hands—real, actual hands, evidently—but they were very thin, pale, emaciated, wrinkled, and of a decidedly blue, consumptive caste,—precisely as they had appeared every day for the past long months of pain and misery. My hair was long, and in all other respects as before; my feet felt tender; nor was there any difference between my then, and prior state, except that a nameless, thrilling joy pervaded me, and which left absolutely nothing to be wished for in that respect; for as the mouth of every nerve drew in the magnetic essence in which I floated, it seemed as if living streams of sense-joy rushed through every channel and avenue of being; and it struck me that if there were no other reward for having lived and suffered, yet that the sensations consequent upon physical death would fully compensate a life of agony.[1]
Soon a sense of vacuity stole over me, and brought the realization, that having passed through two worlds, I was rapidly approaching one still more wonderful and strange.
Many a time had I been mesmerized by friends, in my far distant-dwelling, by my well-beloved brother J. in particular, who all sought by that means to alleviate my sufferings; and not seldom had I passed into what is popularly termed the Superior State;[2] and the feeling
- ↑ All the dead people are not thus favored. Up to the present was an inhabitant merely of the Spiritual world, but had not yet entered upon the vast domains of the realm of Soul. There are two worlds into which it is possible for man to step into from the portals of the grave, as all will be convinced who either study the subject or give this introductory work a careful perusal.
- ↑ My researches have proved to me, that in nine cases in every ten, taking an entire average, the sleeping subject never once actually
