THE
WONDERFUL
STORY OF RAVALETTE.
ALSO,
TOM CLARK AND HIS WIFE,
THEIR DOUBLE DREAMS AND THE CURIOUS THINGS THAT BEFELL THEM THEREIN;
OR,
THE ROSICRUCIAN’S STORY.

BY DR. P. B. RANDOLPH,

“THE DUMAS OF AMERICA,”

AUTHOR OF “WAA, GU-MAH,” “PRE-ADAMITE MAN,” “DEALINGS WITH THE DEAD,”

“IT ISN’T ALL RIGHT,” “THE UNVEILING OF SPIRITISM,” “THE GRAND

SECRET,” “HUMAN LOVE—A PHYSICAL SUBSTANCE,”

ETC., ETC., ETC.

“The fictions of genius are often the vehicles of the sublimest verities, and its flashes often open new regions of thought, and throw new light on the mysteries of our being.”—

Channing.

NEW YORK:
SINCLAIR TOUSEY, 121 NASSAU STREET.
1863.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863, by

P. B. RANDOLPH,

In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern District of New York.

[INTRODUCTORY.]

In giving what follows to the world, no one can be more alive to the fact that this is the latter half of the nineteenth century, and that the present is emphatically the era of the grandest Utilitarianism, Revolution, Matter of Fact, and Doubt that the world ever knew, than is the editor of the following extraordinary tale. He has no apologies to make for offering it—no excuses, even as a novelist, for departing from the beaten track of “War, Love, Murder, and Revenge,” “Politics, Passion, and Prussic acid,” which constitute the staple of the modern novel.

Disliking all long exordia, we propose to enter at once upon the work before us, by inquiring: Is there such a thing as real magic—not the ordinary, chemical, ambidextral jugglery, that passes current among the vulgar as magic—but the real old mysterious thing, whereof we read in old black-letter tomes?

Utterly repudiating the pretensions of modern charlatans, and conscienceless impostors, who deal in “spirit photographs,” and utter misty phrases about “Life in the Spheres,” “Gloria,” and “Jubilo,” together with schemes to reform the world—namely, by means of Indiana divorces, improved “Lieceums,” “Air-lying dispatches,” via Caput Assinorum, and much other.

“Canting, radical jabber and jaw,
’Bout Mornia and Hornia, and Starnos and ’Cor,
Hocus and pocus, and nong-tong-paw;
All stupid crams, not worth a straw.”

Not because there are no spirits, for one case in a million of reported spectral phenomena, may be true, but all are totally unreliable—that is, they lie—and the person who places the least confidence in them in one thousand instances, is sure to be deceived nine hundred and ninety-nine times, and only reach approximate truth and fact in the thousandth.

Spiritualism is yet the great non sequitur of the age, so far as the vast majority of mankind is concerned—for while one portion of its phenomena may be really spiritual, the remaining nine hundred and ninety-nine portions are referable to something else than human ghosts. Spiritualism has done no good whatever, save in that it has called attention to new directions, thereby stimulating the spirit of inquiry; but in itself it is yet far from being among the certainties.

I here disavow all intention to deride true spirit phenomena, if such there be; nor do I question the transmundane life of man—for the belief in immortality is a part of my very being—but, while ignoring the claims, and deriding the absurd pretensions of the vast majority of modern Eolists and self-styled mediums, I repeat the question: Is there any positive means or ways whereby even a favored few can penetrate the mysterious veil that hangs like an iron pall between the great human multitude and the infinitely greater BEYOND? Is it possible to break through the awful barrier—to glimpse through the Night-Curtain that screens and shrouds us from the Phantom-World?—if such there be.

“Deep the gulph that hides the dead—
Long and dark the way they tread.”

Can we know it? Can we by any possibility scan its secrets? Nor are we alone in propounding questions such as these; for every intelligent person, at some period or other, puts them to himself and neighbor, but, in the majority of cases, vainly. The writer hereof, like the great mass of people, has often propounded these queries, the result being a confirmed and indurated scepticism—which scepticism was, almost ruthlessly, swept away by the extraordinary series of events about to be recorded in these pages.

THE WONDERFUL STORY OF RAVALETTE.

BOOK I.

[CHAPTER I.]
THE STRANGE MAN.

“In the most high and palmy days of Rome,
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets.”

And he sat him down wearily by the side of the road. Wearily, for he had journeyed far that day. He was footsore, and his bodily powers were nearly exhausted by reason of the want and privation he had undergone. His looks were haggard, and a pathetic pall, gloomy and tearful, hung and floated around him, invisible to, but sensibly felt by, all who lingered near, or gazed upon him. A sorrowful man was he.

And as he sat there by the roadside, he leaned his head upon the staff which he held in his hand; and as he bowed him down, the great salt tears gushed from between his fingers, and watered the ground at his feet. In other days the cypress, plant of sorrow, sprung up there, and throve in sad and mournful beauty, as if to mark and guard the spot whereon the strong man had lifted up his voice and wept aloud—once upon a time.

This was many years ago; and this was the occasion on which I became acquainted with the personage who figures so remarkably in this volume.[1] At that time the writer practically accepted, but mentally disbelieved, all the religious and psychologic faiths of Christendom; and, had any man even hinted at certain mysterious possibilities that have since then been verified and demonstrated, I should most certainly have laughed in his face, and have reckoned him up as a first-class fool or idiot. Things have changed since then.

He was a man of middle height, was neither stout nor slender, but, when in full flesh, was a happy medium between the two. His head and brain were large, and, from certain peculiarities of form, really much more massive than they appeared. The skull was long and narrow at the base, especially about the ears; but above that line the brain was deep, broad and high, indicating great powers of endurance, with but moderate physical force, it being clearly apparent that the mental structure sustained itself to a great degree at the expense of the muscles, his nervous system, as in all such organizations, being morbidly acute and sensitive. There was, naturally or organically, nothing about him either coarse, brutal, low or vulgar, and if, in the race of life, he exhibited any of those bad qualities, it was attributable to the rough circumstances attendant upon him, and the treatment he received from the world. By nature he was open, frank, benevolent and generous to a fault, and of these traits men availed themselves to his sorrow. With abundant capacity to successfully grapple with the most profound and abstruse questions of philosophy or metaphysics, yet this man was totally incompetent to conduct matters of the least business, requiring even a very moderate financial ability. Such are nature’s contradictions, such her law of compensation.

As a consequence, this man, with abilities universally conceded to be good, was the ready victim of the first plausible knave that came along, from the “friend” who borrowed half his cash, and undertook to invest the balance—and kept the whole, to the printer of his books, who swindled him of both time and money.

His complexion was tawny, resembling that of the Arab children of Beyroot and Damascus. The shape and set of the chin, jaws and lips, were indicative rather of power than force. The mouth, in its slightly protruding upper lip, and two small ridges at the corners, betokened executive ability, passion, courage, affection, humor, firmness and decision. The cheeks were slightly sunken, indicating care and trouble, while the cheek-bones, being somewhat high and broad, betrayed his aboriginal ancestry, as did also his general beardlessness, for, save a tuft beneath the chin of jet black silky hair, and a thin and light mustache, he could lay no claim to hirsute distinction. His nose, which had been broken by a fall when a child, was neither large nor small, and as a simple feature, was in no respect remarkable; but taken with the other features, was most decidedly so, for when under the influence of passion, excitement or emotion, there was an indescribable something about the alæ and nostrils that told you that a volcano slumbered in that man’s brain and heart, only it required a touch, a vent, in the right direction, to wake its fires and cause it to blaze forth vehemently, transforming him in an instant from a passive, uncomplaining man, into the embodiment of virtuous championship of the cause that was true, or into a demon of hatred and vindictive fury. The good prevailed; for the evil spasm was ever a spasm only—save in a very few marked cases, where he had suffered wrongs, deep and grievous, at the hands of men whose meanness and duplicity toward himself he only discovered when they had gained their points and ruined him. These men he hated—and yet that word does not convey the true idea. His feeling was not vindictive, but was a craving for, and determination to exact justice for his wrongs. This satisfied, his ill will died on the instant. His eyes, or rather eye—for one was nearly lost from an accident—was a deep, dark hazel, and such as people are in the habit of describing as jet black. It shone with a lustre peculiar, and strangely magnetic when he let his soul go forth upon winged words from the rostrum, for he had been a public speaker in his time, and had won no small degree of fame on that field.

Once seen and heard, this man was one whom it was impossible ever to forget, so different was he from all other men, and so marked and peculiar were his characteristics.

Such, in brief, were the externals of the person to whom the reader is here introduced.

A very singular man was he—the Rosicrucian—I knew him well. Many an hour, subsequent to that in which he is here introduced, have we sat together beneath the grateful shade of some glorious old elm on the green, flowery banks of Connecticut’s silver stream, and under some towering dome palm beside the bosom of still older Nilus, in the hoary land of the Pharaohs, of magic and of myth, he all the while pouring into my ear strange, very strange legends indeed—legends of Time and the other side of Time—all of which my thirsty soul drank in as the sun-parched earth drinks in the grateful showers, or the sands of Zin the tears of weeping clouds. And these tales, these legends put to shame the wildest fictions of Germany and the terror-haunted Hartz. Particularly was I struck with a half hint that once escaped his lips, to the effect that some men on the earth, himself among the number, had preëxisted on this sphere, and that at times he distinctly remembered localities, persons and events that were cotemporary with him before he occupied his present form, and consequently that his real age exceeded that even of Ahasuerus, the Jew, who, in the dolorous road, mocked the Man of Calvary, as he bore his cross up the steep and stony way, for which leze majeste he was doomed to walk the earth, an outcast and vagabond, from that hour till Shiloh comes, according to the legends of Jewry.

My friend, during our intimacy, often spoke concerning white magic, and incidentally insisted on his curious doctrine of transmigration. Nor was this all: He taught that the souls of people sometimes vacated their bodies for weeks together, during which they were occupied by other souls, sometimes that of a permanently disembodied man of earth; at others, that of an inhabitant of the aëreal spaces, who, thus embodied, roamed the earth at will. He, when closely questioned, declared his firm belief that he had lived down through many ages, and that for reasons known to himself, he was doomed to live on, like the great Artefius—that other Rosicrucian—until a certain consummated act (wherein he was to be involuntarily an active party) should release him from it and permit him to share the lot of other men.

As a consequence of his dissimilarity from others he appeared to have been endowed with certain hyper-mental powers, among which was a strange intro-vision, not the fraudulent clairvoyance claimed and palmed off upon the world by the arch impostor of Poughkeepsie, and others of the same kidney, but something analogous to that attributed to the oracle-priestesses of Delphos and Delos. This power, which was not always present, enabled him to behold and describe things, persons and events, even across the widest gulfs of ocean; and to read the secret history and thoughts of the most secretive, self-possessed and subtle-minded man as easily as if it were a printed scroll. When this ecstasy was on him he looked as if, at that moment, he beheld things forever sealed from the majority of eyes, and that too both with and without his wonderful magic mirror. At first I doubted his pretensions, mentally referred them to an abnormal state of mind, and, until they were abundantly demonstrated, laughed at the preposterous idea, as I considered it, of any one seriously claiming such extraordinary powers in the middle of the nineteenth century of the Christian era. As previously remarked, his complexion told that he was a sang mêlée—not a direct cross—but one in which at least seven distinct strains of blood intermingled, if they did not perfectly blend. Save when in high health and spirits, and weather extremely cold—at which times he was pale—his color was a rich, light bronze, like that of the youngsters one sees in such profusion, scampering like mad through the narrow and tortuous streets of Syrio-Arabic cities, demanding “Bucksheesh” from every Frank they see. With his large, broad, high brain, arched and open brow, his massive, elliptical and angular top-head, he was a marked man, and when his soul was at high tide, and his deep and mystic inspirations thrilled and filled him to the brim, his eye beamed with unearthly fire, glowed like the orbs of a Pythoness, and scintillated a light peculiarly its own. Whoever saw him then never forgot the sight, for he seemed to have the power of glancing instantaneously through the world—Time, space—everything and everywhere. Judging by his speech alone, one would have thought his education might not have been altogether neglected, but that it certainly was of a kind and quality entirely different from that usually received in Christian lands. There was very little, if any, polish about him—not that he lacked urbanity, courteousness or smoothness—not that he was rude or rough in any way, but his placidity was that of the river, forest or lake, not that of the boudoir or the schools of politesse. He was extremely enigmatical, and the most so when he appeared most frank in all that pertained to his inner life and world; and was more sphynx-like to me at the end of ten years’ intimacy than on the first day of our acquaintance. He had, though poor, travelled extensively. Oriental in personal appearance and physical tastes, he was still more so in disposition and mind, and in all that pertained to dreamery, philosophy and the affections.

With this description of the principal personage of this narrative, I now proceed to sketch another part of the man.

FOOTNOTE:

[ [1] ] The same personage is the principal character in the romance of “Dhoula Bel, or the Magic Globe,” which will ere long be published.

[CHAPTER II.]
his early days—the strange legend.

And there sat the man at the side of the road—sat there mournfully, silently weeping—the strange man!—as if his heart would break, and not from slight cause was he sorrowing. Not from present want of food, shelter, or raiment, but because his heart was full, and its fountains overflowing. The world had called him a genius, and as such had petted, praised, admired, and starved him all at once; but not one grain of true sympathy all the while; not a single spark of true disinterested friendship. The great multitude had gathered about him as city sight-seers gather round the last new novelty in the museum—a child with two heads, a dog with two tails, or the Japanese mermaid—duly compounded of codfish and monkey—and then, satisfied with their inspection, they turned from, and left him in all his deep loneliness and misery, all the more bitter for the transient light of sympathy thrown momentarily upon him. Genius must be sympathetically treated, else it eats its own heart, and daily dies a painful, lingering death.

Throwing aside all his theories about preëxistence, and triple life, as being too recondite for either my readers or myself, we come at once to his natural, matter-of-fact history. At eight years of age he had been christened in the Roman Catholic Church, by the name of Beverly. From his father our hero inherited little save a lofty spirit, an ambitious, restless nature, and a susceptibility to passional emotions, so great that it was a permanent and positive influence during his entire life. His fifth year began and completed the only school education the boy ever had, and for all his subsequent attainments in that direction he was indebted to his own unaided exertions. His father loved him little; his mother loved him as the apple of her eye—and all the more because being born with a full and complete set of teeth, old gossips and venerable grey-beards augured a strange and eventful career; beside which, certain singular spectral visitations and experiences of his mother, ere, and shortly after the young eyes opened on the world, convinced her that he was born to no common destiny—much of which has already been detailed at length in “Dhoula Bel: or the Magic Globe.” Two or three and twenty years prior to the opening of this tale, there lived at what then was No. 70 Canal street, New York city, a woman whose complexion was that of a Mississippi octoroon. She was a native of Vermont, had the reputation of being the most beautiful woman in the State, if indeed she was surpassed anywhere. Her mind was as rich in its stores and resources as her person was in feminine graces. Her life up to that time had been a checkered, and in the main, a very unhappy one, for her refinement, nature, education, character and acquirements, were such as to demand a broader, higher, better social sphere than what, from pecuniary want, she now occupied and moved in. Another cause of unrest was that she was maritally mismatched altogether, for her husband, after years of absence, during which she had deemed him dead, and contracted a second alliance with the father of her boy, had suddenly returned, and never from that moment did she receive one particle of what her heart yearned for—that domestic love and sympathy, ever the matron’s due, and which alone can render life a blessing, and smooth the rugged, thorny pathway to the tomb.

Flora Beverly claimed immediate kindred with the red-skinned sons of the northern wilderness, but that blood in her veins mingled with the finer current derived from her ancestor, the Cid—a strain of royal blood that in the foretime had nerved noble-souled men to deeds of valor, and fired the souls of Spanish poets to lofty achievements in the rosy fields of immortal song. She had been tenderly reared—perhaps too much so—for her strange and wonderful beauty, flashing out upon the world from her large and lustrous eyes, and beaming forth from every feature and movement, had been such that she had become marked in community from early childhood, and her parents, looking upon her as a special providence to them, had unwisely cultured qualities in her that had better have been held in abeyance. By over-care and morbid solicitude they had nearly spoiled God’s handiwork, and she grew up an imperious, self-willed, exacting, and sensitive queen. She married, and expected to find herself the centre of a realm of unalloyed joy and delight, wherein her reign would be undisputed. The man she wedded took her for her beauty, expecting to realize a perfect heaven in its possession. Both were bitterly disappointed. The man could appreciate only the external and superficial qualities and excellences of his wife, while her inner, higher, better self—her soul, was a terra incognita to him, which, like so many other husbands, he never even once dreamed of exploring; he had no idea whatever of the inestimable qualities of her heart, intellect, or spirit, and he had never found out that her body is the least a woman gives away—that she has gifts so regal for the man she loves, that glittering diamonds are sparkless, insipid, valueless in comparison.

And so, the first delirious joy-month over, they both began to awaken—the man to the fact that to him his wife was a “very pretty doll,” the woman that her husband was—a brute, whose soul slept soundly beneath the coverlets of sense, and herself its victim and minister. It was horrible; she lost heart, she despised this surface man, and sunk and lost bloom beneath the terrible weight of the discovery and its fearful results. Married, she had expected to move in a sphere very far above that which, by the laws of moral and mental gravity, she was compelled to occupy. Her horizon was henceforth to be bounded by that of her master and his associates. Her husband was vain of his conquest, and one of his greatest joys was found in parading and showing off her beauty to the best advantage, like a jockey does a fine horse—and feeling, jockey-like the while, “all this is mine!” Neither himself nor his associates in life could appreciate that more than royal loveliness which dwells within the breasts of educated and refined women—a beauty which eye hath never seen, which eye can never see, but which, like soft and delicate perfume, radiates from such to all who are fine enough to perceive it.

