The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1873-03-22


hideous face as he returned home no won
der that he had spared only the fewest pos
sible moments to refresh himself with bodi
( ly food when feat like this was waiting
/ for his soul. He who thus spent his nigh
was on the principle of action and reaction
obliged to wander about in an unprofitabl
dream all day long, in which his soul wa
engrossed, not with what was, but will
the recollection of what had been, and Will
the anticipation of what was to be as sool
as night returned again. For many months
he had been growing poorer and poorer
but he made no effort to keep back the sea
of poverty. So absorbed had he become
in life made up of Intoxicating dreams
that he had been unable to attend to the
most ordinary or the most pressing affairs
1t seemed as though the excitement of the
sale, or something else, had actually turned
his brain. His letters had at first remain.
ed unanswered, and then unread; the
schemes and projects in which he had been
engaged rotted or ripened to his ruin; he
neither bought or sold or lent, until, little
by little, he fell under water, and had to
force himself to struggle for merely daily
bread. He who had once dealt in Titians
and Rafaeles now dealt only in cast off hats
and coats and shoes; he who had been the
depositary of the diamonds of duchesses
now took care of the mongles of washer
women; he who had advanced thousands
of pounds to the heirs of peers now lent
shillings for the accommodation of Irish
laborers. And yet he had his reward. If
by day he was an old clothesman and deal
Ell in marine stores, by night he was sui
tan, a caliph. So far from being miser
he was spendthrift who had spent his
whole fortune upon glorious dream.
Could he have given expression to the
visions that came nightly to visit him, he
would have been one of the greatest of
poets of tie world: and SO should be, if
were able to express them for him. They
were not always the same, though all came
to him in the same green light. Some.
times he was the winner of wonderful bat
ties which, in their vastness, were prophet
ic of Armageddon: sometimes he was the
sultan of Il Mahomet's Paradise: some
times he was seated on the throne of justice,
or rather of vengeance, to punish all those
who had injured or Knocked at him by day.
In the last case he used to intlict the most
and every groan on the part of his victims
plunged him into very agony Of pleasure.
Sometimes he was wandering at will
through all the mines of Golconda and
Peru; and they were all his OVID. But the
grandest vision of all was one that came
to him more rarely, and which, whenever
it did come, left him for days after in a
state of bodily and mental prostration.-
On such occasions he would scarcely eat or
drink, and would let his few customers buy
without coin and borrow without security.
He stood before a high altar in a vast
hall, in which his more ordinary calph-
chamber, vast as it was, might have been
contained hundred times over; indeed it
seemed to have the sky, of which every
star was a sun, for its roof, and the hori-
zon itself, studded with mystic figures like
the belt of the zodiac, for its limit The
altar itself was so lofty as to tower above
the loftiest mountons of Asia, which look
ed dwarfed to the size OF strings of pearls.
All the seas and rivers of the earth flowed
together before it so as to form vast sill
yer lake, in which goldfish Of the size of
whales spouted and played and stirred the
water into waves that splashed against the
margin with sound of distant BELLS
Flowers, also, chiefly roses. hyacinths and
rhododendrons wreathed themselves about
columns whose carved capitals were lost in
the expanse where the emerald light chang
ed into a golden ather Throughout echo
ed, besides the bells, a confused murmur
as of countless swarms of bees, into which
many sorts of voices seemed to resolve
themselves into one. Along the streams
that poured themselves into the lake float
ed fleets of vessels of cedar borne along by
sails of purple silk, a queen, raven locked,
and with the crescent moon in her hair,
standing in the foremost prov. Immedi-
ate]y in front of the alter that rose out of
and above all this was erected a brazen
scaffiold and on the scaffold stood Nathan
Levi himself He kneeled down before all
the congregation of Isreal, and spread forth
his hands toward heaven. 1t was the re-
conservation of the Temple in which he
was high priest and king.
How such man should be subject to
this and to sim liar visions must be explain
ed by those who are better versed in the
occult properties of emeralds, and the still
more occult workings of the human soul,
than |. At any rate, the vision endured
for hours, and was as real il its seeming as
if it had been real in sober fact-far more
real than the miserable facts of life in which
he spent his days.
When he again emerged from his magic
chamber. weary with the reaction that
such excitement was bound to bring, lie
would betake himself once more to the
quarter of the town in which he sought to
fill his bag with old clothes. And always,
as he passed the b3enchisserie in Bean street,
the same young girl looked up form her
work and said, "Goed morning."
CHAPTER IX.-CoUNT ANDREAs KRoMEskI
No wonder, once more, that Mr.. erode
had been in violent rage. He had ex-
pected to gain six million pounds by the
expenditure of half-a-crown-that is to say,
to NAL Ike clear profit of five million, nine
hundred and nine thousand, nine hundred
and ninety-nine pounds seventeen shllings
and sixpence, upon one transaction; or, at
least, if his last offer had been taken, five
million, eight hundred and ninety-five
thousand pounds; and such disappoint-
ment was terribly hard for any business
man to bear. Tie had fiattered himself
that bp no ,,,,l,