l68 I GO A- FISHING. 



night sky she loved to gaze at. Her hair was curled by 

 the loving fingers of the wind. Invisible spirits of earth 

 and forest and sea-shore surrounded and guarded her. 

 It is not necessary to be a " Spiritualist" to believe in 

 spirits. Draw the line correctly. We all believe in spir- 

 its. Few are so skeptical as not to believe in spiritual in- 

 fluences and communications. The great point is that 

 we can not exchange converse with them. There is the 

 boundary between the visible and the invisible world. 

 They hear us, they see us, they may even know our 

 thoughts, and fully appreciate our longings. But they 

 are forbidden to tell us the mystery of the dividing wall 

 between us, and as to their escaping the prohibition by 

 thunderous raps on pine tables, or the smashing of furni- 

 ture about our legs, it is nonsense. If some interpreter 

 will rise to tell me what the voices are which float on the 

 sea-wind at night, and fill my ear and soul with melody, 

 and with emotions that I can not understand ; if some 

 seer will explain to me why the rays of yonder star, rising 

 above the hills, make me so restless that I can not sit, 

 but must walk up and down the gallery, and think and 

 think and think, as a swift-crowding, crushing host of 

 memories and hopes and fears and wild untrained fancies 

 go through my brain ; if some one of spirit lore will come 

 to me and tell me that the day and night are full of spir- 

 itual voices, and give me the key to unlock sunshine and 

 starlight, and possess the messages they bring ; if there 

 be any one who will take for me one message, and bring 

 me back one answer, from a silver-haired old man who 

 has gone to God and stands now before his throne, white- 

 robed, a message that will tell me how I may henceforth 

 talk with him as of old, and gather counsels in times of 

 agony as I used to gather them at his feet when all our 



