fickleness, one evening when he had found me at work on my Ambitious Book,
reducing to rule and measure the Laws of Nature.

"It is not fickleness," said he,--"it is necessity."

"Necessity! Explain yourself."

"I seek to find what I have not found," said he; it is my necessity to
seek it, and among the young; and disappointed in one, I turn to the
other. Necessity again. But find it at last I must."

"I suppose you mean what the young usually seek in the young; and if, as
you said the other day, you have left love behind you, you now wander back
to re-find it."

"Tush! If I may judge by the talk of young fools, love may be found
every day by him who looks out for it. What I seek is among the rarest of
all discoveries. You might aid me to find it, and in so doing aid
yourself to a knowledge far beyond all that your formal experiments can
bestow."

"Prove your words, and command my services," said I, smiling somewhat
disdainfully.

"You told me that you had examined into the alleged phenomena of animal
magnetism, and proved some persons who pretend to the gift which the
Scotch call second sight to be bungling impostors. You were right. I
have seen the clairvoyants who drive their trade in this town; a common
gipsy could beat them in their own calling. But your experience must
have shown you that there are certain temperaments in which the gift of