Seth Dene's Revelation, Part I [pp. 175-182]

SETH DENE'S REVELA TION.
Thus, from the very beginning, Dene
took up religion in a spirit of the stern est realism. Every statement of Script ure was accepted by him in its most lit eral sense, and he would have deemed
it something akin to the mysterious sin
against the Holy Ghost to attempt to
soften the rigor of doctrine by the arts
of popular interpretation. I have been
thus circumstantial in speaking of Dene's
peculiarities, because they may serve to
throw some light upon the psychological
phenomena (there are those who will
prefer to class them as purely physiolog ical) which it is the chief object of this
narrative to record.
It was written down in the convenient
"chapter of accidents," to which our ig norance compels us to relegate all those
minor events in the book of life which
we fail to trace to the inexorable law of
cause and effect, that Dene should be
my room - mate. In this circumstance
originated a kind of enforced intimacy,
which gradually matured into friendship.
I was not long in discovering that under
the unattractive exterior of my strange ly constituted comrade were concealed
many sterling qualities, though they were
not of the class that secures college pop ularity.
Before the commencement of our Soph omore year, I had come to understand
that the very characteristics that caused
him to appear at such disadvantage in
his intercourse with others, sprang from a
fine esthetic sense continually distrusted
and repressed under the austere domina tion of a morbidly scrupulous conscience.
His awkwardness and diffidence were the
result of the dim perception of laws of har mony and symmetry to which he strug gled in vain to adjust himself outwardly.
The habit of introspection and merciless
self- criticism had generated an ever haunting consciousness, that precluded
any possibility of the free natural speech
and action that are so gracious and en gaging in those who live a purely ob
jective life, never turning an inward
glance upon the mysteries of their spiritual nature.
From the day of passing his examination up to the period of the revival, Dene
had worked harder than any man not
exceptionally constituted can for any
length of time persist in doing, without
injury to his physical and mental health.
But when the exhausting strain of intense religious enthusiasm, and the labors which a conscience, intolerant of
self-pity, imposed upon a new convert so
terribly in earnest, were added to the
burden of his regular studies, he soon
began to manifest symptoms that seemed to me to menace his reason, if not
his life.
Among the very small number of visitors from outside the college who occasionally called at our rooms, was a young
Italian physician, named Caracoli, who
resided in the village. He had left his
native country in consequence of having
identified himself somewhat too conspicuously with revolutionary politics in
his student days. He possessed talent
enough to have enabled him to attain
the highest rank in his profession, had
he devoted himself to it exclusively.
But an insatiable intellectual curiosity
and a catholic sympathy with every
branch of human knowledge, prevented
this concentration of effort, and constaqtly allured him into new, and often unprofitable, fields of inquiry. When I first
made his acquaintance, his house was
nearly filled with a collection of cats,
rats, snakes, toads, and lizards, for the
purpose of testing a certain theory which
he had adopted in regard to "instinctive
antipathies." At a later period, he shut
himself up for several weeks together in
the apartment he used as a laboratory,
and devoted himself to a series of experiments with a view to re-discovering
the lost poisons of the Borgias. Whenever an impulse of this sort seized him,
every thing but the matter immediately
I872.]
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