“Does this soul life have bodily sense after death?” I again venture a
second question.
“Yes, and bodily sustenance in the air, where is body material, tho’
invisible.”
I clasp my hands to my head, and rush out of the room. But close behind
me is Savant, who is pleased to wish more acquaintance.
I overcome my awe, but do not care to inquire on abstruse subjects. We
go out into the street, and traverse its length before I am attracted by
a special diversion. Entering a hall to rest, we are witness, to me, of
an utterly, and at first inconceivable, exhibit, unheard of before
novelty. It is the paradoxic act of a Concert, or Opera, without
sound—seen and not heard. Upon the stage are rows of lights
(reflections) graded in size like the string of a harp. Raising and
lowering these in varying figure by skilful players constituted the
performance. The changing (not unison) melodies in grave or gay parts,
or intermingling, swaying my emotions. I lean back in rapture.
I am studied by my escort, who has been addicted thus, since first he
looked at me.
The green sward beneath our feet, as on all floors, prevents the
unpleasant custom of stamping. Soon the walls moved in and out,
portraying drama. A row of graded boys and girls also, carrying dolls in
wickers that they stood up against the walls, bowed their heads and
waved their hands in pantomime melody. Marching away, the boys carried
the dolls.
We were quite diverted, laughed heartily, stamping on the sward floor,
that produced no sound.
“We will tell Mae about this,” I remarked. “Let’s go home and send her
here.”
We hurried to the palace to find her under a divan with her head out,
though covered by the flowing robe of a doll (mother bunch) into which
her hands had been made. Charley has to keep the people away, who are
greatly mystified as interested, while he is asking questions, answered
by bowing or head shaking of the sorceress.
Suddenly he answers for the doll in ventriloquism, from which they back
in amazement.
When it is over and Mae released, so great is their awe of us, I seek to
enhance it. I take my watch and convince them it is alive.
This quite overcomes them. I turn to see Charley, slowly at first, then
swifter nod his head up and down, as tho’ some unusual resolve was
engrossing his calculations, soon I find out. Coming around to me, he
says: “I feel a call in my soul to initiate this people to serve our
God. I will take this almighty dollar,” suiting in action, he goes
through some wizard tricks.
We are tired before they. “Do tell us some more,” they ask.
The next day they are still curious, and keep us engaged in exhibit.
We advert to our railroads, telephones, etc., to their confusion, as we
have no samples. Catching in their perplexity some similarity to their
own achievements, they bring forward and strive to teach us how they
move articles by a _solution_. Chairs and street cars in their wizard
propulsion are solved.
“Is it a vegetable or mineral?”
“It is animal.”
Their explanation as greatly confounded us.
“We get it from a fish, which Savant found when he was last over the
ice. He saw the ice strangely cracking to find the queer fish. Grasping
it, there was an explosion of sound. He brought some home, but they are
hard to raise.” Finding us continue in solicitude to understand, they
treat us in exchange of our revelations. Our story reminds them of one
to match it.
One day explaining to Robet how Unit ladies make themselves
young-looking by cosmetics and pencils, she says briskly, “I will take
you to-morrow where they make themselves old and wise-looking. You will
be pleased; it is a fine city.”
After dinner we go. Arriving, I see the houses are crackled in straight
or curved lines of beautiful design. Lines are the fashion.
The costume was striped in pattern. The sward carpet was stems in
graceful arrangement.
The table for light refreshments was a single piece, curving in rings
from top-vase to cake and lower fruit-trays down to numberless seals,
all curls of its octopus dimensions.
As Robet said, the special fad in face garniture of the ladies, as well
as the gents, was aged penciling in lines. The marks of wisdom sit
quaintly on young brows. Drooping mouths are traced to upward curve. Sad
eyes smile; laughing are deepened in thought.
The ribbon-dressed babies are ribboned into similar hammocks, to be
swung back and forth.
Their mode of worship at court was to stand in straight lines, like
soldiers of God.
Their games are sticks (kindergarten) which they also work into
ingenious devises of cabinets and stands. The arches of apartments
decorated thus.
Their adieu was straightening of the fingers.
When on our way home, I kiss Robet. My statue sense is wearing away.
Still yet, I seem to see the past and future. Interior of minds. An
aura-cathode light clarifies. I ask; to answer; my own questions.
“Are spirits before birth individuals?”
“No, only in bulk, combining chemically at birth.”
“Dangers in this life, are there dangers in the next?”
“There are.” I listen to myself statue like.
At last I ask Savant, “What is it?” He is puzzled as I, and questions me
on my church faith. I tell him about Adam and Jesus; the latter to tell
us all mysteries, when he comes in the clouds. He is intensely
interested. I get my bible and read to him day after day.
Much affected one day, he looks up to ask: “May not he the God have sent
this upon you to make you his second forerunner?”
Is the secret solved? Am I the herald-searchlight to His path?
(And is he—the Savant—my mission aid)? Near by me, concealed by
art-screen, I hear a sob, and see a yellow gleam of hair drop on a
loving shoulder. Saucy sobs up to a face, thinking deeply. “Cholly,”
coaxing, “what shall we do—will she go up into the sky?”
A jerk of the shoulder straightens up the head, and sobers the grotesque
grief of its face. “No, you do not know her. She is smart, I allow, but
not so smart as she thinks.” (I feel so funny as I listen). “She is weak
yet from her illness is all.”
“O!” ejaculates Saucy as she relapses to her usual self.
Something rustles under my feet. I pick up a piece of American
newspaper. Saucy says behind me, “That was around my lunch mamma put up.
She is still looking, I suppose,” deeply sighing.
I carefully read each precious word. A short but torn excerpt on science
contains this: “I said one good thing of the soul. That it was
electrified after death.”
