hat a few words should be said about the writer of the
"Book of Universal Brotherhood."

Sylvanus Stone, having graduated very highly at the London University,
had been appointed at an early age lecturer to more than one Public
Institution. He had soon received the professorial robes due to a man of
his profound learning in the natural sciences, and from that time till he
was seventy his life had flowed on in one continual round of lectures,
addresses, disquisitions, and arguments on the subjects in which he was a
specialist. At the age of seventy, long after his wife's death and the
marriages of his three children, he had for some time been living by
himself, when a very serious illness--the result of liberties taken with
an iron constitution by a single mind--prostrated him.

During the long convalescence following this illness the power of
contemplation, which the Professor had up to then given to natural
science, began to fix itself on life at large. But the mind which had
made of natural science an idea, a passion, was not content with vague
reflections on life. Slowly, subtly, with irresistible centrifugal
force--with a force which perhaps it would not have acquired but for that
illness--the idea, the passion of Universal Brotherhood had sucked into
itself all his errant wonderings on the riddle of existence. The single
mind of this old man, divorced by illness from his previous existence,
pensioned and permanently shelved, began to worship a new star, that with
every week and month and year grew brighter, till all other stars had
lost their glimmer and died out.

At the age of seventy-four he had begun his book. Under the spell of his
subject and of advancing age, his extreme inattention to passing matters
became rapidly accentuated. His figure had become almost too publicly
conspicuous before Bianca, finding him one day seated on the roof of his
lonely little top-story flat, the better to contemplate his darling
Universe, had inveigled him home with her, and installed him in a room in
her own house. After the first day or two he had not noticed any change
to speak of.

His habits in his new home were soon formed, and once formed, they varied
not at all; for he admitted into his life nothing which took him from the
writing of his book.

On the afternoon following Hilary's dismissal of the little model, being
disappointed of his amanuensis, Mr. Stone had waited for an hour, reading
his pages over and