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 rHE HERMIT OF CAPRI 
 


BL 50 .T37 1910 
 
 Steventon, John, 1832-1923. 
 
 The hermit of Capri 
 




















r^J 13 19 
 
 THE HERMIT 
 OF CAPRI 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN STEVENTON 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 
 
 NEW YORK AND LONDON 
 
 M C M X 
 
 il 
 


Copyright, 1910, by Harper & Brothers. 
 
 AU rights reserved. 
 Published March, 1910. 
 


Illustrations 
 
 (( 
 
 (< 
 
 WHEN JOHNNY COMES MARCHING 
 
 HOME Frontispiece 
 
 THE LIGHT THAT FAILED " .... Facing p. 14 
 THE GOLDEN MADONNA, CHAPEL AND 
 
 HERMIT " 16 
 
 MONTE TIBERIO AND RUINS OF VILLA 
 
 jovis " 34 
 
 "and he, a hermit!" " 52 
 
 "good-bye, capri!" " 132 
 
 3A10 
 





The Hermit of Capri 
 





The Hermit of Capri 
 
 Capri, Italy, October 3, 190-. 
 (Sunday night.) 
 
 My dear : 
 
 You may fill the blank. Let me thank 
 you for the kind wishes you were pleased to 
 express for me in your note received on the 
 steamer at sailing. You have been ever 
 good to me, and 1 left my native land feeling 
 that I had a fellow-traveller, for you said you 
 would "follow" me. 
 
 I shall try to keep my promise to write to 
 you, so that you may know that I am "all 
 right." It is needless to tell you of the 
 usuals of the voyage: the ever-widening 
 ocean, the great ship, the passengers of low 
 and high degree, the passing ship on the far 
 
 I 
 


horizon, the tick-tack of the Aiarconi, the 
 betting on the day's run, the Captain's dinner 
 on the eve of arrival, and the glad steaming 
 into the Bay of Naples. Then Naples, with 
 its rocky, narrow streets; its beautiful, calm, 
 alluring bay; its treasure-house of all sorts of 
 fascinating, creeping things, etc. The "etc." 
 covers a multitude of voices — singing, bray- 
 ing, crowing, bleating voices; and the mourn- 
 ful cry of the brush-and-broom man goes up, 
 the wandering echo of them all — a wailing 
 Jonah. 
 
 Standing on the balcony of San Martino, 
 high on the summit of the cliff-brow north, 
 the city below — with its flat roofs and warty 
 chimney-pots, its threads of streets, its swell- 
 ing domes here and there — curves along 
 the bay shore, on the left to Portici and 
 Vesuvius, on the right to Posilipo, with 
 Castello Dell Ovo in the centre projecting 
 into the bay as the handle of a Cupid's 
 bow. 
 
 But I merely disembarked at this former 
 capital of a kingdom on my way to Capri, 
 which lies south across the bay — a great 
 leviathan of stone guarding its entrance and 
 bearing my hopes of rest as well. 
 
 2 
 


"And yonder, bluest of the isles, 
 Calm Capri waits; 
 Her sapphire gates 
 
 Beguiling to her bright estates." 
 
 There remains with me the abiding picture 
 of you as, on that warm September afternoon, 
 you turned and walked away so straight and 
 dainty "all in white samite," your five-feet- 
 five really appearing to grow taller in your 
 departing distance, your wheat-gold hair 
 more golden in the glowing sunset. I had 
 said: "Good-bye. God bless you." And you: 
 **How shall I know that you are — are all 
 right?" And I, again: "I will write, if you 
 will permit." You had bowed with a smile 
 of assent in your moist, clear gray eyes. It is 
 to that departing figure, under the rose of that 
 smile and to those honest eyes I write. We had 
 spoken of many things as we walked : of your 
 ambitions in your profession, your love for 
 the children you taught, your misgivings as 
 to your ability to accomplish the good you 
 desired, and, finally, you left me to infer from 
 your exclamation, as we neared the gate of 
 your home, "Oh, I want to be doing some- 
 thing in the world, to take my part!" that 
 
 3 
 


you contemplated the possibility of your 
 abandonment of the work which you had 
 often said you felt to be your "calling," 
 to yield to that universal beckon of Nature 
 to her children; but at whose special behest 
 you left me to imagine. I was not left in 
 doubt that there was some one^ yet in those 
 maidenly eyes came a forbidding mist as a 
 veil through which I might not intrude. 
 Our parting had come — had it not t And 
 so, I, lonely, among the crowd of passengers 
 on the liner, remembered the vision and 
 our talk of many things, and, oh, I do not 
 like your Mr. Call — or whoever that "some 
 one" is! 
 
 But come with me to Capri and forgive in 
 me whatever needs to be forgiven. You 
 never got into a "wobbly-calf" skifF at the 
 Naples landing and were rowed by a barefoot 
 fisherman to the bay steamer, where you 
 mounted the rope-balustered ladder to the 
 deck, and there, while the steamer waited, 
 threw coins to the amphibious divers who, 
 treading water, appealed for "awn franc," 
 and, many francs being thrown edgewise into 
 the blue waves, dove many a fathom deep, 
 brought up the francs, put them in their 
 
 4 
 


mouths until from many divings their cheeks 
 bulged with the enormous quid ? No! You 
 have been too busy in your ten years' "call- 
 ing," and have had no time "to go abroad 
 far countries for to see." Then "follov^^ me, 
 full of glee," across the bay in the warm 
 October morning, the blue waters glistening, 
 the gulls flying, the little band of mandolin, 
 guitar, and triangle musicians on the deck 
 playing Maria, Mart and Addio la Bella 
 Napoli for your lire, until you pass mandarin- 
 groved Sorrento, the broken baths of Agrip- 
 pina, the Bocca (or mouth) between the Sor- 
 rentine peninsula and Monte Tiberio — the 
 leviathan's head of sheer rock-cliff rising a 
 thousand feet above the sea — and, disembark- 
 ing, come to Marina Grande, where your 
 two-hundred-pound trunk is taken on the 
 head of a Capri lady, who, in her bare feet, 
 patters along the stone wharf with it to the 
 omnibus, while the strong men, hotel porters, 
 wrestle with your hand-bag and umbrella. 
 Thus "Johnny comes marching home!" 
 Then you are terraced up by many a zigzag 
 winding way five hundred feet to the saddle 
 of the island — the piazza of the town of 
 Capri. 
 
 5 
 


I am alone in Capri, though I make believe 
 you have followed me. 
 
 You ask me (in your steamer note): "Tell 
 me the truth, why you go so far away 'for 
 rest'?" You think with Naaman, the leper, 
 who, when Elisha prescribed that he should 
 wash himself in Jordan, said: "Are not 
 Abana and Parphar, rivers of Damascus, 
 better than all the rivers of Israel ?" Capri 
 is my Jordan and the bathing is healing — 
 for me, I hope. Here are eight hundred 
 species of flora, and "the nightingale sings 
 here all the night long." Even if here, per- 
 chance, one should happen, accidentally, to 
 die, no funeral director with trappings of 
 woe would funereally direct, but the Brothers 
 of Misericordia, in white gown and mask, 
 would silently come and on their shoulders 
 bear what remained to the church of San 
 Stefano and thence to the little cemetery. 
 
 But, my dear, wise. Little Teacher, you may 
 not understand that of necessity — Necessity, 
 that great God of some philosophic clay- 
 eaters — I must veil the truth, for, in my case, 
 it is ugly. Should I not have adopted the 
 grammar of the mythologists and spoken of 
 "It" as a goddess.? The ultimate Truth is 
 
 6 
 


Beauty. You remember Bernini left unfin- 
 ished his statue of Truth in the vestibule of 
 the Bernini palace, in Rome. None but the 
 sculptor himself can say what was his ulti- 
 mate design for the perfect statue of Truth. 
 None but the Artist of the Universe can imag- 
 ine the perfected Truth. Only He sees the 
 end from the beginning. What is Truth ? 
 "Pilate therefore said unto Him, 'Art thou 
 a King?' Then Jesus answered: 'Thou 
 sayest that I am a King. To this end have 
 I been born and to this end am I come into 
 the world, that I should bear witness unto the 
 truth. Every one that is of the Truth heareth 
 my voice.' Pilate said unto him: 'What is 
 Truth ?' And when he had said this, he went 
 out again unto the Jews, and saith unto them: 
 'I find no crime in him.'" Whatever ap- 
 prehension of the wisdom which passeth 
 reason Pilate gathered from the informing 
 eyes of his prisoner, in answer to "What is 
 Truth .?" he was satisfied with silence. 
 
 I suppose you went to church this morning. 
 Wherever you went you found a noble "body 
 of truth," but the whole, perfect truth has 
 its face turned toward the infinite — the in- 
 finitely beautiful. 
 
 7 
 


You will be patient with my evasion of 
 your solicitous questioning (for which thanks!) 
 while I tell you a little story, for I, too, have 
 been to church, and, "edified" by the earnest 
 simplicity of the eloquence of the priest- 
 preacher, which rapt the attention of the 
 simple folk and of my lord and lady, have 
 heard an angel sing. 
 
 There at the organ — "the very best in 
 Italy," say the Capri people — sat an old, 
 brown-gowned man, and played with that 
 delicate touch, that sensitive feeling of accord, 
 which is the distinctive quality of one "play- 
 ing by ear." As the notes stole lingeringly 
 from beneath his fingers and rose jubilant to 
 escape and soar, his tenor voice winged high, 
 clear as a silver bell, melodious as a flute 
 heard over wide waters, with the appealing 
 cadence of Schubert's Serenade^ filled chapel, 
 transept and high-groined arch with a rich- 
 ness and quality of sound which, in its eff^ect, 
 I can only compare to the sense of that light 
 "like a lily in bloom" within which Abou 
 Ben Adhem "saw an angel writing in a book 
 of gold"; and there, out of his very soul sat 
 my seraph in brown pouring out his voice 
 of gold, "a voice above singing." 
 
 8 
 


In a side aisle, by one of the great pillars, 
 stood a woman straight and tall; her face, 
 under the cowl-like scarf worn over her head, 
 "as it were the face of an angel," with joy- 
 tears trickling in an ecstasy of release down 
 her aged cheek. 
 
 The worshippers, at first joining in the 
 anthem, ceased to follow, and, I do not know 
 why or how, I found myself with them, all 
 silent, impulsively to have risen; and we all 
 stood immovably attent on the voice of the 
 singer. Then, coming tremblingly with a 
 few broken chords to the descendo, he ceased. 
 There was a hushing sigh from the parted 
 lips of the upturned faces as the singer bowed 
 over the keys, his face in his hands. The 
 people stood still a few moments, one not 
 looking at another, and then, as in a daze 
 of awakening, melted away. The woman 
 caught up her scarf more closely about 
 her face, halted hesitatingly in the shadow 
 of the pillar, furtively yet longingly gazed 
 on the bowed figure, then went swiftly 
 out. 
 
 Do you not think we worshipped .? Ah, 
 so well: we in the melody to which the music 
 had keyed us, that in which all nature finds 
 
 9 
 


a note; but she, I was sure, in the singer as 
 well. 
 
 I can understand you when, in our graver 
 talk, you said: "I have no rehgion, but am 
 very rehgious." You acknowledge no dog- 
 matic creed as your rule of conduct, yet are 
 reverently devotional to the truth. What was 
 it St. Paul said.? ''The Truth shall make 
 you free." That is, Truth is not bond of any 
 creature or fashion, is not of man's making, 
 wears no garments of semblance; is naked! 
 The Decadent seeks Truth because she is 
 naked. Yet we must need, however vainly, 
 to personify Truth as a help to the imagina- 
 tion — a mental and moral hitching-post. The 
 test of a Saviour of mankind is that His 
 teaching of Truth shall be of universal applica- 
 tion, or constitute a universal rehgion, so that 
 each man, as he has his several need, finds 
 himself included; and that such a Saviour 
 in His life on earth shall be the highest 
 example of that teaching. He must be both 
 song and singer. 
 
 Your "good wishes" have followed me 
 so far (thank you again), and, having them, 
 I am not lonely, although in a strange 
 land among strangers with which and 
 
 10 
 


with whom I shall try to acquaint myself 
 and you. 
 
 jjs ^ ijc 5f£ ^ 
 
 Faithfully yours. 
 
 Capri, Italy, November 2, 190-. 
 
 My dear : 
 
 Never was realized by me the force of the 
 simile, "Like good news from a far country," 
 until your dear letter came (forgive the last 
 adjective, although it is my own). I can now 
 appreciate that "blessings brighten as they 
 take their flight," when their flight is of 
 several thousand miles from you to me. 
 
 You ask me to "explain" myself. It is 
 hard to conceive how so simple a person as I 
 am requires a foot-note or an appendix. May- 
 be you intended the demand as a challenge- 
 preliminary requiring a retort-courteous. In- 
 deed, I do not call to mind any ambiguity in 
 me worth explanation. 
 
 You also, in that connection, again ask 
 me why I should leave my clients and my 
 life-work to go "so far away." Let me tell 
 
 II 
 


you something about Capri, and you shall 
 judge whether it is not as interesting as a 
 law-office and as cheerful as a court-room. 
 Why it should be so to me "is another story" 
 — which, perhaps, as an envoi, you may 
 "know by heart." But, quilps and quiddi- 
 ties discarded, I came to explain, if not an- 
 swer, to myself certain questionings which 
 have so persistently demanded attention that 
 I had to beat a retreat or be utterly routed. 
 It may be that for me, even yet, "Care sits 
 on the crupper of the horseman." However, 
 if anywhere, "Earth hath no sorrow that 
 Capri cannot heal." Here amid vineyards, 
 and orange, lemon, and olive groves, the rose 
 blooms all the year around, and the narcissus, 
 the morning-glory, and camellia unfold. 
 
 A friend tells me a part of the story of it. 
 From earliest times it has been noted for 
 its mild winters and cool summers. The 
 Nereids, affrighted by passing ships, took 
 shelter here, and the song of the Sirens on 
 the adjacent rocks could be heard by the 
 native Teleboans as Ulysses sailed past. 
 Virgil peopled it with (Ebale, child of Telon, 
 and the nymph Sabethes. Augustus Caesar 
 built palaces there — a palace for each of the 
 
 12 
 


twelve gods. Then came Tiberius, and erect- 
 ed and inhabited Villa Jovis on the high- 
 jutting eastern promontory of the island. 
 Tiberius chose Capri for his retreat from the 
 cares which infested his day, because it was 
 accessible only by a narrow beach, being it- 
 self on all sides a precipitous cliff surrounded 
 by a deep sea. In his Villa Jovis, Tiberius 
 entertained astrologers and learned Greeks; 
 Caligula, then a somewhat nice young man, 
 lived with him; and there Vitellius, as a youth, 
 had dreams of wild oats. There the poisoners 
 of Drusus, the son of Tiberius, were, brought, 
 tried, tortured, and dropped out of the back 
 door — a straight fall of a thousand feet to their 
 sea graves. That same fall was also "a drop 
 too much" for a fisherman who surprised 
 the noble Emperor, as Suetonius says, "in a 
 lark." Here the old gentleman "got a fall" 
 on his gardener for stealing a peacock from 
 its roost in the imperial orchard, and here the 
 supervisor of highways, who did not keep 
 the roads in good order, was Tarpeianed. 
 It is said that Crispina, wife of Commodus, 
 and Lucilla, his sister, "were exiled to 
 Capri before disappearing from the world." 
 People who visit Capri in these days acquire 
 
 13 
 


a habit of "disappearing from the world"; 
 that is, because Capri becomes all the world 
 to them. 
 
 The ruins of Villa Jovis yet rear themselves 
 as a monument to the rage for building in the 
 old Roman days. Near by is the ancient 
 lighthouse, of which a writer of the time says: 
 "The lighthouse, rival of the wandering 
 moon, sheds its rays sweet to anxious ships." 
 The house yet remains, but it is "The Light 
 that Failed." 
 
 My friend also says that the Muse once 
 dwelt in the olive groves of Capri, for 
 
 "Artheneus tells us of Blaesus, quoting a 
 line of his poetry: 
 
 "'Pour out for me now seven measures of the 
 best sweet wine.' 
 
 "This is the one articulate cry of ancient 
 Capri which has come across the ages to us." 
 
 Capri Blanco and Capri Rosso are wines 
 famous for their healthful purity; and, in 
 recent times, they well may have lent their 
 potency to the after-dinner enthusiasm of a 
 notable painter, a visitor, who walked out 
 with his fellow-diners on the favorite (and 
 only level) promenade, the Via Tragara, to 
 
 H 
 








the Punta Tragara. There he stood and 
 beheld, on the south, the wide sea with its 
 rhythmic sighing against the rocks, the Fara- 
 gHoni, five hundred feet below; Monte Solaro 
 rising on the west in the looming grandeur of 
 its two thousand feet, overtowering the gray 
 walls and turrets of dismantled Castiglione; 
 above, on the east, Monte Semaphore; while 
 the white, flat-roofed, balconied little city 
 shone silent, ghostlike in the solemn night. 
 The wandering moon, full, as befitted the 
 occasion, rode in the resplendent blue of the 
 mid-sky, radiant, in her own lustre, as a god- 
 dess coming down out of the heavens. Thus 
 standing, entranced by the witchery of the 
 scene, with arms upraised in rapture to the 
 Queen of Night, he cried: "George! I'm 
 coming out here the first thing to-morrow 
 morning to paint her!" 
 
 Upon the highest point of the ruins of 
 Villa Jovis, overlooking the Bocca, stands, 
 shining golden far out to sea, a statue of Ste. 
 Maria, recently erected by the brother of the 
 ex-King of Naples. Near it is a small chapel, 
 built in the sixteenth century by the devotion 
 of the Capri people, and there, as custodian, 
 has lived for nearly half a century a gentle 
 
 15 
 


hermit, who now is aged more than four- 
 score years. He seems a remaining soul, the 
 last survivor of the Lares of the Villa Jovis. 
 The " Lead, Kindly Light," of his shining 
 brown eyes, the meditative brow, the respon- 
 sive smile for the visitor in quick recognition 
 of friendly appeal, the unconscious grace of 
 movement, might well be taken for the sum 
 of the qualities of the gentle Capri folk. He 
 sits many hours in the sun in front of the west- 
 facing chapel door, the broad expanse of the 
 sea on his left, the smiling island of greenery 
 before him, the Bay of Naples with Vesuvius 
 and its mushroom clouds of steam and smoke 
 on his right. I present myself, and his tall 
 form rises to greet me in welcome as I ascend 
 the steps to his door — the singing organist! 
 
 Shall I repeat to him your question: 
 "Please explain yourself?" He could ex- 
 plain many things, with that high, broad fore- 
 head, and in the benignity of his gaze find 
 excuse for more. Don't you think, if you 
 were here, you would not think Capri "so 
 far away".f' If you could associate me with 
 this ancient presiding genius of Monte Tibe- 
 rio, would you yet think me "an enigma ".-^ 
 
 I had almost forgotten your request that I 
 
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should acquaint you with "anything occult" 
 I might find in my travels which would give 
 zest to your contemplated paper for the 
 Woman's Club until I had several interviews 
 with the hermit — I was so occupied with 
 settling those "questionings!" Selfish in me ? 
 It is only a good constitutional climb of an 
 hour from the town to the cozy chair by the 
 chapel door; and there, with the Madonna to 
 watch over us, my Ancient and I make close 
 friends with the breeze and the birds, and call 
 up the ghosts from the temples of the twelve 
 gods — who have gone "so far away." 
 
