My Library

older Nilus, in the hoary land of the Pharaohs, of magic and of myth, he all the while pouring into my ear strange, very strange legends indeed— legends of Time and the other side of Time—all of which my thirsty soul drank in as the sunparched earth drinks in the grateful showers, or the sands of Zin the tears of weeping clouds. And these tales, these legends put to shame the wildest fictions of Germany and the terrorhaunted Hartz. Particularly was I struck with a half hint that once escaped his lips, to the effect that some men on the earth, himself among the number, had preëxisted on this sphere, and that at times he distinctly remembered localities, persons and events that were cotemporary with him before he occupied his present form, and consequently that his real age exceeded that even of Ahasuerus, the Jew, who, in the dolorous road, mocked the Man of Calvary, as he bore his cross up the steep and stony way, for which leze majeste he was doomed to walk the earth, an outcast and vagabond, from that hour till Shiloh comes, according to the legends of Jewry. My friend, during our intimacy, often spoke concerning white magic, and incidentally insisted on his curious doctrine of transmigration. Nor was this all: He taught that the souls of people sometimes vacated their bodies for weeks together, during which they were occupied by other souls, sometimes that of a permanently disembodied man of earth; at