comprehending innumerable mysteries that lie enshrouded in dim regions far beyond the ken of ordinary man. Dreamer! you shall comprehend your dreams. Rosicrucian! you shall comprehend the Light, the Tower, and the Flame, and where Artefius and Zimati failed you shall find success! It is difficult, if not impossible, to either over-rate the advantages to be derived by the possession of the power I allude to, or to define and characterize it in words, mainly for the reason that, although the idea stands out well marked and distinct before the mind, yet the language which you speak has no terms of symbols adequate to its naming or expression; for, at best, words are coarse raiment for thought, and no more show the beauty of what they cover, than the preposterous costumes of Christendom display the superlative glories of the human form. The soul that sleeps this slumber passes through a gate which even the privileged dead cannot enter, save once in a century, and then only by reason of neutrality, for positive people are to be counted by the billion on either side the grave, negative people outnumber them ten million to one, while neutrals are, like cold heat, very rare indeed. I trust we shall yet assist each other.’ “Now, I had, two hours before, on seeing him eat and drink, hastily abandoned my ghostly hypothesis regarding the little queer old man. But now, as he talked so strangely, and so grandly indicated the Door of the Dome of all possible human knowledge and attainment, the mystery that wrapped him changed its character, but enveloped him in a ten-fold gloom and shadow, that continually grew more thick and dense, so much so, indeed, that, but for his eating, and the fact that several persons in the house beside myself had seen and exchanged speech with and touched him, I certainly should have doubted the evidence of my senses, and set the whole thing down, from the scene in the office till his departure, to the account of a disturbed imagination. There was a something unearthly about his voice and manner; and once, when he turned his chair, the upper part of his right thigh came in direct contact with the red-hot stove, and I watched it there until the chair was ruined by the fire, and the smoke of its varnish and seat fairly filled the room, and yet he was not burned, but coolly rose and opened the door for the smoke to escape, and then resumed his seat as if nothing whatever had happened; and, two or three times in the course of the evening, I not only felt a chilly atmosphere proceed from him, but distinctly saw his skeleton beneath his thin, parchment-like skin, as if but the thinnest integument had been loosely thrown over it to hide its naked deformity by some mouldy tenant of the grave, doomed to expiate its offences by again walking the earth with embodied human beings. Could it be that I had struck the truth, and that this mysterious Miakus was in reality such a vampire as we read of in German story?”