“Yet, Sir,” I said, “you will remember that the time 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 were many apt things which might be said, if I could come at them, as it were, sideways.  In order that I might take them at this advantage, I snatched a letter from my pocket, and began to read.  My eye was soon caught by the impression of a seal that I had once given my wife.  It was a good [woman’s] motto, I jestingly told her; and now it was returned to me at my sorest need.  Six little words of the good Pascal,—­