Idolatry | Page 2

pavement. Having thus asserted your title
to Puritan ancestry, and to the best accommodations the house afforded,
you would approach the desk and write your name in the hotel register.
This done, you would be apt to run your eye over the last dozen arrivals,
on the chance of lighting upon the autograph of some acquaintance, to
be shunned or sought according to circumstances.
Let us suppose, for the story's sake, that such was the gentle reader's
behavior on a certain night during the latter part of May, in the year

eighteen hundred and fifty-three. If now he will turn to the ninety-ninth
page of the register above mentioned, he will remark that the last name
thereon written is, "Doctor Hiero Glyphic. Room 27." The natural
inference is that, unless so odd a name be an assumed one, Doctor
Glyphic occupies that room. Passing on to page one hundred, he will
find the first entry reads as follows "Balder Helwyse, Cosmopolis.
Room 29."
In no trifling mood do we call attention to these two names, and, above
all, to their relative position in the book. Had they both appeared upon
the same page, this romance might never have been written. On such
seemingly frail pegs hang consequences the most weighty. Because
Doctor Glyphic preferred the humble foot of the ninety-ninth page to
the trouble of turning to a leading position on the one hundredth;
because Mr. Helwyse, having begun the one hundredth page, was too
incurious to find out who was his next-door neighbor on the
ninety-ninth, ensued unparalleled adventures, and this account of them.
Our present purpose, by the reader's leave, and in his company, is to
violate Doctor Hiero Glyphic's retirement, as he lies asleep in bed. Nor
shall we stop at his bedside; we mean to penetrate deep into the
darksome caves of his memory, and to drag forth thence sundry
odd-looking secrets, which shall blink and look strangely in the light of
discovery;--little thought their keeper that our eyes should ever behold
them! Yet will he not resent our, intrusion; it is twenty years ago,--and
he lies asleep.
Two o'clock sounds from the neighboring steeple of the Old South
Church, as we noiselessly enter the chamber,--noiselessly, for the hush
of the past is about us. We scarcely distinguish anything at first; the
moon has set on the other side of the hotel, and perhaps, too, some of
the dimness of those twenty intervening years affects our eyesight. By
degrees, however, objects begin to define themselves; the bed shows
doubtfully white, and that dark blot upon the pillow must be the face of
our sleeping man. It is turned towards the window; the mouth is open;
probably the good Doctor is snoring, albeit, across this distance of time,
the sound fails to reach us.

The room is as bare, square, and characterless as other hotel rooms;
nevertheless, its occupant may have left a hint or two of himself about,
which would be of use to us. There are no trunks or other luggage;
evidently he will be on his way again to-morrow. The window is shut,
although the night is warm and clear. The door is carefully locked. The
Doctor's garments, which appear to be of rather a jaunty and knowing
cut, are lying disorderly about, on chair, table, or floor. He carries no
watch; but under his pillow we see protruding the corner of a great
leathern pocket-book, which might contain a fortune in bank-notes.
A couple of chairs are drawn up to the bedside, upon one of which
stands a blown-out candle; the other supports an oblong, coffin-shaped
box, narrower at one end than at the other, and painted black. Too small
for a coffin, however; no human corpse, at least, is contained in it. But
the frame that lies so quiet and motionless here, thrills, when awaked to
life, with a soul only less marvellous than man's. In short, the coffin is a
violin-case, and the mysterious frame the violin. The Doctor must have
been fiddling overnight, after getting into bed; to the dissatisfaction,
perhaps, of his neighbor on the other side of the partition.
Little else in the room is worthy notice, unless it be the pocket-comb
which has escaped from the Doctor's waistcoat, and the shaving
materials (also pocketable) upon the wash-stand. Apparently our friend
does not stand upon much toilet ceremony. The room has nothing more
of significance to say to us; so now we come to the room's occupant.
Our eyes have got enough accustomed to the imperfect light to discern
what manner of man he may be.
Barely middle-aged; or, at a second glance, he might be fifteen to
twenty-five years older. His face retains the form of youth, yet wears a
subtile shadow which we feel might be consistent even