At length I was able to determine that I lay on something like a hammock on the deck of a smoothly gliding vessel. Turning my head first to the right and then to the left, I imagined that I was indeed in Paradise, only the reality before me was so infinitely more beautiful than the most vivid poetic descriptions I had ever read of the longed for heaven of endless peace and happiness. But this could not be the Paradise of the disembodied souls, for I realized I was there in all my physical personal being. I was sailing through a smooth, shimmering sea, thickly studded with matchlessly beautiful islands. They lay in charming profusion and picturesque irregularity of contour on the right and the left, each a distinct type of beauty and perfection. I could make out houses and gardens and farms and people on each of them. Looking to the right I saw what appeared to be a mainland with majestic and softly modulated mountains and broad valleys, running from the distance down to the sands of the seashore. Above the mountains shone the unobscured sun, but not the burning orb I had known of old in the lower latitudes. It kissed me with a tenderness that was entrancing, filling my weakened frame with new life. The breezes toyed with my tangled and unkempt locks, fanned my brow and whispered such things to me as did the zephyrs when I stood upon the threshold of guileless boyhood. Finally I was able to frame a consecutive thought, in the interrogative form, and it was this: "Where am I? Is this the Heaven my mother taught me to seek?" I had as yet seen no one aboard the ship, or whatever it was, although I had heard the hum of what seemed to be conversation from some point beyond the line of vision. Again I silently repeated my mental question. As if in response to my unuttered query, a being, or a man, of striking and pleasing appearance came to my side and laying his hand softly on my forehead, addressed me in a tongue at once familiar but wholly unknown, as paradoxical as that may sound. I remained silent and he again addressed me. I did not feel disconcerted or awed by his appearance and said: "I speak French and German imperfectly; English with some fluency." His rejoinder was in English: "You speak English, but are not an Englishman except by partial descent. You are an American. Not a native of the eastern portion of the continent, but from west of the range of mountains which separate the Atlantic seaboard from the great central valley of the continent. You are from the tributary Ohio valley, and are, therefore, better fitted to comprehend what you will be permitted to see and hear, than the average habitant of the eastern seashore, especially of its great cities." You can possibly imagine, in a faint way, my unbounded surprise to be thus addressed by one who was more than a stranger to me. "You asked yourself two questions. I will answer the first: You are in Intermere." "And where is Intermere?"