Genre:

Letter

Subjects:

Gender, Education, Supernaturalism, Feeling, Disease, Mental Illness, Death, Miracle

    Warns that uneducated women are adversely affected by the publication of anecdotes on supernatural appearances even though, '[i]n this enlightened age, when the high rank many of the sex hold in the walks of literature, proclaims the extent of their mental powers, and clearly demonstrates the fallacy of that prejudice which once considered the female understanding incapable of attaining the heights of science' (361). Argues that 'from the prognostications of the physician we sometimes recover, but a dream, the vision of a heated, or diseased imagination, unmans every faculty of the soul, and death feels his power anticipated' (362). Describes how a practical joke involving the reappearance of a supposedly dead acquaintance resulted in the victim suffering a 'severe illness which immediately attacked him, and the melancholy depression of spirits which ensued [...] continued until his death.—If it did not hasten that event, it embittered some portion of his existence; and life, with the blessings of health and good spirits, are too valuable to be trifled with' (363).