Page:Randolph, Paschal Beverly; Eulis! the history of love.djvu/166

Rh very soul; this, be it known, being possible without the slightest guilt of a sensual character, for such is not always essential to the attraction of the vital life of a full soul by an empty cormorantic one. It was from the abundance of these she-fiends who clustered round me, that for a time a semi-libertinish odor attached itself to my name; because, being foiled in their desperate game and diabolic intent, they generally went off and took sweet revenge, à la Mrs. Potiphar, and scandalized me far and near, right and left; cyprians, vampires, ghouls, all!—without a single exception!—penniless adventuresses, who came to learn of me how to victimize mankind, because I knew all the higher, white, as well as the lower, and black, magic, and they panted like the hart after the brooklets for the information they knew I alone, if I chose, which I did not, impart, but dismissed them empty as they came. It is a curious circumstance of my life that the worst foes I ever made were, 1st. The people to whom I lent money; and, 2d. Those whom I refused to initiate into the mystical secrets adverted to above; for the fellow who invited me to Massillon, after the Boston fire, finding I would not instruct him how to be a greater scoundrel than Nature made him, or God intended, perjured what soul he had, and thereby extorted nearly all I had saved from the fiery wreck two months before. The old "Man" of the Letter and young girl notoriety, also turned upon me for identical reasons. The Ranks of "Reformers" are thickly strewn with unprincipled males, and females, too, and I have been "done" to the tune of thousands by adventuresses of that peculiar ilk, as in the La Hue case detailed in the book called "My Curious Life;" and in the case of "La Blondette," of the "Woman's Book."

So much for victimization through magnetisme mauvais, to say nothing of another instance where, through a cleverly morphined pint of ale—"Bitter beer" it proved—my mother's only son was relieved of some hundreds of dollars; compelled to execute a will, and acknowledge a fact which never existed, by the persuasive eloquence of a six-barrelled revolver in the hands of a male, and a four-barrelled one in the pocket of a thieving she-zingara. I therefore could pity the Man. 3d. If you turn to the section of the