, as it spread...

Some short glimpses of daily scenes may convey, perhaps, a clearer idea of how life sped now with Manton, amidst the new charms which it had gained. The whole man was rapidly ch...

We have lost sight of the other characters in our narrative, and it is now time that we return to them. The reader will remember, in the dark-eyed, sharp-tongued Jeannette of a...

We have frequently mentioned the eccentric Dr. Weasel in the course of this narrative. Another scene will enlighten the reader somewhat in regard to the yet undefined character...

Another year had now passed, which, although it found Manton not entirely released from his thrall, had yet left him a calmer and a stronger man. One by one the manacles had fal...

With all the apparent amount of suffering which we have attempted to describe above, Manton was no little astonished, not only at the promptness and completeness of the recovery...

Amidst the green and savage solitude of pine-haired hills, wild-bounding streams, and islet-fretted lakes, asleep, ’twixt gleam and shadow, where the bellowing moose still rouse...

Had it ever occurred to Manton to reason at all upon the subject of his passion for this girl Elna, or had it been possible for him, under the circumstances which had lately sur...

Months and months had passed, and yet this wretched man was staggering on, not this time drunk, literally, but, as though blinded by red blood oozing from his brain, which had b...

The Editor finds that here the connected narrative of Etherial Softdown breaks off. Though there are many fragmentary notes, which he found in Yieger’s Cabinet, which bear a cle...

This report says of Eusedora Polypheme:—“This woman is between thirty and thirty-five years of age. She is of New England birth, and commenced her education at what we consider...

“Regina Straightback is nearly as unbending in temper as in figure, which peculiarity renders her of somewhat less avail to us than such more ductile natures as her fast friend,...

“But what the circumscribed wits of Etherial Softdown, the divine languishments of Eusedora Polypheme, the defiant unscrupulousness of Regina Straightback, failed to accomplish,...