ime was when your
natural philosophers were persecuted as wizards by Church and State.
Even the mathematician is defined by an old lexicographer to be '_Magus
daemonum invocator_'; and I cannot forget that all that is of honor and
respect to-day is but the actual of a once despised ideal."

I really marvelled at my own audacity in presuming to question the words
of this distinguished and excellent gentleman. Indeed, it was
particularly surprising, because (if I knew myself) I precisely agreed
with him. But there is a certain waywardness in my composition, which
loves to puncture an inflated conventionality, even when I myself am
most conventional.

In the mean time the Treasurer, taking the President's key with his own,
had opened the Safe. I looked in and beheld coffers of lead and oak,
nooks and pigeon-holes covered and sealed with the College seal, little
cells of glass which appeared to hold documents of the utmost
importance, and, in short, whatever might best defy the injuries of
time. The weighty book which registered the contents of the Safe was
opened before me. I was told to write the number assigned to the
manuscript, to describe its present condition, and to indicate its
destination. This I carefully did, and was about to confide my charge to
its long oblivion.

"Stay!" said the President. "You have forgotten the mottoes! Here is
only one; and it is our rule that every deposit in the Mather Safe be
distinguished by three, in as many languages.

'_Alteri Saeculo_.'

The selection is good, though it has already been adopted by a
Massachusetts statesman. It is now for you to supply two others."

Singular as it may appear, this sudden call to perform a trifling office
which I had not anticipated, filled me with a conflict of emotions. In
choosing another's words, I seemed to indorse or repudiate the strange
matter with which they were to be associated. I thought of Vannelle's
wondrous language, of Clifton's exhilaration, and of the vivid buoyancy
with which my spirit had striven to rise. I even groped for some phrase
which might hint what delicate aerial impressions had tended to condense
the soul on the supreme point of spiritual ecstasy. But memory was a
blank when I demanded words for this seeming-glorious fact in the
experience of humanity. Success was made impossible by the very
intensity of the effort to summon an appropriate message to be dropped
over the abyss of Time. I was confident that there