thods of work, as
though the analogy with material life holds good. In the building of a
house, for instance, there are many persons employed; men of different
trades and occupations--architect, builder, masons, carpenters, plumbers,
and a host of others--and all these with the officials of each guild or
trade. So in the world of thought and feelings: knowledge and
understanding come through various agents, each competent to its task.

How far pity reacted with love I knew not; I only knew that whatever her
state might be, were she living or dead, I could find in my heart no
blame for the Lady of the Shroud. It could not be that she was dead in
the real conventional way; for, after all, the Dead do not walk the earth
in corporal substance, even if there be spirits which take the corporal
form. This woman was of actual form and weight. How could I doubt that,
at all events--I, who had held her in my arms? Might it not be that she
was not quite dead, and that it had been given to me to restore her to
life again? Ah! that would be, indeed, a privilege well worth the giving
my life to accomplish. That such a thing may be is possible. Surely the
old myths were not absolute inventions; they must have had a basis
somewhere in fact. May not the world-old story of Orpheus and Eurydice
have been based on some deep-lying principle or power of human nature?
There is not one of us but has wished at some time to bring back the
dead. Ay, and who has not felt that in himself or herself was power in
the deep love for our dead to make them quick again, did we but know the
secret of how it was to be done?

For myself, I have seen such mysteries that I am open to conviction
regarding things not yet explained. These have been, of course, amongst
savages or those old-world people who have brought unchecked traditions
and beliefs--ay, and powers too--down the ages from the dim days when the
world was young; when forces were elemental, and Nature's handiwork was
experimental rather than completed. Some of these wonders may have been
older still than the accepted period of our own period of creation. May
we not have to-day other wonders, different only in method, but not more
susceptible of belief? Obi-ism and Fantee-ism have been exercised in my
own presence, and their results proved by the evidence of my own eyes and
other senses. So, too, have stranger rites, with the same object and the
same success, in the far Pacific Islan