I am at sea. It was not Savant’s lore, but my father’s, who had deceived
me. I go to him with the scrap. He reads and smiles, then takes up a
leaf near him. Holding over it a microscope, I see on it a picture of
cloud lightening taking a spirit to the sky. A wielder of that
lightening concealed afar off. I am at sea again.
I take to studying the leaves myself, seeing how useless to question
Savant.
Charley and Mae too study with me. Still, the latter jealously watches
Savant. Whose modes and agencies are new. Though I see magnetism appear
at times, I cannot tell how produced (he works in an alcove one side).
Every morning I am a fixture here, studying, marking a place on the
register to visit in the afternoon. So safe am I, now a citizen, I often
go alone. Charmed as “Van Winkle,” stay long away.
I am surprised they show no solicitude. Mae one time is absent a week.
Alarmed I go to Savant. He takes the register telephones of her
position. Then in a shining leaf shows me in picture what has passed to
her. I feel to get up and hug him. But hug Charley who is come. “You had
better go after her,” he says. “Why, I know all she does.” “Yes, but you
should direct what she does,” wisely.
I look to the leaf. A new impress is coming. Behind her as she is
backing unconsciously toward it, is an open crevasse trench in use by a
workman. I startle the air with a scream to Savant, “Call me,” says
Charley, authoritatively, who looks on the plate, to call Savant
himself. The latter seeing the dilemma, without leaving his laboratory,
touches a button, that closes the crevasse behind Mae, as she steps on
it safely. I hug Charley convulsively.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Logic is logic. That’s what _I_ say.”—_O. W. H._
My husband, always so loving, so bonny and practical, has become sober
and long-faced, no shadow of a smile. No hop, skip and jump, like Saucy
Mae. Even she he passes absent-minded. If she pulls his sleeve, he does
not heed, so she follows him around to find what the matter is. As she
makes a body-guard, I leave her to watch him.
He has just come out of Savant’s room, absorbed in some papers, he
carefully carries in his hand, assorting them as he noiselessly walks
along, the genius behind failing to get a peep at their contents.
Hearing me approach, he hastens to conceal them in the shrubbery,
disappearing himself.
Saucy having lost him, takes up with me, and we run out and up the
street, looking in at various places. Seeing familiar faces in a crowd
at an opera house, we join them.
Seeing us, the crowd gives way, and gets up in front, where we become
the cynosure of the audience (the performance not having commenced), who
look from us to the stage, as if in connection, enigmatical to us.
Puzzled no longer, we see Charley come out and take position as speaker.
Our mouths as well as eyes open in wonder. What will happen next?
With preoccupied bearing, he explains our discovery of iron, that raised
man from savagery to civilization, builds ships and houses. It was well
we were before him and appreciated his discourse (the home reminiscence
starts the old pain) for the audience do not understand a word he says,
but connecting his gestures, they oddly imitate the latter.
He turns to us and changes to an abstruse subject, not at all congenial
to him.
“Americans concede three natures to man and five senses. I will show him
to possess seven natures, each represented by a sense.” We are quite
attentive. “Touch, first, by his palm, denoting his acquiring nature.” I
clap my hands. “Taste, second, by his tongue, denoting his sustenance
nature.” I muse to myself, do we kiss because we are cannibals, and
would like to eat the one we kiss?
“Social, third, by his lips, denoting his impress nature.” O yes, that
is why we kiss. “Vibrative, fourth, his ear, denoting his emotional
nature.” I think him quite a phrenologist. Mae is some dazed.
“Atmospheric, fifth, by his nose, denoting his steam nature.” Mae sends
up a prolonged shout.
“Solar, sixth, by his eyes, denoting his mental nature.” I shake my
finger at him.
“Soul, by his hair, denoting electric spirit nature.” I come to my feet,
raising both hands, as he proceeds.
“The hair as covering or ornament of the head has not received
sufficient dignity. As telegraph lines of divine construction communes
with God, raises its value.” I place my hands on each of his shoulders,
as he finishes impressively.
“Above the mind, summit of senses, its own power only has revealed it
even to sight.”
Remembering him coming out of Savant’s studio, I am not surprised.
But I continue the thread. Does this theory contravene the immortality
of the soul, teach dissolution with the body? O, no.
The operator back of the telegraph machine does not integrate with the
machine. The telegraph wires down do not signify the operator to be in
the same condition.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
My spirit lies, with dreamful eyes,
Beneath the walls of Paradise.
I catch sight of Show Off coming leisurely toward us. Has he caught the
last part of the lecture, and is he, too, of a studious disposition. For
raising his eyes intelligently, he continues the discourse. “Still we
are made of dust!” (What can _he_ know of dust?) “Birds,” going on, “are
made of trees, for their feathers are little branches. Fishes are of
waterbirth—their scales little drops. Beasts of grass, with coats of
grass fur. Sheep of snow wool.” I am wool gathering. “Reptiles have clod
skins. We are only of the dust—marble, granite or otherwise.” I decide
to read him Genesis some day.
But now he speaks up more blithe. “We are going to-morrow to Aunt
Roban’s house, where my mother Roba is, to get her,” winking his eye at
Saucy.
We are delighted as we return, all together. I look at the streets and
people, not knowing I shall see them no more forever.
The next morning, that is getting very late, we are placed in an open
sleigh, to try the new snow, in making the trip. As it is a gala day,
called Inning Day, so everybody is out. “Will everybody be at Roban’s?”
I ask Show Off, who is holding Saucy by my side.
“Yes, and more too, for the Traveler will be there,” he replies moodily.
“Who is he, and where does he travel?”
“Up in the sky on his air star.”
“And what does he do up there?” I smile.
“He fishes below with a line.”