Interpersonal relations -- Fiction; Spiritualism -- Fiction; United States -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
“Is it wonderful that I should be immortal, as every one is immortal?
I know it is wonderful, but my eye-sight is equally wonderful, and
how I was conceived in my mother’s womb is equally wonderful.”--_Walt
Whitman._
Thought in the mind hath made us.
What we are
By thought was wrought and built.
If a man’s mind
Hath evil thoughts, pain comes on him as comes
The wheel the ox behind.
All that we are is what we thought and willed;
Our thoughts shape us and frame.
If one endure
In purity of thought joy follows him
As his own shadow sure.--_Sir Edwin Arnold._
Mrs. Doring had read that the people of the unseen world, or other
invisible intelligent beings, sometimes condescended to write on slates
under certain conditions. As she now believed that Chrissalyn possessed
all the psychic gifts, she bought a slate and used her most artful
eloquence to persuade her friend to experiment. The capricious creature
consented after fishing up objections enough to make her acquiescence
received with great gratitude. This was her innocent way of making her
services valuable and herself important. But for love of her friend,
and also no doubt for love of Prescott, who was the only person on the
other side of silence that she cared to hear from, apparently, or at
least was not afraid of, she finally consented.
Not knowing the correct manner of procedure they could do no more than
experiment blindly, till they learned something about it. They held
the slate under the table till their arms were all tired out and got
nothing. Then they laid it on the table, and becoming interested in
talking, forgot all about it and their experiment, till they heard a
soft, rapid scratching.
Looking down simultaneously, they saw an incredible thing. The tiny
pencil, no bigger than a grain of rice, was writing, though no visible
hand guided it, and this was its message:
“_Each soul is its own redeemer, here, hereafter and forever._”
The two spectators looked at each other in awe-struck silence. From
whom this came they knew not, for the one that wrote it wrote nothing
more. But for their familiarity with communications from the silent
majority they would have been sore afraid. As it was they were awed by
this extraordinary evidence of the nearness of unseen beings presumably
like themselves.
Talking about it they sat there till the evening was nearly spent.
At last, Chrissalyn idly laid her hand on the slate, and almost
immediately it began to throb or vibrate curiously, like a living
thing. Startled, she removed her hand, and instantly the throbbing
ceased. Turning the slate over they found the under side written full
in a feminine hand of exquisite daintiness, and signed with the name of
one of our most eminent women, one who has been dead nearly a century.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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