That a spirit could visit this earth from such a distant planet as
Mars, my wife would not believe for a moment, explain it how I would.
She required a proof, and proof I could have given her had she only
attended to her household duties and kept my pockets in proper repair,
instead of prying into things that did not concern her; beside, was
not the verbal description of my shadowy visitor and his extraordinary
conversation sufficient to convince any one but an obstinate woman that
what I spoke was solid truth?
Why should she imagine that the inordinately hot weather of the past
summer had had such a soporific effect upon me, that, in wooing
Morpheus, I simply _dreamed_ of my visitor?
Why should she think that because I had my spirit flask with me during
my afternoon ramble that I----?--but allow me, my intelligent reader,
to lay my story before _you_, and I think you will bear me out that
there is a foundation in it.
To begin at the beginning.
It was a hot, dreamy day in the middle of August, and I was staying at
the old-fashioned, out-of-the-world, under-the-hill town of Minehead in
Somersetshire. The atmosphere being too hot for sitting indoors, and
the water much too clear for fishing, I thought I would take a stroll
to Horner Woods, which lie under the great hills, just this side of
Stoke Pero, and in the immediate neighbourhood of Dunkery Beacon, which
is precisely one-third of a mile high.
Opening my umbrella and using it as a sunshade, I wandered listlessly
along the two or three miles which intervene between Minehead and my
haunt, and took a long time in reaching the recumbent tree upon which
I loved to sit and sketch or read. A more charming or solitary spot
cannot be found in all the West Country.
The walk leads up a narrow valley, skirted on either side by hills
rising abruptly to a height of many hundred feet, culminating in the
giant Dunkery Beacon, whose bald head, as I have said, breaks the
horizon seventeen hundred feet above sea level. The feet of these giant
hills are clad in trees and underwood of such an impenetrable nature,
that as one walks in the valley and looks up the acclivities, one
can see but a few score yards, and then the mass of wood and foliage
becomes so black and dense that the eye cannot penetrate it.
Of course, as in all western valleys, a bubbling, murmuring trout
stream flows through it towards the sea, into which it falls at the
pretty village of Porlock, some miles distant; and as it twists and
falls from and among the great boulders with which the bed of the
stream is thickly strewn, it is easy to fancy one hears persons
conversing at no great distance, so peculiar is the murmuring noise
of the waters. Perhaps the water has its familiar spirits! Why not?
We know that spirits and water are frequently very intimate with each
other, and produce much talk and idle chatter, and possibly they are
spirit voices that we hear, although we cannot make much sense of them.
It was a fairy spot I had selected, and as I sat on my comfortable seat
on the mossy old fallen monarch of the woods, with my back resting
comfortably against a bough, which gave it the support of an arm-chair,
I could not help imagining that such a spot would just have suited
Robin Hood and his merry men. In fact, I amused myself by peopling the
glade in my imagination.
There--under that great branching oak might rest several mighty casks
of ale, round which the men in Lincoln green would cluster, lying in
various picturesque attitudes, with their bows and arrows hanging
from the branches of surrounding trees, ready to be snatched down
at a moment’s notice in case of any alarm. There--where that patch
of yellow-green grass crept out from the withered oak, I would have
a party of dancers tripping it to pipe and tabour; and down yonder
precipitous path should come the lofty Little John, with a fine deer
across his broad shoulders; while in the arbour formed by those three
hawthorn trees, I could imagine the sturdy form and graceful figure of
Robin himself and the fair Maid Marian. Then Friar Tuck must be among
them; yes, he should have a large horn of ale and----thud!!
“Why, where in the name of fortune came you from?” I cried, as a little
fat man in cassock and hood plumped down on the soft turf beside me.
“Have I the pleasure of addressing his reverence, Friar Tuck?”
“Friar Tuck! No, my friend--never heard of that gentleman. _My_ name is
Friar Bacon.”
“Friar Bacon!” I exclaimed. “Why, surely _you_ never had anything to do
with this jovial company--Robin Hood and his merry men?”