As a matter of course, she soon grew weary and disgusted with this surface-life. Feeling that she was unappreciated by the living thousands around her, she, with the true instinct of the Indian, spurned their contact, fell back upon herself, and then, with every tendril of her soul, turned and yearned toward the teeming millions of the dead. She invoked them to her aid, and religiously believed her prayers answered—as I do—and delivering herself up wholly to their weird care and guidance, thenceforward lived a double life—a shadow-life in the world, a real life in the phantom land. True to the natural instinct of the human heart, just in proportion as she withdrew from the world, so did she approach that awful veil which is only uplifted for the sons and daughters of sorrow and the starbeam. She became a seeress, a dreamer, and, in what to her was an actual, positive communion with the lordly ghosts of the dead nations, whereof, in both lines, her forefathers had been chiefs, she sought that sympathy in her sorrows, and in her strange internal joys—that mysterious balm of healing, which the red man in his religion—or superstition, if you will—believes can only thus and there be had. And she found what she sought, or what to the spontaneous and impulsive soul amounts to the same thing, believed that she had found it. At first she had some difficulty in correctly translating into her human language of heart and word that which she took to be the low whisperings of the aërial dwellers of the viewless kingdom of Manatou. She ardently longed for a more open intercourse with the dead, and, as herein stated, as well as in “Dhoula Bel,” was gratified.

Poor Flora! half-child of Nature and of Art, was destined to bear a child, and that child the man of these volumes—in the very midst of the conditions here sketched, under these conditions he was born.

As already stated, beneath this woman’s heart there slumbered the fires of a volcano, intense, fervent, quenchless, the result alike of her peculiar ancestry and peculiar training. Her full soul became re-incarnate in the son she bore; and with it she endowed the child with her own intense desire to love and be loved; all her mystic spirit, her love of mystery; all her unearthly aspiration toward unearthly association; all her resolute, yet half-desponding, quick, impulsive, passionate, generous nature; all, all, found in him a local habitation and a name, and that name was Genius.

Thus moulded came he into the world, doomed from birth to strange and bitter experiences—to face alone and unfriended the bitter blasts of wintry storms, and the burning heats of summer suns; to cling to the hope of speedy death, all the while grasping existence with ten-fold the tenacity of others, yet daily pleading for life—strange contradiction!—dear life, at the world’s stern bar; pleading daily, yet as often losing his suit, and being by that world sentenced to be utterly cast adrift on the fickle tide of Fate and Chance, and that too with a mind and body acutely sensitive, and constantly at war with each other.

Compensation is a universal principle. While so alive to pain, he was equally so to the jouissant emotions, and his delights, when they came, were keen, fine, exquisite, to a remarkable degree. As throwing some light on the character of this man—who is not a myth, but an actual existence—I will here repeat the substance of an account himself gave of his early life and weird and ghostly experiences. He had been questioned in regard to certain powers of an unusual kind attributed to him, and the following reply was elicited:

“When I was a very young child, my mother dwelt in a large, sombre and gloomy old stone house on Manhattan Island. At that time New York was about one quarter as large as at present, and that house was a long way out of town. It still stands in the same place, but the city has grown miles beyond it. The building, in times of pestilence, fever, smallpox, and cholera, had been used as a pest-house, or lazaretto, and in it thousands have died of those diseases, and from there, in my fifth year, the soul of my mother took its everlasting flight.

“Scores of people there were ready to testify on oath that the old house was haunted by ghosts, who strode grimly and silently through the solemn, stately halls of that massive island castle. But it generally happened that the witnesses of these spectral visitants had neither time nor inclination to cultivate their acquaintance—save one, an apothecary named Banker, who cursed and swore at one of them on a certain occasion, whereupon the ghost slapped his face, and completely turned and withered his lower jaw by way of punishment for the leze majeste. With this exception, those who met one of these ghosts, invariably had urgent business in an opposite direction, and it was quite surprising with what wonderful speed lame persons got over the ground whenever a ghost was declared to be around, by those who being born with a ‘caul’ over the face, were thereby endowed with the spectre-seeing faculty; and as such gifted ones could see, I used often to wish I could meet some who had been born with two cauls, so that they might speak to as well as see them.

“Some people do not believe in ghosts. I do, ghosts of various kinds. I. It is possible to project an image of one’s self, which image may be seen by another however distant. II. The phantasmal projections of heated fancy—spectral illusion—the results of cerebral fever, as in drunken delirium, opium and other fantasies. III. The spirits of dead men. IV. Spiritual beings from other planets. V. Beings from original worlds, who have not died, but who, nevertheless, are of so fine texture as to defy the material laws which we are compelled to obey, and who, coming under the operation of those that govern disembodied men, are enabled to do all that they do. VI. I believe that human beings, by the action of desperate, wicked wills, frequently call into being spectral harpies—the horrible embodiment of their evil thoughts. These are demons, subsisting so long as their creators are under the domination of the evil. VII. I believe in a similar creation emanating from good thoughts of good people, lovely out-creations of aspiring souls. Remember these seven. This is a clear statement of the Rosicrucian doctrine of the higher order of their temple. In the lower, these seven pass under the names of Gnomes, Dwarfs, Sylphs, Salamanders, Nereiads, Driads and Fays.

“One day, when I was about five years old, I returned from school, and found the clayey vestment—the fleshly form of the only friend I ever had, my mother, cold and prone in the arms of icy cold, unrelenting Death. Ah! what a shock was that to my poor little childish heart! She had that morning grown weary of earth, had serenely, trustingly closed her darling eyes, and I was left alone to battle single-handed against four mighty and powerful enemies—Prejudice, Poverty and Organization were three of them. The fourth is almost too terrible, too wild and fanciful to be credited, yet I will state it:

THE LEGEND.

“Many, very many centuries ago, there lived on the soil where in subsequent ages stood Babylon and Nineveh the first, a mighty king, whose power was great and undisputed. He was wise, well-learned and eccentric. He had a daughter lovely beyond all description. She was as learned as she was beautiful. Kings and princes sought her hand in vain; for her father had sworn to give her to no man save him who should solve a riddle which the king himself would propound, and solve it at the first trial, under penalty of decapitation on failure. The riddle was this, ‘What are the three most desirable things beneath the sun, that are not the sun, yet which dwell within the sun?’ Thousands of the gay, the grave, the sage and ambitious who essayed the solution, and failed, left the presence to mount the horse of death.

“In the meantime, proclamation was made far and wide, declaring that robes of crimson, chains of gold, the first place in the kingdom and the princess should be the reward of the lucky man.

“One day there came to the court a very rich and royal embassy from the King of the South, seeking an alliance, and propounding new treaties; and among the suite was a young Basinge poet, who acted as interpreter to the embassy. This youth heard of the singular state of things, learned the conditions, and got the riddle by heart. For four long months did he ponder upon and study it, revolving in his mind all sorts of answers, but without finding any that fulfilled the three requisites.

“In order to study more at his ease, the youth was in the habit of retiring to a grotto behind the palace, and there repeating to himself the riddle and all sorts of possible responses thereto. The princess hearing of this, determined to watch him, and did so. Now, poets must sing, and this one was particularly addicted to that sort of exercise; and he made it a point to imagine all sorts of perfections as residing in the princess, and he sung his songs daily in the grotto—sung himself desperately in love with his ideal, and so inflamed the girl herself, who had managed to both see and hear him, herself unseen, that she loved him dearer than life. Here, then, were two people made wretched by a whim.

“Love and song are very good in their places, but, for a steady diet, are not comparable to many other things; and, as this couple fed on little else, they both pined sadly and rapidly away.

“At length, one day, the youth fell asleep in the grotto, and his head rested directly over a fissure in the rock through which there issued a very fine and subtle vapor, which had the effect of throwing the young man in a trance, during which he fancied he saw the princess herself, unveiled, and more lovely than the flowers that bloomed in the king’s garden. He also thought he saw an inscription, which bade him despair not, but TRY! and, at the same time, there flowed into his mind this sentence, which subsequently became the watchword of the mystic fraternity which, for some centuries, has been known as that of the Rosie Cross—‘There is no difficulty to him who truly wills.’ Along with this there came a solution of the king’s riddle, which he remembered when he awoke, and instantly proclaimed his readiness to attempt that which had cost so many adventurers their lives.

“Accordingly, the grandest preparations—including a man with a drawn blade ready to make the poet shorter by the head if he failed—were made, and, at an appointed hour, all the court, the princess included, convened in the largest hall of the palace. The poet advanced to the foot of the throne, and there knelt, saying, ‘O king, live for ever! What three things are more desirable than Life, Light and Love? What three are more inseparable? and what better cometh from the sun, yet is not the sun? O king! is thy riddle answered?’ ‘True!’ said the king; ‘you have solved it, and my word shall be kept!’ And he straightway gave commands to have the marriage celebrated in royal style, albeit, through the influence of a high court official, he hated poets in general, and this one particularly so, because he thought the young man had foiled him in one of the treaties just made. Now, it so happened that the grand vizier had hoped by some means to get a solution of the riddle, and secure the great prizes for a young son of his own; and, as soon as the divan was closed, that very day, he hastened to the closet of the king, and there still further poisoned the mind of his master against the victor, by charging him with having succeeded through the aid of sorcery, which so enraged the king that he readily agreed to remove the claimant by means of a speedy, secret, and cruel death that very night, to which end the poet was drugged in his wine at the evening banquet, conveyed to a couch openly, and almost immediately thereafter removed to the chamber allotted to the refractory servants of the court. This apartment was under ground, and the youth, being thrown violently on the floor, revived, and was astonished to find himself bound hand and foot in presence of the king, his vizier, a few soldiers, and—death; for he saw at a glance that his days were numbered. He defended himself from the charge of sorcery, but in vain. He was doomed to die, and the order given, when, just as the blow was about to fall, there appeared the semblance of a gigantic hand, moving as if to stay the uplifted blade; but too late. The sword fell, and, as it reached the neck of the victim, he uttered the awful words, ‘I curse ye all who—’ the rest of the sentence was spoken in eternity; but there came a clamor and a clangor as of a thousand protesting spectral voices, and one of them said, in tones of thunder, ‘This youth, by persistence of will, had unbarred the gates between this world and that of mystery. He was the first of his and thy race that ever achieved so great an honor. And ye have slain him, and he hath cursed thee, by reason of which thou, O king! and thou, O vizier! and the dead man, have all changed the human for another nature. The first shall go down the ages, transmigrating from form to form. Thou, O vizier! shall also exist till thou art forgiven;—DHOULA BEL shall be thy name; and thou shalt tempt the king through long ages, and be foiled whenever the youth—who shall be called the STRANGER—shall so will, for the sake of the love he bore thy daughter. This drama shall last and be until a son of Adam shall wed with a daughter of Ish, or thou, king, in one of the phases of thy being, shall love, and be truly, fully loved again, and for thyself alone. An eternity may elapse ere then!’ ”

“Ask me not,” said the young Beverly, “why, but believe me when I say that I know that ages ago I was that king; that the Stranger has been seen by my mother; that Dhoula Bel still haunts and tempts me for the sin of ages. I know the fate impending over me, and that in this my present form I am a neutral being, for whom there is no hope save through the union of myself, a son of Adam’s race, with a daughter of Ish, one not of Adam’s race.... This, then, is the dreadful fate to which I was left so pitilessly exposed on the morning that my mother died on Manhattan Island—left to pay the penalty of a crime committed thousands of years ago.”

[CHAPTER III.]
A SPECTRAL VISITANT.

It must be confessed that this was a singular story, and smelled very strongly of either Hartz-mountainism or its equivalent, imagination. He continued his story thus:

“I did not know all this at five years old, of course. The only thing I did fully comprehend was the loss of my mother—her strange silence—the woeful look of those who hugged my little head and said ‘Poor child!’ I tried hard to be manly and not cry, as they bade me, but it was useless, and the tears welled up in floods from my poor little childish heart. Have you ever lost a mother?

“As I nestled on the bed where she lay so very still, I asked the bystanding mourners where the talking part of my mother had gone to? If she would never talk to, love and pet me any more? and they said ‘Never more,’ and they repeated that dreadful but untrue refrain till my poor heart was full almost to bursting, with its load and pressure of grief; and then I threw myself upon her dear body, and cried till tears refused to flow, for I had lost my mother, sirs—I had lost my mother! Would that I could weep now as I did then; it would relieve my over-burdened heart. But I cannot, for the tear fountain seldom thaws. The floods still gather and well up, but they freeze ere they reach the surface, and the heart strings snap and crack, but they will not break. I wish they would, so that I might join, even for a while, that dear mother whom I loved so well.

“Childhood’s griefs are written with a feather, upon warm parchment, with stainless ink; but the heart’s greater woes are burned into the memory with a fiery iron stylus; the first lines speedily wear away; the last are ineffaceable. As I lay upon the cold breast of my darling mother, a woman said to me, ‘Do not cry, poor child! She is happy now! She has just gone up, on her way to heaven!’ And I believed what that woman said; and I looked out through the deep foliage of the trees hard by; looked eagerly up into the sky, expecting to see her ascending soul; and as my eye caught the shadowy fleece of a melting silvery cloud, I thought and believed it to be my mother’s sainted soul. I half believe so still; for as the cloud vanished into nothingness on the breast of the blue, I distinctly heard a voice, gentle, soft, and sweetly mournful, like unto the dying notes of a wind-harp, lightly touched by the zephyr’s breath, whisper in my ear these words—which at that time I could not fully comprehend—‘Lonely one of the ages! there may be rest for thee in the life thou’rt now commencing. Let thy motto be—TRY! Despond not, but ever remember that how bitter soever our lot may be, that despite it all, WE MAY BE HAPPY YET! Peace, poor child! Thou’rt watched and guarded by thy mother!’ ‘and the stranger,’ added another, and more silvery voice from out the deep stillness of that noon-tide heaven. I knew that mystic voice—the first one—and felt that it was from beyond Time’s threshold. I trusted it’s sacred words of promise, for I had, child as I was, an unshaken faith, an intuition, if you will, that instant flowing to me, that my blessed mother still lived.

“From that hour commenced a strange, double existence to and in me. Two instances, perfectly true in all respects, I will relate, either of which forever settled in my mind that some human beings consciously survive the ordeal of death. Not long after my irreparable loss, I, along with several other children, went to bed in the roof chamber of that dark old house. Something had occurred of a merry turn, and we were all brimful of joy and glee, and our mirth was as loud as it dared be for fear of the ogres down stairs, who had a bad habit of enforcing silence through the medium of sundry straps and birch twigs. In the very midst of the uproar the bed-clothes were slowly, carefully lifted from off us by agencies totally invisible. We pulled them back; but again and again they were removed, and the movement was accompanied by a din and clatter, as if fifty cannon balls were rolling on the floor; and it immediately brought the ogres and their straps from down stairs to see what was the matter. So far as terror permitted we explained, whereupon the ogres looked scaredly wise, readjusted the quilts and retreated. No sooner had they left than the cannon balls began again to roll over the floor, and mustering courage to rise and grapple for the coverlet, which had again been pulled from us, I clearly and distinctly saw a female figure calmly standing at the foot of the bed, but not upon the floor, for she floated like a vapor on the air. There was but little, if any, light in the room, save that which surrounded, and appeared to emanate from the spectral figure. She stood in the midst of a silvery or phosphoric haze. It was by no means phantasmal in appearance, but so clear, sharp, well defined did the apparition seem, that to this day I remember distinctly the figures on what appeared to be the dress she wore, which fact involves a mystery no psychologist has yet been able to fathom satisfactorily. The children who also saw this sight were terrified; I was not, for I felt she would not harm me, for the reason that mothers love their offspring, and that figure was my mother.

“Some considerable time elapsed after this. I had grown into a stout and active boy, having already drifted for some years up and down the world, and once found myself registered as cabin boy on board the brig Phœbe, of New Bedford, whereof one Alonzo Baker was captain—not of New Bedford—but the brig.

“In this vessel I served for several months, to the satisfaction of no one, myself included, being too small, weak and delicate for the arduous duties required of me, and consequently had to pay the usual penalty.

“Sailors, to a man, are superstitious, though less so now than in the days whereof I am speaking. Still, at present, it is not hard, in spite of the march of intellect, to find sailors who, between the dog-watch and eight bells, will spin you a yarn under the weather rail that will make a man’s hair stand on end like hairs on an enraged kitten.

“On board the Phœbe there were several old salts, and many were the tales they told of the ghosts of murdered sailors, appearing in the midst of dreadful storms, to encourage foremast Jacks, and frighten the souls of guilty mates and captains; and of course all this tended to deepen the vein of superstition and mysticism running through me. Often have I been apprized of the presence and power of the dead or of those who never die, and, when tempted to share the dangerous pleasures of my older comrades, been mysteriously saved.

“Sailors, like everybody else, are fond of power, and delight in lording it over those whom chance or accident places in their power; and on every vessel there is one man who is sure to be the butt and target for petty tyranny and abuse. On board the Phœbe this fell to my lot; and not being able to forcibly resist, I took care to hide in my chest about a gallon of rum, into which about half an ounce of croton oil, from the medicine chest had previously been poured. I labelled the jug ‘Poison.’ Croton oil is the most infamously active purgative known. The sailors found the jug, read the label—didn’t believe it—drank the liquor, and were actively engaged for several hours thereafter, as a consequence. A more earnest, swift-moving set of men were never seen. They had no relish for supper that night. They beat me unmercifully, but I was revenged. Still they abused me, until one day a sailor tweaked my nose in the galley, and for his pains received half a gallon of hot lard in the waist-band, which troubled him wonderfully.... At last I meditated suicide as a relief, and, in a paroxysm of rage and despair, such as boys only are subject to, actually ran aft to accomplish it by leaping over the taffrail into the surging sea, when I was arrested by a narrow blast of warm—almost hot air, which thrilled me to the very centre of my being, and almost pinned me to the deck, while at the same time there flowed into my soul an eloquent and indignant protest against my supreme folly, accompanied by the spoken words, ‘Be patient! TRY!’

“It is impossible to attribute all these things to imagination.

