ubtless a good likeness of the mask he
wore at city club-houses and family-dinners,--but the man as you knew
him _here_, how little does it resemble! As for the Chinese cabinet
which stands between the windows, it has associations, no doubt, but it
is sadly out of repair. Those pink tiles about the fireplace may be
interesting to antiquaries; but I rather prefer the blue variety, as
corresponding to the mental state in which their infinitely pretentious
subjects and execrable drawing always put me."

The lightness of speech was painfully forced. Vannelle turned to me and
said, slowly,--

"Have you been here before?"

"No."

"Has any one described to you this house or its contents?"

"No."

"Then thought has been conveyed from mind to mind in unconditioned
purity. It is as I had supposed. We are brothers forever."

The next day, after an early breakfast, Vannelle summoned me to the
study. I glanced distrustfully at the confusion of the room, which
seemed in strange contrast with the exquisitely neat and even
fashionable attire of its proprietor. A smile of proud pity touched the
lips of Vannelle, as he seemed to divine my thought. Then, as if I had
read them in letters of light, these words seemed to answer me:--

"Shall we, the stewards and guardians of the highest interests of
mankind, fret our souls at trifles,--we, who are to be instruments in
marshalling the race from slavery and folly to wisdom and freedom?
Behold, in one bound, the hovels and palaces of earth shall be alike,
and, floating free in spiritual space, we will win such dominion as the
highest graduates in saintship dimly perceived, but were never able to
declare!"

These thoughts, energizing the brain of my companion, seemed thrown into
my consciousness with far more distinctness than if they had been
uttered. It was with awe that this mystic correspondence between mind
and mind was made plain to me. One man out of this myriad-bodied
humanity had sought me out, and in his presence I was never more to be
alone. The gigantic shadow of self passed from me; I was as clay in the
potter's hands!

At length Herbert spoke.

"Our work in this world is determined for us; mine is allotted to
me,--not by my own choice. I return to this house never to leave it till
I go to join my father, with his great work more nearly completed than
when it came to my hands. At that table he died, with some glimpses of
the promised land whither he tended,--where he