[Illustration: “Just place your hand upon my breast.”--_p. 91._]
But as I swept my arm round to give emphasis to my speech, I perceived,
to my astonishment, that nought but trees and rocks met my view on
every side, my foresters had vanished, and I found myself in the
presence of a short, stout, rubicund monk, who should have been dust
these six hundred years.
“Bacon,” I murmured, looking doubtingly at my visitor; “why, how is it
possible that you, who died, if my memory serves me rightly, ere the
close of the thirteenth century, can be here before me at the end of
the nineteenth? You are joking with me, my friend.”
“Oh no,” replied my visitor, “it is extremely simple. You must know
that I, with many other learned men, have formed a scientific colony,
so to speak, in the planet Mars. We have many among us known to you by
repute. St. Dunstan, Newton, Archimedes, Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo,
Euclid, and many others, are of our company, and right harmoniously we
live together. Live, I say, but of course you will understand I mean
exist, for we have for many ages passed from the flesh, and are now
simply etherealized bodies, or, if you will, spirits!
“You would ask how came we in Mars?
“Well, let it suffice if I inform you, that by the sanction of the
Great Spirit, we, Advancers of Mankind, are allowed a special parole,
as a recompense for our toil on earth, and there in Mars we exist,
instead of perambulating this dense earth of yours, in a spirit form,
till we are required ‘At the Last.’
“Just place your hand upon my breast.”
I did so, but my fingers meeting no resistance, I extended my arm, and
could see my hand emerge beyond the figure as the jolly friar remarked:
“There, you see, I am pure spirit, double distilled, and I trust highly
rectified.
“Well,” he continued, “I have not long to stay, so I will have a short
chat with you, and then, heigh presto! back to my cosy planet. You see
it is only once in two years we get very close to your earth, that is,
at a certain time we are only 35 millions of miles from you, whilst at
another time we are as much as 244 millions of miles away. Therefore
as we travel fast I must not linger long, or I shall be late at our
monthly scientific meeting, which takes place to-morrow.”
I could not refrain from asking him what the planet Mars was like, and
he very civilly informed me that it was prettier than the earth, and
its climate milder; “beside which,” said he--
“The genial seasons are longer; we have a spring of 192 days, and a
summer of 180; whilst the autumn is of 150, and the winter of 147 days’
duration only. A longish year, as you will observe, nearly 690 days;
but then we are so busy and so happy that we do not notice the flight
of time. Time is an object to you mortals, but we philosophers totally
disregard it. If you visited our planet you would find one thing in
particular very trying to you in your present gross form--we have no
atmosphere to speak of.
“We neither eat, drink, nor sleep; require no clothing, that is no
_renewal_ of clothing, for this cassock is the shade of the last
costume I wore when on earth, and will probably last me till the Crack
of Doom; consequently we are enabled to employ the whole of our time in
scientific research.”
“Might I venture to inquire into the nature of your scientific
studies?” I timidly inquired.
“Why certainly,” he replied, rubbing his forehead reflectively; and as
he drew his hand across the noble expanse of his frontal bone, I could
see a rush of little sparks follow his shadowy fingers. This set me
to gaze more intently at his phenomenal person, and as I did so I was
surprised to find that I could see quite through what should have been
the frontal bone, and there, in the cavity of the cranium, I beheld his
brain at work thinking. It simply appeared like revolving smoke curling
this way and that, and taking fantastic forms; halting, and then moving
on again in complex but orderly movement.
Seeing my utter astonishment, he good-naturedly enlightened me as to
the strange appearance.
“The brain,” said he, “is _the man_, it never dies, and in our case
is the only part which does not entirely become spirit, that is,
_transparent_ spirit. It always remains a foggy, cloudy kind of ether,
visible to mortals; and they are constantly walking through and sitting
surrounded by it, though they know it not.
