"Proof? Oh Yes. There's testimony enough to carry conviction to the
stubbornest mind on any other point. But it's very strange about all
that. It doesn't convince anybody but the witnesses. If a man tells me
he's seen a disembodied spirit, I can't believe him. I must see the
disembodied spirit myself."
"That's something so," said Whitwell, with a relenting laugh.
"If one came back from the dead, to tell us of a life beyond the grave,
we should want the assurance that he'd really been dead, and not merely
dreaming."
Whitwell laughed again, in the delight the philosophic mind finds even in
the reasoning that hates it.
The Canuck felt perhaps the simpler joy that the average man has in any
strange notion that he is able to grasp. He stopped in his walk and said:
"Yes, and if you was dead and went to heaven, and stayed so long you
smelt, like Lazarus, and you come back and tol' 'em what you saw, nobody
goin' believe you."
"Well, I guess you're right there, Jombateeste," said Whitwell, with
pleasure in the Canuck's point. After a moment he suggested to Westover:
"Then I s'pose, if you feel the way you do, you don't care much about
plantchette?"
"Oh yes, I do," said the painter. "We never know when we may be upon the
point of revelation. I wouldn't miss any chance."
Whether Whitwell felt an ironic slant in the words or not, he paused a
moment before he said: "Want to start her up, Jackson?"
Jackson brought to the floor the forefeet of his chair, which he had
tilted from it in leaning back, and without other answer put his hand on
the planchette. It began to fly over the large sheet of paper spread upon
the table, in curves and angles and eccentrics.
"Feels pootty lively to-night," said Whitwell, with a glance at Westover.
The little Canuck, as if he had now no further concern in the matter, sat
down in a corner and smoked silently. Whitwell asked, after a moment's
impatience:
"Can't you git her down to business, Jackson?"