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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