Chapter XXI: Above the Clouds 290 (5)

But Dr. Alton was looking earnestly at his son. He recalled one or two occasions when Cyrus had accomplished this very thing. And now, as they looked into each other's eyes, he suspected his own thoughts, at this very moment, were being read. His suspicions were correct, for Cyrus answered an unspoken question.

"Yes, sir, it's the same as those you are recalling. But now I understand it. Much depends, of course, on the individual. Latent faculties in individuals, however, can be surprisingly developed. I do believe that within a few years our thoughts, spoken and unspoken, will be traveling through the air as wireless travels now."

Dr. Alton made no reply. He closed his eyes for a time and smoked in silence. His thoughts went back to those unexplained episodes when Cyrus was a boy; then further back to the villa by the Adriatic. He was recalling a conversation in the loggia of that hidden villa when Luther rose to his feet and exclaimed:

"Is there anything, Cyrus, too impossible for you to believe?"

"Nothing--if it is interesting. I never reject a good fairy tale. Why be a skeptic? To look at a skeptic's face is enough. His digestion is never good. He thinks with his stomach and his stomach reacts on his brain. That means farewell to enthusiasm and to all the best things of life. Ambition and gastric juice are partners. Had Buddha, Christ or Mohammed been skeptics you never would have heard of them. No skeptic could possibly succeed as an inventor, poet, explorer, patriot, or as any other kind of hero. He fails before he begins."

Cyrus paused for a moment, then added: "Perhaps you are both saying to yourselves, better be a skeptic than a credulous ass. But that's open to argument. The credulous ass is not only happier but he has Hope for a backer, and he is a heap sight more likely to get somewhere than the pessimist. The pessimist never starts."

His father nodded approval.

Luther put on his hat. "Right you are, Drowsy. Me for a credulous ass. I swallow all you say, electric miracles and all. Of course, this sending ideas about the world free of expense and without even the trouble of saying them, is quite a morsel for the ordinary throat, but I've got it part way down and am holding on to it. If what you say is true, miracles are with us. Jimminy! It's a large idea!"

"No miracle at all," said Cyrus. "Not half so miraculous as the growth of that apple tree from a seed. And the human brain! Two handfuls of gray matter--and what it achieves! Did you ever happen to realize what a self-starting, Johnny-on-the-Spot, up-to-date miracle your memory is?"

Luther laughed. "Well, no. Not enough to forget my meals."

"Then do it some time. It's the champion mystery of the world. No man knows how it works. We know it furnishes us with names and places, facts and figures and events without limit, and they come to us instantaneously without waiting to be called. A thousand telegraph clerks with an acre of pigeon holes could not accomplish in an hour what your memory does in a second. It is quicker than greased lightning. It's the miracle of miracles. Why, Luther, these thought waves of mine, compared with it, are so simple and so easy that any normal baby could operate them."

"I guess you are right."

After a few more words, this conversation ended, and Luther departed. But Dr. Alton and Cyrus sat a long time on the little porch talking seriously of the Great Discovery.

But the inventor, later that afternoon, was not too much absorbed in electric wonders to visit a corner at the end of the garden. There he straightened up a slab that marked a grave. The slab was of wood. He brushed the surface with careful hands and read the letters he himself had carved nine years before.

HeRe Lies
Zac ALton He
Was VeRY SmARt
and ALSO
GooD

These lines Cyrus always read with a smile--not of mirth, but of satisfaction with their truth and justice to his old friend's character. Pleasant indeed were those memories!--lively and bounding memories: of adoration for himself and of unswerving loyalty to the final breath of a short but joyous life.

X

THE FARTHEST TRAVELER

One sultry morning about six weeks later, Luther Dean got off a train at Springfield. Along the shady side of the main street he walked. He walked faster than usual. His eyes, his hot, perspiring face and general manner showed suppressed excitement. And why not? Wealth, and without labor, would soon be his.

A few blocks from the station he turned into another street, then, not far from the corner he entered a small shop. On the front window of the shop were these words: