A Journey in Other Worlds [121]
Night had fallen, and the electric lamps cast their white rays on
the ground, while the stars overhead shone in their eternal
serenity and calm. Then was it once more brought home to him
that he was a spirit, for darkness and light were alike, and he
felt the beginning of that sense of prescience of which the
bishop had spoken. Passing through the houses of some of the
clubs to which he belonged, he saw his name still upon the list
of members, and then he went to the places of amusement he knew
so well. On all sides were familiar faces, but what interested
him most was the great division incessantly going on. Here were
jolly people enjoying life and playing cards, who, his foresight
showed him, would in less than a year be under ground-- like
Mercutio, in "Romeo and Juliet," to-day known as merry fellows,
who to-morrow would be grave men.
While his eyes beheld the sun, he had imagined the air felt warm
and balmy. He now saw that this had been a hallucination, for he
was chilled through and through. He also perceived that be cast
no shadow, and that no one observed his presence. He, on the
other hand, saw not only the air as it entered and left his
friends' lungs, but also the substance of their brains, and the
seeds of disease and death, whose presence they themselves did
not even suspect, and the seventy-five per cent of water in their
bodies, making them appear like sacks of liquid. In some he saw
the germs of consumption; in others, affections of the heart. In
all, he saw the incessant struggle between the healthy
blood-cells and the malignant, omnipresent bacilli that the cells
were trying to overcome. Many men and women he saw were in love,
and he could tell what all were about to do. Oh, the secrets
that were revealed, while the motives for acts were now laid bare
that till then he had misunderstood! He had often heard the old
saying, that if every person in a ball-room could read the
thoughts of the rest, the ball would seem a travesty on
enjoyment, rather than real pleasure, and now he perceived its
force. He also noticed that many were better than he had
supposed, and were trying, in a blundering but persevering way,
to obey their consciences. He saw some unselfish thoughts and
acts. Many things that he had attributed to irresolution or
inconsistency, he perceived were in reality self- sacrifice. He
went on in frantic disquiet, distance no longer being of
consequence, and in his roaming chanced to pass through the
graveyard in which many generations of his ancestors lay buried.
Within the leaden coffins he saw the cold remains; some well
preserved, others but handfuls of dust.
"Tell me, O my progenitors," he cried, "you whose blood till this
morning flowed in my veins, is there not some way by which I, as
a spirit, can commune with the material world? I have always
admired your judgment and wisdom, and you have all been in
Shadowland longer than I. Give me, I pray you, some ancestral
advice."
The only sound in answer was the hum of the insects that filled
the evening air. The moonlight shone softly, but in a ghastly
way, on the marble crosses of his vault and those around, and he
felt an unspeakable sadness within this abode of the dead. "How
many unfinished lives," he thought, "have ended beneath these
sods! Unimproved talents here are buried in the ground.
Unattained ambitions, and those who died before their time; those
who tried, in a half-hearted way, to improve their opportunities,
and accomplished something, and those who neglected them, and did
still less--all are together here, the just with the unjust,
though it be for the last time. The grave absorbs their bodies
and ends their probationary record, from which there is no
appeal."
Near by were some open graves, ready to receive their occupants,
while a little farther on he recognized the Cortlandt mausoleum,
looking exactly as when shown him, through his second sight, by
the spirit on the previous day.
From the graves filled recently,