 *^0 ^^ ^M *f^ 
 
 ^^ ^^ ^* ^t^ 
 
 Faithfully yours, 
 
 Capri, Italy, November 30, 190-. 
 
 My dear , 
 
 Yes, as you hoped, I did enjoy a "Thanks- 
 giving Day " with (would you believe it ?) 
 a real turkey -and -cranberry dinner. But 
 the glad thanksgiving was for your letter 
 received that day. 
 
 Your club paper seems to trouble you, al- 
 though the programme sets it for some time 
 
 17 
 


to come. "Courage, Christian Soldier!" I 
 have been sitting at the feet of my GamaHel! 
 But no apostoHc succession can halo me as an 
 apostle to any one. By the way, in the midst 
 of your absorbing duties as a teacher, why not 
 recreate yourself by a ramble through St. 
 Paul's letters ^ — just for the sake of the 
 novelty of it! It will be as if you opened a new 
 book for the denouement; for you must turn 
 back to the beginning for local color, times, 
 character, and motive — to Matthew et seq. 
 You might get a religion! St. Paul was 
 illumined by a supernal search-light to de- 
 clare the mysteries of the life of the Spirit. 
 How he makes plain the perfect way! "Be- 
 hold I show you a mystery: We shall not all 
 sleep, but we shall all be changed; for this cor- 
 ruptible must put on incorruption, and this 
 mortal must put on immortality." There is 
 some occult for your paper! I await your 
 club paper! 
 
 Of the thirty thousand strangers who tour 
 to Capri yearly my Ancient has been visited 
 daily during the long years past by men of 
 many minds, and appears to have garnered 
 the intellectual experiences and speculations 
 of the times, and these have simmered down 
 
 i8 
 


in his lonely meditations into a residual com- 
 pound which, as he administers to me 
 allopathically, I shall endeavor to give you in 
 homoeopathic doses; for I have nothing else 
 to do, and must "be doing something in the 
 world," even at the risk of your thinking it 
 better undone. 
 
 I am sorry I cannot give you word for 
 word the language of my old friend, and I 
 fear the transmitting medium of his mono- 
 logues will only enable you to see as through 
 a glass darkly. I speak of his monologues 
 because, when I have led him to talk on the 
 supernatural, the occult, and the spiritual, I 
 have touched him where he lives! You 
 should behold him sometimes when im- 
 passioned in his discourse. I have stayed 
 late, and as in the starlight he has passed to 
 and fro before me, "as a tree walking," 
 gesticulating, his gown flowing with his 
 movement, his head in the clouds of speech, 
 his long beard punctuating his sentences on 
 the sky, he was the traditional picture of a 
 prophet of Israel. It is said that we should 
 translate the record "Elijah was fed by the 
 ravens" that he was fed by the tramps — 
 the passers-by. I am not wise as to that, but 
 
 19 
 


my dear old hermit has had food where of 
 and who of I know not. One evening I led 
 up to your subject. 
 
 In substance, he holds that there is and 
 should be an Occult Science, a secret treas- 
 ure of knowledge. That it is pursued by 
 the elect is the mere condition of qualifica- 
 tion, as is that of the priest, the physician, 
 the lawyer, the artist, the artificer. That 
 it is understood depends upon the same 
 condition — that ability to comprehend. To 
 His disciples Christ said: "To you it is given 
 to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of 
 Heaven, but to them it is not given." The 
 elect are simply those who are in condition to 
 receive. "He that hath ears to hear let him 
 hear" is the foreordination of all knowledge. 
 To the Occult has been referred the studies, 
 experiments, and exhibitions of astrologers, 
 necromancers, and magicians, the seekers 
 after the philosopher's stone, the elixir of 
 Hfe, and the universal solvent. They have 
 been said to have had their "familiars" — 
 spirits, devils — and from them bought or 
 wrested the secrets forbidden of Nature. 
 There was a woman at Endor that had a 
 famihar spirit. It is curious how the devil 
 
 20 
 


has been thought to reign exclusively over 
 the unknown, the hidden powers of Nature. 
 He is that vermiform appendix surviving 
 from the primeval heat which both science 
 and religion are submitting to surgery. He 
 is the Hero of Ignorance. What Occult 
 Science teaches cannot be known generally. 
 The writings which teach of it are obscure 
 except to the enlightened : they are in allegory, 
 or they deal in symbols of which the initiated 
 only have the key to the cryptogram. St. 
 John's Revelation needs a revealer, and 
 Genesis requires an esoteric teacher. There 
 is no systematic grammar or Baedeker by 
 which any one may certainly learn or practise 
 occult science or know what it is. The 
 student, the neophyte, the chela^ must put 
 himself in condition, mentally and physically, 
 to know and pursue the science, or in fact to 
 know that there is such a science. Reading 
 Bulwer's Zanoniy one perceives how difficult 
 it was for the young man to give himself to 
 the pursuit. And the man, who had kept all 
 the commandments, inquired of the Teacher 
 what he should do to inherit eternal life, 
 when required to go and sell all that he had 
 and give to the poor, that he might have 
 
 21 
 


treasures in heaven, and to come, follow Him, 
 "went away sorrowful, for he was one that 
 had great possessions." The Occultist must 
 give his whole heart to his purpose; every 
 light of intelligence must be shining, every 
 force of will must be in hand, or the awful 
 foot of the brute will break the charmed circle 
 of his endeavor. As he seeks to wring her 
 secret from Nature, he must achieve a mastery 
 over her by enveloping himself in a spiritual 
 mantle with which to ungirdle this fierce 
 Brunhild in her bridal bed. 
 
 Elisha, the prophet, knew what was whis- 
 pered in the bedchamber of the hostile King 
 of Syria. He healed Naaman, the leper, and 
 ■ caused the leprosy to cleave to the boodling 
 Gehazi. An army sent to arrest him was 
 stricken with blindness. At his behest thirsty 
 land became refreshed with water. To re- 
 lieve distress, upon his supplication, oil and 
 bread increased many fold. He restored 
 to life the son of the Shunamite woman. 
 He magnetized a twig so that it drew up 
 from the bottom of Jordan the borrowed axe 
 of the bereft workman. He foretold birth 
 and death, the victory and defeat of kings; 
 he anointed men to be kings. The fact 
 
 22 
 


that his so-called "miracles" are narrated in 
 the Bible does not argue that Elisha did not 
 know what he was about; nor does it preclude 
 inquiry as to how he wrought them. He 
 was the pupil of Elijah, and was himself the 
 teacher and manager of a School of the 
 Prophets. There must have been resident 
 in him a quality of life, a potential force, a 
 lodestone of vitality, by means of which he 
 could magnetize the dull iron of common life. 
 He had a sixth sense pervasive of space. His 
 soul was an inhabitant of the fourth dimen- 
 sion. He was clairvoyant to see the powers 
 and principalities of the air encamped about 
 him, with power to open the eyes of his ser- 
 vant likewise to view them. He was clair- 
 audient of the secrets of kings. He knew 
 and foretold — maybe, caused — the flight of 
 the besieging Syrian army because of fear 
 at the "noise of chariots and a noise of 
 horses, even the noise of a great host." He 
 was a man of physical superiority, and by 
 his mode of life peculiar. He attained an 
 incorporeal development unique even among 
 that spiritual race, the Hebrews; so that, in 
 after times, when Jesus appeared working 
 wonders "some said it was Elias." The 
 
 23 
 


pupil of Elijah far exceeded his occult teacher 
 in power and prescience, and covered the stern 
 qualities of his preceptor with a mantle of 
 Kindliness. 
 
 The fakirs of India, so far and beyond 
 that they are mere prestidigitateurs, by 
 heredity and long-continued exercise of will, 
 have a faculty of animal magnetism, or 
 hypnotism, by which they delude the imag- 
 ination of the onlooker, so that he appre- 
 hends any object at their suggestion; or it 
 may be, in instances, they do project appear- 
 ances of particular objects, shapes, dummies, 
 to which the spectator attributes life and 
 characteristics, as must have been the case 
 in the contest between Moses and the magi- 
 cians before Pharaoh. Moses was " learned 
 in all the wisdom of Egypt"; was a neophyte 
 at Hieropolis, the priestly college, was educat- 
 ed in the priesthood as became the adopted 
 son of Egypt's King, who was both King and 
 the High Priest of the Great God Ra, and so 
 was possessed of "that divinity which doth 
 hedge about a King." 
 
 So, in exemplification of your subject, you 
 might induce your club to buy a Bible for 
 
 24 
 


its library. But while it is engaged in so 
 depleting its treasury, let me add some fur- 
 ther reflections — you may call them hy- 
 potheses — with which my instructor has 
 favored me. 
 
 He says that the evolution of the Human 
 Soul is one thing, the birth or devolution of the 
 Spirit, or Spiritual Soul, quite another. The 
 trinity of man is body, soul, and spirit. The 
 body and human soul are matters of evolution, 
 but the spiritual soul is not a matter of 
 evolution — the survival of the fittest — for it 
 is an emanation from the Infinite One. The 
 Spirit is that image of Him — the "likeness" 
 into which man became — for "God is a 
 Spirit." It is this spirit which is the wonder- 
 worker. Man's wilful denial of that spirit is 
 a refusal of life everlasting. To be conscious 
 of its indwelling is to "inherit eternal life." 
 As man can recognize what is without him- 
 self only from that which he has within, it is 
 essential to his perception of things spiritual 
 that he himself be spiritually minded. "The 
 natural man," says St. Paul, "receiveth not 
 the things of the Spirit, neither can he know 
 them, for they are spiritually discerned." 
 The quest for the Holy Grail is to him who 
 3 25 
 


has already drunk of the wine of the spirit. 
 As St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians: "How- 
 beit we speak wisdom among the perfect: 
 yet a wisdom not of this world, nor of the 
 rulers of this world, which are coming to 
 nought: but we speak God's wisdom in a 
 mystery, even the wisdom that hath been 
 hidden, which God foreordained before the 
 worlds unto our glory: which none of the 
 rulers of this world knoweth: for had they 
 known it, they would not have crucified the 
 Lord of glory; but as it is written: 
 
 "'Things which eye saw not, and ear heard 
 not, and which entered not into the heart 
 of man, whatsoever things God prepared for 
 them that love Him. 
 
 "'But unto us God revealed them through 
 the Spirit, for the Spirit searcheth all things, 
 yea, the deep things of God.'" 
 
 Now if there should be any heartburnings 
 about the diversion of the club's funds for 
 The Book, you have only to refer it to the 
 above so apt quotation coming from my 
 Aged One to prove the existence of the occult, 
 "the wisdom that hath been hidden," and to 
 identify the persons to whom and through 
 
 26 
 


what interposition it is revealed. But hear 
 my friend explain: 
 
 "The human soul is merely illustrated by 
 the personality. The animal soul is of the 
 animal. As man is an animal he has an 
 animal soul; and, as he is a man, he has 
 evolved or is capable of evolving a human 
 soul which, despite immense longevity of ages 
 upon ages, may finally lose its personality, 
 disintegrate, and dissolve into other forms of 
 semi-material life which is 'the second death,' 
 or, by attainment of the Spiritual quality, 
 achieve the condition of living everlastingly. 
 It is the inexorable law of cause and effect 
 — which is justice — in things moral that man's 
 nature and condition in the future life de- 
 pend, and they are the effects of tendencies 
 voluntarily encouraged by him in the past 
 and present. This necessitates future lives 
 on earth, as man in this life is the product, the 
 effect, of past lives. Nature loses nothing. 
 *Be not deceived, God is not mocked; for 
 whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also 
 reap. For he that soweth unto the Spirit 
 shall of the Spirit reap eternal life.' The 
 occultist deals with the causes of things. 
 In this age of investigation experiments in 
 
 27 
 


all matters which may be demonstrated to 
 any of the five senses have ceased to be 
 deemed occult, and the domain of the so- 
 called supernatural has been reduced and 
 almost limited to the consideration of the 
 so-called immaterial qualities of the body 
 and spirit; that is, to the psychical feature 
 of occult science. The medium is one whose 
 vital force, by reason of bodily imperfection, 
 escapes as water oozes through a sun-dried 
 barrel, or is one who has a superabundance 
 of that fluidic force which more than fills the 
 body and trickles over the brim. It is in 
 this substance of vitality oozing or over- 
 flowing out of the living body that the 
 'spirit' bodies of the departed in Hades, and 
 other intelligences as well, live again, and for 
 the time of immersion are filled with ap- 
 preciable life. This fluid, 'biogen, od,' is 
 substantial. It is not only such stuff" as 
 dreams are made on, but is the dream-stuff' 
 itself. It is the magic carpet. It is that to 
 which the hypnotist appeals, and which 
 materializes in the imagination of the sub- 
 ject all that is suggested to him. It is 
 simply the vehicle of the life principle; so 
 intimate the connection with the body that 
 
 28 
 


while it remains unexhaled Lazarus may be 
 bidden to 'come forth!' It is this substance 
 which flees when one is frightened to death. 
 It is the 'hoorla,' the mirror, which receives 
 and retains impressions of things, of thoughts 
 and images in the minds of others as well. 
 Its supra-normal development gives us the 
 medium, the clairvoyant and clairaudient, 
 the gift of second-sight, the seer. This de- 
 velopment is a matter of proper (or, as the 
 ignorant consider, improper) exercise. The 
 clairvoyant is a person who discovers ob- 
 jects concealed from sight by distance or 
 intervening obstacles; who sees into things 
 without opening them, or has second sight. 
 It is the positive and voluntary, instead of 
 the passive and involuntary, use made of this 
 fluid or ghost-stuff of the medium, which 
 the clairvoyant and clairaudient person uses 
 to sense things. We are creatures of five 
 senses in search of that sixth, whose faculty 
 of expression may be Swedenborg's 'com- 
 munication by correspondence,' but whose 
 self may be the expression of that real Soul — 
 that Spiritual Soul in whose potency lies the 
 force to set in motion and to dominate all the 
 bodily and psychic capabilities of man. If 
 
 29 
 


such potency can be evoked the laying on of 
 hands means something, and the heahng 
 of paralytics and the ills arising from ob- 
 structions of the blood becomes a possibility: 
 but this 'cometh only through fasting and 
 prayer.' 
 
 "The practices of asceticism are sup- 
 posed to require mortification of the body, 
 but uncleanliness or disregard of the body 
 is as repugnant to the highest devotion to 
 occult science as idle or lustful thoughts are 
 to purity of heart. These practices may be 
 followed by those who cannot otherwise 
 disregard fleshly indulgence and concentrate 
 their thoughts. The prescriptions to 'sub- 
 ject the body' and to 'bring the body 
 under' are only applicable to a weak or 
 diseased mind. 'One man hath faith to 
 eat all things; but he that is weak eateth 
 herbs.' It is only in the perfect body of 
 'one among ten thousand and altogether 
 lovely' who is capable of the sustained la- 
 bors, the self-denials, the courage of will 
 to become a hierophant so as to control 
 the forces of nature as well outside as with- 
 in himself. No doubt the schools of the 
 Prophets have been maintained to this day. 
 
 30 
 


It could hardly be that a man having at- 
 tained to the 'gift of the spirit' would will- 
 ingly break the ladder of his success, but 
 the rather, as he ascended, would drop his 
 mantle upon some Elisha of his hope. One 
 hardly could be expected to leave no heir of 
 him succeeding who had heard from afar the 
 whispered consultation in the King's bed- 
 chamber; or who had suffered unharmed the 
 bite of poisonous vipers and fought uncon- 
 quered with lions at Ephesus; or who, 
 'whether in the body or out of the body,' had 
 seen the mysterious progress of the soul in 
 the nether world, and heard voices whose 
 speech it was 'not lawful for man to utter.' 
 The authority which Jesus gave to His 
 disciples, whom He sent forth to heal all 
 manner of diseases, must have been accom- 
 panied with instructions how to exercise as 
 well as to avail themselves of the power given 
 them by Him when He retired with them into 
 'a mountain apart.' Is there any miracle to 
 him who performs it ? He may not be able 
 to define or analyze, or to explain the origin 
 or action of the force he is conscious of having 
 employed. He knows, however, 'that virtue 
 has gone out of him.' There is nothing 
 
 31 
 


supernatural. The will of God in nature 
 cannot be supernatural. God works no 
 miracles which are so to Him. His works 
 are past finding out, that is all. Man is now 
 engaged in the development of his human 
 soul: some men have attained to the posses- 
 sion of a spiritual soul, and are accounted 
 as of the Divine. We may become con- 
 scious of the existence of it as a flashing spark 
 in the recesses of a vast cavern, and lift our 
 hands in the hope of realizing its flame in 
 the ages upon ages. To reahze it in full 
 consciousness is to have 'our face to shine' 
 and our 'raiment to become shining, exceed- 
 ing white as snow, as no fuller on earth can 
 whiten them.' The attainment of this su- 
 preme consciousness is the destiny of man in 
 his procession in the ages on ages through 
 the world; how to obtain it belongs to the 
 study of the psychology of occult science — 
 a religion. The Gospel of Christ teaches for 
 mankind the possibility of possessing this 
 Christ within us — the 'hope of glory, the 
 hope of everlasting life.' The transfigura- 
 tion was a physical manifestation of its 
 presence, the resurrection a proof of its po- 
 tential quality, and the ascension of its be- 
 
 32 
 


ing in the image of God. The Centurion at 
 the crucifixion recognized its presence when 
 he exclaimed: 'Truly this man was the Son 
 of God!' The Spirit only can be said to be 
 the Son of God — the Only Begotten; gross 
 m.atter is the work of His hands. The high- 
 est cHmax of the drama of Job is the ecstatic 
 outburst of hope reaHzed: 'I know that my 
 Redeemer Hveth, and at last He will stand 
 up upon the earth: and after my skin, even 
 this body, is destroyed, then without my 
 flesh shall I see God.' How grand are the 
 possibilities of Man! Need he longer say, 
 as Manoah to his wife, *We shall surely die, 
 for we have seen God ' ^. The occultist en- 
 deavors to answer the question: 'All things in 
 heaven and in earth are of God, both the 
 visible and the invisible. Such as is the in- 
 visible is the visible also; for there is no im- 
 passable bound between spirit and matter. 
 Matter is spirit made exteriorly cognizable 
 by the force of the Divine Word. When 
 God shall resume all things by love — the 
 divine attraction — the material shall be re- 
 solved into the spiritual and there shall be a 
 new heaven and a new earth.'" 
 
