I knew what it meant when I was there--part of it, at least--and should know again in a few hours. But this poor old earth-brain of mine, which I have had to put on once more as an old woman puts on a nightcap, is like my eyes and ears. It can now only understand what is of the earth--what _you_ can understand, Gogo, who are still of the earth. I forget, as one forgets an ordinary dream, as one sometimes forgets the answer to a riddle, or the last verse of a song. It is on the tip of the tongue; but there it sticks, and won't come any farther. Remember, it is only in your brain I am living now--your earthly brain, that has been my only home for so many happy years, as mine has been yours. How we have nestled! * * * * * But this I know: one must have had them all once--brains, ears, eyes, and the rest--on earth. 'Il faut avoir passe par la!' or no after-existence for man or beast would be possible or even conceivable. One cannot teach a born deaf-mute how to understand a musical score, nor a born blind man how to feel color. To Beethoven, who had once heard with the ear, his deafness made no difference, nor their blindness to Homer and Milton. Can you make out my little parable? * * * * * Sound and light and heat, and electricity and motion, and will and thought and remembrance, and love and hate and pity, and the desire to be born and to live, and the longing of all things alive and dead to get near each other, or to fly apart--and lots of other things besides! All that comes to the same--'C'est comme qui dirait bonnet blanc et blanc bonnet,' as Monsieur le Major used to say. 'C'est simple comme bonjour!' Where I am, Gogo, I can hear the sun shining on the earth and making the flowers blow, and the birds sing, and the bells peal for birth and marriage and death--happy, happy death, if you only knew--'C'est la clef des champs!' It shines on moons and planets, and I can hear it, and hear the echo they give back again. The very stars are singing; rather a long way off! but it is well worth their while with such an audience as lies between us and them; and they can't help it.... I can't hear it here--not a bit--now that I've got my ears on; besides, the winds of the earth are too loud.... Ah, that _is_ music, if you like; but men and women are stone-deaf to it--their ears are in the way! ... Those poor unseen flat fish that live in the darkness and mud at the bottom of deep seas can't catch the music men and women make upon the earth--such poor music as it is! But if ever so faint a murmur, borne on the wings and fins of a sunbeam, reaches them for a few minutes at mid-day, and they have a speck of marrow in their spines to feel it, and no ears or eyes to come between, they are better off than any man, Gogo. Their dull existence is more blessed than his.