that the substance from which the great pabulum of life is extracted by
ferment can be found. Possibly, in the attempts at that transmutation of
metals, which I think your own great chemist, Sir Humphry Davy, allowed
might be possible, but held not to be worth the cost of the
process,--possibly, in those attempts, some scanty grains of this
substance were found by the alchemists, in the crucible, with grains of
the metal as niggardly yielded by pitiful mimicry of Nature's stupendous
laboratory; and from such grains enough of the essence might, perhaps,
have been drawn forth, to add a few years of existence to some feeble
graybeard,--granting, what rests on no proofs, that some of the alchemists
reached an age rarely given to man. But it is not in the miserly
crucible, it is in the matrix of Nature herself, that we must seek in
prolific abundance Nature's grand principle,--life. As the loadstone is
rife with the magnetic virtue, as amber contains the electric, so in this
substance, to which we yet want a name, is found the bright life-giving
fluid. In the old goldmines of Asia and Europe the substance exists, but
can rarely be met with. The soil for its nutriment may there be well-nigh
exhausted. It is here, where Nature herself is all vital with youth, that
the nutriment of youth must be sought. Near this spot is gold; guide me
to it."

"You cannot come with me. The place which I know as auriferous is some
miles distant, the way rugged. You can not walk to it. It is true I have
horses, but--"

"Do you think I have come this distance and not foreseen and forestalled
all that I want for my object? Trouble your self not with conjectures how
I can arrive at the place. I have provided the means to arrive at and
leave it. My litter and its bearers are in reach of my call. Give me
your arm to the rising ground, fifty yards from your door."