“I am desirous of a helper who shall not only aid me during my lifetime, to record events, but carry on the wonderful work, when these eyes shall long have been sightless, these hands but useless dust. Should the concise prophetic record which I here give you attract your interested attention, and the bold and original method by which it is attained win your confidence, I should be glad to have you become at once my assistant, and eventually my successor. “The key to the method I have long ago reduced to writing, so that in case of my death, before imparting all the details to any one, the science and the art of scientific prophecy shall not die with me, but shall live forever, like my own immortal soul.” Taking the manuscript, with an eagerness which I could scarce conceal, I expressed my appreciation of his confidence and good will, no less than my admiration of the wonderful method by which mere dots and lines, veriest material and mechanical exponents, should reveal the secrets of things past and to come. The venerable professor bowed me courteously from his presence, and quitting the old mansion, depository of so much knowledge, of so many hopes, I was soon within earshot of the rattle and roar of the great city. “Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot, Which men call Earth,” the glittering starlight beamed--but I heeded it not. A few minutes’ brisk walking brought me to my own door, my hand clutching, through the thin cloth of my light overcoat, the precious roll which contained that record, more precious than the chronicles of kings long since vanished into thin air; for was it not the unrolling of the time to come--my future, Estelle’s, and our children’s? What glass cases filled with registers of dynasties of the long ago; what sarcophagi, enclosing the mortal remains of monarchy and sages who swayed the earth’s destinies when time was yet young; what crumbling rolls, or incised cylinders, bearing enactments which shook nations to their foundations, achievements which reduced whole peoples to abject slavery, so interesting as these soft, closely-written pages, on which I--I alone now of all mortals on earth--was privileged to hear the happenings of the time to come? What treasury, with walls bursting under pressure of silver bars and golden ingots, with cabinets enclosing priceless jewels--so valuable as those squares of paper, from which those records were compiled, yet which a vagrant spark could reduce to nothingness? I sprang up the stairs, three at a time, with my brain on fire, my eyes wide open, glistening; the blood throbbing in temples and tingling in finger tips. Like Monte Cristo, I felt that the world was mine.