ners, which has made me more than ordinary curious to know how he
came to that perfection, and I communicated to him that doubt. "Mr.
Pacolet," said I, "I am mightily surprised to see you so good a judge of
our nature and circumstances, since you are a mere spirit, and have no
knowledge of the bodily part of us." He answered, smiling, "You are
mistaken, I have been one of you, and lived a month amongst you, which
gives me an exact sense of your condition. You are to know, that all who
enter into human life, have a certain date or stamen given to their
being, which they only who die of age may be said to have arrived at;
but it is ordered sometimes by fate, that such as die infants, are after
death to attend mankind to the end of that stamen of being in
themselves, which was broke off by sickness or any other disaster. These
are proper guardians to men, as being sensible of the infirmity of their
state. You are philosopher enough to know, that the difference of men's
understanding proceeds only from the various dispositions of their
organs; so that he who dies at a month old, is in the next life as
knowing (though more innocent) as they who live to fifty; and after
death, they have as perfect a memory and judgment of all that passed in
their lifetime, as I have of all the revolutions in that uneasy,
turbulent condition of yours; and, you'd say, I had enough of it in a
month, were I to tell you all my misfortunes." "A life of a month, can't
have, one would think, much variety; but pray," said I, "let us have
your story."

Then he proceeds in the following manner:

"It was one of the most wealthy families in Great Britain into which I
was born, and it was a very great happiness to me that it so happened,
otherwise I had still, in all probability, been living: but I shall
recount to you all the occurrences of my short and miserable existence,
just as, by examining into the traces made in my brain, they appeared
to me at that time. The first thing that ever struck my senses, was a
noise over my head of one shrieking; after which, methought I took a
full jump, and found myself in the hands of a sorceress, who seemed as
if she had been long waking and employed in some incantation: I was
thoroughly frightened, and cried out, but she immediately seemed to go
on in some magical operation, and anointed me from head to foot. What
they meant I could not imagine; for there gathered a great crowd about
me, crying, 'An heir, an heir';