without care or order, and covered with dust
and cobwebs. Then he led me into a large
laboratory, of which every part was crammed
with bottles of chemicals, retorts, crucibles,
papers, more old books and pictures, more
strange instruments, and all kinds of learned
litter. A small furnace was at one end of the
room, and beside it a still.

"You see the nature of my employment,"
Mr. Volt began, when he had begged me to be
seated in a tall old-fashioned chair. "My
time is occupied in chemical research. It is a
wide field, sir, a wide field. It is true we
seekers have found neither the philosopher's
stone, nor the elixir vitæ, nor the alcahest;
but in seeking them through speculative chemistry,
we have found the secrets of steam,
gas, electricity. It is good still to keep before
us the three old aims of the alchemists; the
more so, I think, if they never be attained,
since they stimulate search. When we give up
dreaming of wonders yet unrealised, we shall
give up seeking."

"Am I to suppose," I said, " that you have
yourself contributed an important discovery to
science?"

"I don't know. I can scarcely tell," replied
Mr. Volt, hesitating. " I fear it is in advance
of the age." The eyes of the old man assumed
a singular look of fulness, and the pupils became
dilated. " You will probably be sceptical
when I tell you that I have discovered a certain
solvent by which to resolve the being we call
man, at will, into his primitive elements of body
and spirit: allowing the spirit by itself to travel
over the universe, free from the gross trammels
of the fleshly element."

"You do not mean to imply that you can go
out of your body at pleasure?" I asked, doubtful
of Mr. Volt's sanity.

"I do mean no less, and probably more,"
he replied, with composure.

"Surely it is more easy to go out of your
mind," I observed.

"A jest is but a poor answer to a fact
proved by experience. Still I will accept your
very retort as an evidence how plausible my
position really is. If it be so easy as you suppose
for a man to go out of his mind (which, to
me, involves a contradiction in terms, since I
hold the mind to be the man himself), it surely
must be less difficult to suppose he can go out
of his body; which, I take it, is but the external
idea of the man. For my own part I have been
a great traveller, although my external idea
has not left Firworth for many years. I explored
Central Africa long before Livingstone.
I am familiar with the whole tract of Abyssinia,
and have investigated all the territory of Japan.
Dreams, you say? The publishers say the
same. Although I have written volumes on
the subject of my travels, no one will print
them, simply on the ground that I was not
foolish enough to waste time and endanger my
life on long sea voyages, when I could travel
quicker without. I made the first step in
my grand discovery," Mr. Volt went on, and I
saw that argument was out of the question,
"accidentally. Your friend, Mark Stedburn,
who occasionally practises chemistry with me,
was, at my suggestion, combining olefiant gas
and iodine in a peculiar manner over the furnace,
to produce a vapour of iodic ether at a
high temperature with which to experiment.
When heated to three hundred and eighty degrees,
fumes of a pale violet colour and of a
penetrating ethereal odour, rose from the crucible,
dispersing themselves in wreathing clouds
about the room. I remembered at this moment
having made a very important omission in the
directions I had given him, but feared to speak,
as the operation on which he was engaged was
of so delicate and absorbing a nature, that to
disturb him even by a word would have involved
his going through the whole process again. At
the time I wished very strongly that he would
take a certain book from a shelf beside him, and
refer to section two hundred and seventeen,
where he would find the omitted direction.
His back was towards me at the moment, but I
saw him reach down the book and refer to the
place. When he had completed the experiment
successfully, I inquired what had led him
to take down that book? His reply was: ' I
felt you had told me to do so.' Reflection
convinced me that I had unknowingly projected
my mind upon his; and I had reason to believe
that the pale violet vapour had rendered this
easier of accomplishment than under ordinary
circumstances. I thereupon commenced a series
of experiments with a view to ascertain how
far it would be possible to carry out this principle
of the projection of mind. I find it is
first of all needful so to refine the body, by a
course of low vegetable diet, succeeded by a
day's fasting, that the spirit shall withdraw
itself from its outposts and become gradually
detached from the external idea, every part of
which must be brought into abject subjugation
to the will. Then, after inhaling the pale violet
vapour for fifteen minutes, I take a small quantity
of confection from this box, and, remaining
in the heated fumes of the vapour, can distil
the spirit from my body in a pure essence, as
easily as we distil the spirit from any other
earthly body. I thus obtain pure concentrated
mind. In this state I can either travel—not
involuntarily as in dreams, but consciously and
under the direction of my own will—or I can
project my mind on that of another person,
and live in him and direct him for the time
being, while my own body appears to sleep."

"May I ask of what this confection consists?"
I said, very sceptically indeed. Mr.
Volt placed in my hand  a small tortoise-shell
box, containing a dull greenish paste.

"That is the true ' hatchis,' " he explained;
"it is made of many ingredients, but Indian
hemp, and a peculiarly volatile preparation of
opium, are two of its active principles."

"And the vapour?"

"No; that is my secret. But," he continued,
dropping his voice almost to a whisper, " I
meditate a still greater experiment in the projection
of mind than any I have hitherto attempted.
I propose for Mark Stedburn and