CHAPTER XXIII.
THE "BOOK OF UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD" It is fitting that a few words should be said about the writer of the "Book of Universal Brotherhood." Sylvanus Stone, having graduated very highly at the London University, had been appointed at an early age lecturer to more than one Public Institution.

He had soon received the professorial robes due to a man of his profound learning in the natural sciences, and from that time till he was seventy his life had flowed on in one continual round of lectures, addresses, disquisitions, and arguments on the subjects in which he was a specialist.

At the age of seventy, long after his wife's death and the marriages of his three children, he had for some time been living by himself, when a very serious illness--the result of liberties taken with an iron constitution by a single mind--prostrated him.
During the long convalescence following this illness the power of contemplation, which the Professor had up to then given to natural science, began to fix itself on life at large.

But the mind which had made of natural science an idea, a passion, was not content with vague reflections on life.

Slowly, subtly, with irresistible centrifugal force--with a force which perhaps it would not have acquired but for that illness--the idea, the passion of Universal Brotherhood had sucked into itself all his errant wonderings on the riddle of existence.