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+Project Gutenberg's Tom Clark and His Wife, by Paschal Beverly Randolph
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Tom Clark and His Wife
+       Their Double Dreams, And the Curious Things that Befell
+       Them Therein; Being the Rosicrucian's Story
+
+Author: Paschal Beverly Randolph
+
+Release Date: February 23, 2011 [EBook #35366]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TOM CLARK AND HIS WIFE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier, Mary Meehan and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
+produced by the Wright American Fiction Project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                         TOM CLARK AND HIS WIFE,
+
+THEIR DOUBLE DREAMS, AND THE CURIOUS THINGS THAT BEFELL THEM THEREIN;
+BEING 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.
+
+
+    NEW YORK:
+    SINCLAIR TOUSEY, 121 NASSAU STREET.
+    1863.
+
+
+DEAR CHARLES T----s:
+
+Since we parted at the "Golden Gate," the weight of a world has rested
+on your shoulders, and I have suffered much, in my journeyings up and
+down the world, as wearily I wandered over Zahara's burning sands and
+among the shrines and monuments of Egypt, Syria, and Araby the blessed;
+separated in body, but united in soul, we have each sought knowledge,
+and, I trust, gained wisdom. _Our work_ is just begun. One portion of
+that work consists in the endeavor to unmask villainy, and vindicate the
+sanctity and perpetuity of marriage. In this little work I have tried to
+do this, and believe that if the magic talisman herein recommended as a
+sovereign balm for the strifes and ills of wedlock, be faithfully used,
+that the great married world will adopt your motto and my own, and
+become convinced that in spite of much contrary seeming "WE MAY BE HAPPY
+YET!"
+
+To you, and to such this book is
+
+Affectionately dedicated by your friend and the world's,
+
+P. B. RANDOLPH.
+
+
+
+
+THE ROSICRUCIAN'S STORY.
+
+
+
+
+PART I.
+
+THE MAN.
+
+
+He used to pace rapidly up and down the deck for a minute or two, and
+then, suddenly striking his forehead, as if a new thought were just
+pangfully coming into being at the _major foci_ of his soul, he would
+throw himself prone upon one of the after seats of the old "Uncle Sam,"
+the steamer in which we were going from San Francisco to Panama, and
+there he would lie, apparently musing, and evidently enjoying some sort
+of interior life, but whether that life was one of reverie, dream, or
+disembodiedness, was a mystery to us all, and would have remained so,
+but that on being asked, he very complaisantly satisfied our doubts, by
+informing us that on such occasion he, in spirit, visited a place not
+laid down in ordinary charts, and the name of which was the realm of
+"Wotchergifterno," which means in English, "Violinist's Meadow" (very
+like "Fiddler's Green"). When not pacing the deck, or reclining, or
+gazing at the glorious sunsets on the sea, or the still more gorgeous
+sun-risings on the mountains, he was in the habit of--_catching flies_;
+which flies he would forthwith proceed to dissect and examine by means
+of a microscope constructed of a drop of water in a bent broom wisp.
+Gradually the man became quite a favorite with both passengers and
+officers of the ship, and not a day passed but a crowd of ladies and
+gentlemen would gather around him to listen to the stories he would not
+merely recite, but compose as he went along, each one containing a moral
+of more than ordinary significance. It was apparent from the first that
+the man was some sort of a mystic, a dreamer, or some such
+out-of-the-ordinary style of person, because everything he said or did
+bore an unmistakable ghostly impress. He was sorrowful withal, at times,
+and yet no one on the ship had a greater or more humorous flow of
+spirits. In the midst, however, of his brightest sallies, he would
+suddenly stop short, as if at that moment his listening soul had caught
+the jubilant cry of angels when God had just pardoned some sinful,
+storm-tossed human soul.
+
+One day, during the progress of a long and interesting conversation on
+the nature of that mysterious thing called the human soul, and in which
+our fellow passenger had, as usual, taken a leading part, with the
+endeavor to elicit, as well as impart, information, he suddenly changed
+color, turned almost deathly pale, and for full five minutes, perhaps
+more, looked straight into the sky, as if gazing upon the awful and
+ineffable mysteries of that weird Phantom-land which intuition
+demonstrates, but cold reason utterly rejects or challenges for
+tangible proof. Long and steadily gazed the man; and then he
+shuddered--shuddered as if he had just received some fearful solution of
+the problem near his heart. And I shuddered also--in pure sympathy with
+what I could not fairly understand. At length he spoke; but with bated
+breath, and in tones so low, so deep, so solemn, that it seemed as
+though a dead, and not a living man, gave utterance to the sounds:
+"Lara! Lara! Ah, Lovely! would that I had gone _then_--that I were with
+thee now!" and he relapsed into silence.
+
+Surprised, both at his abruptness, change of manner and theme--for ten
+minutes before, and despite the solemnity of the conversational topic,
+he had been at a fever heat of fun and hilarity--I asked him what he
+meant. Accustomed, as we had been, to hear him break in upon the most
+grave and dolorous talk with a droll observation which instantly
+provoked the most unrestrainable, hilarious mirth; used, as we had been
+to hear him perpetrate a joke, and set us all in a roar in the very
+midst of some heart-moving tale of woe, whereat our eyes had moistened,
+and our pulses throbbed tumultuously, yet I was not, even by all this,
+prepared for the singular characteristic now presented. In reply to my
+question, he first wiped away an involuntary tear, as if ashamed of his
+weakness; then raised his head, and exclaimed:
+
+"Lara! Lara! The Beautiful One!"
+
+"What of her?" asked Colbert, who sat opposite him, and who was deeply
+moved at his evident distress, and whose curiosity, as that of us all,
+was deeply piqued.
+
+"Listen," said he, "and I will tell you;" and then, while we eagerly
+drank in his words, and strove to drink in their strange and wondrous
+meaning (first warning us that what he was about to say was but the text
+of something to be thereafter told), he leaned back upon the taffrail,
+and while the steamer gently plowed her way toward Acapulco and far-off
+Panama, said:
+
+"Fleshless, yet living, I strode through the grand old hall of a mighty
+temple. I had been compelled to climb the hills to reach the wall that
+bars the Gates of Glory, and now within my heart strange pulses beat the
+while. I found myself upon the verge of a vast extended plain,
+stretching out to the Infinitudes, as it seemed, through the narrow
+spaces wherein the vision was not obstructed by certain dense,
+convolving vapor-clouds that ever and anon rose from off the murky
+breast of the waters of the river of Lethe, that rolled hard by and
+skirted the immense prairie on and over which I proposed to travel, on
+my way from Minus to Plus--from Nothing to Something, from Bad to Good,
+and from Better to BEST--travelling toward my unknown, unimagined
+Destiny--travelling from the _Now_ toward the _Shall Be_. And I stood
+and mutely gazed--gazed at the dense, dark shadows rolling murkily,
+massily over the plain and through the spaces--dim shadows of dead
+worlds. No sound, no footfall, not even mine own--not an echo broke the
+Stillness. I was alone!--alone upon the vast Solitude--the tremendous
+wastes of an unknown, mysterious, unimagined Eterne--unimagined in all
+its fearful stillitude! Within my bosom there was a heart, but no pulse
+went from it bounding through my veins; no throb beat back responsive
+life to my feeling, listening spirit. I and my Soul were there alone; we
+only--the Thinking self, and the Self that ever knows, but never
+thinks--were there. My heart was not cold, yet it was more: it was, I
+felt, changed to solid stone--changed all save one small point, distant,
+afar off, like unto the vague ghost of a long-forgotten fancy; and this
+seemed to have been the penalty inflicted for things done by me while on
+the earth; for it appeared that I was dead, and that my soul had begun
+an almost endless pilgrimage--to what?--to where? A penalty! And yet no
+black memory of red-handed crime haunted me, or lurked in the
+intricacies of the mystic wards of my death-defying soul; and I strode
+all alone adown the uncolumned vistas of the grand old temple--a temple
+whose walls were builded of flown Seconds, whose tesselated pavements
+were laid in sheeted Hours, whose windows on one side opened upon the
+Gone Ages, and on the other upon the Yet to Be; and its sublime turrets
+pierced the clouds, which roll over and mantle the hoary summits of the
+grey Mountains of Time! And so I and my Soul walked through this temple
+by ourselves--alone!
+
+"With clear, keen gaze, I looked forth upon the Vastness, and my vision
+swept over the floors of all the dead years; yet in vain, for the things
+of my longing were not there. I beheld trees, but all their leaves were
+motionless, and no caroling bird sent its heart-notes forth to waken the
+dim solitudes into life and music--which are love. There were stately
+groves beneath the arching span of the temple's massy dome, but no
+amphian strains of melody fell on the ear, or filled the spaces, from
+their myriad moveless branches, or from out their fair theatres. All was
+still. It was a palace of frozen tones, and only the music of Silence
+(which is vocal, if we listen well) prevailed; and I, Paschal the
+Thinker, and my Thought--strange, uncouth, yet mighty but moveless
+thought--were the only living things beneath the expansive dome. Living,
+I had sacrificed all things--health, riches, honor, fame, ease, even
+Love itself, for Thought, and by Thought had overtopped many who had
+started on the race for glory long ere my soul had wakened to a
+consciousness of itself--which means Power. In life I had, so it seemed,
+builded stronger than I thought, and had reached a mental
+eminence--occupied a throne so lofty--that mankind wondered, stood
+aloof, and gazed at me from afar off; and by reason of my thought had
+gathered from me, and thus condemned the Thinker to an utter solitude,
+even in the most thronged and busy haunts of men; and I walked through
+earth's most crowded cities more lonely than the hermit of the desert,
+whose eyes are never gladdened by the sight of human form, and through
+the chambers of whose brain no human voice goes ringing. Thus was it on
+earth; and now that I had quitted it forever, with undaunted soul,
+strong purpose, and fearless tread, assured of an endless immortality,
+and had entered upon the life of Thinking, still was I alone. Had my
+life, my thinking, and my action on thought been failures? The
+contemplation of such a possibility was bitter, very bitter--even like
+unto painful death--and yet it seemed true that failure had been
+mine--failure, notwithstanding men by thousands spoke well of me and of
+my works--the children of my thought--and bought my books in thousands.
+Failure? My soul rejected the idea in utter loathing. For a moment the
+social spirit, the heartness of my nature over-shadowed Reason, and
+caused me to forget that, even though confined by dungeon walls,
+stricken with poverty, deformity, sin or disease--even though left out
+to freeze in the cold world's spite--yet the thinker is ever the world's
+true and only King. I had become, for a moment, oblivious of the fact
+that failure was an impossibility. _Rosicrucians never fail!_"
+
+       *       *       *       *
+
+"But now, as I slowly moved along, I felt my human nature was at war
+with the God-nature within, and that Heart for a while was holding the
+Head in duress. I longed for release from Solitude; my humanity yearned
+for association, and would have there, on the breast of the great
+Eterne, given worlds for the company of the lowliest soul I had ever
+beheld--and despised, as I walked the streets of the cities of the
+far-off earth. I yearned for human society and affection, and could even
+have found blissful solace with--a dog! just such a dog as, in times
+past, I had scornfully kicked in Cairo and Stamboul. Even a dog was
+denied me now--all affection withheld from me--and in the terrible
+presence of its absence I longed for death, forgetting again that Soul
+can never die. I longed for that deeper extinguishment which should
+sweep the soul from being, and crown it with limitless, eternal
+Night--forgetful, again, that the Memories of Soul must live, though the
+rememberer cease to be, and that hence Horrors would echo through the
+universe--children mourning for their suicidal parent, and that parent
+myself!
+
+"And I lay me down beneath a tree in despair--a tree which stood out all
+alone from its fellows, in a grove hard by--a tree all ragged and
+lightning-scathed--an awful monument, mute, yet eloquently proclaiming
+to the wondering on-looker that God had passed that way, in fierce,
+deific wrath, once upon a time, in the dead ages, whose ashes now
+bestrewed the floors of the mighty temple of Eterne.
+
+"It was dreadful, very dreadful, to be all alone. True, the pangs of
+hunger, the tortures of thirst, the fires of ambition, and the raging
+flames of earthly passion no longer marred my peace. Pain, such as
+mortals feel, was unknown; no disease racked my frame, or disturbed the
+serenity of my external being--for I was immortal, and could laugh all
+these and Death itself to scorn; and yet a keener anguish, a more
+fearful suffering, was mine. I wept, and my cries gave back no outer
+sound, but they rang in sombre echoes through the mighty arches, the
+bottomless caverns, the abyssmal deeps of Soul--my soul--racking it with
+torments such as only thinking things can feel. Such is the lot, such
+the discipline of the destined citizens of the Farther Empyrean--a
+region known only to the Brethren of the Temple of Peerless Rosicrucia!"
+
+       *       *       *       *
+
+"Sleep came--sweet sleep--deep and strange; and in it I dreamed.
+Methought I still wandered gloomily beneath the vast arches of the grand
+old hall, until at last, after countless cycles of ripe years had been
+gathered back into the treasury of the _Etre Supreme_, I stood before a
+solid, massive door, which an inscription thereabove announced as being
+the entrance to the Garden of the Beatitudes. This door was secured by a
+thousand locks, besides one larger than all the rest combined. Every one
+of these locks might be opened, but the opener could not pass through
+unless he unfastened the master-lock having ten thousand bolts and
+wards.
+
+"Once more despair seized on my soul, in this dream which was not all a
+dream; for to achieve an entrance through the gate without the
+master-key was a task, so said the inscription, that would defy the
+labors of human armies for periods of time utterly defying man's
+comprehension--so many were the difficulties, so vastly strong the
+bolts.
+
+"Sadly, mournfully, I turned away, when, as if by chance--forgetting
+that there is no such thing as Chance--my eye encountered a rivetless
+space upon the solid brazen door--a circular space, around the periphery
+of which was an inscription running thus: 'MAN ONLY FAILS THROUGH
+FEEBLENESS OF WILL!' Within this smooth circle was the semblance of a
+golden triangle, embracing a crystalline globe, winged and beautiful,
+crowned with a Rosicrucian cypher, while beneath it stood out, in fiery
+characters, the single word, 'TRY!' The very instant I caught the magic
+significance of these divine inscriptions, a new Hope was begotten in my
+soul; Despair fled from me, and I passed into
+
+"A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM.
+
+"What a change! During my slumber it seemed that I had been transported
+to the summit of a very lofty mountain, yet still within the Temple. By
+my side stood an aged and saintly man, of regal and majestic presence.
+He was clad in an oriental garb of the long-gone ages, and his flowing
+robes were bound to his waist by a golden band, wrought into the
+similitude of a shining serpent--the sacred emblem of eternal wisdom.
+Around his broad and lofty brow was a coronet of silver, dusted with
+spiculae of finest diamond. On the sides of the centre were two scarabei,
+the symbol of immortality; and between them was a pyramid, on which was
+inscribed a mystical character which told, at the same time, that his
+name was Ramus the Great.[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: The same known historically as Thothmes, or Thotmor the
+Third, King of all Egypt, in the 18th dynasty, and sixty-ninth Chief or
+Grand Master of the Superlative Order of Gebel Al Maruk--since known, in
+Christian lands, as the Order of the Brethren of the Rosie Cross, and
+now known in America and Europe, where it still thrives, as the Imperial
+Order of Rosicrucia.]
+
+"This royal personage spake kindly to me, and his soft tones fell upon
+the hearing of my soul like the words of pardon to the sense of sinners
+at the Judgment Seat. 'Look, my son,' said he, at the same time pointing
+toward a vast procession of the newly-risen dead--a spectral army on the
+sides of the mountain, slowly, steadily, mournfully wending their way
+toward the part of the temple I had quitted previous to the commencement
+of this dream within a dream. Said the man at my side: 'Yonder host of
+pilgrims are men and women who are seeking, as thou hast sought, to
+unbar the Gates of Glory, that they may pass through them into the
+delightful Garden of the Beatitudes. It is one thing to be endowed with
+Intellectual Strength, Knowledge and Immortality; it is another to be
+Wise and Happy. The first is a boon granted to all the children of earth
+alike; the last can only be attained by integral development--by
+self-endeavor, by innate goodness and God-ness continually
+manifested--and this in material and aromal worlds alike. Man is man and
+woman is woman, wherever they may be! The true way to the garden lies
+not through Manifestation Corridor, but through the Hall of Silence! and
+each Aspirant must open the door for himself alone. Failing to enter, as
+thou hast failed, each must turn back, and, like thee, come hither to
+Mount Retrospect, and entering into the labyrinths within its sides,
+must search for the triple key, which alone can unbar the Gate, and
+admit to the Beautiful Garden! Remember! Despair not! Try!' and in an
+instant the Phantom-man turned from me, and with outstretched arms, and
+benignance beaming from every feature, hied him toward the ascending
+army.
+
+"Again I stood alone, not now in despondency and gloom, but in all the
+serene strength of noble, conscious Manhood--not the actual, but the
+certain and glorious possibility thereof. My soul had grown. It was
+aware of all its past short-comings, failures, and its hatreds toward
+two men who had done me deadly wrong. This feeling still
+survived--stronger than ever, now that I was across the Bridge of
+Hours, and had become a citizen of the inner land--a wanderer through
+Eternity. That hate was as immortal as my deathless soul. Will it ever
+be? And yet I had ever meant well. All was calm in my spirit, save this
+single awful thing. In this spirit, with this consciousness--not of deep
+malignance, but of outraged Justice--I began to look for the mysterious
+key; and as I looked, an instinct told me that the key must consist of
+certain grand human virtues, and corresponding good deeds, held and done
+before I left the shores of time and embarked upon the strange and
+mystic sea whereon my soul's fortunes were now cast.
+
+"And so I searched, and at last seemed to have found what I sought; and
+thereupon I wished myself once more before the brazen Gate. Instantly,
+as if by magic, the wish was realized, and I stood before at, on the
+same spot formerly occupied. The first inscription, the symbols and
+circle had disappeared, and in their stead was another circle,
+containing these lines: 'Speak, for thou shalt be heard! Tell what thou
+hast done to elevate thy fellow men, and to round out the angles of
+thine own soul. Whom hast thou uplifted, loved, hated? Speak, and when
+the words containing the key are spoken, the door will yield, and thou
+mayest pass the Threshold.'
+
+"The writing slowly faded, and left naught but a surface, but that
+surface as of molten gold. I spoke aloud my claim to entrance, and, to
+my astonishment, my voice rang out shrill and clear, through the vaults
+and arches of the mighty dome towering far above my head. 'I have
+suffered from infancy--been opposed from the cradle to maturity--been
+hated, robbed, slandered on all sides, yet pushed forward in defiance of
+all, until I reached all that I desired--all that earth could give me.
+Self-educated, I achieved triumphs where others failed; have reaped
+laurels and grasped the keys of fame, and laughed at my folly
+afterwards, because what is fame? A canker, gnawing out one's life when
+living, disturbing his repose when dead--not worth a straw! But, in all
+this, despite the ending, I have set an example, by following which man
+might elevate himself, society be improved, and its constituents realize
+the bliss of moving in loftier spheres of usefulness!' While giving
+voice to these truths, I firmly expected to see the gate fly open at
+their conclusion. But what was my horror and dismay to see that it moved
+not at all, while the echoes of my speech gave back in frightfully
+resonant waves of sound the last word, 'USEFULNESS!'
+
+"Not being able to think of any nobler achievements, I cast my eyes
+groundward, and, on again raising them, I beheld, across the clear space
+on the door, the single word, 'TRY!'
+
+"Taking heart again, I said, 'Alone I sought the secret of restoring
+health to the sick, and gave it freely to the world, without money,
+without price. I have made grand efforts to banish sloth, sin,
+ignorance; have ever upheld the honor of the Cross, and the sweet
+religion it symbolizes. Striving ever to upraise the veil that hides man
+from himself, in the effort I have been misapprehended, my motives
+impugned, and my reward has been poverty, slander, disgrace. In the
+strife, I have been heedless to every call save that of human duty,
+and, in obeying the behests of a nobler destiny, have been regardless of
+all worldly distinction; have ignored wealth, fame, honorable place in
+the world's esteem, and even been deaf to the calls of love!'
+
+"I ceased, and again the vault threw back my last word, and all the
+arches echoed 'LOVE!'
+
+"The gate moved not, but once more appeared upon the golden lozenge on
+the door the word 'TRY!' in greater brightness than before, while it
+seemed to the hearing sense of my spirit that a thousand velvet
+whispers--low, _so_ low, gently cadenced back 'LOVE!'
+
+"'I have rebuked the immoral, humbled the lofty and overbearing, exposed
+deception, comforted the mourner, redeemed the harlot, reformed the
+thief, fed the orphan and upheld the rights and dignity of Labor!'
+
+"Still the door moved not, but again the echoes gave back the last word,
+'LABOR!'
+
+"'I have preached immortality to thousands, and prevailed on them to
+believe it; have written of, and everywhere proclaimed its mighty
+truths. I have beaten the sceptic, confirmed the wavering, reassured the
+doubting, and through long and bitter years, in both hemispheres of the
+globe, have declared that if a man die, he shall live again; thus
+endeavoring to overthrow error, establish truth, banish superstition,
+and on their ruins lay the deep and broad foundations of a better
+faith!'
+
+"As if a myriad voices chimed out my last syllable, there rang through
+the spacious halls and corridors of the Temple, the sublime word,
+'FAITH!' and instantly the bolts appeared to move within their iron
+wards. Continuing, I said: 'I have ever endeavored, save in one single
+instance, to foster, and in all cases have a spirit of forgiveness.'
+
+"This time there was no mistake. The thousand bolts flew back, the
+ponderous brazen gate moved forward and back, like a vast curtain, as if
+swayed by a gentle wind; while a million silvery voices sang gloriously,
+'IN ALL CASES HAVE A SPIRIT OF FORGIVENESS!'
+
+"Joyously I tried again, intuition plainly telling me that only one
+thing more was necessary to end my lonely pilgrimage, and exalt me to
+the blessed companionship of the dear ones whom I so longed to join in
+their glory-walks adown the celestial glades and vistas of God's Garden
+of the Beatitudes. I spoke again:
+
+"'I have fallen from man's esteem in pursuance of what appeared to be my
+duty. A new faith sprung up in the land, and unwise zealots brought
+shame and bitter reproach against and upon it. Lured by false reasoning,
+I yielded to the fascinations of a specious sophistry, and for awhile my
+soul languished under the iron bondage of a powerful and glittering
+falsehood. At length, seeing my errors, I strove to correct them, and to
+sift the chaff from the true and solid grain; but the people refused to
+believe me honest, and did not, would not understand me; but they
+insisted that in denouncing Error, I ignored the living truths of God's
+great economy; yet still I labored on, trying to correct my faults, and
+to cultivate the queen of human virtues, Charity!' Scarcely had this
+last word escaped my lips, than the massive portals flew wide open,
+disclosing to my enraptured gaze such a sight of supernal and celestial
+beauty, grandeur, and magnificence, as human language is totally
+inadequate to describe; for it was such, as it stood there revealed
+before my ravished soul; and I may not here reveal the wondrous things I
+saw and heard.... Lara, Lara, my beautiful one, the dear dead maiden of
+the long agone, stood before me, just within the lines of Paradise. She
+loved me still--aye, the dear maiden of my youth had not forgotten the
+lover of her early and her earthly days--
+
+    "'When I was a boy, and she was a girl,
+    In the city by the sea,'
+
+ere the cruel Death had snatched her from my arms, and love, a long,
+long time ago; for the love of the Indian, as _his hatred, survives the
+grave_.... And she said, 'Paschal, my beloved--lone student of the weary
+world--I await thy entrance here. But thou mayest not enter now, because
+no hatred can live inside these gates of Bliss. Wear it out, discard it.
+Thou art yet incomplete, thy work is still unfinished. Thou hast found
+the keys! Go back to earth, and give them to thy fellow-men. Teach,
+first _thyself_, and _then_ thy brethren, that Usefulness, Love, Labor,
+Forgiveness, Faith and Charity, are the only keys which are potent to
+cure all ill, and unbar the Gates of Glory.'
+
+"'Lara! Beautiful Lara, I obey thee! Wait for me, love. I am coming
+soon!' I cried, as she slowly retreated, and the gate closed again. 'Not
+yet, not yet,' I cried, as with extended arms I implored the beauteous
+vision to remain--but a single instant longer. But she was gone. I fell
+to the ground in a swoon. When I awoke again, I found the night had
+grown two hours older than it was when I sat down in the chair in my
+little chamber in Bush street, the little chamber which I occupied in
+the goodly city of the Golden Gate."
+
+Thus spake the Rosicrucian. We were all deeply moved at the recital, and
+one after the other we retired to our rooms, pondering on the story and
+its splendid moral. Next day we reached Acapulco, and not till we had
+left and were far on our way toward Panama, did we have an opportunity
+of listening to the sermon to the eloquent text I have just recounted.
+
+At length he gave it, as nearly as it can possibly be reproduced, in the
+following words:
+
+
+
+
+PART II.
+
+THE DOUBLE DREAM.
+
+    ----"and saw within the moonlight of his room----
+
+    An angel, writing in a book of gold."--Leigh Hunt.
+
+"And so you like the text, do you? Very well, I will now see how much
+better you will be pleased with the sermon. Listen:
+
+"'I cannot and will not stand this any longer. Here am I, yet a young
+man--in the very prime and heyday of life, and I do believe that I shall
+be a regular corpse in less than no time, if a change for the better
+don't very soon take place in my family; that's just as certain as "open
+and shut." She, ah, _she_, is killing me by inches--the vampire! Would
+that I had been thirty-five million of miles the other side of nowhere
+the day I married her. Don't I though, Betsey--Betsey Clark is killing
+me! No love, no kindness, not a soft look, never a gentle smile. Oh,
+don't I wish somebody's funeral was over; but not mine; for I feel quite
+capable of loving, of being happy yet, and of making somebody's daughter
+happy likewise. People may well say that marriage is a lottery--a great
+lottery; for, if there's one thing surer than another, then it is
+perfectly certain that I have drawn the very tallest kind of a blank;
+and hang me, if it wasn't for the disgrace of the thing, if I wouldn't
+run off and hitch myself for life to one of the Hottentots I have read
+about; for anything would be better than this misery, long strung out.
