My Library

wrongs, deep and grievous, at the hands of men whose meanness and duplicity toward himself he only discovered when they had gained their points and ruined him. These men he hated— and yet that word does not convey the true idea. His feeling was not vindictive, but was a craving for, and determination to exact justice for his wrongs. This satisfied, his ill will died on the instant. His eyes, or rather eye—for one was nearly lost from an accident—was a deep, dark hazel, and such as people are in the habit of describing as jet black. It shone with a lustre peculiar, and strangely magnetic when he let his soul go forth upon winged words from the rostrum, for he had been a public speaker in his time, and had won no small degree of fame on that field. Once seen and heard, this man was one whom it was impossible ever to forget, so different was he from all other men, and so marked and peculiar were his characteristics. Such, in brief, were the externals of the person to whom the reader is here introduced. A very singular man was he—the Rosicrucian—I knew him well. Many an hour, subsequent to that in which he is here introduced, have we sat together beneath the grateful shade of some glorious old elm on the green, flowery banks of Connecticut’s silver stream, and under some towering dome palm beside the bosom of still