Chapter VI: The Ghosts Tell Stories, and Compare Notes (1)

At this moment another ghost came up and joined in the conversation and said impressively: "Young gentleman, you are having the most remarkable experience of your life. You want to see all you can, for probably never before did man come down and see the dead as they really are—before they get their passports. Certainly some live persons do come down occasionally, but they do not count, for they are only those who are buried alive, and they do not get out, as they do not as a rule live long. All these ghosts are dead of body, but are not sufficiently purified in soul to go free from the hindrance of bones. So they all, men and women alike, are burdened with many of their old characteristics, and in many ways they act much as they did during life. Indeed, it has seemed to me that it may be quite possible that the repetition of their least pleasant characteristics here is a sort of punishment, and—well, all this will doubtless strike you as different from what you had imagined. It shall be my pleasant task to tell you anything you may wish to know so far as it lies in my power."

"I should like to know very much whether you ever want to see your families, and how you manage to see them, and how it is that you seem to know everything that goes on above ground."

"We lie here in the dark alone, for except for this one night in the year our bones are imprisoned in our coffins, or wherever we lie, if, as many of us have no coffins to lie in. That silence and isolation naturally creates a necessity for thought, concentrated and intense. This thought is most often connected with those whom we have left, and with whom we have been the most closely associated in life, and so the thought becomes desire. Thoughts are things, and they crystallize into a vehicle for our transportation to wherever we wish to go. We then become in a measure disassociated from the material part of ourselves, and the freed spirit can go where it will, and as it retains its ego, it is as a general rule anything but pleasant to go and hover around places and persons we have left. Sometimes it has occurred to me that some of our punishment was thus intended.

"In my life I was one of that kind of men that thought the world could not go on without me, and I was sure that my death would leave a void that never could be filled. And, above all, I thought that all my well-laid plans for the benefit of my family would be allowed to relapse into confusion. All I ever did for my family was to advise them, and the only real benefit I ever conferred upon them was by dying, so that they could collect the insurance I had placed on my life. Well, I have since been obliged to float around in space, unnoticed and unheard, and probably unremembered, while things were being done which would have had no approbation from me, and they came out right after all. I am obliged to admit that my family and the world at large have gained by my death. Yet I was a very religious man and was class leader in church, and always had prayers every morning before breakfast. I am ashamed to tell you the epitaph they put on my stone, but I must admit in the light of what I know now I deserved much worse."

"I should like very much to know what it was," said the reporter eagerly.

"Very well; I will repeat it, leaving out the 'here lies,' etc.: 'He gave Each day to Almighty God, advice of considerable worth; But his wife Took in sewing to keep him going, While he superintended the earth.'"

"But it is much when you get to such a point that you see what were your shortcomings in the upper world." "How much of it is out?" said another ghost who was standing by interested in this recital.

"Oh, you know that is truth and so is easy."

"I suppose we all have shortcomings against our record when it comes to count all the things we did and didn’t do to our wives. We seemed to think that when we had married a woman there was nothing further to do to make her happy, and the better and more willing she was the more we imposed upon her. I was rather bossy myself, and I thought as you did that this world could not get along without me, and I guess I must have carried my bossiness a little too far. One morning Marinthy was tired of it and fixed a plan that made me a little ashamed, for the time. She slipped out of bed before daylight and set all the clocks ahead four hours and then rang the dinner bell and when the family had all gathered she told them that she did not know what was going to happen now, for their father had forgotten to tell the Lord that it was time for the sun to rise."

“I found her sitting at the piano”

"You are not the only one to have a rise taken out of you, for I had a little of that sort of experience myself," said another ghost with a very long under jaw. "I, too, liked to lay down the law for all my family to obey. My wife was generally a meek little soul, and never questioned my right to order even the most trifling things. But, at last she revolted and one day during protracted meetings when two clergymen and the vestryman of our church were at my house to dinner and we were all in the parlor waiting for it to be ready, she opened the door half way and crept timidly into the parlor, with a meek and browbeaten air, and asked permission of me to breathe through her mouth as her nose was stopped up."

Everybody within hearing laughed at this, but the ghost who had told it, and he glared at the first speaker, but they happened to think of something else and calmed down. One of them turned to the reporter, saying: "Is there anything that you would like to know more than we have told you?"

"Yes; you said that you could float around and see all that is going on. I should like to know if any one of your friends feels or in any way recognizes your presence?"

