Page:Dealings with the dead.djvu/101

 friendship was thought to dwell—lust and passion, under the guise of esteem and love—and many more such unveilings of the seeming, and disclosures of the real. This sensitiveness is morbid, but its revelations are, alas! quite frequently too true; and the effect it produces is an inveterate suspicion of all things and people, and an utter loss of confidence in the entire human race. This is the hidden reason why a certain order of those who call, themselves Spiritualists are so unhappy and discontented; and it is this also that has suggested the ten thousand and ten panaceas for all the ills of life now so freely scattered up and down the walks of the social world. To this cause is to be attributed the thousand mad Quixotic schemes for rejuvenating the world—from 'Free-love' to 'Angel-movements,' 'Woman's Rights' to 'Land Reform.' This it is that separates people—engulphs thousands in the sea of idle and useless speculation—entangles thousands more in the meshes of sophistry, under the name of 'Philosophy'—wise and otherwise, "Harmonial' and Harm-only; and this it is that makes people lonely, and throngs the ways of Earth and Spirit-land with pilgrims of Solitude, surrounded by millions.

It is never your boisterous, jolly, rubicund subject who reaches the penetralia of things, and who thenceforth casts off the world in despair, declares the play of life is only a dismal tragedy, and becomes at heart a hermit of the misanthropic order. O no! far from it! Such belong to the first or lower orders of men—they can find company anywhere, at any time. Careless they, no matter whether it rains or shines; it's all the same to them, whether school keeps or not. Of those