“You probably do not believe in ghosts or spirits, yet you are
surrounded by them day and night, and when, by a variety of accidental
causes, one becomes materialized you see it, and immediately write off
to a newspaper about it as something wonderful. Ha! ha! If I could
only open your eyes and show you the number of ghosts in this silent
and solitary spot you would scarcely believe your eyes; there are
thousands!”
Then looking at me with his peculiar, luminous eyes he inquired, “Did
you ever notice a kind of mist floating over graveyards during certain
days of damp, muggy weather?”
“Yes,” I replied, “often; but what of that?”
“What of that!--why,” continued Bacon, “that is the spirit, the soul,
_the brain_ of disembodied mortals, which floats till the Final Day
just above the ground, the rock, the sea, or wherever the body was
buried.”
I marvelled at this, whereupon my communicative friend went further,
and said:--
“Do you not know that these spirits may be conversed with by mortals?
You have a certain control over electricity, you have the phonograph,
the electrophone, and the telephone--trifles in comparison to what we
have invented in Mars--but with these you have only to proceed in this
way. You simply----”
But ere he uttered another word a wind swept through the wood with a
crackling sound, at which the Friar bowed his head and quietly uttered
the words “I obey!” It was evident by his uneasy movements and facial
expression that he had been stayed from enlightening me further by some
unseen spirits, so, to turn the subject, I said:--
“What is there appertaining to this earth in which we might advance our
knowledge, by invention or otherwise?”
The little monk looked at me with a mirthful face, putting his jolly
head on one side, and with a look in his eyes as if he would say,
“Don’t you wish you may pump me?” said:--
“I must tell you plainly, that by our bond we are forbidden to tell
to mortals the secrets we possess, but I will just give you a little
idea or two that you may experimentalize upon, and see what you are
clever enough to make of notions that _we_ have already established as
practical scientific facts.
“Electricity with you is only in its infancy, it is but just born--yet
you have taken several steps in the right direction; you have the
phonograph, the electrophone, and the telephone, all of which are
very well in their way, but you must go further with them. If you are
clever enough you can make the phonograph convey _thought_ as well as
speech, so that you and I, being a mile apart, could, with the help
of an improved phonograph, convey our _thoughts_ to each other. With
a certain instrument conversation with departed spirits might be held
and the very secrets of the grave revealed, and the great----” But here
the wind again sighed through the valley, and the monk again bowed and
meekly crossed himself, having evidently ventured too far beyond the
bounds of his suggestions.
“The electrophone,” said he, “may easily be improved, so that in
combination with a certain machine which I may tell you is _on the eve
of being invented_ in America, will not only give you the voice of the
person speaking at a distance, but also his or her likeness with every
line of the features expressing the individuality of the person under
notice.
“Electricians of the Nineteenth Century! why, you have only reached
‘A’ in the alphabet of electrical possibilities. How absurd of you to
use horseflesh to draw loads, and raise or lower heavy masses, and to
use steam--noisy, bulky steam--for locomotives and marine engines, and
to write with ink and even use hand-power to sew with, when everything
could be done quicker, easier, cheaper, and cleaner by the _touchstone
of all future motion_--electricity!
“There, get along, ye mortals of to-day!” and the little man rolled
about with laughter, “ye laggards, why, if half-a-dozen of our company
in Mars had had _your_ scientific instruments and delicate machinery
in _our_ day we should have made an entirely different world of this
earth. Why, my old friend Archimedes would have obtained a fulcrum
for his lever long before now, and if no one had prevented him would
have attempted to hurl the earth right out of the planetary system
into space. Oh, he is even now a most mischievous fellow, though you
would not think it to look at him; his ambition is boundless, and his
scientific pranks are at times very reprehensible. Only last week,
just for the fun of the thing, he blew Sir Isaac Newton nearly to the
sun, and when the poor fellow returned to Mars after several days’
absence we scarcely knew him, he had become so sunburnt with his visit
to the suburbs of the great luminary. It was beyond a joke, you know.”