“One evening, a long time after the occurrence just related, a company of ladies and gentlemen, in a house situated near the observatory, Portland, Maine, were conversing upon the general subject of ghosts, and rewards and punishments after death. When we sat down there were thirteen persons in the room, and thirteen persons only. We became deeply absorbed in the discussion, indeed so much so, that the host gave the servant strict orders not to disturb us, and to refuse admission to any person whatever. And thus we all talked freely, the servant seated in the hall, close by the door. No one was admitted. Presently one person, by reason of his eloquence and venerable appearance, engrossed all our attention by the thrilling things he told, although he did not join the conversation till over an hour after we had begun it; nor did his conversation appear at all intrusive. He was the fourteenth person, although we did not realize the fact till we were separating, and he had disappeared. Upon inquiry no one knew him, had ever seen him before, or observed his departure—not even the servant, who declared that for two hours no one had passed him either way. It was voted ‘very strange,’ and that for our own credit sake the matter should be ‘hushed up;’ but we agreed to meet again at the same house, that day-week, to discuss the matter, and compare opinions arrived at in the interim.”

[CHAPTER IV.]
A VERY STRANGE STORY—ETTELAVAR!

“On the appointed evening a select party of us met pursuant to agreement; but not one had reached a solution of the mystery. In those days the impostor Davis had not foisted his blasphemous absurdities on the world; nor had his peculiar system of morals made rogues of the one half of his deluded followers, or shameless harlots of the other; nor had lunatic asylums then been packed, as they have since, with sufferers ruined by his teachings; nor were graveyards dotted with the mounds raised by weeping friends over loved ones driven to suicide by his doctrines. In those days a man’s wife was comparatively safe, nor were divorces half so common as they have since become. In those days husbands did not sneak off to Indiana, and by blank perjury procure divorce in order that they might revel in barefaced, shameless, open lust with their worthy paramours. In those days spiritualism had not broken in on the world, nor had the goblin philosophy made millions of fools and idiot fanatics out of material that God created for better purposes. In those days Joe Smith had not convinced thousands that harlotry is the straightest road to heaven; nor had Noyes founded his huge religious brothel in the centre of the State, contaminating the country for leagues around; and the handy system of ghostology, with its hundred truths and thousand falsehoods, had not then afforded a ready explanation of mysteries such as those I have recounted; nor had any man dared claim to be the confidential secretary of Almighty God.

“On the night in question our conversation became, if possible, more interesting and absorbing than on the first occasion, owing to the novel fillip it had then received. So absorbed did I become during the evening, that on one or two occasions I partially lost myself in a sort of semi-mesmeric coma, which gradually deepened as the discussion waxed warmer, until my lower limbs grew cold, and a chilling numbness crept upon me, creating such a terror that I resolved to make my condition known, even at the risk of interrupting the discussion.

“I made the trial, and found, to my consternation, that I could not utter a syllable—I could not move an inch. Horror! The company were so engrossed with the matter before them, that no notice was taken of any change that might have been perceptible in me; nor did one person there suspect that I was not attentively drinking in the discourse.

“With inexpressible alarm, I felt that life itself was fast ebbing from me, and that death was slowly and surely grasping, clutching, freezing my vitals. I was dying. Presently—it appeared as if a long interregnum had occurred between the last previous conscious moment, and the present instantaneous, but positive agony—a sudden, sharp, tingling pang, like that of hot needles thrust in the flesh, shot through my brain. This was followed by a sinking sensation, as if the body had resigned itself to passive dissolution, and then came, with electric rapidity, a succession of the most cruel agonies ever endured by mortal man. When it ceased consciousness had ceased also, and I fell to the floor as one suddenly dead, to the amazement of the company, as was afterwards declared.

“How long this physical inanition lasted, I cannot now say, but during it the spiritual part of me was roused to a tenfold degree of activity, consciousness and power; for it saw things in a new and cryptic light, and far more distinctly than it ever had through the bodily eyes. An increase of hearing power accompanied this accretion of sight, and I heard a voice, precisely like that heard when my mother died, and when about to throw myself into the sea, which said, ‘Awake! a lesson awaits you;’ and with this there came a partial rousing from the lethargy, and I was led upstairs and threw myself upon a sofa, mechanically, at the same time fixing my eyes upon the bald white face of a rare old Flemish clock that occupied the entire southern angle of the room. Here I was left alone by my friends, who again resumed their conversation in the parlor below.

“Gradually the old clock-face seemed to clarify and expand, until, no longer obstructed by substance, I gazed out, and down, and up, through an avenue of the most astonishing light I had ever beheld. It seemed to me that I no longer occupied my body, but that, freed from flesh and time, I had become a denizen of Eternity; and on a fleecy vapor I was sustained in mid-air by the potent arm of a strange-looking old man—the veritable and precise image of him who, ten days before, had occasioned us such a fright by his mysterious conversations and evanishment. He told me not to fear, but to repose implicit confidence in myself and him; that he would not injure me, but do me good; that his name was Ettelavar; that his years were ages long; that he was the companion of those who die—who die, and live again—and of those who never taste of death. All this, and more, he told me; and he said that his design was to serve both himself and me; that he was familiar with certain mighty secrets, that had been claimed to be possessed, through many ages, by the wise and learned of earth—the Narek El Gebel, the Hermetists, the Pythagoreans, the three temples of the Rosie Cross, the mediæval and modern Rosicrucians, and the scattering delvers after mystery in all ages, times, and places. He said that among the things that I might learn from him, were the priceless secret of compounding the Elixir of Life, the drinking of which, by mortals, would confer perpetual youth and surprising beauty. Then there was the Lethean Draught, and whomsoever drank thereof, forthwith forgot all care, was oblivious to all that concerned the Future, and lived intensely in the Present. Then there was the Water of Love, and whoever drank thereof became irresistibly magnetic to the opposite sex, and could kindle affection in the heart of ice by mere personal presence. Then there was the Wondrous Stone of the Philosophers, not capable of transmuting, by a touch, whole tons of grossest substance into solid, shining gold, but of making it chemically. Then there was the Magic Crystal Ball, in which the gazer could behold whatever he wished to, that was then transpiring on this earth, or any of the planets. ‘All this knowledge,’ said he, ‘I will expound to you, on certain conditions to be hereafter mentioned.’

“I relate these things in the briefest possible manner, and make no allusions to my feelings during the time I listened to the strange being, Ettelavar, further than to remark, that during the—temptation, shall it be called?—I seemed to be hovering in the aërial expanse, and realized a fullness and activity of life never realized before, and knew for the first time what it was to be a human being. My freed spirit soared away into the superincumbent ether, and far, very far, beneath us rolled the great revolving globe; while far away in the black inane, twinkled myriads of fiery sparks—the starry eyes of God, looking through the tremendous vault of Heaven. Picture to yourself a soul, quitting earth, perhaps forever, and hovering over it like a gold-crested cloud, at set of sun, when all the winds are hushed to sleep on the still and loving bosom of its protecting God, and thine!

“By the exercise of a power to me unknown, Ettelavar arrested our motion, and the cloud on which we seemed to float stood still in mid-air, and he said to me, ‘Look and learn!’

“Like busy insects in the summer sun, afar off in the distance I beheld large masses of human beings toiling wearily up a steep ascent, over the summit of which there floated heavily, thick, dense, murky, gloom-laden clouds. Crimson and red on their edges were they, as if crowned with thunder, and their bowels overcharged with lightnings; and their sombre shadows fell upon the plains below, heavy and pall-like, even as shrouds on the limbs of beauty, or the harsh critic’s sentence upon the first fruits of budding and aspiring genius. ‘It is nothing but a crowd,’ said I; and the being at my side repeated, as if in astonishment, ‘Nothing but a crowd? Boy, the destinies of nations centre in a crowd. Witness Paris. Look again!’ Obeying mechanically, I did so, and soon beheld a strange commotion among the people; and I heard a wail go up—a cry of deep anguish—a sound heavily freighted with human woe and agony. I shuddered.

“On the extreme apex of the mountain stood a colossal monument, not an obelisk, but a sort of temple, perfect in its proportions, and magnificent to the view. This edifice was surmounted by a large and highly polished golden pyramid in miniature. On all of the faces of this pyramid was inscribed the Latin word Felicitas; I asked for an explanation from my guide, but instead of giving it, he placed his air-like hand upon my head, and drawing it gently over my brow and eyes, said, ‘Look!’

“Was there magic in his touch? It really seemed so, for it increased my visual capacity fifty-fold, and on again turning to the earth beneath me, I found my interest almost painfully excited by a real drama there and then enacting. It was clearly apparent that the great majority of the people were partially, if not wholly blind; and I observed that one group, near the centre of the plain below the mountain, appeared to be under much greater excitement than most of the others, and their turbulence appeared to result from the desire of each individual to reach a certain golden ball and staff which lay on a cushion of crimson velvet within the splendid open-sided monument on the mountain. In the midst of this lesser crowd, energetically striving to reach the ascending path, was one man who seemed to be endowed with far more strength and resolution—not of body, but of purpose—than those immediately around him. Bravely he urged his way toward the mountain’s top, and, after almost incredible efforts, succeeded. Exultingly he approached the temple, by his side were hundreds more; he outran them, entered, reached forth to seize the ball and sceptre—it seemed that the courageous man must certainly succeed—his fingers touched the prize, a smile of triumph illumined his countenance, and then suddenly went out in the blight of death, for he fell to the earth from a deadly blow, dealt by one treacherous hand from behind, while others seized and hurled him down the steep abyss upon which the temple abutted, and he was first dashed to pieces and then trampled out of existence by the iron heels of advancing thousands—men who saw but pitied not, rather rejoicing that one rival less was in existence.

“ ‘Is it possible,’ cried I, internally, ‘that such hell-broth of vindictiveness boils in human veins?’

“ ‘Alas, thou seest!’ replied Ettelavar, by my side. ‘Learn a lesson,’ said he, ‘from what you have seen. Fame is a folly, not worth the having when obtained. ‘Felicitas’ is ever ahead, never reached, therefore not to be looked for. Friendship is an empty name, or convenient cloak which men put on to enable them to rob with greater facility. No man is content to see another rise, except when such rising will assist his own elevation; and the man behind will stab the man in front, if he stands in his way. Human nature is infantile, childish, weak, passionate and desperately depraved, and as a rule, they are the greater villains who assume the most sanctity; they the most selfish who prate loudest of charity, faith and love. I begin my tutelage by warning, therefore arming you, against the world and those who constitute it. If you wish to truly rise, you must first learn to put the world and what it contains at its proper value. Remember, I who speak am Ettelavar. Awake!’

“Like the sudden black cloud in eastern seas, there came a darkness before me; my eyes opened, and fell upon the old clock face. Its hands told me that it was exactly thirteen minutes since I had marked the hour on the dial. Since that hour I have had much similar experience, and it is this that affords ground for the unusual powers in certain respects, not claimed by, but attributed to me.” ...

Such was the substance of the young man’s narrative, in answer to questions propounded to him long before the date at which he is introduced to the reader.

[CHAPTER V.]
LOVE. EULAMPÉA[2]—THE BEAUTIFUL.

The golden sun was setting, and day was sinking beneath his crimson coverlets in the glowing west. The birds, on thousand green boughs, were singing the final chorus of the summer opera; the lambs were skipping homeward in the very excess of joy; while the cattle on the hills lowed and bellowed forth their thanksgiving to the viewless Lord of Glory. Man alone seemed unconscious of his duty and the blessings he enjoyed. Toil-weary farmers were slowly plodding their way supper and bed-ward, and all nature seemed to be preparing to enjoy her bath of rest. Still sat the wanderer by the highway side; still fell his tears upon the grateful soil; and as the journeyers home and tavern-ward passed him by, many were the remarks they made upon him, careless whether he heard them or not. Some in cruel, heartless mockery and derision, some few in pity, and all in something akin to surprise, for men of his appearance were rarely seen in that neighborhood. At last there came along three persons, two of whom were unmistakably Indians, and the third, a girl of such singular complexion, grace, form, and extraordinary facial beauty, it was extremely difficult to ethnologically define what she was. This girl was about fourteen; the boy who accompanied her and the grey-haired old Indian by her side, was apparently about twelve years old. This last was the first to notice the stranger.

“Oh, Evlambéa,” said he, “see! there’s a man crying, and I’m going to help him!” The boy spoke in his own vernacular, for he was a full blood of the Oneida branch of the Mohawks, fearless, honorable, quick, impulsive, and generous as sunlight itself. To see distress and fly to its relief was but a single thing for him, and used to be with his people until improved and “civilized” with bad morals and worse protection. The Indian was Ki-ah-wah-nah (The Lenient and Brave) chief of the Stockbridge section of the Mohawks. The girl, Evlambéa, nominally passed for his grandchild, but such was not the case, for although she might well be taken for a fourth blood, she really had not a trace of Indian about her, further than the costume, language, and general education and habit. Her name was modern Greek, or Romaic, but her features and complexion no more resembled that of the pretty dwellers on Prinkipo or the shores of the Bosphorus, than that of the Indians or Anglo Saxon. Many years previous to that day, this girl, then a child of three or four months age, had been brought to the chief and left in his care for a week, by a woman clad in the garb of, and belonging to a wandering band of gipsies, who, attracted by the universal reputation of the New World, had left Bohemia and crossed the seas to reap a golden harvest. This band had held its headquarters for nearly a year on Cornhill, Utica, whence they had deployed about the country in a circle whose radius averaged one hundred and twenty miles. The woman never came back to claim the child, for the members of the band suddenly decamped after having financiered a gullible old farmer out of several thousands of dollars in gold, which they had persuaded him it was necessary that he should put in a bag and bury in the ground at a certain hour of a certain night, in order to the speedy discovery of a large mine of diamonds that was certainly upon his farm, and would as surely be brought to light when the gold was exhumed after a certain time, which time was quite long enough for the band to dig up the gold and disperse in all directions, to meet again three thousand miles away. This bit of Cornhill swindling was considered rather sharp practice, even for that locality, and ended by shrouding the girl in an impenetrable mystery, and giving to the old chief a child, who, as she expanded and grew up became quite as dear to his heart as any one of his own offspring; and in fact, by reason of her superior intelligence, she became far more so, for mind ever makes itself felt and admired. Not one of the ethnological, physical, moral, or mental characteristics which mark the Romany tribes was to be noticed in this girl, and wise people concluded that she had somewhere been stolen by the woman, who from fear or policy had left her to her fate and the good old Indian’s care.

Esthetics is not my forte, hence I shall not attempt to describe the young girl. The name she bore was marked on her clothing in Greek letters, which were afterwards rendered into English by a professor of a college whose assistance had been asked by the Indian.

Besides being known far and near as the most beautiful girl of her age, she was also distinguished as by far the most intelligent. She was undisputed queen on the Reservation, not by right, but by quiet usurpation. She looked and acted the born Empress, and her triplicate sceptre consisted of kindness, intelligence, and that nameless dignity and presence inherent in truly noble souls.

Such was the bright-shining maiden, who, attracted by the boy’s cry and actions, now crossed over to the side of young Beverly. Observing his sorrowful appearance, she placed her soft hand tenderly upon his head, and said in tones heart-felt and deeply sympathetic, “Man of the heavy heart, why weep you here? Is your mother just dead?”

The young man raised his head, saw the radiant girl before him, and, after a moment’s hesitation, during which he shuddered as if at some painful memory, murmuring, “No; it cannot be possible!—cannot be—in this part of the world, too! no!” he replied to her, saying, “Girl, I am lonely, and that is why I weep. I am but a boy, yet the weight of years of grief rest on and bear me down. To-day is the anniversary of my mother’s death, and, when it comes, I always pass it in tears and prayer. Since she went home to heaven, I have had no true friend, and my lot and life are miserable indeed. Men call themselves my friends, and prove it by robbing me. Not long ago, there came a man to me—he was very rich—and said, ‘People tell me that you are very skillful with the sick. Come; I have a sister whom the physicians say must die. I love her. You are poor; I am rich. Save her; gold shall be yours.’ I went. She was beyond the reach of medicine, and it was possible to prolong her life only in one of two ways—either by the transfusion of blood from my veins to her own, or by the transfusion of life itself. I was young and strong, and we resolved to adopt the latter alternative, as being the only possibly effective one; and for months, during three years, I sat beside that poor sick girl, and freely let her wasted frame draw its very life by magnetically sapping my own. Finally, I began to sink with exhaustion and disease similar to her own, and, to save my life, was forced to break the magnetic cord, and go to Europe. As soon as it was severed she sunk into the grave, and then I returned, and received a considerable sum of money in the nature of a loan. This favor was granted me as a reward for my pains, time, and ruined health. I was to return it from the proceeds of a business to be immediately established. At that time I resolved to purchase a little home for those who depended on my efforts for the bread they ate, and so wrote to a man who called himself my friend, but who is the direct cause of most of the evil I have for ten years experienced. This fellow pretended to deal in lands. I put nine hundred dollars—half I had in the world—in this man’s hands, to purchase a fine little place of a few acres, which place he took me to see. I was pleased with it, and saw a home for those who would be left behind me when I was dead. A few days thereafter this ghoul came to me again, and represented that gold bullion being down he could make considerable profit for me in three days, would I make the investment. I handed over the remainder of my money. The three days lengthened into years. Instead of being a capitalist he was a bankrupt—was not in the gold business, and had no more control of the land he showed me than he had of Victoria’s crown. Meantime, my furniture was seized; I lost my name with the friend who advanced the sum; I became ill, and, in my agony, called this man a swindler. To silence me, he gave me a check on a bank. I presented it. ‘No funds!’ And yet he dared call himself an honest man. ‘You have but to unsay the harsh things said about me,’ said this semblance of a man to me one day, ‘and I am ready to pay you everything I owe.’ My mind was unsettled; I listened to him, and the result was that, by duplicity and fraud, more mean and despicable than the first, if there be a depth of villainy more profound, he obtained my signature to an acknowledgment that the money of which he had openly swindled me, then in his hands, was ‘a friendly loan.’ And then he laughed, ‘Ha! ha!’ and he laughed, ‘Ho! ho!’ at me and my misery, and actually suffered a child in our family to perish and wretchedly die for the want of food and medicine. But then he told me that he had buried it properly, respectably, up there in the cemetery, and it was the only truth I ever heard from his lips. But then he sent the funeral bills for me to pay—all the while laughing at my misery—while the lordly house he occupied was redeemed from forced sale with my money, and himself and his feasted luxuriously every day on what was the price of my heart’s blood! Still, they all laughed, ‘Ha! ha!’ and grew fat on my blood. I still have the memory of a dead child, up there in the cemetery. Poor starved child! It is no satisfaction to me to know that this man will die a disgraced pauper, dependent on charity for bread. Still less is it to realize, as I do, that the brothel and the gibbet, the gambling hell and massive prisons, are shadowed in the foreground of his line, and that it will utterly perish from off the earth in ignominy and horror. I would not have it so, but fate is fate; and I see, at least, one dangling form of his race swinging in the air! My prophetic eye beholds——”

As the man uttered these terrible sentences, he shuddered as if horror-stricken at the impending fate of this wronger of the living and the dead, and it was clear to the girl that he would have freely averted the doom, had such a thing been possible.

