This mystical minor poet in the cement business had several friends like himself, but no one of them possessed his value, because no one of them practised their beliefs. They talked well and were sincere up to a point, but not to the point of making sacrifices for their faith. It was always with them a future hope. One, however, must be excepted--a woman. She was over sixty and always dressed in black, with crêpe scattered all over her, and a large white face, and shining eyes, and great bags under them. She had been a vegetarian for years. In spite of her size she looked so ethereal that a puff of wind might have blown her across the street. All her friends and relations had “passed over,” and her thoughts were evidently centred in the beyond, so far as she herself was concerned. She had means of her own, but spent most of them in helping others. There was no humbug about her. She claimed to have what she called “continuous consciousness,” and at night, when her body lay down and the brain slept, she focused her Self in some spiritual region of her being, and never lost consciousness. She saw her body lying there, and knew the brain was asleep, but she meanwhile became active elsewhere, for she declared a spirit could never sleep, and it was only the body that became too weary at the end of the day to answer to the spirit’s requirements. In sleep the body, left empty by the spirit, slept, and memory, being in the brain, became inactive. But as soon as one had learned to realize one’s spirit, sleep involved no loss of consciousness and memory was continuous. Her accounts of her experiences in the night thrilled me.... While she talked her face grew so white that it almost shone. It was a beaming, good, loving face, and the woman was honest, even if deluded. She radiated kindness and sympathy from her person. She had a way of screwing up her eyes when speaking, stepping back a few paces, and then coming suddenly forward again as though she meant to jump across the room, her voice ringing, and her eyes opened so wide that I thought the bags underneath them must burst with a pop.