“It is well known that one of the cardinal points of the Rosicrucian belief is that bodily life can be prolonged through whole ages in two different ways; first, by means of the Elixir of Life; secondly, by means of mere will alone. In the first case beauty and youth accompany age; but in the second, age is apparent all along the centuries. This latter secret and the processes were revealed by a degenerate Rosicrucian in 1605; and all students of medicine are aware that great capital was made of it in later times by a French physician named Asgill. This writer undertook to publicly demonstrate and teach the art of life-prolonging, laying it down positively, that man is literally immortal, or rather that any given man alive could, if he choose, utterly laugh at and defy death; that he need not, if so disposed, ever die, if he used sufficient prudence, and forcibly and constantly exerted his will in that direction. Asgill used to complain of the _cowardly practice_ of dying, considering it a mere trick, and unnecessary habit. The records tell us that several men have used both these means to perpetuate existence, and I have not the slightest doubt that it has been attempted and proved measurably successful; and now, on this stormy night, as I gazed on the withered wreck before me, it struck me that he was one of those wretches who had attained indefinite length of years by the second method, and, as a necessary consequence, had lost all fire, all feeling, all love, and all conscience. I shuddered as the possibility flashed upon me. He saw the motion, and a smile of ineffable scorn curled his lip as he did so. I abandoned my notion.