Once on a time, before the dark catalogue of vices was made complete by the
wicked inventions of men, or the evil made to counterbalance the good in
the world, the Arch Enemy of mankind, deeply sensible of the vantage-ground
occupied by the antagonistic Being, and anxiously casting about him for the
means of securing an equilibrium of power, called around him a small
company, consisting of those of his Infernal subjects whom he had
previously noted for their excellence, in subtility and devilish invention,
and, after fully explaining his wants and wishes to his keenly appreciating
auditory, made proclamation among them, that the Demon who should invent a
new vice, which, under the name and guise of Pastime, should be best
calculated to seduce men from the paths of virtue, pervert their hearts,
ruin them for earth and educate them for hell, should be awarded a crown of
honor, with rank and prerogative second only to his own. He then, with many
a gracious and encouraging word to incite in them a spirit of emulation,
and nerve them for exertion in the important enterprise thus set before
them, dismissed them, to go forth among men, observe, study, and come again
before him on a designated time, to report the results of their respective
doings, and submit them to his decision. Eager to do the will of their lord
and Lucifer; as well as to gain the tempting distinctions involved in his
award, the commissioned, fiend-group dispersed, and scattered themselves
over the earth, which was understood to be their field of operations. And,
after noting, as long as they chose, all the different phases of human
society, the secret inclinations of those composing it, their follies,
weaknesses, and points most vulnerable to temptation, they each returned to
the dark dominions whence they came, to cogitate in retirement, concoct and
reduce to form those schemes for securing the great object in view, which
their observations and discoveries on earth had suggested.