The bishop bowed his head in assent to this, and that set the reporter to thinking about the great agnostic Ingersoll. He asked the company at large if they could tell him if Col. Robert Ingersoll were present. The whole company waited for the bishop to answer this question as though he were the proper one to do so. He spoke at last; but as if he would have preferred to waive the question: “No, Mr. Ingersoll is not here. He got his passport the same day he died.” “I—I—thought he believed—or didn’t believe—I really do not know how to express it—” stammered the young man in his excitement. “Young man,” said the bishop impressively, “it is not what a man believes, or thinks he believes, while on earth, that gains heaven, but what he does.” All the ghosts clapped their hands and shouted, “Hear, hear.” The young man found food for the thought in the fact just told him. He made a resolution to become acquainted with the words of the man who had received his passport the same day he died. And, moreover, he intended to follow them. There was a ghost who up to now had taken no part in the conversation, and he suddenly fixed the newspaper man with a compelling glance and said, slowly and impressively: “It seems to me that no one has exactly answered the question about the phenomenon of death, which is in reality no greater than that of birth. We see that, but even the wisest men of all time knows no more of the life principle than the most ignorant. We know only that we enter this world and quit it through the doors of pain. When my own final moment came, I knew it and braced myself so that if ever I should be able to tell those still of the world all the sensations I experienced I would do so. If this is my opportunity I am glad of it. “In the first place, I was a strong man and nothing but the pneumonia ever seemed to get a hold on me. I was ill about a week, and they all thought I was getting better, and for that reason I refused to take any more medicine, though really that would have made no difference anyway, for my time had come.