"Well," said I, smiling, "you must not blame him for his not
reaching at once and per saltum your position. He has been more
deliberate in stripping himself. Yet he has come on pretty well.
You ought not to despair of him. I wonder at what point he is now."

"You may ask him to-morrow," said he, "for I am expecting him here
to spend a few weeks with me. At whatever point he may be in these
days of 'progress,' as they are called, he does not know that I am
already arrived at the ne plus ultra; for my letters to him were
yet briefer and rarer than to you: and I never touched on these
topics. Where would have been the use of asking counsel of such an
oracle?"

I said I should be glad to see him. "But I shall be still better
pleased to hear from you, why you are dissatisfied with any such
system as his; and especially why you say he ought in consistency to
go much farther."

"I am far from saying that my reasons will be satisfactory, but I
will endeavor, if you wish it, to justify my opinion."

"I shall certainly expect no less," replied I. "You are strangely
altered, if you are willing to assert without attempting to prove;
and if you were altered, I am not. When will you let me hear you?"

"O, in a day or two, when I have had time to put my thoughts on
paper; but, if I mistake not, some of the most important points will
be discussed before that, for Fellowes, I hear, is a very
knight-errant of 'spiritualism,' and it is a thousand to one but he