“I presume I understand the significance of your similitude,” I replied, a little annoyed at this inopportune indulgence of the pastoral privilege.  “You would imply the dangerous tendency of a certain sort of philosophical speculation; and so far we doubtless agree.  Yet I ought to say, that, in cases where personal investigation is possible, I would take neither popular clamor nor learned dogmatism as conclusive evidence against any writer’s honesty and usefulness.  With the vulgar, genius has always seemed a sort of madness; and should a man rise preeminent above the teachers of his generation, his wisdom would appear to them as foolishness.”

A change came over the face of Clifton as I said these words.  It was as if a mask had fallen.  Perchance he had wished to appear to me in that character of instructor which he desired some competent person to assume to him.  Now, the relaxed muscles and averted eye only asked the sympathy of an equal.  He spoke with forced, and almost grating, utterance.

“Then you have used experience well enough to know that some minds may bear into the world a light, a knowledge too fine for general perception, too pure for even exceptional recognition.”

“I fully believe it possible,” I said.  “Yonder old Safe, if rumor says true, holds many mystic signals which the past and present could address only to the future,—­signs meaningless, no doubt, to you or me, but which the freemasonry of higher intelligence shall render plain in the time hereafter.”

“And what if I had come,” exclaimed Clifton, eagerly,—­“what if I had come to add to those deposits which are not for this time, but which may be for other times?  What blame to me, if I am here to do this?  Should we common men, who find a life full of active duties presented to our acceptance,—­should such as we, I say, receive this world as a pageant before which we must sit down and evolve a doctrine?  The conceit of external education is at present too strong to acknowledge a divine element radiating from the depths of the soul, and finding in the mind only an awkward and imperfect instrument.  Any extravagance is now tolerated, but an extravagance of spirituality; and we find altogether wanting the perception, that, rising from the gross symbols of language, can know the subtile and precious emotion which in a more advanced state of being those symbols might suggest.”

As it was evident that Mr. Clifton was laboring under great nervous excitability, I judged it prudent not to question the sequence of what he said, or even demand that it be made intelligible by further explanation.  Indeed, I was sufficiently occupied in striving to identify this incomprehensible person with my familiar acquaintance, the pastor of the First Church in Foxden.  It occurred to me that something had once been said of Clifton’s connection with that topsy-turvy sodality popularly known as “The Transcendentalists.”  But this was many years ago; and the world always