“I think few of us are conscious when the last moment comes. We have all probably been so ill that there was a complete blank, and where by accident or any mortal injury it stands to reason that the shock and hurt would render the person unconscious. You may not know that I was a bishop in my life time. I thought that I had nothing to fear, and so as I lay ill—I suffered a long time with the gout—the usual result of eating and drinking—at last it went to the stomach and I died. Before departing, I called my weeping friends and told them that the Lord had called me and I was ready to go. I posed as a martyr and angel of grace, and my deathbed farewell was spoken of as edifying. I really believed I was almost a saint, and it was for a long time a matter of surprise to me to discover that I was not wafted to immediate glory. I had yet to learn that from him to whom much shall be given much shall be required. And here I am, the least among you all.” Another ghost took up the subject and said: “The most of you here will think it queer, but when I was drawing my last breath I knew it, and my principal feeling was anger that now one of my neighbors would get my favorite horse. He had long tried to buy it, and I would not sell, but what could my widow do with that horse when I was dead? After that there was a few seconds of blank and I felt myself drawn out of my own body and in another moment I was standing looking at myself. It certainly was a strange experience, and I am glad it is all over. “I have talked with many ghosts and they all agree that death itself is not so dreadful. It is like going from a light room into a dark one and no one knows what is there. I find that almost every one has felt the same fear of the unknown, but it is after all so small a change. Many have a feeling as if they were falling a great distance to a profound depth in the darkness, but so far I have never found one who was really afraid of dying. It was more like the thought of the plunge into an icy bath. Sickness and physical suffering have a tendency to deaden the senses. And death itself is not so much of a change as we are prone to regard it. The way I now look at it is that it is simply one of the systematic changes made from time to time, from one sphere of existence to another, according to the great eternal plan toward a better kind of man. I used to wonder if this creature here who ravages and eats everybody else, and who is altogether unworthy and vicious and selfish was the best there could be, but now that I have an inkling into the future existence, I believe that we are but atoms in one great plan, and as worlds have been formed in their perfection, so will man stand out at last as the finished being he is intended to be, in the right time as grain is ripened.”