My Library

gazed with rapture, for the intense light faded away into a sort of hazy-vapor surrounding this spot. “ ‘Into such, and through such do I wish you to look for me. But not now. The time is not propitious. That which you behold is the lense of a mystical telescope, wherewith you may scan and sweep the fields where revolve a myriad worlds like this, and of other millions whereof man is yet profoundly ignorant. Through it you can and may witness not only the worlds of which I speak, but also their tenants and all that they are doing.’ “ ‘What! Do you mean to tell me that through that telescope, as you call it, a living man can behold all that is going on in Mars and Jupiter?’ “ ‘Aye!’ said he, ‘and half a million planets, suns and systems more. It will reveal the fate or fortune of any one, alive or dead. But to the proof.’ As he spoke, it seemed that a sort of tube of light extended itself toward my eyes, and through it I beheld, as in a diorama, each and all of the terrible and painful scenes of what I believe to be my most recent life on the earth. I beheld all my few joys and successes, and all the countless agonies of body and soul, by which they had been girdled. Men met the phantom of myself, with smiles upon their faces, and seemed to speak in honied phrases, to make themselves believed, and then these shadows