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'just to have a man about the house' she said. As she was one of
the cleanest women in the world, she could not bear to see the mold of
the Long Island mud on me, and every Saturday I had a bath. She put
clean clothes on me, and always did as long as she lived. We both lie
now at Kenisco. I hope there will be no removal from there, but you must
not blame me if I have lost confidence when it comes to be a question of
routing out the dead to make place for the living, if there is money in
it."

CHAPTER V.
THE PRINCESS FROM EGYPT

While the polished ghost was relating his varied experiences, the women
were talking, and the young man found that his thoughts wandered as he
noticed a couple of articulated skeletons. He wondered if their
experience would not be worth an effort, and was trying to think up some
plan by which he could get them to talk, but before he could do so a
man, on the other side of the woman who hated cooking, said solemnly:

"Now, maybe your folks had dyspepsia. That excuses much, and some folks
that are not really nagging by nature get so by their sufferings. Now, I
knew a fellow, and he was something awful. Nobody couldn't do nothing to
pacify him after he had had his dinner, and at last it got so that
smoking injured his vitals and his victuals done him no good."

"Did he pine away and die slow or go off all of a sudden at the end, as
it were?" asked the old lady sympathetically.

"Well, I disremember, for I was in California that year and when I came
back he was gone."

The young reporter thought this was a good time to try to learn what
death really meant, and so he chose out a ghost whose frontal
development was such as to give the appearance of great intellectuality,
and said modestly:

"Sir, I hope you will not take it amiss if I ask you a few questions-"

"Fire away!" replied the ghost.

This unexpected answer quite took his breath away, but he managed to
keep a sober face and asked:

"I wish very much to know how a man feels when he knows that he is
drawing his last breath, when in short, he knows he is dying. If it is
not asking too much I should like to have as many of you as are willing
to tell me, each his individual experience." One thoughtful-looking man
waited a moment and as nobody else took up the question he said:

"I think few of us are conscious when the last moment comes. We have all
probably been so ill that there was a complete blank, and where by
accident or any mortal injury it stands to reason that the shock and
hurt would render the person unconscious. You may not know that I was a
bishop in my life time. I thought that I had nothing to fear, and so as
I lay ill-I suffered a long time with the gout-the usual result of
eating and drinking-at last it went to the stomach and I died. Before
departing, I called my weeping friends and told them that the Lord had
called me and I was ready to go. I posed as a martyr and angel of grace,
and my deathbed farewell was spoken of as edifying. I really believed I
was almost a saint, and it was for a long time a matter of surprise to
me to discover that I was not wafted to immediate glory. I had yet to
learn that from him to whom much shall be given much shall be required.
And here I am, the least among you all."

Another ghost took up the subject and said:

"The most of you here will think it queer, but when I was drawing my last
breath I knew it, and my principal feeling was anger that now one of my
neighbors would get my favorite horse. He had long tried to buy it, and
I would not sell, but what could my widow do with that horse when I was
dead? After that there was a few seconds of blank and I felt myself
drawn out of my own body and in another moment I was standing looking at
myself. It certainly was a strange experience, and I am glad it is all
over.

"I have talked with many ghosts and they all agree that death itself is
not so dreadful. It is like going from a light room into a dark one and
no one knows what is there. I find that almost every one has felt the
same fear of the unknown, but it is after all so small a change. Many
have a feeling as if they were falling a great distance to a profound
depth in the darkness, but so far I have never found one who was really
afraid of dying. It was more like the thought of the plunge into an icy
bath. Sickness and physical suffering have a tendency to deaden the
senses. And death itself is not so much of a change as we are prone to
regard it. The way I now look at it is that it is simply one of the
systematic changes made from time to time, from one sphere of existence
to another, according to the great eternal plan toward a better kind of
man. I used to wonder if this creature here who ravages and eats
everybody else, and who is altogether unworthy and vicious and selfish
was the best there could be, but now that I have an inkling into the
future existence, I believe that we are but atoms in one great plan, and
as worlds have been formed in their perfection, so will man stand out at
last as the finished being he is intended to be, in the right time as
grain is ripened."

The bishop bowed his head in assent to this, and that set the reporter
to thinking about the great agnostic Ingersoll. He asked the company at
large if they could tell him if Col. Robert Ingersoll were present. The
whole company waited for the bishop to answer this question as though he
were the proper one to do so. He spoke at last; but as if he would have
preferred to waive the question:

"No, Mr. Ingersoll is not here. He got his passport the same day he
died."

"I-I-thought he believed-or didn't believe-I really do not know how to
express it-" stammered the young man in his excitement.

"Young man," said the bishop impressively, "it is not what a man
believes, or thinks he believes, while on earth, that gains heaven, but
what he does."

All the ghosts clapped their hands and shouted, "Hear, hear." The young
man found food for the thought in the fact just told him. He made a
resolution to become acquainted with the words of the man who had
received his passport the same day he died. And, moreover, he intended
to follow them.

There was a ghost who up to now had taken no part in the conversation,
and he suddenly fixed the newspaper man with a compelling glance and
said, slowly and impressively:

"It seems to me that no one has exactly answered the question about the
phenomenon of death, which is in reality no greater than that of birth.
We see that, but even the wisest men of all time knows no more of the
life principle than the most ignorant. We know only that we enter this
world and quit it through the doors of pain. When my own final moment
came, I knew it and braced myself so that if ever I should be able to
tell those still of the world all the sensations I experienced I would
do so. If this is my opportunity I am glad of it.

"In the first place, I was a strong man and nothing but the pneumonia
ever seemed to get a hold on me. I was ill about a week, and they all
t

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