there was an evil spirit in the world seeking whom
he might devour. But little did she dream, when she stopped her
spinning-wheel to think for a moment of the gallant young lover who
wooed her so ardently, that the glance of his eye was lighted with the
flame of eternal fire, and that the fond words of love he spoke were hot
breathings from the regions of the accursed. Poor Gretchen!

But, my dear Madam, this is all a fable. Mephistopheles--the real,
vital, moving Mephistopheles--has outlived Goethe, and will outlast the
very memory of the unhappy heroine of his noble poem. He walks the
streets to-day as fresh and persuasive as when, in ophidian form, he
haunted that lovely garden which is said to have once stood near the
banks of the Euphrates, and there beguiled the mother of mankind. Your
friend Asmodeus--albeit not the quondam friend of that name for whose
especial amusement he unroofed so many houses in the last century, when
he was suffering from severe lameness--has a discerning eye to pierce
his many disguises. He does not walk our streets now-a-days in red
tights or with tinsel eyes; he does not limp about with a sardonic
laugh; nor could you see the cloven hoof which is said to betray his
identity. Were such the case, the little street-boys would point him
out, and the daily papers, with which his friend Dr. Faustus had so much
to do in their origin, would record his movements with greater eagerness
than they do the comings and goings of generals and governors. No, my
dear Madam, he assumes no such striking costumes. But he brushes by you
in your daily walks, he sits beside you in the car, the theatre, and
even in the church, in respectable, fashionable attire. Frank dickers
with him in his counting-room, Tommy chases him in the play-ground, Mrs.
Asmodeus makes him a fashionable call, and--God help us all!--we
sometimes find him sitting domiciliated at our hearthstones. He changes
like the wizard we used to read of in our wonderful fairy books, who was
an ogre one moment and a mouse the next. He is more potent than the
philosopher's stone; for that changed everything into gold only, while
he becomes, at will, all the ores and alloys of creation. Fortunatus's
wishing-cap and Prince Hussein's tapestry were baby toys to him. They
whisked their owners away to the place where they wished, at the moment,
to be. He is ubiquitous.

He lurks under the liberty-cap of the goddess whose features are stamped
in the shini