"The material structure in which it existed, which in a sense was memory itself, is dissipated by death. Memory disappears with it. But perhaps not wholly. Some shadow of itself remains. What will most likely be treasured then? The strongest, deepest memories only. Those which are so subjectively strong as to leave even in the spirit _flesh_ an impression. In this same little book of Bain's this sentence occurs: 'Retention, Acquisition, or Memory, then, being the power of continuing in the mind, impressions that are no longer stimulated by the original agent, and of recalling them at after-times by purely mental forces, I shall remark first on the cerebral seat of those renewed impressions. It must be considered as almost beyond a doubt that the _renewed feeling occupies the very same parts, and in the same manner as the original feeling_, and no other parts, nor in any other manner that can be assigned.' "It seems to me, my son, in view of all this, that, as the fondest hope of my life is to send back to you from wherever I may be, a message, and as we both believe the means must be something like this wireless telegraphy, I must imbed in my mind the whole system we have developed, and especially make myself almost intuitively familiar with the Morse alphabet. Beating, beating, beating upon my brain substance this ceaselessly reiterated mechanical language, it will become so incorporated, that even in the surviving mind I shall find its traces and be able to use it. "So I have concluded to put aside almost everything else and think and live in the thought only of this coming experience. You understand me? You sympathize in this? Yes, yes, I shall get ready for this supreme experiment which may at last, to a long waiting world, bring some reasonable assurance that death does not end all. As I think of it, as I look forward to meeting your mother, the whole prospect of death grows wonderfully interesting and sublimely welcome. And yet, my son, you, you who have been so patient, so kind, giving up your life for my convenience and pleasure, I dread to leave you. But I will speak to you! Watch! wait! and at that instrument upstairs, which I know responded to some waves of magnetism crossing the oceans of space, I shall be heard by you in English words, opening up the mysteries of other worlds!" He stopped in sheer exhaustion with his whole face charged with almost frantic ecstacy. It seemed to me so natural, nurtured in the same impossible dreams, that I saw nothing ludicrous in his hopes. From that day on we gave ourselves up to telegraphing from our two stations, while my father again and again consulted models of our transmitters and receivers. This excitement lasted a long time and it did seem psychologically certain that in any disembodied condition my father would be likely to recall some important parts or all of this well learned lesson.