missed a maiden since he could walk, and lay in wait to wrest his
tribute of glance and blush from every one that passed, lo! he had
changed all that, and Saint Anthony in an old master looks not more
resolutely 'the other way' than he, his very thoughts crushing his flesh
with invisible pincers. No more softly-scented missives lie upon his
desk a-mornings; and, instead of blowing out the candle to dream of
Daffodilia, he opens his eyes in the dark to defy--the Dweller on the
Threshold, if haply he should indeed already confront him.

One thrilling piece of news in regard to the latter he was unable to
conceal. He read it out to me one flushed morning:--

'_I--have--seen--him--and--am--his--master_,'

wrote the 'guru,' in answer to his neophyte's half fearful question.
Fitly underlined and sufficiently spaced, it was a statement calculated
to awe, if only by its mendacity. I wonder if that chapter of Bulwer's
would impress one now as it used to do then. It were better, perhaps,
not to try.

The next news of these mysteries was the conclusion of them. When so
darkly esoteric a body begins to issue an extremely catchpenny 'organ,'
with advertisements of theosophic 'developers,' magic mirrors, and
mesmeric discs, and also advertises large copies of the dread symbol of
the Order, 'suitable for framing,' at five shillings plain and seven and
sixpence coloured, it is, of course, impossible to take it seriously,
except in view of a police-court process, and one is evidently in the
hands of very poor bunglers indeed. Such was the new departure in
propaganda instituted by a little magazine, mean in appearance, as the
mouthpieces of all despised 'isms' seem to be, with the first number of