Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/376

 acquainted with the Hebrew and Greek text, and versed in the higher mathematics."

"Do you bestow this inestimable gift to people 'free, gratis, for nothing'—as the children say?"

"It was my purpose to do so, for I thought it simony to sell God's gift. But I have come to think that it is proper that persons who have passed the ordeal should contribute towards the good works which I intend to execute in the eternity that awaits me."

"By the way," I said, "have you entered on immortality yourself?"

"Certainly I have. I am now in my seventy-fourth year, and that is the mere babyhood of the life I am to enjoy."

"How did it happen that this boon, expected from the beginning, had never been heard of till the present day?"

"You are altogether mistaken; a minister of the Gospel, in the reign of Queen Anne, evolved the same truth from the Bible, as I have done in the reign of Queen Victoria."

"Bravo! That is what I call coming to the point. Bring me this contemporary of Queen Anne enjoying perpetual life (for of course he availed himself of his own discovery) and I'm your man; meanwhile the debate stands adjourned."

Dr. Gregg afterwards sent me two pamphlets in which his opinions were stated with the utmost gravity, and insisted on with considerable rhetorical power. I found in one of the brochures, that there was a tariff for perpetual life. The Doctor intended to impose as the honorarium for his instructions—"On persons of £100,000 per annum, £10,000; of £50,000 a year, £5,000; of £20,000 a year, £2,000; and so on in the same proportion. With respect to the poorer