+Oh, don't I wish I was a Turk! When a fellow's a Turk he can have ever
+so many wives--and strangle all of 'em that don't suit him or come to
+Taw--as they ought to. Bully for the Turks! I wish I knew how to turn
+myself into one. If I did, I'd be the biggest kind of a Mohammedan afore
+mornin'!'
+
+"Such was the substance of about the thousandth soliloquy on the same
+subject, to the same purport, delivered by Mr. Thomas W. Clark, during
+the last seven years of his wedded life.
+
+"The gentleman named delivered himself of the contented and
+philanthropic speech just recited, on the morning of a fine day, just
+after the usual morning meal--and quarrel with his--wife, _de
+jure_--female attendant would better express the relation _de facto_.
+Mr. Clark was not yet aware that a woman is ever just what her husband's
+conduct makes her--a thing that some husbands besides himself have yet
+to learn.
+
+"Every day this couple's food was seasoned with sundry and divers sorts
+of condiments other than those in the castor. There was a great deal of
+pickle from his side of the gay and festive board, in the shape of
+jealous, spiteful innuendoes; and from her side much delicate _sauce
+piquante_, in the form of sweet allusions to a former husband, whom she
+declared to have been 'the very best husband that was ever sent to'--a
+premature grave by a vixen--she might have added, truthfully, but did
+not, finishing the sentence with, 'to be loved by a tender, gentle
+wife'--like her! The lady had gotten bravely over all her amiable
+weaknesses long ago. Gentle! what are tigresses? Tender! what is a
+virago? So far the man. Now for his mate.
+
+"Scarcely had her lord--'Mr. Thomas W.,' as she was wont to call
+him--gone out of the house, and slammed the door behind him, at the same
+time giving vent to the last bottleful of spleen distilled and concocted
+in his soul, than 'Mrs. Thomas W.,' or poor Betsey Clark, as I prefer to
+call her--for she was truly, really pitiable, for more reasons than one,
+but mainly because she had common sense and would not exercise it
+sufficiently to make the best of a bad bargain--threw herself upon the
+bed, where she cried a little, and raved a good deal, to the self-same
+tune as of yore. Getting tired of both these delightful occupations very
+soon, she varied them by striking an attitude before a portrait of the
+dear defunct--badly executed--the portrait, not the man--whose name she
+bore when she became Mistress Thomas W. This picture of a former husband
+Tom Clark had not had courage or sense enough to put his foot through,
+but did have bad taste sufficient to permit to hang up in the very room
+where he lived and ate, and where its beauties were duly and daily
+expatiated upon, and the virtues of its original lauded to the skies, of
+course to the intense delight of Mr. Clark.
+
+"Madam had a tongue--a regular patent, venom-mounted, back-spring and
+double-actioned tongue, and, what is more, knew well how to use it when
+the fit was on, which, to do her justice, was not more than twenty-three
+hours and a half each day. Never did an opportunity offer that she did
+not avail herself of to amplify the merits of the deceased, especially
+in presence of such visitors as chance or business brought to their
+house, all to the especial delectation of her living spouse, Mr. Thomas
+W. Clark.
+
+"Just look at her now! There she is, _kneeling_ at her shrine, my lady
+gay, vehemently pouring forth the recital of her wrongs--forgetful of
+any one else's, as usual with the genus grumbler--dropping tears and
+maledictions, now on her own folly, then on the devoted head of him she
+had promised to love, honor, and obey, Mr. Clark, fruit-grower, farmer,
+and horse-dealer. Exhausted at length, she winds up the dramatic scene
+by invoking all the blessings of all the saints in all the calendars on
+the soul of him whose counterfeit presentment hangs there upon the wall.
+
+"If this couple did not absolutely hate each other, they came so near it
+that a Philadelphia lawyer would have been puzzled to tell t'other from
+which, and yet nobody but themselves had the least idea of the real
+state of things--those under-currents of married life that only
+occasionally breach through and extensively display themselves in the
+presence of third parties. In the very nature of the case, how absurd it
+is for outsiders to presume to know the real _status_ of affairs--to
+comprehend the actual facts which exist behind the curtains of every or
+any married couple in the land. Hymen is a fellow fond of wearing all
+sorts of masks and disguises; and it often happens that tons of salt
+exist where people suppose nothing but sugar and lollypops are to be
+found.
+
+"Tom and his wife--the latter, especially--pretended to a vast deal of
+loving-kindness--oh, how great--toward each other--and they were
+wise--in the presence of other people. You would have thought, had you
+seen them billing and cooing like a pair of 'Turkle Doves'--to quote the
+'Bard of Baldwinsville'--that there never was so true, so perfect a
+union as their own; and would not have entertained the shadow of a doubt
+but that they had been expressly formed for each other from the
+foundations of the world, if not before. No sooner did they meet--before
+folks, even after the most trifling absence--than they mutually fell to
+kissing and 'dearing,' like two swains just mated, all of which made
+fools wonder, but wise people to grieve. Physical manifestations are not
+quite Love's methods; and it is a safe rule that those who most ape love
+externally, have less of it within--and in private, so great a
+difference is there between Behind and Before, in these matters of the
+heart. Billing and cooing before folks acts as a nauseant upon sensible
+men and women, and in this case it did upon a few of the better class of
+the city of Santa Blarneeo, within a few miles of which Clark lived.
+
+"Betsey Clark gave a last, long, lingering look at the portrait, saying
+the while: 'Don't I wish you were alive and back here again, my love, my
+darling, my precious duck?' Lucky for him was it that such could not be;
+for had it been possible, and actualized, he would have been finely
+plucked, not to say roasted, stewed, perpetually broiled, and in every
+way done brown. 'If you were here, I should be happy, because you _was_
+a man; but this one (meaning Tom), bah!' and the lady bounced upon her
+feet and kicked the cat by way of emphasis. She resumed: 'I can't stand
+it, and I won't, there! that's flat! I'm still young, and people of
+sense tell me I am handsome--at least, good-looking. I'm certain the
+glass does, and no doubt there are plenty who would gladly link their
+lot with mine if he was only dead!' And she shuddered as the fearful
+thought had birth. 'Dead! I wish he was; and true as I live, I've a
+great good mind to accomplish my wish!' And again she shuddered. Poor
+woman, she was indeed tempted of the devil! As the horrible suggestion
+flashed across the sea of her soul, it illumined many a deep chasmal
+abyss, of whose existence, up to that moment she had been utterly
+unaware.
+
+"The human soul is a fearful thing, especially when it stands bare
+before the Eternal Eye, with myriad snake-forms--its own abnormal
+creation, writhing round and near it. A fearful thing! And Betsey Clark
+trembled in the ghastly presence of Uncommitted Murder, whose glance of
+lurid flame set fire to her heart, and scorched and seared it with
+consuming heat. Its flashful light lasted but for a moment; but even
+that was a world too long, for it illumined all the dark caverns of her
+soul, and disclosed to the horrified gaze of an aerial being
+which that instant chanced to pass that way--an abyssmal deep of
+Crime-possibility, so dense, black and terrible, that it almost
+shrivelled the eyeballs and shrouded the vision of the peerless citizen
+of the upper courts of Glory.
+
+"Suddenly the radiant Heaven-born ceased its flight through the azure,
+looked pityingly earth and heaven-ward, heaved a deep and soul-drawn
+sigh, and stayed awhile to gaze upon the Woman and the Man. Long it
+gazed, at first in sorrow, but presently a smile passed across its face,
+as if a new and good thought had struck it, and then it darted off into
+space, as if intent upon discovering a cure for the desperate state of
+things just witnessed. 'Did it succeed?' Wait awhile and see.
+
+"Human nature is a very curious and remarkable institution; so is woman
+nature, only a great deal more so--especially that of the California
+persuasion. Still it was not a little singular that Tom's wife's mind
+should have engendered (of Hate and Impatience) the precise thought that
+agitated his own at that very minute--that very identical crime-thought
+which had just rushed into being from the deeps of his own spirit--twin
+monsters, sibilating 'Murder!' in both their ears.
+
+"There is as close a sympathy between opposites and antagonists, indeed
+far greater, than between similarities--as strong attractions between
+opposing souls as in those fashioned in the same mould. True, this
+affirmation antagonizes many notions among current philosophies and
+philosophers; but it is true, notwithstanding, and therefore so much the
+worse for the philosophers.
+
+"The same fearful thought troubled two souls at the same time, and each
+determined to do a little private killing on their own individual and
+separate accounts. As yet, however, only the intent existed. The plans
+were yet crude, vague, immature, and only the crime loomed up
+indistinctly, like a grim, black mountain through a wintry fog.
+
+"The day grew older by twelve hours, but when the sunset came, ten years
+had fastened themselves upon the brows of both the Woman and the Man
+since last they had parted at rosy morn.
+
+"Bad thoughts are famous for making men grow old before the weight of
+years has borne them earthward. They wrinkle the brow and bring on
+decrepitude, senility and grey hairs faster than Time himself can
+possibly whirl bodies graveward. The rolling hours and the circling
+years are less swift than evil thoughts of evil doing. Right doing,
+innocence, and well-wishing make us young; bad thoughts rob us of youth,
+vivacity, and manhood! Let us turn to Mr. and Mrs. Thomas W.:
+
+    "'Night was on the mountain,
+        Darkness in the valley,
+      And only stars could guide them now
+        In the doubtful rally.'
+
+"There _was_ a star hung out in the sky, and she had already determined
+to watch their destinies; with what success, and in what manner, will be
+apparent before finishing my story, every word of which is true in one
+sense, if not precisely in another.
+
+"The sun had set, and slowly the moon was uprising--blessed moon! God's
+Left Eye, wherewith He at night overlooketh the thoughts and deeds of
+solitary men and solitary women--for only such are capable of
+crime--those only who are, and live alone--and many such there be, even
+at their own firesides, surrounded by their own families, own flesh, own
+blood--fathers, mothers, wives (as times go), husbands (as they are
+conventionally called). Many there be who exist in dreadful solitudes in
+the very midst of human crowds--who live alone and pass through life,
+from the cradle to the grave, perfect strangers, perfect hermits, wholly
+unknowing, totally unknown, like interlopers on the globe, whose very
+right to be here all the world disputes. Friends, I have seen many
+such--have you? These lonely people, these exotics, these insulars in
+the busy haunts of men--the teeming hives of commerce--alone in earth's
+well-paced market-towns--in the very saturnalia of TRADE'S gala days;
+and they are to be pitied, because they all have human, yearning hearts,
+filled to the brim with great strangling sorrows; and they have high and
+holy aspirations, only that the world chokes them down--crushes out the
+pure, sweet life God gave them. These are the Unloved ones; yet ought
+not to be, for are they not somebody's sons and daughters? Yes! Then
+they have rights; and the first, greatest, highest right of all is the
+right of being loved--loved by the people of the land--our
+world-cousins, for what we do, are doing, or have done; and to be loved,
+for the sake of the dear soul within, by somebody else's son or
+daughter.
+
+"So think we of the Rosicrucian Order; so, one day, will think the
+world."
+
+At this point of the Rosicrucian's narrative, Captain Jones, one of his
+auditory, interrupted him with:
+
+"Why, I thought the Rosicrucian system had been dead, buried, and
+forgotten two centuries ago."
+
+He replied: "The false or pseudo-Rosicrucian system has ceased to be.
+Truth herself is deathless. I cannot now stop to explain what interests
+you concerning the revived system of Rosicrucianism. You will now please
+to allow me to proceed with my story," said he, and then resumed,
+saying:
+
+"I repeat that only those who live alone, unloved, unloving, are they
+who, becoming morbid, having all their kindly feelings driven back upon
+themselves, daily, hourly eating up their own hearts--brooding over
+their wrongs, their social and other misfortunes--at length engender
+crime, if not against their fellow-men, then against themselves.
+
+"Oh, for something to love, and be loved by, if but a little pet dog!
+The unloved ever are wrecked, the unloving ever wreck others. It is
+sweet to be loved by even a dumb brute! But, ah, how inexpressibly, how
+infinitely better to be endeared for yourself alone!--for your integral
+wealth of soul--by a Man, a full, true Man; by a Woman, a full,
+gushing-hearted Woman; or, sweeter, dearer still, a child--some glorious
+hero of a hobby-horse, some kitten-torturing Cora! Ah, what a chord to
+touch! I am very fond of children--dear little Godlings of the Ages.
+Those who reciprocate affection truly, are too full of God to keep a
+devil's lodging-house. It is a dear thing to feel the great truth--one
+of Rosicrucia's truths--that nothing is more certain than that
+somewhere, perhaps on earth, perhaps in some one of the innumerable
+aromal worlds--star-spangles on God's diadem--or from amidst the
+mournful monodies in material creation--some one loves us; and that
+there goeth up a prayer, sweet-toned as seraph-harps, to Him for you, my
+weary brother, for you, my sister of the dark locks turning prematurely
+grey; for all of us whose paths through life have been thickly strewn
+with thorns and rocks, sharp boulders and deep and frightful
+pit-falls--great threatening, yawning gulfs:
+
+  "'Oh, the little birds sing east, and the little birds sing west,
+                                                Toll slowly.
+  And I smile to think God's greatness flows around our incompleteness,
+                               Round our restlessness His rest.'
+
+"Somebody loves us for ourselves' sake. Thank God for that!
+
+"And the pale, silver shield of the moon hangs out in the radiant blue,
+and myriad gods look down, through starry eyes, upon this little world,
+as it floats, a tiny bubble, on Space's vast ocean; and they speak
+through their eyes, and bid us all love the Supreme, by loving one
+another; and they say, 'Love much! Such is the whole duty of man.' The
+moon, God's night-eye, takes note of all ye do, and is sometimes forced
+to withdraw behind cloud-veils, that ye may not behold her sweet
+features while she weeps at the sad spectacle of thy wrong doing! Luna,
+gentle Luna, does not like to peer down into human souls, and there
+behold the slimy badness, which will ere long breed deeds of horror to
+make her lovely face more pale--things which disfigure the gardens of
+man's spirit, and transform them into tangled brakes, where only weeds
+and unsightly things do grow. And Luna has a recording angel sitting on
+her shield, whose duty is to flash all intelligence up to His deific
+brain, in whose service she hath ever been. He is just, inexorably just,
+ever rewarding as man sinneth or obeys. And so it is poor policy to sin
+by night. It is equally so to sin by day; for then the Sun--God's Right
+Eye--fails not to behold you, for he is always shining, and his rays
+pierce the clouds and light up the world, even though thick fogs and
+dense vapors conceal his radiant countenance from some. He sees man,
+though man beholds him not; and he photographs all human thoughts and
+deeds upon the very substance of the soul, and that, too, so well and
+deeply, that nothing will destroy the picture; no sophistical 'All
+Right' lavements can wash it away, no philosophic bath destroy it. They
+are indelible, these sun-pictures on the spirit, and they are, some of
+them, very unsightly things to hang in the grand Memory-Galleries of the
+imperishable human soul; for, in the coming epochs of existence, as man
+moves down the corridors of Time, these pictures will still hang upon
+the walls, and if evil, will peer down sadly and reproachfully, and
+fright many a joy away, when man would fain be rid, but cannot, of
+pain-provoking recollections, when his body shall be stranded on the
+shores of the grave, and his spirit is being wafted over strange and
+mystic seas on the farther brink of Time!
+
+"Night had come down, and Mr. and Mrs. Thomas W. retired to bed, each
+with thoughts of murder rankling in their hearts. Not a word was spoken,
+but they lay with throbbing pulses, gazing out upon the night, through a
+little window at the foot of the bed, whose upper sash was down--gazing
+out upon the starry lamps that skirt the highways of the sky, beacons of
+safety placed there to recall and guide all stray and wandering souls
+back on their way to Heaven! and they silently looked at the stars as
+they twinkled and shimmered in the azure.
+
+"The stars shone; and strange, horrible, ghastly thoughts agitated the
+woman and the man. 'Tom _might_ get sick, and he might _die_! Isn't it
+possible to feed him with a little arsenic, or some other sort of
+poison, and not get caught at it? I think it _is_. He, once dead, I
+shall be free--free as the air, and happy as the birds!' Happy! Think of
+it!
+
+"'Is it not possible to push Betsey over the cliff, _accidentally_, of
+course, and thus rid myself of her and misery together, and forever!'
+Forever! Picture it! And thus they lay as the night wore on, two
+precious immortal souls, with rank Murder for a bed-fellow.
+
+"At the end of an hour's cogitation, both had reached the desperate
+resolution to carry their wishes into execution, and attempt the fearful
+crime.
+
+    "'Come down in thy profoundest gloom--
+      Without one radiant firefly's light,
+    Beneath thine ebon arch entomb
+      Earth from the gaze of Heaven, O Night.
+    A deed of darkness must be done,
+    Put out the moon, roll back the sun.'
+
+"Betsey was to 'season' Tom's coffee; he was very fond of coffee. Tom
+was to treat Betsey to a ride in a one-horse shay, and topple the shay,
+horse, and Mrs. Thomas W.--all except his mother's only son--over a most
+convenient and inviting little precipice, a trifle over four hundred
+feet deep, with boulders at the bottom rather thicker than autumn leaves
+in Vallambrossa, and a good deal harder. All this was to be the result
+of 'accident,' and 'inscrutible Providence,' as a matter of course.
+Afterwards he was to buy a 'slashing suit' of mourning, bury what was
+left of her in grand style, erect a fine headstone of marble, announcing
+that--
+
+    "'The Lord gave, and the Lord took away,
+    Blessed be the name of the Lord!'
+
+an inscription many a spouse would like to read in their own cases!
+
+"The proposed locality of the fall of woman 'luckily' lay right on the
+road between their house and Santa Blarneeo. Each thought, 'I may not be
+able to achieve the exploit upon which I am bent, but one thing is
+certain, which is, that it shall not fail for want of trying. Once
+fairly accomplished, freedom comes, and then for a high old time!' So
+thought the woman; so thought the man.
+
+"Night has various and strange influences, which are altogether unknown
+to the day. The Magi, on the plains of Chaldea, the astrologers of early
+Egypt, and the whole ancient world duly acknowledged the power of the
+astral bodies. The whole interest of Bulwer's 'Zanoni' hinges on the
+soul-expanding potentiality of a star upon Clarence Glyndon, one of the
+heroes of that Rosicrucian story. Indeed, the whole august fraternity,
+from the neophyte of last week to Ross and Henri More, down to
+Appolonius of Tyanae, and away through the Ages to Thothmes, and down
+beyond all the Egyptian dynasties to Zytos, and still away into the very
+heart of the Pre-Adamite Eras, we know, held strange doctrines
+concerning stars; and if the historian of the Order, the great
+Mirandolo, be not mistaken, our Brotherhood possesses the key that
+reveals the nature of the starry influences, and how they may be gained.
+Of my own knowledge--for I am but in the fifth degree, therefore do not
+know all these mysteries--there are Destinies in the stars. Well, on
+this particular night, the star known as Hesper, she of the pale mild
+eye, was looking straight into the room where lay the precious pair, and
+it shone through the little window at the foot of the bed. The night was
+sultry--a little window--summer was in the ascendant--and the upper sash
+was down. Remember this, _the upper sash_ was down.
+
+"And now a strange thing occurred, a very strange and mysterious thing.
+Just as Tom Clark and his wife had been magnetized into a sort of
+restless sleep from gazing at the star--an uneasy, disturbed, nervous,
+but dreamless sleep--as if a heavy, thick and murky cloud just floated
+off a stagnant marsh, there descended upon the house a pestilent, slimy
+mist, and it gathered over and about the roof; and it entered, rolling
+heavily, into the chamber, coming through that little window at the foot
+of the bed.
+
+"It was a thick, dense, iron-greyish mist, approaching blackness, only
+that there was a sort of turgid redness, not a positive color, but as if
+it had floated over the depths of hell, and caught a portion of its
+infernal luminosity. And it was thick and dark, and dense and very
+heavy; and it swept and rolled, and poured into the room in thick,
+voluminous masses--into the very room, and about the couch where tossed
+in uneasy slumber the woman and the man. And it filled the apartment,
+and hung like a pall about their couch; and its fetor oppressed their
+senses; and it made their breath come thick, and difficult, and wheezing
+from their lungs. It was dreadful! And their breath mingled with the
+strange vapor, apparently endowing it with a kind of horrid life, a sort
+of semi-sentience; and gave it a very peculiar and fearful
+movement--orderly, systematic, gyratory, pulsing movement--the quick,
+sharp breath of the woman, the deep and heavy breath of the man. And it
+had come through the window at the foot of the bed, for the upper sash
+was down.
+
+"Slowly, and with regular, spiracular, wavy motion, with gentle
+undulations, like the measured roll of the calm Pacific Sea, the gentle
+sea on which I am sailing toward the Pyramids and my Cora--six years
+old, and so pretty! Pyramids ten thousand years old, and so grand! Like
+the waves of that sea did the cloud begin to move gyrally around the
+chamber, hanging to the curtains, clinging to the walls, but as if
+dreading the moonlight, _carefully_ avoiding the window through which it
+had come, the little window at the foot of the bed--whose upper sash was
+down.
+
+"Soon, very soon, the cloud commenced to change the axis of its
+movement, and to condense into a large globe of iron-hued nebulae; and it
+began a contrary revolution; and it floated thus, and swam like a
+dreadful destiny over the unconscious sleepers on the bed, after which
+it moved to the western side of the room, and became nearly stationary
+in an angle of the wall, where for a while it stood or floated, silent,
+appalling, almost motionless, changeless, still.
+
+"At the end of about six minutes it moved again, and in a very short
+time assumed the gross but unmistakable outline of a gigantic human
+form--an outline horrible, black as night--a frowning human form--cut
+not sharply from the vapor, but still distinctly human in its
+_shapeness_--but very imperfect, except the head, which was too
+frightfully complete to leave even a lingering doubt but that some black
+and hideous devilry was at work in that little chamber. And the head was
+infamous, horrible, gorgonic; and its glare was terrible, infernal,
+blasting, ghastly--perfectly withering in its expression, proportions
+and aspect.
+
+"The THING, this pestilent thing was bearded with the semblance of a
+tangled mass of coarse, grey iron wire. Its hair was as a serried coil
+of thin, long, venom-laden, poison-distilling snakes. The nose, mouth,
+chin and brows were ghastly, and its sunken cheeks were those of Famine
+intensified. The face was flat and broad, its lips the lips of incarnate
+hate and lust combined. Its color was the greenish blue of corpses on a
+summer battle-field, suffused with the angry redness of a demon's spite,
+while its eyes--great God!--_its_ eye--for there was but one, and that
+one in the very centre of its forehead, between the nose and brow--was
+bloodshot and purple, gleaming with infernal light, and it glamored down
+with more than fiendish malignance upon the woman and the man.
+
+"Nothing about this Thing was clearly cut or defined, except the
+head--its hideous, horrible head. Otherwise it was incomplete--a sort of
+spectral Formlessness. It was unfinished, as was the awful crime-thought
+that had brought it into being. It was on one side apparently a male, on
+the other it looked like a female; but, taken as a whole, it was neither
+man nor woman, it was neither brute nor human, but it was a monster and
+a ghoul--born on earth of human parents. There are many such things
+stalking our streets, and invisibly presiding over festal scenes, in
+dark cellars, by the lamp, in the cabinet and camp; and many such are
+daily peering down upon the white paper on the desks where sit grave and
+solemn Ministers of State, who, for Ambition's sake and greed of gold,
+play with an Empire's destiny as children do with toys, and who, with
+the stroke of a pen, consign vast armies to bloody graves--brave men,
+glorious hosts, kept back while victory is possible--kept back till the
+foeman has dug their graves just in front of his own stone walls and
+impenetrable ramparts--and then sent forward to glut the ground with
+human blood. Do you hear me, Ministers of State? I mean you! you who
+practically regard men's lives as boys regard the minnows of a brook. I
+mean you who sit in high places, and do murder by the wholesale--you who
+treat the men as half foes, half friends, tenderly; men whose hands are
+gripped with the iron grip of death around the Nation's throat--the
+Nation's throat--do you hear?--and crushing out the life that God and
+our fathers gave it. Remember Milliken's Bend, Port Hudson, Fort Wagner,
+and the Black Heroes of the war--Noble men--Black, too, but the bravest
+of the brave--yet treated not as heroes ought to be. Forget not
+Fredericksburg! and bear in mind that this gorgon of your own creation
+will not quit you, day or night--not even on your dying day, when it
+will hiss into your ears, 'Father, behold, embrace me!'--and its slime
+will fall upon and choke you, as you have choked our country. And the
+sheeted ghosts of six hundred thousand heroes, slaughtered by a whim,
+will mournfully upbraid, and--perhaps--forgive you. Will the weeping
+widows and the countless orphans--pale, blue-cast women, pale with
+grief, blue with want; orphans, poor little shrivelled, half-starved
+orphans--will they forgive you? will your own conscience? will the
+Eternal God of Heaven? Why did you sacrifice these six hundred thousand
+men? Why did you not put your guns and swords in the hands of six
+hundred thousand men--men who had God's best gifts to fight for and
+maintain--Liberty and their wives? Black men, too--brawny, brave,
+strong-hearted, Freedom-nerved, God-inspired black men. _No black man
+yet ever sold his country!_ Why don't you first remove their
+disabilities here in the North? Why don't you bid them rise and be men?
+Why grudge freemen the pay of other free men; the bounty, the pension,
+of other heroes of the same rank? Do this, let the Negro understand that
+you concede his manhood, and appreciate his prowess; let him once know
+that you are grateful for all he does for the country, and proclaim it
+to the world, and Black men will flock to your standard, not only from
+your own soil, but from every spot on earth where civilized black men
+exist.
+
+"See, yonder is a plain, miles in extent. In its centre there stands an
+obelisk. Go, Ministers of State, and plant on its top a banner, upon
+which shall be emblazoned this magic sentence: 'Freedom--Personal,
+Political, and Social, to the Black man--and protection of his Rights
+forever,' and there will be more magnetic power in it than in ten
+thousand Ministers, with their little whims; ten thousand 'Fancy
+Generals,' with their 'pretty little games,'--and such would be
+History's record when she handed you down the ages. If you would live in
+the sacred page, and have your names shine brightly, act, act at once,
+cut the cords that now bind the Black man. Say to him: 'Come as a man,
+not as a chattel! Come with me to Enfranchisement and Victory! Let us
+save the Nation!' and the swift-winged winds will bear the sound from
+pole to pole, from sea to sea, and from continent, island, and floating
+barks, from hills, valleys, and mountains, from hut, hovel, and dismal
+swamps, will come a vast and fearful host, in numbers like unto the
+leaves of the forest; and they will gather in that plain around that
+obelisk, rallying around that banner, and before their victorious march
+Rebellion will go down as brick walls before the storm of iron; and if
+France, or England, or Austria, or all, combine against them--they, too,
+will go out of the battle, nevermore to enter it again.
+
+"This is possible destiny! Think of it, O Ministers of State!
+
+       *       *       *       *
+
+"And so the fearful spectre in Tom Clark's room had its origin then and
+there--had been created by the morning's wicked thought--a creature
+fashioned by their human wills, and drawing its vitality from their life
+and pulses--drawing its very soul from out those two beating human
+hearts. Tell me not that I am painting a picture, limning the creature
+of a distorted fancy. I know better, you know better, we all know that
+just such hideous creatures, just such monstrosities, move, viewless,
+daily, up and down the crowded streets of Santa Blarneeo, up and down
+the streets of the Empire City and Puritanic Boston; but there are
+crowds of them in Pennsylvania Avenue, and they wear phantom epaulettes
+upon their spectral shoulders! You and I know that just such and other
+
+    "'Monstrous, horrid things that creep
+    From out a slimy sea,'
+
+exist all over the land--but principally in high places begotten of
+Treason and lust of Gold.
+
+"Soon the lips began to move; it spoke: 'Father! mother! I am yet weak;
+be quick; make me strong! feed me; I am hungry; give me blood--hot
+streams--great gouts of blood! It is well. Kill, poison, die; it is
+well! Ha! ha! It is well; ho! ho!' and then the Thing began to dissolve
+into a filmy mist, until at last only the weight of its presence was
+felt, for it floated invisibly but heavily through the room, and, except
+the gleam--the fiery gleam of its solitary eye--nothing else of it was
+discernible.
+
+"Ten minutes elapsed after it had found voice, and faded away, when
+suddenly a fleecy cloud that had for some time past obscured the sky in
+the direction of Hesper, shutting out her silvery smiles, broke away,
+and permitted her beams and those of the moon to once more enter the
+chamber and flood it with a sheeted silver glory--the room where still
+lingered the hateful Thing, and where still slept the woman and the man.
+
+"Simultaneously with this auspicious event there came sighing over the
+landscape, the musical notes of such a song as only seraphs sing--came
+over the wastes like the mystical bells that I have heard at sunset
+often while sailing on the Nile--mystical bells which thousands have
+heard and marvelled at--soft bells, silvery bells, church bells--bells,
+however, not rung by human hands. I have often heard them chiming over
+Egypt's yellow, arid sands, and I believe they are rung by angel hands
+on the other side of Time. And such a sound, only sweeter, came
+floating o'er the lea, and through the still air into the little
+chamber. Was it a call to the angels to join in prayer--midnight prayer,
+for the sinful souls of men? But it came. Low it was, and clear; pure it
+was, and full of saintly pity, like unto the dying cadence of the prayer
+that was prayed by the Sufferer on the stony heights of Calvary; that
+same Calvary where I have stood within a year, 'midst devout lovers of
+their Lord, and the jeering scoffs of Mussulmans! And the music came--so
+sweetly, as if 'twould melt the stony heart of Crime itself. And it
+proclaimed itself the overture of another act of the eventful drama then
+and there performing. And see! look there! the curtain rises. Woman,
+Man, behold! Alas! they slumber insensibly on. Gaze steadily at that
+upper sash--above it--for it is down; see, the clear space is again
+obscured by a cloud; but this time it is one of silver, lined with
+burnished gold, and flecked and edged with amethyst and purple. Look
+again! What is that at the window? It is a visible music--a glorious
+sheet of silvery vapor, bright, clear, and glittering as an angel's
+conscience! It is a broad and glowing mantle of woven gossamer, suffused
+with rose-blushes, and sprinkled with star-beams; and it flows through
+the space, and streams into the chamber, bathing all things in holy
+tremulous light, soft, sweet, balmy, and pure as the tears of virgin
+innocence weeping for the early dead! That light! It was just such a
+light as beamed from your eyes, Woman--beamed from out your soul, when,
+after your agony, your eye first fell upon the angel you had borne--the
+man-child whom God gave to your heart a little while ago; just such a
+light as flashed fitfully from your soul, and fell upon the cradle, O
+father of the strong and hopeful heart, wherein the little stranger lay;
+just such light as beamed from your eyes, in pride, and hope, and
+strange, deep prophecies, as you bent over her languishing form,
+heartfully pressing her first-born to her dear woman's bosom, when you
+looked so tenderly, kindly, lovingly down through her eyes into
+her spirit--the true heart beating for you and it, beneath
+folded--contentedly folded, arms--contented, too, through all the deep
+anguish, such, O man, as only a woman and a mother can undergo. That
+light! It was like that which fell upon the babe she had given you, and
+the great Man-wanting world--given first for its coming uses, and then
+to Him who doeth all things very well--well, even when He taketh the
+best part of our souls away, and transplants the slips in His eternal
+and infinite gardens, across the deep dark gulfs that hide the dead;
+just such a light as gleamed from her eyes and thine own, when your
+hearts felt calm and trustful once more, after the great, deep grief
+billows had rolled over them--grief for the loss of one who stayed but a
+little while on earth--all too coarse and rough for her--some little,
+cooing Winnie--like mine--whose soul nestles afar off, on His breast, in
+the blue sky, and whose body they laid in the cold grave, there in
+Utica, after they--_he_--had let her starve, perish sadly for want of
+proper food and medicine, while I was on the deep--winsome Winnie! child
+of my soul, gone, lost, but not forever!--just such a light played in
+that little room as streams from angel eyes when God takes back at the
+hands of Azrael and Sandalphon, the beautiful angels of Death and of
+Prayer, the things you had learned to love too well--to forgetfulness of
+God and all true human duty. But they will give back what they took:
+they will give back all, more in the clear sunshine of a brighter and a
+purer day, than these earthly ones of ours!
+
+"And the light streamed through and into the chamber where lay the woman
+and the man; and it radiated around, and bathed every object in a
+crystalline luminescence; and it carried a sadness with it--just such a
+sadness as we feel when parting from those who love us very well; as I
+felt on the day I parted from ----, Brother of my soul! when we parted
+at the proud ship's side--the ocean courser, destined to bear me over
+the steaming seas to Egypt's hoary shrines. It bore a sadness with it
+like unto that which welled up from my soul, tapping the fountains of
+friendship--and tears upon its way, in the memorable hour wherein I left
+the Golden Gate, and began my perilous journey to the distant
+Orient--across the bounding seas. What an hour!--that wherein our bodies
+move away, but leave our sorrowing souls behind!
+
+"Well, a holy light, sadness-bearing light, like this now rested on the
+bodies of the sleeping pair. At first, this silvery radiance filled the
+room, and then the fleecy vapor began to condense slowly. Presently it
+formed into a rich and opalescent cloud-column, which speedily changed
+into a large globe, winged, radiant and beautiful. Gradually there
+appeared in the centre of this globe a luminous spot, momentarily
+intensifying its brilliance, until it became like unto a tiny sun, or as
+the scintillae of a rare diamond when all the lamps are brightly shining.
+Slowly, steadily, the change went on in this magic crystal globe, until
+there appeared within it the diminutive figure of a female, whose
+outlines became more clear as time passed on, until, at the end of a few
+minutes, the figure was perfect, and stood fully revealed and
+complete--about eighteen inches high, and lovely--ah, how lovely!--that
+figure; it was more than woman is--was all she may become--_petite_, but
+absolutely perfect in form, feature and expression; and there was a
+love-glow radiating from her presence sufficiently melting to subdue the
+heart of Sin itself, though robed in Nova Zembla's icy shroud. Her
+eyes!--ah, her eyes!--they were softer than the down upon a ring-dove's
+breast!--not electric, not magnetic--such are human eyes; and she was
+not of this earth--they were something more, and higher--they were
+tearful, anxious, solicitous, hopeful, tender, beaming with that snowy
+love which blessed immortals feel. Her hair was loose, and hung in
+flowing waves adown her pearly neck and shoulders. Such a neck and
+shoulders!--polished alabaster, dashed with orange blossoms, is a very
+poor comparison; it would be better to say that they resembled petrified
+light, tinted with the morning blush of roses! Around her brow was a
+coronet of burnished, rainbow hues; or rather the resplendent tints of
+polarized light. In its centre was the insignia of the Supreme Temple of
+the Rosie Cross--a circle inclosing a triangle--a censer on one side, an
+anchor fouled on the other, the centre-piece being a winged globe,
+surmounted by the sacred trine, and based by the watchword of the Order,
+'TRY,' the whole being arched with the blazon, 'ROSICRUCIA.' To attempt
+a minute description of this peerless fay, on my part, would be
+madness:--her chin, her mouth, her bust, her lips! No! I am not so vain
+as to make the essay. I may be equal to such a task a century or two
+from this, but am not equal to it now.
+
+"There, then, and thus stood the crowned beauty of the Night, gazing
+down with looks of pity upon the restless occupants of that humble
+couch; for during all these transactions they had been asleep. She stood
+there, the realization and embodiment of Light; and there, directly
+facing her, glowered, and floated the eye of that hateful, scowling,
+frowning Thing--scowling with malignant joy upon the woman and the man.
+Thus stood the Shadow: thus stood the Light. But soon there came a
+change o'er the spirit of the scene; for now an occurrence took place of
+a character quite as remarkable as either of those already recounted;
+for in a very short time after the two Mysteries had assumed their
+relative positions, there came through the window--the same little
+window at the foot of the bed--the tall and stately figure of a man--a
+tall and regal figure, but it was light and airy--buoyant as a summer
+cloud pillowed on the air--the figure of a man, but not solid, for it
+was translucent as the pearly dew, radiant as the noontide sun, majestic
+as a lofty mountain when it wears a snowy crown!--the royal form of a
+man, but evidently not a ghost, or wraith, or a man of these days, or
+of this earth, or of the ages now elapsing. He was something more than
+man; he was supramortal; a bright and glorious citizen of a starry land
+of glory, whose gates I beheld, once upon a time, when Lara bade me
+wait; he was of a lineage we Rosicrucians wot of, and only we!--a
+dweller in a wondrous city, afar off, real, actual--whose gates are as
+the finest pearl--so bright and beautiful are they.... The stately
+figure advanced midway of the room until he occupied the centre of a
+triangle formed by the shadowy Thing, the female figure, and the bed;
+and then he waved his hand, in which was a staff or truncheon--winged at
+top and bottom; and he spake, saying:
+
+     "'I, Otanethi, the Genius of the Temple, Lord of the Hour, and
+     servant of the Dome, am sent hither to thee, O Hesperina,
+     Preserver of the falling; and to thee, dark Shadow, and to
+     these poor blind gropers in the Night and gloom. I am sent to
+     proclaim that man ever reacheth Ruin or Redemption through
+     himself alone--strengthened by Love of
+     Him--self-sought--reacheth either Pole of Possibility as he,
+     fairly warned, and therefore fully armed, may elect! Poor, weak
+     man!--a giant, knowing not his own tremendous power!--Master
+     both of Circumstance and the World--yet the veriest slave to
+     either!--weak, but only through ignorance of himself!--forever
+     and forever failing in life's great race through slenderness of
+     Purpose!--through feebleness of Will! Virtue is not virtue
+     which comes not of Principle within--that comes not of will
+     and aspiration. That abstinence from wrong is not virtue which
+     results from external pressure--fear of what the speech of
+     people may effect! It is false!--that virtue which requires
+     bolstering or propping up, and falls when left to try its
+     strength alone! Vice is not vice, but weakness, that springs
+     not from within--which is the effect of applied force. Real
+     vice is that which leaves sad marks upon the soul's escutcheon,
+     which the waters of an eternity may not lave away or wash out;
+     and it comes of settled purpose--from within, and is the thing
+     of Will. The virtue that has never known temptation--and
+     withstood it, counts but little in the great Ledger of the Yet
+     to Be! True virtue is good resolve, better thinking, and action
+     best of all! That man is but half completed whom the world has
+     wholly made. They are never truly made who fail to make
+     themselves! Mankind are not of the kingdom of the Shadow, nor
+     of the glorious realm of Light, but are born, move along, and
+     find their highest development in the path which is bounded on
+     either side by those two eternal Diversities--the Light upon
+     this side--the Shadow upon that:
+
+     "'The road to man and womanhood lies in the mean:
+     Discontent on either side--happiness between.'
+
+     "'Life is a triangle, and it may be composed of Sorrow, Crime,
+     Misery; or Aspiration, Wisdom, Happiness. These, O peerless
+     Hesperina, are the lessons I am sent to teach. Thou art here to
+     save two souls, not from loss, assailings or assoilings from
+     without, but from the things engendered of morbid
+     thought--monstrous things bred in the cellars of the soul--the
+     cesspools of the spirit--crime-caverns where moral newts and
+     toads, unsightly things and hungry, are ever devouring the
+     flowers that spring up in the heart-gardens of man--pretty
+     flowers, wild--but which double and enhance in beauty and aroma
+     from cultivation and care. We are present--I to waken the wills
+     of yonder pair; thou to arouse a healthy purpose and a normal
+     action; and the Shadow is here to drag them to Perdition. Man
+     cannot reach Heaven save by fearlessly breasting the waves of
+     Hell! Listen! Thou mayest not act directly upon the woman or
+     the man, but are at liberty to effect thy purpose through the
+     instrumentality of DREAM! And thou,' addressing the Thing,
+     'thou grim Shadow--Angel of Crime--monstrous offspring of man's
+     begetting--thou who art permitted to exist, art also allowed to
+     flourish and batten on human hearts. I may not prevent
+     thee--dare not openly frustrate thee--for thus it is decreed.
+     Thou must do thy work. Go; thou art free and unfettered. Do thy
+     worst; but I forbid thee to appear as thou really art--before
+     their waking senses, lest thy horrible presence should strike
+     them dumb and blind, or hurl Will and Reason from their
+     thrones. Begone! To thy labor, foul Thing, and do thy work also
+     through the powerful instrumentality of DREAM!'
+
+     "Thus spoke the genius of the Order and the Hour; and then,
+     turning him toward the couch, he said, yearningly, with tearful
+     mien and outstretched arms: 'Mortals, hear me in thy
+     slumber--let thy souls, but not thy senses, hear and
+     understand. Behold, I touch thee with this magic wand of
+     Rosicrucia, and with it wake thy sleeping wills--thus do I
+     endow thee with the elements, Attention, Aspiration,
+     Persistence--the seeds of Power--of resistless Might, which,
+     will--if such be thy choice, enable thee to realize a moral
+     fortress, capable of defying the combined assaults of all the
+     enginery Circumstance can bring to bear against thee. The
+     citadel is Will. Intrenched within it, thou art safe. But
+     beware of turning thy assaulting power against thyselves. Will,
+     normal, ever produceth Good: Abnormal, it hurls thee to the
+     Bad! Remember! Wake not to the external life, but in thy
+     slumber seize on the word I whisper in thine ears; it is a
+     magic word--a mighty talisman, more potent than the seal of
+     Solomon--more powerful than the Chaldean's wand--but it is
+     potential for ill as for Good. See to it, therefore, that it is
+     wisely used. The word is,
+
+     "TRY!" As thou shalt avail thyselves of its power, so be it
+     unto thee. I now leave thee to thy fate, and the fortunes that
+     may befall thee. TWO dreams each shalt thou have this night;
+     one of them shall be overruled by thy good, the other by thy
+     evil genius. God help thee! Farewell!' and in another instant,
+     the tall and stately figure passed through the moonlight, out
+     upon the deep bosom of the Night; and he floated, accompanied
+     by the same soft music heard before, away off into the blue
+     empyrean; and he passed through the window--the little window
+     at the foot of the bed, whose upper sash was down.
+
+
+
+
+PART III.
+
+THE MAGIC SPELL.
+
+    "In the Kingdom of Dream strange things are seen,
+    And the Fate of the Nations are there, I ween."
+            _From_ "_The Rosie Cross_," _an unpublished Poem by_
+                                            P. B. RANDOLPH.
+
+
+"The regal being was scarcely gone from the chamber ere Hesperina and
+the Shadow--which had once more become visible, approached the sleeping
+pair--drew nigh unto the woman and the man; and the Fay gently breathed
+upon their heads, as if to establish a magnetic _rapport_ between
+herself and them. She then calmly took her stand near the bedside, and
+folded her beautiful arms across her still more beautiful bosom, and
+awaited the action of the tempter. She had not long to wait, for
+straightway the Black Presence advanced, and hovered over the
+bed--hovered scowlingly over them, glaring down into their souls, as
+doth the vampire upon the man she would destroy--the spirit of Wrong
+peering wistfully at all beautiful things, and true! Such was the
+posture of affairs; and thus they remained until the Thing had also
+established some sort of connection with the sleepers. It soon became
+evident, from their nervous, uneasy movements and postures, that the
+twain were rapidly crossing the mystic boundaries that divide our own
+from Dream-land--that they were just entering the misty mid-region--the
+Shadow, the Thing, the monstrous IT, ruling the hour, and guiding them
+through the strange realm--
+
+    "'That lieth sublime, out of Space and out of Time.'
+
+"The man who says that dreams are figments is a fool. Half of our
+nightly experiences are, in their subsequent effects upon us, far more
+real and positive than our daily life of wakefulness. Dreams are, as a
+general thing, save in rare instances, sneered at by the wise ones of
+this sapient age. Events, we of Rosicrucia hold, are pre-acted in other
+spheres of being. Prophetic dreaming is no new thing. Circumstances are
+constantly occurring in the outer life that have been pre-viewed in
+Dream-land. Recently, while in Constantinople, I became acquainted with
+a famous Dongolese negro, near the Grand Mosque of St. Sophia, in one of
+the narrow streets on the left, as you enter the square from toward the
+first bridge, and this man had reduced the interpretation of dreams to a
+science almost; and many a long hour have I rapidly driven the pen, in
+the work of recording what was translated to me from Dongolese and
+Arabic into Turkish and English, from his lips, obtaining in this way
+not merely the principles upon which his art was founded, but also
+explicit interpretations of about twenty-nine hundred different dreams.
+
+
+"THE DREAM OF THOMAS W.
+
+"Tom Clark was dreaming; and, lo! great changes had taken place in the
+fortunes of the sleeping man. No longer a toiler at the anvil or the
+plow, he had become a rich and, as times go, therefore an honored
+man--honored by the crowd which, as a general thing, sees the most
+virtue in the heaviest sack of dollars.
+
+"The wealth of Mr. Thomas W. had come to him in a very singular and
+mysterious manner, all since he had become a widower; for Mrs. Thomas
+was dead, poor woman, having some time previously met her fate through a
+very melancholy accident. An extract from the 'Daily Truth-Teller,' of
+Santa Blarneeo, a copy of which paper Tom Clark carried in his pocket
+all the time, and which pocket I shall take the liberty of picking of
+the journal aforesaid, and of quoting, will tell the story--sad
+story--but not the whole of it, quite:
+
+     "'FEARFUL AND FATAL CATASTROPHE!--We learn with deep, sincere,
+     and very profound regret, that another of those fearful
+     calamities, which no human prudence can guard against, no
+     foresight prevent, has just occurred, and by means of which a
+     most estimable woman, an exemplary and loving wife, an
+     excellent Christian, firm friend, and esteemed person, has been
+     suddenly cut off in her prime, and sent prematurely to her
+     final account. It appears that the late heavy rains have
+     rendered all the roads leading from Santa Blarneeo nearly
+     impassable, by reason of the rifts, rocks, boulders, and
+     slides of clay--very dangerous and slippery clay--which they
+     have occasioned.
+
+     "'Especially is this the case along the cliff road, and more
+     particularly where it skirts the side of the Bayliss Gulch. Of
+     late it has been exceedingly unsafe to pass that way in broad
+     daylight, and much more so after dark.
+
+     "'At about ten o'clock yesterday morning, as Mr. Ellet, the
+     Ranchero, was passing that road, along the brink of what is
+     known as the Scott ravine, his horse shied at some objects in
+     the path, which proved to be a man's hat and woman's shawl, on
+     the very edge of the precipice--a clear fall of something like
+     four hundred feet. It immediately occurred to Farmer Ellet,
+     that if anybody had tumbled over the cliff, that there was a
+     great probability that whoever it was must have been
+     considerably hurt, if nothing more, by the time they reached
+     the bottom, as he well remembered had been the case with a yoke
+     of steers of his that had run off at the same spot some years
+     before, and both of which were killed, very dead, indeed, by
+     the accident. So, at least, he informed our reporter, who took
+     down the statement phonographically. Mr. Ellet discovered the
+     remains of a horse and buggy at the bottom of the ravine, and
+     at a little to the left, about ten feet down the bank, where he
+     had, by a miracle, been thrown when the horse went over, Mr.
+     Ellet found the insensible body of a man, desperately hurt, but
+     still breathing. His fall had been broken by some stout young
+     trees and bushes, amidst the roots of which he now lay. Mr. E.
+     soon rescued the sufferer, who proved to be Mr. Thomas W.
+     Clark, a well-known, honest, sober man, and a neighbor as well.
+     Mr. Clark's injuries are altogether internal, from the shock of
+     falling, otherwise he is almost unscathed. His pains inwardly
+     are very great, besides which he is nearly distracted and
+     insane from the loss of his wife and horse, but mainly for the
+     former. It seems that they had been riding out on a visit to a
+     sick friend, and the horse had slipped on the wet clay, had
+     taken fright, and leaped the bank, just as Clark was hurled
+     from the buggy, and landed where Ellet found him. The horse,
+     carriage, and the precious freight, instantly plunged headlong
+     down through four hundred feet of empty air.
+
+     "'We learn that the couple were most devotedly attached to each
+     other, as is notorious from the fact, among others, that
+     whenever they met, after a day's absence, and no matter where,
+     nor in what company, they invariably embraced and kissed each
+     other, in the rich, deep fullness of their impassioned and
+     exhaustless conjugal love. Poor Clark's loss is irreparable.
+     His wife had been twice married, but her affection for her
+     first husband was but as a shallow brook compared to the deep,
+     broad ocean of love for him who now mourns, most bitterly
+     mourns, her untimely fate!'
+
+"There! What d'ye think o' that, my lady?--what d'ye think o' that, my
+man? That's a newspaper report, the same that Tom Clark carried in his
+pocket, and read so often in his dream. Singular, isn't it, that the
+ruling passion triumphs, especially Reporters'--even in Death or
+Dream-land.
+
+"At the end of two days Mr. Clark recovered sufficiently to go to the
+foot of the cliff, and when there his first work was to carefully bury
+what was left of his wife--and her first husband's portrait at the same
+time--for he had placed that canvas across the backs of two chairs, and
+amused himself by jumping through it--like a sensible man.
+
+"There is--do you know it?--an almost uncontrollable fascination in
+Danger. Have you never been seized with the desire to throw yourself
+down some yawning chasm, into some abyss, over into the ready jaws of a
+shark, to handle a tiger, play with a rattlesnake, jump into a foundery
+furnace, write a book, edit a paper, or some other such equally wise and
+sensible thing? Well, I know many who have thus been tempted--and to
+their ruin. Human nature always has a morbid streak, and that is one of
+them, as is also the horrible attraction to an execution--to visit the
+scene of a homicide or a conflagration--especially if a few people have
+been burnt up--and the more the stronger the curiosity; or to look at
+the spot where a score or two of Pat-landers have been mumified by the
+weakness of walls--and contractors' consciences. With what strange
+interest we read how the monarch of some distant lovely isle dined with
+his cabinet, off _Potage aux teet de missionaire_--how they banqueted on
+delicate slices of boiled evangelist, all of which _viandes_ were
+unwillingly supplied by the Rev. Jonadab Convert-'em-all, who had a call
+that way to supply the bread of life, not slices of cold missionary--and
+did both! So with Tom Clark. One would have thought that the last scene
+he would willingly have looked upon, would have been the bottom of the
+ravine. Not a bit of it. An uncontrollable desire seized him, and for
+his life he could not keep away from the foot of the cliff. He went
+there, and day by day searched for every vestige of the poor woman,
+whose heart, and head likewise, he at last had succeeded in breaking
+into very small fragments. These relics he buried as he found them, yet
+still could not forsake his daily haunt. Of course, for a time the
+people observed his action, attributed it to grief and love, forbore to
+watch or disturb, and finally cared nothing about the matter whatever.
+Such things are nothing in California. Well was it for Clark that it was
+so--that they regarded him as mildly insane, and let his vagaries have
+full swing, for it gave him ample time and opportunity to fully improve
+one of the most astounding pieces of good luck that ever befell a human
+being since the year One.
+
+"It fell out upon a certain day, that, after attending to other duties,
+Tom Clark, as usual, wound his way, by a zig-zag and circuitous path, to
+the foot of the hill, and took his accustomed seat near by the rock
+where it was evident Mrs. C. had landed--the precise spot where her
+flight had been so rudely checked. There he sat for a while, like
+Volney, in deep speculative reverie and meditation--not upon the ruins
+of Empires, but upon those of his horse, his buggy, and his wife.
+Suddenly he started to his feet, for a very strange fancy had struck
+upon his brain. I cannot tell the precise spot of its impingement, but
+it hit him hard. He acted on the idea instantly, and forthwith resolved
+to dig up all the soil thereabouts, that had perchance drank a single
+drop of her blood. It was not conscience that was at work, it was
+destiny. This soil, that had been imbrued with the blood of the horse
+and buggy--no, the woman, I mean--he resolved to bury out of sight of
+man and brute, and sun and moon, and little peeping stars; for an
+instinct told him that the gore-stained soil could not be an acceptable
+spectacle to anything on earth, upon the velvet air, or in the blue
+heaven above it; and so he scratched up the mould and buried it out of
+sight, in a rift hard by, between two mighty rocks, that the earthquake
+had split asunder a million years before.
+
+"And so he threw it in, and then tried to screen it from the sun with
+leaves and grass, great stones and logs of wood; after which he again
+sat down upon the rock to rest.
+
+"Presently he arose to go, when, as he did so, a gleam of sunshine
+flashed back upon his eyes from a minute spiculae of, he knew not what.
+He stooped; picked up the object, and found, to his utter astonishment,
+that he held in his hand a lump of gold, solid gold--an abraded,
+glittering lump of actual, shining gold.
+
+"Tom Clark nearly fainted! The lump weighed not less than a pound. Its
+sides had been scratched by him as he dug away the earth at the foot of
+the cliff where his wife had landed, after a brief flight through four
+hundred feet of empty air--a profitable journey for him--but not for
+her, nor the horse, nor buggy!
+
+"For a minute Clark stood still, utterly bewildered, and wiping the
+great round beads of sweat from off his brow. He wept at every pore. But
+it was for a minute only: in the next he was madly, wildly digging with
+the trowel he always carried with him, for Tom was Herb-Doctor in
+general for the region roundabout, and was great at the root and herb
+business, therefore went prepared to dig them wherever chance disclosed
+them.
+
+"Five long hours did he labor like a Hercules, in the soft mould, in the
+crevices of the rocks--everywhere--and with mad energy, with frantic
+zeal. Five long hours did he ply that trowel with all the force that the
+hope of sudden wealth inspired, and then, exhausted, spent, he sank
+prostrate on the ground, his head resting on a mass of yellow gold--gold
+not in dust, or flecks, or scales, but in great and massy lumps and
+wedges, each one large enough for a poor man's making.
+
+"That morning Thomas Clark's worldly wealth, all told, could have been
+bought thrice over for any five of the pieces then beneath his head, and
+there were scores of them. His brain reeled with the tremendous
+excitement. He had struck the richest 'Lead' ever struck by mortal man
+on the surface of the planet, for he had already collected more than he
+could lift, and he was a very strong and powerful man. There was enough
+to fill a two-peck measure, packed and piled as close and high as it
+could be; and yet he had just begun. Ah, Heaven, it was too much!
+
+"Alas, poor Tom! poor, doubly poor, with all thy sudden, boundless
+wealth! Thou art even poorer than Valmondi, who, the legends say, gave
+his soul to the service of the foul fiend--for he, like thee, had riches
+inexhaustible; but, unlike Valmondi, and the higher Brethren of the
+Rosie Cross, thou hast not the priceless secret of Perpetual youth. Thou
+wilt grow old, Tom Clark--grow old, and sick, and grey hairs and
+wrinkles will overtake thee. And see! yonder is an open grave, and it
+yearns for thee, Tom Clark, it yearns for thee! And there's Blood upon
+thy hands, Tom Clark, red gouts of Blood--and gold cannot wash it off.
+
+"Valmondi repented, and died a beggar, but thy heart is cased in golden
+armor, and the shafts of Mercy may not reach its case, and wake thee up
+to better deeds, and high and lofty daring for the world and for thy
+fellow-men. Gold! Ah, Tom, Tom, thou hadst better have been a humble
+Rosicrucian--better than I, for weakness has been mine. It is better to
+labor hard with brain and tongue and hands, for mere food and raiment,
+than be loaded down with riches, that bear many a man earthward, and
+fill untimely graves! It is better to live on bread, and earn it, than
+to be a millionaire. Better to have heaped up wealth of Goodness, than
+many bars of Gold. Poor Tom! Rich you are in what self-seeking men call
+wealth; but poor, ah, how poor! in the better having, which whetteth the
+appetite for knowledge, and its fruitage, Wisdom, and which sendeth man,
+at night, to Happy Dream land, upon the viewless pinions of sweet and
+balmy Sleep! Every dollar _above_ labor brings ten thousand evils in its
+train.
+
+"Well, night was close at hand, and Tom buried his God, and went home.
+Home, did I say? Not so. He went to his bed, to sleep, and in that sleep
+he dreamed that it was raining double eagles, while he held his hat
+beneath the spout. But he was not home, for home is where the heart is,
+and we have seen the locality of Clark's.
+
+"For days, weeks, months, he still worked at his 'Lead,' studiously
+keeping his own counsel, and managing the affair, from first to last,
+with the most consummate tact; so that no one even suspected that the
+richest man in California, and on the entire continent, was Mr. Thomas
+W. By degrees he conveyed to, and had vast sums coined at the mint, as
+agent for some mining companies. A few hogsheads he buried here and
+there, and sprinkled some dozens of barrels elsewhere about the ground.
+This he continued to do until at last even _his_ appetite for gold was
+doubly, _triply_ glutted; and then he sprung the secret, sold his claim
+for three millions, cash in hand, and forthwith moved, and set up an
+establishment close under Telegraph Hill, in the best locality in all
+Santa Blarneeo.
+
+"And now everybody and his wife bowed to Mr. Thomas W., and did homage
+to--his money. Curious, isn't it, how long some gods _will_ live? About
+three thousand years ago a man of Israel fashioned one out of borrowed
+jewelry, fashioned it in the form of a _veal_, after which he proclaimed
+it, and all the human calves fell down straightway, and a good many are
+still bent on worshipping at the self-same shrine. That calf has
+retained to this day '_eleven-tenths_' of earth's most zealous
+adoration! So now did men reverence Clark's money. Women smiled upon
+him, ambitious spinsters ogled, and hopeful maidens set their caps to
+enthrall him. He could carry any election, gave tone to the Money
+Market, reigned supreme and undisputed king on ''Change,' and people
+took him for a happy man; and so he was, as long as daylight lasted, and
+he was steadily employed; but, somehow or other, his nights were
+devilishly unpleasant! He could not rest well, for in the silence of the
+night, when deep sleep falleth upon man, an unsheeted ghost passed
+before his face, bearing a most damnably correct similitude to a former
+female acquaintance of his, now, alas! deceased; and not unfrequently,
+as he hurried along the streets, did he encounter persons who bore
+surprising and unmistakable resemblances to the 'dear departed.'
+
+    "'Black clouds come up, like sinful visions,
+    To distract the souls of solitary men.'
+
+"Was Tom Clark mistaken? Was it Fancy? Was it Fear?... One night he went
+to a theatre, but left it in a hurry, when the actor, who was playing
+Macbeth, looked straight into his private box and said:
+
+    "'The times have been that, when the brains were out
+    The man would die--and there an end;
+    But _now_ they rise again, with twenty mortal murders
+    On their crowns, to push us from our seats!'
+
+And the words pushed Clark out of the house, deadly sick--fearfully
+pale; for the avenging furies, roused at last, were at that very moment
+lashing his guilty soul to madness--and Shakspeare's lines, like
+double-edged daggers, went plunging, cutting, leaping, flying through
+every vault and cavern of his spirit. He rushed from the place, reached
+his house, and now: 'The bowl, the bowl! Wine, give me wine, ruby wine.'
+They gave it, and it failed! Stronger drink, much stronger, now became
+his refuge, and in stupefying his brain he stultified his conscience.
+His torture was not to last forever, for by dint of debauchery his
+sensitive soul went to sleep, and the brute man took the ascendant.
+Conscience slept profoundly. His heart grew case-hardened, cold and
+callous as an ice-berg. He married a Voice, and a Figure, as heartless
+as himself; became a politician--which completely finished him; but
+still, several handsome donations to a fashionable church--just think of
+it!--had the effect of procuring him the reputation of sanctity, which
+lie he, by dint of repetition, at last prevailed upon himself to
+believe. Thus we leave him for awhile, and return to the chamber in
+which was the little window whose upper sash was down.
+
+
+
+
+PART IV.
+
+THE DREAM OF BETSEY CLARK.
+
+
+"Madame, awake, it will be remembered, had come to the conclusion to
+settle Tom's coffee--and hash, at the same time, with a dose or two of
+ratsbane, or some similar delicate condiment; and now, in her dream, she
+thought all her plans were so well and surely made as to defy detection,
+and laugh outright at failure.
+
+"In California there is a small but very troublesome rodent known to
+Science as '_Pseudo-stoma bursarius_,' and to the vulgar world as
+'gopher'--a sort of burrowing rat, nearly as mischievous and quite as
+wicked, for the little wretches have a settled and special penchant for
+boring holes in the ground, particularly in the vicinity of fruit trees.
+My friend, Mr. Rumford, who has a very fine orchard in Fruit Vale,
+Contra Costa, just across the bay from Santa Blarneeo, recently assured
+me that the rascals make it a point to destroy young trees, not only
+without compunction, but even without saying, 'By your leave.' Now it so
+happened that Clark's place was overstocked with the pestilent animals
+alluded to, and the proprietors had, time and again, threatened the
+whole race with extermination, by means of arsenic, phosphor-paste, or
+some other effective poison, but had never carried the resolution into
+practice. This fact was seized on by Mrs. Clark, as a capital _point
+d'appui_. Accordingly, with a dull hand-saw, the lady hacked a few dozen
+of the very choicest young trees, in such a way as to make them look
+like unmistakable gopher-work, thus subjecting the brutes to charges
+whereof they were as innocent as _two_ unborn babes. Gophers and the
+Devil have to answer for a great deal that properly belong to other
+parties. Her act was a grand stroke of policy. She meant that Tom should
+voluntarily get the poison, which she intended he--not the
+gophers--should take at the very earliest possible opportunity. _She_
+didn't mean to purchase arsenic--oh, no, she knew too much for _that_!
+The ravage was speedily discovered by Clark. He raved, stamped his foot
+in his wrath, turned round on his heel, pulled his cap over his eyes,
+ejaculated, 'Dod dern 'em!' started for the city, and that very night
+returned, bearer of six bits' worth of the strongest and deadliest kind
+of poison--quite as deadly, almost as strong, as that which stupid fools
+drink in corner stores at six cents a glass.
+
+"That night about half the poison was mixed and set. Twelve hours
+thereafter there was great tribulation and mourning in Gopherdom; for
+scores of the little gentry ate of it, liked the flavor, tried a little
+more--got thirsty--they drank freely (most fools do!), felt
+uncomfortable, got angry, swelled--with indignation and poisoned meal!
+and not a few of them immediately (to quote Mr. Clark), 'failed in
+business; that is to say, they burst--burst all to thunder! Alas, poor
+rodents!
+
+"Next morning Tom's coffee was particularly good. Betsey fairly
+surpassed herself, in fact she came it rather too strong. About ten
+o'clock he felt thirsty, and inclined toward cold water; for the weather
+was hot, and so were his 'coppers,' to quote the Ancient Mariner. He
+would have taken much water, only that Betsey dissuaded him, and said:
+'It was just like him, to go and get sick by drinking ever so much cold
+water! Why didn't he take switchel, or, what was much better, cold
+coffee, with plenty of milk in it--and sugar, of course;' and so he
+(Tom) tried her prescription, liked it, took a little more, and that
+night followed the Gophers!
+
+"Three days afterwards a kindly neighbor handed Mrs. Clark a fresh copy
+of the 'Santa Blarneeo Looking Glass,' wherein she read, with tearful
+eyes, the following true and veracious account of
+
+"'A MOST DISTRESSING AND FATAL SUICIDE!
+
+     "'We regret to announce the fearful suicide, while laboring
+     under a fit of temporary insanity, caused by the bite of a
+     gopher, of Mr. Thomas W. Clark. It appears, that in order to
+     destroy the vermin, he purchased some arsenic, gave some to the
+     animals, got bitten by them, ran stark mad in consequence, and
+     then swallowed the balance (about a pound) himself. His
+     unfortunate wife now lies at the point of death, by reason of
+     the dreadful shock. She is utterly distracted by the
+     distressing and heart-rending event, which is all the more
+     poignant from the fact, that probably no married pair that ever
+     lived were more ardently and devotedly attached than were they.
+     The coroner and a picked jury of twelve men sat for two hours
+     in consultation, after which they found a verdict of "Death by
+     his own act, while insane from the bite of a gopher!"'
+
+       *       *       *       *
+
+"In due time the body of the victim who had been killed so exceedingly
+dead, by cruel, cold poison--(if it had been warm he might have stood
+it, but cold!)--was consigned to the grave--and forgetfulness at the
+same time; and after a brief season of mourning, materially assisted
+before company by a peeled onion (one of the rankest kind) in a
+handkerchief, applied to the eyes--my Lady Gay, our disconsolate
+relict--fair, forty, and somewhat fat--gave tokens, by change of dress,
+that she was once more in the market matrimonial,
+
+    "'With her tacks and sheets, and her bowlines, too,
+    And colors flying--red, white, and blue,'
+
+She was once more ready to dare and do for husband number three. To do
+her justice, she _was_ good-looking--all women are, when they choose to
+be. Her face was fair and intelligent; she possessed a voluptuous degree
+of what Monsieur de Fillagre calls 'om-bong-pong' (_embonpoint_), could
+sing--at a mark; and if not O fat! was _au fait_--a little of both,
+perhaps--on the light, fantastic toe--of the California Order; while as
+an invaluable addition, there was no woman on the coast who could equal
+her in getting up either linen, a dinner, or a quarrel. She excelled all
+rivals in the really divine art of cooking a husband--beefsteak, I mean.
+Her pastry and bread were excellent, her tea was fine, and her coffee
+was all that man could wish, and more so, for it was good--perfectly
+killing--as we have seen.
+
+"Betsey took matters coolly; was in no apparent hurry, for she had
+resolved to shoot only at high game, and, accordingly, after a time,
+deigned to smile upon the Reverend Doctor Dryasdust, the honored head of
+the new sect recently sprung up in the land, and which was known as the
+'Wotcher Kawlums,' and who rejoiced in repudiating everything over five
+years old in the shape of doctrine, tenet and discipline, but who went
+in strongly for Progress and pantaloons--for women; for Honduras and the
+_naked_ truth; for Socialism and sugar estates; mahogany and
+horticulture--a patent sort.
+
+"Now, the pastor of this promising body felt that it was not good for
+man to be alone, and therefore cast about for a rib whereof to have
+fashioned a help meet unto him. He saw the widow, fell in love,
+proposed, was accepted, and in due time she became the wife of the
+Newlight preacher. I like the old lights best; she didn't.
+
+"Betsey achieved a 'position'--a thing for which her sex almost
+proverbially sacrifice all they have on earth--happiness, health, long
+life, usefulness. She enjoyed herself quite well, and only two things
+disturbed her peace of mind: First, she could not bear the smell or
+sight of coffee, which drink her new lord was strongly addicted to, and
+insisted on her making for him with her own hands; thereby inflicting
+daily tortures upon her, compared to which all physical pain was
+pleasure. The second disturbing cause was this: by a very strange
+fatality their house was overrun with rats, and their garden fairly
+swarmed with gophers--which, with infernal malice and pertinacity,
+became quite tame, semi-domesticated, and intruded themselves upon her
+notice a dozen times a day, thereby fetching up from memory's storehouse
+fearful reminiscences of other days--horrible recollections of the
+gophers of the long-agone. It is hard to be weaned of your fears;
+nevertheless, after a while she conquered herself, brazened down her
+horrors, weighed herself, applied a false logic, tried herself by it,
+and returned a clear verdict of 'Justifiable all the way,' and concluded
+that her present happiness, what there was of it, fairly outweighed the
+crime by which it had been reached. She was materially justified in her
+conclusions by an accidental development of character on the part of her
+present husband, who had, in a fit of petulance, unfolded a leaf from
+the inner volume of the soul within.
+
+"Not caring to recapitulate the whole story (for reticence is sometimes
+wisdom), I will merely observe that at the end of a somewhat heated
+controversy, her husband had smashed a mirror, with one of Webster's
+quarto dictionaries, and roundly declared that he 'preached for pay.
+Hang it, Madame, the salary's the thing!--you _Bet_! How can souls be
+saved without a salary? That's a plain question. They are not now, at
+all events, whatever may have been the case with the Old Lights, who
+had a great deal more zeal than discretion--more fools they! It can't be
+done in these days of high prices and costly raiment--with the
+obligation of feeding well and dressing better. What's life without
+money? What's talent without brass? What's genius without gold? They
+won't pay! No, no, Madame; in the game of life, diamonds are always
+trumps, and hearts are bound to lose. What's the result?
+
+"'Listen! Five years ago, up in the mountains, I thought I had
+a call. I did, and went--and preached the new doctrines of
+Do-as-you-feel-a-mind-to-provided-you-don't-get-catched-at-it-ism--the
+regular out and out All-Right-ite-provided-you-don't-tread-on-my-corns
+religion. Well, I preached it, had large houses, converted many--and
+nearly starved! What's the consequence? Why, I left, and now hear only
+the loudest kind of calls! What's the loudest call? Why, the biggest
+salary! that's what's the matter! Do you see the point--the place where
+the laugh comes in? It's as plain as A B C to me, or any other man! and
+all the rest is leather and prunella--stuff, fudge--Hum!'
+
+"Honest, out-spoken Dryasdust! How many of the world's teachers sail in
+the same boat! His eloquence--not all false, perhaps--was not lost upon
+his wife. The Dryasdusts are not all dead; there's a few more left of
+the same sort--only they keep their own counsel, even from their wives.
+New Lights!
+
+"As a result of this conversation, Madame became a sort of cross between
+an Atheist and--God knows what; for she was neither one thing nor
+'tother, but a sort of pseudo-philosophical nondescript, without any set
+principle of belief whatever. Her conscience froze.
+
+"'Who knoweth the spirit of a man that it goeth upward, or of a beast
+that it goeth downward? The Spiritualists?--a pack of fanatics! I don't
+believe in ghosts'--but she shuddered as she gave utterance to the
+words, and her hair crawled upon her head as if touched with spectral
+fingers. No man disbelieves his immortality--the thing is impossible,
+_per se_; for although he may differ with that class of people who
+pretend to very extensive ghostly acquaintanceship and commerce, as many
+do--yet he doubtless always whistles as he passes a graveyard in the
+night! I certainly do! Why? Because I disbelieve in ghosts!--of course.
+
+"She resumed her soliloquy: 'I'm nervous--that's all! I mean to eat,
+drink and be merry, for to-morrow I die--DIE! What of it--isn't Death an
+eternal sleep? My husband says that it is, to all except the New Lights;
+but he's a fool, in some things, that's certain.... And after death the
+_Judgement_!' And she shuddered again, for a cold wind passed by her,
+and she thought it best to light two more candles and run her fingers
+over the piano, and take a glass of Sainsevain's best Angelica. 'Bah!
+who knows anything about a judgment? There's no such thing. He's dead.
+What of it? He can't talk! If he could, what of it? Ghosts can't testify
+in court! Besides, it was to be--and it's done. Fate is responsible, not
+I--
+
+    "'In spite of Reason, erring Reason's spite,
+    One truth is clear, Whatever _is_ is right.'
+
+"'Tom was to die. The conditions that surrounded him were just such as
+had determined the results that followed. I was but the proxy of eternal
+Fate. Am I to blame? Certainly _not_, for I acted in precise accordance
+with the conditions that surrounded me--that made me do as I
+did--tempted me beyond my strength; and, for that reason, the crime, if
+crime it be, was a foregone conclusion from the foundation of the world!
+Hereafter?
+
+    "'Come from the grave to-morrow with that story,
+    And I may take some softer path to glory.'
+
+"'Parrhasius was a true philosopher--or Willis. Pshaw! I guess I'll take
+another drop of Angelica!'
+
+"Poor Betsey! she had been reading Pope and Leibnitz, and Ben
+Blood--bad, worse and worst, unfairly interpreted; good, better and
+best, rightly understood--and as the respective writers probably meant.
+Weak people read a book as children do Swift's Gulliver--on the surface;
+others read the great book whose letters are suns, whose words are
+starry systems, in the self-same manner; and there is still a greater
+volume--the first edition, to be continued--the Human Soul--which they
+never read at all. All of these must go to school; they will graduate
+by-and-by, when Death turns over a new leaf. It is best to study
+now--there may not be so good a chance presently.
+
+"Betsey Clark believed, or thought she did, that because God made all
+things, therefore there could be no wrong in all the world. She accepted
+Pope's conclusions literally, misread them, and totally overlooked the
+sublime teachings of the third author named; and her mind went to rest,
+and her conscience slumbered under the sophisms--for such they are, from
+one point of view. The opiate acted well. And so she slept for
+years--long years of peace, wealth, all the world could give her--slept
+in the belief that there would never be a waking. Was she right? Wait.
+Let us see.
+
+"We are still in the little chamber, near the window--the little window
+at the foot of the bed--whose upper sash was down."
+
+
+
+
+PART V.
+
+TOM CLARK DREAMS AGAIN.
+
+
+"And now the Shadow--the terrible, monstrous Thing, that had so
+strangely entered the room through the window--the little window at the
+foot of the bed, whose upper sash was down--hovered no longer over the
+heads of the woman and the man--the unhappy woman, the misery-laden man,
+who, when the last sun had set, went to bed with Murder and Revenge--and
+Hatred--this wretched couple, who had contemplated such dreadful crimes,
+and who, within the past two hours, had had such strange and marvellous
+dreams! Only two hours! and yet in that space had been crowded the
+events of a lifetime. They say there are no miracles! What, then, is
+this? What are these strange experiences of soul which we are constantly
+having--fifty years compressed in an hour of ordinary Dream!--thirty
+thousand ages in a moment of time, while under the accursed spells of
+Hasheesh? The soul flying back over unnumbered centuries; scanning the
+totality of the Present, and grasping a myriad Futurities--sweeping the
+vortex of unborn epochs by the million!--and all in an instant of the
+clock, while under the influence of the still more accursed Muust. What
+are the frogs and bloody waves of Egypt, compared to these miracles of
+the human soul--these Dream-lives that are not Dreams?
+
+"And so the Thing took the glare of its horrible Eye from off the woman
+and the man. Its mission--its temptations were over. And it floated from
+off the bed, frown-smiling at Hesperina as it did so; and it passed
+lazily, gloomily, scowlingly through the window at the foot of the bed,
+through which it had a little previously entered; and it moved through
+the starlight with a rush and a roar--a sullen rush and roar--as if each
+star-beam stabbed it with a dagger of flame; and the Thing seemed
+consciously angry, and it sullenly roared, as doth the wintry blast
+through the tattered sails of a storm-tossed bark, toilsomely laboring
+thro' the angry deep: a minute passed, and IT was gone; thank God! IT
+was gone--at last--that horrible Incubus--that most fearful Thing!
+
+"Simultaneously the sleepers evinced by their movements that their
+souls, if not their senses, had been relieved by the presence of its
+absence; and they were apparently on the point of waking, but were
+prevented by the magic, or magnetic action of the angelic figure at that
+moment leaning o'er their couch; for she gently, soothingly waved her
+snowy hands, and, in a voice sweeter than the tones of love, whispered:
+'Sleep on; still sleep--softly--sweetly sleep--and dream. Peace,
+troubled hearts! Peace; be still!' and they slumbered on.
+
+"Tom Clark's dream had changed. All the former troubled and exciting
+scene had vanished into thin air, leaving only vague, dim memories
+behind, to remind his soul of what it had been, and what it had seen and
+suffered. In the former dream he had been on dry, solid land; but now
+all this was strangely altered, and he found himself tossed on a rough,
+tumultuous sea; his lot was cast upon the deep--upon a wild and dreary
+waste of waters. In his dream the rain--great round and heavy drops of
+rain--fell in torrents; the mad winds and driving sleet--for the rain
+froze as it fell--raved and roared fiercely, fitfully; and the good ship
+bent and bellied to the hurricane, and she groaned as if loath to give
+up the ghost. And she drove before the blast, and she plunged headlong
+into the foaming billows, and ever and anon shook her head--brave ship!
+as if she knew that ruin was before her, and had determined to meet it
+as a good ship should--bravely, fairly in the face.
+
+"I have yet to disbelieve that every perfect work of man--ship, watch,
+engine--has a semi-conscious life of its own--a life derived from the
+immortal soul that gave its idea birth--for all these things--these
+ships, watches, engines, are ideas, spiritual, subtle, invisible, till
+man hides their nakedness with wood, iron, steel, brass--the fig-leaves
+of the Ideal World. Some people cannot feel an idea, or be introduced to
+one, unless it be dressed up in matter. Sometimes we lay it on paper or
+canvas, and draw pencil lines around, or color it, and then it can be
+seen; else we take one and plant it out of doors, and then put brick and
+iron, marble and glass sides to it, rendering the spirit visible, and
+then the people see the Idea's Clothing, and fancy they behold the thing
+itself, just as others, when looking at a human body, imagine they
+behold the man, the woman, or the child. A mistake! None but God ever
+yet beheld a human Soul, and this it is, and not the body or its
+accidents, that constitutes the Ego.
+
+       *       *       *       *
+
+"And the ship surged through the boiling seas, and her timbers strained
+and cracked in the combat, and her cordage shrieked as the blast tore
+through, and the tattered sails cried, almost humanly--like a man whose
+heart is breaking because his wife loves him not, and all the world for
+him is robed in mourning--and they cried, as if in deadly fear they were
+craving mercy at the Storm-King's hands. He heard the cries, but he
+laughed 'ho! ho!' and he laughed 'ha! ha!' and he tore away another sail
+and hurled it in the sea, laughing madly all the while; and he blew, and
+he rattled, and he roared in frightful glee; and he laughed 'ha! ha!'
+and he laughed 'ho! ho!' as the bridegroom laughs in triumph.
+
+"And still the storm came down; and the yards bent before the gale, and
+then snapped asunder, like pipe-clay stems, and the billows leaped and
+dashed angrily at her sides, like a trained blood-hound at the throat of
+the mother, whose crime is being black--Chivalrous, well-trained
+blood-hounds! And the waves swept the decks of the bark--swept them
+clean, and whirled many a man into the weltering main, and sent their
+souls to heaven by water, and their bodies to the coral caves of Ocean.
+Poor Sailors! The Storm-King's spirit was roused, and his soul up in
+arms; and the angry waves danced attendance; the lightning held high
+revelry, and flashed its applause in the very face of heaven, and lit up
+the night with terrible, ghastly smiles; and the sullen growl of distant
+thunder was the only requiem over the dead upon that dismal deep.
+
+"It was night. Day had long left the earth, and gone to renew his youth
+in his Western bath of fire--as we all must--for death is our West--and
+the gloomy eidolon had usurped Day's throne, arrayed in black garments,
+streaked with flaming red, boding no good, but only ill to all that
+breathed the upper air. And the turmoil woke the North, and summoned him
+to the wassail; and he leaped from his couch of snow, with icebergs for
+his pillow, and he stood erect upon his throne at the Pole, and he blew
+a triumphant, joyous blast, and sent ten thousand icy deaths to
+represent him at the grand, tempestuous revel. They came, and as the
+waters leaped into the rigging, they lashed them there with
+frost-fetters; and they loaded the fated ship with fantastic robes of
+pearly, heavy, glittering ice--loaded her down as sin loads down the
+transgressor.
+
+"And still the noble ship wore on--still refused the bitter death.
+Enshrouded with massy sheets and clumps of ice, the good craft nearly
+toppled with the weight, or settled forever in the yawning deep; for
+despite her grand endeavors--her almost human will and resolution--her
+desperate efforts to save her precious freight of human souls--she
+nearly succumbed, and seemed ready to yield them to the briny waters
+below. Lashed to staunch timbers, the trembling remnant of the crew soon
+found out, while terror crowned their pallid brows, that the tornado was
+driving them right straight upon a rock-bound coast--foaming and
+hopeless for them, notwithstanding that from the summit of the bold
+cliffs, a light-house gleamed forth its eye coldly--cynically upon the
+night--in mockery lighting the way to watery death and ruin. Steadily,
+clearly it glimmered out upon the darkness, distinctly showing them the
+white froth at the foot of the cliff--the anger-foam of the demon of the
+storm. Ah, God! Have mercy! have mercy!
+
+"Look yonder, at the stern of the ship! What frightful gorgon is that?
+You know not! Well, that is Death sitting on the taffrail. See, he moves
+about. Death is standing at the cabin door; he is gazing down below,
+looking up aloft, glaring out over the bleak, into the farther night.
+See! he is stalking about the deck--the icy deck--very slippery it is,
+and where you fall you die, for he has trodden on the spot. Ah, me! ah,
+me! Woe, woe, a terrible woe is here, Tom Clark! Tom Clark, don't you
+hear? Death stands glamoring on you! Hark! he is whistling in the
+rigging; he is swinging on the snapping ends of yonder loosened
+halliards; if they strike you you are dead, for they are Whips, and
+Death is snapping them! He is calling you, Tom Clark; don't you hear
+him?--calling from his throne, and his throne is the Tempest, Tom
+Clark--the Tempest. Now he is watching you--don't his glance trouble
+you? Don't you know that he is gazing down into your eyes? How cold is
+his glance! how colder his breath! It is very, very cold. Ah! I shiver
+as I think--and Death is freezing you, Tom Clark;--he is freezing your
+very heart, and turning your blood to ice. He is freezing you, and has
+tried to freeze me, in various ways. But I bade him stand back--to stay
+his breath--for, unlike you, Tom Clark, I am a Brother of the Rosie
+Cross, and I have been over Egypt, and Syria, and Turkey; on the borders
+of the Caspian, and Arabia's shores; over sterile steppes, and weltered
+through the Deserts--and all in search of the loftier knowledge of the
+Soul, that can only there be found; and I found what I sought, Tom
+Clark--the nature of the Soul, its destiny, and how it may be trained to
+any end or purpose. And the History and Mystery of Dream, Tom Clark,
+from the lips of the Oriental Dwellers in the Temple--and Pul Ali
+Beg--Tom Clark--our Persian Ramus and our lordly Chief--and I learned
+the worth of Will, and how to say, and _mean_,--'I _will_ be well, and
+not sick--alive, and not dead!' and achieve the purpose. How? That is
+our secret--the Rosicrucians'--strange order of men; living all along
+the ages, _till they are ready to die_--for Death comes only because man
+will not beat him back. They DIE THROUGH FEEBLENESS OF WILL. But not so
+with us, Tom Clark; we leave not until our work is done, and mine is not
+yet finished. We exercise our power over others, too, but ever for their
+good. Well do I remember, how, when I lived in Charlestown, there was an
+old man dying, but I bade him live. He exists to-day. And long years
+before that, there reached me--lightning borne, on the banks of the
+Hudson, a message saying, 'Come, she is dying!' and I went, and stood
+beside the bed of the sick child, and I prayed, and I invoked the Adonim
+of the Upper Temple; and they came and bade her live. And she liveth
+yet--but how ungrateful!
+
+"Till our work is done! What work? you ask me, and from over the
+steaming seas I answer, and I tell you through the boundless air that
+separates us: Our work is to help finish that begun lang syne upon the
+stony heights of Calvary; in the shade beneath the olive in Gethsemane,
+where I have stood and wept--begun when Time was thousands of years
+younger than to-day. Our work, Tom Clark, is to make men, by teaching
+them to make themselves. We strive to impress a sense upon the world of
+the priceless value of a MAN!
+
+       *       *       *       *
+
+"And the vessel drove before the gale straight upon the cliff. All hope
+was at an end; all hope of rescue was dead. There was great sorrowing on
+board that fated bark. Heads were downcast, hearts beat wildly, ears
+drank in the mournful monody of the scene, and lo! the strong man lifted
+up his voice and wept aloud. Did you ever see a man in tears--tears
+tapped from his very soul? When they laugh at his misery, whose lives he
+has saved? When he discovers that the man he has loved as a brother, and
+for whom he has sacrificed his all during long years, was all the while
+a traitor and a foe, a mean and conscienceless traitor, and a secret,
+bitter Judas Iscariot, yet wearing a smile on his face continually? God
+grant you never may.
+
+"The strong man wept! the very man, too, who, a few brief hours before,
+had heaped up curses, for trifling reasons, upon the heads of others;
+but now, in this hour of agony and mortal terror, fell upon his knees in
+the sublime presence of God's insulted majesty; who now, in the deadly
+peril, lashed to the pump, trembling to his soul's deep centre, cried
+aloud to Him for--Mercy! God's ears are never deaf! At that moment one
+of His Angels--Sandalphon--the Prayer-bearer, in passing by that way,
+chanced to behold the sublime and moving spectacle. And his eyes flashed
+gladness, even through his tears; and he could scarcely speak for the
+deep emotion that stirred his angel heart; but still he pointed with one
+hand at the prostrate penitent, and with the other he placed the golden
+trumpet to his lips, and blew a blast that woke the sleeping echoes
+throughout the vast Infinitudes; and he cried up, cried up from his very
+soul: 'Behold! he prayeth!' And the Silence of the upper courts of
+Heaven started into Sound at the glad announcement, 'Behold! he
+prayeth!' And the sentence was borne afar on the fleecy pinions of the
+Light, from Ashtoreth to Mazaroth, star echoing to star. And still the
+sound sped on, nor ceased its flight until it struck the pearly Gates of
+Glory--where was an Angel standing--the Recording Angel--writing in a
+Book; and, oh! _how_ eagerly he penned the sentence, right opposite Tom
+Clark's name: 'Behold! he prayeth!' and the tears--great, hot, scalding
+tears, such as, at this moment, I am shedding--rolled out from the
+angel's eyes, so that he could scarcely see the book--mine own eyes are
+very dim--but still he wrote the words. God grant that he may write
+them opposite your name and mine--opposite everybody's, and everybody's
+son and daughter--opposite ALL our names!
+
+"'Behold! he prayeth!' And lo! the Angels and the Cherubim, the Seraphs
+and the Antarphim, caught up the sound, and sung through the Dome; sung
+it till it was echoed back from Aidenn's golden walls, from the East to
+the West, and the North and South thereof; until it echoed back in low,
+melodious cadence from the Veiled Throne, on which sitteth in majesty
+the Adonai of Adonim, the peerless and ineffable Over Soul, the gracious
+Lord of both the Living and the Dead! Are there any _Dead_? No! except
+in sin and guiltiness!... And there was much joy in the Starry World
+over one sinner that had in very truth repented.
+
+"And still the ship drove on, and on, and on--great heaven! right on to
+a shelving ledge of rock, where she was almost instantly dashed into a
+million fragments; masts, hull, sails, freight, men, all, all swept and
+whirled with relentless fury into one common gulf of waters; and yet,
+despite the din and roar, there rose upon the air, high and clear, and
+shrill:
+
+    "'The startling shriek--the bubbling cry
+    Of one strong swimmer in his agony.'
+
+"And that swimmer was Tom Clark. Thrice had he been thrown by the surf
+upon a jutting ledge of rock; thrice had he, with the strength of
+despair, clung to it, and seized upon the sea-weed growing on its edges,
+with all the energy of a drowning man. In vain; the relentless sea
+swept him off again, broke his hold, and whirled him back into the
+brine. His strength was almost gone; exhaustion was nigh at hand; and he
+floated, a helpless, nerveless mass at the mercy of the tide. And yet,
+so wonderful a thing is a human soul!--in that dreadful moment, when
+Hope herself was dead, and he was about to quit forever and forever this
+earth of sin and sorrow, and yet an earth so fair and bright, so lovely
+and so full of love, teeming so with all that is heroic and true, so
+friendly and so kind; his soul, even then, his precious and immortal
+soul, just pluming its wings for a flight to the far-off regions of the
+Living Dead--that soul for which God Himself had put forth all His
+redemptive energy--had abundant time to assert its great prerogative,
+and bid Death himself a haughty, stern defiance. With the speed of Light
+his mental vision flashed back along and over the valley of the dead
+years, and saw arrayed before it all the strange phasmaramas of the
+foretime. Deeds, Thoughts, and Intuitions never die! They are as
+immortal as the imperishable souls that give them life and being!
+
+"And in that wondrous vision Tom Clark was young again; his childhood,
+youth, maturity; his sins, sorrows, virtues, and his aspirations, all,
+all were there, phototyped upon the walls of the mystic lane through
+which his soul was gazing--a lane not ten inches long, yet stretching
+away into the immeasurable deeps of a vast Infinitude. A Paradox! I am
+speaking of the Soul!--a thing whereof we talk so much, and know so very
+little.
+
+"The spectres of all his hours were there, painted on the Wall of
+Memory's curved lane; his joys, his weary days of grief--few of the
+first, many of the latter--were there, like green and smiling oases,
+standing out in quick relief against the desert of his life. His anxious
+eyes became preternaturally acute, and seemed to take cognizance both of
+fact and cause--effect and principle at the same glance. His marriage
+life--even to its minutest circumstance--stood revealed before him. He
+saw Betsey as she had been--a girl, spotless, artless, intelligent,
+ambitious; beheld her married; then saw her as she was when she joined
+her lot with his own. He beheld her as she had become--anything but a
+true wife and woman, for only her surface had been reached by either
+husband. There was a fountain they had neither tapped nor known. Her
+heart had been touched, indeed; but her soul, never. He was amazed to
+find that a woman can give more than a husband is supposed to seek and
+find. More, did I say? My heaven! not one man in ten thousand can think
+of a line and plummet long enough to fathom the vast ocean of a woman's
+affection; cannot imagine the height and depths--the unfathomable riches
+of a woman's Love. Not a peculiar woman's--but any, every woman's love;
+your sister's, sir, or your wife's, sir, or mine, or anybody's sister or
+wife--anybody's daughter.
+
+"It appeared to Clark's vision that a vast deal of his time had been
+worse than wasted, else had he devoted a portion of it to the attentive
+study of the woman whom he had, in the presence of God and man, sworn to
+love, honor, and protect; for no man is fit for Heaven who does not
+love his wife, and no man can love his wife unless he carefully studies
+her nature; and he cannot study her nature unless he renders himself
+lovable, and thus calls out _her_ love; and until her love _is_ thus
+called out, the office of husband is a suicidal sham. Thus saith the
+canons of the Rosicrucian philosophy. Are they bad?
+
+"And he gazed in the depths of her spirit, surprised beyond measure to
+find that God had planted so many goodly flowers therein--even in virago
+Betsey's soul! And he said to himself--as many another husband will,
+before a hundred years roll by--'What a precious fool I've been!
+spending all my time in cultivating thistles--getting pricked and
+cursing them--when roses smell so very well, and are so easily raised?
+fool! I wish'----and he blamed his folly for not having nurtured
+roses--for not having duly cultivated the rich garden God had intrusted
+him with; execrated himself for not having cherished and nursed this
+garden, and availed himself of its golden, glorious fruitage. It was as
+a man who had willfully left down the bars for the free entrance of his
+neighbor's cattle, and then wondering that his harvest of hay was not
+quite so heavy as desired.... Clark saw that it had been in his
+power--as it unquestionably is in that of every married man--by a few
+kind acts, a few tender, loving words, to have thawed and melted forever
+the ice collected by ill-usage--and every woman is ill-used who is not
+truly, purely, loyally loved! He saw that he might easily have warmed
+her spirit toward himself, therefore toward the world, and consequently
+toward the Giver. He might have made their life a constant
+summer-time--that very life that had been by his own short-sighted
+externalism, confirmed into freezing, stormy, chilling winter.
+
+"Wheat and lentils I have seen in Egypt, taken from a mummy's hand,
+where they had lain three thousand and four hundred years. Some of that
+wheat I still possess; some of it I planted in a flower-pot, and it
+forthwith sprung up, green and beautiful, into life and excellence. The
+mummy's hand was crisp; the tombs of Beni-Hassan were not the places for
+wheat to grow, for they are very dry. Do you see the point, the
+place--the thing I am aiming at? It is to show that the ills of marriage
+life are to be corrected not by a recourse to law-courts and referees,
+but by each party resolutely trying to correct them in the heart, the
+head, the home. Another thing I aim at is to seal the lips--to strike to
+the earth the brawlers for Divorce--the breakers-up of families, who
+preach--or prate of--what they have neither brains to comprehend, nor
+manhood to appreciate--Marriage!
+
+"Clark saw, in the soul of his wife, in an instant, that which takes me
+an hour to describe; for the soul sees faster than the hand can indite,
+or the lips utter. He beheld many a gem, pure and translucent as a
+crystal, shut up in the caverns of her nature; shut up, and barred from
+the light, all the while yearning for day. What seeds of good, what
+glorious wheat was there. The milk of human kindness had been changed to
+ice-froth--sour, and sugar-less, not fit to be tasted. Inestimable
+qualities had been left totally unregarded, until they were covered up,
+nearly choked out by noxious weeds. God plants excellent gardens, and it
+is man's express business to keep them and dress them, and just as
+surely as he neglects them, and leaves the bars down, or the gates open,
+just so surely along comes the Tare-sower, whether his name be
+'Harmonial Philosopher,' 'All-Right' preacher, Tom, Harry, Dick,
+Devil--or something worse.
+
+"Many good things, saw Tom, that might have been developed into Use and
+Beauty, that had, in fact, become frightfully coarse and abnormal; and
+all for want of a little Trying.
+
+    "'The saddest words of tongue or pen
+    Are these sad words: IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN!'
+
+"But that he was not kind, tractable, and confiding; and that he was the
+reverse of all this. Faults of his own--great and many; tremendous
+faults they were. He had been curt, short, sarcastic, selfish, exacting,
+petulant, _offish_, arbitrary, tyrannical, suspicious, peremptory--all
+of which are contained in the one word MEAN!--and he _was_ mean. Too
+late he realized that he might have brought to the surface all the
+delicious, ripe sweets of her woman, and her human nature, instead of
+the cruel and the bitter. He saw, what every husband ought to see--but
+don't--that no woman can be truly known who is not truly loved!--and
+that, too, not with mere lip-homage, nor with nervous, muscular,
+demonstrative, show-love--for no female on the earth but will soon
+detect all such--and reckon you up accordingly--at your proper
+value--less than a straw! She demands true homage, right straight from
+the heart; from the bottom of the heart--whence springs the rightful
+homage due from man to woman--right straight from the heart--without
+deflection. Mind this. Give her _that_, and ah, then, _then_, what a
+heaven is her presence! and what a fullness she returns! compound
+interest, a thousand-fold repeated!--a fullness of affection so great
+that God's love only exceedeth it!--a love so rich and vast, that man's
+soul can scarce contain the half thereof. _This truth I know._ This
+truth I tell, because it is such. You will bless me for it by-and-by,
+when I am Over the River--if not before--will bless and thank
+me--despite of what 'They say.' Remember that!
+
+"Tom Clark was drowning, yet he realized all this. He regretted that he
+had treated his wife as if she were soulless, or a softer sort of man.
+He could have so managed as to have been all the world to Betsey--all
+the world, and something more and better, for there are leaves in
+wedlock's book which only those can turn and read who truly love each
+other. Marriage is, to some, a coarse brown paper volume, with rough
+binding, bad ink, and worse type, poorly composed, and badly adjusted,
+without a page corrected. It may be made a super-royal volume, on tinted
+paper, gilt-edged, clear type, and rich and durable covers, the whole
+constituting the History of two happy lives spent on Hymen Island:
+Profusely illustrated, in full tints, with scenes of Joy in all its
+phases. Price, The TRYING! Very cheap, don't you think so?
+
+"He saw, as he floated there in the brine, that he had never done aught
+to call out his wife's affection, in which he resembled many another
+whiskered ninny, who insanely expect women to doat upon them merely
+because they happen to be married. Dolts! Not one in a host comprehends
+woman's nature; not one in two hosts will take the trouble to find it
+out; consequently, not one man in three hosts but goes down to the grave
+never having tasted life's best nectar--that of loving and being loved.
+
+"'O Betsey, Betsey, I know you _now_! _What_ a stupid I have been, to be
+sure!'
+
+"Profound ejaculation!
+
+"'I've been an out-and-out fool!'
+
+"Sublime discovery!
+
+"Thus thought the dying man, in the dreadful hour of his destiny--that
+solemn hour wherein the soul refuses to be longer enslaved or deceived
+by the specious warp and woof of the sophistical robe it may have
+voluntarily worn through many a year, all the while believing it to be
+Truth, as some people do Davis' and Joe Smith's 'Philosophy.' It is not
+till a dose of Common Sense has caused us to eject from our moral
+stomachs the nice philosophical sweetmeats we have indulged in for
+years, until at last they have disturbed our digestion--sweets, very
+pleasant to the palate--like the 'All Right-ism' of the 'Hub of the
+Universe'--but which, like boarding-house hash, is very good in small
+quantities--seldom presented--and not permanently desirable--that we
+begin to have true and noble views of life, especially married life,
+its responsibilities and its truly royal joys and pleasures. Clark had
+reached this crisis, and in an instant the scales fell from his
+eyes--the same that blinds so many of us during the heyday and vigor of
+life.
+
+"'If I could be spared, Betsey, I'd be a better man.'
+
+"Bravo! Glorious Thomas Clark! Well said, even though the waters choke
+thine utterance.
+
+"'I would. O wife, I begin to see your value, and what a treasure I have
+lost--lost--_lost_!'
+
+"And the poor dying wretch struggled against the brine--struggled
+bravely, fiercely to keep off the salt death--the grim, scowling Death
+that had sat upon the taffrail; that had stalked about the deck, and
+stood at the cabin door; the same fearful Death that had whistled
+through the rigging, and ridden on the storm, and which had followed but
+had not yet touched him with his cold and icy sceptre."
+
+
+
+
+PART VI.
+
+WHAT BECAME OF THOMAS CLARK.
+
+
+Our entertainer ceased to speak, for the evening meal was nearly ready,
+and the golden sun was setting in the West, and he rose to his feet to
+enjoy the glowing scene. Never shall I forget the intense interest taken
+by those who listened to the tale--and doubtless these pages will fall
+in the hands of many who heard it reported from his own lips, on the
+quarter-deck of the steamer "Uncle Sam," during the voyage begun from
+San Francisco to Panama, on the twenty-first day of November, 1861. At
+first his auditors were about ten in number, but when he rose to look at
+the crimson glories of the sky, fifty people were raptly listening. We
+adjourned till the next day, when, as agreed upon the night before, we
+convened, and for some time awaited his appearance. At last he came,
+looking somewhat ill, for we were crossing the Gulf of California, and
+Boreas and Neptune had been elevating Robert, or in plainer English,
+"Kicking up a bobbery," all night long. We had at least a thousand
+passengers aboard, consisting of all sorts of people--sailors, soldiers,
+and divers trades and callings, and yet not one of us appreciated the
+blessing of the epigastrial disturbances--caused by the "bobbery"
+aforesaid. Many could successfully withstand any amount of qualms of
+conscience--but those of the stomach were quite a different thing
+altogether! and not a few of us experienced strong yearnings toward "New
+York," and many "reachings forth" went in that direction. Indeed the
+weather was so rough, that scarce one of us in the cabin fully enjoyed
+our breakfasts. As for me, I'm very fond of mush and molasses, but I
+really _couldn't_ partake thereof on that occasion. No, _sir_! The
+gentleman from Africa who stood behind us at table to minister to our
+gustatory wants, found his office a perfect sinecure that morning; and
+both I and the Rosicrucian, in whose welfare that official took an
+especial interest--because, in a fit of enthusiasm, we had each given
+him four bits (ten dimes)--seemed to challenge his blandest pity and
+commiseration, for we both sat there, looking as if we had been
+specially sent for and couldn't go. The waiter--kind waiter!--discerned,
+by a wonderful instinct, that we didn't feel exactly "O fat," and he
+therefore, in dulcet tones, tried to persuade us to take a little
+coffee. Coffee! Only think of it! Just after Mrs. Thomas W. had poisoned
+her husband through that delectable medium. He suggested pork! "Pork,
+avaunt! We're sea-sick." "Beef." Just then I had a splendid proof of
+Psychological infiltration and transmission of thought; for my friend
+and I instantaneously received a strong impression--which we directly
+followed--to arise from our seats, go on deck, and look over the lee
+rail. Toward the trysting time, however, the sea smoothed its wrinkles,
+and the waters smiled again. Presently the expected one came, took his
+accustomed seat, and began the conclusion of
+
+TOM CLARK'S DREAM
+
+    "There's a tide in the affairs of men, which,
+    Taken at the flood, leads on to fortune."
+
+    SHAKSPEARE.
+
+    "There's a tide in the affairs of women, which,
+    Taken at the flood, leads--God knows where."
+
+    BYRON.
+
+"Neither do I! Last night, my friends, we left poor Tom in a desperate
+situation, from which it seems necessary that I should relieve him, but
+really without exactly knowing how--not feeling particularly well from
+the motion of the ship last night, it is not easy to think under such
+circumstances; still, believing as I do, in the sterling motto, Try,
+why, I will endeavor to gratify your curiosity, especially as I perceive
+we are honored with the presence of the ladies, and, for their sakes, if
+not for our own, I feel it incumbent to do something for him.
+
+"Tom Clark had, by the waves, been already taken in, and by this time
+was nearly done for, so far as easy breathing was concerned. Slowly, but
+surely, his vision was fading away, and he felt that he was fast sinking
+into Night.
+
+    "'Deep the gulf that hides the dead--
+    Long and dark the road they tread.'
+
+That road he felt that he was rapidly going; for his senses were
+becoming numb, and a nauseant sensation proved that if he was not
+sea-sick, he was remarkably sick of the sea, even to the point of
+dissolution.
+
+"All dying persons hear musical sounds: all dying persons see strange,
+fitful gleams of marvellous light, and so did Thomas Clark--low, sweet
+music and soft and pearly light it was, but while he drank it in, and
+under its influence was being reconciled to Death, there suddenly rose
+high and shrill above the midnight tempest, a loud and agonizing
+shriek--the wild, despairing, woeful shriek of a woman--and it was more
+shrill and piercing than the ziraleet of Egyptian dame or Persian houri;
+and it broke upon the ear of the perishing man, like a summons back to
+life and hope. Well and instantly did he recognize its tones. 'It must
+be--yet no!--still it can be no other than _her_ v-voice! It cannot
+be--and I am dy-ing!' and an angry wave dashed over him, drowning his
+utterance, and hurling his body, like a wisp of straw, high upon the
+ledge of rocks, whence the recoil, or undertow, was about to whirl it
+out again into the foaming waters, when it was prevented by a most
+wonderful piece of good fortune, which at that instant, intervened to
+save him, at what certainly was the most interesting and critical
+juncture of his entire earthly existence. Again that sharp voice rang
+out upon the storm, and a hand, small, soft, yet nerved with all a
+woman's desperate energy--desperate in Love! clutched him by the hair,
+and dragged--triumphantly dragged him to the hard and solid land, just
+over the ledge, on a winding path at the foot of the overhanging cliff.
+It was Betsey Clark's voice; it was Betsey Clark's hand; it was she who
+saved him; and thus he received a new lease of life at the hands of the
+very woman whom, in a former dream, he had sent so gaily sailing down
+the empty air--down through four hundred feet of unobstructed
+space--with boulders at the bottom--solid boulders of granite and
+quartz--gold-bearing quartz at that, and very rich, too, but still quite
+solid and considerably harder than was agreeable to either the woman,
+the buggy, or the horse, for not one of them was
+
+    'Soft as downy pillows are'--
+
+not even Governor Downie's of California.
+
+"It was, indeed, his wife's voice that he heard; it was she that rescued
+him from what, in very truth, was a most unfortunate pickle--or
+_brine_--as you choose, or _both_--but at all events one into which he
+would never have got had he not been far greener than a cucumber.
+
+"In a dream strange things come to pass. And in strict accordance with
+the proprieties of that weird life and Realm--a life and Realm no less
+real than weird--Tom was speedily cared for, and emptied of the overplus
+of salt water he had involuntarily imbibed, while Mrs. Clark carefully
+attended upon him, and a score or two of good people busied themselves
+in saving all they could from the wreck. After this they all retreated
+to a comfortable mansion, situated on the summit of this cliff, in the
+regions of Dream, and there the following explanations took place: It
+appeared that Betsey had been on a visit to her uncle, who kept the
+light-house, and had for several days been on the look-out for the
+arrival of the vessel--the wrecked one--in which, some time previous,
+Tom had sailed on a voyage to Honey-Lu-Lu, the Bay of Fun-dee, or some
+other such place that vessels trade to. The ship had at last been
+descried, laboring in the midst of a violent storm, just before dark,
+and under such circumstances as rendered it positively certain that she
+would drive headlong upon the rocks at the foot of the very cliff on
+which the light-house stood.
+
+"But by a singular coincidence, perfectly unaccountable anywhere else,
+save in Dream-land, Betsey Clark had learned to love Tom dearly, at the
+precise instant that he had discovered, and repented his own great
+error. At the instant that Tom had declared that, could he be spared, he
+would be a better man, she saw his deadly peril; the icicles began to
+melt around her heart--melt very fast--so that by the time she reached
+him her soul was in a glow of pure affection for the man she had until
+that moment hated. She now saw, with unmitigated astonishment, that,
+with all his faults, there was a mine of excellent goodness; that God
+had not made anything either perfect or imperfect; and that, after all
+was said or done, he was of priceless consequence and value to her.
+
+"Human nature and woman nature are very remarkable institutions,
+especially the latter. We seldom value either a man or woman, until they
+are either dead or a long way off, and then--'Who'd a'thought it?'
+
+"When Clark awoke from the gentle sleep into which he had fallen after
+the kind people had made him comfortable, he found his head pillowed on
+a bosom a great deal softer than down or Downie's--that of his loving
+and tender wife--for she was so now, and no mistake, in the full, true
+sense--A Wife!
+
+       *       *       *       *
+
+"Tom Clark got well. He never grew rich, and never wanted to. He went to
+Santa Blarneeo, and had both their pictures taken in a single frame, on
+one canvas, and he hung it over the window in the little room--the
+little window at the foot of the bed, whose upper sash was down.
+
+       *       *       *       *
+
+"Years rolled by. Long did they live in the enjoyment of a domestic
+bliss too great for expression or description--a happiness unsullied by
+an unworthy thought, unstained by any blot; for it was full, pure,
+husbandly, wifely; and daily, hourly, did they bless and learn to love
+each other more.
+
+       *       *       *       *
+
+"'Cease dreaming,' said Hesperina--the beautiful Hesperina, the Genius
+of the Garden and the Star--'cease thy _dream_ of Perpetual Peace, and
+live to actualize it on thy way through the World! Cease dreaming, but
+awaken not. Remember the counsel of Otanethi, the radiant, Lord of the
+Temple, the Spirit of the Hour; and when thou wakest, TRY to be a nobler
+and a better man. Waken not yet, O frail and weak! but still
+sleep--sweetly, soundly sleep, yet awhile, and only wake to be a full,
+true, loving man, forgiving and forgiven!' And then the peerless being
+waved her hand over the prostrate woman, and, lo! her movements gave
+token that the strange and mighty magic was felt, and that she was
+swiftly passing the mystic Threshold of that sphere of new and
+marvellous activities where the Dream Fay reigns supreme."
+
+At this point of the story, a lady, Mrs. V., invoked the narrator's
+attention, saying: "Thus far, sir, your story is an excellent one, and
+its moral is all that could be desired; yet how comes it that you, who
+so strongly deprecate all human hatreds and unkindness, are yet, in a
+measure, amenable to the very thing you decry? In the proem to the
+remarkable story you have been reciting, you have admitted that there
+was one man toward whom your soul felt bitter. Is this right? Is it just
+to yourself, your foe, the world, or God? Answer me!"
+
+The Rosicrucian studied awhile, and then replied: "It is _not_ right or
+just, and yet it is very hard to forgive, much less to forget, a cool,
+deliberate injury, such as I suffered at the pen, and hand, and tongue
+of the man alluded to. It is hard to forget"----
+
+"And still harder to forgive," said one of our company, a rather
+young-looking man, who had been one of the speaker's most attentive
+auditors. He spoke with much passion.
+
+Said the Stranger: "It is hard to forgive or forget. Few people in the
+world are capable of long-continued love in a single direction, unless
+self-trained; fewer still of deliberate, long-continued hatred, and
+fewer still are competent to full, free, unqualified forgiveness. _I am
+not._ In all my experience, I never knew but one man in whom unqualified
+Hatred was a paramount King-passion, over-riding and surviving all
+others whatsoever. I will tell you that man's story as he told it to me,
+for he was a friend of mine whom I dearly loved, and who loved me in
+return. One day I asked him to open his heart to me, which, after a
+while, he did as follows, saying: 'Listen, while I briefly sketch the
+story of my life. There was a man who, because I differed with him on
+questions of Philosophy--for he claimed to be Nature's private
+secretary, which claim all sensible people laughed at, and only
+weaklings listened to and believed--he, this man, for this cause, called
+in question, not only my own, but the fair fame of the mother who bore
+me--that mother being already dead; and for this I hate him, as roses
+hate the foul malarious swamps of earth. The blazoned motto of that man
+was--Let no man call God his Father, who calls not man his brother. I
+rose in the world, and he hated me for the talent God gave me. Envy! I
+was in a sense his rival, and as such, this man, snake-like, used his
+very utmost influence and power, by tongue and pen, to injure me--and
+did--for he took the bread from my children by depriving me of
+employment. I wrote a pamphlet, under a _nom de plume_, and he joyfully
+exposed my secret. Jealousy! He attacked me personally, grossly in his
+paper, misrepresented well known facts--LIED! Robbing me of fair fame,
+as he had my dead mother before me. It is impossible for A to forgive B
+for a crime against C. I hated him for the dead one's sake; that hate I
+once thought would survive my death, and be the thing next my heart
+through all the Eternities. Perhaps it will not. He crushed me for a
+time, but "_Je renais de mes cendres!_" We two are yet in the World. He
+will not forget it! Will I? Never!--for the sake of my dead mother. I
+can overlook his crimes toward me, but before the Bar I hold him ever
+accountable for the injury to her--and to my little ones, who nearly
+starved, while this fiend of hell, in the garb of heaven, triumphed in
+_my_ misery, and gloated over _their_ wrongs. I am the watchful
+proxy--the rightful Nemesis, of the living and the Dead! I put forth
+books to the world. This demon in saint's garb, and his minions, howled
+them down as blood-hounds do the panting slave. More bread lost to my
+hungry ones, more stern calling for reprisals. All men have foes. I had;
+and this man--this impostor, this conscienceless outrager of the dead
+and starver of little children, listened gladly, and covertly published
+their statements--and that when he morally knew them to be as false as
+his own black, polygamous, scoundrel heart. More wrong done, more little
+pale hands reaching vainly forth for bread; and more hatred laid up for
+him and his minions at the bottom of my heart of hearts, the core and
+centre of my soul!'
+
+"Thus he spake, and the man's eyes flashed fire as the words escaped
+him, proving that they were not the impulsive utterances of temper, but
+the deep and cherished results of long and bitter years of feeling. Said
+I: 'And does this feeling demand a physical atonement?' With a look of
+ineffable scorn, he replied: 'Not for an empire's sceptre would I harm
+a single hair of that man's head. Were his wife in a burning building, I
+would rescue her, or perish in the trial; were his children--but, thank
+God, he cannot propagate his species--Monsters never do!--but had he
+such, and they were hungry, I would work till I fell from exhaustion, in
+the effort to procure them bread: were the man himself in want or
+danger, I would joyously risk my life to save or serve him. Why? Because
+my revenge is one that could not be appeased by blood. It is too
+vast--too deep--and I will wreak it in other worlds, a myriad ages from
+now. To this I pledge my very soul; and when hereafter I point him to
+what I am, and what he has brought me to, I will thunder, in the ears of
+his spirit, in the very presence of the Judge, "THOU ART THE MAN!"
+Wherever he may be, in the Vault, or in the Space, there will I be also.
+Nor can this feeling die before he shall undo his doing, and--no matter
+what. At length this feeling of mine grew strong. I loved. It drowned
+all love. I was ambitious, and ambition paled before it. I had wealth
+within my reach, and turned from the shining gold to the superior
+brilliance of the pole star of my passion against the soul of this man,
+not against his body. And then I said:--I will rise from my ashes. I
+will win fame and name. I, the Angular Character, will rise, and in my
+dealings with this fiend will be as remorseless and bitter as the
+quintessence of Hate; I will suffer patiently, and mount the steeps of
+fame, and I will ring the bells at the door of the world till all the
+peoples wake, and then, _then_ will I launch him down the tide of time
+in his own true colors--stripped to the centre, and show him to the
+Ages for the monster that he is. This is a revenge worthy of an immortal
+being; one that merely extends to the physical person is such as brutes
+enjoy, but is not full, broad, deep and enduring enough for a man. As
+for his minions they are too contemptible to engage my attention for a
+moment; but in their master's soul will I fix my talons so deep, that an
+eternity shall not witness their extraction; and henceforth I dedicate
+all my life to the one purpose of _avenging the dead_!'
+
+"Five years rolled by after this recital, when again, in a foreign land,
+we met each other. In the meantime he had grown grey. His foe still
+attacked him; he had never once replied, but his hatred had crystallized
+in the centre of his soul, and, said he, 'I can wait a million years;
+but revenged I will be yet, by the Life of God!' That is my story; I
+believe my friend will keep his oath," said the young man as he turned
+from the company on the quarter-deck, and slowly walked toward the bow
+of the steamer.
+
+The words he had spoken were bitter ones, and they were expressed with
+such a _verve_--such a vehemence of vigor, intensity and passion, that
+not one man or woman on the quarter-deck of the steamer doubted for an
+instant that himself was the injured one, himself the vehement hater,
+notwithstanding his implied disclaimer. We saw that he fully, deeply,
+felt all he gave utterance to; and never, until that moment, did I
+comprehend the awful depths and capacity of the human soul for either
+love or hatred; nor had any of us, even the Rosicrucian, the faintest
+idea but that every word of his awful threat came from his heart; nor
+the slightest doubt that if there were a possibility of wreaking his
+revenge in the World to come, that he would find that possibility, and
+remorselessly execute it. Said the Rosicrucian, as the man finished his
+terrible recital: "This episode comes in quite _apropos_ to my own
+story's moral. It is well to beware, lest we, by some act or word of
+ours, so deeply plant the germ of hatred, that in after years it spring
+up to annoy us, and mar our peace of mind. Now, I have some knowledge of
+the soul, and am firmly convinced that the man who has just left us
+means all that he says; nor would I incur so dreadful a penalty as that
+man's hatred, for all the diadems on the terraqueous globe. His passion
+is not merely external, else he would, by an assault, or by slander,
+seek its satisfaction. But his feeling is the offspring of a sense of
+outraged justice. I have not the least doubt that the object of his
+spleen laughs at the man. But Revenge will outlive laughter, wealth,
+position, influence--all things, when of the nature of the present case.
+Thus, Madame, your question, I hope, has been answered to your
+satisfaction. Of course, I deprecate hatred, but demand justice.
+
+"But see, the sun is setting again, and the conclusion of our story must
+be deferred until after supper, when, if you will again assemble here
+upon the quarter-deck, you shall learn what befell Mr. Thomas W., and
+what other events transpired in the little chamber with a window at the
+foot of the bed, whose upper sash was down."
+
+
+
+
+PART VII.
+
+BETSEY CLARK IN DREAM-LAND.
+
+    Could I with ink the ocean fill,
+      Were all the earth of parchment made;
+    Were every blade of grass a quill,
+      And every man a scribe by trade--
+    To tell the love of God above
+      Would drain the briny oceans dry:
+    Nor would a scroll contain the whole,
+      Though covering all the arching sky.
+
+
+"I believe just as did the writer of these lines," said the Rosicrucian,
+as he began his recital in the cabin of the "Uncle Sam," after partaking
+of what the purveyors of that steamship line, in the rich exuberance of
+their facetious imaginations were pleased to call a supper.
+
+       *       *       *       *
+
+"Betsey Clark was dreaming: It was morning, and the glorious face of the
+sun shone in unclouded splendor over the world--this world, which, to
+the good man and woman, is ever a world of Good and Beauty, viewed from
+the God-side, whatever it may be from the human. All things were
+praising Him--at least all dumb things were, for men so intently adore
+their Lares and Penates--Dollars and Dimes--that they have scarcely
+time to devote a worshipful thought to Him who is King of kings, and
+regnant God of gods.
+
+"Nature was arrayed in gala robes; she had put aside her frowns, and now
+smiled sweetly on the world, decked gaily in pearls and light; she was
+on her way to attend the weddings of the flowers and the birds. Betsey
+Clark was a blythe young girl again. In her dream she was gaily tripping
+o'er the lea, her happy heart swelling and palpitating with strange
+emotions--she was a budding virgin now, and her heart overflowed with
+innocence and love, accompanied with that pure, but strange, wild
+discontent, and longing for, she knew not what, but something, which all
+young women feel, and are conscious of, as they pass the golden barrier
+that divides their youth from womanhood. It is, and was, the holy and
+chaste desire to love, and be loved in return--from the heart, sir,
+right straight from the heart! Ah, how I sometimes wish I had been
+created a girl instead of a boy. Bah! What's the use of wishing?
+especially when all the girls desire an opposite transmigration.
+
+"Betsey's bloom outrivalled the blushes of the newly-wedded roses--roses
+just married to sunlight, in the morning dew, with all the trees for
+witnesses, and all the birds to swell the sounding chorus! And she was
+happy; ah, how full of happiness! and yet it was slightly dashed with
+bitterness--just a taste of gall in her cup of honey--for she imagined a
+more perfect state, had vague dreamings of something still higher. So
+have we all. We have it! and that is a certain sign that that higher
+something is attainable, if we only try. Some one said he wanted to eat
+his friend. Good! but I want to lose myself in another self--to make of
+them twain a unit, which is better! or to thus blend, and then lose
+_ourself_ in the great God-life, which is Best!
+
+"And she gaily tripped over the lea. She was going with a pitcher of
+cream, and a basket of fresh eggs, toward a hole in the rock, not a
+great way off, to present them to the strange 'Hermit of the Silver
+Girdle,' who dwelt within a little grotto just upon the edge of a forest
+wild, hard by her girlhood's home.
+
+"Now, be it henceforth known to everybody, and to everybody's son and
+daughter--if the fact is not already patent unto them--that every female
+between the ages of fifteen and twenty-three, is naturally,
+spontaneously, and inevitably, in love; and all that is then wanting, is
+a suitable, and worthy object to lavish it upon. If she finds such, well
+and good; but whether she does, or not, still she must, and will pour it
+out--either healthily, or otherwise--on a cat or a man; a poodle or
+politics; marriage or a mirror. Between those ages the female heart is
+just as full of love as an egg is full of meat; nor can she help it; it
+is the birth of affection, love, romance--the endeared and endearing
+spring-tide of life and emotion. Alas! that the tide too often ebbs,
+never, never to rise again this side of the grave! Then, in the rich
+exuberance of her innocence and purity, woman, unlike man at the same
+age, thinks no wrong, fears no harm. Gentle, trustful, noble girl!
+Blessed is he who then calls her to himself--who, in the morning of his
+life, and her own, shall win, and worthily wear, her heart; and abased
+indeed is he who then shall gaze upon her with unhallowed eyes, and seek
+to lure her from the path of honorable womanhood!
+
+"Presently the girl reached the hermit's abode, saluted the reverend
+man, presented her welcome gift, and received on bended knee his
+blessing in return.
+
+"They conversed awhile, did that fair girl and that strange recluse; the
+hermit stood on this side, the maiden stood on that. 'Daughter,' said
+he, as he placed his white palms upon her beaming forehead, 'the world
+and all it contains amounts to but little, if it, and they, be not
+improved to the utmost--the attainment of the soul's aliment, knowledge,
+which it assimilates and digests into Wisdom. I have partaken of that
+food for fourscore years and ten--have converted it into wisdom, and
+expect to be thus engaged during long centuries to come. Thou seest me
+living here alone, dependent upon the charities of such as thou: poor in
+California, where even the rocks are retained by golden wedges in their
+places, and where diamonds sparkle in a hundred valleys. Thou seest me
+shut out from the busy world, and drawing life from Charity--and Heaven.
+Such an existence is suitable for me, but not for such as thee. I am a
+student and professor of a strange and mighty magic, for I possess the
+marvellous Mirror, and the still more wondrous Crystal Globe--both of
+which are heirlooms of the early foretime, handed down the ages to me,
+as I in turn shall bequeath them to the ages yet to be. But thou! thou
+art a woman, and cannot afford to shut thyself out from life, society,
+and pleasure, as Rosicrucians do, and must, if they would obtain the
+kingdom, the password--that uplifts the sable curtains that hide a dozen
+worlds--and the key, by which the doors of Mystery are opened. Child,
+for thee there are more fitting things in store than the upper
+knowing--better than solitude; higher charms than study, and abstruse
+pondering over recondite lore, and subtle laws of Being and of Power.
+Thou in thy way, I in mine, are, and must be, soldiers in the strife for
+holy peace; toilers for the millions yet unborn; mechanics for
+redemption of the world; active bees in the busy hive--thou of active
+human life, I that of human destiny; together, marchers in the grand
+army whose movement is ever onward, and which never looks behind. I
+strive for the True; thy destiny tends toward the Beautiful; together,
+we shall reach the goal of Good, moving over thorny roads, albeit, on
+the way; for there are many dangerous pit-falls, deep morasses, dismal
+swamps, gloomy forest-solitudes, and stony mountains, steep and
+slippery, that bar man's path to happiness. "Prepare ye the way.... Make
+His paths straight!" Such is thy business--and mine. To accomplish this
+duty I am here; but a different field is thine to labor in. To achieve
+thy destiny thou must place thine affections upon a son of man--thy
+soul's great love on God alone. You must wed, bear children in great
+agony, yet gloriously, to your husband, your country, and to Him.
+
+"'I will now, by means of the higher magic, which I am able to use in
+thy behalf, show the figure of a man whom you will hereafter marry. You
+shall behold him _as he is; as he will be_, and _and as he may
+become_--provided you choose to make him so; for a husband is _ever and
+always just what a woman makes him_! I am now about to display a
+phantarama of the future before you. Observe, and note well all thou
+mayest behold. Speak not thereof to vain worldlings, who cannot
+comprehend deep mysteries, such as these; above all, utter not one
+single word while thou sittest at yonder table, gazing into the
+Future-revealing Crystal Globe.'
+
+"And so saying, the grey-clad hermit of the Silver Girdle, who dwelt in
+a forest wild, led the way to a recess of the grotto, where the light
+was very subdued, very dim, and exceedingly religious. There he seated
+her before a tripod, supporting a triangular shelf or table, himself
+taking a seat directly opposite. Upon this table he then placed a small,
+square, dark-leathern box, opening on brass hinges across the sides and
+top. He opened it, while reiterating his caution, and disclosed to the
+enraptured gaze of the doubly-delighted girl--all girls are delighted
+before they get their husbands--and many of them are considerably
+delighted, if not more so, to get rid of them afterwards!--a magnificent
+globe of pure crystal, clear as a dew-drop, radiant as a sunbeam. It was
+not over four inches in diameter, was a perfect sphere, and was
+altogether beautiful--in this respect, infinitely transcending that of a
+soap-bubble of the same size--a humble comparison, but a just one--for
+there are few things more beautiful than these self-same soap-bubbles!
+
+"The first impulse of the girl was to handle this beautiful trinue--as
+it was called; and she made a movement with that intent, but was
+instantly prevented by the hermit in grey, who said: 'Not for a hundred
+husbands, should mortal fingers touch that sphere; for such contact
+would instantly rob it of its virtues, perhaps never to be regained!
+Look, my daughter, look, but touch not!'
+
+"She obeyed, and withdrew her hand, but reluctantly; for her fingers
+itched severely--as what young woman's would not, under similar
+circumstances. _Vide_ the Apple and Eve--by means of which, man
+fell--but fell _up-hill_ nevertheless! A great trait is this curiosity.
+It is woman's nature; it is her great prerogative! Eve looked into
+matters and things generally, induced Adam to follow her example, and
+thus was the main lever that lifted the race out of Barbarism, and into
+civilization and decency. So much for this much-abused 'Female
+curiosity.' But for it, man had remained a brute. With it, he has risen
+to a position a long way below the angels, to be sure, but then he is
+'Coming Up.'
+
+"The twain now began to gaze steadily at the magic globe, maintaining
+perfect silence for the space of ten minutes. All was still, hushed,
+silent as the grave, and only the wild throbbings of the young girl's
+heart could be heard. Presently the crystal began to change, and to emit
+faint streams of pale light, which gradually became more pronounced and
+distinct, until finally there was a most magnificent play of colors all
+over its surface. Presently the rich, effulgent scintillas, the
+concentric, iridescent flashings previously observed, ceased entirely,
+and in their stead the girl began to notice two very strange and
+extraordinary appearances, which, to her and to all save those who are
+familiar with such mysteries (and which, although nearly unknown in this
+country, are still quite common in the farther East), are totally
+unaccountable. In the first place, she became conscious that she was
+breathing an atmosphere highly charged with a subtle aura that
+manifestly emanated from the body of the crystal itself. This air was
+entirely different from that which floated in the grotto an hour before,
+when she entered with her offering, because it was unmistakably charged,
+and that, too, very heavily, with a powerful magnetic aura. I said
+'magnetic;' I should have said 'magnetoid,' for whereas the former
+induces drowsy feeling and somnolence, the latter had a purely opposite
+effect, for it provoked wakefulness, and promoted greater and
+intensified vigilance on the part of both the woman and the man.
+
+"In the second place, there came a remarkable change in the crystal
+itself; for, having lost its brilliant, diamond-like colors and
+interchanging rainbow spray, it now became decidedly opalescent,
+speedily passing into the similitude of a ball of clear glass, with a
+disk of pearly opal transversely through its centre. Very soon even this
+changed, until it became like a dead-white wall, upon the surface of
+which the eye rested, without the power of penetration as before. Gazing
+steadily upon this opaque frame, the girl in a short time distinctly and
+perfectly beheld, slowly moving across that pearly shield, as if
+instinct with life, numerous petite, but unmistakable _human
+figures_!--figures of men and women, tiny to the last degree, but
+absolutely perfect in outline and movement. And they moved hither and
+thither across the field of vision; she saw them moving through the
+streets of a city. A little closer!--'as I live, they are going up and
+down Bush street!'--an aristocratic thoroughfare in the great city known
+in this story as Santa Blarneeo. This fact she instantly recognized,
+with that strange and inexplicable anachronism peculiar to Dreams, and
+the still stranger inconsistency peculiar to dreamers and voyagers to
+the 'Summer Land.'
+
+"Gradually these tiny figures appeared to enlarge, or rather, she saw
+them in such a perspective, that they looked like full-sized persons
+some little distance off. Even while she gazed, the crystal changed
+again, or rather, vanished from her perceptions altogether, the figures
+enlarged--approached, as it were--and she became a passive spectator of
+a scene at that moment transpiring--but where? Certainly not in this
+world of ours, nor in Dream-land, nor in fancy's realms, nor in the home
+of souls you read about in the 'very funny' descriptions of 'Starnos and
+'Cor,' nor in 'Guptarion,' nor around the 'Lakes of Mornia,' nor among
+the 'Pyramidalia,' nor in 'Saturn,' nor in any of the gloriously
+ridiculous localities imagined by A. J. Davis, and put forth by him in
+the delusive hope that any sane man or woman could be found green or
+fool enough to swallow. Few men better deserve the name of impostor than
+the author of 'Guptarion,' 'Mornia,' 'Foli,' 'Starnos,' 'Galen,' 'Magic
+Staffs,' 'Harm _only_--Man,' and ''Cor,'--not one of which has the least
+existence on the earth, under, or above or around it; but the true and
+exact location of which is on an extensive and very soft spot just above
+their author's ears, and the soft spots of his followers, for it is
+morally certain that no one with even an ordinary modicum of--not
+sanity, but common sense, can, would or could accept his funny
+'Philosophy?' as true.
+
+"'Where, then, was the true locality of the scene that Betsey saw taking
+place?' you ask. And I answer, and I tell you, in nearly the words of
+the strange Hermit of the Silver Girdle, when explaining it to Betsey
+Clark: All these strange things are occurring, not in any sort of
+phantom-world, but in another material earth, quite as solid as this.
+This crystal is a magic telescope through which we may view whatever we
+desire to, whether on this earth or off it.
+
+"Listen! Space is by no means limitless, but is a globular or
+elliptical, definite region--the play-ground of the Powers--and is
+bounded on all sides by a thick amorphous Wall, of the materials of
+which new worlds and starry systems from time to time are fashioned.
+This Wall is thicker, a million-fold, than the diameter of the entire
+menstruum wherein this universe is floating. Surrounding this universe,
+on all sides of this wall, are seven other universes, separated as is
+this, from all the others; and they all differ from our own and the
+rest, as differs a volcano from a sprig of rosemary--that is to say,
+utterly--totally. The material worlds of each of these other universes
+outnumber the sands of the desert, yet their number is precisely that of
+the one in which we live; but they are larger, for the earth that
+corresponds to, and bears the name of this of ours, is, in the smallest
+of the other universes, quite as bulky as the sun which gives us light,
+and the other solar bodies in proportion. The universe next higher is
+immeasurably larger than the one just alluded to. It has the same number
+of material worlds, and the earth corresponding to this of ours is as
+large as the solar system in which we are. That of the third is as large
+as the solar system of the second, and so on to the last of the series
+of seven; but not the last in fact, for outside of, and surrounding the
+entire seven, is another Wall, separating them from forty-nine other
+systems, in ascending grade. I cannot now give you any information
+respecting the sublime realities of these forty-nine, nor of the regions
+and realms STILL BEYOND; therefore I recall your attention to this world
+and sphere of being.
+
+"On earth there are seven distinct classes or orders of men: the
+INSTINCTUAL, AFFECTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, INTUITIONAL, ASPIRING,
+INDIFFERENT, and WISE, to all of whom a different destiny is decreed.
+Organizations determine destinies! Every nebulae seen in the far-off
+heaven is a system of worlds. That wonderful family of stars to which
+our sun belongs is, with all its overflowing measure of star-dust, but a
+single cosmos; and there are myriads of such within the confines of this
+present universe, and before we cross the vast ocean of Ethylle, and
+reach the Wall alluded to. All things are in halves; male,
+female--negative, positive--light, dark, and so on. So is the nebulae of
+worlds to which we belong. Now, remember what I have said of the
+resemblances between this earth and universe and the seven others
+beyond the Wall. Precisely such likenesses exist between the worlds of
+the respective halves of our own system.
+
+"At various distances, flecking the vault, we behold suns and systems
+innumerable. These all belong to this, the female half of our system.
+Beyond them lies a vast ocean of Ether, separating the Continents.
