r own;
the two remaining, having cleared the supper-things away and lighted
their pipes, were engaged in their tent, playing _old sledge_ by the
light of a single candle. There was a race out on the lake, and a
far-off merriment, with an occasional halloo, like a suggestion of a
busy world somewhere, but all so softened and toned down that it did not
jar on my tranquillity. There was a crackling fire of green logs as
large as the guides could lift and lay on, and they simmered in the
blaze, and lit up the surrounding tree-trunks and the overhanging
foliage, and faintly explored the recesses of the forest beyond. I lay
on the blankets, and near to me seemed to sit my daemon, ready to be
questioned.

At this instant there came a doubt of the theological position of my
ghostly _vis-a-vis_, and I abruptly thought the question, "Who are you?"

"Nobody," replied the daemon, oracularly.

This I knew in one sense to be true; and I replied, "But you know what I
mean. Don't trifle. Of what nature is your personality?"

"Do you think," it replied, "that personality is necessary to existence?
We are spirit."

"But wherein, save in the having or not having a body, do you differ
from me?"

"In all the consequences of that difference."

"Very well,--go on."

"Don't you see that without your circumstances you are only half a
being?--that you are shaped by the action and reaction between your own
mind and surrounding things, and that the body is the only medium of
this action and reaction? Do you not see that without this there would
have been no consciousness of self, and consequently neither
individuality nor personality? Remove those circumstances by removing
the body, and do you not remove personality?"

"But," said I, "you certainly have individuality, and wherein does that
differ from personality?"

"Possibly you commit two mistakes," replied the daemon. "As to the
distinction, it is one with a difference. You are personal to yourself,
individual to others; and we, though individual to you, may be still
impersonal. If spirit takes form from having something to act on, the
fact that we act on you is sufficient, so far as you are concerned, to
cause an individuality."

I hesitated, puzzled.

It went on: "Don't you see that the inertia of spirit is motion, as that
of matter is rest? Now compare this universal spirit to a river flowing
tranquilly, and which in itself gives no evidence of motion, save when
it meets wit