of the night in their peregrinations “up and down the earth;” whilst a fourth even recollected individual instances of miserable wretches resorting to hidden and secluded spots to hold communion with the evil one. Certain it was, there were few now in that circle who were willing to affirm that Deford’s conduct was the result of good motives or an honorable career. The tide of opinion was turned against him, so sure is an odd demeanor, sooner or later, destined to breed ill-thoughts in those around us, and arouse suspicion. Curiosity hates to be baffled, and when it seizes hold of an entire neighborhood, it becomes a dangerous thing, and the discreet and judicious man will always avoid it. Without a guide to govern and control it, the itching phrensy of inquisitiveness is as limitless in its range as it is void of reason and discretion. Whilst, however, the villagers had been moved to the highest degree of anxiety to learn something more of Felix than simply his name, he was no less curious concerning matters of quite a different character, but which were of about equal significance. Unfortunately for him, he was one of those deluded, so-called philosophers who have always had their counterparts in all ages of the world; and who, despising simple and common things, as a French commentator truly observes, followed the lead of quaint fancies and cheating vagaries, even rejecting the plainest truths unless they came invested with a charm to gratify their desire for the extraordinary and marvelous. Every fantastic story of ghost or goblin that had come to his knowledge, and every mysterious witch transaction, had, to him, been important matters for study. He had squandered many days in search of an antidote to decrease the dominion of death, yet never attempted to wrest from its grasp any poor victim of disease. “Was there not,” he would ask of himself, “a tree of life in the garden of Eden, and if its fruit possessed the magic power of imparting perpetual life, has nature lost the qualities and elements of which they were composed? Are we not informed by the ancient Skalds and Sagas, that the heroes and warriors of old, when pressed down and enfeebled by age, repaired to the fair and beautiful Iduna, to eat of the ‘apples of youth,’ and become young again?” To him, the efforts of the Spanish voyager, Juan Ponce de Leon, in search of the mystic spring, located, by tradition, somewhere amongst the sands of Florida, a sip of whose precious waters imparted rejuvenescence, and secured perennial youth, had been an enterprise so noble that better success should have crowned it. Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastes Paracelsus Honenhelm, after first pruning down his monstrous name to decent proportions, which was, perhaps, the most sensible act he performed during his life, became possessed of the _elixir vita_. “If,” thought Felix, “the foolish neglect of a careless and fickle world, which not