Strange Visitors | Page 4

ensued. We remained here but a few moments, partook of refreshments, and then proceeded to the court-yard, where I was told a car awaited to carry us to our destination.
The car seemed to be a frame-work, apparently of silver wire. We now comfortably seated ourselves, when two large wings struck out from it like those of some great condor. We moved rapidly over the acclivity. This is a new way of crossing the mountains, thought I; I will have to introduce it in the Sierra Nevada and Colorados.
I inquired how the machine was propelled, and was informed, "Simply by a chemical arrangement similar to your galvanic battery."
You may conceive my astonishment when we descended into a park of a vast city.
"My God!" exclaimed I, "it cannot be that I am in the spirit world! Why, look at the houses and churches, and temples! What magnificent buildings!" But I must say the material alone struck me as something sublime and unearthly. So transparent and rich in color, reflecting light as if through a veil or mist! "This caps all," said I, as doctors and lawyers, artists and authors, whom I had known, stepped up to greet me, smiling and full of life. "Why, how is this?" "Is this you?" "Where did you come from?" Questions like these came from all sides. Francis and Brady, Willis, Morris, and a host of New Yorkers who had slipped out of sight and almost out of mind, now gathered around me as if by miracle. I rubbed my eyes in wonder. Spying Brown, I cried out, "Why, how is this, Brown? It can't be that I am in heaven! Do you have such things here? Houses, stores, and works of art on every side?"
"Yes; people must live," said he, "wherever they be."
"And are men here the same, with all their faculties?" I asked.
"Yes; why not? Have you any you'd like to lose?"
I shook my head and walked on absorbed in thought. And are all our paraphernalia for funerals, our solemn black, and our long prayers but useless ceremonies? Why, according to this, the beliefs of the Chinese, Hottentot, African, and Indian are nearer the truth than our civilized creeds!
I find that there are few things in which society in this world so much differs from that of earth as in its social and political arrangements.
All the great system of living for appearances, and the habit of self-deception whereby men live outwardly what their secret lives disavow, are here entirely done away with.
In the first place the marriage relations differ materially from those of earth, and no false sentiment nor custom, nor religious belief, holds together as companions those who are dissimilar in their nature. Neither do men crucify their tastes and feelings from a mistaken idea of duty.
The miseries and disasters which are attendant on a life on earth they view as a parent would view the whooping-cough or scarlatina which afflict the body of his child--as necessary steps toward his growth and progress from youth to manhood.
A remarkable instance of this came under my own observation. You remember that the singular and sudden death of Abraham Lincoln was a matter of surprise to us. We could not see the purpose of an all-wise Providence in this sudden closing of an eventful career. It was discussed in every newspaper in the land, and the conclusion was that the Creator had some special purpose in his removal, and this we all believed.
But here the enigma is solved.
Standing face to face and walking side by side, as I have done for the last few days with this man, raised as some suppose for the special purpose of freeing the slave--a martyr for principle--I find that he enjoys as a good joke, this martyrdom, and I have also ascertained the solemn fact that he was removed, not by God, but by spirit politicians, God's agents.
And the state of the case is this: the Southern rebels, hot-blooded and revengeful, who were arriving daily by scores and hundreds, in the spirit world, finding their cause discomfited and worsted, became mutinous. They were too raw and new to fall into the harmony of the spirit life, and they threatened a second war in Heaven; a war which those young Lucifers would have waged with terrific power.
To quell this disturbance and produce a counteraction, it was necessary that one whom they looked upon as the great leader of the Northern cohorts should be withdrawn from the post which he occupied.
A man of calm, dispassionate judgment, not vindictive, who could hold the reins with a firm hand, yet look with a lenient eye on the follies which he did not share, was needed in the spirit world, and that man was Abraham Lincoln.
When those young Southern bloods had conspired with their co-patriot to