“Within the lifetime of the child already born,” Clifford went on, “all this will be done away. The world is growing too ethereal and spiritual to bear these enormities a great while longer. To me, though, for a considerable period of time, I have lived chiefly in retirement, and know less of such things than most men,—even to me, the harbingers of a better era are unmistakable. Mesmerism, now! Will that effect nothing, think you, towards purging away the grossness out of human life?” “All a humbug!” growled the old gentleman. “These rapping spirits, that little Phœbe told us of, the other day,” said Clifford,—“what are these but the messengers of the spiritual world, knocking at the door of substance? And it shall be flung wide open!” “A humbug, again!” cried the old gentleman, growing more and more testy at these glimpses of Clifford’s metaphysics. “I should like to rap with a good stick on the empty pates of the dolts who circulate such nonsense!” “Then there is electricity,—the demon, the angel, the mighty physical power, the all-pervading intelligence!” exclaimed Clifford. “Is that a humbug, too? Is it a fact—or have I dreamt it—that, by means of electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time? Rather, the round globe is a vast head, a brain, instinct with intelligence! Or, shall we say, it is itself a thought, nothing but thought, and no longer the substance which we deemed it!” “If you mean the telegraph,” said the old gentleman, glancing his eye toward its wire, alongside the rail-track, “it is an excellent thing,—that is, of course, if the speculators in cotton and politics don’t get possession of it. A great thing, indeed, sir, particularly as regards the detection of bank-robbers and murderers.”