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“I thought you had told me all about yourself long ago,” I said. “How is it that you have kept so mum about this experience? I should fancy it must have been a decidedly odd one.”

“It was a very odd one,” replied Hammond,–“the strangest passage, on the whole, I think, in my life. I have never spoken of it, because it is one of those emotional experiences which no man likes to relate unless he is sure of being understood. To tell it to most men would be casting pearls before swine. I have always meant to tell you when a suitable opportunity came up.”

“You know,” he said, when I had signified my eagerness to hear, “that I graduated at Leroy College. It was a little one-horse institution, but blue as a whetstone in its orthodoxy; and with my father, who was a clergyman of a very strait sect and staid views, that fact covered a multitude of shortcomings. I was nineteen when I entered, and consequently twenty when, at the beginning of sophomore year, I came under the charge of Professor Regnier. He was a Frenchman, but spoke English with perfect ease and precision and a very slight accent. At the time I knew him, he was probably sixty. His hair was quite gray, but his mustache and imperial were still dark. It was rumored among the students that he had left his native land for political reasons, having played for too high stakes at the national game of revolution. True or not, the report naturally heightened the interest which his personality had for us.

“He made it his business to know personally all the students in his classes; and as it is not easy for a man of sixty, especially if he is also their teacher, to become really acquainted with students of twenty, the fact may be taken as evidence of his unusual tact. He was, I think, the most fascinating man I ever saw. His insight into character was like magic, his manners were charming, and his Gallic vivacity made him seem like a boy. Gradually, while still remaining to the rest of the students a genial and friendly instructor, he singled out a smaller circle of particular intimates. Of these I was one, and I believe the most trusted.

“Of course we boys were immensely flattered by the partiality of such a man; but equally of course the pursuit of his own pleasure could scarcely have been the motive which impelled him to seek our companionship. It was, in fact, a motive as unselfish as that of the missionary who leaves the comforts and refinements of civilization and exiles himself among savages that he may win them to his faith. He had been a personal friend and disciple of Auguste Comte, then but lately dead, and on coming to America had sought his present employment, not merely as a means of livelihood, but equally for the opportunity it offered for propagating the new gospel among young men. Do you know much about what Positivism is?”

I confessed that I knew next to nothing,–scarcely more than that there was such a thing.

“I shall not bore you with an account of it,” resumed Hammond, “further than to say that it is a scheme for the perfection of the human race. It rejects as idle all theories of superhuman intelligences, and declares the supreme object of the individual love and devotion should be humanity. The rational demonstration of the truth of this system is sought in the course of history, which is claimed to prove Positivism the finality of social evolution. You will find anything else you want to know about it in the books. I dare say you will not be converted; but if you were nineteen instead of twice that, with Hippolyte Regnier to indoctrinate you, I fancy the result would be about what it was in my case.