the colossal fortune which he had but to stretch forth his hand and
grasp, refused to seize the unlimited power which his genius had laid at
his feet, and used his unparalleled discovery for a purpose so eccentric,
so wildly unpractical, so utterly beyond the pale of waking life, that to
any ordinary man he must have seemed a lunatic lost in an endless dream
of bedlam. And to this day I cannot, without a nervous thrill, think how
the desire of all the ages, the ideal that has been the loadstar for
thousands of philosophers, savants, inventors, prophets, and dreamers,
was actually realized upon the earth; and yet of all its fifteen hundred
million inhabitants but a single one knew it, possessed it, controlled
it--and he would not reveal it, but hoarded and used his knowledge for
the accomplishment of the craziest design that ever took shape in a human
brain.

Now, to be more specific. Of Stonewall's antecedents I know very little.
I only know that, in a moderate way, he was wealthy, and that he had no
immediate family ties. He was somewhere near thirty years of age, and
held the diploma of one of our oldest universities. But he was not, in a
general way, sociable, and I never knew him to attend any of the reunions
of his former classmates, or to show the slightest interest in any of the
events or functions of society, although its doors were open to him
through some distant relatives who were widely connected in New York, and
who at times tried to draw him into their circle. He would certainly have
adorned it, but it had no attraction for him. Nevertheless he was a
member of the Olympus Club, where he frequently spent his evenings. But
he made very few acquaintances even there, and I believe that except
myself, Jack Ashton, Henry Darton, and Will Church, he had no intimates.
And we knew him only at the club. There, when he was alone with us, he
sometimes partly opened up his mind, and we were charmed by his variety
of knowledge and the singularity of his conversation. I shall not