"They do not. We are intangible and invisible, and there is nothing to show them that we are there, and the most ridiculous side of it is that every one would be scared nearly to death if he or she knew that there was a spirit in the room. Then is the time that they need have the least fear, for there is nothing of us that could do the least possible harm."

"Are there no persons whose natures are so attuned to the spiritual life that they can see you or feel your presence, and keep silent?"

"If there is one I do not know him or her, and frankly, I do not think that any one ever saw a spirit. There is nothing to see. As to the return of disembodied spirits to their old habitations, that is certainly true, but no one knows it or can know it, and so it does no harm and no special good."

Here the first speaker took up the question and said: "I believe that we can influence some dreams by entering into the mind of one who sleeps and is therefore in a measure free from all earthly thrall save life itself. I know that three times I have been able to enter into the mind of my daughter in her sleep, and I have impressed her so that she has shown clearly that she recognizes my direction. But her case is a peculiar one, as she is one whose mind is absorbed to a degree by her work so that every waking thought is occupied with it and she elects to be alone as much as she can. Being thus removed from most outside influences and having no distractions aside from her own thoughts, and having what one might define as an indwelling nature, as well as a highly sensitive organization, she has become almost like a sensitized photographic plate, only it is in her brain that she receives these unconscious impressions in her sleep. When she awakens she believes she has dreamed, but the impression is so strong that she obeys the line of conduct laid out for her in this way. She feels somehow that it is from me that the direction comes, and acts on it. But, from all that I have heard this is an exceptional case."

"I think so, too," said the other ghost, "and now you know as much about that as we do. We are but the bones and a few ligaments, and we are waiting until such time as may suit the Master to give us release, and move us to whatever sphere of existence He may choose."

At this moment a ghost stepped up and said in a brisk way, as though he belonged to a newer and more active age: "Gentlemen," here he bowed to the newspaper man, and then right and left, "what these gentlemen have said is quite true, as my own experience will show, and if this gentleman wishes I will tell my own story." The young man bowed and said that he certainly should like to hear it, so the ghost said:

"That we can come out of our mouldering bodies and hover unseen about our own homes is so. About six months after I was dead I was seized with the most intense longing to go to my house. I have been dead but a comparatively short time. I had been married but about two years and naturally hated to leave my young wife. But—well—we are not always free agents in these cases and must die when our time comes. I was run over by a cable car," he added as he saw that all near by seemed to be interested, and particularly the young man. "I was killed soon after the Spanish war broke out. I did not want to go as a volunteer and risk being shot and killed. I had a good business all my own and a nice little home all paid for, and I had every reason to wish to live. My wife thought I ought to leave all that and strike for glory. I tried to make her see that glory does not go to the unit, but to the officers in command, but it was no use, she kept it up. I could not go anywhere without hearing bands of music and seeing soldiers, and at last it annoyed me so that I would take any chance to avoid it. And, that is just how I came to be killed. I started to cross a street when one car was coming up and another going down, I never did know just how it happened, but the wheels went over my neck. You may notice how loose it is."

"What did you do? How did you feel? When did you know that you were dead? Or did you know nothing until they got you out?" began the reporter breathlessly, for somehow this accident appealed to him in an unusually strong way.

"I knew as soon as I was out of my body. I watched them lift the car with jacks to get me out. I felt so mad that anger swallowed up every other sensation to think I had let myself be killed in this senseless way. But it was no use. I followed along and was in the house ahead of my body, and found Mary sitting there surrounded with half a dozen scarehead newspapers around her reading about the war. They brought my body in, and you never saw such heartrending grief. I felt sorry for her, but I could do nothing. She sobbed and moaned and screamed with hysterics, and it took four persons to hold her. Of course it was a shock, I admit that, but it need not have made her such an idiot."

"I think her grief quite natural," said the reporter.

"Of course, of course. But wait till I tell you the rest. They sent for an undertaker, one of the swell ones. Common funerals are out of date now, or you would have thought so had you heard him talk. Honey from Hymettus was not sweeter than his sympathy, and oil from the olive groves of Italy was not so smooth as his tongue. He was so gentle and suggestive in his consolatory words that before the poor girl understood she had given him carte blanche to have a funeral such as should show the proper amount of respect for the dead and her uncontrollable grief. Oh, yes; everything must be such as would pour balm into that broken heart. She had never wanted anything during my life, and she knew absolutely nothing about business, so that glib fellow just turned her around his finger. The funeral must be in church. That meant the music and preacher to pay besides all the other things. There must be palms all down the aisle, and floral pieces. I must be embalmed. Well—I hope he may be obliged to float helplessly around and see some other fellow embalm him. And I hope it may be a business rival! My coffin was the finest, copper-lined, with silver handles and plate-glass top. And she agreed to it all without asking the price. She did not know enough.