“Men and cliques,” said he, “have used me for their purposes—have, like this ghoul, wormed themselves into my confidence, and then, when their ends were served, have ever abandoned me to wretchedness and misery.

“Rosicrucians, and all other delvers in the mines of mystery, all dealers with the dead, all whose idiosyncracies are toward the ideal, the mystic and the sublime, are debtors to nature, and the price they pay for power is groans, tears, breaking hearts, and a misery that none but such doomed ones can either appreciate or understand. Compensation is an inexorable law of being, nor can there, by any possibility, be any evasion of it. The possession of genius is a certificate of perpetual suffering.

“You now know why I am sad, O girl of the good heart. I am weak to-night; to-morrow will bring strength again. But, see! the golden sun is setting in the west. Alas! I fear that my sun is setting also for a long, long night of wretchedness.”

“You speak well, man of the sore spirit,” replied the girl. “You speak well when you say the sun is setting; but you seem to forget that it will rise again, and shine as brightly as he does to-day! He will shine even though dark clouds hide him from us; and though you and I may not behold his glories, some one else will see his face, and feel his blessed heat. Old men tell us that the darkest hour is just before the break of day. I bid you take heart. You may be happy yet!”

“The precise formula of the Mysterious Brotherhood!—the very words uttered by the dead mother who bore me! How did this girl obtain it? When? Where? From whom?”

Beverly started, gazed into the mighty depths of her eye, was about to ask the questions suggested, but forbore.

“We may all be happy yet,” said she; “for the Great Spirit tells me so!” And she crossed her hands upon her virgin breast—breast glowing with immortal fervor and inspiration; and she threw, by a toss of the head, her long, black sea of hair behind her, and stood revealed the perfect incarnation of faith and hope, as if her upturned eyes met God’s glance from Heaven. The old chief and the boy at his side said nothing, but each instinctively folded his hands in the attitude of confidence and prayer. The combined effect of all this upon the young man was electric. The singular incident struck him so forcibly that he rose to his feet, placed his hand upon the girl’s head, uplifted his eyes and voice to heaven, and, from the depths of his soul, responded “Amen, and Amen.”

It was at this critical instant that I, the editor of these papers, chanced to come up to where this scene was being enacted. A few words sufficed for an introduction, and on that spot begun a friendship between us all that death himself is powerless to break.

Two hours thereafter, the chief, his son, the girl, the youth, were, with myself, partaking of a friendly meal at the old man’s house. After the repast was over, the conversation took a philosophic turn, in which the chief, who was a really splendid specimen of the cultivated Indian, took an active and interested part.

Presently the old people took their pipes, the younger ones went to bed, and Beverly and ’Levambea, as she was almost universally called, walked out, and sat them down beneath an old sycamore that stretched its giant limbs like the genius of protection over the cottage. There they talked gaily enough at first, but presently in a tender and pathetic strain; and it was clear that there had sprung up between them already something much warmer than friendship, yet which was not love. When they rose to enter the house, the last words uttered by the girl—uttered in the same singularly inspired strain observed on their first meeting—were, “Yes! I will love you; but not here, not now, perhaps not on this earth. Yet I will be your prop, your stay, though deep seas between us roll. Listen! When I am in danger you will know it, wherever you may be. When you are in danger you will see me. Forget not what I say. Ask me no questions. Your fate is a singular one, but not more so than my own. Good night! Good-bye! We will see each other no more at present—it is not permitted!” And without another word she abruptly left him, darted into the house, passed up the stairs, and was gone like a spirit.

Next day, at the solicitation of the chief and others who took an interest in young Beverly, he consented to go with me to my home, many leagues from that spot; and, accordingly, in due time we arrived there, and for several months he was an inmate of my house; and, while under the shadow of ill health and its consequent sympathetic state, I became intimate with many of the loftier and profound secrets of the celebrated Rosicrucian fraternity, with which he was familiar, and which he gave me liberty to divulge to a certain extent, conditioned that I forbore to reveal the locality of the lodges of the Dome, or indicate the persons or names of its chief officers, albeit, no such restriction was exacted in reference to the lesser temples of the order—covering the first three degrees in this country—to the acolytes of which the higher lodges are totally unknown. Oh! how often have I sat beside him, on the green banks of a creek that ran through my little farm, and raptly listened to the profoundest wisdom, the most exalted conceptions and descriptions of the soul, its origin, nature, powers, and its destinies—listened to metaphysical speculations that fairly racked my brain to comprehend, and all this from the lips of a man totally incapable of grappling successfully with the money-griping world of barter and of trade. Here was the most tremendous contradiction, in one man, that I had ever known or heard of. One who revelled in mental luxuries fit for an angel, yet had not forecast enough to foil a common trickster;—who blindly, and for years, reposed his whole trust in one whose sole aim was to rob him not only of his little competence, but of his character as a man—who suffered one near and dear to him to starve, literally starve to death, and then be buried, at the very moment that himself and his were luxuriating on the very money for which that man had bartered health, and almost life itself! Was it not very singular? I have wondered, time and again, how such things could be, and intensely so when he has been revealing to me some of the loftier mysteries of the Order; when talking of Apollonius of Tyanæ, the Platonists, the elder Pythagoreans; of the Sylphs, Salamanders and Glendoveers; of Cardan, and Yung-tse-Soh, and the Cabalistic Light; of Hermes Trismegistus, and the Smaragdine Tables; of sorcery and magic, white and black; of the Labyrinth, and Divine policy; of the God, and the republic of gods; of the truths and absurdities of the gold-seeking Hermetists and pseudo-Rosicrucians; of Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Cyprian, Lactantius, and the Alexandrine Clement; of Origen and Macrobius, Josephus and Philo; of Enoch and the pre-Adamite races; of Dambuk and Cekus, Psellus, Jamblichus, Plotinus and Porphyrius, Paracelsus, and over seven hundred other mystical authors.

Said he to me one day, “Do you remember laughing at me when I first began to talk about the Rosicrucians? and you asserted that, if such a fraternity existed, it must be composed either of knaves or fools, laughing heartily when informed that the order ramified extensively on both sides of the grave, and, on the other shore of time, was known in its lower degrees as the Royal Order of the Foli, and, towering infinitely beyond and above that, was the great Order of the Neridii; and that whoever, actuated by proper motives, joined the fraternity on this side of the grave, was not only assured of protection, and a vast amount of essential knowledge imparted to him here, but also of sharing a lot on the farther side of life, compared to which all other destinies were insignificant and crude. I repeat this assertion now.”

FOOTNOTE:

[2] Romaic—Ευλαμπια—Eulampía—Evlambéah. “Bright-shining.”—Lovely, mystically beautiful.

[CHAPTER VI.]
NAPOLEON III. AND THE ROSICRUCIANS—AN EXTRAORDINARY MAN AND AN EXTRAORDINARY THEORY.

Beverly continued his very singular narrative, saying:—“You have already been informed of the singular doom that hangs over me—that I am condemned to perpetual transmigrations, unless relieved by a marriage with a woman in whom not one drop of the blood of Adam circulates—and even then, the love must be perfect and mutual. Thus my chance is about as one in three hundred and ninety-six billions against, to a single one for me. This doom has brought around me, as it did around others before me, certain beings, powers, influences, and at length I became a voluntary adept in the Rosicrucian mysteries and brotherhood. How, when, or where I was found worthy of initiation, of course I am not at liberty to tell; suffice it that I belong to the Order, and have been—by renouncing certain things—admitted to the companionship of the living, the dead, and those who never die; have been admitted to the famous Derishavi-Laneh, and am familiar with the profoundest secrets of the Fakie-Deeva Records; and through life have had ever three great possibilities before me: one of these—I being a neutral soul—is that of becoming after death a chief of a supreme order, called the Light; or of its opposite, called the Shadow—to which I am tempted by invisible, but potent agencies; and the third of which is the one I dread most—the perpetuation of the doom to wander the earth for ages, in various bodies, as the result of the curse pronounced by a dying man ages ago, as you already have been told, unless I be redeemed by a true marriage with a woman in whom not one drop of the blood of Adam circulates. I desire to avoid all three if possible, and to share the lot of other men.

“I have another mysterious thing to relate to you. Doubtless you recollect that the curse was uttered by the young poet—and that the mysterious voice heard in the dungeon where he was slain, declared that thenceforth, until the doom was fully accomplished, this youth during all his ages should be known as the Stranger. Well, in the course of the centuries that rolled away, this Stranger became a member of an august Fraternity in the Heavens, known as the Power of the Light. You know, also, that I, who was the king, incurred the penalty of wandering till relieved; and you are also aware that him who was the Vizier was sentenced to a singular destiny under the name of Dhoula Bel. Well, he also became an active member of a vast Association in the Spaces, known as the Power of the Shadow. This is but one half of the mystery, for it became the object of both Dhoula Bel and the Stranger—who both knew that in my birth from the woman Flora—years before I underwent my present incarnation—that I would be in every respect a Neutral man; one having no tendencies whatever, naturally, to either good or evil, but only toward ATTAINMENT; and as such neutral man, it became possible to forego my doom, and to become supreme chief of either of the Orders named; hence both Dhoula Bel and the Stranger, beside their original, have the strong additional motive of making me subservient to their loftier views; and to achieve it, they frequently attend me in visible and invisible shapes—tempting, nearly ruining, and as often saving me from dangers worse than death itself—in what way has already been partly told, and will be hereafter seen.

“In one of my frequent sojourns in Paris, I became acquainted with a few reputed Rosicrucians, and after sounding their depths, found the water very shallow, and very muddy—as had been the case with those I met in London—Bulwer, Jennings, Wilson, Belfedt, Archer, Socher, Corvaja, and other pretended adepts—like the Hitchcocks, Kings, Scotts, and others of that ilk, on American soil. At length, there came an invitation from Baron D——t, for me to attend, and take part in, a Mesmeric Séance. I attended; and from the reputation I gained on that occasion, but a few days elapsed ere I was summoned to the Tuilleriés, by command of his majesty, Napoleon III.,[3] who for thirty-four years had been a True Rosicrucian, and whom I had before met at the same place, but on a different errand than the present. What then and there transpired, so far as myself was an actor, it is not for me to say, further than that certain experiments in clairvoyance were regarded as very successful, even for Paris, which is the centre of the Mesmeric world, and where there are hundreds who will read you a book blindfold; and two—Alexis, and Adolph Didiér—who will do the same, though the page be inclosed in the centre of a dozen boxes of metal or wood, one within the other.

“On this occasion I had played and conquered at both chess and écarte, no word being spoken, the games simultaneous, and the players in three separate rooms. There was present, also, an Italian gentleman with an unpronounceable name; a Russian Count Tsovinski, and a Madame Dablin—a mesmerist and operatic singer. After awhile his majesty asked the empress, and the general (Pellisier), who afterwards became the Duke de Malakoff, if they would submit to a trial of mesmerism by either of the three professors of the art, named. They declined; whereupon the Emperor, speaking aloud, asked ‘if any of the company were willing to test, in their own persons, the vaunted powers of his excellency, the Italian Count?’ whose methods of inducing his magnetic marvels differed altogether from those usually adopted; inasmuch as he, like Boucicault, the actor, in his famous play—‘The Phantom’—makes no passes, scarcely glances for an instant at his subjects, and invariably looks away from, not toward, them. Now, it is a well-known fact that everybody believes everybody else, save themselves, subject to mesmeric influence, as is often demonstrated at the weekly séances of the Magnetic Society, held in the Rue Grenelle St. Honore.

“At the date of this Imperial Séance, spiritualism had not yet made public pretensions in France, and although the Scotch trickster, Daniel Hume, had crossed the Atlantic, and was at that time living at Cox’s, in Jermyn street, Picadilly, London—yet he had not then obtained the notoriety that subsequently became his, nor had half Europe ran after those in whose presence tables tipped by heel, toe, and genuine spirit power. Of course, then, spiritual phenomena, so called, being then under bann, it could not be, and was not depended on as a means of explaining what there and then took place.

“ ‘With great pleasure,’ said the Count, in reply to a request to exhibit his power. ‘With great pleasure, your majesty,’ and forthwith he turned and looked straight into a massive mirror that occupied the entire space between two windows of the saloon. As he spoke it struck me that, somewhere, at some time, I had met this Italian Rosicrucian, but where, for the life of me, I could not tell; yet I was certain that I had heard that voice, and still more certain that I had beheld that strange, sweet smile.

“The Count’s position before the mirror was such that, supposing his eye had been a flame, the reflected rays would strike the forehead of one of the company fairly in the centre. The person upon whom it struck had not the least suspicion of what was being done. He did not make the discovery until it was too late, for no sooner did the operator get him fairly in focus, then he clenched his hands, looked with ten-fold earnestness at the mirror, muttered to himself a few unintelligible words, and the gentleman fell to the floor as if his heart had been perforated by a bullet, or as if he had been struck down with a club. In an instant all was confusion, everybody thinking it a fit of apoplexy, except the Emperor, the operator, myself and the Russian.

“Several went to raise him, but before they could do so he sprung to his feet, began to sing and dance—the truth, at the same time, flashed upon the company, that the phenomenon was mesmeric—and in another minute to plead for his life, as if before his judges, with the prison and the axe before him. The scene was solemn to the last degree.

“Suddenly, and without a word from the Count, the pleading changed to a musical scena; and although, at other times totally incapable of singing or playing in the least degree, he performed several difficult pieces in magnificent style, on the harp and piano, accompanying the performances vocally, and in a manner that drew involuntary plaudits from every person present.

“This part of the performance was suddenly terminated; for the sleeping subject placed himself in the exact spot in which the Italian had stood, and, like him, gazed steadily at the mirror, and in twenty seconds the man who stood in the line of reflection fell to the floor, and a lady who, in going to his assistance, chanced to strike that line, instantly seized, raised him as easily as if he had been a doll, and with him commenced a dance unique, wild and perfectly indescribable. It was infectious, for in less than half a minute seventeen persons, high lords and stately dames, were wheeling, whirling, leaping, flying about the room in wilder measures than were ever performed by mad Bachantes. They had all been magnetized by proxy.

“Astonished beyond measure at this extraordinary display, I retired, the better to watch the progress of the strange scene, to the opposite side of the saloon, and leaned carelessly against one of two colossal Japanese josses that stood there. No person was anywhere near me, and in my surprise I murmured below my breath: ‘What astonishing power!’ and am certain that a person standing close at my side could not have discerned what I said, yet nevertheless the thought was scarcely framed before the Count turned square upon his heel, advanced straight toward me, smiled sweetly, strangely, as he did so, and said: ‘All this power is yours—and much that is still more mysterious—if you but say the word!’

“ ‘What word?’ asked I, surprised that a man should so readily read my thought—for it is impossible that he could have heard my exclamation.

“ ‘That you will voluntarily join the most august fraternity that ever earth contained! Think of it! We shall meet again.’

“ ‘When? where?’ I asked hurriedly, for the august company were observing us, especially the Emperor, who, beneath his heavy brows, was evidently paying quite as much attention to us as to the wonderful things then occurring across the room.

“He did not reply directly, but, by a continuation of his breach of etiquette resumed, saying: ‘By the exercise of the power I possess, and will impart to you, conditionally; you shall be capable of depriving any man of speech, and make man, woman or child perfectly subservient to your silent command, as the people yonder are to mine. There is Jean Boyard, in this Paris, who merely looks at any small object, and makes it dance toward him. You shall exceed him fifty-fold! On the Boulevart du Temple M. Hector produces a full-blown rose from a green bud, in seven minutes; you shall be able to do it in one.

“ ‘In the Rue de Bruxelles lives a girl—Julie Vimart—who exceeds Alexis and all the other sleepers, for she beats you at chess, tells you all you know, and much that you have forgotten; you shall do all that and more. In the street Grand Père, lives a boy who brings messages from the living, in their sleep; meets and converses with your friends—when they slumber, and describes them as perfectly as the sun paint their portraits in the cameras of Talbot and Dagguerre; you shall have that power.

“ ‘In the Rue du Jour, is a Sage Femme, who cures all diseases that are curable, by a simple touch and prayer: you shall have that power greater than she can ever hope to. It is only necessary to say ‘I will have these powers!’ and they shall be yours. They all are well worth having. I learned my secret among the magi of the East—men not half so civilized as are we of the West; but who, nevertheless, know a great deal more than the sapient men of Christendom—that is, less of machinery, politics, and finance; but a great deal more of the human soul, its nature, its powers, and the methods of their developement. Instead of being surprised at modern scientific revelations, we of the True Temple——’ ‘What Temple?’ I interrupted him to ask. ‘Of the Supreme Dome of the Rosie Cross,’ said he.

“The Emperor must have heard this question and its answer, for he directly crossed over to us, and actually joined this curious tête-à-tête. The Count bowed; did not seem at all embarrassed by the presence of the son of Admiral Verhuiel, the great Dutch founder of the Second Empire—or Emperor ——.

“ ‘As I was saying,’ the Count resumed, ‘instead of being elated at what Western science has done, we are ashamed of the tardy steps of “Progress”—Progress indeed! Where is it, save in wretchedness, poverty, crime, selfishness, and in the accrement of misery. Progress is more fancied than real. Civilization is a misnomer, utilitarianism a desecration of man’s soul, Philosophy an imposture, and learning altogether false!’

“I was pleased to see the Emperor join the conversation at this point, for two reasons: first, to hear what he had to say; and secondly, to observe whether the subjects on the floor could be kept under the Count’s influence while his mind was abstracted from them and centered on matters entirely different.

