Well-known figures in the state and community passed out of sight into the silence of the grave every now and then, and it was the _Register’s_ custom to speak with unvarnished frankness about their lives. Without doubt this, in many instances, added to the terrors of death, for Prescott was capable of very rough surgery in his post-mortem analysis. He flouted the old injunction, “speak no ill of the dead,” saying that mere dying did not excuse a man’s misdeeds, nor make an angel of him, and that they should reap an obituary harvest of whatever crop they had sown. Not even the time-honored “regular subscriber” or “constant reader,” had immunity from this harsh ruling. He was willing to take the same medicine himself when his time came, and it should never be said of him that he was in the habit of plastering people all over with laudatory lies just because they had died. “O yes,” he would snarl, “lots of men serve the devil all their lives, and then expect newspapers to put plenty of heaven in the truck they print about them when they die. But the _Register_ isn’t conducted that way. They shall get in it what they have earned, no more, no less.” Truly, many found, even without dying, that it was a terrible thing to fall into the too truthful hands of the _Register’s_ editor. CHAPTER IX. THINGS NOT DREAMED OF IN EVERYDAY PHILOSOPHY. “Communication between the spirit world and the corporeal world is in the nature of things, and has in it nothing supernatural.” The body, after all, is only a portable, two-legged telephone through which the soul, or part of it, communicates with other souls which for purposes of education and evolution are temporarily imprisoned in these cumbrous and ingenious, but very inconvenient physical machines. --_William T. Stead._ Chrissalyn had the usual difficulty of the untrained in finding employment. The search was long and disheartening and might never have had a happy ending but for a curious accident, which was no doubt down in the books of destiny. She was going up a public stairway one day, when a man descending at a break-neck gait ran against her, throwing her down. Distressed at what he feared might have a serious ending, he picked her up, bewailing his awkwardness, and offering to do anything in his power to atone for it. She opened her eyes to consciousness just as he was saying, “What can I do for her? What can I do for her?” “Get me a chance to earn my bread,” she gasped, with almost her first breath.