olflRKcnTH] THE SWIMMER MANUSCRIPT 143 



ctretchcd out in front of him. The grass was of a fine green color, 

 and felt very soft and nice to walk iii)on. 



Soon he saw a building; he entered, and found it filled with children, 

 some of them mere babies, and none of them any older than about 

 12 years. ITe asked them where the chief lived; they told him, the 

 chief lived in the fourth building, and that, if he wished to see him, 

 he had but to walk through the opened doors of the three first buildings. 



He went through the second building and the third, and found 

 these likewise filled with people, both men and women, but all of 

 them older than the children he had seen at the first place. 



As he came to the fouith building he found the door locked; ho 

 asked several times for admittance. "Chief, open the door for me." 

 As ho asked it the fourth time he heard somebody inside turn round 

 on his chair; then he went in. 



There was a white man, very old, with a long white beard, sitting 

 at a desk. He did not even look up at the visitor, and shook hands 

 with him without even turning round. lie said: "Well, have you 

 come to live with us?" T. said he had, upon which the man at the 

 desk turned round, reached for a big account book and a pen, and 

 made ready to write T.'s name in the book. But all of a sudden ho 

 bethought himself: "I think you had better go back home again." 

 he said; "you will come back here again 33 days from now; then 

 you will come to stay, and then we will write your name in the book." 

 He closed the bool-: and put it away. 



ile opened a trapdoor and gave T. a small disk-like object, like a 

 thin sheet of tin, about the size of a silver dollar, and said: "You 

 had better hold this in your hand, to find your way." 



After that T. felt himself, still sitting on his chair, drop through 

 the trapdoor, and falling at a terrific speed, the air rushing past him 

 as if it were a windstorm; he soon landed on the top of a mountain 

 near his settlement; he threw the little disk in front of him and it 

 started rolling in the direction of his home; he followed it, went into 

 the cabin, where he found his friends and relatives still gathered, and 

 stretched himself out on his couch; he then opened his eyes, and 

 found everybody very nmch relieved, as they had been watching him 

 carefidly, and had thought him to be dead. 



\n both these cases, "the different settlements," the "four different 

 buildings," nmst surely have some definite meaning. In T.'s account 

 there would appear to be a differentiation according to age, but this 

 I suspect to be infiuenced by ill-digested evangelization, as another 

 informant told me once that "all children under 12 years of age who 

 die are happy; under 12 they do not know what is wrong." 



Incidentally, I want to draw attention to a rather humorous side 

 of T.'s account: The whole of his visit with God, in an oilice, with 

 7548°— 32 11 