"Well, I suppose I ought to feel flattered about it, but I don't. No, sir! And then the grave. The highest priced lot was chosen by that wily undertaker, and the grave dug. An awning was stretched over it, and all the earth that came out was sifted so that it should fall lightly without that sickening thud that we hear when the clods strike the coffin. Folding chairs were there for the mourners, and iced vichy for those who were thirsty. Carriages were provided for every Tom, Dick and Harry that wanted to have a free ride. My wife was the only mourner, for we neither had any relatives. But, my employees were there, and every comfort was provided for them. I am telling you this to show how women are imposed upon. Why the crape upon the door was a yard wide and twice as long. The undertaker made his strong point always saying that nothing less would be showing the proper respect. And my own dress suit that I hadn't worn but three times was not good enough, and so he went and put another on and charged her a hundred dollars extra.

"While he was doing this my wife had let her friends go to the swellest store in the city and order her mourning. They did not have to pay for it themselves, and it felt important to be ordering the best. Nothing short of the finest and richest Eudora cloth was good enough for the dress, and this had to be almost covered with the heaviest Courtauld crape, like those worn for court mourning abroad, and among the smart set here. Her bonnet had a little roll of white in front to show that she was a widow, and there was veil of the crape over the bonnet that reached the feet back and front, and was reefed up in a deep fold or hem or whatever they call it. Then there were gloves and black bordered handkerchiefs, and dull black jewelry, and to top off with a long sealskin coat. They told her that was the fashionable fur, for mourning, and it was better to get a good one while she was about it, as it would always be useful. They paid eight hundred dollars for that!

"What is the use talking any more about it. She paid her respects to the dead in the same kind of clothes the millionaires wear, but it took the house and lot to pay for them, and crippled the business besides. That undertaker soaked her for three thousand dollars, and took a mortgage on the house and furniture to pay, and the business went to the dogs in less than six months. I used to go up and hover around and try to infuse a little sense into her head, but it was no use. I don’t go there any more."

This last was said with such evident dejection that the reporter asked sympathetically why he had ceased his visits.

"Well, it is this way. One evening about six months after my death, as I was saying, I went there and found her sitting at the piano and playing softly and talking between bars to a young woman whom I had never liked. She was really the principal one to lead Mary on in her fatal extravagance.

"From her conversation I found that the mortgage was to be foreclosed the next week. The business was at its last gasp, and I thought she seemed more cheerful than circumstances warranted. Well, to make a long story short she was telling her friend that she was engaged to marry a captain in the army and that as soon as her year and day was finished they would be married and go to Porto Rico where he was to be stationed. Well, sir, I was so mad that I did not know what to do. All I could do was to stand there behind the piano and listen to their gabble. I never went back again. I don’t care if she has to take in washing to support him. Now, wouldn't that make your hair curl?"

"I certainly think it would," replied the newspaper man earnestly. Just then a small sized ghost stepped forward timidly and in a very polite manner bowing and signifying that he did not wish to intrude, yet had something to say. Several were gathered there and each evidently intended to tell the story of his own taking off.

"Sir," said the little man as soon as he saw that the reporter noticed him, "perhaps you might feel interested in the singular way in which I came to die. I may almost say that I did another man’s dying for him."

"It would be very interesting, I am sure," replied the young man with a bow. This ghost had a heavy manzanita cane with abundant evidence of the hard knotty roots at the knob, and they were so very sharp that the simple appearance of it was quite enough to provoke interest in the story, so the little ghost heaved a deep sigh and began:

"I will make my story as short as possible, as time presses. I was a young man in the best of health, when some forty-five years ago I started to California to make my fortune. I intended to start a jewelry store in one of the mining towns, in fact Murphy's Camp, a place well known then as it is now. Some of the story I did not know myself at the time of my death, though I learned it since and will incorporate it in this.

