“Oh, how it stormed outside! and oh, how warm and cosy was the little snug harbor into which I had just moored myself!
“It was the second cup of tea—orange pekoe it was, for I had bought it of a Chinaman in Boston, who knew all about tea—and the second slice of toast that I was discussing, along with my daily paper, when suddenly there came a loud, imperative double knock at the door, similar to that of an English postman when in a hurry to deliver his letters. The door was immediately opened by a servant, who thought some one had been taken suddenly ill, and that I had been sent for professionally. But what was my astonishment when in stalked, with as much ease and nonchalance as if he belonged there, no less a personage than the mysterious little old man of the afternoon. I was thunderstruck. It was the same person who had treated me so rudely, and who had first come and then gone again so unaccountably, and who had induced an illness in Mrs. Graham that resulted in causing her to forever abandon her mediumatic practices—the same that has sent so many scores of people to premature graves, and will send thousands more. The strange man advanced toward the fire, and exclaimed—
“ ‘What a fright I caused you and your guest this afternoon! Ha! ha! It was capital—was it not?’
“And again he laughed, but this time in a manner and with a voice which, had it not been for the immense physical disparity apparent, I could have sworn was that of the Italian Count in Paris. But this supposition was hardly possible. The man before me was so decidedly human, that, by a rapid and comprehensive induction, I concluded that Mrs. Graham and myself had been victimized for sport by one who was perfect master of the mesmeric art. This hypothesis was quite plausible, only I could not account for the non-ringing of the office bell; and the idea seemed at that time quite preposterous that any one could successfully magnetize the clapper of a bell into silence. I learned more afterwards. Neither did it seem quite reasonable that this man had, before entering the office at all, exerted his power upon our sense of hearing, rendering us deaf.
“To his remark I replied, rather sententiously, with ‘Very!’ and said no more, for I did not fancy his joke, if such it was, nor his brusquerie, nor his decided lack of good manners, nor his rude speech; in fact, I did not fancy the man at all, nor anything about him. Not that he was hated or despised, but because there was a something about him that made my very flesh creep again, and caused me to instinctively shrink from his contact.
“It is well known that one of the cardinal points of the Rosicrucian belief is that bodily life can be prolonged through whole ages in two different ways; first, by means of the Elixir of Life; secondly, by means of mere will alone. In the first case beauty and youth accompany age; but in the second, age is apparent all along the centuries. This latter secret and the processes were revealed by a degenerate Rosicrucian in 1605; and all students of medicine are aware that great capital was made of it in later times by a French physician named Asgill. This writer undertook to publicly demonstrate and teach the art of life-prolonging, laying it down positively, that man is literally immortal, or rather that any given man alive could, if he choose, utterly laugh at and defy death; that he need not, if so disposed, ever die, if he used sufficient prudence, and forcibly and constantly exerted his will in that direction. Asgill used to complain of the cowardly practice of dying, considering it a mere trick, and unnecessary habit. The records tell us that several men have used both these means to perpetuate existence, and I have not the slightest doubt that it has been attempted and proved measurably successful; and now, on this stormy night, as I gazed on the withered wreck before me, it struck me that he was one of those wretches who had attained indefinite length of years by the second method, and, as a necessary consequence, had lost all fire, all feeling, all love, and all conscience. I shuddered as the possibility flashed upon me. He saw the motion, and a smile of ineffable scorn curled his lip as he did so. I abandoned my notion.
“People who observe things as they plod their way through the world, and who have at all made the human soul a study, have often been made aware that there is a certain nameless something that comes over a man, that with resistless eloquence persuades his inner soul that some danger approaches, some peril besets, some disaster impends over him. There are times, when calm reigns all around him, and peace blossoms in his heart, that he suddenly is apprised that Calamity is flapping her way toward him through the terrible nebulous gloom of the Future. Many a man and woman has felt this; and some such feeling, some such horror-form, now seemed hovering, cowering, crawling near me, and preparing to seize upon and fang my very soul, in the presence of the queer little man at my side. It was a mixed feeling of guilt and dread, and yet no guilt was mine. I had not cheated, robbed, lied, to my best friend. I had not fared sumptuously every day on the proceeds of villainy; my wife and daughters did not dress in purple and fine linen, bought with the money wronged from a poor man, or any man at all. I had not a fine piano, and parlors full of guests enjoying funds thus gotten; nor had I driven fast and fine horses of my own, fed and fattened on the money of a man whose child was at that very moment struggling, gasping, choking in the clutches of grim death for want of bread and medicine. True, there were those who did all this—and the corpse of a pretty little girl attests it—but I did not; why then should I be afraid? There is no answer to that, and yet I was in dread.
“After saying ‘Very!’ I spoke no more, but striving to repress the horror creeping over me, I tried to look as indignant as possible, which he was not slow to observe; for he approached, slapped me familiarly on the back, poured out and drank a cup of tea and ate a rusk, which settled the question as to his being no ghost; then he dropped carelessly into my easy-chair, rubbed his little perked-up nose with his thin, little, bluish-pale fingers, and throwing himself forward, so as to look right up into my face, he laughed heartily, and then bawled out, rather than sung, at the top of his voice:
“ ‘The storm howls drearily,
Let you and I live cheerily;
And we’ll study things that never were known.
I’ve come from the West,
To see the man that I like best.
Don’t think I’m all depravity—
I’m in search of the centre of gravity—
And you’ll find out the Philosophers’ Stone.’
And then he again burst out into one of the wildest, most outré, and ridiculous laughs that ever fell on mortal hearing.