My Library

was familiar, and which he gave me liberty to divulge to a certain extent, conditioned that I forbore to reveal the locality of the lodges of the Dome, or indicate the persons or names of its chief officers, albeit, no such restriction was exacted in reference to the lesser temples of the order—covering the first three degrees in this country—to the acolytes of which the higher lodges are totally unknown. Oh! how often have I sat beside him, on the green banks of a creek that ran through my little farm, and raptly listened to the profoundest wisdom, the most exalted conceptions and descriptions of the soul, its origin, nature, powers, and its destinies— listened to metaphysical speculations that fairly racked my brain to comprehend, and all this from the lips of a man totally incapable of grappling successfully with the money-griping world of barter and of trade. Here was the most tremendous contradiction, in one man, that I had ever known or heard of. One who revelled in mental luxuries fit for an angel, yet had not forecast enough to foil a common trickster;— who blindly, and for years, reposed his whole trust in one whose sole aim was to rob him not only of his little competence, but of his character as a man—who suffered one near and dear to him to starve, literally starve to death, and then be buried, at the very moment that himself and his were luxuriating on the very money for which that man had bartered health, and almost