"The people of that part of the country liked to play practical jokes on strangers—I was a stranger—and they took me in. The stage driver and all the passengers set out to frighten me with the most blood-curdling tales of the way travelers were robbed and murdered for their money or belongings. As I had all my stock with me I felt very nervous. I did not know that all this was what they called 'Joshing green horns.' So by the time we reached Murphy's I was scared all the way through.

"We reached there just at sundown, and as soon as supper was over I went to my room and to bed. I was very tired. This room was partitioned off with redwood boards and was not even papered. There was just room for a narrow bed, a small stand and one chair. I put all my things under the bed, but I lay awake a long time, on account of strange mutterings and moans and cries in one of the rooms. But at last I fell asleep.

"I must now tell you what I learned afterward regarding the affair. I was an Englishman, small in size, and my hair was red and very curly. There was in this town another English jeweler, small and with curling red hair. He had had typhoid fever for several days and it was his delirious moans I heard.

"All the miners of this place gathered every evening at the barroom of this hotel, at the time of which I speak, to pass the time and play cards. Sometimes they remained until morning. The driver of the coach was an enormous man, strong as an ox, and as good-natured. He was a regular fanatic about the game they call poker, and they say he would play forty-eight hours on a stretch. They tell a story about how he and another poker fiend kept on playing once till their cards began to smoke before they knew the place was on fire.

"Seeing that this driver was settled for the night the hotel keeper asked him if he would do something for him. 'Certainly, what is it?' The other replied that the little English jeweler was very sick, and that he was worn out taking care of him. So he asked the driver to give the sick man his medicine at exactly three o'clock. The driver was always willing to do anyone a good turn, and asked about the dose, and how to prepare it, saying at the same time that the little Englishman must have been taken very suddenly. The landlord replied that he had indeed and was scarcely expected to pull through, and that all depended on his getting his medicine regularly. 'And, he will tell you that he isn’t sick, and don't want any medicine, and all that, but you must make him take it.'

"'All right,' replied the driver, 'I'll see that he takes it. You go to bed.' They played and smoked until three o'clock, and then the big driver mixed up the draught in a big spoon, and taking a candle he came up the stairs. He forgot about the other Englishman, and asked the porter where the little Englishman was that had come up that day. The sleepy porter told him where my room was. Now I can tell the rest from my own knowledge. I was suddenly aroused from my sleep to see an enormous form standing beside my bed, outlined by the flickering candle on the stand, and naturally my first thought was that I was about to be robbed and murdered, perhaps murdered first. I called out to know who it was and the big figure said:

"'You keep still now, and don’t get excited. No one is going to hurt you, so just take this now, and then lie down and go to sleep. It won't hurt you.'

"I was sure now that I was going to be drugged into insensibility and I told him that I would take nothing. He said:

"'Now don't you fash yourself, but take this medicine, It will do you good and is not bad to take, all stirred up with molasses.'

"'But I won't touch it,' I cried; 'you want to drug me and rob me. Get out of here.' As I said that I pushed him away with all my strength, but he just put his great hand around my neck and jerked me up in bed, saying:

"'Ah, I knew you would say that. Now come on and no more nonsense.' With that he jammed the spoon down my throat and choked me with the other hand so that I had to swallow or strangle. So I took his dose, and he let me go, and laid me down in bed again like a baby, but I think I fainted, for I knew nothing more until the daylight was streaming in the window. I found all my things untouched, but I felt awfully ill, and could scarcely get up. But I determined to leave, if they would let me, as soon as I could get away. When I did get down stairs everybody had heard of the affair and they began to make fun of me. I took passage back to Stockton, but I felt very queer. I took cold and died in about six weeks, and the other Englishman got well. The shock and the awful dose combined with the cold I took finished me up. What made me the maddest of all was that the doctor I had in Stockton was some kind of a foreigner, and he could not write English. So, my death was written down as having been caused by 'Gallumpin consumpsin'."

The whole assemblage of ghosts who were listening to this tale of woe agreed that death sometimes has sharper stings than we know. The ghosts with whom the newspaper man had been talking before this interruption now gathered around him again and he thought that probably now was his chance to learn something of the question so often mentioned of "getting the passports." That there was to be a move onward toward some desired goal he felt sure and at the risk of seeming importunate he asked of the nearest one:

"Sir, is it permitted you to give me any information regarding the next move onward, or upward, or whatever you call it, or what you mean when you speak of your passports? I need not tell you how much I desire to understand this."

