“He rose, took the case, laid it on the table between us, and, while playing with the key, continued--‘If you really desire to pierce through the gloom that palls the human senses, you must abandon all human loves and passions, most especially all that relates to woman; for woman’s love destroys--in the very moment of man’s victory over her, she triumphs--he yields his life, and offers up existence itself on her altars, and then she laughs! Is it not so? Does not every man’s experience corroborate this? Strong as iron alone, no sooner does he reach the goal of love than he is lost in a sea of weakness, lethargy, deadness! Bah! avoid woman. You want high knowledge, and must pay high prices. God gives nothing--he sells all; and he who would have must purchase, and the price is suffering. So with love. Its life is bought with the coin of death. Woman is like the ivy vine mantling round some hoary tower, and the more you are ruined the closer she clings, and the closer she clings the more you are ruined! Listen. No one acts without a motive. I have one with regard to yourself, and it is a selfish one. It so happens that the possessor of the magic mirror can in it behold all other horoscopes but his own, beyond a certain point; and, if he would know it, he must consult other seers. Now, there are certain beings in existence whose future cannot be read except by certain persons specially constituted. You are one of the latter, I am one of the former; and such as we only meet at the beginning and the end of epochs and eras. The present is one of these. I will present you with the mirror when you have done me this favor; I will teach you the art of their construction; and I will give you a verbatim copy of the answers you shall make to the questions I shall ask you while gazing in its awful depths. To this I pledge a word that never yet was broken, and an oath that never will be. For this purpose I have followed you for years, patiently waiting for the hour that dawns at last. To successfully do the thing I ask, two things are essential. 1st, That, in a perfectly pure state of body, health, mind, intent, and morals, you gaze into the glass. 2d, That, while doing so, you make no resistance against certain sleepful influences that may assail you, which influences will not be mesmeric, nor assisted by myself in any way, but is the sacred slumber of _Sialam Boaghiee_, which can only be enjoyed once in a hundred years, and then only by persons who are singularly constituted as you are--whose veins are filled with the mingled blood of all the nations that sprung from the loins of the Edenic protoplast, the Biblical Adam, and who, temperamentally, and in all other respects, save sex, are perfectly neutral. Certain great advantages will accrue to you from this concession that are unattainable without. From this slumber you will awaken doubly; first, to the old life without; and, second, to another and a fuller though stranger life within, and to the power of