Amos Kilbright; His Adscititious Experiences: With Other StoriesStockton, Frank R.
Science
Amos Kilbright; His Adscititious Experiences: With Other Stories
Stockton, Frank R.
African Americans -- Fiction
The young lady was found, pale, but very happy. "When he left me last
night," she said, "my mind was in a strange hubbub. He had told me that
he loved me, and had asked me to marry him, and my heart would not let
me say anything but 'yes;' and yet, after he had gone, his wondrous
story came up before me as it had not come when he told it, having just
told something else. I did not sleep all night, thinking of it. I have
read and pondered a great deal upon these subjects, but have never been
able to make up my mind whether or not to put faith in the strange
spiritual manifestations of which we are told. So I determined, a good
while ago, not to consider the matter at all. I could do nothing with
it, and it would be better that I should let it alone. To this same
determination I came early this morning in the case of Mr. Kilbright.
None of us know what we may once have been, nor what we may become. All
we know is what we are. Mr. Kilbright may be mistaken as to what he was,
but I know what he is. And to that man I give myself as I am. I am
perfectly satisfied with the present."
Mrs. Colesworthy enfolded her in an approbatory embrace, and hurried
home to tell me about it. "There now!" she exclaimed, "didn't I say that
Lilian Budworth was a girl of good, sound common-sense?"
"That is what you said," I answered, "but I must admit that I was afraid
her common-sense would interfere with her acceptance of his story. We
had outside evidence in regard to it, but she had only his simple
statement."
"Which is quite enough, when a woman truly loves," said Mrs.
Colesworthy.
When old Mr. Scott was informed what had happened, he put down his
newspaper, took off his spectacles, and smiled a strange, wide smile. "I
have been reading," he said, "about a little machine, or box, that you
can talk into and then cork up and send by mail across the ocean to
anybody you know there. And then he can uncork it, and out will come
all you have said in your very words and voice, with the sniffles and
sneezes that might have got in accidental. So that if one of the Old
Testament Egyptians that they've been diggin' up lately had had one of
these boxes with him it might have been uncorked and people could have
heard in his own voice just who he was and what was his personal opinion
of Moses and his brother Aaron. Now, when an old man like me has just
come to know of a thing of this kind, it isn't for him to have a word to
say when he is told that Lilian Budworth is to be his step-grandmother;
he must take it in along with the other wonders."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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