"My dear sir, you know as much about it as we do. We all dread it while we still desire it sincerely. We dread it because we do not know what it will be, but on the other hand we wish the change, hoping that it will be a step toward better things. There are some reasons of which we prefer not to speak, why we would welcome a change. Anyone who pretends to know more than this is a liar. You see we use strong words down here, for truth is a fundamental principle of life after death, and we are trying to practice it."

"And you might add," said one of the ghosts who had been talking when the man told of his sudden taking off and his grievance against the undertaker. "You might add that no spirit would or could harm anyone, for in the first place he has not the power, and secondly he thinks more of trying to undo the evil he did in lifetime than to do more,"

"Just one thing more I should like to ask, and that is if there is ever any kind of religious service or observance down here?"

The newspaper man was growing bolder as he became better acquainted with the ghosts, and had the welcome assurance that they would not harm him.

"There is no religion as you have been taught to consider it in any of the underground places," replied the ghost. "It will surprise some of the preachers when they come down to learn even the little we know. They preach one thing, but when they get here they will find that truth in all things, love to your neighbor, and charity to all is all that is required of us, and I believe all that is essential to give us a chance to work out our own salvation."

"And for punishment? Is there a hell as we have been taught? And, what must we do to be saved? Must we join some church, and if so what one?"

They had evidently found the buffet.

"All churches lead to one goal. As it is, the One who created us has given us all a chance to work out our own salvation after we are dead. We can go on being ghosts, which means unredeemed souls for a few million years and redeem ourselves. But it is hard—very hard—to overcome our sins and weaknesses. As near as I can make it out there is a constant advance toward perfection in everything. It began uncounted millions of years ago, and will continue to all eternity. Evolution, the survival of the fittest, and all those things have truth for foundation, though the men who have been the ones to advance those theories have but the faintest glimmering of the truth. But I think from all I have seen and heard that Hell is that period of our existence while we are still chained to existence, obliged to know all that goes on without power to hinder or help. I used to preach other theology when I was a bishop, but I see things now with my spiritual instead of earthly eyes. I think I may say that this short life as men and women, is fraught with more meaning than any of our previous existences in different forms—for in this life we have been pretty nearly free agents—and a pretty mess we have made of it all. We shall have a chance to progress to higher—meaning better—conditions when we shall be sufficiently purified, or at least I hope so."

"And, is there no special punishment, like frying in a cauldron of boiling pitch and things like that?" asked the young man somewhat anxiously, thinking at the same time of Dante's Inferno, which he had just been reading.

"No, but there are such things as moral suffering, and one thing came to my knowledge to-day. This is what one might call poetic justice, and it would be comic if it were not so tragic. It is this; all the women who have deliberately and with intention shirked the cares of maternity while alive, are obliged to take care of the children of the poor overworked women whose quivers were full of them on earth. There is a kind of heavenly kindergarten, but the labors of these nurses and teachers are quite as hard as were those of the poor mothers, and the unaccustomed and often unpleasant labor is enough to make any poor rich woman shed tears of rage and worry—that is, if it were a possible thing for a ghost to cry—for the source of their tears is dried up forever. I heard one woman say that she would give one million years of heaven if she could only have one good cry."

"So then there is none of that weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth that we read about and have dinned into our ears ever since we could hear, and long before we could understood?"

"No; but don’t think that you can do wrong with impunity. Ex fatoris, is the law, and it is always enforced in one way or another. But, we are here to-night to enjoy ourselves as well as the nature of the occasion will permit. Each has full permission to follow his or her own inclinations, and—well—some of them seem to forget that they are adding to their own term of detention. We have been talking on subjects usually avoided by people on pleasure bent, and I should not have said so much only that I hope it may do some good directly or indirectly. The music will soon begin to play for those who wish to dance, and after that we shall have a short convention, where some important questions will be discussed with a view to interest the living public in our needs and complaints."

"Before you leave me," said the young man hurriedly, "I beg you to tell me where the children are. I have not seen one, and I know that there are many buried right here and others in St. Paul's, and in all other cemeteries in the city."

