Immortality of the soul is an universal instinct.
Phil. Schaff, D. D.
Looking to where he sits, I study one in my mind, and observe father sees my abstraction. I can tell by a wrinkling around his eyes, he is preparing himself for enjoyment of the debate.
“What is the breath of life?” I at last ask ingenuously.
“Oh, I can answer that. I have found it out since I have been here. That is an easy question. It is, my dear, electricity, which we assimilate into spirit. Simple in explanation. The electric soul batteries of our organism thus supplied by God, the maker of souls, drawn in with our breath.” Quite suavely preaches my father to me.
“Yes, but there are two electricities; how could we take both and live?”
“There are two electricities, assuredly. They assimilate; the assimilation is life.”
I feel dubious, but see clearer as he proceeds.
“The earth has negative electricity, the other positive, or masculine, comes from the sun, uniting to life.”
Suddenly I burst out, “That makes the sun our father. Pray, who is God, who made the sun?” The eye wrinkle deepens. “In that case, our grandfather.”
I scorn to smile.
“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.