excited. What was he
going to tell us? The Young Astronomer looked upon him with an eye as
clear and steady and brilliant as the evening star, but I could see that
he too was a little nervous, wondering what would come next.

The old Master adjusted his large round spectacles, and began:

--It has cost me fifty years to find my place in the Order of Things. I
had explored all the sciences; I had studied the literature of all ages;
I had travelled in many lands; I had learned how to follow the working of
thought in men and of sentiment and instinct in women. I had examined
for myself all the religions that could make out any claim for
themselves. I had fasted and prayed with the monks of a lonely convent;
I had mingled with the crowds that shouted glory at camp-meetings; I had
listened to the threats of Calvinists and the promises of Universalists;
I had been a devout attendant on a Jewish Synagogue; I was in
correspondence with an intelligent Buddhist; and I met frequently with
the inner circle of Rationalists, who believed in the persistence of
Force, and the identity of alimentary substances with virtue, and were
reconstructing the universe on this basis, with absolute exclusion of all
Supernumeraries. In these pursuits I had passed the larger part of my
half-century of existence, as yet with little satisfaction. It was on
the morning of my fiftieth birthday that the solution of the great
problem I had sought so long came to me as a simple formula, with a few
grand but obvious inferences. I will repeat the substance of this final
intuition:

The one central fact an the Order of Things which solves all questions
is:

At this moment we were interrupted by a knock at the Master's door. It
was most inopportune, for he was on the point of the great disclosure,
but common politeness compelled him to answer it, and as the step which
we had heard was that of one of the softer-footed sex, he chose to rise
from his chair and admit his visitor.

This visitor was our Landlady. She was dressed with more than usual
nicety, and her countenance showed clearly that she came charged with an
important communication.

--I did n't low there was company with you, said the Landlady,--but it's
jest as well. I've got something to tell my boarders that I don't want
to tell them, and if I must do it, I may as well tell you all at once as
one to a time. I 'm agoing to give up keeping boarders at the end of
this year,--I mean co