' It should be taken for granted that so
startling a novelty would attract the floating scum of society, whether
the solid folk heeded or derided it.
Though the following narrative may bring upon me an infinite derision, I
have long felt that it should be published, on account of the light it
throws upon some of the most mysterious facts of existence. Others may
have had similar experiences; but, if so, pride keeps them from
confessing how utterly they have been hoodwinked and enslaved by those
invisible loafers who form so large a portion of the newcomers and who
are permitted--not to put on too fine a point--to do the dirty work of
cleansing the modern mind of its gross Augean Sadduceeism. The only
theory promotive of self-complacency that I could ever concoct, as to
why I was put through such an ordeal, is, that I was suffered for my own
and the general benefit to see the dangers of necromancy, and especially
the awful psychodynamical methods used by spirits to obsess and
gradually craze human brains. I, at least, received a scare that made me
careful, ever after, how I called spirits from the vasty deep, or
elsewhere. After passing perils manifold, both carnal and
spiritual--having gone, torrent-borne, through the yawning chasms
represented in Cole's 'Voyage of Life' pictures, I come into calmer
seas, the lines fall in pleasant places; and now I sit me down, in
life's high noon--having lighted on a certain place where was a den (a
pleasanter than Bunyan's)--to write the strange things that befell me in
the seeming long ago--the dew and freshness of my youth.
Pages:
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194