“While thus intently engaged, I was suddenly startled by the exclamations, ‘Careless fool! Look out! Run!’ Mechanically I obeyed, leaped into the outer office, and had scarcely done so, than there occurred a loud explosion. The retort had burst into a million fragments, shattering the windows and apparatus into fine pieces, and scattering some pounds of ignited phosphorus upon the floor. Here was trouble. But not to the speaker--for, quick as light, he tore the carpet off the office floor, and hurled it, phosphorus and all, into the snow-drifts in the yard below, which soon melted under the intense blaze of that almost quenchless fire, until, having consumed itself, nothing but a white smoke was left to tell the danger I and the house had been in. “The fire out, and my fright subsided, I turned to see who it was that had so opportunely saved me, and found the little old man smiling and smirking before me. “‘What! is it you, then?’ I asked, at the same time cordially extending my hand toward him. “‘I rather think it is!’ said he, grasping it, ‘and very lucky for you it was that I chanced to happen along “‘So early in the morning, Just after break of day,’ said and sung the Enigma, continuing: ‘You are not an overwise chemist, my dear doctor, else you would never expect, either that Phosphorus gas could reach the condenser, with the stop-cock shut, or that a glass retort, already cracked, would long resist the immense pressure of the accumulating and continually heating vapor. I see you have turned Hermetist and Alchemist--Rosicrucian like! and that you are determined to blow yourself up, or else “‘Find out the ’lixir Vitæ, Or stumble across the Philosophers’ Stone,’ and the little old man clapped his hands and danced about the room in the most exuberant glee. “‘But, my friend,’ said he, ‘as constant trying means eventual success, I have not the slightest doubt but that you will yet become a very rich man, as well as a long-lived one; for, to tell you the truth, you have come nearer this morning to compounding the Elixir of Life--that very Elixir for which Philosophers have toiled during thousands of years, in vain--than any man that ever lived. For instance: had you placed a less quantity of phosphorus in the retort; more of the first and third, and less of the second, fourth, and fifth ingredients, with a slower heat, and the addition of two ounces of ----, and ----, and one of ----,’ mentioning the articles, ‘you would have, indeed, made the water of perpetual youth and health--that wonderful chemic which purifies the juices, removes obstructions, clarifies the fluids, and renders man physically invulnerable to miasmas and disease--to all things destructive to life, except, of course, material injury. What d’ye think of that? Ha! ha!’ and again he burst out in a roaring squeak: “‘I’ll discover the centre of gravity, You’ll find out the Philosophers’ stone.’