“ ‘Do not be disturbed at what he says,’ said his majesty, ‘for these Mesmerists are all slightly mad.’ And he smiled, while the Count shrugged his shoulders, and exclaimed:

“ ‘With a method, however!’

“Then turning his attention toward the company, by some inscrutable power he stopped the dance, restored the subjects to their normal state, and almost instantly thereafter exercised it upon Madame Dablin, who straightway, with closed eyes, approached a grand piano, swept its keys with matchless skill, as a prelude, and then launched forth into one of the strangest, most brilliant, yet wild and weird fantasias, that genius ever dreamed of. I cannot now stop to describe its effect upon the company, nor upon myself, for my whole being was absorbed at that moment in matters far more important to me than a mesmeric experiment, however interesting and successful it might be; for at best, its effect and memory would be transient and ephemeral, while, on the contrary, the things I might learn from the Italian might last so long as my conscious soul endured. I was not, therefore, disappointed when he resumed his talk. I cannot now repeat the ipsissima verba of what he said, but the substance, in reply to questions by the Emperor and myself, was in effect this:

“ ‘The soul and its qualities, passions and volume are all clearly marked upon the physique, and are apparent to all who possess the proper key; to all others, the difficulty lies in correctly reading these signs, and a still greater in assigning to each faculty its actual, its possible, and its relative strength and value. Every act that a man does has an effect upon both his body and soul, and the imprints thereof are indelibly stamped upon his features; therefore his past—even his most secret act or thought—can be read by the adept with as much ease as if his face were a printed page, the type being large, smooth and clear. Every man is susceptible of being controlled mesmerically by another, because no man is collectively stronger than his weakest faculty; a chain is no stronger than its most defective link. Now I control men because I know at a glance which is the most vulnerable portion of their nature. Self-love, Emulation and Will are the trinity in unity around which the Psychal Republic revolves. One of these is always vulnerable; subdue that, and you subdue the man. Now, when I perform such experiments as those now being exhibited, I first mesmerize, not the entire brain, but a single faculty, which in turn speedily subdues all the rest. The mind of man is a mirror! Conceded. Well, then, I forthwith, by an effort of will, entirely vacate my own mind, thinking of nothing but a revolving wheel. The subject reflects my action; then in fancy I sing, dance, play, and the subject reflects my thought by appropriate action.’

“ ‘But,’ said one, ‘suppose your subject understands nothing about these accomplishments. How then?’

“ ‘All souls understand them. Bodies may not; and I bring the soul under subjection, not the body merely.’

“ ‘This is a dangerous power to possess,’ said the Emperor, ‘and none but a good man ought to have it.’

“ ‘A bad man cannot become a true Rosicrucian, although men have turned their arms against the race, and the secrets of the fraternity, like all things else, have been trifled with and abused. Thus it is possible for an expert to cure a diseased man by the exercise of the power alluded to. But the rule is dual: it is also possible to kill a healthy man by the same mysterious means; and indeed it has often been done, especially by the natives of Africa.

“ ‘I persuade my soul that you are sick and will die, and if I keep up the will and wish, nothing is more certain than that both will be accomplished. Some men naturally possess enormous powers of will, and are able to project visible images, like those of a phantasmagoria—images of whatever they choose to fancy—a flower, a hand, arm, or a human form—and these spectra will be visible to scores of startled observers, who, in their utter ignorance of the human mind and body, and their respective and conjoined powers, believe them to be the veritable ghosts of dead men, and objects produced by them. I learned recently that in London is at this moment a young Scotchman, named Hume, who possesses this power to a remarkable degree, and also that of levitation, and who is coining fame and fortune by pretending that the psychical phenomenon is really and truly spiritual—which is not the case. I learned this great secret in the Punjaub, of Naumsavi Chitty, the chief of the Rosicrucians of India, and the greatest reformer since Budha.’

“At this point the Emperor asked the Count to exhibit a specimen of his spectre-producing power, to which the latter assented. First he walked rapidly several times up and down the saloon, gave directions to lower the lights, which was done, and then, as before, he stood still directly in front of the mirror for a minute or two, and then, in a sharp, cracked tone, repeated thrice the word ‘Look!’ We did so, and as I live, there flashed the semblance of a thousand chains of vivid lightning across the face of the mirror, along the floor, over the ceiling, up and down the walls; now like forks, then as chains of electric fluid; anon changing to fiery acorns, which gradually formed themselves into a fiery crown, rose gently, floated over the company for a few seconds, and then rested in the air about five inches above the head of Napoleon III.—a crown of fire!

“ ‘Mind,’ said he, after this splendid proof of his weird ability, ‘I do not aver that all the phenomena exhibited in these days as spiritual are produced as I have these; but I do say that not one-tenth part is attributable to spiritual agencies. That which is indeed spiritual is not all the product of dead men, but much of it proceeds from the Larvæ and inhabitants of the spaces between the rolling globes.’

“Then turning to me, he repeated his invitation to become an acolyte of the Temple; said we should meet again; and shortly thereafter the séance broke up, and I left the palace, greatly wiser than when I entered it five hours before.

“Calling a voiture de remise, I entered it and rode home to my hotel. Arrived there, I dismounted beneath the glare of a street lamp, and drew forth my pocket-book to pay my fare. On opening it, what was my surprise at finding a letter, closely sealed, within it, directed to myself. I paid the coachman, hastened to my chamber, and then, eagerly tearing the envelope, I read the following very singular letter, written in a female hand, and in the English language:

“ ‘Monsieur,

“ ‘Remember that you have met one human soul who knows and thoroughly understands your strange, mysterious and inexplicable nature—your heaven’s heights, your hell’s depths, your spacic breadth, your volcanic eruptions, your ocean of god-like calmness, and all-pervading, all-sustaining, holy stillness and quiet, wherein the soul in its magnificent grandeur sweeps over all space and all time, and lives an infinity of lives in its own self-created world! As such I see and know you. Yet in all this I see still other and a greater character to arise in your being than now exists there; I see a character is to arise, if you will allow the grander, diviner elements of your being, and also the heavenly elements that surround you, to blend into one united force of harmonic intelligence, that will mould your entire self into a man such as I cannot now describe. Two ways, my friend, are now before you. One so grand, so sublime, that I would (in order to explain it) demand the eloquence of a Patrick Henry, the strength of a Cæsar, the love of a greater still, the wisdom of a god; the other, not all these combined could give me power to depict.

“ ‘In the name of Him and humanity, choose the right.

“ ‘Such are the feelings of one who knows you.

“ ‘Listen—be quiet! your time is precious.

“ ‘Adieu!’

“This was Greek, Hebrew, Sanscrit, all combined, to me; and it continued so for a long, long time. It was evidently written by some one who, while fully aware of one of my weaknesses—a susceptibility to flattery—yet knew not the man himself. Still, the allusions to my awful secret were too palpable to admit a doubt that the writer knew far more than that strange letter said or hinted at. Was it the mysterious Count? If so, why did he take so great an interest in a stranger? I could not understand it.

“Of course I thought much of the Italian Count, and ardently longed to know more of, if I did not join, the mystic Fraternity whereof he was a member; but to no human being had I ever opened my mind upon the subject, either in Paris, or Naples, whither I repaired on my way to the Orient. Indeed, in the latter city the subject lay perdu in the cellars of my mind, for I sought to banish all care while in Italy, in order to drink full draughts of music—that balm for fevered souls.

“While there, I one night went to San Carlos to hear the opera of the ‘Barber of Seville,’ and to listen to the glorious strains of Mario, Grisi and Gassier. I had been charmed out of all my griefs by the celebrated ‘Music Lesson’ of the latter cantatrice, and as I walked homeward I hummed its notes as I passed along, and it rung in my ears long after I had lain down to sleep. With the peculiar caution of Americans generally, but of Californians especially—whose habits I had imbibed during my short residence within the Golden Gate—before retiring I had carefully examined the room, for Italians, especially Neapolitans, bear watching, to see that all was safe and right. It was so. Then securely fastening both doors and windows, I was soon drifting up and down the Dream Sea. Beneath my pillow was my money belt, in which was about two thousand dollars in gold, which, together with a revolver, loaded to the muzzle, was the property of my friend T——s.

“In the morning the room was as when I slept; but the charges were drawn from the pistol, and the gold lay on the table arranged in the form of a triangle, surmounted by the letter ‘R,’ while, pinned to the bosom of my sleeping robe, was a note in English, in a bold, clear handwriting, but in red ink. That note was not there the night before; it could not have been placed there by human hands! ‘Do not fail,’ it read, ‘to remember the purpose for which you crossed the seas, for your enterprise concerns the future ages of the world! It is not yet accomplished. Achieve it. I will yet serve and save you.—E.’

“I was thunder-struck. Again some mysterious being was crossing my path; that being whose strange domain lay on either side of Time, and whose will seemed ever to hedge me about like a wall of fire, so that escape from the strange destiny that hung over me seemed almost impossible. I was in despair, for already had grey hairs shown themselves; I felt that I was growing prematurely old, and that the chances were greatly against me, a son of Adam, ever wedding with a daughter of Ish.”

FOOTNOTE:

[3] This is a fact—as is also the whole succeeding account of what took place at this extraordinary séance. The anachronism observable is purposely made.—Ed.

[BOOK II.]

[CHAPTER I.]
ABOUT THE ROSICRUCIANS.

It is no part of my (the editor’s) design to recount all the adventures of Beverly, nor to trace his paths through Egypt, Syria, Turkey, nor Europe. Suffice it, that I became so interested in his story that I accompanied him on more than one long journey. Occasionally I would lose sight of him for months together, but by the strangest seeming accident we would meet again, now on the top of Ghizeh’s great pyramid, now in the deserts of Dongola and Nubia; then in a French café, anon in the columned groves of Karnak and of Thebes. We often parted, and as often met again; and in the interim I had not failed to investigate certain grave secrets which he had confided to me. I did not fully believe his strange doctrines; but I am sure that he did, and therefore he commanded my sympathy and respect. As previously indicated, on my first acquaintance with him I was exceedingly sceptical in regard to the existence, in these days, of the Brotherhood of the Rosie Cross, and derided his assertions respecting their powers. True I had heard much, and read more, concerning the celebrated fraternity—an association that has proved a veritable God-send to scores of paper-stainers in all parts of the globe where letters reign, as witness Charles Mackay, Kingsley, Robert Southey, and fifty others, not omitting Bulwer Lytton, his “Zanoni,” and “Strange Story,” nor Hargrave Jennings and his “Curious Things” about “Fire” and the “Outside World.”

In my varied travels through Europe and the East, as well as in this, my native land, I have met with scores, not to say hundreds, who boasted themselves Rosicrucians; and it is but a little while since there appeared, in a “spiritual” sheet in Boston, first a learned lecture, by a female “medium,” on the Rosicrucians, and a long communication, purporting to come from a deceased adept of the Order, both of which were quite laughable by reason of the total and utter ignorance displayed. Probably both of these “enlighteners” had heard or read of Dr. Everard’s “Compte de Gabalis,” and took that humorous bit of badinage as the real, simon-pure explanation of Rosicrucianism as, indeed, was natural, seeing that hundreds have fallen into the same comical error; for, upon applying the touch-stone to all these pretended adepts in the secrets, sublime and mighty, of the Order, it is found that, exceptionless, they are woefully deficient in even the rudiments of the genuine fraternity; nor have these modern pretenders any more real claims to the truth than the hordes of fanatics which swarmed all over Europe an age or two ago, and who brought ineffable disgrace both upon themselves and the sublime name which they stole.

A good gold coin passes very quietly through the world, but your counterfeit makes a great noise wherever it may chance to be; so with the pseudo-Rosicrucians. The latter created a sensation, and then disappeared, only occasionally jingling their bells to let the world know that the fools were not all defunct; while the true Brotherhood went on, and still goes on, quietly performing its mission.

Every student of history is, or ought to be, aware that the pretended “adepts” in past times laid claim to enormous amounts of the most wonderful knowledge, but when put to the proof, invariably failed to substantiate their claims. Such were the men who sought, and, in some instances, pretended to have succeeded, in accomplishing the composition of the Philosopher’s Stone and the great Elixir.

Vaughan, in his “Hours with the Mystics,” laughs at the idea that there ever was really such a society as that of the Brethren of the Rosie Cross, and alleges that they were but the “Mrs. Harris” of certain romancers of the past two centuries; in other words, that they are altogether mistaken who suppose such a society ever had existence. Baron Fischer, now of San Francisco, declares that there really was such an order, but that it was composed of Fools, Fanatics, and Moon-struck Madmen, who in time became the laughing-stock of all Europe. On the other hand, Lydde, the traveller, asserts positively, in his great work, “The Asian Mystery,” that he has traced the Order, under one or more of its names, back into the very night-time of the world’s history. And Abdul Rahman, the Arabian author, boldly declares that he has proved the existence of this Brotherhood in ages so remote that Christian and Jewish history is modern in comparison.

Hein, Hun—Tse-Foh, the Chinese annalist, asserts, that the Order originated in Tartary thousands of years before the foundation of the Chinese empire, itself claiming an age of over thirty thousand solar years! From Tartary it went to Japan, thence to China, thence to Persia, thence to Arabia, thence to India, and, by stages, to Europe, having passed through Egypt, Jewry, and Phœnicia on its way down the ages.

So much for Vaughan; now for another “authority.” Under the letter “R,” in the American Encyclopedia, occurs the word “Rosicrucians,” followed by—“Members of a society, the existence of which became unexpectedly known at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Its object was ostensibly the reformation of Church, State, and individuals, but closer examination showed that the discovery of the Philosophers’ Stone was the true object of the fully initiated. A certain Christian, Rosenkrauze, who was said to have lived long among the Brahmins in Egypt, etc., was pretended to have founded the Order in the fourteenth century; but the real founder is believed to have been one Andrea, a German scholar, of the beginning of the sixteenth century, whose object, as is thought, was to purify Religion, which had been degraded by Scholastic Philosophy. Others think that he only gave a new character to a society founded before him by Cornelius Agrippa, of Nettesheim. Krause, the author, says, that Andrea occupied his time from early youth with the plan of a secret society for the improvement of mankind. In 1614 he published his famous “Reformation of the Whole Wide World,” and his “Fama Fraternitas.” Christian enthusiasts and alchemists considered the poetical society, partially described in these books, as having a real existence, and thus Andrea became the author of the later Rosicrucian fraternities which extended over Europe. After a number of books had been written on the Rosicrucian system, and the whole exploded, the interest in it was revived in the latter half of the eighteenth century, in consequence of the abolition of the Order of Jesuits, and the story of their machinations, as well as of the frauds of Cagliostro and other notorious impostors.”

So much for the wiseacre who wrote this account at so much a line for the “American Encyclopedia.”

In juxta-position to the above, I quote part of pages 132-3-4 and 5, verbatim, of the autobiography of Heinrich Jung Stilling, late Aulic Counsellor to the Grand Duke of Baden. London: 1858. James Nisbet, Berners street. 3d Edition. Says this incomparable man:

“One morning in the spring of 1796, a handsome young man, in a green silk-plush coat, and otherwise well dressed, came to Stilling’s house at Ockershaussen. This gentleman introduced himself in such a manner as betrayed a polished and genteel education. Stilling inquired who he was, and learnt that he was the remarkable ——. Stilling was astonished at the visit, and his astonishment was increased by the expectation of what this extremely enigmatical individual might have to communicate. After both had sat down, the stranger began by saying that he wished to consult Stilling relative to a person diseased in the eyes. However, the real object of his visit pressed him in such a manner that he began to weep; kissed, first, Stilling’s hand, then his arm, and said: ‘Sir, are not you the author of the “Nostolgia?”’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘You are, therefore, one of my secret superiors’ (in the Grand Lodge of the R. C.) Here he again kissed Stilling’s hand and arm, and wept almost aloud. Stilling answered: ‘No, dear sir; I am neither your nor any one else’s secret superior. I am not in any secret connection whatever.’ The stranger looked at Stilling with a fixed eye, and inward emotion, and replied: ‘Dearest friend, cease to conceal yourself! I have been long tried, and severely enough. I thought you knew me already!’ Stilling: ‘No, Mr. ----, I assure you solemnly that I stand in no secret connection, and in reality understand nothing of all that you require of me!’

“This speech was too strong and too serious to leave the stranger in uncertainty. It was now his turn to be astonished and amazed. He therefore continued: ‘But tell me, then, how is it that you know anything of the great and venerable connection in the East which you have so circumstantially described in the “Nostolgia,” and have even pointed out their rendezvous in Egypt, on Mount Sinai, in the Monastery of Canobin, and under the Temple at Jerusalem?’ ‘I know nothing of all this,’ replied Stilling. ‘But these ideas presented themselves in a very lively manner to my imagination. It was, therefore, mere fable and fiction.

“ ‘Pardon me, the matter is the truth and reality as you have described it. It is astonishing that you have hit it in such a manner—this cannot have come by chance!’ The gentleman now related the real particulars of the association in the East. Stilling was amazed and astonished beyond measure; for he heard remarkable and extraordinary things, which are not, however, of such a nature as can be made public. I only affirm that what Stilling learnt from the gentleman had not the most remote reference to political matters.

“About the same time a certain great prince wrote to Stilling, and asked him ‘How it was that he knew anything about the association in the East, for the thing was as he had described it in the “Nostolgia.”’ The answer was naturally the same as that given verbally to the above-mentioned stranger. Stilling has experienced several things of this kind, in which his imagination exactly accorded with the real fact without previously having the least knowledge or presentiment of it. How it is, and why it is, God knows. Stilling makes no reflections upon the matter, but lets it stand upon its own value, and looks upon it as a direction of Providence, which purposes leading him in a distinguished manner. The development of the Eastern mystery is, however, a most important matter to him, because it has relation to the Kingdom of God. Much, indeed, remains in obscurity; for Stilling afterwards heard from another person of great consequence, something of an Oriental Alliance which was of a very different kind. It remains to be developed whether the two are distinct or identical.”

Thus far Jung Stilling. Quite recently I became aware of the existence of Rosicrucian Lodges in this country, obtained much information concerning the Fraternity, and have been privileged to publish the following Seven Paragraphs, concerning the exoteric practice of the Temple:

THE ROSICRUCIANS,

WHO AND WHAT THEY ARE.