"Children are never put under the same conditions as ours, and they are taken at once to an intermediate place and classed off, according to their ages, and they are happy in their own way. They are not allowed to remember anything about their previous existence. They are never enlightened as to the world and its miseries, and no one knows that it had parents or pain. They are all equal, and all are ignorant of sin or its punishment. They always remain little children. In short, all and every one who has not yet reached a state of sinlessness must pass through a period of purification, which I may say is purely mental, and only the Master knows how long or short it will be. Some that we thought would have to stay millions of years underground have all gone on long ago. Others who bore the very odor of sanctity are here yet. The Master has given every one a chance to save himself, each after his kind. I could never understand, even when I was officiating as bishop, how it was that such a comparatively small number of persons were to be saved from perdition, and I could not feel that a loving Father and our Creator could have left countless billions to die unredeemed, and then send them to that terrible hell for not knowing something which He had made it impossible for them to know. I used to wonder then, I do not now."

"Will you tell me? I suppose you mean the Heathen."

"Yes; I mean the Heathen, at home and in far lands. Ah, my young friend, we all try to find a short cut to heaven. I can only say love your neighbor, tell the truth, think only pure thoughts, and trust the rest to the Master. He created us all, the Jew and the Gentile, the Heathen and these calling themselves Christians. They are all alike to Him.

"Do you not see that a merciful Father, loving his own creation could not condemn them to everlasting tortures for not believing something that he himself had made it impossible for them to know? You must follow the same road, and work for your passport to the next place or phase of existence, which we all hope will be better, but of which we are as ignorant as you."

At this moment there was a faint and tremulous sound, indescribably sweet, and no one could have told from whence it came, but it grew in volume, and in a few minutes it had swelled louder and began to throb with the strange thrill that makes dance music so enlivening. As soon as the music was well under way it seemed to be the signal for every one to begin to talk. The noise was deafening, and the young man wondered how just ghosts could make so much confusion. He noticed three men who had evidently found the buffet, and they had evidently made the most of their find, for they would have been considered drunk in any other place. They were inclined to be noisy and quarrelsome, and the young visitor feared they would pick him out for punishment, but they seemed to ignore his presence. The bishop who had been talking to him said:

"You see that we are still full of the leaven of unrighteousness. Ah; there goes the most unsociable ghost I ever saw. He will never get away from here at that rate. He thinks he is just the biggest frog in the pond. Nobody likes him. That tall man over near him is next to him the most disagreeable ghost here. He is so swelled up with his own importance that he is looking with a candle for insults to his dignity. But, deary me! Here am I, a bishop too, gossiping like an old woman. I could be in better business, but some folks think they are the whole bunch. I heard that expression once—in fact, recently—and it struck me as being so forcible that—ah, me; I am forced to admit that a bishop is no more when he gets before the Master than any other man. And if he has not been better than the most of them he gets the same treatment. I used to think I was some value to the world, but bishops are nothing more or less than men down here. It has taken over two hundred years to make me admit that much. I used to stand among other men and take their reverential words as my just due, and when we were at the banqueting board I took the best of everything as my right indisputable and just. Now I take what I can get and must be content, for, as I said, all that has passed away. You see, we have outgrown preachers down here, and I often wonder why we ever had them. To change the subject, what are your impressions of what you see here to-night?

“It would be impossible to define them, for I see so much that put all my preconceived notions to flight that it will take long before I can really understand them myself. I am sure that I shall profit by your discourse,” answered the reporter, earnestly, for the bishop’s conversation did give him food for reflection.

Very opportunely one of the ghosts who had visited the buffet too often got into a wrangle, and no one knew how it happened but the young stranger, and he kept a discreet silence, for it was not his quarrel anyhow, but he had heard one ghost say to another:

“I notice that your name is obliterated—”

He got no further, for the other doubled up his fists and cried indignantly:

“You're a liar! My name is Jones, and don’t you forget it.”

The first speaker was ready for a fight, but the other ghosts surrounded them and tried to persuade Jones that the offending word was intended for a compliment, and begged him to overlook it, so finally they shook hands and sat down in a corner and promptly went to sleep.

The music now struck up a grand march and the ghosts formed in couples and marched to the music, and in perfect unison. The procession appeared interminable. The ghosts floated rather than walked. It seemed as if millions passed along.

The people in the procession were about as well assorted as one finds them in all marches, some being tall with short partners, and vice versa. Some walked smoothly and with a certain degree of dignity while others tried to take fancy steps reminding him of a cake walk. Four persons there were who did not join in the march, a young lady ghost, a tall man, the Egyptian princess and the newspaper man.