+Across that Ocean, at a distance incomputable by the human intellect, is
+the male half of our system. There--there is a sun precisely as large,
+as brilliant, and as hot as ours--and no more so. Around that sun fiery
+comets whirl, planets revolve, and meteors flash, just as they do
+hitherward. There is a Venus, Mercury, Asteroids, Mars, Jupiter, and all
+the other planetary bodies, just as here, and of the same dimensions. A
+globe there is called Earth; it has a moon, an Atlantic, Pacific,
+Mediterranean, and other seas, exactly equivalent to ours. It has a
+California, a San Francisco, Paris, Berlin, Munich, Boston, New York,
+Philadelphia, Baltimore, Pittsburg, just as here; and their names, as
+are those of its trees, countries, counties, town, people, capitals, are
+exactly as on this earth. There is a President Lincoln, and General
+Fremont; a Thurlow Weed, and Cullen Bryant; an Agassiz, and Horace
+Greeley; Atlantic Monthly, and Harper's Magazine; a New York Mercury, an
+Independent, edited by Beecher, Tilton and Leavitt--and they deal the
+same as do their similitudes here. The streets and omnibuses are
+precisely as here; Wall street is as full of thieves, and contractors
+get fat off their country's gore as they do here. There is a Rebellion
+there, and Union Generals sell themselves to Treason just as here--while
+the men who could and would save the nation are left out in the cold, in
+spite of the Tribunes, Posts, and Times--all of which long since pointed
+out the road to Richmond and to victory--and were laughed at just as in
+our planet.
+
+"In that far-distant world there is at this moment a steamer, 'Uncle
+Sam,' sailing across the Gulf of California, as at this moment we are,
+and on board of her there are just as many men and women as on this one,
+and their persons, names, habits, features, motives, hopes, fears,
+characters, secrets, and intellectual and moral natures, are precisely
+the same as our own, on board this ship. Our namesakes there are at this
+instant doing, thinking, acting, reading, as are we; and some of them
+are listening to a very strange story, and its still stranger episodes,
+told by a Rosicrucian--just such a personage as myself--indeed my Very
+Self--in the self-same form and feature. And I say, and I tell you, that
+the _alter ego_--the living portrait of each man and woman in this
+circle, is thinking of him or herself, and of me and my revelations, at
+this moment, with the same stupid levity, with the same deep and awful
+impression of their truth, in the same manner, whatever it be, as are
+all of you at this moment. And some there, as here, set me and my story
+at naught--stigmatize me as an enthusiast or dreaming poet, as do some
+of you. Others believe my truths. You have heard that coming events cast
+their shadows before them, and that Prophecy has been demonstrated true.
+Behold the solution of the world-enigma. Events transpire in that other
+world a trifle sooner than they do here; yet you must remember that
+there is a vast interval of space, and therefore time, that must be
+bridged by even that swift courier, Sympathy. According as a man there,
+and his counterpart here, are fine, aspiring, and spiritual-minded, so
+is their _rapport_ across the awful gulf; and the male half, the more
+perfect portion of each man or woman's self, very frequently telegraphs
+the other, often a long time before the event becomes actualized on this
+earth. You have heard of Fays and Fairies. Listen, and learn the truth
+concerning them: Remembering that no human soul can by any possibility
+quit the confines of this universe until it has exhausted the whole of
+its, the universe's, resources, and has attained _all_ of Love, Will,
+Majesty, Power, Wisdom and Dignity, that this vast cosmos can give it;
+after which it sleeps awhile, but will awake again to the exercise of
+Creative Energy, on the thither side of the Wall--both duplicates sleep
+at once; for, after their deaths on the material earths, they exist
+apart, but sustain the same relations, in certain aromal worlds attached
+to their respective primary homes. At the final deaths, they blend
+forever, their stature is increased, and they enter, through the Wall,
+that earth resembling the one whereon the double unit had its birth
+_originally_.
+
+"You have heard of Metempsychosis, Transmigration, of Reincarnation, and
+of Progress. Listen, and learn more: Not only the inhabitants of the
+countless myriads of worlds in this material _and aromal_ universe, but
+also the material and aromal worlds themselves, are in a constant state
+of progressive movement. By aromal worlds I mean the aerial globes that
+attend each planet. They are places where souls rest awhile after death,
+before they commence in earnest the second stage of their career; and
+this state is an intermediate one, just like sleep, only that they are
+conscious and active while there; but it is an activity and
+consciousness, not like, but analogous to that of Dream. Every world,
+and assemblage of worlds, is periodically reduced, by exhaustion, but at
+enormously long intervals, into Chaos, and is then reformed, or created
+anew, still, however, being the same world. After this passage, each
+system and world becomes vastly more perfect than before; but, owing to
+the diminished quantity of Spirit or essence which has been consumed in
+giving birth to hosts of immortal armies, each system and world is
+vastly smaller than before. This is for two reasons, one of which I have
+just stated; the other is, in order to make room for new cosmi, and new
+worlds, both of which are being constantly created from the material of
+the Wall; and the Wall itself is the condensed effluence of the
+Maker--in short, it is God-Od, and therefore inexhaustible. The majority
+of those who have lived on any world are re-born in it after its
+restitution, they, in the meantime, having grown correspondingly clean
+and perfect. The same relative proportions between a world and its
+occupants is still preserved, and never varies; and, consequently, the
+six-foot man and the five-foot woman of one career, find themselves, in
+their next state, occupying five and four-foot bodies respectively. The
+present is our thirty-fourth Incarnation. Originally we were taller
+than many of our present trees, and coarser than our mountains. We are
+smaller and better than ever before, and our worst man is better than
+the best of the preceding state. The worst, in the next change, will be
+better than our best.[2] To illustrate, let me say, that the following
+persons, viz.: Thurlow W----, Abraham L----, Russel L----, J. Gordon
+B----, Henry J. R----, Wm. Cullen B----, Jefferson D----, John G.
+Fre----, James Buch----, Wigfall, Charles Sum----, Horace G----,
+Fernando W----, George B. Mc----, Gen. J. H--k--r, Dr. H. F. G--d--r,
+Charles T--n--s, Lizzie D---- and myself, respectively, were, previously
+to the last change: the first, a feudal lord; the second, an editor; the
+third, a Danish prince; the fourth, a court-jester; the fifth, a
+missionary; the sixth, a _generalissimo_; the seventh, a harpist; the
+eighth, a theatrical manager; the ninth, a knife-grinder; the tenth, a
+privateer; the eleventh, a preacher; the twelfth, a schoolmaster; the
+thirteenth, a trumpeter; the fourteenth, a politician; the fifteenth, a
+hunter; the sixteenth, a very little boy, died exceedingly young; the
+seventeenth, an emperor; the eighteenth, a born queen; and the last, a
+barber's clerk; so that it is evident, that though our progress is slow,
+still that we are 'Coming up.' Little as our actual worth may be, still
+we are better now, generally speaking, than in the former stage. Thus,
+we will grow smaller at every change. Some worlds, and their dwellers,
+in this universe have thus decreased, and being sometimes seen by people
+here, have been called Fays or Fairies. The world has yet to undergo
+some thousands of these changes, until at last we become very small
+indeed, which will occur when conception is no longer possible in the
+universe, either in the vegetable or animal worlds; and then will occur
+the change and transference beyond the Wall.
+
+[Footnote 2: Extremes meet. The sublime impinges on the ridiculous. The
+substance of the text--save only that I have changed the names--was put
+forth seriously as truth, by a recent British author. Here, of course,
+it is given for what it is worth, which may be _more than some imagine_.
+Viewed in one light, these notions are almost as absurd as are the
+desperately-funny lucubrations of Andrew Jackson Davis, concerning what
+he calls the "Summer Land," which many people regard as true revelations
+of Man's _post-mortem_ life, when, in fact, they are monstrous
+abortions, devoid of even common sense, and are without one particle of
+truth from beginning to end.]
+
+"Betsey Clark was beholding persons and events of that other world-half
+of this, our little staying-house, beholding things through that fairy
+lense--that beautiful magic crystal, through which the human eye can
+see, the human brain _sense_, things that have occurred, are occurring,
+or are to occur, upon the world-stage of this our life's theatre.
+
+"It is an established fact that fools never dream! Wise people often do!
+And those belonging to the latter category cannot have failed to notice
+that things, dates, persons, circumstances, and probabilities, are
+considerably mixed up, as a general thing, in dreams. Their anachronisms
+are especially remarkable and provoking, and indicate that time is of
+but little, if any, account, so far as the soul, _per se_, is concerned.
+A dream of a minute often embraces the multifarious experience of a
+century. This instant you are hob-nobbing with one of the pre-Adamite
+kings on the plateaus of eastern Asia, and in the next are taking wine
+with Pharaoh and Moses on the banks of the Nile; now you are delivering
+an oration before Alexander the Great, and in a jiffy find yourself
+stuffing ballots on Cornhill in an election for ward-constable; now you
+are contemporary with Sardanapalus or Thothmes III., and in half a
+second you are delivering a 'Spiritual Lecture' in Lamartine Hall,
+having paid fifty cents for the privilege of listening to your own
+'Splendid and Overpowering Eloquence.' Taken together, dreams, like
+Complimentary Benefits, are queer concerns. Such was that of Betsey
+Clark; for at one moment of time she was a virgin girl, a wife, a widow,
+and a wife again. She recognized at once the facts of her girlhood, that
+she had carefully deposited one husband in a hole in the ground, and was
+in high hopes of performing the same kind office for a second--Mr.
+Thomas W.
+
+"Presently the view in the crystal faded away, and in its stead there
+came the appearance of a large and splendid atelier, containing
+numberless statues, in a more or less finished condition, standing on
+pedestals or in niches round the wall-sides. The sculptor was absent. It
+was evident at a glance that his images were not hewn of marble, but of
+some other material, which needed but a touch of fire to make them start
+up into life, liberty, and light. It was a man-factory--a place where
+people were carved out to order by a wonderful Artist, who had just
+opened business thereabouts and who, judging from appearances, was
+already in a fair line of patronage, and quite likely to do well, if not
+better.
+
+"Standing near the centre of the apartment, propped up with bits of
+wood, Betsey saw the exact likeness, in all respects, of Mr. Thomas
+Clark--but the figure was unfinished--soft, puttyish, and doughy as a
+Northern Politician.
+
+"This statue stood semi-erect, and strongly suggested an invalid kitten,
+leaning on a hot brick; or, a modern philosopher of the spread-eagle and
+Progressive school, when the contributions are small. The figure was
+labelled 'Tom Clark, as he was;' that is to say, soft, ductile, capable
+of being moulded into the Ruffian or the Man. Directly beside it was
+another statue, closely resembling the other in many points, but yet
+different. It was labelled 'Tom Clark, as he is!' that is to say, it
+looked as if abundantly capable of feeding on tenpenny nails, dining on
+files, and supping upon pigs of iron. It looked, for all the world, as
+if the greatest possible favor that could be done for it, would be to
+tread on the tail of its coat, or knock a chip off its shoulder, or as
+if its supreme delight would be to be permitted to wrap itself in a
+star-spangled banner; move across the room in three strides and a
+straddle; fire off two horse-pistols, and die like a son of a--gun,
+after having exercised a special penchant for divorced women--separating
+wives from their husbands, for the sake of position, wealth, beauty and
+passion. It looked as if it was troubled about stealing rain-producing
+theories--not for stealing, but for being caught at it. It looked as if
+its heart was breaking, because it had not brains enough to be a
+Pantarch--or the tenth-part of one. It looked as if its heart would
+burst with envy, because other men had friends, and power, and
+applause, and merit, in spite of _its_ little, perked-up, seven-by-nine,
+skull-cracked soul--poor cambric, needle-eyed soul, twelve hundred and
+eighty trillions to the half ounce. It looked, for all the world, as Tom
+really did the very last time he came home, just before they lay down
+upon their couch, in the little chamber in which was the little window,
+whose upper sash was down--that is to say, short, crusty, crisp, and
+meaner than 'git;' as he felt before they both lay down, and dreamed
+such 'very funny' dreams--mean, despicable, iron-hearted Tom Clark, the
+plague of her life, bane of her existence, and source of all her
+troubles. So at least it seemed to the lady in her curious vision.
+Presently both these figures slowly faded from her sight, and in their
+stead there arose through the floor a third figure, labelled, '_Tom
+Clark, as he may be_.' While she was admiring the vast superiority, in
+all respects, of this new statue, a fourth human figure entered the
+atelier; this figure was alive, and, _mirabile dictu!_ the woman beheld
+the exact counterpart of--_herself!_--clad as a working artist--a
+sculptor, with apron, paper-cap, and dusty clothing, all complete, as if
+she had just left chiselling the dead marble. This lemur of herself
+appeared deeply gratified at the appearance of the statue; for, after
+surveying it awhile, she proceeded to arm herself with a flame-tipped
+baton, wherewith she touched the figure in various places, but mainly on
+the head, and over the region of the heart. The effect of these touches
+of flame was to make the figure move; and, in five minutes the dead mass
+was warm with life, vitality and genius--for the phantom-artiste
+appeared to endow the figure with a portion of her own life; and a
+closer inspection revealed the curious fact that the flame at the end of
+the staff--which was hollow--was fed from a deep well of subtle, fine
+and inflammable ether in her own heart.
+
+"The statue lived. It was Tom Clark, and no mistake; but Heaven! what a
+change!--what a difference between the actual and the ideal man! His
+features fairly blazed with the fires of Genius and Ambition; and they
+beamed like a sun, with Friendship, Intelligence, Truth and
+Manhood--they all held high court in his soul, and radiated from his
+inspired features; his very presence charged the air with Mind, though
+his lips spoke never a word, breathed never a syllable. And now Betsey
+heard her _alter ego_ speak; and it said to the living statue: 'Rise,
+Tom Clark; rise, and be a Man--be yourself. Rise!' And it rose; stepped
+from the pedestal, erected its head--and such a head!--while she, the
+phantom artiste, with careful tread, and anxiously holding her nether
+lip between her teeth, slowly retreated backward from the room, quitting
+it through the door by which she had entered a little while before. She
+was followed majestically by the statue, which moved with power and
+grace, as if charged to the brim by God's Galvanic Batteries.
+
+"Scarcely had the two phantoms left the room, than the woman on the
+stool--the real Betsey Clark--followed their example with a sudden
+bound, exclaiming, as she did so, despite the warning of the Hermit of
+the Silver Girdle (for whom at that moment she didn't care;--not even a
+piece of a fig), 'My _husband_! _my_ husband!' Human nature, especially
+woman nature, could stand the pressure no longer. She felt and acted
+_as_ she felt--as every woman has, since the year ONE--and will, until
+Time and Eternity both grow grey. '_My husband!_' there spake the woman.
+In an instant the Hermit of the Silver Girdle was in a very great and
+unprecedented fluster.
+
+"'Silly girl! didn't I tell you not to speak? Only look! see how you
+have gone and done it!--done _me_! Oh, dear! if I warn't a Rosicrucian,
+I'd get excessively angry, Dorg on it, if I wouldn't!' and in his
+trouble, he pronounced 'dog,' with an _r_. Commend me to a female for
+upsetting the best calculation of the wisest Rosicrucian that ever
+lived. I speak from experience.
+
+"'I told you not to open your lips, and here you've gone and spoken
+right out! What's the consequence?' exclaimed the venerable grey-beard.
+'Why, the spell is broken--the charm fled--nor can either be recalled
+before the sun has set and rose again, and once more declined toward the
+western sea. Familiar as I am with the secrets of Galae and the mysteries
+of magic crystals, I know that you have done very wrong; for no one is
+fit to consult Destiny by their aid who is not competent to keep silence
+for an hour, no matter what the temptation or provocation to break it
+may be. Now hie thee homeward. To-morrow thou mayest return again,
+provided thou wilt obey me, and speak not a syllable while the
+phantasmal game of Fate is being played before thine eyes.'
+
+"The Hermit of the Silver Girdle had spoken truly; for at the very
+first movement of her lips, the whole scene of enchantment vanished into
+thin air, leaving only a three-cornered table and a little
+glossy-looking ball behind.
+
+"To depict her chagrin and disappointment at this abrupt termination of
+a very strange affair, is a task totally beyond my capacities. She
+bounced out of the grotto in a miff, tossing her pretty head in a manner
+peculiarly adapted to play the very Old Scratch with the soft and
+susceptible heads and hearts of the male 'sect'--especially their heads;
+but she had no idea of abandoning the adventure at that point--not she;
+but was fully resolved to see it out next day, even if she bit her
+tongue in two, in the endeavor to keep still. Warriors, statesmen,
+philosophers, and well-read men can comprehend the sublimity of her
+resolution, because they know that of all earthly tasks, the one
+assigned herself was the greatest, most heroic, and one compared to
+which the twelve labors of the Greek god were mere child's pastime. At
+all events, to keep perfectly silent she would certainly--'Try,' said a
+voice, right beside her ear! She started, attributing the circumstance
+to mere fancy; but again the magic word was, by unseen lips, gently,
+softly whispered in her ear. 'Try,' it said--and the word went echoing
+through her very soul. Whence came the voice? Who was it--what was it
+that spoke? Certainly not herself, nor the Hermit. When was it, where
+was it, that she had heard that voice and word before? When, how, where
+had it made so deep an impression on her mind? Was it in a dream? Who
+can tell? she could not. My hearers, can you?
+
+"Next morning, bright and early, the young girl returned once more to
+the grotto of the Hermit of the Silver Girdle, who dwelt on the shady
+borders of a forest wild. An hour or two elapsed in friendly converse
+and admonition; and now again behold the dissimilar twain once more
+seated silently before the little table, on which glittered, as before,
+the rare, pearl-disked, magic, wonder-working crystal globe. Again, as
+before, the glorious play of colors came and went. Again it faded, and
+she saw the atelier, the artiste, and the artiste's living statue; but
+this time Betsey could look right through its body, as if it were made
+of finely-polished glass. Tom Clark stood before her. She saw and
+comprehended him on all sides--soul, spirit, body; and though she was
+neither a strong-minded woman, a lecturess on philosophy, 'The good time
+coming,' nor 'Woman's sacred and delicate work,'--and though she knew
+but little of the human organism, beyond a few familiar
+commonplaces--yet she comprehended enough of the glorious mystery before
+her to be aware that the red, pulsing lump just beneath its throat was
+technically known and considered as the heart; and she couldn't help
+admiring its wonderful and mighty mechanism; its curious movements,
+mystical arrangements of parts, and adaptation of means to ends; its
+auricles, valves, and veins; its ventricles, and its pump--tapping the
+well of life, and forcing its water through a million yards of hose,
+plentifully irrigating the loftiest gardens of man's body, and hence, of
+his imperishable soul. The inspection was almost too much for the girl,
+who had liked to have screamed out her wonderment and delight; but
+having made up her mind to keep still this time, she, by dint of much
+handkerchief and tongue-biting, succeeded, to the eternal credit of
+herself--or any other woman!
+
+"'That which you see,' said the Hermit, who of course had the privilege
+of talking as he pleased, 'is a man's heart, in full play. It is, as you
+perceive, filled with blood, whose office is to give life to the body
+and vigor to the mind. But the heart has other chambers than those
+containing the venous and arterial fluids; for all its walls and valves
+contain innumerable small cells; and these cells secrete and contain
+certain aeriform fluids far more potential than blood, and which
+subserve the ends of a higher and far more wonderful economy. There are
+two kinds of blood; so also are there two kinds of the subtle fluid I
+have mentioned: one sort is born with us, and we come into the world
+with exactly one half of these cells full, while the other half are
+entirely empty; and so they must remain until they are filled from the
+heart of some one else. Males are born with the cells of the left side
+empty, females with those of the right unfilled, while the other cells
+of each are always full. These fluids are real, actual, perceptible, but
+imponderable. Their name is Love; and when things take their proper and
+natural course, the fluid flows out from the cells of a woman's heart
+into the empty ones of a man's; and the full cells of a man's heart fill
+the empty ones of a woman's, in which case they are said to "love each
+other." Two men cannot thus love; nor can two females. Many of either
+sex travel from the cradle to the grave without either filling, or
+being filled in turn; for it is a law that love cannot flow unless it be
+tapped by the opposite party; and it can only be tapped by KINDNESS,
+GENTLENESS, RESPECT--these three! The unloved and unloving are only half
+men and half women--and, believe me, my child, there's a mighty sight of
+Halfness in this world of ours! Much of it comes of not Trying to have
+it otherwise. People--married people, especially--devote half their days
+to growling because they have not got somebody else's wife or husband,
+when the fact is that their own partners are quite good enough--as they
+would find out with a little proper endeavor. Men expect a woman's love
+to bubble up all the time. Fools! why don't they sound its depth, and
+_bring it to the surface_? There are altogether too many divorces--a
+divorce first, and the next step--is dangerous. I knew a wife of three
+divorces; I knew a man the husband of two consecutive divorcees. Good
+intentions! Bah! Hell is paved with such. I know of fifty broken-hearted
+women whose husbands, after wearing them out, sneaked off to Indiana and
+robbed them of name, fame, life, and hope;--the demons! Out upon the
+wretches! The woman who has wasted her youth and bloom upon a man who
+then wants a divorce, and permits him to obtain it, is a fool. He
+promised for life. Make him keep it, even if you invoke the law's strong
+arm. If both agree, that alters the case. I have a legal acquaintance in
+New York who drives a large trade in the divorce line, at twenty-five
+dollars a head. I feel called upon to expose the infernal methods by
+means of which it is done, and I call upon the Legislature to see to it
+that the thing is not suffered to go on. A. is a lawyer; B. and C. are
+husband and wife. B. wants a "divorce without publicity;" goes to A. and
+pays a fee to secure it, but has no legal quibble by means of which to
+obtain it. A. gives him the following counsel: "Go to a brothel, take up
+with an inmate thereof; call her D.; make three or four male and female
+acquaintances (E., F., G., and H.), introduce them to D. as your wife;
+leave town a day or two, but take care that D. is well watched in the
+interim. Of course she will avail herself of your absence to ply her
+vocation. E., F., G., and H. furnish the most incontestable and damning
+proof of her supposed guilt. The witnesses may or may not know your
+precious scheme. You prosecute the leman under your wife's name--she, of
+course, knowing nothing about the proceedings--poor thing! The court
+takes the evidence, hands it over to a referee, who passes on it;
+returns it, affirmed, to the court, which forthwith enters a decree of
+perpetual divorce. A scoundrel goes unwhipped of justice, and an honest
+woman's reputation is forever damned!
+
+"'Legislators, I tell you that these things are done every day! I was
+told it--could not believe it--and assuming to be desirous of such a
+decree, received the above counsel, word for word, from a practitioner
+at the New York bar. Legislators, here is a crime worse than murder!
+Will you sanction it longer? How prevent it? Summon the witnesses and
+performer of this marriage; or at least _prove the identity of the woman
+or the man_, as the case may be--for women practice in that court also!
+
+"'There would be far less of this sort of iniquity, if there were fewer
+blatant philosophy-mongers afloat on the tide of the times, inculcating
+their morbid, detestable, blasphemous, brothel-filling, "Harmonial"
+theories, all of which directly pander to the worst vice a man can
+have--Meanness.
+
+"'People insanely look for and expect perfection in others--not only
+without the slightest claim thereto themselves, but without the least
+attempt in that direction--which is a very suicidal policy to pursue.
+Such soon come to be vampires, consuming themselves and destroying
+others--ravening tigers at their own fold's side! Sometimes one person's
+affection--which is akin to love--goes out toward and clings round
+another; but Death ever flaps his wings by the side of such, when that
+other fails to give it back. The unloving loved one, if such a thing be
+possible, is a born thief, from the cradle to the clouds; and there are
+a great many such robbers in the world.'
+
+"'But how is one to love when one don't feel like it, or has attractions
+in another direction?' asked Betsey.
+
+"'Where duty and honor point, there should the attraction lie! Whosoever
+shall render themselves lovable and lovely, can no more help being loved
+than smoke can help ascending through the air. Make yourself agreeable
+to the partner of your lot in life, and that partner can no more help
+loving you than mirrors can help reflecting.
+
+"'The heart of yonder statue, which is that of the man who is destined
+to be a future husband of yours,' said the old man--pointing to the
+first figure of the previous day, which had, together with the second,
+re-appeared upon the scene, 'will be only half full by reason of your
+withholding and refusing all tender wifeliness; you will rob him and
+yourself of the better meat of life; your years will be gloomy ones; you
+will make him wretched, and be the same yourself--cheat your bodies of
+health, your souls of happiness and vigor! Take heed; correct the fault.
+You "can't?" There's no such word. TRY!'
+
+"Turning now to the second figure of the previous day, he observed:
+'See! Tom Clark's heart is empty. All its cells are _filled with a
+void_--hollow as the apples of Persia's arid wastes. Have mercy, Heaven,
+on him whose heart throbs not with the rapturous burden of a woman's
+love! Pity him whose soul groweth not tender with the love-light beaming
+from a baby's eyes! Ah, what a world of nameless glory flashes from an
+infant's eyes! They are telescopes through which my soul sees
+Heaven--through which I watch the mazy dance of starry worlds, and
+behold the joys of seraphim. We Rosicrucians love babies--seed of the
+ages--and their mothers, too--because they are such; for we believe that
+after death the maids fair worst--the wives fare better; but no tongue
+or pen can express the rapture that awaits those who have borne sons and
+daughters to the world and heaven! Bachelors! Bah! I will pass by such
+cattle, merely remarking that their place is not to be found in heaven,
+or the other place. They repair in a body to Fiddler's Green--and ought
+to stay there, if they do not!'
+
+"And Betsey gazed on the forlorn figure of poor Tom--who was all
+one-sided, crooked, lean; his hopes and joys were flown, because no one
+loved him, not even his wife; and who else should, if not she? And so he
+was wretched, like full many another whom I have seen as I journeyed
+down life's glades. His soul was driven back upon, and forced to eat
+itself, day by day, and year after year. 'And this great wrong you will
+do,' said the hermit; and 'This great wrong I have already done,'
+thought the girl--wife--widow--wife--four in one, with that strange,
+anomalous inconsistency, peculiar to Dream-Life. 'I have done badly; but
+this I will do no more--not another second longer!'
