Page:Dealings with the dead.djvu/221

whispered "I am here!" * * * * In other days, when I gave my soul and body up to the guidance and control of invisible beings, whom I did not know, whom I did" not stop to prove and identify—apocryphal persons, at the best—persons disembodied, if indeed they ever wore clay upon this footstool—beings who seek their own amusement at the expense of human dupes—beings who take supreme pleasure and delight in the exhibition of human weakness—beings who silently, but surely, infuse the most deadly and destructive venom, in the shape of philosophic assurances—beings who mock at our calamity and laugh when our troubles come, both of which they themselves bring to pass—beings who persuade people to believe in all sorts of inanities, dictate senseless platitudes, and encourage persons to believe themselves philosophers when they are only—fools! I repeat, when in other days I yielded to this evil influence—in other days, when both God and Thotmor were practically ignored and forgotten—in other days, when the pride and power of Eloquence turned me from the Useful—an eloquence weird and almost magic, that welled up through my soul and went forth from eye, and tongue, and pen, and drew my soul from God,—there came occasional twinges of regret, and an assurance that, in forgetting to profit by the teachings of that afternoon, I had bartered off priceless joys for the empty bauble 'worldly fame and ephemeral glory'—that for the hollow music of man's praises and a few claps of the hand, I had given up the Key to the magnificent Temple, one of whose apartments I that afternoon entered for the first time. Great God! how I have suffered for that foolish estrayal—that fearful lege majesté—that silly vanity and supreme folly!