Honor, Manhood, Goodness.

TRY.

I. The Rosicrucians are a body of good men, and true, working under a Grand Lodge Charter, deriving its power and authority from the Imperial Dome of the Third Supreme Temple of the Order, and the last (claiming justly to be the oldest association of men on earth, dating from the sinking of the New Atlantis Isle, nearly ten thousand years anterior to the days of Plato), and as a Grand Lodge, having jurisdiction over the entire continent of North America, and the Islands of the Sea. The Grand Lodge, and Temple, grant charters and dispensations to found or organize subsidiary lodges and temples, anywhere within the limits of its jurisdiction.

II. All Rosicrucians are practical men, who believe in Progress, Law and Order, and in Self-development. They believe firmly that God helps those that help themselves; and they consequently adopt as the motto of the Order, the word TRY, and they believe that this little word of three letters may become a magnificent bridge over which a man may travel from Bad to Better, and from Better to Best—from ignorance to knowledge, from poverty to wealth, and from weakness to power.

III. We constitute a large society in the world, and our ranks bid fair to largely swell in this land of Practical Men. There are hundreds of men of large culture, deep intuitions and liberal minds, who actually languish because they do not know each other—there being no organized body, save our own, which invites such men to join its ranks and find the fellowship which such men of such minds need. In our Lodges such men find all they seek, and more; in our weekly reunions the rarest and best intellects are brought in contact, the best thoughts are elicited, and the truest human pleasure experienced; forasmuch, as nothing impure, ignoble, mean or unmanly, is for an instant tolerated under any circumstance whatever; while, on the contrary, every inducement is held out to encourage all that is noble, good, true, beautiful, charitable and manly—and that, too, in a way totally unknown and unpractised in any other order, or association of men.

IV. Every Rosicrucian is known, and is the sworn brother of every other Rosicrucian the wide world over, and as such is bound to render all possible aid and comfort (except when such aid would sanction crime or wrong doing, or interfere with the demands of public justice, social order, decency, sound morals or National prosperity and unity). In all things else, every Rosicrucian is bound to help another, so long as he can do it with a clear conscience, and not violate his honor, derogate from his personal dignity, or sully his own manhood. In all things worthy, one assists the other; in sickness, sorrow, life, death, and the troubles and trials of the world and society. Each man is eligible to one, two, or three degrees; and after once becoming a true Rosicrucian, it is next to impossible that he can ever afterward come to want, either for protection in all that is just, counsel in difficulty, food, raiment, shelter, and all true human sympathy;—all of which is freely rendered so long as the man remains a worthy Dweller in the Temple!

Thus the Temple ensures its acolytes against want, mitigates their sorrow, enhances their usefulness to themselves and the world, braces and sharpens their intellects, fires their emulation, encourages all manly effort, assuages their grief, cultivates their hope, strengthens their self-reliance, self-respect, self-effort; it frowns on all wrong doing, seeks to elevate man in his own esteem, teaches due and loyal respect to woman, the laws, society and the world; it promotes stability of character, makes its votaries strive for Manhood in the full, true sense; adopts “Try” and “Excelsior” as living, practical mottoes; and thus, both directly and indirectly, does the Temple of Rosicrucia seek to increase the sum total of human happiness in the world, within and without its walls.

V. Every man pays an initiation fee, and a monthly tax of one dollar. In return for which, the member has the advantage of all information the Lodge may be able to procure in the shape of lectures, debates, books, scientific papers, models, experiments in all the physical sciences, essays on philosophy, etc.; in addition to which he is allowed a sum, varying from four to fourteen dollars a week when sick, provided he needs such aid; he is visited, comforted, nursed, doctored, and, should he die, the Temple buries him—as a man and a Rosicrucian should be buried. If he dies an officer (and every man is eligible), his widow and children are properly cared for by the Order.[4]

VI. This Order is a school of the highest and best knowledge the earth affords. It is unlike any and all others, for, in addition to being a Mutual Protection Society, it reaches out in far higher and nobler aims—only a few, very few, of which are alluded to in this hand-book, which is merely printed to save much explanatory talk on the part of Rosicrucians who are being continually importuned for information respecting the said Order. One of its main objects is to be a School of Men; to make men more useful by rendering them stronger, more knowing, therefore wiser—therefore happier. As Rosicrucians we recognize the immense value of Sympathy, Encouragement, Emulation and Persistency—

Nil mortalibus, ardum est.

THERE IS NO DIFFICULTY TO HIM WHO TRULY WILLS!

Whatever of good or great man has ever done, may still be accomplished by you and I, my brother, if we only think so, and set about in right good earnest, and no mistake. TRY! We proclaim the OMNIPOTENCE OF WILL! and we declare practically, and by our own achievements demonstrate, the will of man to be a supreme and all-conquering force when once fairly brought into play, but this power is only negatively strong when exerted for merely selfish or personal ends; when or wherever it is called into action for good ends, nothing can withstand its force. Goodness is Power; wherefore we take the best of care to cultivate the normal will, and thus render it a mighty and powerful engine for Positive Good. You cannot deceive a true Rosicrucian, for he soon learns how to read you through and through, as if you were a man of glass; and he attains this power by becoming a Rosicrucian only, nor can it be had through any other means whatever. The Temple teaches its acolytes how to rebuild this regal faculty of the human soul—the will; how to strengthen, purify, expand, and intensify it; and one of the first results observable after a man has become a true Rosicrucian, is that his vanity grows smaller by degrees, and beautifully less; for the first thing he fully realizes is that all he knows would probably make quite a large book, but that all he does not know would make a book considerably larger, and he therefore sets himself to learn. Where there’s a will there’s a way; and after getting rid of self-conceit, the man finds himself increasing in mental stature by imperceptible gradations, and finds himself a learned man by a process which he cannot fairly comprehend, and one which is neither appreciated or known outside of the Temple.

As a consequence of travelling on this royal road to knowledge, the Rosicrucian soon learns to despise the weakness of wickedness, not by reason of any long-faced cant being poured into his ear, but because he finds out practically that manhood and virtue are safe investments, while badness or meanness won’t pay. It is the universal testimony of all who have become true Rosicrucians, that within its symbolic walls there is a deeply mysterious influence for good pervading its atmosphere, under which every man of the Order becomes rapidly but normally individualized and intensified in character, manhood, and influence.

VII. The doors of our Lodges are never closed against the honest, honorable or aspiring man; nor can any earthly potentate, no wielder of an empire’s sceptre, no wearer of a kingly crown, gain admission by reason of his eminence; for though he be a king, he may not be a MAN, a title far above all others on the earth—a title nobler than any other ever earned by mortals! We Rosicrucians are proud of our eminence—and justly so—for we are a Brotherhood of Men! and recognize MANHOOD as the true kingship; hence we honor that man highest who knows the most, and puts his knowledge to the highest and noblest uses, not only toward his brothers, but in any field in the world’s great garden, for are not we all brethren? Does not the one great God rule over and love us? Even so! No man can enter our doors by reason of his wealth, for riches, unless put to manly uses, are detrimental;—bad—positively injurious! No man can enter our doors by reason of his fame, politics, or religion. The Order has nothing to do with a man’s politics or religion, and it matters not what a man’s creed is, so long as he IS A MAN. The Baptist is welcome, but not as a Baptist; and so with men of all other faiths. No religion, no faith, no politics can be discussed from our platform, nor will their introduction be tolerated one moment. We accept men of all creeds, except such as outrage decency, manhood, sound morals, and public order, such as Free Lovers, Mormons, and birds of that feather; nor can any such person enter our ranks, no matter who he may be, or how high in fame or social place. No man is barred out of our Temple by reason of his poverty, for physical beggars are often kings in mind. All we ask or seek for in a man is HONOR, HONESTY, and ambition to KNOW MORE AND BE BETTER.

Usually the Lodges of Rosicrucia meet once a week to hear lectures, exchange courtesies, thoughts, news; to listen to invited guests, debate questions in art, science, and philosophy; to mutually inform and strengthen each other; to investigate any and all subjects of a proper nature, and to cultivate that manly spirit and chivalric bearing which so well entitles their possessor to be called A MAN. These are a few of the good things of Rosicrucia. We seek no man—men seek us. Our facilities for obtaining knowledge and information on all subjects are, as may well be conceived, unsurpassed—unequalled. Financially we are satisfied. A Temple of Rosicrucia never yet felt the pressure of an exhausted exchequer, and probably never will. But this last is the least commendable thing about the Institution; yet it uses money for good purposes, and therefore has its chest supplied. All other essential information respecting the Order can be obtained BY TRYING!

It will be seen that there is nothing magical here, yet I do not doubt but the members could tell strange stories if they chose.

Many, but by no means all, the Alchemists and Hermetic Philosophers were acolytes of that vast secret Brotherhood, which has thrived from the earliest ages, and, under different names in different lands, has performed, is still performing its mission. The members of this mystic union were the Magi of old, who flourished in Chaldea (Mesopotamia) ages before one of their number (Heber) left his native plains, and on foreign soil founded the Hebraic confederation. They were the original Sabi and Sabeans, who for long ages preceded the Sages of Chaldea. They were the men who founded that Semitic civilization, the faint shade of which we find, having leaped long avenues of centuries, in the mouldy records of early China, itself numbering its years by the thousand. Of this great Brotherhood sprung Brahma, Buddha, La-otze, Zoroaster, Plato, the Gnostics, the Essenes, and therefore Christ himself—who was an Essene, and who preached the sacred doctrines of the Mountain of Light. They were the Dreamers of the ages—the sun of the epochs—eclipsed occasionally, but anon bursting forth in glory again. They were the men who first discovered the significance of Fire; and that there was something deeper than Life in man; profounder than Intellect in the universe. Whatever of transcendant light now illumes the world, comes from the torches which they lit at the Fountain whence all light streameth upon that mystic mountain which they alone had courage and endurance to climb, and climbed, too, over a ladder whose rungs were centuries apart. Hermes Trismegistus, Egypt’s mighty king, and that other Hermes (Asclepius IX.), was an adept, a brother, and a Priest—as was Malki Zadek before him—that famous Pre-Adamite monarch, that Melchisedek, who was reputed to have been born of a Thought, and to have lived for countless ages. And so with the Greek Mercurius. Theirs, too, was that wondrous learning wherein Moses was skilled; and at their fountain the Hebrew Joseph drank. Nothing original in Thaumaturgy, Theology, Philosophy, Psychology, Entology, and Ontology, but they gave it to the world; and when Philosophers thought they had gained new thoughts and truths, the records of the Order prove them to have been old ages before the Adamic era of Chronology, and to have been the common property of the adepts.

I have been led into these remarks and explanations, first, for the purpose of finally and authoritatively settling the vexed question concerning the Rosicrucians, and to throw light on that which is to follow.

FOOTNOTE:

[4] The Grand Lodge contemplates the enactment of laws looking to the providing for the families of members when sick, and to their burial when dead, which will be secured by the payment of additional fees from time to time. It also contemplates a system of life insurance of its members, who, by the payment of certain fees, may secure a certain sum to their families at death sufficient to maintain them in comfort, but not in luxury or idleness. The system will probably be one of graduated annuities.

[CHAPTER II.]
WHO WAS HE?—WHAT WAS IT?

“I made,” said Beverly to me one day, “my projected tour, and had returned much wiser than I went, but no nearer the consummation of my chief hope. I had begun the practice of medicine in the city of Boston, and occupied an office reputed to have been haunted by the troubled ghosts of sundry persons who were there attracted by some strange influence. I laughed at, and ridiculed the pretensions of scores of so called seers, who claimed to behold these flitting gentry.

“There came to my office one day—it was a very stormy day in the latter part of the winter of the year in the spring of which I was so neatly swindled—there came, I repeat, on a stormy day, when the snow fell thick and fast; when the fierce wind blew, and the Frost-king was busily engaged in putting icy manacles upon all that he could reach—a lady to consult me upon a case of scrofula in her child. At that time my reputation in that specialty was great and constantly increasing; for I had but a few months before introduced and practised the method of treating that order of diseases, taught me in Constantinople by the famous negro sage of that metropolis. I prepared the materials required, and stood waiting for her to leave the office, as I was anxious to continue the perusal of some Hieratic manuscripts lent me that day by a lettered friend in Dedham. She made no movement indicative of leaving; but instead, challenged me to a discussion of some spiritual subject or other, which challenge I, from an innate horror of all strong-minded male-feminines, respectfully declined. She called herself my friend, and was, if sticking to one is a title to the name. She possessed all the qualities of the best adhesive plaster—it was impossible to get rid of her presence. She declared that she constantly saw, and held conversations with the dead, and she would then and there give a proof of her qualifications in that direction; whereupon she was instantly seized with an exceedingly violent trembling, accompanied with any amount of spasmodic jerks and twitchings. I had witnessed such things before, and consequently did not feel alarmed at Mrs. Graham’s condition, but going into the rear office I procured a chair and sat down to wait for demonstrations; which, when they came, were but so many pretty word-paintings—commonplace counsel and advice addressed to me by what purported to be my mother—which latter, however, appeared to have forgotten her name, my own, and when and where she departed this life. I was perfectly certain that it was not my mother, and equally so that Mrs. Graham was not consciously acting the part of an impostor, and I accounted for the phenomenon on the Rosicrucian theory, then quite new to me, that she was obsessed, or possessed, by and with a distinct individuality entirely foreign to her own. To my mind the thing was certain that she, like scores of thousands of others are, was for the time being under the absolute control and dominion of a Will a myriad times stronger than that of any living human being that ever tenanted a body on this terraqueous globe of ours—beings perfectly intelligent, powerful, invisible, and totally conscienceless, wherein is a great difference from human beings.

“The lady came around in a few minutes, and I frankly stated my opinion to her. It was new and startling. ‘Not human spirits—yet intelligent? An intelligent thing—and guileful? It is dreadful! Horrible! What, then, is that Thing? Angels? No! Devils? If so, whence come they? Why? For what end?’

“These were terrible questions; and we talked about the matter, the lady and I, as we sat in the back office, near the fire, for it was very cold; and she sat leaning on the desk near the window, and I sat near the door between the offices, my back nearly touching it. The outer door, which opened on the stair-landing, was closed, and a wire was so attached to it that it could not be opened, or even the latch be raised, without touching a spring that instantly rung a bell that was suspended directly over my head in the rear office. I used this rear office as a reading-room and laboratory, and I frequently became so absorbed in my reading or chemistry, that nothing less than the ringing of that bell would suffice to divert my attention.

“And there and thus we sat and talked for more than three long hours. The strong-minded woman’s soul had at last really been aroused; while I once more brought to the surface my Rosicrucian lore. In thought and speech we traversed a score of conjectural worlds and labyrinths of Being; until, at last: ‘Are there, really, any intelligent, but viewless beings, other than man, in all the broad universe—I mean other than man as he is here, and disembodied likewise?—that’s the question,’ said the lady by the desk.

“ ‘Of course there are! MYRIADS!’ said a clear, manly voice in the room, right straight from the centre of the triangle formed by the desk, the door and the southern wall of the office! It was not the lady who thus replied to her own question! It was not I who spoke; nor, strange as it afterwards appeared, did the circumstance strike me as being at all out of the common. And, therefore, without an instant’s hesitation, I rejoined to the observation of the speaker, whom I subsequently remember to have observed was a thin, strange-looking, scrawny, shrivelled little old man, with the queerest possible little sharp grey eyes. He looked half frozen, and acted so, for he advanced toward some shelves and proceeded very leisurely to warm his hands over my laboratory furnace, between the door and wall. The lady appeared no more surprised than myself at the inexplicable presence of this singular intruder.

“ ‘I am not so sure of that,’ I replied, in answer to the words uttered by the strange old man—‘I am not so sure that there are such beings in existence.’

“ ‘Then you’re a greater fool than I took you for! Good evening!’ And he moved slightly toward the door, against which my chair firmly stood.

“ ‘Don’t go yet, for I want you to explain,’ said the lady. ‘Don’t you think he ought to?’ turning to me with a very peculiar earnestness expressed in her countenance, especially in her eyes—very peculiar eyes at all times, but lit up in the most extraordinary manner at that moment. ‘I think he ought to prove his statement, and not leave us in this state of uncertainty. It is positively cruel!’ And, as she spoke, her eye met mine, and fastened it as if the encountering glances were riveted together.

“There must be some magic in the soul that is only flashed forth on very rare occasions, else why did her glance so fix my gaze for ten seconds that I could not stir? At the end of that space of time the fascination ended, and, raising my eyes, I answered—

“ ‘Certainly! he ought to explain; and, of course,’ said I, turning toward the man—‘of course, you will explain yourself, and——’

“There was no man there! Not even a sign that he had been. He had disappeared, gone, utterly vanished—not through the window, for that was a clear fall of seventy feet to the ground, besides which it had been securely nailed down for over four months—not through the door, for my chair and back were against it!

“Mrs. Graham fainted, and fell prone upon the floor!

“I lived in Charlestown, and reached home rather early that evening. Not that I was frightened. Oh, no! but because home seemed cheerier than the office; for the weather was bitterly cold, and the storm-spirits were holding high, tempestuous revels in the common and the bay; and, ever and anon, as the shivering pedestrian jogged along, and turned the sharp corners of what is literally and emphatically, and in more senses than one, the most angular city in the world, the blast would meet him square in the face, side-ways, and all around him in the same blessed moment of time, no matter which way he headed; for a Boston snow-storm blows every way at once—here it is due north, around the corner it is south-east, behind you it is north-west; over the way it blows straight up, and in the middle of the street it blows straight down.

“It was hard work travelling the four miles to my home that night, for every step had to be wearily footed. True, there were street cars, but no man in Boston ever remembers one going the right way when most it was wanted; but everybody can find scores coming, when everybody is bent upon going.

“Well, after a perilous walk, I at last reached home, and gladly sat down to my comfortable supper of toast and tea in my snug little parlor—the same little parlor where I wrote my book and received the loan of money to publish it, which money I was afterwards deprived of by the financial acumen of as great a scoundrel as ever went loose upon the world.