 When my Ancient had so ended the 
 
 33 
 


Occultist's rhapsody he was so exultant of the 
 vision of the coming spiritual new heaven 
 and new earth that I felt he would be more 
 lonely with than without my company. In 
 his pale, upturned face I saw the glorified 
 calm of the Great Peace, and, without a 
 word, I left him and went quietly down the 
 star-lit way. Stumbling along, I wondered 
 if that Supervisor of Tiberian roads had 
 not come back and was in office again. The 
 marble palaces which once adorned the 
 Roman highway were not; the rumbling 
 chariots and ramping horses, the processions 
 of priests of Isis, of Mithra, and of the twelve 
 gods of Rome with their flaming torches, 
 blaring trumpets, dancing youths, and the 
 thousand slaves of burden, had gone; and 
 there was only a lonely rock -paved and 
 stone-walled path with the one solitary foot- 
 man pondering the words he had just heard, 
 and wondering if in any former life he 
 had ever been, or in the Great Hereafter he 
 
 would be, companion, friend (or ?) 
 
 of you ! 
 
 I do not suppose the Hermit would object 
 to your availing yourself of anything he has 
 said; he has no use for speech, or anything 
 
 34 
 


o 
 
 2 
 H 
 
 m 
 
 CD 
 
 m 
 
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 z 
 
 a 
 
 c 
 
 2 
 t/l 
 
 O 
 
 r 
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else, except to give it away. As for myself, 
 I am still sitting at his feet — at the foot of 
 the class — and remaining 
 
 Faithfully yours, 
 
 Capri, Italy, December 24, 190-. 
 
 My dear : 
 
 I posted my last letter hurriedly to catch 
 the home-bound steamer, and to give you 
 my Aged's ideas on occultism for use in your 
 paper; and I am glad it arrived in the nick 
 o' time for the purpose, but I was not pre- 
 pared for the result you have been so speedy 
 to relate in your letter gladly received the day 
 before yesterday, part of which I could not 
 resist the temptation to read to the Aged 
 Author on the evening of that day. It is the 
 part in which you say that, with many quota- 
 tion marks, and "It is saids," and "It is 
 helds," you interweaved your paper with 
 extracts from the Hermit's outgivings; but 
 had not given any consideration to the few 
 lines about reincarnation, a subject in which 
 
 35 
 


you had never taken much interest. I can 
 imagine the explosions with which you say 
 those "few Hnes" were met: "Do you 
 believe in reincarnation ? Do you believe in 
 mncarnation ?" Your response: "Do you 
 think that I, my ego, my self, am a creature of 
 flesh and blood ?" was well seconded by a 
 facetious friend with: "No, I don't think 
 you're a mere 'critter creetur!'" But, oh! 
 how did you cover your defenceless head 
 when the little, pale innocent exclaimed: 
 "Why, I never knew that oculists were so 
 religious!" No wonder, with the pelting you 
 received, you felt that you were like "a cer- 
 tain man going down from Jerusalem to 
 Jericho." I always knew you had gay re- 
 sources, and it was with heightened respect 
 therefor, and without disesteem for the club, 
 that I learn that you rounded it up with that 
 old, old conundrum: "Where was Moses 
 when the light went out V To which they 
 all cried out: "In the dark!" And then, to 
 your, "What light remained V they hummed 
 and ah'd until the little innocent one re- 
 deemed herself with: "Oh, the Israelite!" 
 Then you came in with an inning: "When 
 the light of this life goes out and / am in 
 
 36 
 


the Great Dark, the Israel-Hght will remain; 
 shall remain because it must have been 
 before the lamp of this life was lit: the light 
 but illumined, it did not create Moses !"3^7^ 
 
 Please return my thanks to your "good 
 Samaritan," whose hair threaded with gray 
 years of experience and in the depths of 
 whose dark-blue eyes shine the sacred secrets 
 of many things, who, at adjournment, smiling, 
 whispered: "Your Israel-light saved you." 
 
 After I had concluded your report, the 
 dear old man rather tentatively remarked: 
 "The dear girl, the good woman!" He 
 did not continue, but fell into one of his 
 reflective moods, and I left him to his medi- 
 tations. 
 
 You say you never had taken much in- 
 terest in the subject. No, you haven't been 
 with the Hermit. Did you ever think, when 
 in the night you looked up at the stars, 
 millions and millions of miles away, that you 
 had not much business with them— except 
 to apostrophize ? Is not this earth, of which 
 we know so little, so little — not even how the 
 grass grows on it — big enough to house us 
 for some time to come ? Isn't this hive large 
 enough to store all the honey we can gather 
 
 37 
 


from the gardens of God and then come back 
 here for a span of threescore and ten years 
 out of, say, every two thousand ? If we 
 could only realize that the true life is that 
 of the conscious spirit, we would consider 
 our immersion into this world but a baptism 
 to a new birth in "heaven." I am reminded 
 of a question you ask: "What do we do be- 
 tween births?" "Sleep, perhaps to dream," 
 says Hamlet. But what do you do now } 
 You think. The outer world with which, 
 during this life, you come into contact 
 through your senses, merely furnishes you 
 food for thought; then you go away until you 
 have exhausted the subject and are hungry 
 again. You wrestle with ignorance, the lack 
 of divine perfection (some call that lack. 
 Evil); you touch the earth and gather strength 
 of experience, labor, suffering, love, and 
 finally, when in exhaustive possession of all, 
 conquer. You learn and sing the score of 
 all the music of this world, and, when 
 proficient, join the "Choir Invisible." In 
 heaven there are many mansions, and you 
 must furnish and inhabit them all. The 
 fact of His going prepared them for your 
 faith. 
 
 38 
 


I do not think that you need be afraid of 
 the "gods many" of St. Paul, or of the 
 Pantheon of the pagan. 
 
 If there be any differences in the degrees of 
 advancement of humanity in the spiritual 
 world when released from the wheel of in- 
 carnation, they will not be greater than those 
 on the earth now. There will be work and 
 joy enough — as there is here and now. 
 As Admiral Schley said, after the victory off 
 Santiago: "There's glory enough for all." 
 
 I know there are many questions as to how, 
 when, and where you lived during past lives 
 on earth. When you think of it, the same 
 questions arise as to you — you, the Thinker; 
 you, the Dreamer, the Word-Builder, during 
 this present life — who have in haunt "many 
 a quaint and curious volume of forgotten 
 lore." 
 
 If the essential you is a veritable thing, a 
 substance however ethereal, however subtile 
 — as magnetic force, electricity, or the ether 
 itself, is a thing — then you have existed before 
 you became manifested in that beautiful body 
 of yours; and I may loyally add, so lived that 
 you deserved your present habitation. Grant- 
 ed that you lived on this planet, you were 
 
 39 
 


with your kindred-soul relations, of all sorts, 
 and you gravitated to this life Kinward. Even 
 obedience to the law of motion by way of 
 least resistance would bring this accord. 
 As "Love is stronger than death, many 
 waters cannot drown it,',' the soul seeks 
 its companion-soul when reincarnated. Then 
 don't you think loving should find its object 
 without striving, without impatience, with- 
 out jealousy ? It should come from above, 
 as the dew from the sky of former lives. 
 True love is not made, it is born; it Is the 
 child of the past and of interbirth dreams; 
 it is the honey stored from all the flowers 
 of the life-fields. The object loved is the 
 ideal pictured by all our past lives — for 
 they are the painters. Such love is worth 
 waiting for as we wait for the rose to bloom 
 from seed planted long ago. If we do not, 
 in this one life, meet our ideal, this true love, 
 then single blessedness is no failure. 
 
 You say: " It is not very amusing to have to 
 be born again and to work out my salvation. 
 Once is enough for me. So far, life is hardly 
 worth living again." But, my dear, you will 
 not live the same life again; you will know 
 better how to live. Last evening I was at the 
 
 40 
 


chapel door again and told my Ancient what 
 you had further written: that you wished 
 you could live your present life over again 
 if you could only be born with the knowledge 
 you now have, for you could then avoid 
 making many grievous mistakes and order 
 your hfe on different and greatly higher 
 levels. 
 
 "Yes, yes," he began, "that is the wish of 
 unreflection; but it shows a noble discontent 
 which is the seed of progress. Your friend 
 may have cause for her dissatisfaction. She 
 may have lost some opportunity, failed to 
 realize some ideal — as we all have. Ah me! 
 Yet the fact that she perceives and acknowl- 
 edges such loss and failure is evidence of her 
 high intent. She can begin a new life, be 
 born again, now! Let her re-form her 
 broken ideals, and, having unmasked her 
 enemies — her weaknesses and faults — begin 
 the battle anew. However, she may console 
 herself, in part; she has already fought a good 
 fight — for what was she when she last lived 
 on earth .? Her discontent is of ancient 
 seeding, and is now fruiting in grander as- 
 pirations. All that she is now is plus what 
 she has been In the past. Let her consider 
 4 41 
 


the pit from which she has been digged, and 
 take courage. I am glad, young man, that 
 you have such a friend." 
 
 As he concluded we sat in silence for 
 some time, watching the full moon sinking 
 over Monte Solaro into your west, and I, 
 following it over sea and land, came to the 
 gate of our parting; then, rather thinking 
 aloud as in a dream than responding to him, 
 I said: "So am I." I felt him detect and 
 follow my gaze, and then: 
 
 "Indeed!" was all my Wise One said. 
 
 Once I heard, "as the voice of one crying 
 in the wilderness," one who had lost the 
 way, was bewildered, despairing, for the paths 
 were tangled, crooked; before and behind 
 was the gloom of impending forest: "I wish 
 I had never been born, but / cannot get 
 back!" The mistakes of the years past were 
 a maze, the future was a continuing labyrinth. 
 It was dreadful, that "I cannot get back!" 
 To such a caged starling, is there not some 
 solace in the fact that although it cannot get 
 back it can go forward — can rest, review, and 
 repent its errors, and come again into the 
 wilderness and make straight its paths ? 
 Withal, there is one reflection which gives 
 
 42 
 


us pause. There is no escape of the soul 
 from reincarnation by shuffling off this mortal 
 coil; death does not give absolution; if one 
 life is not worth living, we must live until it 
 is made worth while; the coward suicide but 
 prolongs his task of Sisyphus. 
 
 That we are to be born again into this 
 earth-life is what makes this life worth living, 
 my old friend says. That we shall try again 
 gives a zest to the present; for the manner 
 in which we enjoy or suffer now we will en- 
 rich or impoverish the hereafter life, with 
 the added enrichment of the intermediate 
 rest, the dream-life. The motives, the 
 thoughts (for "thoughts are things") will 
 give suggestion to the hereafter even as "the 
 child is father of the man." The lives past 
 are an anagoge to the present one. If it is 
 not " amusing" it is verily interesting. When 
 we go hence, don't you think we shall ponder 
 of things left undone, of mistakes to be 
 corrected, kindnesses foreborne; the failure 
 of one may become the triumph of the next 
 life; the unsatisfied longings of the one be 
 adjusted in the next by wisdom gained from 
 reflection in our intermediary life — " heaven." 
 And so we will go on through the ages until 
 
 43 
 


in the divine progress (for it is a progress) of 
 all things we become "sons of God." Oh! 
 life is worth hving, worth loving, because we 
 may, some day, attain to the love which 
 God has for all things. 
 
 In your past Hfe you may have been a pupil 
 of some master of the ferule and rod, and 
 often craved to show him what a teacher 
 should be. I hope, now, if he is learning his 
 lessons of you, his head is hot under the coals 
 of fire you heap upon it. 
 
 It is this past — the causes set in motion 
 from life to life — that is the suggestion which 
 projects the lesson of one life into another, 
 and is really that which Charles Grant, in 
 his "Poem of Life," personifies: 
 
 "Ere a babe is born to its bliss or harm, 
 God takes the naked soul on His arm, 
 And whispers a great word in his ear, 
 So that it cannot choose but hear. 
 On whatever land that babe shall grow. 
 Whether the world shall hear or know, 
 If he be strong, or if he be weak, 
 No other word his soul shall speak." 
 
 Blessed is she who hath ears to hear that 
 word! You have heard the story of the 
 
 44 
 


"Lost Name"? The true name of the 
 Supreme, the Only One, was given by Him 
 to a wise man, who was to impart it only 
 with his dying breath to one other. It was 
 passed thus from one to another until a Wise 
 One, dying, sought to transmit it to a youth 
 as his successor, but, as with expiring breath 
 he was uttering it, the youth turned to listen 
 to the song of a girl beneath the window, and 
 — alas! the name, the holy word, unheard, 
 was lost! So, now, we have only man-made 
 symbols to signify the unutterable mystery. 
 
 Oh no, I am not "studying for the minis- 
 try"; I am simply hermiting. 
 
 You further add that you avoided mention 
 in your club paper of the Hermit's occult 
 explanation of the faculties of Spirit-mediums, 
 because, as their performances are mostly in 
 the dark, you "did not deem it best to in- 
 troduce the shady subject." Let me suggest 
 what I infer from the Ancient's theory (?) of 
 vibrations. The light from the sun is hurled 
 to the earth at the rate of about ninety-five 
 million miles in eight minutes; in vibrations 
 it beats upon and penetrates the atmosphere 
 of the earth, which is about forty miles thick 
 and has a weight of fifteen pounds to the 
 
 45 
 


square inch on the earth's surface. It strikes 
 the earth with a direct force equal to nearly a 
 hundred thousand tons weight. Now, don't 
 you think that force must be accounted when 
 dealing with that subtile fluid (if it may be 
 so called) of vital or magnetic energy oozing 
 out of or overflowing from the Medium ? 
 It would seem that the direct rays of the sun 
 driven, palpitating with throbbing percussion 
 upon the earth would break in storm upon 
 the fragile, tenuous waves of ooze or over- 
 flow of mediumistic magnetism, and drown 
 any spook who adventured his frail bark 
 across the Styx. The surging push of the 
 sun's rays of light is a force which con- 
 tinually aids the centrifugal flight of the 
 planets, in a degree counteracting the power 
 of gravity of the sun's immensity. 
 
 Those who deny the longing and the pitiful 
 attempts of the disembodied to communicate 
 with their kindred on earth usuallv disclose 
 a preference to cut out the hereafter alto- 
 gether — probably for reasons of their own. 
 I broached inquiringly this subject of medium- 
 ship to the Hermit, but all the information ( ?) 
 he vouchsafed was, "Alas, poor Medium!" 
 
 Yet there must be some fluid to bear the 
 
 46 
 


wireless telegrams of disunited souls, which 
 the patience of the open-minded Scientist 
 and the hope of the Christian shall yet 
 probatively rediscover. 
 
 Who shall say that, in the complementary 
 and now invisible (as the infra-red and the 
 ultra-violet) rays of light, the ghostly fingers 
 that rap and write may not become sensible 
 to mortal eyes ? 
 
 «^ ^1^ ^u u^ ^u 
 
 * ' ^* ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ 
 
 Faithfully yours, 
 
 Capri, Italy, December 27, 190- 
 
 My dear : 
 
 For fear of being tiresome to you, I did not 
 attempt to answer all the inquiries in your 
 last (club!) letter. Besides, I have had an- 
 other sitting with my Gamaliel. 
 
 I am pleased to find you interested in this 
 little island, but hardly flattered by your 
 saying this "dot on the earth must derive its 
 color from the eyes which seem to be in love 
 with it"; and you intimate that Capri 
 Rosso has also lent its rubiness to beautify 
 
 47 
 


it. But I can say, as Daniel Webster said of 
 Massachusetts: "There she is. Behold her, 
 and judge for yourselves!" It is not her 
 blue, white, red, and green grottos, her 
 caves, her crumbled altars of Mithra and 
 the gods; the Saracen watch-towers embrasur- 
 ing its west coast; the grim, tattered castle of 
 Barbarossa on steepled Monte Solaro, or 
 even the good people who cheerily build and 
 plant, worship and make merry; but it is 
 the altogether, the atmosphere of the whole 
 island, which makes one feel not only alive 
 but living. 
 
 You say you are "glad to learn about the 
 occult matters the Hermit talked of," and 
 ask me, "as his pupil, to be prepared for 
 'exams.'" My Seer is sufficient unto him- 
 self — an oracle on his own account, without 
 any "assumacy." He believes in the man- 
 datory permission given originally when 
 Adam was installed in the command of the 
 earth, his commissary limited by: "Of every 
 grain that beareth seed thou shalt eat"; and, 
 through obedience, the days of his years are 
 threescore years and ten; and by reason of 
 strength they are fourscore, yet is their 
 strength rest and gladness! 
 
 48 
 


The trouble with some of your club mem- 
 bers is that they enjoy the bliss of ignorance; 
 particularly that one who came out of ambush 
 with her 22-calibre black eyes levelled at you 
 and demanded that you stand and deliver 
 with: "Oh! what you say about Elisha — 
 why, that's in the Bible! Give us something 
 fresh!" You might refer such a one to 
 the evidences gathered in late years, since 
 scientific methods in collecting facts have 
 been instituted, and to the deductions there- 
 from which at least tend to prove that the 
 individual soul (Spirit, Thinker) does exist 
 after death, and that it is possible for it to 
 communicate with the living (but, ah! why 
 awaken the smiling dreamer?); that it, in a 
 bodily shape, while of the body as well as 
 when recently not, can, possibly, visit and 
 be seen by the living. People in general 
 are heedless of the great work done in these 
 days to blow into flame the embers of smoul- 
 dering faith in the resurrection of the Christ — 
 the Spiritual Soul in the Spiritual Body. 
 
 Indeed, if your club guerilla wishes some 
 really recent refreshment, you might refer her 
 to The Life of Father Ignatius^ the Monk of 
 Llanthony. 
 
 49 
 


The Via Tiberio, wall-lined, between villas 
 and vineyards, leads up by the "Caffe Mar- 
 gherita and Carolina," where the Siren, 
 Carolina, " always gay," greets this traveller, 
 "who passeth by this road so late" (or 
 early), with a tarantella carol from her 
 overlooking balcony; while the gentle Evan- 
 geline-faced Margherita offers a bouquet of 
 the fragrant narcissus as he reaches her 
 door; thence up by the lighthouse — once 
 "wont to shed its rays sweet to anxious 
 ships" — and over ruined Tiberian galleries, 
 halls, amphitheatres, armories, and cisterns, 
 until he again finds the gentle hermit, who, 
 having seen him a long way off, awaits his 
 prodigal. Neither falls on the other's neck 
 nor kisses — although falling was an ancient 
 practice up here, and kissing must not be 
 surprised; alas, poor fisherman! Yet one 
 might kiss the sweet-faced old man and be 
 forgiven. I wonder if, half a century ago, 
 some fair Margherita was not seen afar ofi^ 
 and, prodigally, kissed and been forgiven! 
 My daily, and often nightly, pilgrimages to 
 my old friend, up there on the lonely moun- 
 tain under the blue tent of God, have given 
 me something to think of at least. 
 
