e that he has been really in love;
but, pray press me not too curiously as to whether I believe it all, as
to whether I really imagine that his youth knew other dreams than those
of the foolish young 'masherdom' one meets in the train every morning,
or that he has married a wife for other than purely 'masculine' reasons.

These matters I do not mind leaving in the form of a postulate--let them
be granted: but that every man has at one time or another had the craze
for saving the world I will not assume. Narcissus took it very early,
and though he has been silent concerning his mission for some time, and
when last we heard of it had considerably modified his propaganda, he
still cherishes it somewhere in secret, I have little doubt; and one may
not be surprised, one of these days, to find it again bursting out 'into
sudden flame.'

His spiritual experience has probably been the deepest and keenest of
his life. I do not propose to trace his evolution from Anabaptism to
Agnosticism. The steps of such development are comparatively familiar;
they have been traced by greater pens than mine. The 'means' may vary,
but the process is uniform.

Whether a man deserts the ancestral Brahminism that has so long been
'good enough for his parents,' and listens to the voice of the Buddhist
missionary, or joins Lucian in the seat of the scornful, shrugging at
augur and philosopher alike; whether it is Voltaire, or Tom Paine, or
Thomas Carlyle, or Walt Whitman, or a Socialist tract, that is the
emancipator, the emancipation is all one.

The seed that is to rend the rock comes in all manner of odd, and often
unremembered, ways; but somehow, it is there; rains and dews unnoticed
feed it; and surely, one day the rock is rent, the light is pouring in,
and we are free! It is often a matter of anguish that, strive as we may,
it is impossible to remember what helping hand it was that sowed for us.
Our fickle memory seems to convict us of ingratitude, and yet we know
how far that sin is from us; and how, if those sowers could but be
revealed to us, we would fall upon their necks, or at their feet.

I talked of this one day with Narcissus, and some time after he sent me
a few notes headed 'Spiritual Pastors,' in which he had striven to
follow the beautiful example set by Marcus Aurelius, in the anxiously
loving acknowledgment with which he opens his meditations. I know he
regarded it as miserably inefficient; but as it does actually indicate