Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 58.djvu/92

84 England from the strain of the Bloody Assizes. Mr. Marvin could muffle the bell of St. Germain l'Auxerrois and the name of St. Bartholomew would lose its dark suggestion. Miss Lucy Wilkins could leave us to the north of Cologne and in the time of St. Ursula. This good woman could be turned from her useless quest and her sad host of martyred virgins could each become a German Hausfrau. Again, our fair friend from Fidèletown, Miss Violet Dreeme, could find scope for her powers in the rescue of Guinevere. These serve simply as illustrations. We may vary them as we please.

"The preliminary difficulties once surmounted, the auroral turntable once in operation and in the hands of a few hundred adepts, missionaries of the present to the past, the tangled jungles of history would be turned to a field of the Cloth of Gold. By keeping open telepathic connection with the esoteric clubs at home, we can inform the world that is, of the progress of our work, and the changes we make in history could be announced in our schools.

"Grand indeed is our conception," said Professor Gridley, "and it is not far from realization. The initial expense is but a trifle. A few hundred dollars in tense springs, clockwork and dynamos, a table of the finest rosewood and the service of a skilled mechanic, an adept in electricity and skilled in astral impersonation, and it is done.

"More than this," continued Professor Gridley impressively, "all this is already provided. I have here a letter from the editor of the New York Sunday 'Monarch,' an offer of all expenses and a generous salary in return for the first telepathic advices, going back beyond the present century. For each preceding century, the sum will be doubled. I have, indeed, contracted with the great journal for the exclusive account of my interviews with the great Bacon, whose noble but polluted nature it shall be my life work to redeem."