nd vigorous carriage. He was a great favorite
with the ladies, as clergymen are apt to be, and consequently never
lacked for delicate and appetizing sustenance. He was esteemed,
self-respectful, and happy; and all these things tend to good health and
good looks. I propose to make myself famous as the Gibbon of the decline
and fall of this reverend gentleman, once so honorably established on
the everlasting hills of Orthodoxy, and now so overthrown and trampled
under foot by the Alaric of Spiritualism. I do not expect, indeed, that
anybody will take warning by my friend's sad history; nor do I insist
that people in general would find it advantageous to learn much wisdom
from the experience of others; for it is very clear, that, if we
attempted only what our neighbors or our fathers had succeeded in doing,
we should kill all chance of variety or improvement. It would be a
stupidly wise world; there would be no sins, and, very possibly, no
virtues; instead of "Everything happens," it would be "Nothing happens."
Believing and hoping, therefore, that Dr. Potter's calamities will not
be the smallest check upon any person who shall feel disposed to follow
in his footsteps, I present the story to the public, not at all as a
lesson, but merely as an item of curious information.

Oddly enough, it was on that day of delusions, the first of April, that
I stumbled into the Doctor's revival of the age of miracles. I had been
engaged for three months on a geological survey in a Western Territory,
during which time I had received very brief and vague news from the
little city which was then my place of abode, and had not even had
a hint of the signs and wonders which there awaited my astonished
observation. Reaching home, I made it my first business to call on my
reverend friend; for the Doctor, it must be known, was one of my most
valued intimates, had baptized me, had counselled me, had travelled with
me in foreign lands; we had many interests, many sympathies in common,
and no differences except with regard to the extent of the Flood, the
date of the Creation, and other matters of small personal importance.
I found him in his study, surrounded by those seven hundred and odd
volumes, the learning and excellent spirit of which gave to his sermons
such a body of venerable divinity, such a bouquet of savory eloquence.
He was walking to and fro rapidly, studying a slip of manuscript with an
air of serious ecstasy. He did not look up until