But I had a few very good friends. Among these was Charles Macalester. One day when I had been bullied shamefully by the knot of boys who always treated me badly, he ran after me up Walnut Street, and, almost with tears in his eyes, assured me of his sympathy. There were two other intimates. George Patrullo, of Spanish parentage, and Richard Seldener, son of the Swedish Consul. They read a great deal. One day it chanced that Seldener had in his bosom a very large old-fashioned flint-lock horse-pistol loaded with shot. By him and me stood Patrullo and William Henry Hurlbut, who has since become a very well-known character. Thinking that Seldener's pistol was unloaded, Patrullo, to frighten young Hurlbut, pulled the weapon suddenly from Seldener's breast, put it between Hurlbut's eyes and fired. The latter naturally started to one side, so it happened that he only received one shot in his ear. The charge went into the wall, where it made a mark like a bullet's, which was long visible. George Patrullo was drowned not long after while swimming in the Schuylkill river, and Richard Seldener perished on an Atlantic steamer, which was never heard of. On the other hand, something took place which cast a marvellous light into this darkened life of mine. For one day my father bought and presented to me a share in the Philadelphia Library. This was a collection which even then consisted of more than 60,000 well-chosen volumes. And then began such a life of reading as was, I sincerely believe, unusual in such youth. My first book was "Arthur of Little Britaine," which I finished in a week; then "Newes from New Englande, 1636," and the "Historie of Clodoaldus." Before long I discovered that there were in the Loganian section of the library several hundred volumes of occult philosophy, a collection once formed by an artist named Cox, and of these I really read nearly every one. Cornelius Agrippa and Barret's "Magus," Paracelsus, the black-letter edition of Reginald Scot, Glanville, and Gaffarel, Trithemius, Baptista Porta, and God knows how many Rosicrucian writers became familiar to me. Once when I had only twenty-five cents I gave it for a copy of "Waters of the East" by Eugenius Philalethes, or Thomas Vaughan.