The young lady referred to had a timid and bashful air, and the man a gloomy bend of the head and a morose crossing of the arms over his bony chest, while the Egyptian was so enveloped in her wrappings that she would have found locomotion difficult. Besides she was seated to watch the proceedings. She rather liked being set up there, as something more and better than the rest, and she was not blind to the fact that all the other women were as jealous of her as they could be.

The newspaper man resumed his interrupted journey toward her, keeping carefully out of the way of the dancers, until he approached the princess, and with a profound bow began a conversation with her. He was not quite sure of the proper way to address her, as she was a princess, of no one knew what dynasty. And, a ghost besides. So, he naturally felt a little timid, but as she seemed to smile affably he began, at the same time taking out his note book and pencil from force of habit. Then he remembered where he was and hastily hid them again, and thanked his stars that no one had seen them, and recklessly said:

“Oh, most noble and highly exalted princess,” here he stuck fast and did not know how to continue, but she deigned to smile on him. Indeed she had to smile for the embalmer who had made a mummy of her had fixed that charming smile on her lips with coal tar or whatever it was that they used for the purpose. But, whatever it was it served its purpose, and the princess smiled.

“Approach, young man” she said gently. He drew near and took hold of the bony but small and well shaped hand and was about to give it a hearty shake, but he remembered in time that it was the custom to kiss the hands of sovereigns, and he was not sure enough of her rank to take any chances, so he thought it better to make the mistake on the right side. So he knelt and kissed the hand held out to him, while his hair stood on end at that cold and stony contact. He wondered if in some occult way he had not bound himself to her through eternity. She broke the charm by saying in a voice as sweet as any one could wish to hear:

“Sir, be good enough to tell me in what way I can serve you, for I see question in your eyes and desire in your heart?”

This did not reassure him, for he did not half like the idea that all his thoughts were so evident, but he tried to do the best he could under the circumstance by saying lamely:

“Most noble of princesses, I will not try to disguise from your highness that I should be most grateful if you would tell me something about your illustrious self and how you came to this country and anything you may have seen in your long pilgrimage. Your highness must have seen many things that the world would like to know. The master of ceremonies said that you are more than five thousand years old, yet I find you young and beautiful—” Here the reporter stopped and strangled, for he happened to remember that she could read his thoughts, and he had said in his mind, ‘Now we shall see how long a woman remains susceptible to flattery,” and the cold sweat broke out on his forehead, but she only smiled more graciously than before, and said:

“I now perceive that you are not one of those vulgar curiosity seekers like those who tore me from my tomb, where I had hoped to sleep until my summons came. There is very little to tell. I have seen but about four thousand and nine hundred and fifty years, so I am not so old by considerable as that gentleman said, and doubtless in good faith. But, I have seen nations, races and armies melt away so that no trace of their existence remains, no stone of their habitations is seen above ground, and I have seen lands change their boundaries and the new rise up out of the old. Kings and queens have become dust and buried so deep in it that no one can tell where they were. Yes; I have seen so much that it would require a lifetime to tell you the half.”

“Ah, did your highness ever see Cleopatra? She has always been a prominent figure in Egyptian history—and—she has been much discussed. I should like to know something of her from a contemporary.”

“Oh,” she replied stiffly, “I scarcely know to which Cleopatra you refer. There were several of them, but I suppose you refer to she who reigned last and was the cause of the overthrow of the nation, and who killed herself with an asp.”

“Yes, your highness, that is the one,” replied the young man eagerly.

“Well, in the first place, that queen is entirely too modern, and she reigned something like three or four hundred years before the Christian era, while I came from the family of one of the first of the real Egyptian sovereigns. She was not even Egyptian, being only of Greek origin. We did not recognize her when she died and she was not even mummified, for the Romans would not have allowed it, and so no one ever knew what ever really became of her body. It did not interest us, as she was an upstart who had brought all sorts of evils upon my country. She is doubtless dust and ashes two thousand years ago. She was greatly overrated, and was nowhere near so beautiful as she has been considered. I belonged to the first dynasty, though there had been many kings and queens before me. My tomb was like those of the first royal ladies of my line. I had never been married—nor had I reigned, so according to usage, my tomb and sarcophagus were plain, save for the paintings on them to tell who I was. One day some vandals came and rifled my tomb and took my mummy case, and brought it to this country and put me in the museum in a glass case, and you have no idea how angry it makes me to have to squeeze out. May the jackals eat their bones, and leave no two of them together, so they will never find them in this world or the other and may wild beasts tear their children, and leave the mothers desolate, and raze their dwellings, and may their babes starve to death, and may they all die crying for water—”

