“The wretched doggerel that I had just heard was beneath my notice; and little did I know of the singer, and still less did I imagine that those lines were to me the most important I had ever heard.
“Gradually, and by imperceptible degrees, my prejudices began to wane; I conversed with him upon a variety of subjects, and the conference was maintained during four long hours, perhaps more; for if my memory serves me, it was nearly eleven o’clock when he arose from his seat, shook me cordially by the hand, said he was going, promised to call again ‘when he wanted to serve me,’ and then, opening the doors, passed out into the midst of one of the most fierce and vindictive tempests that ever desolated the shores of Boston Bay. A singular thing was this: in the depth of winter, this man, who refused steadily to speak concerning himself, was clad in the very thinnest summer raiment, not having enough even for a northern June, much less for such fearful weather as prevailed on the night of that 4th of February—a night when the glass in Boston told of cold twenty degrees below zero, and in New Hampshire nineteen lower still—a night so bitter that many and many a man went to eternity, borne thither on the frosty pinions of the Ice-king.
“ ‘After all it is a man, and mesmerism furnishes a key to all this seeming mystery,’ thought I; and with this consoling supposition I went to bed, and there reproduced all that he had said or done. Now, although little was said in regard to himself, yet, from that little, I gathered that he was an Armenian by birth, that his name was Miakus, which is the ancient Chaldaic for Priest of Fire. He told me this as he bent down to kiss a sweet little prattling Cora, and said that he was very fond of children, and felt particularly so toward the little fairy, who, seated in her chair, was busily engaged in laying down the law to a culprit kitten, who, it appeared, had been guilty of leze majeste to her Christmas doll. After the child had been sent to bed, Miakus produced from his bosom a little square, flat case, apparently of rose or olive wood, and about seven inches across by two and a half deep.[5] It was locked, and the key, a silver one, hung by a golden clasp to an ordinary steel watch-chain round his neck. The little man laid this case upon the bureau, where it lay undisturbed, although it became clear to me that his business there was in some way associated with that box and myself. It was equally clear that his air was more than half assumed, and that, in spite of his nonchalance and brusque surface, great trouble reigned beneath; for, occasionally, as he spoke, there was a melancholy cadence and plaintive modulation in his tones, that, to practised ears, spoke, if not of a breaking heart, at least of one most deeply injured and bereaved. This circumstance affected me much, for, through life, I have been one who grieved with those in grief, and joyed with those in joy. Then, after a little, he told me that one of his objects was to initiate me into certain mysteries of white magic, to teach me how to construct the magic mirror in which the majority of persons could glance through space, see and talk with the dead, and in all things, save a few, have an unerring guide through life. Said he—‘I have such a curious looking-glass in yonder box, and perhaps—and perhaps not—you may test its qualities before I leave you. The fact is, I feel down-hearted, have been so all day, and all the more because I hurt your amour propré by calling you a fool, which, of course, I do not apologize for. It struck me that I would take advantage of the weather to chat with you, without infringing upon your business, and that, possibly, you might learn something and I find relief in teaching you, and thus withdraw us both for a time from the great Failure’—by which he meant the world. ‘I am weary of myself, the world, philosophers and philosophy. There’s nothing good but magic! You have been a fool while striving to be wise; and are ambitious to know what you have hitherto merely imagined.’
“He rose, took the case, laid it on the table between us, and, while playing with the key, continued—‘If you really desire to pierce through the gloom that palls the human senses, you must abandon all human loves and passions, most especially all that relates to woman; for woman’s love destroys—in the very moment of man’s victory over her, she triumphs—he yields his life, and offers up existence itself on her altars, and then she laughs! Is it not so? Does not every man’s experience corroborate this? Strong as iron alone, no sooner does he reach the goal of love than he is lost in a sea of weakness, lethargy, deadness! Bah! avoid woman. You want high knowledge, and must pay high prices. God gives nothing—he sells all; and he who would have must purchase, and the price is suffering. So with love. Its life is bought with the coin of death. Woman is like the ivy vine mantling round some hoary tower, and the more you are ruined the closer she clings, and the closer she clings the more you are ruined! Listen. No one acts without a motive. I have one with regard to yourself, and it is a selfish one. It so happens that the possessor of the magic mirror can in it behold all other horoscopes but his own, beyond a certain point; and, if he would know it, he must consult other seers. Now, there are certain beings in existence whose future cannot be read except by certain persons specially constituted. You are one of the latter, I am one of the former; and such as we only meet at the beginning and the end of epochs and eras. The present is one of these. I will present you with the mirror when you have done me this favor; I will teach you the art of their construction; and I will give you a verbatim copy of the answers you shall make to the questions I shall ask you while gazing in its awful depths. To this I pledge a word that never yet was broken, and an oath that never will be. For this purpose I have followed you for years, patiently waiting for the hour that dawns at last. To successfully do the thing I ask, two things are essential. 