doubt both men and their reasonings till I meet them in that
truthful medium."

"Perhaps your faith in the ideal is deeper than you are aware," said
my friend. "You are at least a democrat; and methinks no scanty
share of such faith is essential to the adoption of that creed."

Among the characters who had elicited these remarks were most of the
noted reformers of the day, whether in physics, politics, morals, or
religion. There is no surer method of arriving at the Hall of
Fantasy than to throw one's-self into the current of a theory; for,
whatever landmarks of fact may be set up along the stream, there is
a law of nature that impels it thither. And let it be so; for here
the wise head and capacious heart may do their work; and what is
good and true becomes gradually hardened into fact, while error
melts away and vanishes among the shadows of the ball. Therefore
may none who believe and rejoice in the progress of mankind be angry
with me because I recognized their apostles and leaders amid the
fantastic radiance of those pictured windows. I love and honor such
men as well as they.

It would be endless to describe the herd of real or self styled
reformers that peopled this place of refuge. They were the
representatives of an unquiet period, when mankind is seeking to
cast off the whole tissue of ancient custom like a tattered garment.
Many of then had got possession of some crystal fragment of truth,
the brightness of which so dazzled them that they could see nothing
else in the wide universe. Here were men whose faith had embodied
itself in the form of a potato; and others whose long beards had a
deep spiritual significance. Here was the abolitionist, brandishing