The herald., 1896-03-01

ClOuRnts Cno CTOWA VI OAoAnS ""S"
Sorrow always wears; the strange pal
impsests of immaterial memory; the
hidden springs OF life; the Something
better than the best; the real, the pure,
the true Love that is the destiny to
which all other destinies lead-all
these and countless more l sought to
solve with all the insanity of soul lit
by the fires of an undying impulse.
Whence and Why and Whittier we're
the questions I invoked of the eternal
Sphinx. Would that could
raise the veil from the Isis Of
mystery to read there in in
finite expression the alpha and
omega of all things! With absorbing
intensity read the books OF men who
found and wrote thought to live for
ever. abandoned myself to the dusty
the Rosicrucians, to the old records
wherein lay revealed the triumphs of
alchemists. I devoted whole days and
nights to the study of parchments
whose faded leaves embalmed the
starry dreams Of the Chaldean philoto-
piers. read the tales of wild ordeals
performed by weird Adopts. All these
served as oxygen to partly feed the
flame of my soul-longings. sought
amid all the dark and deluding corri-
dors of earthly life to find the Ariadne-
thread that led to light-to the abode
of Psyche.
That there was the higher life of
hereafter my soul-longings proved to
me beyond the shadow a doubt. The
dream of Immortality is that beautiful
tableau which is enacted only in the
theater of the loftiest minds. 1 Iscorned
the thought that the grave was the end
of all. I could not believe that life
was nothing more than substanceless
rainbow that arches the sky of time
cleaning but for an instant through
the "mist of human tears and then
fading away from view, never to ap-
pear again. could not think that all
the countless planets whereon inhabi-
tants had reached high state of evolu-
tion and the acme and apex of human
and material civilization-I could not
think that all these we're but a vast
procession Of moving hearses-but re-
volving mockeries to the highest as
pirations of the human mind. To me
the word, Immortality, was written
upon every babbling brook, upon every
lifting peak, upon every tender flower,
| upon every brow of love-lit beauty,
upon the sea in mirrored light, upon
the midnight dome in letters formed OF
stars.
To me this world was but a
portal to the spiritual temple
but single speck of dust
in the vast expanse Of gIittering stars
but an alembic which instilled gross
matter into the purity of spirit-but q
soil in which evolved non-entity into a
life which transcends all the imagina-
! tion of what is possible. My material
fetters goaded me. longed for a re-
lease from such down-pinning cap
| tivity. strove with bleeding nails
and slipping feet to climb the walls to
the prison bars-where might catch
breath of that pure air for which my
lungs we're strangling-where I might
see in the spiritual east the blossom
| ing dawn Of amaranthine day. Oh,
that it were mine to sever the silver
cord, to burst the lids of the dark sar-
cophagus, and on wings that knew
nothing of temporal or spacious con-
| Arcana-to ascend to that star of
Know-all which perturbed me with the
magnetism of its cleaning power.
Rambling one afternoon along q GER
tain part of the island near the coast,
I discovered small, but weird cave,
It's interior was fantastically adorned
by those crystal and columnar forms
which are carved by the hand of
eternal night. The lamp of Aladdin
never shown upon wilder sight.
From that day this cave became the
scene Of my already advanced expert
ments in psychic phenomena. filled
it with oriental furnishings, with q
wealth of "decora, with the instruments
of science and the apparatus of my
| own wild inventions. Phantasmsgoric
drapings, soft rugs and costly furs,
walls smirched with the dreamy paint
ings of love and scenes Of Shade wland.
mystic mechanisms that we're operated
by the unseen world, the ANTIQUE ves-
sells Of alchemy-the crucible, the cauld-
ron, the alembic, the appliances Of q
strange chemistry-all this strange
! medley was there and the whole lit BY