pen. The
soul-juggleries of the before-mentioned President are very curious, but
people will not realize that soul transference from body to body is
as much a plain fact as the daily rising of the sun on one half of the
world and its nightly setting on the other."

"Do you mean that souls pass on into the world again on the death of
the particular body in which they have been for the moment confined?" I
asked.

"Precisely: I have no doubt of it. Sometimes a woman's soul goes into
a man's body; then the man acts woman, and people cry against him for
effeminacy. The soul colours the body with actions, the body does not
colour the soul, or not in the same degree."

"But we are not irresponsible. We can command ourselves."

The Professor smiled dryly.

"You think so?" he said. "I sometimes doubt it."

"And I doubt your theory of soul transference."

"That shows me--pardon the apparent impertinence--that you have never
really examined the soul question with any close attention. Do you
suppose that D------ really likes being so noticeably different from
other men? Depend upon it,' he has noticed in himself what we have
noticed in him. Depend upon it, he has tried to be ordinary, and found
it impossible. His soul manages him as a strong nature manages a
weak one, and his soul is a female, not a male. For souls have sexes,
otherwise what would be the sense of talking about wedded souls? I have
no doubt whatever of the truth of reincarnation on earth. Souls go on
and on following out their object of development."

"You believe that every soul is reincarnated?"

"A certain number of times."

"That even in the animal world the soul of one animal passes into the
body of another?"

"Wait a minute. Now we are coming to something that tends to prove
my theory true. Animals have souls, as you imply. Who can know them
intimately and doubt it for an instant? Souls as immortal--or as
mortal--as ours. And their souls, too, pass on."

"Into other animals?"

"Possibly. And eventually, in the process of development, into human
beings."

I laughed, perhaps a little rudely. "My dear Professor, I thought that
old notion was quite exploded in these modern scientific days."

"I found my beliefs upon my own minute observations," he said rather
frigidly. "I notice certain animals masquerading--to some extent--as
human beings, and I draw my own conclusions. If they happen to fit in
at all with the conclusions of Pythagoras--or any