 5° 
 


I was going to tell you something which 
 suggested my "wonder," and then I hesitated 
 for the space of the last sentence, thinking I 
 ought not to tell tales out of school; yet I can 
 trust you with all my heart — and do — why 
 not with something of that of another; 
 though I know the sacredness with which you 
 treasure (from me) the secret of your elect 
 one! Besides, this is not a secret — simply 
 something occult, to the ignorant — and may 
 be a belated chapter in that "little story" I 
 told you in my first letter. Last evening, as 
 the sun tarried over Monte Solaro, and was 
 paying his parting respects to the golden 
 Madonna, to the ruins of Villa Jovis and the 
 little chapel, before seeking a shrine beyond 
 the sea, I came up for a night's occult revel 
 with my Ancient, and with my kodak, that 
 iconoclast of all the gods of modesty, sur- 
 prised my dear old friend standing on the 
 steps leading up to the chapel, and gazing 
 mournfully and tenderly upon a tall, kerchief- 
 ed figure in white below, whose face I could 
 not see (as it was fixed on him), until, as I ad- 
 vanced, she turned toward me. She was old, 
 for her hair was streaked with gray; but 
 young, for "the light that never was on sea or 
 
 51 
 


land," effulged her face, and the lines of 
 patient years fled away and caused her to be 
 transfigured. She was straight and strong, 
 for she had borne the heat and burden of the 
 day of a Capri workwoman; she was glorified, 
 for she loved! For her was not written: 
 
 "There's a love for a year, a love for a day, 
 But alas for the love that lasts alway!" 
 
 While she but glanced at my coming upon 
 this innocent tryst, she was not ashamed or 
 embarrassed, but, turning, walked away with 
 the free step and joyance of bearing of one 
 refreshed with the wine of the spirit which 
 her threescore years and ten but enriched. 
 And he, a hermit! The extreme gentleness 
 of my Abelard, as he greeted me and led the 
 way to our accustomed seat, was enhanced by 
 a subdued joyousness. I was so perplexed 
 by my self-reproaches for untimeliness in in- 
 vading the sanctuary of the aged couple, 
 that, to try to hide my confusion by the rule 
 of opposites, I was led to ask the most irrel- 
 evant and malapropos question: "What is 
 the genealogy of hell ?" My dear old friend 
 "never turned a hair," but with the serenity 
 
 52 
 


AND HE. A HERMIT!' 
 





of a babe answered: "Ah! hell is the fear of 
 the future and is born of the past. Fear is 
 the mother of care; and you know what killed 
 the cat." 
 
 " But what was it that feared r' I asked. 
 
 "Ah," said he, "that's another question. 
 There was something that feared: the past 
 cast its shadow, and out of it fear arose, its 
 spectre. But what was it evoked the ghost f 
 It was that something which does fear, does 
 hope, grieve, rejoice, hate, love. It is the I, 
 the ego, the soul — call it what you will — the 
 subjective; the subliminal; the consciousness 
 of consciousness, the residuum of thought ex- 
 periences; the sublimate essence of all our 
 emotions, desires, personalities; the individual 
 entity — it is the substance of them all, the 
 Self." 
 
 " But what is the origin of the * substance' ?" 
 
 " My young friend," said the old man, " that 
 origin is, as the Jewish scriptures have it, 
 'in the beginning?' The spirit of life per- 
 vades all material things (and I am not saying 
 there is any other than the material — that is, 
 substance) in the heavens above and the 
 earth beneath, in one form or another. 
 That spirit of Life was breathed out of the 
 
 53 
 


Infinite, the God, the Beginner; and, formed 
 and crystalHzed under His law, by process of 
 that law, evolves ever higher and more com- 
 plex forms of expression of that life, and 
 finally is resolved back into Himself, com- 
 pleting the circle of manifestation. Now 
 man, combining in himself all the preceding 
 forms, cannot, if he would, stop the spiral 
 climb of evolution. He must, by the divine 
 propulsion, ever seek that life more abun- 
 dantly until he shall acquire what we may 
 call a spiritual life — the life of the soul 
 as self-existent. Can the evolution of the 
 spirit of life, the life force, be complete ? Can 
 the persistence of force, the conservation of 
 energy, the law of continuing, be exhausted, 
 come to a standstill, in the production of a 
 mere man-animal } 
 
 "You may have a personal God, an an- 
 thropomorphic God, if you will — if it helps 
 you to comprehend, in any degree, by en- 
 larging the proportions of the highest con- 
 ceivable personality, until you may con- 
 template Him in all man-like perfection — and 
 yet you will have but a bare suggestion of 
 what may be the All-wise, the Beneficent, 
 the Almighty, the Only One. To this end, 
 
 54 
 


as helps to the imagination, man has shrined 
 his images; but the old command is upon the 
 wise: 'Thou shalt make no graven images.' 
 Yet, can you look up yonder at the myriad 
 stars, at the Milky Way — that nebula of 
 world -stuff — -at the illimitable spaces no 
 glass has yet pierced, and bridle your God 
 to this less than an atom in His universe, 
 and say that all this was made and per- 
 petuated for a mere man-animal ?" 
 
 The Aged One had risen, and, stretching 
 his arms aloft and abroad, as if to call an 
 expression of his idea down from the im- 
 mensity, exclaimed: "Oh, that I might know 
 HimF' 
 
 After a contemplative pause, he turned to 
 me with folded arms, as if in silent apology, 
 and I asked: 
 
 "Then you have heard of the Eastern 
 doctrine of Nirvana ?" 
 
 "Oh yes," he answered. "I have had 
 several very learned visitors here who be- 
 lieved in it. Why should a rain-drop refuse 
 to flow down into the ocean .? We may be 
 in accord, or at one, with God; but patience, 
 my son, the Universe will be a graybeard 
 before you or I shall be of God. When we 
 
 55 
 


can think God's thoughts (and, remember, 
 you are one of them), we won't object to 
 become of Him; but, until then — Good- 
 night!" 
 
 The Hermit sought to tell me what hell is. 
 Let me give you the geography of it — and 
 then some! 
 
 Seers, poets, and saints have localized hell 
 and peopled an under-world with lost souls — 
 mostly those of their enemies; but they, and 
 even the Amiable Hermit, had not dreamed 
 of a still farther but easily accessible place 
 for the final abode of sinners. It remained 
 for the Rev. Obedia Mashim, of the eight- 
 gallon persuasion, 'way back in the "airly 
 days," on his return to his congregation, after 
 having driven his hogs to market at Cin- 
 cinnati, and lingered there until Saturday 
 night to sell them on a rising market, and 
 having scruples against travelling on Sunday, 
 was forced to remain in the city over the next 
 day, to describe the wrecking of the Moselle 
 (April 25, 1838), and proclaim to his flock 
 upon his return home a new geography of 
 souls. After making his excuses for absence 
 on the preceding Sunday, he proceeded: 
 
 "I was seekin' some place of worship, but, 
 
 56 
 


like Noah's dove, I found no rest for my foot; 
 but, meanderin' by the river-sides, there mine 
 eyes beheld the new steamboat Mosellee 
 reposin' upon the bosom of the beautiful 
 Ohio, her steam blowin' off, her bells ringin', 
 and on the v^harf a vast crov^d huzzahin', 
 singin', and laughin' as the Mosellee started 
 on her trial trip up the river. Then a band 
 of music desecrated the Sabbath air v^ith its 
 audacious goin' on. Slowly she backed from 
 the wharf, and then her great wheels churned 
 the waters like the leveeathan in his fury, 
 and she swum out into the stream, a magnif- 
 icent structure and a credit to the city of 
 her birth. Then, let mine ears be deaf and 
 mine eyes blind, if I did not hear fiddlin' 
 and see dancin' on her deck— aye, fiddUn' 
 and dancin' and laughin' on the Lord's Day! 
 Fiddlin' and dancin'! — the men with their 
 arms around the women! I fain would have 
 turned mine eyes away, so full was I of wrath. 
 But there was the Mosellee^ as she swep' up 
 the river, the grand work of men's hands; 
 and the sun in the blue heavens did not cease 
 to shine on the abomination of wickedness 
 of that Sodom and Gomorrah on her deck! 
 Up the river she flew like a bird, and then 
 
 ' 57 
 


slewed about near the other side, when, all 
 of a suddent, she explored her boilers — ah! 
 She blew everything sky-high — ah! And all 
 that fiddhn' and dancin' crew — ah! She blew 
 some to heaven and some to hell and some 
 clean away over into Kentucky — ah!" 
 
 And thus it was that the bloody hunting- 
 ground came to be a new locus umbra in the 
 world of spirits. 
 
 Of the three places you have choice. In 
 heaven there is no marrying or giving in 
 marriage; in hell it is too hot for domestic 
 tranquillity; there remains Kentucky — with 
 you I'll risk her. 
 
 I fear your patience will not endure what 
 to me has become so interesting — my con- 
 versations with my friend. You have your 
 daily work (I hope it is not labor), and I have 
 my continuing leisure, coupled with an old 
 habit of being busy — at something! You 
 may think an "old man of the sea" is riding 
 me, but, I assure you, it is I who am being 
 carried away; I only wish it were to you. 
 But this may not be, mea miserum! Suppose 
 I join the Hermit, and " so let the wide world 
 wag as it will, we'll be gay and happy 
 still!" Then there would be no hermit, 
 
 58 
 


only two jolly companions. I fear, however, 
 that would violate the injunction: "Be not 
 unequally yoked together." 
 Let me say good-night! 
 
 Faithfully yours, 
 
 Capri, Italy, January 30, 190-. 
 
 My dear : 
 
 Yours of the 15th inst. discloses you as a 
 see-er, a star performer of a seance with 
 yourself as audience, solus. You appear to 
 have been a shadow-dancer — the shadow 
 your own. 
 
 You say you are glad I wrote you on the 
 24th ult., as you had been much alarmed on 
 the 22d by seeing my spook at your gate. 
 You ran from the veranda, where you had 
 tarried after bidding good-night to some 
 very late departing guests, and were enjoying 
 the clear, brilliant light of the moon in mid- 
 sky, and, with the soft south wind presaging 
 a green Christmas, were longing for a "cer- 
 tain truant" to come home for a Christmas- 
 
 59 
 


ing, when there, in full, palpable view, he 
 stood! You sa}^ you ''ran to meet him,"' 
 and when you got to the gate he vanished 
 away, 
 
 "The Snark was a Boogum, you see." 
 You hastened to the gate, looked up and 
 down the street, but he was nowhere. It is 
 generally believed that what you saw was 
 "another of those things no fellow can find 
 out" — out of certain mysterious cabinets, 
 though 
 
 "You may seek it with thimbles and seek it with 
 care; 
 You may hunt it with forks and hope; 
 You may threaten its life with a railroad share; 
 You may charm it with smiles and soap." 
 
 And you did not faint! You simply leaned 
 on the gate-post and said: "He is dead." 
 You do not give me any of the post-mortem 
 particulars — the garments of woe, heart- 
 breakings, and so-forth; but it's gratifying 
 to learn that my letter of the 24th ult. "was 
 a glad relief." 
 
 I knew a little girl who, when it fell to her 
 lot to wash the dishes, always sang with the 
 most dolorous psalmistry that blasphemous 
 
 60 
 


hymn-line: " I'm glad that I was born to die." 
 She is not dead yet; but she never saw a 
 spook! If you really want an explanation of 
 my manifestation, I can only suspect: / was 
 there! Yet it was "All in your eye, Betty 
 Martin." Up there into the cortices of your 
 gray matter "where is fancy bred," as I sat 
 at the chapel door and saw the moon going 
 down to you, my thought of you and myself 
 at the gate of our parting projected itself, 
 and (may I be pardoned for imagining) at 
 the same time you had a vision of the same 
 sadness: our thought of each other as we 
 once stood there, united, and I was made 
 exteriorly cognizable to you. You saw me 
 present, as I was consciously thinking my- 
 self to be. So, you see, "thoughts are things,''^ 
 a mode of motion, between us ^. It was all 
 on the wireless-telegraph system — finer and 
 farther. It represents the idea of the near 
 invention of the telephonic picture of the 
 sender and receiver respectively appearing 
 in response to the "Hi loo!" When our 
 wills, consciously, are able to project our 
 thoughts with our images to receptive wait- 
 ing members of the New Telephone of Souls, 
 call me up, please! 
 
 6i 
 


I told you of the Hermit and the lady at 
 the chapel steps expecting sympathetic ap- 
 preciation, but find you intimating a scandal. 
 The whispered truth is scandalful. 
 
 I would not have believed it, you inno- 
 cent Little Teacher! Here I have you, in 
 black and white, a traitor to your sex! Or is 
 it an overweening vanity of that same sex 
 with which you write: "I knew there was 'a 
 woman in it'!" Hurrah for her, I say! I 
 wonder if it was really your prescience of 
 facts or a mere Eve-itical instinct which dis- 
 closed to you that "there can be no hermit, 
 pure and simple." Women have a sort of 
 illusive intuition; for were not the Sibyls, 
 the Delphines, the Vestals, all women .? So 
 much so that Woman has assumed to be "the 
 divinity that stirs within us" — all sorts of 
 de-dev-devotion! Instance: All our sym- 
 bols — in fresco and statue, in park and palace, 
 everywhere — of Industry, Art, Literature, 
 Justice, Liberty, Peace, and — and War^ are 
 Woynen. 
 
 There is a fable that when the gods were 
 making woman and were throwing the in- 
 gredients into the caldron, one inadvertently 
 tossed in a soul — and thence came man's 
 
 62 
 


toil and trouble. Blessings on the incon- 
 sequent young chap for his carelessness! 
 For he must have been a youthful sport, in- 
 tent on fun. Or may it have been an old 'un 
 on mischief bent — throwing the chestnuts 
 into the fire that we men might monkey with 
 the cat to get them out I The widow of 
 General Custer, in a lecture, said that during 
 the Civil War she once was invited to the 
 headquarters of the army to witness the dis- 
 tribution of medals to twenty soldiers for 
 distinguished service. When the men were 
 lined up to receive their decorations they 
 would have passed muster as so many pretty 
 girls, they were so young and so blushingly 
 handsome; and, for acts, then and there nar- 
 rated by the general commanding as each 
 was given his insignia, of gay gallantry, reck- 
 less and loyal devotion, patient suffering, and 
 intrepid deviltry, they deserved to be ! 
 
 I wonder if between fable and fact there is 
 any relation of sequence; if so, it certainly was 
 the young chap! 
 
 You say your work is often labor, for as a 
 Teacher you are, in law, in place of the 
 parents, a parent-in-law — you must com- 
 bine in one the most heterogeneous elements. 
 
 63 
 


The "old woman who hved in a shoe" had 
 her blessed privileges. You think that as 
 the remedy for divorces is proposed to be 
 in sensible marriage laws requiring physical 
 examinations for degenerates, additionally 
 there should be required of the would-be- 
 happy couple certificates of qualification as 
 nurses and kindergarten teachers; thus they 
 would be qualified to stand /« loco parentis 
 themselves. I agree with you. I think that 
 a person who has taught school for, say, 
 about ten years, would be entirely eligible! 
 How would it do to establish reformatories 
 for incorrigible parents .'' Also, provide kin- 
 dergartens for honeymooners and hospitals 
 for divorcees ? 
 
 I went to the Hermit with your difficulties 
 in regard to rewards and punishments, which 
 you seem to have difficulty in distributing in 
 your school. You wish me to discover for 
 you "the rod that chasteneth without chastis- 
 ing," and to tell you "how spoiled the rod 
 should be to spare the child." 
 
 The Hermit never argues, never disputes. 
 He listens and he talks; who am I to inter- 
 locute ? I stated your case, and then tried 
 to have ears to hear, but I doubt if I shall 
 
 64 
 


be able to lend them to you. He talked as 
 if alone: *'As a fact, I do not think God ever 
 punishes. Punishment for sin is a mis- 
 nomer — the invention of man. We see a 
 consequence of what we call wrong-doing, 
 and we say it is a reward or a punishment. 
 There is neither reward nor punishment in 
 God's purpose. In it there is only cause and 
 effect — justice — justice inexorable. There is 
 no escape from it. There is no such thing as 
 mercy either — mercy in the sense of relief 
 from the effect of wrong-doing on the doer. 
 I know this is shocking to one who has re- 
 garded only man and his mode of govern- 
 ment. Indeed, our legal punishments are 
 not justice at all. You say: 'Let us temper 
 justice with mercy.' Yes, let us. We are 
 fallible: we do not know all. We administer 
 justice like we do medicine — afflict the patient, 
 hoping that Nature will hear the cry for help. 
 Our penal statutes are hostile provisions for 
 the safety of the social body, for the welfare 
 of every other than the criminal. The so- 
 called effect of sin against man's laws is arti- 
 ficial; it is not caused by but merely follows 
 disobedience. We put a man in prison, or 
 take his property from him, or kill him; it is 
 
 65 
 


not even an eye for an eye, a tooth for a 
 tooth. The punishment does not fit the 
 crime, simply because we cannot create a 
 natural effect from the artificial cause. 
 Society, as such, is not responsible for the 
 sins of men, save as the result of such sins 
 hurts the whole or some member of the 
 system. It is even deemed justifiable to in- 
 flict the severest penalties upon a culprit as an 
 example to deter others from committing 
 crime. This is the old idea of the scapegoat 
 bearing the sins of the people into the wilder- 
 ness — without consulting the goat or the 
 wilderness! It is in line with the counsel of 
 Caiaphas, the high priest, that it was ' expedient 
 that one man should die for the people'; in 
 accordance with which the Holy Nazarene 
 was murdered, obsequious to the expediency 
 of the law. Christ dealt with the individual. 
 'Love thy neighbor as thyself is for the hap- 
 piness of the loving, the effect on the neighbor 
 is the incident. Until within a few years, 
 before we had reformed the law^s a little, if 
 you saw a man judicially hanged by the 
 neck, you could not say whether he had 
 stolen, counterfeited the coin of the realm, 
 smuggled a keg of brandy, rebelled against 
 
 66 
 


the king, refused to attend church, or was a 
 bigamist or a murderer. And now, if you 
 visit a penitentiary, you cannot say of any 
 convict there what offence he has committed. 
 But, in nature, not a flower blooms or wind 
 blows for which there is not a sure and 
 adequate cause. It is easy, after the event, 
 to say that Sodom and Gomorrah were 
 punished by fire from heaven for Sin; but 
 Christ said: 'Those eighteen upon whom the 
 tower of Siloam fell and slew them, think 
 ye that they were sinners above all that dwelt 
 in Jerusalem .? I tell you, Nay.' It might as 
 well be said of Pompeii and Herculaneum, 
 that fires rained down from heaven and 
 destroyed them as punishment for sin. V\'e 
 know they perished in an eruption of Mount 
 Vesuvius, which had from time immemorial 
 emitted flames and lava threatening them. 
 They were pagan in all things of worship. 
 They chose to live under a volcano and suf- 
 fered the consequences. Let us not forget 
 that there are ethical causes which may pro- 
 duce physical effects. The low, voluptuous 
 worship of the Pompeians was one of the 
 first nature-religions of man. Physical lux- 
 uriousness selected their place of abode, and 
 
 67 
 


in sympathy with riotous nature they revelled 
 in contiguity to the primeval, the passional 
 heat of the fruitful slope of the burning moun- 
 tain. Spiritual depravity and animal desire 
 w^ere associated w^ith cosmic fertility and un- 
 rest. The good often escape; they heed 
 w^arnings. There may be angels — moral 
 forces — to warn the good; for goodness in its 
 receptivity, its obedience to spiritual sug- 
 gestion, is in the line of Godward progress. 
 But natural causes produce natural effects, 
 and a good man may die of apoplexy in his 
 tribune. If he had been wise in knowledge 
 of his disease he might have lived longer, 
 and, probably, he had lived long by reason 
 of his obedience to suggestion. Mere good- 
 ness does not change the laws of the universe, 
 but by obeying them one has length of days. 
 A man by taking thought may not add a 
 cuhit to his stature, but he may add an inch 
 or two. While all I have heretofore said is 
 true, you must know that there is a repentance 
 and an obtaining mercy, in the sense that 
 ceasing to do evil and learning to do good is 
 obtaining mercy — is a coming into a non- 
 sinning state. That man is able to repent, 
 to turn from doing evil, is itself a mercy. 
 
