wasted his youth. My
knowledge of the secret committed for eighty years to the Mather Safe
made me the only person to whom Clifton could freely write. At some
private inconvenience, I admitted a tolerably full intercourse with my
new correspondent. He declared that the sympathy of a man in active
affairs was invaluable to a solitary student like himself: he hoped, so
he said, to see through my eyes the facts of life. It was not difficult
to discern the cause of the sad indecision which afflicted him. To state
the case roughly, he had too much knowledge for his will. Busy people
reason by instinct with sufficient accuracy, but with this man no
conviction was for five minutes free from the probe of a metaphysical
argument. Yet from glimpses I had obtained of that overwhelming System
of Things elaborated by the two Vannelles, I could understand the
condition in which its partial apprehension had left Clifton. The more I
considered certain statements, authoritatively made in the portion of
the manuscript I had dared to read, the firmer grew my belief that years
of concentrated thought and fervent speculation had indeed illuminated,
to these men, dim outlines of most august truths,--truths which some
possible, although very distant, advancement of physical science might
inductively realize. But I had made out to dismiss the matter, with the
consideration that whatever it concerned me to know could be tied to no
one method of pursuit,--and, so reflecting, returned contentedly to the
multiplex concerns with which I was then occupied. Clifton, on the
contrary, having always struggled loftily along the same narrow sunbeam,
was utterly unable to accept such available knowledge of a principle as
is sufficient to direct our activity,--he must ever soar skyward to gaze
upon the origin of its authority, until, entangled in a web of
contradictions, he fell impotent to earth.

Week by week, in my city-home, through letters from the minister and
Colonel Prowley, I had been kept informed of the progress of that wild
ferment going on in Foxden. At length the contentious spirit there
evoked seemed ready to summon to trial all ancient and reputable things.
My friends of the protesting minority were surely to be credited with
good Puritan pluck; though there was also something admirable in the
vigor which had marshalled a party for their discomfiture. I began to
think it my duty to visit Clifton; moreover, I was curious to see the
town at th