What man of the masses can this one be, thus heralded by the authorities
of the nation, and what his labor, so commended by the rulers? I glanced
at him mentally again. Perhaps he is laboring for the endowment of some
great literary or benevolent institution, for the building of a national
monument. No. Perhaps he has some theory that thousands of facts must
prove and illustrate; or it may be he is a voracious gatherer of
statistics. The last is the most probable; but the more I mused, the
more the fire burned within me to know more of his mission.

I awaited impatiently his coming. It was on the stroke of the hour
appointed. The object of that interview may not with propriety be
stated, nor the results described; but it may be said that that hour was
the most intensely exciting of any of my professional life, causing the
blood to chill and boil alternately. The business was so peculiar, and
connected with men so exalted in position, and conducted with such
wonderful ability and tact, that now, years after, scarcely a day passes
that my mind does not revert to those hours and do homage to those
transcendent abilities by which it was conducted, till I sometimes think
the possessor of them was an overmatch for Lucifer himself. My eyes
were for the first time opened to the marvellous in his department
of knowledge and art; and the region of impossibility was materially
circumscribed, and the domain of the prince of the powers of the air
extended _ad infinitum_. Into those regions it is not my present purpose
to delve.

After a business acquaintance of several years with Mr. Sidney, I have
learned that he was formerly a rich manufacturer, and that he was nearly
ruined in fortune by the burning of several warehouses in which he had
stored a large amount of merchandise that was uninsured. The owners of