 68 
 


Ihat one can turn Godward, can love his 
 neighbor as himself, can love the Supreme, is 
 a mercy. One may not escape the effect of 
 past sinning by repentance, but that effect 
 will be better borne; no more seed being sown, 
 the harvest of evil will be cut short; and 
 although tares may appear in the harvest, 
 the wheat will be sufficient to rejoice in; be- 
 sides, good is a more fertile seed than evil. 
 It rains on the just and the unjust, but the 
 just receive the gifts of God with fruit- 
 bearing hands. 
 
 "This rule of cause and effect — this equal 
 working of the laws of nature, the com- 
 pensatory adjustment of all forces — does not 
 shut out the fact (the law) that the wise may 
 cause Nature to work effects by the use of 
 her laws, as the smith heats the iron and 
 hammers it into such shape as he wills. So 
 Christ healed the sick; so, by the power of 
 the law of faith. He survived the crucifixion. 
 Nothing happens. Ignorance, knowing no 
 law of expectancy, says: 'It happens.' Nor 
 does the rule deny that 'the prayer of the 
 righteous availeth much,' for the faith- 
 begetting prayer of the righteous is a force, 
 a dynamic force in nature. It stirs the vital 
 
 69 
 


influences to healing. It is the telegraphic 
 wire between the spirit of man and the forces 
 in nature. Given the same faithful prayer 
 by an equally righteous one, and the same 
 result of healing will follow as an effect of 
 the same cause. The mighty works of the 
 prophets of old are not now seen simply be- 
 cause the prophets are not — are not seen ? All 
 this is but asserting the power of the spirit 
 within man, the rule of the spiritual law over 
 matter, to set in motion the forces of nature. 
 What we now generally do is to drill the body 
 and exercise the mind in order to feed and 
 clothe the body. We invent wants, and spend 
 our lives gratifying them. No wonder the 
 prophets are not born of us. We breed cattle 
 and kings, but not prophets or seers. We 
 pray for riches and things of sense, which 
 are to be worked for. The man who deter- 
 mines to be rich can be rich; the law gives 
 him the pound of flesh, but the life of the 
 Spirit is not his. We can and do sow for 
 riches and harvest them; they perish with 
 the using, but there is a sowing of wise 
 endeavor and joy which enricheth with the 
 using." 
 
 When my old friend had ceased, I asked 
 
 70 
 


him: "What of one's past sins ? What is one 
 to do with them ?" 
 
 With a look of utter weariness, he answered : 
 "Sins? There are sins and sins! Whatever 
 they are, coddle them not, nor bedevil them, 
 'Go and sin no more,' and, by all means, go! 
 Bandage your bruised feet and — forget them! 
 Displace the thou-shalt-nots of Moses with 
 the affirmations of Christ! Don'ts are rocks 
 of stumbling — they suggest offence, as 'the 
 strength of sin is the law.' " 
 
 Don't you think my Seer is correct m hold- 
 ing that Society should exist only for the pro- 
 tection of its members — for self-preservation, 
 not for vengeance ? Percival Lowell has 
 said that "politeness is the social art of living 
 agreeably with one's fellows." The criminal 
 must be taught politeness. If he cannot love 
 his neighbor as himself, he, at least, must not 
 be disagreeable; if he won't be polite, he must 
 be restrained from evil until he learns to do 
 good, although Society cannot compel him to 
 be good: for, after all, he must punish himself. 
 It is said: "The suicide is one who meets his 
 executioner and slays him." Every man 
 must meet his besetting sin and starve it to 
 death. The preacher ends his sermon with 
 
 71 
 


an "application," the fabulist with a moral; 
 one criminal I know of is a prisoner of Capri, 
 trying to reform himself; but the more he 
 tries, the more he is beset; the more he starves, 
 the hungrier he is. Please pardon the per- 
 sonal application and forego the moral, for 
 I am afraid to meet my executioner— lest she 
 slay me. I fear, however, that my sin has 
 found me out (in the sense of discovery, not 
 escape), when in your last note you say: 
 "Men have said they loved me, and some I 
 believed." It is a satisfaction to know that 
 you have not, with Job, said in your heart 
 that "all men are liars." That "some" may 
 cover a multitude of sinners, "of whom I am 
 chief." I merely quote St. Paul and de- 
 mand the proof, for I never have said it, yet — f 
 However, I was troubled when you added: 
 "I have had a bitter disappointment." There 
 you stop! Don't you think, this time, that 
 it is you who should "explain yourself"? 
 I have read that sentence over so often that, 
 in my colloquies with my Hermit, when I 
 tried to listen, so as to write you of what 
 you style "his religions" (you seem to think 
 he has several), I have become a disappoint- 
 ment myself. I resent anything which is a 
 
 72 
 


cause of pain to you. If any person has dis- 
 appointed you, I shall certainly doubt if my 
 Seer is correct in his views of punishment. 
 My politeness, too, has its limit. Your trust 
 is not sufficiently alive to impel you to confide 
 your trouble to me, as of old. I have sinned 
 and come short of the high calling of friend- 
 ship, or something, which used to make a 
 partnership of our hopes, fears, and trials. 
 It cannot be that your Mr. Call is a disap- 
 pointment — although the bitterness of him 
 I have had reason to know. You cannot have 
 failed as the Little Teacher — that is im- 
 possible. I try to think you have exaggerated 
 something trivial, which to your sensitive 
 conscience is a mountain; but you are not 
 given to misjudge. It is all a puzzle — a 
 puzzle! I can only wait, and hope I also 
 serve. Meanwhile, to cease from troubling, 
 I shall earnestly devote myself to learn all 
 I can from the lips of my philosopher and 
 friend ; although your " bitter disappointment " 
 has caused me to feel that Tom Moore's lines, 
 
 "Here bring your wounded hearts, here tell your 
 anguish, 
 Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal," 
 
 6 73 
 


do not apply to Capri after all, for heaven's 
 not a place, but, like it is said of our Athens: 
 "Boston is not a place, but a state of mind." 
 Faithfully yours, 
 
 Capri, Italy, February 28, 190-. 
 
 My dear 
 
 jjC sK •(* *!• T* 
 
 Again and again I recall that, during that 
 last walk and talk we had together on the eve 
 of my departure — a talk so rosemaryed for 
 me — you said: "I want to be doing some- 
 thing in the world, to be in fellowship of 
 experience with my kind." 
 
 There is an old mystic fable that the gods 
 first made man "male and female" (as the 
 literal reading of Genesis states it), but that, 
 by reason of the arrogance of this self-suf- 
 ficient, parthenogenetic creature, in its per- 
 fect self capable of peopling the world and 
 defying its makers, these same gods repented 
 that they had made man and divided this 
 vain work of their hands. Thereupon the 
 halves, perplexed, in perpetual lament, went 
 
 74 
 


about the world in search of each other, and 
 were so occupied in their quest they let the 
 gods eat their ambrosia in peace; yet, being 
 often deceived by similarities, by appear- 
 ances, by impatient desires (wanting to be 
 doing something in the world), they united 
 in marriage to find that they were joined to 
 strangers! And thus the divergence from 
 their original oneness continued, until, even 
 if the hapless halves finally united, their 
 experiences meantime with their mismates 
 had so impressed the images of the latter 
 upon the originals they could hardly dis- 
 tinguish their own true-love selves. Hence 
 the proverb: "The course of true-love never 
 did run smooth." Yet, once in a while, now 
 and then, they came together with instant 
 recognition, amid great rejoicing, and "lived 
 happily ever after." 
 
 Whether this is all a mere allegory, or an 
 accounting after the fact for unhappy mar- 
 riages, I leave you to determine, to decide 
 whether he — the unknown (I wish he were 
 Mwknown) — is that other half, the only one 
 in the universe for whom you can make the 
 sacred sacrifice of individual liberty, interests, 
 likes, and even name! True, we have our 
 
 75 
 


desires, passions, which cry out to be satis- 
 fied. We are prone to sacrifice; proud to 
 vanity to be able to give, since giving implies 
 in us a surplus of riches. We "want to be 
 doing something in the world" in the order 
 of inherited nature — to obey the sentence of 
 the law adjudged on Adam, as an effective, 
 not a punishment, for his disobedience: for 
 "in Adam's fall we sinned all." 
 
 By -the -way, according to the account, 
 Adam was no gentleman; he was the first cad. 
 He told tales out of school; he kissed and told, 
 and, if the truth were known, he doubtless 
 lied! The Nazarene, it is said, was "the 
 first true gentleman that ever breathed." 
 He was the first in quality — the Spiritual 
 Aristocrat; Prince of All the Humanities. 
 The first gentleman of the Old Testament, 
 in point of time, was Abimelech, a king of 
 the Philistines, who dwelt in Gerar. 
 
 How to reverse the judgment visited on our 
 first parents has been a world's puzzle. Some 
 have kicked against the goads and broke the 
 entail by a common recovery, have volun- 
 tarily abdicated manhood and womanhood 
 to escape, have side-stepped to avoid the 
 blow, and are saints! Yet the vestal mother 
 
 76 . 
 


of Romulus and Remus was burled alive, 
 and "nephews" have been numerous. Single- 
 blessedness in such case was the failure; yet 
 marriage is declared by some socialists to be a 
 monopoly! The latter seem to seek some 
 indeterminate-sentence method to modify the 
 judgment for Adam's fall. Had we not better 
 seek a reversal of the transgressive force of 
 our first progenitors by the generation of a 
 second Spiritual Adam; and so find a com- 
 pensation, if not a satisfaction .? Can we not 
 take the consequences and rejoice in it ? 
 Can't we Adamites eat our bread in the 
 sweat of our brows and joy in the work, and 
 you Eveites bear the children of mated true- 
 love, not the offspring of convenience or of 
 the fierce cries of Edenic desire, and so breed 
 temples for souls ? 
 
 You have heard the song of the seventeen- 
 year locust, the Cicada ? The egg-child falls, 
 a speck of down, from its cradle in the tender 
 branch of the tree, its orphanage home, and 
 burrows far into the ground, where it sum- 
 mers and winters itself as a worm, and then 
 a beetle, until seventeen years have passed. 
 Then on the very day, the hour appointed, 
 through all the under- world the prophesied 
 
 77 
 


reveille summons from under every green 
 tree in the land the now armored host of 
 Cicadae to arise and fight its battle up to 
 sunshine and the renew^al of its race. It 
 marches, assaults, and storms the barricading 
 earth walls and is in Eden! There it hangs 
 its spears and shields on the rough bark of 
 the trees, emerges from its coat of mail — a 
 legion of winged Cupids, an army of Amorites. 
 Embowered on every leafy twig the trouba- 
 dour serenades the lady of his love, until the 
 forest resounds with the palpitating refrain: 
 
 "I live for love, for love I die." 
 He tarries with her a few days, and then 
 
 "The shrilling locust slowly sheathes 
 His dagger voice and creeps away 
 Beneath the brooding leaves where breathes 
 The zephyr of the dying day," 
 
 and v/ith it dies. 
 
 His lady-love lays her eggs in the nest- 
 cradle carved by her in the tender twigs of 
 the tree, and, having fulfilled the law by 
 giving her life that the Cicadas shall not 
 perish from the earth, she also dies. The 
 
 78 
 


Cicada has been transmitted for another 
 life-round. Within forty-two days from the 
 moment of the sortie of the army of crusad- 
 ers in the cause of the Hfe more abundantly 
 not a martyr remains, and the grove is silent 
 once more — silent for another seventeen 
 years. 
 
 "Fear ye not, therefore; ye are of more 
 value than many CtcadcB." For Psyche is 
 thine. 
 
 If man — Man! — has arisen from the dust 
 to become the prince of all animal life, to hold 
 in his hands the power of life and death over 
 all animate things, is there not in him a higher 
 destiny yet in the eternal progress of Life ? 
 Must he be satisfied with the gratification of 
 the animal impulse to "multiply and re- 
 plenish" ? True it is that nature has spread 
 all its decoys to allure and its nets to capture 
 every amorous Cupid. The humblest flower 
 as well as the proudest oak puts forth in- 
 numerable germs of life to reproduce other 
 flowers, other oaks; the very stones do "cry 
 out to raise seed to Abraham." Nature runs 
 to seed-bearing. Every sense is appealed to 
 and seems to have been evolved for the pur- 
 pose of embodying life. Pollen and stigmata 
 
 79 
 


call to each other; the lions of the mountain 
 roar; the vegetable invites the animal and the 
 mineral the vegetable world to assist; every 
 atom in the universe runs to and fro in an 
 agony of motion: all seeking life more abun- 
 dantly. 
 
 Yet shall Man remain King of Beasts only ? 
 After all, is not this inbred impulse, desire, 
 passion to perpetuate, a corollary to the uni- 
 versal law of the persistence of force, and 
 argues an inherent impulsion toward ever- 
 lasting existence ? 
 
 What are you not doing in the world ? 
 The young woman, through her instinct of 
 unexpended motherhood, is the natural teacher 
 of children, while man teaches from his pro- 
 pensity for mastery. In the appeal of help- 
 less childhood to the sympathies of woman 
 is the birth of altruism; and now, when the 
 schoolmaster is abroad, it is the schoolmis- 
 tress who is at home. She is discovering 
 herself — the quasi mother of the great here- 
 after. 
 
 It is Inazo Nitobe, who, in his Bushido; or. 
 Soul of Japan, says: "When character and 
 not intelligence, when the soul and not the 
 head, is chosen by a teacher for the ma- 
 
 80 
 


terial to work upon and develop, his voca- 
 tion partakes of a sacred character. 'It is 
 the parent who has borne me; it is the teacher 
 who makes me man.'" 
 
 I know of a boy with his diploma from the 
 University, who, when asked by his father, a 
 minister of the Gospel, what he had chosen 
 for his life-work, answered: "Father, I can't 
 make a minister out of myself." To which 
 the reverend gentleman, laying his hand on 
 his boy's head, replied: "Ah, no, my son; it 
 is God who makes ministers of the Gospel." 
 
 So it is of a woman-teacher, who, with 
 pure, exalted ideals of being and living, 
 hears the cry of the coming need and stress of 
 her people, with Jephtha's daughter, answers: 
 "Here am I, a willing sacrifice," and denies 
 her personal self in fulfilling the answer. 
 Such was once your intrepid answer, while 
 here am I, pedicled to "the wandering foot." 
 
 There is no altruism in fact, for in the 
 scales of nature there are compensations 
 against every deprivation. Yet can there be 
 any greater self-denial for a woman to forego 
 than the inherited demand of motherhood 
 that she may minister to the crying needs of 
 virtually parentless children — children whose 
 
 8i 
 


future, and the future of Society as well, de- 
 pend upon the self-denying care of the teacher 
 in the public schools ? And, if foregoing the 
 personal longing to love and be loved by one 
 alone, there must come to that teacher the 
 satisfaction of having done something in the 
 world, of having entered into the loving life 
 of hundreds of her pupils, who shall rise up 
 and call her blessed ? The teacher rocks the 
 cradle of the future of her people. The 
 true-born teacher has heard the coming, com- 
 ing heralds of her nation's progress, and all 
 the babes of promise leap within her at the 
 sound of their announcing bugles. With 
 Zeph, the old black seer, she cries: "The 
 blood ansahs; I'se bawn with a caul! I'se 
 bawn with a caul!" 
 
 I hope you will pardon me for giving that 
 significance to the concluding sentence of 
 your last letter which its occultness deserves. 
 Let me repeat it: "Please don't trouble your- 
 self about 'your Mr. Call.' 'Speak for 
 yourself, John.'" Now, it strikes me that 
 "your Mr. Call" (forgive the mention of him 
 by me this last time) is set upon a pedestal, 
 a dodo on a consecrated altar dedicated to 
 silence. In the awed hush of your worship 
 
 82 
 


of his saintship his is the "lost name" — 
 unutterable by my profane lips. You mean 
 that I, wicked, must cease from troubling and 
 give him (and you) a rest. I am to speak 
 for myself, as I am no prophet for your most 
 high and mighty sacredness, your little tin 
 god! Your meaning is plain, though under 
 covert of the quotation-marks to screen the 
 rebuke. You omit from the quotation the 
 present inquisitive, "Why don't you V — pre- 
 ferring the imperative to suit your mood. 
 Although I accord you all the graces, purity, 
 and loveliness of Priscilla, I have not the 
 courage to be as modest as John Alden. 
 li'ou never, never (were you X) so impatient 
 with me, and 1, no doubt, deserved to be — to 
 be — reprimanded! Well, in your heaven 
 this wicked one shall cease from troubling, 
 and in my Capri the weary shall be at rest — 
 I hope. I shall try to be content with the 
 memory of our dear old companionship of 
 thought and sympathy — the communion of 
 the saints, one of whom I always hold you, 
 though I am far from being another, except 
 under your halo. 
 
 In the case at bar I have a client, but, 
 though I have always fought to the last ditch 
 
 83 
 


for my clients, now an ancient maxim of the 
 legal profession warns against a foolish 
 championship of his cause by me; therefore 
 let me flee to the mountain, to my dear old 
 Hermit, and to that ever-fond kinship with 
 you in things spiritual which hallows my 
 
 rest. 
 
 Faithfully yours, 
 
 Capri, Italy, March 7, 190-. 
 
 My dear 
 
 I am sorry if anything in my last letter 
 offended you — you do not mention my out- 
 break against the nameless one; and that is 
 ominous (I might say "omni-ous"), for your 
 letter, now before me, seems as if cut short by 
 a frost. But frosted cake is all the sweeter, 
 and the sweetness of your cake is in your in- 
 quiry: "When are you coming home?" 
 The inference is that I should come, though 
 you assign no reason why. There is only 
 one reason which could appeal to me, and 
 that is too unreasonable for me to think of. 
 