How much longer this would have continued the newspaper man did not know, but he began to feel most uncomfortable, for one of these very collectors of mummies was his own father, and if he had not brought his particular one he had brought two others. He began to want to go home, but he tried to look sympathetic, and as if he had never heard of such terrible things as stealing mummies before. She continued:

“Yes; I am lady Shep, and when I was mummified these lines were put upon my case. Not everybody knows about them, but I will tell you. First, there was a line of text, and this is what it says:

“Royal offering of Osiris Unifer (the good being), great lord god of Abydos, may he give every good thing, libations to the Ka (Double) of the Osiris, the lady of the house, the honorable Shep (justified).’ This means that I lay a day and a night in the underground temple in the arms of Memnon, and all the good deeds I had done were weighed, and when they were found to be more than the evil ones I was justified. On the other side was this inscription: “The worthy mistress and daughter of Ru-ru, Justified; her mother was the lady of the house, Tarerust, Justified, and worthy.’ On the left is another with the goddess Maat, and there are other gods and goddesses, all saying that Shep, the lady of the house, is justified and worthy of a place among the illustrious dead. We did not have to go under the same peculiar conditions as do you who have a different way of burial and belief. Perhaps because our bodies are made imperishable we come under another division. I cannot tell, but this I know, I slept peacefully when I should and did no harm when I came out at the command, and then the explorers as they call them, came and took me from my country so far away that I shall never see it more.”

“Is there no way by which you could go back?” asked the young man, touched by her sorrow.

“No: for the scientific men would never let me go. Because my mummy case is the best one they have, and I am told that men of science have no honor and no feeling where it concerns the despoiling of tombs, whether they be of our people, or the red Indians who have built mounds or the Mexicans, or the old Peruvians. And, besides, we ghosts cannot cross the ocean in spirit form unless our bones go too.”

“May I ask why?” questioned the young man, really distressed by what he heard, and now understood as he could not have done a day, even a few hours before.

“Because the spirit is an essence, and the cold of the water chills it, and renders it powerless to float, and so I can never behold the dear country of my birth again.”

“What if I stole your mummy from the museum and took it back to Egypt?” said the young man, carried away by sympathy.

“We have often talked of just such a contingency nights up there, and we all agreed that if ever we did find any one who was willing to try, he might be beheaded after unheard-of tortures by the authorities of the museum, but if one could succeed we would make him the richest man in the world. We know many secrets. What if I told you that I know where the kings of the first and second dynasties got their gold and precious stones? I know where kings of the second dynasty got emeralds in such profusion that we scarcely cared for them. I was dead then, but I suppose that a woman never quite loses her interest in gems. I could take you to a place where you could get all the finest emeralds that you could carry.”

This particularly appealed to him as the emerald was his birth stone, according to the astrologers, and besides he liked them better than any other. He remembered also that emeralds were the fashionable stones for the time, and that a fine emerald was worth more than a diamond of the same size. Therefore he was impressed.

He asked her when he could see her again and she answered that it must be just one whole year before she could come out of her sarcophagus in visible form, and when he wanted to try to communicate with her spirit she told him that such a thing was impossible, and had never been done by any spirit that ever floated. But he could come to the museum a year from then and manage somehow to stay in the building over night, and they could then discuss the situation, and see if some way could not be found by which she could be returned to her country. The young man thought if he could manage to get enough of this wealth of jewels to handle he could find some way to buy up the attendants. But he felt delicate about speaking of such a plan, for fear she would not understand that he didn’t dare anything so dangerous without having money enough to silence all scruples of the night watchmen. He also thought to himself that probably no other man living had ever made two appointments like the two he had made this night; one to bring the good natured ghost a bottle of rum and a package of tobacco, and another with a mummy in a museum to make arrangements to steal her and carry her back to Egypt. It was enough to make one’s hair stand on end. He thought he might be able to fix it with the ghost so that he could deposit the things in some safe place, because he felt that the affair with the princess was the more important. He was about to discuss the plan more fully when the grand march ended and the floor manager shouted:

The dance and cake walk

“There will now be given a selection of the newest songs, such as are sung in the theaters above ground. You are requested to listen quietly, or if you must talk let it be in whispers, for it is very disconcerting for a singer to be interrupted by conversation during the time he is trying to amuse you.”