+
+"Bravely, royally thought and said! Better, if more gloriously
+done!--and that's just the difference--saying and doing. The first is
+common; the last is very rare. 'Better still, if truly said, and still
+more nobly done!'--was whispered in the woman's ear, in the same low,
+silvery voice, she had heard the day before. Who was it that spoke these
+melodious words? Not the hermit in grey. Was it the invisible Hesperina,
+telegraphing Betsey's soul across the vast expanse of the Continent of
+Dream? Who shall answer me these questions?
+
+"Said the silver-girdled hermit, as he smiled a smile of more than human
+gladness--more than human meaning--'It is Well.' She looked again toward
+the magic globe, and lo! within a moment, its disk had changed. The
+first two figures had disappeared; the third had once more come upon the
+scene--a conspicuous actor in such a terrific drama, as neither earth
+nor starry eyes ever saw before, may they never see again!
+
+"The Gorgon, WAR, had glutted himself on Europe's bloody fields, and had
+flown across the salt sea, alighting on our shores. The demon landed
+with a howl, midway between Moultrie and Sumter. He had seized the reins
+of government, proclaimed himself sole Lord and King; strangled Reason
+in his dreadful gripe, until she lay bleeding on the gory earth, and
+meek-eyed Peace fled tearfully away from his grim presence, and hid
+herself upon a distant mountain-top, whence she could survey the shock
+of armies on the plains beneath, and sigh, and long for Liberty and
+rule.
+
+"War and Carnage, side by side, with gory banners flying, marched from
+one end of the nation to the other, until their footsteps rested on the
+graves of eight hundred thousand men. God's precious word was
+disregarded, and His blessed soil dyed red with human blood--the rich,
+fat blood of the noblest race that ever trod His earth--the blood of
+your brother, and of mine, O my countrymen!
+
+"And now, the loud-lunged trumpets brayed their fierce alarums, and
+summoned Columbia's sons to deeds at which our grandsons shall turn
+pale--deeds of heroic daring such as Greece, nor Rome, nor Carthage ever
+dreamed of, nor storied page has chronicled: summoned them to Sumter's
+stony ramparts, and Potomac's grassy banks--summoned them to do,
+and--die. Eight hundred thousand Men! And they went--going as tornadoes
+go--to strike for a Nation's life--to strike the foul usurper low, and
+fling his carcass to the dogs. They would have struck--struck hard and
+home; but they were stayed. _That_ was not the 'little game' of
+Generals and Statesmen, and of high contract-ing parties. Oh, no!
+Victory would never do! 'Let us fight the foe with gloves on!' said the
+Minister. They fought. The foe wore gloves, also; but the palms were
+brass, the fingers iron, and the knuckles polished steel! But the
+Minister had his whim, and unborn generations will feel its
+consequences! Eight hundred thousand graves!
+
+"And the Union legions went, from decreed Fate toward a consummated
+Destiny, in spite of Ministers, their minions, or the 'little game;' and
+Tom Clark went, too.
+
+"And loud the trumpets brayed; and the heavy drums did sound; and they
+woke strange and fearful energies in the slumbering Nation's heart. What
+a magic transmutation! Plowmen transformed to heroes, such as shall
+forever put Cincinnatus in the shade; day laborers, carriers of the hod,
+claiming--and rightfully, too--high places in the Pantheon of heroic
+demi-gods. Look at Fredericksburg! Forget not the Black Brigade! Bear in
+mind the deeds of a hundred regiments on a hundred fields--fields, too,
+that might, and would have finally decided the carnage and the quarrel,
+but for the Minister, his gloves, his 'little game,' his great whim--and
+lo! its consequences!
+
+       *       *       *       *
+
+"Tom Clark, quickened into life by the subtle, flame-tipped staff in the
+hands of the phantom-artiste--the proprietress of the wonderful atelier
+and Man-factory, now stepped forth through the door of the room, and
+forthwith the scene expanded to such vast dimensions, that Betsey found
+it impossible to realize the magic mimicry, for the whole thing was too
+real, and on too grand a scale. She stood on the hill of the world,
+surveying its valleys at leisure. Tom Clark, apparently heard--deeply
+heard, his Country's wail of agony--for unchecked Treason was then
+griping her tightly by the throat. That cry called him to a field of
+glory, such as God's green earth never before afforded, nor His sun ever
+saw; nor His moon; nor His myriad, twinkling, starry eyes!
+
+"Clark's soul was in arms, as his offended ears drank in the hoarse,
+deep thunders of Treason's cannonry, pouring iron hail upon a prostrate
+Nation's head; and his eyes beheld the flashing of the guns, as they
+vomited a hell of iron and fire upon Sumter, upon Anderson, and the
+peerless EIGHTY-THREE! Tom Clark saw the storm, and his heart indignant
+swelled, at the insult to the Star-gemmed Flag of Human Rights and
+Liberty--an insult, long since wiped out in traitor's blood, but for the
+Minister, and the gloves, and the 'little game,' and the whim, whose
+consequences are--eight hundred thousand skeletons!
+
+"Like a true man, Clark, inspired by a true woman--the phantom-wife, and
+artiste--ran, leapt, flew to arms and deathless glory. Ah, God! to arms,
+and fadeless glory! He had no time to grieve, or grumble; or to
+criticise this general, or that battle. He looked over the heads of
+cowards and traitors in his own camp, at the noble men in arms, and who
+bravely fought, and nobly died, for the Country. He saw, and gloriously
+emulated such men as Lyon, Saxton, Hunter, Fremont--and Baker! Baker!--O
+Oregon! my tears fall with thine, for him! He was mine, yours--ours!
+Ours, in his life; in his nobleness; in his soul-arousing eloquence; in
+the valor, and the effulgent glory of his death--the result of another
+whim, and lo! the consequences!
+
+"And now, see! Behold the smoke of yonder battle! Death rides on
+cannon-balls, to-day! And, to-night, there will be much mourning in the
+land; for strong men in thousands are giving up the ghost. Weep not, O
+widow, for God accepts such sacrifices; mourn not, O orphans, He who
+tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, will hold thee in His keeping; thy
+grateful country will not let thee want for bread; and, by-and-by, it
+will be a proud boast of thine, 'My father died to redeem the land from
+treason!'
+
+"Death rides on cannon-balls, to-day, in the fight that we are seeing.
+Tom Clark is a hero. See! he leads the van. God spare him! What a
+presence! What blows he deals for Liberty and the Union! Lo! the
+thundering battalions of the brave and bold, but insane, misguided, and
+revengeful foe, sweep down the embattled plain, their war-cry ringing
+out above the belching roar of artillery; and, with such might and valor
+do they charge, that Freedom's cohorts reel and stagger beneath the
+dreadful shock of arms. Another such a charge, and all is lost. But,
+see, there comes a man from the ranks--a common soldier--his voice rings
+clearly out upon the sulphur-laden air: 'Follow me!' The inspiring words
+and action kindle new fire in the wavering breasts of hundreds. They
+rise; they throw themselves upon the foe--they hush his battle-cry in
+death. He is repulsed! 'Who did that?' demands an aide-de-camp.
+'Private Thomas W.,' is the response. 'Hero! greet him in my name, as
+Color Sergeant,' says the General; and Tom Clark is promoted on the
+field.
+
+"The first day's fight is over. It is renewed next day, and, when the
+tired guns give over with the sun, a group of soldiers are gathered
+round a man. 'Who is it?' 'Who is it?' 'I thought you knew--why, it is
+the man who saved the Tenth Brigade--and was rewarded on the
+spot--Captain Thomas W.!'
+
+"With the sunrise, came the foe! 'Pass the word along the line,
+there--Captain Clark is wanted at the tent of the General-in-Command!'
+He goes.
+
+"' Captain Clark, do you see yonder battery of the enemy? It must be
+taken, or we are lost. If I give you command of a regiment whose colonel
+was killed yesterday, can you take it?' 'I will try.' ... 'General, the
+battery on the left is ours,' says an aide-de-camp an hour afterwards.
+'It is taken, and all its men are either dead or prisoners!' 'Indeed! So
+soon? Greet the commander in my name, and salute him as Colonel Thomas
+W.'
+
+"Another day dawns on the ensanguined field--a field where privates were
+heroes and generals poltroons! Hard fighting is before us. Up, up the
+soldiers spring; and on, on to death or victory they rush. Oh, it was a
+splendid sight--those death-defying demi-gods, who, had they in previous
+battles had but a Man to lead them, would have taken fifty rebel
+strongholds in as many hours. But such was not the drift of the 'pretty
+little game.' More men must die, more ditches must be dug, and more
+human bones must fill them, else how can Ministers carry out their
+whims; how else can the enemy be fought and placated at the same time?
+It isn't Constitutional! besides which it hurts the prospect for the
+Presidency of the re-United States--which prospect would be forever
+marred, and the 'little game' played out, if we fought without gloves,
+and violated our Constitutional obligations by kicking the wind out of
+the foe, who is trying might and main to strangle the Nation. He might
+hereafter say: '_You_, sir, fought without gloves on!' which wouldn't
+do, you know.
+
+"'Damn that Colonel Thomas W. If the fellow keeps on at that rate, we'll
+surely whip somebody--badly. Curse the fellow, he don't believe in the
+glove business, or in the "Erring Sisters' theory,"' soliloquized
+somebody on a certain day. 'This'll never do! Aid, come here; go tell
+Colonel Clark take possession of the Valley down yonder, and hold it at
+all hazards till nightfall!' 'But, General, he has only seven hundred
+men--the foe is thirteen thousand strong!' 'So much the worse for'--he
+meant Clark, but said, 'the enemy--they will fight like tigers.' And the
+aid transmitted the order--shaking hands with the Colonel as he rode
+away, muttering, 'Poor fellow! His goose is cooked for a certainty! What
+a pity he stands in somebody's light--somebody who is jealous of even a
+private's fame. Ah me!' and he rode back to headquarters, wondering
+whose turn next it would be to face the forlorn hope--such a singular
+number of which this Rebellion has developed.
+
+"But there was no flinch in Colonel Thomas W.--no flinch in his men.
+They all saw the hazard; but _they_ were Men and Soldiers. _They_ knew
+how to obey orders, when their superiors did not. But then again, they
+had no hopes of success in a general election; they had no 'little
+game.'
+
+    "'Their's not to reason why,
+    Their's but to do or die.'
+
+And they done it!
+
+"On, on, like more than Spartan heroes, on they dashed, literally, as
+absolutely as anything earthly can be, 'into the jaws of death--into the
+mouth of hell.' I have a minnie bullet on my table that plowed a furrow
+through a brother's heart of mine in that same dreadful valley! Away
+they went--that gallant band, that gallant man; and many a bullet went
+crashing through skulls and bones as they went; and many a soul sped its
+way to God ere the cohort reached the knoll in the valley. Once there,
+they were no longer men--they were as sublime exemplar gods. But a man
+fell--fell before the resistless force of a hundred horses charging with
+all of Treason's vehement strength, and the gallant man went down, and
+the thunder of iron hoofs exploded in his ear, and then the cloud passed
+on.
+
+"And Thomas Clark went down--down, as Truth, and Justice and I went
+down; but he rose again--so ever does Truth and Justice; and as for me,
+_Je renais de mes cendres_--let those beware by whom I fell.... Down to
+the gory soil he went; but even while the woman sat there in the grotto,
+gazing till her eyeballs fairly ached with intensity--sat gazing with
+suppressed breath, so still was she--sat gazing, her blood on fire, her
+pulse beating three hundred to the minute, beating with a deep, fierce,
+tumultuous fire; sat gazing stilly, while her heart bounded and thumped
+within its bony citadel as if impatient of its duress, and longing to
+burst its tabernacle, and let the imprisoned soul go free; sat gazing,
+while her eyes, large grey eyes, all the while gleamed with a light that
+proved her capable of giving birth to heroes--even while thus she gazed
+on the wheeling squadrons, the charging hosts, and the great guns, as
+they gave forth their fiery vomit, charged with sudden deaths--the man,
+Tom Clark, sprung to his feet again, and, as he staunched his blood with
+one hand, he pointed with the other at the foe. 'Follow me!' he cried.
+'See! we are reinforced! On to victory--on!' And his voice rose above
+the tempest, and it flew over the spaces, and it fell upon the ears of a
+'great man,' and the 'great man' wrung his hands, and he thought: 'Not
+dead yet! Damn the fellow! He will make us win a victory--and that'll
+never do! Dear me! that cursed fool will spoil my little game! Oh, for
+night, or a fresh division of--the enemy! I must reinforce him, though,
+else it'll get into that infernal _Tribune_--or into that cursed George
+Wilkes' paper--and that'll spoil my little game! Ho, there! Aid, go tell
+General Trueman to reinforce Colonel Thomas W. _My little game_!' and he
+arranged his epaulettes and gave his moustache an additional killing
+twist. In the meantime, Tom Clark had charged the enemy with bayonets
+with the remnant of his own force, followed by hundreds whom his
+example had transformed into something more sublime than fighting
+soldiers.
+
+"And now occurred one of those conflicts which make or mar the fortunes
+of a nation: one of those terrible multi-personal combats which mark a
+century's history, and strike the ages dumb with awe; one of those
+terrific scenes in the world's great drama, that mark historic epochs,
+and enshrine men's names in fiery letters upon the scrolls of Fame.
+
+"The charge and the action were short, sharp, swift, desperate; but at
+its close the
+
+    "'Flag of the Planet gems,
+    With saphire-circled diadems,'
+
+floated proudly over the scene of Treason's battle lost--a Nation's
+battle won!
+
+"Day closes again; and the wounded hero in an ambulance was borne
+fainting--almost dying, from the field. 'Colonel Clark, can I do
+anything for you?' said one of the fighting generals to the stricken
+man--a bullet had gone through him. 'You are a noble fellow, and I speak
+for myself, your comrades in arms, and for our country. Can I--can they,
+can we, can she--do anything for you, in this sad hour of your destiny?
+If so, I beg you to speak.'
+
+"'Alas! no, my friend,' replied he, reviving, only to swoon again. A
+little cold water on his temples partially dissipated the coma, but not
+all the fog from his perceptions; for his general's words, 'Can _she_,'
+considerably obfuscated his intellect, and he thought: 'He means
+Betsey--that's the only _she_ I know of.' And then he strengthened up
+for a last dying effort; strove to collect his thoughts, partly
+succeeded, and said: 'Nothing more, dear general. Yes. No.
+I'm--dy--ing--going--home. Tell Betsey--_dear_ Betsey--I did not--find
+her out till--it was--too--late. Tell her that I loved--her from
+my--soul--at last. Tell her--that'----
+
+"She can't stand the pressure any longer--globe or no globe, hermit or
+no hermit--not another minute. _You_ Bet! It's a pretty how de do, me a
+settin' here, and poor Tom laying there, killed a'most to death!'
+shrieked the fair girl in the grotto of the hermit of the silver girdle,
+waked up beyond endurance by the skillful magic of the weird recluse.
+And repeating the Californian, 'You _Bet_!' with vehement emphasis on
+the last word, she sprung to her feet, in spite of the warnings of the
+man who dealt in magic crystal globes in the precincts of a forest
+wild--upsetting table, tripod, stool and hermit, in her eagerness to
+reach Tom's side and give him wifely ministry.
+
+"What luck she might have had in bridging Phantom River I know not,
+having omitted to remain long enough for inquiry, not having had time to
+thus devote; but this I do know, namely, that she nearly kicked the
+veritable Mr. Thomas W. Clark completely out of bed--the bed at whose
+foot was a window, whose upper sash was down--the identical window
+through which came all the 'funny things' of this most veracious
+history, which, of course, is all true. Betsey woke from excitement, Tom
+from being kicked, and both had finished their double dreams.
+
+"'What'n thunder's up now, Bet--no, Lizzie, I mean?' said he, checking
+the less respectful utterance, and modulating his voice to what he
+doubtless intended to be a 'velvet-dulcet cadence,' but which wouldn't
+pass for that in Italian opera. 'Not nothing, Tommy, dear.' 'Not
+nothing, Lizzie?' 'Not nothing.' 'That ain't grammar, sweet.' 'I was
+paragorically speaking, my turkle dove! Only I've been having two very
+funny dreams.' 'You! _Two_ dreams? That _is_ queer!' 'You Bet!' 'What
+about, Lizzie?' 'Oh, all about how we didn't love each other as we ought
+to, husband.' 'And, dorg on my buttons, wife, if I haven't had two just
+such dreams myself--all about a precipice, and a pile--Oh, wasn't it a
+pile, though?' 'You Bet!' 'And my dreams were all about how I ought to
+love you, and didn't--and then, again, I did.' 'That's a dear!' 'You
+Bet!' 'Let's love each other this time out, will _you_?' 'I will; will
+_you_?' 'You _Bet_!' 'Let's profit by our dreams. I mean to; won't you?'
+'I'll _try_!' '_I'll_ try!' 'We'll both try!' 'You BET!' And they tried
+to forgive and forget.
+
+"Will you do the same?" asked the Rosicrucian of the "Angular
+Character," who had told his own story in disguise. The latter saw that
+his secret was out; yet his heart was touched, for, as a great tear-drop
+rolled down his cheek, he said, with smothered breath, the holy
+words--"I'll try!" "Amen!" said the Rosicrucian. "Amen!" said we all;
+and then, turning to his auditors again, the story-teller said:
+"Friends, go thou and do likewise; and so long as you live, I charge you
+never to forget the Rosicrucian nor his story; nor IT, the Shadow; nor
+Hesperina, the Light; nor Otanethi, the Genius of the Hour; nor the
+silver-girdled Hermit, and his Crystal Globe in a forest wild; nor,
+above all, the little window at the foot of the bed, whose upper sash
+was down."
+
+       *       *       *       *
+
+A day or two afterwards we reached Panama, and after that we saw but
+little of our entertainer; but before I finally lost sight of him he
+told me that he was about writing some Rosicrucian stories, the MSS. of
+which he would send to me when ready. I have received some, and they
+will be published by me as soon as I can spare time to attend to it,
+which will be--
+
+    "When this cruel war is over"
+    P. B. R.
+    UTICA, _November, 1863_.
+
+
+
+
+From SINCLAIR TOUSEY
+
+
+NEWSVENDERS' AND BOOKSELLERS' AGENCY.
+
+I INVITE THE ATTENTION OF DEALERS IN _Cheap Publications, Periodicals,
+etc.,_
+
+To my facilities for packing and forwarding everything in my line. All
+goods packed with the utmost care, and forwarded, _in all instances_, by
+the very earliest conveyance following the receipt of the orders.
+
+I am GENERAL AGENT for, and take the WHOLE EDITIONS (except mail
+subscriptions), of the New York Ledger, New York Clipper, Nick-Nax,
+National Police Gazette, Scottish-American Journal, Beadle's Dime Books,
+Littel's Living Age, Wilkes' Spirit of the Times, Comic Monthly, New
+York Weekly, Metropolitan Record, Irish American, Phunny Fellow, Herald
+of Progress, Leslie's Budget of Fun, Mr. Merryman's Monthly, Banner of
+Light, Leslie's History of the War, Madame Demorest's Mirror of
+Fashions, New York Illustrated News, Leslie's War Maps, etc., etc.
+
+I also supply ALL OTHER Magazines, Newspapers, and other Periodicals
+sold in the Trade, at the very LOWEST PRICES, and forward them at the
+EARLIEST MOMENT after leaving the Press. I make special efforts to
+forward New Books on the best terms.
+
+    SINCLAIR TOUSEY,
+    No. 121 Nassau street, New York.
+
+
+MISCELLANEOUS ARTICLES.
+
+Dealers wanting anything from New York, not in their regular order, as
+Books, Stationery, Music, Pens, Envelopes, Almanacs, Song Books,
+Pictures, Paper, Maps, Charts, Note Paper, plain, Note Paper, embossed,
+Note Paper, colored edges, Note Paper, with mottoes, Note Paper, with
+designs, Note Paper, with States' Arms, Note Paper of all sorts, kinds,
+qualities and prices. Letter Paper of all sorts, kinds, qualities and
+prices. Cap Paper of all sorts, kinds, qualities and prices. Envelopes
+white, Envelopes buff, all shades, Envelopes plain, Envelopes with
+designs and mottoes, Envelopes of all sorts, qualities and prices.
+
+Almanacs, Toy Books, Paper Dolls, Pens, Ink, etc., etc. Everything
+needed by a Newsdealer or Bookseller, or anybody else.
+
+Also, Cheap Novels, Pictures, Portraits, Albums of all kinds,
+Lithographs, Maps, Cartes de Visite of prominent persons, etc., etc.,
+etc.
+
+EVERY NEW THING AS SOON AS READY.
+
+Books, Papers, Magazines, etc., sent FREE OF POSTAGE, on receipt of the
+advertised retail price.
+
+I pledge myself to furnish EVERYTHING at the VERY LOWEST PRICES, and low
+enough to afford the Retailer a good profit.
+
+
+
+
+BY DR. P. B. RANDOLPH,
+
+THE DUMAS OF AMERICA.
+
+New, Original and Thrilling Works!!
+
+It is sufficient to say of the following seven Works, that they are from
+the pen of P. B. Randolph, to command such a sale as few books enjoy in
+these days.
+
+I.
+
+"THE WONDERFUL STORY OF RAVALETTE,"
+
+A ROSICRUCIAN ROMANCE, AND THE MOST EXTRAORDINARY AND THRILLING WORK
+EVER PUBLISHED IN THIS COUNTRY.
+
+Contents:--The Strange Man.--The Legend.--Preexistence.--Double
+Life.--The Haunted House.--The Mysterious Guest.--A very Strange
+Story.--Evlambea.--A Son of Adam and a Daughter of Ish.--Napoleon
+III. and the Rosicrucian.--An extraordinary Seance in
+Paris.--Spectra.--Phosphorus and the Elixir of Life.--The Magic
+Mirror.--Who was he?--What was it?--The Secret of Perpetual
+Youth!--The Priest of Fire.--The Magic Slumber.--Strange
+Revelations.--Confession.--The Magic Pictures.--"And several other
+Worlds!"--Very curious.--An Astounding Chapter!--Singular
+Experiment.--"A Man goes in a Cab in search of his own Ghost!"--A
+Strange Wager.--Mystery thickens.--Deeper and Deeper.--Murder will
+out.--The Devil in Paris.--Diablerie extraordinary.--"The Saucer on the
+Floor." What some Folks believe are Spirits!--_An Astounding
+Disclosure!_--The Grand Secret.--A Theory demolished.--Ravalette
+explains.--The Sleep, and a Revelation of the Destinies of Nations, a
+chapter so extraordinary that it alone is worth the price of the whole
+book.
+
+II.
+
+TOM CLARK AND HIS WIFE; THEIR DOUBLE DREAMS, AND THE CURIOUS THINGS THAT
+BEFELL THEM THEREIN.
+
+_Being the Third Thousand of the celebrated_
+
+ROSICRUCIAN'S STORY.
+
+
+III.
+
+PRE-ADAMITE MAN:
+
+Demonstrating Human Existence 100,000 years ago, and that Adam was not
+the First Man.
+
+"When the gude Laird was making Adam, even then the clan Grant was as
+thick and numerous as the heather on yon hills."--Bailey Grant.
+
+Universally conceded by the Press of two countries, to be--
+
+     "A remarkable book." "We hail this shot from the Fort of
+     Truth!... Shows that men built cities 35,000 years ago!...
+     Extra valuable volume." "Great grasp of thought!... _Proves_
+     Adam was _not_ the first man, nor anything like it!...
+     Engrossingly interesting.... Soul-stirring and grand beyond
+     description!" "The Author exhibits a profound reverence for the
+     truths of Scripture, but a still profounder one for Truth
+     herself. Dissent we may to some things, yet on the whole, we
+     commend the work to the favorable attention particularly of the
+     learned world."
+
+
+IV.
+
+"DEALINGS WITH THE DEAD."
+
+The Human Soul--What it is; whence it came; its location in the body;
+its passage through death; whither it goes after death; what it does;
+how it lives! Marriage in the Soul-world! Offspring there! Eating,
+drinking, sleeping after we are dead! Do Souls occupy space? Does a Soul
+feel heat, cold, get wet in a storm? What becomes of dead children?--of
+idiots?--lunatics?--premature births? Heaven! Hell!--their nature and
+location, with scores of equally important and profound questions, are
+all answered in this most extraordinary and entirely original volume.
+
+
+V.
+
+AN INSIDE VIEW OF SPIRITUALISM.
+
+A thorough and complete summing up of the system, showing its true
+nature and vividly depicting its effects upon the minds, bodies, morals
+and characters of all its adherents, by one who had a thorough
+experience of ten years of, and in it.
+
+
+VI.
+
+THE ROSICRUCIAN'S STORY.
+
+The great Sensation Tale. Embracing the celebrated and quite
+extraordinary "Miranda Theory."
+
+By Dr. P. B. Randolph.
+
+N.B. The above two books are especially valuable by reason of the flood
+of light thrown on the modern phenomena usually attributed to "spirits."
+
+
+VII.
+
+IT ISN'T ALL RIGHT;
+
+Being an Answer to, and refutation of, the modern doctrine that
+"Whatever is is right." The book is an eloquent defence of Marriage, and
+embraces an appeal for the poor prostitute against the villainous wiles
+of those who make her what she is. Nothing in the language speaks more
+forcibly for fallen woman than this rare pamphlet.
+
+       *       *       *       *
+
+It is doubtful if any List of Modern Works by a single author can
+surpass in variety, interest, scope or power, that above presented. The
+volumes are well worth perusal. All orders for them, or any books
+published by this house, or any other, will be promptly filled, whether
+for single copies or in quantities.
+
+SINCLAIR TOUSEY.
+
+
+_In addition to the above, will be for sale_,
+
+THE CELEBRATED
+
+"RODREY" DREAM-BOOK,
+
+RE-TRANSLATED, CONDENSED, AND ADAPTED TO MODERN USAGE.
+
+This, the largest and most perfect book of the kind in the world, in any
+language, has been enlarged till it now contains the enormous number of
+Three Thousand Solutions of Three Thousand Dreams! It is utterly
+impossible to have any sort of Dream; the interpretation and meaning of
+which is not contained in this very curious book. It also embraces the
+famous Persian "Pfal," whereby these Orientals tell their own and each
+others fortunes by means of the numbers thrown with three dice. As a
+source of amusement, and instruction too, this book is unsurpassed.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Tom Clark and His Wife, by Paschal Beverly Randolph
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TOM CLARK AND HIS WIFE ***
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