Page:Dealings with the dead.djvu/80

 figure, it struck me that the very quintessence of my felicity on earth would be achieved could I have the exquisite joy and unsurpassable pleasure of hanging him to the weathercock on the summit of that flag-staff. This would be to me—to us, a very heavenly state indeed. And so I hung him, in fancy, to the north corner of the vane, enjoyed his imaginary struggles for a while, and then went home. * * * * * * Years passed. My childhood's troubles were forgotten, and man's estate had come, with all its griefs, cares and strifes, and, from a student of revenge, I became one of the science of Forgiveness. During one of these latter years I became interested in the question, 'Has man a death-surviving soul, or not?' and to the solution of this great problem I bent the entire force and energy of my mind, not hesitating to make all sorts of experiments that held out a hope or possibility of my reaching a definite conclusion in regard to the subject. In pursuance of this grand object I one day made an experiment which, in some respects, was but too successful; it was not by means of drugs or potions, magnetism or spiritual circles. At the end of one of these experiments I became totally lost to the external world, its surroundings and influences, and found myself in the world of Spirit—in the midst of a vast and boundless Chaos, in which no sound struck upon me save the rattling of the bones of a huge and ghastly skeleton which swayed and swung to and fro in the bleak air from the point of a vane on the top of a vast pole, itself the very spectre of the one on which mentally, I had hung my mortal foe. Attracted irresistibly by the ominous sounds, I turned my gaze toward it, when instantly the horrible, ghastly