My Library

suggestions, that wonderful fluid alluded to awhile since; but I did believe it possible that I could compound a draught that when quaffed would repair the waste of nature, and believed until that moment, that in Phymyle I had found it. What, then, was my astonishment when the weird old man whispered in my ear that I stood upon the brink of the grandest success conceivable, that the grand Secret of secrets was all but in my grasp? To describe my sensations at that moment is impossible, and the more so because the old man told me the whole process and constituents. “What cared I even if it was necessary for me to go to Jerusalem, and gather the precious seeds of a fruit that grows upon its walls, wherewith to prepare the water? In other years I did go, and the treasured seeds are mine.... In that awful moment of success I blessed the old man and internally vowed that in return I would read his horoscope, and sleep the sleep of Sialam; for was not the desire of my soul gratified? Why then should I not return the favor? “Such, in that tumultuous moment, were my thoughts. Soon I became calmer, and then, ‘How came the old man to know the materials that were being used?’ ‘Perhaps he saw the fumes, and thus knew them!’ But how of the contents of the condensing-chest through which the vapor was forced for the purpose of nullifying its