Interpersonal relations -- Fiction; Spiritualism -- Fiction; United States -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
At this tribute to her kindness from beyond the grave Cartice dropped a
grateful tear. The Colonel’s nature had something childlike and sweet
in it, in spite of its many defects. Most of his faults had been of a
peevish and childish order.
“Thank you, Colonel Layton,” Cartice answered. “I am glad to hear from
you.”
“Mrs. Doring, do you remember the conversation I had with you an hour
or so before I made the final journey?”
“Perfectly.”
“I sang about death being a narrow sea that divides your world from the
land of pure delight. Well, it’s a very narrow sea--so narrow we can
step across. In fact it isn’t a sea at all, for the two worlds are not
really divided. They only seem to be.”
Several times Mrs. Layton’s friend, Jessie, came. When asked whether
she threw flowers at her own funeral, she said she did; that she knew
beforehand that Chriss had the faculty of seeing certain things others
could not, and had it in mind before she went away that she would do
something to prove that death was only an illusion.
Cartice’s great grandfather, who died before she was born, came and
wrote his name in full, which she did not herself know. He told things
pertaining to the family, which she afterward verified, among them
being the name of the political party to which he belonged, and which
had long been extinct. His handwriting was of an older style, and he
wrote with a deliberation uncommon in the present day.
Some communications purported to come from North American Indians,
mighty chiefs and stalwart braves with great dignity of manner and
imposing names. After a time, however, Cartice inclined to the
opinion that both the manner and the names were masks used to conceal
identities that did not wish to be known. They spoke in the figurative
style attributed to gifted red men, and for the most part their
messages were interesting and instructive.
Once when Mrs. Doring was very tired and discouraged one of them wrote:
“Is it not a pleasure to the squaw to convince the braves and old men
that she teaches many truths? She must not let the ink dry in her
horn, for she can carry many braves with her in the councils.”
Again, apparently overhearing the two investigators of psychic law
talk of some poor, pitiful, hide-bound persons who found fault with
everybody that did not revolve within their pint-measure orbit, this
same Red Feather, as he called himself, wrote with emphatic force:
“Be not tied by the ways of others. The eagle cannot fly with the wings
of a chicken.”
One evening Prescott wrote a few minutes and then excused himself from
further work, saying that something had just occurred which made him
too nervous to write.
His two friends looked at each other in speechless astonishment. Here
was a mystery beyond other mysteries. Too nervous? Were not nerves but
parts of the body, destined to dust with the rest of it?
Evidently understanding their amazement, he added this line after a
moment’s pause:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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