Then the little man went off into another paroxysm of laughter at the
thought of poor Sir Isaac’s burnt spirit-face.
“What,” queried I, “can you tell me of ships and navigation? Have we
reached the limit of speed in the merchant service, and the zenith of
offensive and defensive power in the Navy?”
These questions sent the little man off into a fresh fit of laughter,
and he looked at me as much as to say, “You ignoramus, you type of
mortal feebleness and conceit.” Presently having calmed down he
proceeded:--
“I must tell you that Nelson is with us in spirit, and has turned out
a capital inventor. He follows eagerly all that takes place, navally,
in the little dots on the globe called Great Britain, and you will
scarcely believe it when I tell you, that he has invented a _wooden_
ship that would in one brief hour destroy your entire navy.”
“How could it be done?” said I.
“Ah! there you are! I cannot _tell_ you, I can only give you an idea.
My lord’s ship is of wood, compressed india-rubber, and cork! The only
thing you have to discover is how to place your caoutchouc so that when
a shot is fired at your ship it passes clean through it and the hole
immediately closes, just as the water closes after it is cloven by the
ship’s hull. Firing at Nelson’s ship would have the same effect as if
you thrust your walking-stick through me or through your own shadow.”
“But,” I asked eagerly, “how would he destroy our navy in an hour?”
“Why,” said the Friar, “he and Sir Humphrey Davy have invented an
explosive of such vast power, that a single pound weight would destroy
the strongest ironclad afloat, and he can fire it from an ordinary
shoulder gun, with which he delights to practise at the mountains of
Mars. He can chip a thousand-ton mountain top off with a single shot;
we have to stop him at it, for he quite spoils the scenery, and alters
it so completely that we are in danger of losing ourselves. He calls
his destructive agent ‘infernite,’ and it really is quite diabolical.”
“And of speed in merchant vessels,” I remarked, “what of that?”
“There you are all wrong again, you have gone right off the proper
path. Why, your passenger vessels actually float on the _surface_ of
the sea, instead of fathoms below it; consequently you have both wind
and waves to contend with, which is absurdly and palpably wrong to any
one who gives the least reflection to the matter.
“Set your inventive faculties to work, control and compress your
air--by the way, see that you get it pure, sea air is always best and
safest--sink your hermetically-sealed ship by hydraulic arrangements,
pitch your great thumping steam monsters overboard, and propel your
vessel with civilized and cleanly electric force, and there you are!
America in twenty-four hours! India in three days! China in five! and
Australia in a week!!
“This speed should have been attained years since; but your engineers
are so in love with great smoky furnaces, steel monsters, and grimy
coal and grease, that it will take some time before they get off with
the ugly old love (steam) and on with the elegant new one (electric
force).”
I nodded approval, and put another query. “Can we do anything more to
improve the locomotive engine both as to safety and speed? Of course
I gather from what you have just said that electricity could be made
to take the place of steam, and then we should get a much quicker and
safer service of trains than at present.”
“Quicker service of trains?” he echoed, and looked at me in feigned
amazement. “Trains and locomotives, did you say? Why, my dear friend,
you astonish me. To improve your service, gather up all your network
of iron rails, but leave your stations intact for the present, and
pitch both the rails and the horrid shrieking engines into the midst
of the Atlantic, not into the North Sea, for that is so shallow that
the immense pile of old iron would cause an obstruction to submarine
navigation, and quite spoil the fishing-ground, though it would be an
excellent iron tonic to the fish.
“Then, having done that, invent a neat little electric aërostat--it
can and has been done by us--and simply fly from point to point,
from station to station if you will, noiselessly and expeditiously.
Edinburgh or Dublin in three hours, or St. Petersburg in ten, would be
a fair speed. What are they made of, do you say? Well, there is that
bothering bond that seals my lips, or I would willingly make a sketch
and give you a specification with pleasure.
“You know that certain chemicals produce certain gases. Gas is a power:
it may be converted into a motive power. Do you follow?”