 84 
 


**In Capri's land I'll take my stand, 
 And live and die in Capri!" 
 
 For I find this hospitable southland is most 
 interesting — to me. Though it is of stone, its 
 heart is mysteriously tender. It has had its 
 tragedy, even in later times. It is said that, 
 in a raid by a band of Saracens from across 
 the narrow sea, some years ago, when it land- 
 ed to rob, and to rapt the fair women for 
 their harems and the children for the Tunis- 
 ian slave-market, the inhabitants, as of old, 
 sought the security of the cavern under the 
 old castle on Castiglione. The cavern, or 
 grotto, is approached by a foot -wide path 
 along the face of a bare cliff several hundred 
 feet above the sea, where one person at the 
 entrance of the cave has only to push the 
 intruder a hand's-breadth to hurl him down 
 the abyss. Most of the people had made 
 their entry into safety, when one young man 
 at the beginning of the path tarried to ward 
 off the pursuers from a beautiful young 
 woman who was about to enter the narrow 
 passage. He chivalrously held them at bay 
 until "Heloise" escaped into the cavern, but 
 her defender and rescuer himself fell victim, 
 
 85 
 


overpowered by numbers, and was left man- 
 gled and for dead on the mountain-side. 
 
 Whether or not this incident has any rela- 
 tion to my "little story" of the organist and 
 the lady, I will repeat what my informant 
 said: "We know very little, suspect a great 
 deal, guess at some things." While I cannot 
 ask my Hermit, for there is about him a silent 
 forbidding of personalities as too trivial for 
 consideration, yet I believe — I dream, per- 
 haps — that my saintly friend who so brave- 
 ly champions Psyche would not hesitate to 
 face an army of Saracens in defence of a 
 woman. 
 
 During this same raid a little shoemaker 
 was pegging his way up the steeps toward 
 the cavern when overtaken by the raiders, 
 and was by them carried oversea a prisoner. 
 His bereaved wife, with her "nine small 
 children and one at the breast," pleaded 
 with the good church people of Capri to ran- 
 som him. In a year or two the money was 
 sent, and the son of Crispin was returned 
 and received with joy and fatted chickens. 
 He seemed pleased with his reception, and, 
 in his character as Munchausen, he reflected 
 honor on the original until he began to believe 
 
 86 
 


his own fairy tales, was reduced to the neck 
 of the chickens, and was "on his uppers" 
 — to speak professionally. Alas, one morn- 
 ing he was missing! He had learned the 
 trick. He had "folded his tent like the 
 Arabs and as silently stole away" — to get his 
 share of the ransom and rejoice his two 
 Saracen wives, fulfilling the adage of his trade : 
 "Let the shoemaker stick to his last." 
 
 Notv.ithstanding the pie-crustian short- 
 ness of your last note (you had "no time to 
 write a letter"), yet it was long on recondite 
 inquiries. You "wish to know what the 
 Hermit means by saying that the resurrection 
 of Christ was a proof of the essential quality 
 of the Spirit, the Spiritual Soul — the Christ 
 within us"; and you also "wish to learn what 
 he knows of the relation of the Spirit to the 
 Animal-Man." Yet I have been hinting 
 that yours was a short note! 
 
 Although I cannot question my Aged 
 One about his younger life, I have continued 
 to inquire, and he has continued to respond, 
 concerning the life spiritual in which he is 
 almost wholly absorbed, and from time to 
 time his responses have fallen into the lines 
 which I have tried to remember, and in 
 
 87 
 


which I hope you will find, in some sort, a 
 solution of the problems you present. To 
 begin with, the other evening he made a 
 resume of the whole subject of matter and 
 spirit, I was glad to listen, and now am the 
 more so, because it may help you as an 
 answer to your note of inquiries. 
 
 He began: "What is mind } The simplest 
 exposition is, that Mind is a result. Thought 
 is born of the Spirit and Matter. Given the 
 Spirit and the Animal-Man, the former 
 acting in and upon, or, as some say, over- 
 shadowing the latter, engenders an activity 
 of perception, cognition, with consequent 
 association of the informations obtained, by 
 comparison, contrast, reasoning; and thus 
 man has a mind, memory, knowledge. Mind 
 thus becomes the instrument through which 
 the soul takes cognizance of things, experi- 
 ments with matter. It is the antennae with 
 which the soul seeks nutriment. 
 
 " So our thoughts are born. They depend 
 upon the heredity both of our overshadowing 
 spirit and of our bodies. We may escape the 
 easy, indolent following of the mere animal 
 desires by giving the lead to the spirit, de- 
 veloping the consciousness of it, bringing it 
 
 88 
 


by a life of work and faith to be an ever- 
 abiding presence witliin, so that it becomes no 
 longer an 'overshadowing,' an 'over-soul,' 
 but an active 'Christ within us, the hope of 
 glory'; an existing quality — not quantity — 
 of Eternal Life. Denying Fate, we weave 
 our Destiny — the certain jfinal effect of ef- 
 ficient causes. 
 
 "Our destiny is in our own hands, if we 
 have the will to do our Master's will. The 
 Spirit ever stands at the door and knocks. 
 Conscience is the latch. Every one can open 
 the door by lifting the latch — if he will. 
 Jesus — the exemplified Christ for us — stood 
 among us, divine in and because of the per- 
 fection of the Spirit. In this He was at one 
 with the Supreme, with God. The perfect 
 Spirit is the Only — not the only thing, for 
 spirit, although it is a substance, is no thing 
 in the popular terms of matter — the 'Only 
 Begotten Son of God.' It is the 'Man in 
 Our Image.' To utterly quench this Spirit, 
 put out its lighting fire, is to 'die the death'; 
 to abjure, to deny this Spirit — this whole, 
 perfect Spirit, this whole. Holy Ghost within 
 us — is to strive against and destroy the 
 eternizing principle of our present life, and 
 7 89 
 


it leaves us to go on in a purely human-animal 
 existence, with the Spirit grieved, though 
 present ceasing to strive with us; and, finally, 
 when physical death comes — or even before 
 — the Spirit 'returns to God who gave it.' 
 The Soul has committed suicide. 'And 
 every one who shall speak a word against the 
 Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; unto 
 him who blasphemeth against the Holy 
 Ghost, it shall not be forgiven.' In such a 
 case, what becomes of the result of the con- 
 nection of such a spirit and such a rejecting 
 human-animal } There must be some effect 
 caused by such a connection — the life lived, 
 the body of desire, the personality. 
 
 "The man-animal has lived, has been a 
 person, has had an animal-soul, and, so far 
 as the Spirit has been resident, the beginnings 
 of a human-soul. This animal-soul must 
 have an existence hereafter, for it is a some- 
 thing; memory and remains of reason be- 
 long to it, but it is a shell — the Spirit, the 
 eternal fire divine, having been trampled out. 
 It thereafter is an insane person babbling 
 of illusion, a person obsessed of the past, 
 possessed of a demon — his own. 
 
 "To that incorrigible is reserved the 
 
 90 
 


'second death,' the condition and effect of 
 the 'sin against the Holy Ghost.' The 
 quality of continuing, which gives eternal 
 life, repudiated, has withdrawn itself. Such 
 a personality may linger long among the 
 shades by the river Styx, but having no 
 obolus to pay Charon, the ferryman, he 
 wanders maundering on the shore. He is of 
 those dead, according to St. John, to be 
 'cast into the lake of fire; this is the second 
 death.' Even in this life he is like the 
 Church at Sardis, to whom it was said: 'I 
 know thy works, that thou hast a name, that 
 thou livest, and art dead.' But of the human- 
 soul, attaching itself to and so being eternized 
 by the Spirit that quickeneth, the savor of 
 life unto life, it is said: 'He that overcometh 
 shall not be hurt by the second death.' To 
 him who overcometh his desires for the en- 
 joyment of the pleasure of sense as the end 
 and purpose of this present life, who uses all 
 things, without abusing any, as a means of 
 clothing the spirit with the experiences of 
 this life, enriching it with loving action, all 
 things are given, even eternal life. Spirit 
 is that quality of the Life of the Universe, 
 which is from the beginning — the everlasting. 
 
 91 
 


The destiny of man is to become of that 
 quality. As there is no annihilation of sub- 
 stance — only change of its forms — it follows 
 that whatever is, was and shall be. It is for 
 man to acquire the everlasting form, to gather 
 the immortelle from the gardens of God. 
 If the animal-man develops, acquires, or at- 
 tains to a spiritual -soul, which is of what 
 may be called the divine quality capable of 
 surviving without change of form — a Son- 
 of-Man become a Son-of-God — the mortal 
 will have 'put on immortality,' the everlast- 
 ing substance of life will have been absorbed, 
 assimilated, by the man, and he will become 
 individually everlasting. The Son-of-David, 
 descended of a Kingly strain, of a peculiar 
 people, was doubtless one among miUions 
 in bodily perfection — a fit temple for the 
 indwelling of the Spirit of all Life. It was 
 objected by the Pharisees that He ate and 
 drank with publicans and sinners. This was 
 after His body had been cleansed by the 
 trials in the wilderness and perfected for the 
 indwelling of the Spirit by its thirty years' 
 apprenticeship. His body became a temple 
 through all the portals of which His Spiritual 
 Soul shone in the splendor of the trans- 
 
 92 
 


figuration. He so overcame bodily condi- 
 tions that all men looking up to Him may feel 
 that kin-throb of the divine Spirit of Life, 
 may become conscious of heirship with Him 
 to eternal life, and be free from the desires of 
 the flesh by the inbreeding of that Spirit! 
 It is this Spirit of all Life which is the 'Lamb 
 slain from the foundations of the world ' by 
 being embodied in flesh; which was in- 
 breathed 'in the beginning,' triumphing over 
 its environment, arising from the cerements 
 of burial, overcoming the illusions of man- 
 ifested creation, resurrected a Redeemer; 
 which in its perfection in the life, death, and 
 resurrection of our Lord we must seek, and, 
 having found, shall no more see death. Why 
 did the Spirit descend into matter? Why 
 this mystery of redemption 'into which the 
 angels desired to look'.? If we, 'become as 
 little children,' may make so great question- 
 ings; inquire into the genesis of man; seek 
 to discover why the Only Begotten — the 
 Spirit — should be subjected to the created 
 Adam, and why the involution of the Spirit 
 into matter should include an evolution of 
 the Spirit out of matter, we shall enter the 
 never-ending spiral of the circle which in- 
 
 93 
 


volves an evermore seeking for more life, 
 and shall approach Him not knowing what 
 manner of man we shall finally become, but 
 assured as we do approach we shall be like 
 unto Him. The divine order on earth, first 
 natural then spiritual, resolves all things back 
 as substantial Spirit — the Logos — though, as 
 St. Paul says, 'with much groanings of the 
 Spirit making intercession for the creature.' 
 The ray of the Spirit strikes the prism of this 
 life, is refracted and separated into its con- 
 stituent colors, adorning the tearful sky of 
 earth for the time, yet gathering all to itself 
 'when the storm of life is past.' 
 
 "However hypotheses may differ as to 
 whether any particular soul existing in the 
 body came as a direct special emanation, or 
 creation, from God into that particular body; 
 or came through successive reincarnations 
 from such a direct, though incipient, original 
 emanation; or is an evolution from the prin- 
 ciple of life force universally infused into all 
 matter, and at last, by progressive experiences, 
 working its spiral way upward to Him — the 
 Living Head — finally to become a conscious, 
 living, Spiritual-Soul, we may rest — italiciz- 
 ing according to the light received — with the 
 
 94 
 


written: 'And the Lord God formed man 
 of the dust of the ground and breathed into 
 his nostrils the breath of Hfe; and man be- 
 came a Hving soul.' When he shall so be- 
 come, shall he not be able to breed a strain 
 of everlasting son-souls ? The effect of 
 'Adam's fall' may cite us to the cause and 
 light us to the remedy. The flood of genera- 
 tion from Adam is turned back by the re- 
 generation of the Spirit, as manifested in the 
 Christ. Sin is generic. To be 'born in 
 sin,' to be 'totally depraved,' is to be subject 
 to the flesh — to the material — to be un- 
 regenerate. The development and realiza- 
 tion in consciousness of the Spirit is a re- 
 demption from the flesh, a 'growth in grace,' 
 an involution of the Christ in man. In the 
 spiritual-soul is the quality of eternal life, 
 and in it resides the potency of all things. 
 Redemption from sin is the acquirement of 
 the quality — the condition — of non-sinning; 
 it is the 'new birth' by the regeneration of the 
 Spirit in man. This quality of Eternal Life 
 is of individual experience, to be sought with 
 patient obedience and courage. It is a state 
 of being. Will must join with desire and as- 
 piration to achieve it. It is a gift from above, 
 
 95 
 


but its reception and realization in conscious- 
 ness is upon condition of earnest personal 
 seeking — 'knock and it shall be opened.' 
 Simon, the sorcerer, could not purchase it. 
 This individual responsibility to seek it can- 
 not be shirked or shared. Neither custom 
 nor fashion, authority nor servitude, can di- 
 vest the right or absolve from the duty of 
 every one to strive for individual everlasting 
 life. The acquirement of the quality of not 
 sinning may be called the 'state of holiness'; 
 as the personal consciousness of the incom- 
 ing of the spirit may be termed 'conversion ' — 
 'the new birth.' While heaven is a state of 
 condition, not a place, what makes it is the 
 quahty of the inhabitant. 'The Kingdom 
 of Heaven is within you.' Nature, with man 
 a part, climbs without haste, irresistibly sure, 
 to complexity, the final step embracing all 
 before. There is naught in the Universe 
 which is not in Man — its epitome, its mi- 
 
 crocosm 
 
 The Egyptian conceived the idea of the 
 irresistible force of the Spirit of Life when he 
 set up the Sphinx — 'the Champion Spirit 
 of the World,' 'with calm, eternal eyes gazing 
 straight on,' and with nourishing breasts — 
 
 96 
 


a symbol of the persistence and frultfulness 
 of that Force. 
 
 "Every atom of the Universe, subject to the 
 Spirit of Life, has an intelHgent purpose, 
 adapting itself to its environment, pursuing 
 that purpose in the way of least resistance. 
 That intelligent purpose progressively be- 
 comes instinct, and, by heredity, perpetuates 
 itself, with increasing tendencies as intelli- 
 gence accumulates, the fittest for the environ- 
 ment surviving. As instinct meets obstacles 
 in its subservience to the persistence of force, 
 endeavoring to obey this law of its being, 
 reason is the result and reward. Thereupon 
 in his progress animal-man reaches up to 
 and embraces Psyche, the soul, as his help- 
 mate toward immortality. 
 
 '*As Psyche develops by experience with 
 man, the time comes when she may exist 
 alone, without the cruder grossness of flesh 
 and blood as an informer and interpreter, 
 and, with the spiritual body as her habitat, 
 seek an ethereal home. Can we conceive a 
 higher intelligence than that force which 
 pervades all matter — the divine wisdom in 
 the Life of the Universe ? 
 
 "Why should not this Life be aggregated in 
 
 97 
 


the highest complexity of matter, man ? 
 And, if it should be, why may not man be- 
 come conscious of its indwelling force and 
 use it to discover and forward his own 
 spiritual progress as an individual entity, 
 to attain and be of the quality of eternal 
 life — to be an everlasting immortal: And 
 when he shall become and be such, why 
 should he not be an intelligent force, as a 
 radium of light, an electron permeating 
 matter ? Nor would it be in derogation of the 
 possession by man of such immortality that 
 he should finally deny to himself further en- 
 try into human life on earth, or to anew his 
 experiences of the unrealities of material life, 
 but should prefer to become a Spiritual 
 Sphinx! To such an immortalized man life 
 and death would be only changes of environ- 
 ment. 
 
 "It is a function of such a soul to exist 
 without the human body as well as within 
 it. While the body is habitable the soul has 
 the possible power of egress and ingress, 
 and by means of that vehicle, by some called 
 the astral body, it may assume bodily shape 
 and presence without as well as when resi- 
 dent in the body. 
 
 98 
 


"Where was Christ during the burial of His 
 body? He, his spiritual-soul, was 'preach- 
 ing to the souls in bondage.' That highest 
 spiritual potency manifest in Jesus, the 
 Christ, was in Him an embodied entity, 
 being of the essential quality of Eternal Life. 
 It was something, a resident, incorporeal 
 substance. It existed on earth while His body 
 was in the sepulchre — apart from yet of the 
 body. It went into the middle under-world. 
 Hades; into Hades, the world of spirits, 
 where souls bound by affection for those yet 
 living, where souls filled with the unsatis- 
 fied passions of life, where souls released 
 from their bodies by untimely death through 
 disease, accidental or suicidal violence — sent 
 into Hades 'half made up,' have not entered 
 into their rest nor yet desire to enter therein, 
 and so are 'in prison'; maybe, in course of 
 purgation; to these the liberated Christ, the 
 Spiritual personage, as a celestial presence, 
 preached. He descended into hell — Hades 
 — and 'loosed those which were bound,' 
 not to return to earth but to pass forward. 
 He held the keys of both death and Hades. 
 Lazarus went through the gate of death, but 
 not of Hades. When the stone was rolled 
 
 99 
 


away from the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, 
 Jesus went 'before them into GaHlee,' as 
 He had told His disciples and Mary; and it is 
 questionable whether His body of flesh ever 
 after its entombment was seen by His disciples. 
 His public work, His work for the ages was 
 finished. Upon the cross He had yielded up 
 His life on earth with a recitative of the open- 
 ing cry of that singularly appropriate script- 
 ure, the twenty -second Psalm: 'My God, 
 my God, why hast thou forsaken me ?' That 
 Psalm, if read to its triumphant conclusion, 
 vindicates His quotation from despair. While 
 filled with the woes of the crucifixion, it was 
 an adoption of the Psalm as a prophecy, 
 a last testament of His own character and 
 final victory. Afterward, in the garden, 
 Mary did not recognize Him. To the two 
 disciples, with Him in a walk of threescore 
 furlongs to Emmaus, though their hearts 
 burned within them as He talked by the way, 
 He was not known save, at last, in the break- 
 ing of bread. Then 'their eyes were opened 
 and they knew Him; and He vanished from 
 their sight.' The same evening, in Jerusalem, 
 He appeared to the disciples, the doors being 
 shut for fear of the Jews, and the disciples, 
 
 100 
 


though terrified, recognized the Lord. A 
 visitation was made by Him in Hke manner 
 a week later. It was His speech which made 
 Him known to them. At the sea of Tiberias, 
 whither He went 'before them into Galilee,' 
 He was not at first recognized. Upon the 
 Mount of Ascension He ascended — disap- 
 peared in the air — 'in the clouds of heaven.' 
 These manifestations as such were substantial. 
 The idea that they were merely the visions 
 of self-deluded and credulous persons is as 
 chimerical as the phenomena doubted. Must 
 it not have been His phantasm, simulacrum, 
 double, bodiless body, astral body — the spir- 
 itual body, under the control of His own 
 conscious spirit, walking, speaking, eating 
 even, substantially flowing out of His body 
 of flesh and blood — of the whereabouts of 
 which body conjecture has no facts to present. 
 Between the several separate times when He 
 manifested Himself we have no account of 
 Him whatever. St. John always speaks of 
 His appearances after the burial as mani- 
 festations, revealings, of Himself. 
 
