"Tell us more," the boys asked of the Moon-Struck-One, one evening
after the day's work was done, "about the inhabitants of Mars, which
you see in your trances."
And then he--the Moon-Struck-One--would explain in detail the strange
people he had seen in his dreams.
"These planets," he told them, "are all being made ready for the coming
race of Man.... After Cycles and Cycles, we move on to newer and better
worlds.... Each of the mystic Seven Planets are at the service of the
human race. Time and time again a new world has borne the burden of the
evolving man's hope and his despair.... The cosmic scheme is worthy of
the Wondrous God, who holds not only the Seven Planets in control, but
rules the Seven Universes with their Seven Suns--you laugh, most men
laugh, the churchmen laugh, they do not know, they have not seen--but I
know and have seen."
"How interesting," said one boy, winking slyly to his fellows. "I know
something of astronomy myself; my brother was a Princeton graduate."
It was a summer's evening when this conversation took place and the
boys were sitting out on the lawn enjoying the night air, for the day
had been hot and oppressive.
"What do any of you know of the Stars?" said the Moon-Struck-Sage.
"Very little, but tell us," said one of the boys, "for I believe in
your visions. I dreamed one night myself about a big fire--a bad sign
as you very well know--and the next day I got 'pinched.'"
"Yes, you are deeply learned in the Stars," he said with smiling
skepticism, "that is, I suppose you can tell the difference between a
star and a lantern."
"Look out," said a boy who had not spoken before, "he is joking you."
"No, seriously," said the Witless One, "when I said 'lantern' I had
reference to the light that Edison hangs out each night when the
weather is clear--you have no doubt read of it. He plans to construct a
light that will illuminate this country at night almost as brightly as
the sun lights it by day.... Do you see that light just above the trees
in the East. You can tell it as it is larger than any stars around it.
It has the appearance of a star only much brighter. Do you see it?"
"Yes," said the boys who were all attention, although one or two were
skeptical until one of the group remembered that he had read about
Edison's powerful light in the Sunday magazine supplement of a New York
paper.
"He is a wonderful man," said another.
At last all were convinced and the Moon-Struck-One, satisfied, arose
rather abruptly, and went into the house.
A few days later he left the Colony to go to his relatives in a distant
city, and so the boys had no one to play tricks upon, no one who was
not their equal in wit.
It was some weeks afterwards that one of the young men said to me as we
were talking out of doors in the evening:
"There is that light of Edison's hanging over the trees."
"Where?" I asked.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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