“Oh, how it stormed outside! and oh, how warm and cosy was the little snug harbor into which I had just moored myself!

“It was the second cup of tea—orange pekoe it was, for I had bought it of a Chinaman in Boston, who knew all about tea—and the second slice of toast that I was discussing, along with my daily paper, when suddenly there came a loud, imperative double knock at the door, similar to that of an English postman when in a hurry to deliver his letters. The door was immediately opened by a servant, who thought some one had been taken suddenly ill, and that I had been sent for professionally. But what was my astonishment when in stalked, with as much ease and nonchalance as if he belonged there, no less a personage than the mysterious little old man of the afternoon. I was thunderstruck. It was the same person who had treated me so rudely, and who had first come and then gone again so unaccountably, and who had induced an illness in Mrs. Graham that resulted in causing her to forever abandon her mediumatic practices—the same that has sent so many scores of people to premature graves, and will send thousands more. The strange man advanced toward the fire, and exclaimed—

“ ‘What a fright I caused you and your guest this afternoon! Ha! ha! It was capital—was it not?’

“And again he laughed, but this time in a manner and with a voice which, had it not been for the immense physical disparity apparent, I could have sworn was that of the Italian Count in Paris. But this supposition was hardly possible. The man before me was so decidedly human, that, by a rapid and comprehensive induction, I concluded that Mrs. Graham and myself had been victimized for sport by one who was perfect master of the mesmeric art. This hypothesis was quite plausible, only I could not account for the non-ringing of the office bell; and the idea seemed at that time quite preposterous that any one could successfully magnetize the clapper of a bell into silence. I learned more afterwards. Neither did it seem quite reasonable that this man had, before entering the office at all, exerted his power upon our sense of hearing, rendering us deaf.

“To his remark I replied, rather sententiously, with ‘Very!’ and said no more, for I did not fancy his joke, if such it was, nor his brusquerie, nor his decided lack of good manners, nor his rude speech; in fact, I did not fancy the man at all, nor anything about him. Not that he was hated or despised, but because there was a something about him that made my very flesh creep again, and caused me to instinctively shrink from his contact.

“It is well known that one of the cardinal points of the Rosicrucian belief is that bodily life can be prolonged through whole ages in two different ways; first, by means of the Elixir of Life; secondly, by means of mere will alone. In the first case beauty and youth accompany age; but in the second, age is apparent all along the centuries. This latter secret and the processes were revealed by a degenerate Rosicrucian in 1605; and all students of medicine are aware that great capital was made of it in later times by a French physician named Asgill. This writer undertook to publicly demonstrate and teach the art of life-prolonging, laying it down positively, that man is literally immortal, or rather that any given man alive could, if he choose, utterly laugh at and defy death; that he need not, if so disposed, ever die, if he used sufficient prudence, and forcibly and constantly exerted his will in that direction. Asgill used to complain of the cowardly practice of dying, considering it a mere trick, and unnecessary habit. The records tell us that several men have used both these means to perpetuate existence, and I have not the slightest doubt that it has been attempted and proved measurably successful; and now, on this stormy night, as I gazed on the withered wreck before me, it struck me that he was one of those wretches who had attained indefinite length of years by the second method, and, as a necessary consequence, had lost all fire, all feeling, all love, and all conscience. I shuddered as the possibility flashed upon me. He saw the motion, and a smile of ineffable scorn curled his lip as he did so. I abandoned my notion.

“People who observe things as they plod their way through the world, and who have at all made the human soul a study, have often been made aware that there is a certain nameless something that comes over a man, that with resistless eloquence persuades his inner soul that some danger approaches, some peril besets, some disaster impends over him. There are times, when calm reigns all around him, and peace blossoms in his heart, that he suddenly is apprised that Calamity is flapping her way toward him through the terrible nebulous gloom of the Future. Many a man and woman has felt this; and some such feeling, some such horror-form, now seemed hovering, cowering, crawling near me, and preparing to seize upon and fang my very soul, in the presence of the queer little man at my side. It was a mixed feeling of guilt and dread, and yet no guilt was mine. I had not cheated, robbed, lied, to my best friend. I had not fared sumptuously every day on the proceeds of villainy; my wife and daughters did not dress in purple and fine linen, bought with the money wronged from a poor man, or any man at all. I had not a fine piano, and parlors full of guests enjoying funds thus gotten; nor had I driven fast and fine horses of my own, fed and fattened on the money of a man whose child was at that very moment struggling, gasping, choking in the clutches of grim death for want of bread and medicine. True, there were those who did all this—and the corpse of a pretty little girl attests it—but I did not; why then should I be afraid? There is no answer to that, and yet I was in dread.

“After saying ‘Very!’ I spoke no more, but striving to repress the horror creeping over me, I tried to look as indignant as possible, which he was not slow to observe; for he approached, slapped me familiarly on the back, poured out and drank a cup of tea and ate a rusk, which settled the question as to his being no ghost; then he dropped carelessly into my easy-chair, rubbed his little perked-up nose with his thin, little, bluish-pale fingers, and throwing himself forward, so as to look right up into my face, he laughed heartily, and then bawled out, rather than sung, at the top of his voice:

“ ‘The storm howls drearily,
Let you and I live cheerily;
And we’ll study things that never were known.
I’ve come from the West,
To see the man that I like best.
Don’t think I’m all depravity—
I’m in search of the centre of gravity—
And you’ll find out the Philosophers’ Stone.’

And then he again burst out into one of the wildest, most outré, and ridiculous laughs that ever fell on mortal hearing.

“The wretched doggerel that I had just heard was beneath my notice; and little did I know of the singer, and still less did I imagine that those lines were to me the most important I had ever heard.

“Gradually, and by imperceptible degrees, my prejudices began to wane; I conversed with him upon a variety of subjects, and the conference was maintained during four long hours, perhaps more; for if my memory serves me, it was nearly eleven o’clock when he arose from his seat, shook me cordially by the hand, said he was going, promised to call again ‘when he wanted to serve me,’ and then, opening the doors, passed out into the midst of one of the most fierce and vindictive tempests that ever desolated the shores of Boston Bay. A singular thing was this: in the depth of winter, this man, who refused steadily to speak concerning himself, was clad in the very thinnest summer raiment, not having enough even for a northern June, much less for such fearful weather as prevailed on the night of that 4th of February—a night when the glass in Boston told of cold twenty degrees below zero, and in New Hampshire nineteen lower still—a night so bitter that many and many a man went to eternity, borne thither on the frosty pinions of the Ice-king.

“ ‘After all it is a man, and mesmerism furnishes a key to all this seeming mystery,’ thought I; and with this consoling supposition I went to bed, and there reproduced all that he had said or done. Now, although little was said in regard to himself, yet, from that little, I gathered that he was an Armenian by birth, that his name was Miakus, which is the ancient Chaldaic for Priest of Fire. He told me this as he bent down to kiss a sweet little prattling Cora, and said that he was very fond of children, and felt particularly so toward the little fairy, who, seated in her chair, was busily engaged in laying down the law to a culprit kitten, who, it appeared, had been guilty of leze majeste to her Christmas doll. After the child had been sent to bed, Miakus produced from his bosom a little square, flat case, apparently of rose or olive wood, and about seven inches across by two and a half deep.[5] It was locked, and the key, a silver one, hung by a golden clasp to an ordinary steel watch-chain round his neck. The little man laid this case upon the bureau, where it lay undisturbed, although it became clear to me that his business there was in some way associated with that box and myself. It was equally clear that his air was more than half assumed, and that, in spite of his nonchalance and brusque surface, great trouble reigned beneath; for, occasionally, as he spoke, there was a melancholy cadence and plaintive modulation in his tones, that, to practised ears, spoke, if not of a breaking heart, at least of one most deeply injured and bereaved. This circumstance affected me much, for, through life, I have been one who grieved with those in grief, and joyed with those in joy. Then, after a little, he told me that one of his objects was to initiate me into certain mysteries of white magic, to teach me how to construct the magic mirror in which the majority of persons could glance through space, see and talk with the dead, and in all things, save a few, have an unerring guide through life. Said he—‘I have such a curious looking-glass in yonder box, and perhaps—and perhaps not—you may test its qualities before I leave you. The fact is, I feel down-hearted, have been so all day, and all the more because I hurt your amour propré by calling you a fool, which, of course, I do not apologize for. It struck me that I would take advantage of the weather to chat with you, without infringing upon your business, and that, possibly, you might learn something and I find relief in teaching you, and thus withdraw us both for a time from the great Failure’—by which he meant the world. ‘I am weary of myself, the world, philosophers and philosophy. There’s nothing good but magic! You have been a fool while striving to be wise; and are ambitious to know what you have hitherto merely imagined.’

“He rose, took the case, laid it on the table between us, and, while playing with the key, continued—‘If you really desire to pierce through the gloom that palls the human senses, you must abandon all human loves and passions, most especially all that relates to woman; for woman’s love destroys—in the very moment of man’s victory over her, she triumphs—he yields his life, and offers up existence itself on her altars, and then she laughs! Is it not so? Does not every man’s experience corroborate this? Strong as iron alone, no sooner does he reach the goal of love than he is lost in a sea of weakness, lethargy, deadness! Bah! avoid woman. You want high knowledge, and must pay high prices. God gives nothing—he sells all; and he who would have must purchase, and the price is suffering. So with love. Its life is bought with the coin of death. Woman is like the ivy vine mantling round some hoary tower, and the more you are ruined the closer she clings, and the closer she clings the more you are ruined! Listen. No one acts without a motive. I have one with regard to yourself, and it is a selfish one. It so happens that the possessor of the magic mirror can in it behold all other horoscopes but his own, beyond a certain point; and, if he would know it, he must consult other seers. Now, there are certain beings in existence whose future cannot be read except by certain persons specially constituted. You are one of the latter, I am one of the former; and such as we only meet at the beginning and the end of epochs and eras. The present is one of these. I will present you with the mirror when you have done me this favor; I will teach you the art of their construction; and I will give you a verbatim copy of the answers you shall make to the questions I shall ask you while gazing in its awful depths. To this I pledge a word that never yet was broken, and an oath that never will be. For this purpose I have followed you for years, patiently waiting for the hour that dawns at last. To successfully do the thing I ask, two things are essential. 1st, That, in a perfectly pure state of body, health, mind, intent, and morals, you gaze into the glass. 2d, That, while doing so, you make no resistance against certain sleepful influences that may assail you, which influences will not be mesmeric, nor assisted by myself in any way, but is the sacred slumber of Sialam Boaghiee, which can only be enjoyed once in a hundred years, and then only by persons who are singularly constituted as you are—whose veins are filled with the mingled blood of all the nations that sprung from the loins of the Edenic protoplast, the Biblical Adam, and who, temperamentally, and in all other respects, save sex, are perfectly neutral. Certain great advantages will accrue to you from this concession that are unattainable without. From this slumber you will awaken doubly; first, to the old life without; and, second, to another and a fuller though stranger life within, and to the power of comprehending innumerable mysteries that lie enshrouded in dim regions far beyond the ken of ordinary man. Dreamer! you shall comprehend your dreams. Rosicrucian! you shall comprehend the Light, the Tower, and the Flame, and where Artefius and Zimati failed you shall find success! It is difficult, if not impossible, to either over-rate the advantages to be derived by the possession of the power I allude to, or to define and characterize it in words, mainly for the reason that, although the idea stands out well marked and distinct before the mind, yet the language which you speak has no terms of symbols adequate to its naming or expression; for, at best, words are coarse raiment for thought, and no more show the beauty of what they cover, than the preposterous costumes of Christendom display the superlative glories of the human form. The soul that sleeps this slumber passes through a gate which even the privileged dead cannot enter, save once in a century, and then only by reason of neutrality, for positive people are to be counted by the billion on either side the grave, negative people outnumber them ten million to one, while neutrals are, like cold heat, very rare indeed. I trust we shall yet assist each other.’

“Now, I had, two hours before, on seeing him eat and drink, hastily abandoned my ghostly hypothesis regarding the little queer old man. But now, as he talked so strangely, and so grandly indicated the Door of the Dome of all possible human knowledge and attainment, the mystery that wrapped him changed its character, but enveloped him in a ten-fold gloom and shadow, that continually grew more thick and dense, so much so, indeed, that, but for his eating, and the fact that several persons in the house beside myself had seen and exchanged speech with and touched him, I certainly should have doubted the evidence of my senses, and set the whole thing down, from the scene in the office till his departure, to the account of a disturbed imagination. There was a something unearthly about his voice and manner; and once, when he turned his chair, the upper part of his right thigh came in direct contact with the red-hot stove, and I watched it there until the chair was ruined by the fire, and the smoke of its varnish and seat fairly filled the room, and yet he was not burned, but coolly rose and opened the door for the smoke to escape, and then resumed his seat as if nothing whatever had happened; and, two or three times in the course of the evening, I not only felt a chilly atmosphere proceed from him, but distinctly saw his skeleton beneath his thin, parchment-like skin, as if but the thinnest integument had been loosely thrown over it to hide its naked deformity by some mouldy tenant of the grave, doomed to expiate its offences by again walking the earth with embodied human beings. Could it be that I had struck the truth, and that this mysterious Miakus was in reality such a vampire as we read of in German story?”

FOOTNOTE:

[5] Both the incidents of the magic mirror are actual, literal facts, as is also its curious construction and effects as herein related. I have witnessed many astonishing experiments with mirrors constructed as was that treated of in the text. I have seen several exactly similar—one in Zagazik, Lower Egypt, in the hands of a Hindoo magician, two in Cairo, one in Thebes, two in Constantinople, and one in London. In the East, owing to the scarcity of the peculiar material wherewith the space between the glasses is filled, they cost enormous prices, and then can only be had by a Christian through favor. In this country, or England, they might cheaply be made. I have one in my possession that I would not part with for three thousand dollars, so wonderful, so astonishing are the effects witnessed in and through it.—Editor.

[CHAPTER III.]
PHOSPHORUS AND THE ELIXIR OF LIFE.

“Marvelling,” said Beverly, continuing his wonderful story—“Marvelling on the strange events of the day and night, as said before, I retired to my chamber, but not to rest, for ere the morning dawned upon the world again, there came to me an experience that in some respects totally changed the current and character of my life. These incidents are already recorded in my narrative concerning ‘Cynthia and Thotmor,’ long since given to the world.[6]

“On the morning following this eventful night, I repaired to the office of a reputed to be Philosophic tooth-doctor, whose brain is a far more curious museum than the one near his office. With him I conversed awhile, and by him was introduced to a real thinker, whose name, I think, was Blood. After smoking a segar—and each other—in his laboratory, I repaired to Nichols’, the chemist, made a few purchases, and forthwith went to my office.

“Now, it so happened that sometime previously I had purchased a chemical apparatus, conducting my experiments secretly, and mainly after twelve at night—for the purpose of repeating La Brière’s great experiment for the removal of the poisonous and igneous properties of Phosphorus without decreasing its revivifying and medicinal qualities. I had experimented untiringly for five months, at a cost almost ruinous to me, but still with an invincible conviction that I should succeed, and give my secret to the world, instead of perishing like the poor Frenchman, who burst an artery from excitement at his success, having made about eleven ounces that fulfilled his entire expectations. Part of his process only survived him, and many a man, like myself, had attempted to fathom the secret and gain the enormous fortune that must result from complete success, but hitherto in vain.

“The experiment was a most important one. Churchill had produced his hypophosphites, and they had lamentably failed of the intention; hence, in working at this mine, I had avoided his and others’ formulæ. Success, I felt, would not only benefit my own private practice, but would be of incalculable service to the medical profession, and still more to that large class of persons who by over mental exertion, severe intellectual and sedentary occupations, and by passional and other imprudent excesses, had deprived themselves of the wine of life, by draining themselves of nervous force; and become spiritless, semi-insane, gloomy, and despondent. Such a discovery I knew would place in the hands of the profession a true, positive, but perfectly harmless aphrodision nervous stimulant, invigorant and tonic. It was, therefore, worth all the time, trouble, and expense I devoted to it, for it would be one of the best things medical science had yet given to the world.

“It had long been demonstrated: 1st. That Phosphorus abounded in the bones, nerves, and tissues of the human body, but especially in the human brain. 2d. That Phosphorus was invariably present in large quantities in the brains of healthy men who had been killed, and analysis thereafter made; and invariably as the brain thus analyzed was that of an intellectual, fine-strung, high-toned, ambitious, executive, or spiritual person, just in proportion was the volume of phosphorus found in their remains; while the low, the ignorant, coarse and brutal had comparatively little phosphorus in them. 3d. It had been proved that in the administration of phosphorus to old people; to the class of patients who seek private advice; to those exhausted by mental labor or excess, it invariably acted as a revivifier, and seemed not only to restore health, strength, and fire to the body, but to rejuvenate and tone up the mind to its pristine strength, power, and activity; while insanity, idiotcy, brain-softening, and causeless terror, disappeared in the ratio of its exhibition, for one half of the diseases of civilization result from the waste of phosphorus from the system, and for thirty years medical chemistry had sought to so prepare the article that it would at once assimilate with the tissues and fluids. It had not succeeded. True, La Brière had, but then his secret was dead. I resolved to restore it; and after a hundred failures, produced what he had named Phymyle.

“I tried its effects upon myself; then several physicians on themselves; and finally, it was tried upon patients at their own request, and the result left not a nail to hang a doubt on, that I was perfectly justified in crying ‘Eureka!’ This preface is essential to the understanding of what follows.

“Now, it so happened that a few days before I saw Mrs. Graham, that I had placed about four pounds of phosphorus, together with about five times that weight of other materials, in a strong glass vessel, in a sand-bath, ready for the production of, perhaps, one quart of the precious medicine; and the first thing I did on entering my office from the dentist’s, was to light the gas beneath it. For a few minutes I stood watching the rich and beautiful scarlet and purple vapor as it rose and curled through the neck of the retort, and the long glass pipes leading to the condensing apparatus.