 "Light is a force in motion; we do not see 
 its shine save as its rays are obstructed in their 
 progress and reflected; so spirit, which is a 
 
 lOI 
 


formless force, to be visible, must come in 
 contact with, or invest, some material object. 
 "As the imponderables, heat, electricity, 
 magnetism, are resolvable into each other, 
 are correlatives, there must be a matrix of 
 them all, out of which they are differentiated 
 by vibration — a mother of many children, a 
 complexity of one in which they all reside. 
 So it must be that there is a force of life be- 
 hind all motion, a life that vibrates through 
 all the Universe, In the vibrations of that 
 force of life is the telegraph of souls — in and 
 out of the body. May not the blood be 
 vitalized by that force in motion, and that 
 force be the thing which makes the difference 
 between the living and the dead } He who 
 has the power to put that force in motion 
 may act as a battery and evolve and transmit 
 it, 'For whether it is easier to say. Thy sins 
 are forgiven; or to say. Arise and walk.'' 
 But that ye may know that the Son of Man 
 hath power on earth to forgive sins, I say 
 unto thee. Arise, and take up thy bed and go 
 into thy house.' Disease, the consequence 
 and the burden of transgression (sin), the 
 hireling of death, is the changing of the form 
 of life, not its activity. The decay of one 
 
 102 
 


form is the insurgence of another — a change 
 in the direction of force, a transformation of 
 motion. This constant progression of forms 
 is the recurrent sowing and harvest — Saturn 
 devouring his children. The scenes are 
 shifted, the play — the play goes on. Each 
 scene is prolonged until the part it localized 
 is fully played out. Rest is but the coming 
 into equilibrium with the environment; and 
 motion is only motion by relation. Up and 
 down are not opposed to each other. The 
 balloonist is not conscious of moving as he 
 rests on the bosom of the wind, except as he 
 observes the earth beneath or the clouds 
 about him. All earthly objects appear to 
 rest as they yield to and are at one with the 
 force which carries the earth in its orbit. 
 Gravitation is the seeking for harmony with 
 the motion of force. The harmony of nat- 
 ure is the unity of direction of force. The re- 
 sistance of the air to force is the cause of its 
 vibration as sound; the air is not the vehicle 
 of force to carry sound: it is the resistance 
 of the air to force which causes the vibration 
 known as sound. Behind all motion lies 
 force — the Divine Energy. It may well be 
 imagined that the various forms of force must 
 
 103 
 


be conserved in one, of which they are but 
 part and into which they may be resolved. 
 Each atom ceaselessly whirls within its 
 sphere; the earth revolves about the sun, 
 and the sun advances in step with a multitude 
 of other suns on his grand round, followed 
 by his courtier suite. May not it yet be 
 found that the activities of all are as one, 
 the mode of motion of the atom in its ratio 
 the same with the shining hosts of the firma- 
 ment ^ It must be in the small as in the 
 great. To find it is to unveil the Infinite 
 Force, 'that Power, outside ourselves, which 
 makes for righteousness.' Sin is want of con- 
 formity to that Force. So love is the gravita- 
 tion of souls — toward God. 
 
 "As it is the hinted suggestion of modern 
 science that all matter may be resolved into 
 one element, it is but a sequence that it is the 
 evolution, the out-breathing, of an initial 
 Force — the One. If electricity is life, does 
 it think ? No, the Smith is behind the ham- 
 mer. Thought is a force which can project 
 a vibration. The Thinker is the god in the 
 machine. 
 
 "All things are possible to the Spirit of 
 Life — this out-breathed Force — to be excited 
 
 104 
 


to motion through man by Faith. 'If ye 
 have faith as a grain of mustard seed ye shall 
 say unto this mountain: Remove hence to 
 yonder place, and it shall remove; nothing 
 shall be impossible unto you.' Such faith 
 must be a force capable of exciting atomic 
 action. May not atomic vibration be awak- 
 ened by the will of the spiritual minded .? 
 
 "Ordinarily we do not distinguish between 
 opinion, belief, and faith. Opinion is tenta- 
 tive; asserting a fact to be upon the known 
 evidence, but with an implied reservation of 
 final decision upon newly discovered evidence. 
 Belief rests upon the known evidence with a 
 conclusive finding that there is no other 
 variant, and this behef regulates conduct. 
 Belief, in the sense in which Jesus employed 
 it, has been defined to be 'that judgment of 
 the human soul which vindicates the absolute 
 verity of a suggestion; that condition of the 
 fully enlightened soul which unhesitatingly 
 recognizes such verity.' Prayer, by a per- 
 son's concentrated contemplation of and ap- 
 peal to the Supreme, is a means of lifting the 
 soul into spiritual condition — one of the 
 mind's athletics whereby the soul is prepared 
 for insight, for strength, for help to believe, 
 8 105 
 


through which faith may be obtained. There 
 must be a consciousness of power in a man 
 possessed of faith. It is the man who has 
 received faith — the divine efflux of the Spirit 
 of Life, the 'God in us' — who may remove 
 the mountain. 
 
 "'As a man thinketh, so he is.' The 
 thoughts of God; who can think them ? 
 They are manifest in matter — as above, so 
 below; on earth as it is in heaven, in the small 
 as in the great. 
 
 "Only as we are fitted hy condition^ so can 
 we receive; and as we are able, so we shall 
 receive. 'Unto every one which hath shall 
 be given; and from him that hath not, even 
 that he hath shall be taken away from him' 
 — that is, the unused capacity to have. 
 
 " Knowledge of the truth ' cometh not by 
 observation.' It is the gift of the Spirit. 
 A kernel of wheat may lie for thousands of 
 years in an Egyptian pyramid, and when 
 taken out may germinate and grow to a 
 harvest. So may a soul in its fruition of this 
 life lie in Hades, and, retaining a fertilization 
 of the divine Spirit of Life, in the ages, come 
 forth into growth again upon the earth and 
 begin anew its spiral climb to everlasting life. 
 
 1 06 
 


Ignorance is the home of the supernatural. 
 There is nothing supernatural to the wise." 
 My Hermit is not a priest, nor is he a 
 preacher. He's simply a thinker for think- 
 ing's sake, and a meditative talker. I put 
 a question or two touching your inquiries, 
 and out of the quaint fulness of his thought 
 there springs the flow of words which I have 
 pitchered from time to time and now pour out 
 to you, until I am afraid you have dropped 
 your cup from utter weariness. 
 Faithfully yours, 
 
 Gapri, Italy, March 20, 190-. 
 
 My dear : 
 
 I see the dawning smile which ushers the 
 awaiting dimple in your cheek, as you read 
 of my enthusiasm for my dear Hermit, when 
 you remember the 
 
 "Waltzes, polkas, lancers, reels, and glides, 
 Highland, schottische, quadrille, gallops, slides, 
 . . . How we danced them all!" 
 107 
 


Oh, how we swam and swirled with the 
 swing of the vioHn in valse bleu! 
 
 "And it's all over now." . . . ? I am glad 
 if you do remember, and if the smile shall 
 ripple into glad, gay laughter when you think 
 of the good times 
 
 "O' Life! we've had long together, 
 Through pleasant and through cloudy weather." 
 
 But I hope it shall be ages before "in some 
 brighter clime I shall bid you good-morn- 
 mg! 
 
 You say that "at least the influence of the 
 Ancient will teach jne reverence for grave 
 matters, if one is to believe what he says 
 about the resurrection." There, I see Cupid's 
 bow pouted over Little Teacher's firm under 
 lip as it closes over "grave matters." The 
 earnestness of that straight guardian nose 
 above bids me pause. If we really do believe 
 in the life of the Spiritual-Soul apart from 
 the body in an ascended Christ, why not be 
 cheerful about "one who wraps the drapery 
 of his couch about him and lies down to 
 pleasant dreams"? Why always be going 
 ''down to the grave," or be going to "the 
 
 1 08 
 


undiscovered country from whose bourne no 
 traveller returns" ? For death **was not spoken 
 of the soul," and "the grave is not its goal." 
 As my Ancient says, *' There is no up or 
 down; it's all God!" What is the use of our 
 tossing up the dirt in our road that we may 
 walk in the falling dust? "Pray, and in 
 everything give thanks!" "Joy in tribula- 
 tion," as a means if not a reward for well- 
 doing; and know that we are in the world 
 to stay and see it out! Why should we not 
 run rejoicing as the sun of the morning than 
 loiter with that Dolly Varden nun of the 
 skies, "pale forweariness of climbing heaven"? 
 "The laughter of man is the contentment of 
 God !" The dying Irishman who, when asked 
 by his friend whether the mourners should 
 drink the wake-whiskey going to or coming 
 from the cemetery, answered, "Whin goin', 
 for I'll be wid ye thin," had a better com- 
 prehension of grave affairs than those lugu- 
 brians who are never so happy as when they 
 are miserable, and who dote on the time when 
 "the mourners go about the street and the 
 grinding is low," The theological student 
 who, when requested by his professor to give 
 the exegesis of St. Paul's exclamation, "Now 
 
 109 
 


death is swallowed up in victory," said, 
 "There are two lessons to be drawn — one 
 patent, the other inferred: one that death is 
 swallowed up in victory, and the other that 
 it is swallowed down." You have your 
 choice! 
 
 "Oh, bold blue sky! Oh, keen glad wind! 
 
 I wonder me if this may be ? 
 That some fair day, leaving life behind, 
 
 Our eyes shall view new land, new sea, 
 So exquisite that, lo! with thrilling breath, 
 We shall laugh loud for very joy of death." 
 
 We will learn, "some sweet day," how to 
 die as we now go to sleep; we will know, also, 
 how to awake — and when! And this will 
 be when we undoubtingly know 
 
 "That life is ever Lord of death, 
 And love can never lose its own." 
 
 The face of the comfortably dead is won- 
 derful for its peacefulness, its "strange aloof- 
 ness and preoccupation." 
 
 "Death smoothes the wrinkles of the past, and 
 somewhat 
 . . . reveals the child forgot." 
 
 no 
 


I doubt if my Hermit has given as clear a 
 definition of faith as this, stated by St. Paul: 
 "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, 
 the evidence of things unseen." Hope ex- 
 presses both desire and expectation. You 
 may desire, yet not expect. To expect you 
 must have a basis of facts from experience 
 sufficient to remove doubt from the mind, 
 and this, with desire, is a reasonable ground 
 for "things hoped for"; so, to have faith to 
 heal or to remove mountains, you must also 
 have in yourself the substance of things hoped 
 for — the poiuer to do so, v^hich is "the evi- 
 dence of things unseen"; without that you 
 cannot expect to do anything. 
 
 I suspected you would be surprised by my 
 old friend's matter-of-fact treatment of the 
 resurrection of our Lord. The truthfulness 
 of the appearances to the disciples is shown 
 by the ingenuousness of their narration, upon 
 the assumption by them that the spiritual- 
 soul may exist and be visible in the spiritual- 
 body. He was dead by all the common 
 tests of the time, but the power of resurrection 
 was in the vitalizing energy of His will, which 
 operated as a force to revive tissue. He 
 had asserted His ability to rebuild the temple 
 
 III 
 


of His body in three days; it was rebuilt 
 between Friday evening and that Sunday 
 dawn when He came forth from the tomb, to 
 the terror and stupefaction of His Roman 
 guard, which had been posted at the sepulchre 
 to prevent His disciples carrying His body 
 away by night. He, in His crucified body, 
 went before them into Galilee. He could 
 not in safety have been seen by the Jews of 
 Jerusalem, for the decree of death would not 
 have been satisfied. 
 
 Many modern instances of both living and 
 of recently dead persons projecting their 
 "appearances" to a distance and being rec- 
 ognized and conversed with have been 
 proved. There is a very old and famous 
 tapestry in the Galleria of the Arazzi in the 
 Vatican which pictures the appearance of 
 Jesus to His disciples as a "shade." This 
 shows that the artist who designed the tapes- 
 try sought to revive the idea conveyed by 
 the New Testament. When Jesus appeared 
 to His disciples in Galilee, St. Matthew re- 
 lates that "when they saw Him they wor- 
 shipped Him, but some doubted"; and St. 
 John writes of the same event: "And none 
 of the disciples durst ask Him, *Who art 
 
 112 
 


Thou ?' knowing that it was the Lord." 
 Both St. Matthew and St. John convey the 
 idea of timorous apprehension on the part of 
 the disciples at the sight of the appearance. 
 T here was no such wonder, fear, or doubt at 
 the grave of Lazarus, or in the house of 
 Jairus, or in the street of the city of Nain, 
 when the dead were raised. He was not rec- 
 ognized as an actual flesh-and-blood man, 
 but appeared with all the semblance of one, 
 and invited the disciples to identify Him as 
 such, and not as a mere ghost of the imagi- 
 nation, when He came in unto them in Jeru- 
 salem, "the doors being shut." 
 
 You say: "If He appeared to His disciples 
 as a mere shade, it takes all the force from 
 the idea of the resurrection." But if it was 
 an intelligent "shade" — the house of His 
 mind, soul, the Spiritual-Soul in the Spiritual- 
 Body — does not that prove the existence of the 
 mind, the soul, apart from the flesh-and-blood 
 body, as an existing entity resurgent from the 
 common clay, and justifies your faith in the 
 Christ as ever living? This Imperial Per- 
 sonage whose teachings, moral and ethical, 
 are absolute edicts for all time, is and 
 through the ages shall be a Spiritual Pres- 
 
 "3 
 


ence ever living, preaching to all Souls in 
 Bondage. 
 
 You do not suppose that Jesus in His body 
 of flesh and blood ascended ? The material 
 flesh-and-blood body of the son of Mary 
 was not the Christ of your hope. That He 
 W2LS able to manifest Himself on earth as a 
 living Soul without that body is the proof of 
 the immortality of that Soul. 
 
 You are becoming a real theologue when 
 you follow up your first interrogatory by a 
 Socratian other: "If it be true that it was 
 the 'spiritual-body' which ascended into the 
 heavens, what becomes of the resurrection 
 of the earth-body,?" Let St. Paul answer: 
 
 "Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and 
 blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God; 
 neither doth corruption inherit incorrup- 
 tion, 
 
 "So also is the resurrection of the dead. It 
 is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorrup- 
 tion; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in 
 glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in 
 power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised 
 a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, 
 there is also a spiritual body. So also it is 
 written, The first Adam became a living 
 
 114 
 


Soul. The last Adam became a life-giving 
 
 spirit." 
 
 So far as I am concerned, I don't care; 
 earth to earth, dust to dust, and ashes to 
 ashes with my body, so that I save my Soul. 
 "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and 
 that which is born of the spirit is spirit." 
 When Titus burned to ashes the Temple at 
 Jerusalem, and the blood of the brave and 
 only death-conquered Jews ran in floods 
 about the Holy of Holies, it is said that, 
 above the turmoil and roar of battle and 
 flame, strange voices were heard in the air, 
 sorrowful yet fateful: "Let us go hence." 
 
 You further say: "Your Hermit does not 
 admit or affirm that he has ever lived in the 
 flesh on earth before his present incarnation. 
 If he affirms it, what reason has he to know 
 it .? Does he remember .?" 
 
 No, he has neither admitted nor affirmed; 
 yet he evidently beheves that he has. I think 
 this because of his firm assertion of his belief 
 in the fact of the reincarnation and progress 
 of souls. If he did admit or affirm, what 
 conclusive proof would that be to you or me ? 
 We would not rest content upon the word of 
 belief even of so good and sincere a man; 
 
 115 
 


we must have proof — something tangible to 
 our reasonable intelligence; and he fully 
 realizes the futility of such a mere expression. 
 I might answer your question by asking: 
 How would he give you such proof? How 
 could you verify his experience ? No doubt 
 he feels many suggestions foreign to all his 
 experiences in this Hfe which determine his 
 intuitive loves and his hates (if the dear soul 
 has any hates, even for the Saracens), so 
 many Hmitations and inspirations to feeling 
 and conduct, so many susceptibilities, for 
 which he has no cause or reason whatever, 
 and for which he can look for their source 
 only in a previous incarnation. My Seer has 
 passed that animal stage where thought is but 
 the recurrence of fermentations of cellular 
 conditions, evolving electrical currents in the 
 billions of thought tracts with which a long 
 excitation of sensory nerve action has criss- 
 crossed the brain, as the scientific mate- 
 rialists would have it. He has spiritual 
 insight; his meditations are those of concen- 
 trated intellections. His is not "the ecstatic 
 stupor of the cow . . . chewing the cud of sweet 
 and bitter fancies." He has come to himself 
 and said, "I will go to my father," leaving 
 
 ii6 
 


the "husks that the swine did eat" — to — to 
 those who hke them! 
 
 I can conceive how a person may attain a 
 clear consciousness, a knowledge of former 
 lives, not derivative from memory, but ac- 
 quired by actual inspiration, which he may 
 hesitate to assert. There are certain sacred- 
 nesses which the soul (as well as the heart) 
 may not profane by speech. They belong 
 to the experiences of that sixth sense my old 
 friend talks of; are the revelations no man 
 may utter; for words are but the angels of 
 the soul and many of them are fallen. "See 
 thou tell no man " was a prescription for 
 healing of which Jesus knew the psychical 
 efficacy — the failure to follow which is the 
 origin of doubt and then relapse. Henry 
 Ward Beecher once denounced as sacrilegious 
 those familiar but good-meaning people who 
 slap a person on the back and say, "How's 
 your soul .?" 
 
 You say you are afraid you would "lose 
 identity when born again into a strange, new 
 body." Have you lost it in your present 
 body ? Do you think you are you now .? The 
 physicists say that we renew our tissues, 
 our bones even, every seven years. Don't 
 
 117 
 


you think your ego rather comfortably feels 
 itself to be itself now after, say, three such 
 renewals ? May I not venture to suppose 
 that you vividly remember the personal 
 events of your life, even some of your dreams, 
 preceding all the three ? But it is not upon 
 that remembrance only that you base your 
 identity; it is rather upon your knowledge of 
 the continued sameness, of the unintermittent 
 continuity of your Self. You may compare 
 your states of mind and feeling now with 
 those, let me suppose, of last September! 
 But you will not, by the mere act of memory, 
 assume to test your identity. That any- 
 thing is or was does not depend on memory. 
 That you remember now depends on your 
 present ability to reproduce the sensation 
 of — of — our parting! That sensation may 
 not affect you now, except as a passing 
 memory — a has-been. 
 
 You have spent one-fourth, at any rate, of 
 your time in sleep; Hke that church at Sardis, 
 you were living yet dead — asleep; yet your 
 Thinker knows itself to be itself after for- 
 getting itself for seven years of your present 
 life. Why should you fear to prolong that 
 sleep, or to go to sleep and, when you awake, 
 
 ii8 
 


get into a new body as you shall deserve to 
 choose; for it must be the logical conclusion 
 of the Aged One's doctrine of cause and effect, 
 the sowing and reaping, that you will get 
 your deserts — with some of us, that's the rub ! 
 
