Mark Twain - The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain (Illustrated)

Ollendorff stood his ground with good pluck, and was going to open his batteries again, when a storm of cries arose all over the house, "Get down! Go on! Clear out! Speak on—we'll hear you! Climb down from that platform! Stay where you are! Vamoose! Stick to your post— say your say!"

The medium rose up and said if Ollendorff remained, she would not. She recognised no one's right to come there and insult her by practising a deception upon her, and attempting to bring ridicule upon so solemn a thing as her religious belief. The audience then became quiet, and the subjugated Ollendorff retired from the platform.

The other German raised a spirit, questioned it at some length in his own language, and said the answers were correct. The medium claimed to be entirely unacquainted with the German language.

Just then a gentleman called me to the edge of the platform and asked me if I were a Spiritualist. I said I was not. He asked me if I were prejudiced. I said not more than any other unbeliever; but I could not believe in a thing which I could not understand, and I had not seen anything yet that I could by any possibility cipher out. He said, then, that he didn't think I was the cause of the diffidence shown by the spirits, but he knew there was an antagonistic influence around that table somewhere; he had noticed it from the first; there was it painful negative current passing to his sensitive organization from that direction constantly. I told him I guessed it was that other fellow; and I said, Blame a man who was all the time shedding these infernal negative currents! This appeared to satisfy the mind of the inquiring fanatic, and he sat down.

I had a very dear friend who, I had heard, had gone to the spirit-land, or perdition, or some of those places, and I desired to know something concerning him. There was something so awful, though, about talking with living, sinful lips to the ghostly dead, that I could hardly bring myself to rise and speak. But at last I got tremblingly up and said with a low and trembling voice:

"Is the spirit of John Smith present?''

(You never can depend on these Smiths; you call for one, and the whole tribe will come clattering out of hell to answer you.)

"Whack! whack! whack! whack!"

Bless me! I believe all the dead and damned John Smiths between San Francisco and perdition boarded that poor little table at once! I was considerably set back—stunned, I may say. The audience urged me to go on, however, and I said:

"What did you die of?"

The Smiths answered to every disease and casualty that men can die of.

"Where did you die?"

They answered Yes to every locality I could name while my geography held out.

"Are you happy where you are?"

There was a vigorous and unanimous "No!" from the late Smiths.

"Is it warm there?"

An educated Smith seized the medium's hand and wrote:

"It's no name for it."

"Did you leave any Smiths in that place when you came away!"

"Dead loads of them!"

I fancied I heard the shadowy Smiths chuckle at this feeble joke—the rare joke that there could be live loads of Smiths where all are dead.

"How many Smiths are present?"

"Eighteen millions—the procession now reaches from here to the other side of China."

"Then there are many Smiths in the kingdom of the lost?"

"The Prince Apollyon calls all new comers Smith on general principles; and continues to do so until he is corrected, if he chances to be mistaken."

"What do lost spirits call their drear abode?"

"They call it the Smithsonian Institute."

I got hold of the right Smith at last—the particular Smith I was after—my dear, lost, lamented friend—and learned that he died a violent death. I feared as much. He said his wife talked him to death. Poor wretch!

By-and bye up started another Smith. A gentleman in the audience said that this was his Smith. So he questioned him, and this Smith said he too died by violence. He had been a good deal tangled in his religious belief, and was a sort of a cross between a Universalist and a Unitarian; has got straightened out and changed his opinions since he left here; said he was perfectly happy. We proceeded to question this talkative and frolicsome old parson. Among spirits I judge he is the gayest of the gay. He said he had no tangible body; a bullet could pass through him and never make a hole; rain could pass through him as through vapour, and not discommode him in the least (so I suppose he don't know enough to come in when it rains—or don't care enough); says heaven and hell are simply mental conditions; spirits in the former have happy and contented minds, and those in the latter are torn by remorse of conscience; says as far as he is concerned, he is all right—he is happy; would not say whether he was a very good or a very bad man on earth (the shrewd old waterproof nonentity! I asked the question so that I might average my own chances for his luck in the other world, but he saw my drift); says he has an occupation there—puts in his time teaching and being taught; says there are spheres—grades of perfection—he is making very good progress—has been promoted a sphere or so since his matriculation; (I said mentally, "Go slow, old man, go slow,you have got all eternity before you," and he replied not;) he don't know how many spheres there are (but I suppose there must be millions, because if a man goes galloping through them at the rate this old Universalist is doing, he will get through an infinitude of them by the time he has been there as long as old Sesostris and those ancient mummies; and there is no estimating how high he will get in even the infancy of eternity—I am afraid the old man is scouring along rather too fast for the style of his surroundings, and the length of time he has got on his hands); says spirits cannot feel heat or cold (which militates somewhat against all my notions of orthodox damnation—fire and brimstone); says spirits commune with each other by thought—they have no language; says the distinctions of sex are preserved there—and so forth and so on.

The old parson wrote and talked for an hour, and showed by his quick, shrewd, intelligent replies, that he had not been sitting up nights in the other world for nothing; he had been prying into everything worth knowing, and finding out everything he possibly could—as he said himself—when he did not understand a thing he hunted up a spirit who could explain it, consequently he is pretty thoroughly posted. And for his accommodating conduct and his uniform courtesy to me, I sincerely hope he will continue to progress at his present velocity until he lands on the very roof of the highest sphere of all, and thus achieves perfection.

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This day, many years ago precisely, George Washington was born. How full of significance the thought! Especially to those among us who have had a similar experience, though subsequently; and still more especially to the young, who should take him for a model, and faithfully try to be like him, undeterred by the frequency with which the same thing has been attempted by American youths before them and not satisfactorily accomplished. George Washington was the youngest of nine children, eight of whom were the offspring of his uncle and his aunt. As a boy, he gave no promise of the greatness he was one day to achieve. He was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie. But then he never had any of those precious advantages which are within the reach of the humblest of the boys of the present day. Any boy can lie now. I could lie before I could stand—yet this sort of sprightliness was so common in our family that little notice was taken of it. Young George appears to have had no sagacity whatever. It is . related of him that he once chopped down his father's favourite cherry-tree, and then didn't know enough to keep dark about it. He came near going to sea once, as a midshipman; but when his mother represented to him that he must necessarily be absent when he was away from home, and that this must continue to be the case until he got back, the sad truth struck him so forcibly that he ordered his trunk ashore, and quietly but firmly refused to serve in the navy and fight the battles of his king so long as the effect of it would be to discommode his mother. The great rule of his life was, that procrastination was the thief of time, and that we should always do unto others somehow. This is the golden rule. Therefore, he would never discommode his mother.