Points of Friction
himself—and us—with the vision of an authorless future. "There were no books in Eden," he said meditatively, "and there will be none in Heaven; but between times it is otherwise."
For an Englishman more or less conversant with ghosts, Mr. Birrell showed little foreknowledge of their dawning ambitions. If we may judge by the recent and determined intrusion of spirits into authorship. Heaven bids fair to be stacked with printing-presses. One of their number, indeed, the "Living Dead Man," whose amanuensis is Elsa Barker, and whose publishers have unhesitatingly revealed (or, I might perhaps say, announced) his identity, gives high praise to a ghostly library, well catalogued, and containing millions of books and records. Miss Lilian Whiting assures us that every piece of work done in life has its ethereal counterpart. "The artist creates in the astral before he creates in the material, and the creation in
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