 The genealogy of sin as an infraction of 
 moral or physical law, under the operation 
 of the rule of cause and effect, embraces the 
 past as well as the present life, as shown by 
 the story of the "man blind from his birth," 
 concerning whom the disciples of Jesus asked: 
 "Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, 
 that he was born blind ?" The Master 
 answered: "Neither hath this man sinned, 
 nor his parents; but that the works of God 
 should be manifest in him." Thereupon He 
 healed the man. But why the question ? 
 It must have been upon the presentation of 
 the blind man as an object-lesson of a previous 
 teaching by the Master, and was shown to 
 be an exception proving the rule; the "sin" 
 was an accidental sin, a prenatal mishap, 
 for which neither the parents nor the blind 
 man was morally responsible. 
 
 I fear you will have to be content to believe 
 that each soul must come to have within itself 
 the subconsciousness of previous existence, 
 
 119 
 


because any extrinsic record of a previous 
 life on earth after a thousand years or so of 
 "heaven" can hardly be preserved, and 
 memory of the sensations of any previous 
 Hves on earth will only have as their heirs by 
 spiritual heredity the unconscious suggestions 
 they have in the present life. To a soul in- 
 born of the Spirit of Life there must come in 
 some transcendent state of intellection a 
 conscious continuity of individuality inde- 
 pendent of the shell-body, which, as in the 
 Hermit, knows itself to be itself — a child ever- 
 lasting from its progenition, and not a gross 
 phenomenon of matter. 
 
 Solely because a man-animal stands erect 
 on his hind legs, and, reasoning upon his 
 experiences, feeds, clothes, and shelters him- 
 self, he has not a continuing "soul to save," 
 nor can he "call his soul his own" so as to be 
 capable of living endlessly; but to become 
 so he must involve the highest into his lower 
 condition by reaching up and bringing down 
 into himself the Spirit of Life. "All good gifts 
 come from above." Evolution is a cry for 
 help ! Growth is the ability to add to one's self. 
 
 My old Philosopher and Friend does not 
 ignore physical heredity in his exaltation and 
 
 1 20 
 


prophecy of the everlastingness of the spiritual 
 entity; for, upon my suggestion that his 
 genealogy of the spirit or soul in man ought 
 to have some correlation in man's material 
 body, to keep pace with his spiritual uplift, 
 he said: "These bodies of ours are instinct 
 with the man-animal germ since his emergence. 
 Each of the millions of cells in our flesh and 
 bones has a history, and by specific functions 
 of the brain carrying those sensations to the 
 Thinker a character has been formed by that 
 history. This character is transmitted and 
 specialized from generation to generation, 
 and each, in its degree, is intelligently re- 
 lated to others and becomes more complex 
 as well as distinctive — a microcosm of all 
 past experiences — just as the Thinker, the 
 Psyche, has its past history and character; 
 with the vital difference that Psyche has 
 assumed control and wardship, and finally 
 has outgrown the body." 
 
 I can readily trace your wheat-gold hair, 
 born of the sun and snow, nurtured by the 
 winds of northern seas, to Anglo-Saxon an- 
 cestry, and there is a heraldry can blazon 
 your title to that remote Adam (or to those 
 remoter Adamses) who first stood erect and 
 
 » 121 
 


enforced service from all his congeners of the 
 slime ? But you are an heir, a progenition, a 
 composite picture of all the lives of your 
 fathers who have lived during all the years 
 since. I am sure yours is a noble strain of 
 Thinkers and Doers. Your Psyche! Alas, 
 of what does it not assume wardship .? 
 
 You know the story of Psyche — the story 
 painted on the wall and ceiling of the Farnese 
 Palace .? It is of her triumph and translation 
 to the home of the gods through the inter- 
 vention of Cupid and her marriage to him. 
 It is a personification of the soul perfected by 
 love. Shall not Psyche, through love, create 
 a new heaven and a new earth, and Man, 
 immensely gianted, become the sum of all 
 creatures ? The conception of Christ as the 
 Son-of-Man is a prodigious step toward the 
 realization of that final consummation. 
 
 You "wish to know why man should not 
 have been created a spiritual-soul in the first 
 instance; why he was made 'a little lower 
 than the angels' to begin with.?" And you 
 add: "If he had been made perfect in the 
 beginning, it would have saved a world of 
 trouble." "Well," as Dundreary says, "that 
 is another of those things no fellow can find 
 
 122 
 


out" — yet! Would you have him an angel? 
 Beware of Lucifer! But you might ask why 
 all flowers do not grow spontaneously in the 
 air, or on your hat, and all of them your 
 favorite roses! 
 
 "Why" is the word of curiosity, of prog- 
 ress, and in the long-run is answered; and 
 that is what faith in God means — the as- 
 surance of the answer. The Life of the Uni- 
 verse is being lived; we can grow with it, or we 
 can cumber the ground. You know the say- 
 ing, "A letter unanswered answers itself." All 
 letters are answered in the progress of that life. 
 
 The homely speech, "It will all come out in 
 the washing," is but another expression of 
 that common faith in the ultimate explana- 
 tion — the cleansing from all doubt. 
 
 Sj» 5j! J^C 3p "I* 
 
 Faithfully yours. 
 
 Capri, Italy, April 2, 190-. 
 
 My dear : 
 
 This afternoon I wandered up my accus- 
 tomed route and had a seance with my 
 Ancient of Days at his friendly door. All the 
 
 123 
 


island is abloom, and was reflected in the 
 cheeriness of him in whose veins the wine of 
 life is renewed with the flowering spring. I 
 do not wait for your reply to my last letter 
 before giving you a new personal experience, 
 and trying to answer how long a person's re- 
 incarnations were to be kept up "as a going 
 concern," and what they have to do with the 
 "spoilt child." 
 
 From what I can make out from the de- 
 tached emanations, so to speak, of my old 
 friend, rewards and punishments as we style 
 them, cause and effect in his vocabulary, 
 are meted out through reincarnations, and 
 throughout them the human soul is ever 
 helped toward perfection by the constant 
 effluence of the Life of the Universe — the 
 Spiritual Force of God. The survival of the 
 fittest (the fightest, if you will) is but the 
 selection by this Force of the means of prog- 
 ress. It is a good deal like the scholar 
 working his way, by excelHng in learning, to 
 the head of his class with the aid of the 
 teacher. The Soul continually grows into 
 the sacred image of the Father — until it can 
 say: "I and my Father are one," and then 
 the cycle of life on earth is complete. As 
 
 124 
 


belief in eternal life — a self-consciousness of 
 it — is the muniment of an individual's title 
 thereto, so disbelief is a negation, a dis- 
 possession of it. Yet an individual, self- 
 conscious of eternal life in himself, may seek 
 reincarnation for the purgation of effects 
 caused by his former lives. That is, an in- 
 dividual may be entitled to live everlastingly, 
 but his happiness may require reincarnations 
 to free himself from previous ill-doings — from 
 the effect of "deeds done in the body," for 
 it is by good deeds that every man is to 
 attain happiness. Reincarnation v^ill cease 
 when the soul is in perfect accord v^ith the 
 Life of the Universe — at one with God, and 
 that at-oneness will be when it can be said 
 of it as of one of old: "Enoch walked with 
 God; and was not, for God took him." Was 
 not Jesus of Nazareth a Son of Man become 
 a Son of God, an individual entity possessed 
 of the quality of Everlasting Life, sinless as 
 well, and, as such exalted personage, may He 
 not, if He will, reincarnate in a human body 
 as easily as He may dwell in the ether — in fine, 
 may He not "come again".? General Lew 
 Wallace would never consent to the drama- 
 tization of Ben-Hur for the stage until the 
 
 125 
 


Nazarene should appear only as a light, in 
 which the lepers were healed, exemplifying 
 the scripture that "in Him was life; and the 
 life was the light of men." 
 
 I asked the Hermit, "If the Kingdom of 
 God is within us, and is a condition of the 
 soul, will that condition involve any powers, 
 as of healing, or of obtaining knowledge, 
 illumination of the understanding ?" 
 
 He answered: "To attain that condition 
 the first thing is to obey the command, 'Love 
 God with all your heart and your neighbor 
 as yourself.' Then there comes an effluence 
 from the source of all life which transfuses 
 and enlightens the Soul. Why or how I do not 
 know; I simply know it is so by being con- 
 scious of its inspiriting power, which each 
 soul must 'feel to know.'" 
 
 "What is the effect upon one in his rela- 
 tion to his fellows ?" I asked. 
 
 "Well, practically, it is a prompting to go 
 about doing good." 
 
 "Then," I returned, "I suppose a man, so 
 conditioned, lives by what he feeds on, as 
 'Every man is the son of his own works'; 
 but has such a man any extraordinary, not 
 to say supernatural or occult, power ?" 
 
 126 
 


"That is a matter you will know more of 
 when you attain to it," was his answer. But 
 he resumed: "'Eye hath not seen nor ear 
 heard . . . the things which God hath prepared 
 for them that love Him'— and, my son, let me 
 add, for them you love." 
 
 I scarcely think his addenda was intended 
 specifically for myself, but was applicable to 
 one who should love his neighbor as him- 
 self; yet I doubt not that eye hath not seen, 
 nor ear heard, the things prepared for him you 
 love. He is a very loving as well as lovely 
 old man, and was quite rhapsodical when he 
 continued: "Love is the universal harmony, 
 the cohesive force of all matter, and in 'the 
 sweet influences of the Pleiades' all the stars 
 of heaven feel its centring force; and why 
 should the Soul of man be ashamed to ac- 
 knowledge and glory in this power to love 
 which centres in the very God ?" 
 
 "Then," I added, "it is worth while to 
 love even for love's own sake." 
 
 With a quizzical glance at me, he rejoined: 
 "Yes, if it will keep you in Capri!" 
 
 I sat there beside him, warm in the sun- 
 setting, for some time, thankful that the dear 
 old man was in any wise pleased to have me 
 
 127 
 


remain in the island, while the bHthe air over 
 blossoming vines brought up the perfume 
 of the springtime from the underlying vine- 
 yards, until, turning to him, I found him with 
 closed eyes, relaxed at ease in his arm-chair, 
 lapsed into a state of dreaminess with a seem- 
 ing consciousness that he was dreaming, to 
 judge from the placid expression of his face. 
 After a moment he awoke, to gaze at me with 
 those illumining brown eyes as if to impart 
 his dream; but with a smile of kindliness 
 wrinkling up his eyes he only said: "I shall 
 miss you." 
 
 I thanked him for his interest in me, and, 
 as the sun hovered over Monte Solaro in the 
 west, bade him "good-evening," but lightly 
 called back, as I descended the chapel steps, 
 "I haven't gone yet!" 
 
 I went down over the ruins some three 
 hundred yards, and turned aside from the 
 path once more to enjoy the extended view 
 of the sea and island from the top of the old 
 lighthouse perched on the cliff over the sea. 
 Climbing up, I sat there some time, content to 
 inhale the gracious air, and, relaxed into a 
 brown-study, to follow the wake of the sun 
 as it led westward toward home and you, 
 
 128 
 


when I distinctly heard a clear, bell-like voice 
 exclaiming: ''Oh, my beloved, come!" It was 
 an appealing, assertive voice. I heard it not 
 from without or from a distance, but as an 
 articulate speech in my inner ear — at the 
 spot in the brain where we do hear. 
 
 Aroused, I wondered if my Seer was ex- 
 ercising one of his occult gifts on me; or was 
 I becoming nervously excited by my night 
 watches with him on the mountain, and my 
 "subjective" was juggling with my "ob- 
 jective" in make-believes; or had I intercept- 
 ed some wireless telegram designed for some 
 wanderino; lover ? — for the voice was melodious, 
 of timbre feminine! Really, would it not be 
 something dizzily occult if one could only 
 "hear what is whispered in the King's bed- 
 chamber" .f* 
 
 I proceeded homeward as far as the little 
 church of San Michele, which stands at the 
 north side of my way, near the town, and had 
 sat down on the rude steps leading up from 
 the road toward the church, when there came 
 up along the steep ascent from the town my 
 lady of the pillar in San Stefano, also of the 
 Chapel steps and kodak — and, was it not, I 
 wonder, of the cavern of the Castiglione! 
 
 129 
 


How comely she was in her simple, gray dress 
 of woollen, on her head the ever-worn Capri 
 scarf of varied and bright hue, and on her 
 feet the white cotton shoes with soles of 
 hempen cord which cling to the rocky paths! 
 As she approached with hesitating pause of 
 recognition and inquiry, I rose with hat raised 
 in respectful salute, to which she, in the 
 musical Italian aspirate, "II Signor!" re- 
 sponded, with a gentle inclination of her head, 
 while her dark eyes, timorously confident of 
 friendliness, held my salutation in privilege, 
 as she stood with questioning lips apart. 
 She, evidently, had not halted in dalliance or 
 w^ithout the authority of purpose. Now 
 that she was near, facing me, I could see 
 where the Greek had left his modelled grace 
 of form and strength of profile to wander 
 down the years. A fine sensibility played 
 about the corners of her mouth and eyes, the 
 former responsive to the latter. Imper- 
 sonality was in the atmosphere of her, yet 
 with a pervading individuality giving strength 
 and purpose, as if she put aside herself in the 
 thought which preoccupied her or the message 
 she had in charge. I stood thus, hat in hand, 
 not a little in awe, before this admirable 
 
 130 
 


epitome of historic Capri, and was at a loss 
 to imagine why so evidently she should wish 
 to interview me. While the faintest blush 
 hovered about her temples below her gray- 
 black hair, she began: 
 
 "You have been with our friend, the 
 Hermit ?" 
 
 She laid no emphasis on the "our," nor 
 did she consciously use it as a confidence be- 
 tween us, but it was as a relation granted as 
 of course, an indefinite adjective. 
 
 "Oh yes, I left him not a quarter of an 
 hour ago. The descent is rapid," I answered. 
 
 She continued: "Are you going away .''" 
 
 "Away .? From Capri, do you mean ? No." 
 
 "I was told to meet you as you came down 
 the way, and, if I could, ask you." 
 
 Surprised, I interrupted with: "You were 
 told to ask me! Who is so interested ? May 
 I be curious enough to inquire who told you 
 to question me ?" 
 
 She smiled, and, with a lighting eye, an- 
 swered: "He did." 
 
 "When?" 
 
 "Within the hour." 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 "While I was at my home in the town. He 
 
 131 
 


told me to meet you here and ask. Shall I 
 tell him you say, 'No'?" 
 
 "Certainly, if you are going up to Villa 
 Jovis, and will be so kind — " 
 
 "But 1 do not have to go up to tell him," 
 she broke in. 
 
 Amazed, I stammered: "You — you do not 
 have to go up to see him to — to tell him!" 
 
 "No. Don't you know?" 
 
 "Yes, I begin to understand. It is one of 
 those things that 'eye hath not seen nor ear 
 heard, prepared for — for them that — '" 
 
 "Yes! yes!" With radiant face, she in- 
 terrupted me. "He has been telling you." 
 
 And, giving me a parting smile and bow, 
 with springing step she passed on over the 
 stone-paved way, and was at once lost to my 
 sight in its near windings. 
 
 Thereupon, directly, I began the steep 
 descent from the little church, and in a five 
 minutes of slipping and sliding down the 
 pitching grade of the stone pavement entered 
 one of those long arcades between the houses 
 of the town where, on either side, shops and 
 children do most abound, and soon was at 
 my hotel. Heigho! Capri is not "so far 
 away," after all. 
 
 132 
 








I hope soon to unravel the knitting for your 
 entertainment. Meanwhile I remain, as ever, 
 Faithfully yours, 
 
 -, U. S. A., April 2, 190-. 
 
 My dear : 
 
 ^'You may fill the blank." It is already 
 full in my heart. 
 
 This is the first day of our spring vacation, 
 and it brought v^ith it your dear letter of 
 March 20th, while a few friends were with 
 me at noon luncheon. The girls have just 
 gone, and I have fled to my room, and in 
 tears have read your every word. 
 
 Yes, indeed, I do remember the "good 
 times 
 
 "'O' Life! we've had long together.'" 
 
 And now, dear, I do not want to do anything 
 in the world without you! I have suffered 
 until I can endure it no longer. Every letter 
 you have written has been to me a reproach 
 as well as a gladness. The world has seemed 
 


to be gliding from under me ever since you 
 went away. I had lost gravity. 
 
 Some time ago, in one of your letters, you 
 asked what was my "bitter disappointment," 
 and I was not brave enough to tell you. 
 
 You know, you and I always have been 
 loyal comrades; and, unconsciously, or, as you 
 metaphysicians say, "subjectively," I always 
 must have felt that oneness of thought and 
 sympathy with you which, ever since your 
 departure "for rest from worrisome work," 
 as you gayly put it, has come home to me as a 
 possible loss most unbearable until I have 
 become jealous of your Hermit even. 
 
 Sincerity is evidenced by confession, and 
 that is repentance. You alone can give me 
 absolution. 
 
 "Mr. Call," as you have been pleased to 
 name him, caught my fancy as something 
 new. He was evidently in earnest in his 
 court, and I believed him — one of the "some 
 I have believed." Yet when he made his 
 avowal, a few days before you left for Europe, 
 I found, to my surprise, / did not love him! 
 I had fancied I did, and, frankly, this dis- 
 covery that I did not was a "bitter disap- 
 pointment"; for I was so fascinated with the 
 
 134 
 


idea of being "in love" that when he "pro- 
 posed" I was dumfounded to find suddenly 
 arise in me a deadly repulsion for him. A 
 sudden realization of what true-love was took 
 possession of me. He was an unknown 
 quantity, an X, and I was no Y, and we could 
 not equal anything. Not that there was any 
 known objection to him! But an utter re- 
 vulsion seized me. It was as if he, a stranger, 
 had attacked me. I hated him abhorrently; 
 partly, I suppose, because I so hated myself 
 for my total lack of self-knowledge. I did, 
 in truth, all the while, love. My love was so 
 perfect and it so rounded my days with such 
 peaceful assurance that, without asking my- 
 self why, I found that I had treasured, not 
 only your every word and look, but, with the 
 tenderest care, as a matter of course, had pre- 
 served every transient note, flower, book, 
 picture, and all that, which you had given me 
 in the gayety and frank cordiality of our 
 comradeship. But this episode brought me 
 to my senses. Oh, the pang of it when we 
 parted in the sunshine at the gate! I had 
 sinned against you — and myself. The Spirit 
 of Love, grieved, was about to take its flight 
 with you. 
 
 135 
 


As we stood there In the glow of the parting 
 day I felt the sun going down on my sin, and 
 was speechless with the shame of it, knowing 
 that you thought me disloyal to our unspoken 
 past; yet you must have felt the truth! I 
 know you did! I could not forgive myself 
 enough to be frank with you — that was the 
 "bitter disappointment," indeed. 
 
 You would have pitied and forgiven me if 
 you had known why, as you say, I turned 
 from you and walked away so straight, 
 without looking back, after asking you to 
 write that I might know you were "all right." 
 Lot's wife saved me! 
 
 Now, dear, is it "all a puzzle".'' Does 
 anybody "trouble" you.? Now! wont you 
 "speak for yourself, John".'' Dearest, with 
 all my love, I send you many messages from 
 my strong and constant heart. 
 
 Oh, my beloved, come! — when you will. 
 
 Auf Wiedersehen. 
 
 Faithfully yours. 
 
 THE END 
 





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