Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/39

Rh reel off the philosophy for you. I guess, by your looks, you're a philosopher; they're all pale and sickly-looking."

I made no reply, and in a moment, with a few more convulsive jerks and gyrations, the woman went off into apparent unconsciousness. Soon she said, and in the same drawling tone as before, "Hain't you satisfied yet?"

"Satisfied of what?" I asked.

"That I'm Franklin."

"No."

"Well, you orter be. Didn't he tell you that it was me, and that I felt good natured to ye?"

"What he?"

"Why, the old man on there to York—him as they call the Christian Spiritualist."

"Yes, he did, and he said you were there."

"Well, I was; and he said, too, that I had one hand on yer shoulder, and pointed with t'other to my bust on his book-shelf."

"It is not your bust—it looks no more like you than it does like Aristides."

"What der ye mean?"

"What I say. You have been deceiving me from the beginning; you are not Franklin."

"Yer thinkin' so don't make it so. I tell ye I am."

"I'll not bandy words with you. Tell me in the name of Christ whether you are Franklin or not."

There was a short pause. Then, with a laugh that showed two rows of very ugly teeth, the spirit, or the woman, said "Well, I hain't; but how did ye find out thet thet would bring it out of me?"

"Now and then I read the New Testament, and last night my eye fell on a passage in John which says: 'Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is of God; and every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is not of God: and this is that spirit of Antichrist, whereof ye heard it should come, and even now already it is in the world.

"Ye kin quote Scripture up to any one I ever see; ye orter hev been a parson."

"They meant to make me one, but I thought myself unworthy of the mission."

"And ye thort yerself unworthy of my mission?"

"I thought it unworthy of me."

"Well, yer awful good; but I'll try ye afore yer a year older."

"Now you are showing the cloven foot; you are of Antichrist."

"I hain't of Antichrist. I know nothin' about Christ; I never seen him, and don't believe there ever was such a man."