“While thus intently engaged, I was suddenly startled by the exclamations, ‘Careless fool! Look out! Run!’ Mechanically I obeyed, leaped into the outer office, and had scarcely done so, than there occurred a loud explosion. The retort had burst into a million fragments, shattering the windows and apparatus into fine pieces, and scattering some pounds of ignited phosphorus upon the floor. Here was trouble. But not to the speaker—for, quick as light, he tore the carpet off the office floor, and hurled it, phosphorus and all, into the snow-drifts in the yard below, which soon melted under the intense blaze of that almost quenchless fire, until, having consumed itself, nothing but a white smoke was left to tell the danger I and the house had been in.

“The fire out, and my fright subsided, I turned to see who it was that had so opportunely saved me, and found the little old man smiling and smirking before me.

“ ‘What! is it you, then?’ I asked, at the same time cordially extending my hand toward him.

“ ‘I rather think it is!’ said he, grasping it, ‘and very lucky for you it was that I chanced to happen along

“ ‘So early in the morning,
Just after break of day,’

said and sung the Enigma, continuing: ‘You are not an overwise chemist, my dear doctor, else you would never expect, either that Phosphorus gas could reach the condenser, with the stop-cock shut, or that a glass retort, already cracked, would long resist the immense pressure of the accumulating and continually heating vapor. I see you have turned Hermetist and Alchemist—Rosicrucian like! and that you are determined to blow yourself up, or else

“ ‘Find out the ’lixir Vitæ,
Or stumble across the Philosophers’ Stone,’

and the little old man clapped his hands and danced about the room in the most exuberant glee.

“ ‘But, my friend,’ said he, ‘as constant trying means eventual success, I have not the slightest doubt but that you will yet become a very rich man, as well as a long-lived one; for, to tell you the truth, you have come nearer this morning to compounding the Elixir of Life—that very Elixir for which Philosophers have toiled during thousands of years, in vain—than any man that ever lived. For instance: had you placed a less quantity of phosphorus in the retort; more of the first and third, and less of the second, fourth, and fifth ingredients, with a slower heat, and the addition of two ounces of ——, and ——, and one of ——,’ mentioning the articles, ‘you would have, indeed, made the water of perpetual youth and health—that wonderful chemic which purifies the juices, removes obstructions, clarifies the fluids, and renders man physically invulnerable to miasmas and disease—to all things destructive to life, except, of course, material injury. What d’ye think of that? Ha! ha!’ and again he burst out in a roaring squeak:

“ ‘I’ll discover the centre of gravity,
You’ll find out the Philosophers’ stone.’

“It has been the habit of the wiseacres of this world to deride the idea that it is possible to make gold; to laugh in face of the notorious fact that nature is constantly making it, and that, too, of gasses in the earth, as all things else, save souls, are made. It has been fashionable to laugh at the idea of compounding a material capable of freeing the system of all its gross and clogging impurities—the only friction to the wheels of life; a mixture which would exhilarate, purify, strengthen, and supply to the body the chemical and dynamic forces of which it is constantly being robbed. But these wise people will have done laughing by-and-by; not by any means must it be thought that I, for a moment, entertained the silly notion of the alchemists and false Rosicrucians—of finding a material which when brought into contact with metals would change them into gold. We of this century are too knowing for that; nor that I hoped to discover, from the application of the old man’s suggestions, that wonderful fluid alluded to awhile since; but I did believe it possible that I could compound a draught that when quaffed would repair the waste of nature, and believed until that moment, that in Phymyle I had found it. What, then, was my astonishment when the weird old man whispered in my ear that I stood upon the brink of the grandest success conceivable, that the grand Secret of secrets was all but in my grasp? To describe my sensations at that moment is impossible, and the more so because the old man told me the whole process and constituents.

“What cared I even if it was necessary for me to go to Jerusalem, and gather the precious seeds of a fruit that grows upon its walls, wherewith to prepare the water? In other years I did go, and the treasured seeds are mine.... In that awful moment of success I blessed the old man and internally vowed that in return I would read his horoscope, and sleep the sleep of Sialam; for was not the desire of my soul gratified? Why then should I not return the favor?

“Such, in that tumultuous moment, were my thoughts. Soon I became calmer, and then, ‘How came the old man to know the materials that were being used?’ ‘Perhaps he saw the fumes, and thus knew them!’ But how of the contents of the condensing-chest through which the vapor was forced for the purpose of nullifying its injurious qualities? for no living human being had seen me compound or place them there. How came he to know the purpose for which this compound was being brewed? How had he become aware of the dream, the hope of my soul, the fixed purpose of my life during long and wearisome years?

“All these queries served but to envelop their subject in a deeper robe of mystery; and while they were passing he stood at my side gazing curiously at the now white vapor, as it writhed and curled upward, and out upon the air, through the broken panes.

“It was very, very singular!

“In a little while the wreck was cleared; the old man left me, promising to call again that day, and I went out to order new apparatus, some glazing, another carpet, and to visit a number of patients; after which I returned. It was about three o’clock, and I had not been long in before Miakus, true to his word, came also.”

FOOTNOTE:

[6] See the book called “Dealings with the Dead,” second series.

[CHAPTER IV.]
THE MAGIC MIRROR.

“ ‘Let me give you a piece of advice,’ said Miakus, ‘for you need it. First, never intrust any secret to a friend, which, if revealed, would bring trouble or disgrace. Never interfere in a brawl or quarrel, no matter who is right or who wrong; but always let the world do its own fighting, while you stand by to avail yourself of any advantage that chance may disclose; and lastly, keep what you know until there shall be a market for it. Now we will test our magic glass,’ and forthwith we went into the rear office, which by that time had been refitted, so far as glass and carpet were concerned.

“In his hands he bore the rose-wood box, which he laid upon the table, while, by the aid of four gimlets, he fixed a silken screen, or curtain, entirely across the room, having previously closed the shutters to exclude every ray of daylight from the apartment.

“ ‘That,’ said he ‘is a magic screen. You have seen a magic-lantern exhibition. Well, this is to be a similar one, without the lantern. I now open this box, as you see, and take from it this mirror, which is, as you observe, merely two plates of French glass, with strips of wood around their edges to keep them half an inch apart, and so that a fluid poured between them shall not escape. Nothing depends for success upon either the box, the curtain, or the glasses, but all depends upon the peculiar fluid between them, which is, as you perceive, of a dark brown color, but at a distance, quite inky to the eye.

“ ‘I now hang this mirror by this hook, to the ring sewed to the upper central edge of the screen. Then closing and locking both the doors, thus, I place these two chairs for you and I to sit upon. Then I take this reflector and place it near the gas jet in such a manner as to throw a strong light—a perfectly circular and brilliant disk upon the very centre of the glass tablet, thus,—and he suited his actions to his words; after which we took our seats before the curtain, and I observed that the liquid between the glasses was of such a nature as to reflect a sort of semi-opalescent hue.

“ ‘Before proceeding to demonstrate the truth of Hamlet’s remark to Horatio,’ said the experimenter at my side, ‘I find it essential to give you a why and wherefore. Know, then, that not only is there a mysterious and powerful sympathy between man’s body and all things outside of it, but it is still more true that a greater one exists between these outside things and his soul within, as is proved by the astonishing power over it exerted by various substances, most of which, especially the last eight, ought to be banished from the earth and be accursed for ever—for instance, Belladonna, Cantharadin, Beng, Opium, Hasheesh, Dewammeskh, Hyndee, Tartooroh, Hab-zafereen, Mah-rubah, Gunjah, and many other vegetable preparations that might be named, and every one of which will not merely affect the body, but the tremendous mystery that lies concealed within it. They expand the soul, but they also damn it! Let us ascend from gross matter to the volatile—Light, for instance. By concave mirrors we can throw an image in open space that shall be seen by thousands. We chain a shadow, and whoever has a photograph possesses one such prisoner. We make a few passes over a glass of water, and charge it thus with any specific quality we choose, nauseous or pleasant, and it produces corresponding effects upon the patient who takes it. Here you have mind and matter united by an act of mere volition. But we go still farther: for we select materials, and with them render the water still more highly sensitive. We then charge it with our souls, to such an extent that it shall comatize a man’s body, and illuminate his soul to the sublimest degree of clairvoyance. Still higher: it is possible to compound a liquid that shall seize on, and for a time retain, by its subtle power, any mental image thrown upon it. Still higher: there are direct and positive affinities and co-relations between every thing and person on this earth and off it. By certain knowledge, certain persons are able to select those things that possess certain affinities to and for the inhabitants of the upper worlds, and the dwellers in the Spaces. Now that glass disk before you contains such a liquid, thus compounded—’

“Here he gave me the most minute explanations of the process of constructing such curious mirrors, and how to charge them with a liquid which I at once saw must of necessity be electrical, magnetic, highly odyllic and ethereal. Then he told me how to charge it differently for different uses—as a toy, a means of medical diagnosis, for the purpose of interpreting dreams, seeing earthly things, discovering lost treasures, reading the past or the future, and for many other purposes, as no one mirror would serve more than one end, or work in more than a single direction, unless specially constructed for such general use, which would render them too costly.

“ ‘Properly prepared,’ he continued, ‘your mirror becomes so amazingly sensitive as to not only receive and retain images of things too subtle for solar light, but to bring out and render them visible. Nor is this all. There is light within light, atmosphere within atmosphere, and intelligent beings who dwell within them, and who can commune with man only through such mirrors, upon which they can photograph the information they wish to convey, either by scenes depicted therein, or by words projected thereon. Now, observe. Thoughts are things—they are real, substantial actualities, if not actual matter. They are things that have shadows, shape, form, outline, bulk. Some are flat, others are sharp, cutting, pointed, and go on boring their way through the world from age to age. Others are solid, round, bulky, and stagger when they strike you or impinge upon the world. Thoughts live, die, and grow. Now, attend. Gaze steadily and firmly; desire to see something, no matter what.’

“I smiled incredulously, and observed that one could see one’s face in any bit of glass.

“ ‘True,’ replied he, ‘but you have never seen your soul; and this bauble will show you that. It will reveal events already past, that are now occurring, or that will transpire in the future, on the earth or off it.’

“Much doubting what he said, I told him that, just then, the sceptical mood was on me, and my belief must be forced. He well knew the singular constitution of my mind, and that, in spite of much contrary seeming, I was one of the most obdurate sceptics concerning the supernatural that ever lived. To most of those who have known me, or read what I have written in past years, it may appear strange that I, who have been the accepted champion of all things spectral, should now make such a seeming confession. But human nature is a very strange compound! My heart, my loves, desires, and emotional nature were all on the side of the ghostly, and eagerly grasped and nursed the occult and weird; and when these reigned in my soul I bravely defended the spiritual theory against all comers. I rose to sublime heights of inspiration and speculation, and being thereby rendered morbidly sensitive to affectional influences, readily yielded to the specious social sophistry of the hour, and, for a while, pursued a course from which, had not reason been utterly blinded, I would have shrunk with ineffable horror; but, being surrounded by scores of thousands similarly deluded, it was impossible for a while to break through the accursed meshes of this devil’s net into the clear, cool light of truth beyond.

“This was one side of the life-web I was weaving. But there came moments wherein enthusiasm was exchanged for something like sober-mindedness; and then intellect rejected most of what heart had drank in, and challenged the conclusions of my own and others’ in regard to the Phantom-Philosophy. People cried, ‘Inconsistent!’ ‘Variable!’ mistaking honesty for whim—and just as if anything or person was ever consistent!

“In the present séance, logic held the reigns of mind, and I laughed, which Miakus observing, said: ‘Laugh on, laugh on; but you must be careful or the laugh will be against you. Truth is a dainty and a jealous dame, and never relishes practical jokes at her expense. But, look! the mirror begins to operate.’ And, instantly bending down, he veiled his face in both his hands, and remained thus for perhaps a minute, when he spoke, saying, ‘What see you in the glass?’

“ ‘Nothing,’ I replied, ‘but the images of ourselves.’

“ ‘Have patience! Look again! Try!’

“A short silence then followed, when—

“ ‘Do you see anything yet?’

“ ‘Yes; but nothing extraordinary. Only a clear spot—an atmospheric-looking aperture in the centre of the glass. Yes! now there comes a change—faint, misty, dusky shadows flit across; but nothing positive or distinct.’

“ ‘Is that all?’

“ ‘It is.’

“ ‘Look again.’

“ ‘Clearly and distinctly I see the fore-quarters of a large greyish-white dog. It grows! Now it is complete! The image stands out, bold and clear, from the mirror!’

“So perfect was this appearance, that I could not realize that it was a phantasm. The thing was impossible. It looked like the reflection of a dog in a looking-glass, and I actually turned my head, not to look for the dog, but for the picture of one upon the wall, that might have caused the image in the mirror. There was no such picture. The old man enjoyed my surprise, and muttered—

“ ‘Nothing supernatural, ha? Remember that idiots, bigots, and fools only dispute the existence of that which others do, but they do not understand. True, many pin their faith in a hereafter upon the curious phenomena attributed to disembodied souls, but they err in so doing. The demonstration can never be afforded through any process of either phenomena or intellection. Of that, be assured. Immortality can never be thought; it must be felt. Your philosopher cannot possibly grasp the idea, because it is not an idea at all. It is a reality, and comes to man never through the intellect, but ever and always through other channels of the spirit—comes over roads that begin on earth and terminate directly at the foot of God’s throne. Thus, when storms fall on the philosophic soul it shrinks and plays the coward. Not so the truly intuitional man. He feels, and, feeling, sees God through the gloom; and that, to him, is an insurance against loss or annihilation. He rides triumphant over circumstances that bar themselves effectually against all philosophers. Even when the shadow rests heaviest on the sky of life, such a soul beholds God enthroned in auroral splendor everywhere; he catches the sound of his voice from every echoing hill and dell, and it speaks to him of life everlasting, and its tones carry a thrilling demonstration of an hereafter that all the spiritualism of the earth could never impart.’

“Now while I looked upon the mirror I silently marvelled whether it were possible, through that glass, to solve the grand secret of the ages, and the old man’s speech could not possibly have been more apropos than it was. But in a moment afterward I felt indignant at having beheld such a figure, when he had promised I should see my soul, and told him so. ‘Let not that offend you,’ he replied, ‘that figure is not spectral, it is correspondential. What is the type of enduring fidelity, perfect trust and confidence, unbounded love and faith, if its symbol be not a dog? Such is the quality of your soul, nor is it very bad.’

“There now came a broad clean space on the glass, and the whole of it became clear and pellucid as the finest crystal; and in its very centre appeared a tiny, but very brilliant speck of white light, and its lustre increased till it became painful to gaze upon it. Gradually this expanded, and there came a space in its middle clearer than the brightest noon-day, into which I gazed with rapture, for the intense light faded away into a sort of hazy-vapor surrounding this spot.

“ ‘Into such, and through such do I wish you to look for me. But not now. The time is not propitious. That which you behold is the lense of a mystical telescope, wherewith you may scan and sweep the fields where revolve a myriad worlds like this, and of other millions whereof man is yet profoundly ignorant. Through it you can and may witness not only the worlds of which I speak, but also their tenants and all that they are doing.’

“ ‘What! Do you mean to tell me that through that telescope, as you call it, a living man can behold all that is going on in Mars and Jupiter?’

“ ‘Aye!’ said he, ‘and half a million planets, suns and systems more. It will reveal the fate or fortune of any one, alive or dead. But to the proof.’ As he spoke, it seemed that a sort of tube of light extended itself toward my eyes, and through it I beheld, as in a diorama, each and all of the terrible and painful scenes of what I believe to be my most recent life on the earth. I beheld all my few joys and successes, and all the countless agonies of body and soul, by which they had been girdled. Men met the phantom of myself, with smiles upon their faces, and seemed to speak in honied phrases, to make themselves believed, and then these shadows stabbed at the listener and he fell, but did not seem to die, for a grisly phantom ever hovered over him, but from pity forbore to strike.

“The scene changed. It appeared to be a rural village—the date, in fiery figures on the corner of the field, was 1852. It was a barber’s shop, and a light, happy-hearted youth was therein pursuing his avocation, and earning bread and health. This youth was apparently gifted to look beyond the veil, and into the dim regions of the dead; and it seemed that this was known, for presently people flocked about him, and the scene closed.

“Again the magic picture presented this man as in public life; cliques made use of him, flattered his vanity, and he was led into errors of conduct and judgment, but none so great as manifested by others around him; but, on the instant that this man discovered his error, and announced it, ten thousand daggers were levelled at his heart, ten thousand tongues defamed him—and for what? Because he had been true to his knowledge, his conscience and his God. He fell beneath the strokes of those who had sworn themselves his friends and the friends of all mankind. See him now with his heart bowed down.

“It shifts; and lo! the man appears again. Consumed by the fires of hatred, envy, ingratitude and venom of his former friends, he has risen again. ‘Je renais de mes cendres,’ was the motto on the banner that he floated to the breeze. He changed his mode of life. One of those who were the very first to take him from his labor, and bring him before the world, still clung to him, declared that even death should never alienate him (for the pantomime was as readable as speech), and the deceiver was believed.

“Again the phantorama changed. The barber-orator had reached to competence—had gained much gold, a deal of philosophy, and but very little wisdom with it all, for he still believed the speech of people; measured men and women by the standard of his own heart, and believed that honest say was honest mean. He had forgotten that, after all, this is but a baby world, and still went on in the same old way, trusting and suffering.

“He had one to provide for—a female relative—in whom his heart was bound, but this was not reciprocal. The relation was that of religious duty on his side, and self-interest on hers. Still the man nobly struggled for her—so it seemed—and the picture faded, but another came. His ‘friend’ by fraud obtained all the man had, and then, with malignant purpose, defamed the female to his dupe, having first reduced the man to beggary. All this, working on the barber, nearly upset his reason, and the victim raged in his agony, and the financier laughed at him, and fed sumptuously, daily; and, having previously obtained by double fraud, a signature to the effect that robbery was a legal loan, gloated over the misery he had caused, and denounced the victim himself had made. Once more the picture flew on, years had gone by, the despised man—despised because his skin was darker than his destroyer’s—had risen into eminence and fame.

“It changed again. Disgrace, poverty, the prison and the halter had avenged him.

“ ‘The way of the world!’ said Miakus, ‘but recollect that

“ ‘Ever the Right comes uppermost,
And ever is justice done!’