1st, That, in a perfectly pure state of body, health, mind, intent, and morals, you gaze into the glass. 2d, That, while doing so, you make no resistance against certain sleepful influences that may assail you, which influences will not be mesmeric, nor assisted by myself in any way, but is the sacred slumber of Sialam Boaghiee, which can only be enjoyed once in a hundred years, and then only by persons who are singularly constituted as you are—whose veins are filled with the mingled blood of all the nations that sprung from the loins of the Edenic protoplast, the Biblical Adam, and who, temperamentally, and in all other respects, save sex, are perfectly neutral. Certain great advantages will accrue to you from this concession that are unattainable without. From this slumber you will awaken doubly; first, to the old life without; and, second, to another and a fuller though stranger life within, and to the power of comprehending innumerable mysteries that lie enshrouded in dim regions far beyond the ken of ordinary man. Dreamer! you shall comprehend your dreams. Rosicrucian! you shall comprehend the Light, the Tower, and the Flame, and where Artefius and Zimati failed you shall find success! It is difficult, if not impossible, to either over-rate the advantages to be derived by the possession of the power I allude to, or to define and characterize it in words, mainly for the reason that, although the idea stands out well marked and distinct before the mind, yet the language which you speak has no terms of symbols adequate to its naming or expression; for, at best, words are coarse raiment for thought, and no more show the beauty of what they cover, than the preposterous costumes of Christendom display the superlative glories of the human form. The soul that sleeps this slumber passes through a gate which even the privileged dead cannot enter, save once in a century, and then only by reason of neutrality, for positive people are to be counted by the billion on either side the grave, negative people outnumber them ten million to one, while neutrals are, like cold heat, very rare indeed. I trust we shall yet assist each other.’
“Now, I had, two hours before, on seeing him eat and drink, hastily abandoned my ghostly hypothesis regarding the little queer old man. But now, as he talked so strangely, and so grandly indicated the Door of the Dome of all possible human knowledge and attainment, the mystery that wrapped him changed its character, but enveloped him in a ten-fold gloom and shadow, that continually grew more thick and dense, so much so, indeed, that, but for his eating, and the fact that several persons in the house beside myself had seen and exchanged speech with and touched him, I certainly should have doubted the evidence of my senses, and set the whole thing down, from the scene in the office till his departure, to the account of a disturbed imagination. There was a something unearthly about his voice and manner; and once, when he turned his chair, the upper part of his right thigh came in direct contact with the red-hot stove, and I watched it there until the chair was ruined by the fire, and the smoke of its varnish and seat fairly filled the room, and yet he was not burned, but coolly rose and opened the door for the smoke to escape, and then resumed his seat as if nothing whatever had happened; and, two or three times in the course of the evening, I not only felt a chilly atmosphere proceed from him, but distinctly saw his skeleton beneath his thin, parchment-like skin, as if but the thinnest integument had been loosely thrown over it to hide its naked deformity by some mouldy tenant of the grave, doomed to expiate its offences by again walking the earth with embodied human beings. Could it be that I had struck the truth, and that this mysterious Miakus was in reality such a vampire as we read of in German story?”
FOOTNOTE:
[5] Both the incidents of the magic mirror are actual, literal facts, as is also its curious construction and effects as herein related. I have witnessed many astonishing experiments with mirrors constructed as was that treated of in the text. I have seen several exactly similar—one in Zagazik, Lower Egypt, in the hands of a Hindoo magician, two in Cairo, one in Thebes, two in Constantinople, and one in London. In the East, owing to the scarcity of the peculiar material wherewith the space between the glasses is filled, they cost enormous prices, and then can only be had by a Christian through favor. In this country, or England, they might cheaply be made. I have one in my possession that I would not part with for three thousand dollars, so wonderful, so astonishing are the effects witnessed in and through it.—Editor.
[CHAPTER III.]
PHOSPHORUS AND THE ELIXIR OF LIFE.
“Marvelling,” said Beverly, continuing his wonderful story—“Marvelling on the strange events of the day and night, as said before, I retired to my chamber, but not to rest, for ere the morning dawned upon the world again, there came to me an experience that in some respects totally changed the current and character of my life. These incidents are already recorded in my narrative concerning ‘Cynthia and Thotmor,’ long since given to the world.[6]
“On the morning following this eventful night, I repaired to the office of a reputed to be Philosophic tooth-doctor, whose brain is a far more curious museum than the one near his office. With him I conversed awhile, and by him was introduced to a real thinker, whose name, I think, was Blood. After smoking a segar—and each other—in his laboratory, I repaired to Nichols’, the chemist, made a few purchases, and forthwith went to my office.