"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.