II
MEANWHILE,
happy letters were coming
almost daily from the Gaylord family, and less frequently, but with
expressions of equal conviction, from Mr. Kendal.
Mrs. Gaylord had promised to spend
Easter week with relatives,
in a Middle Western town, which she had not visited—indeed, had scarcely dared to think of—since
taking Frederick's body there for burial; and the day after the second
Lesson was given she arrived in New York, where she paused briefly
en route,
her elder daughter and son-in-law joining her
the next morning.
Although her train arrived late in
the evening, we talked a little to Frederick before separating for the
night. We had been commenting on her changed appearance.
"Mother dearest, you are not much
differenter than I am," he began, after the usual signature.
"Why, Frederick!" she exclaimed.
"Are you better, too?"
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He made the enthusiastic little
circle so often used. "(O) So
much better! You can't guess how much better I am. It helps me as much as it does you."
"Were you at Mrs. Z——'s the other
day?" she asked, referring to
a visit to a "medium," of which I had not been informed.
"I was that, but she fell down on
what I was trying to get over," was the reply. When his mother said
she had not received what she
expected on that occasion, he returned: "Nor what we expected…. She's
all right, as far as she goes." He told her, also, that the woman
accompanying him, described by Mrs. Z——, had been his father's mother.
"This is a nice, peaceful powwow
we're having to-night," he commented, when they had exchanged views
concerning various personal matters. "I had to work last time, but this
time I'm here for…"
The pencil paused, and I asked: "For
what?"
"Just for a good time, Mrs. L——. Sis
is coming to the party tomorrow. Hooray!"
A little later, when she expressed
some uncertainty about her ability to go through an Easter in K——, with
all its sad associations, unshaken, he warned her: "Don't you go
backsliding!" Continuing, she told us that his last illness had
developed just before Easter,
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and that in his desire to give the
family an unclouded day he had persuaded a friend to send them a
typewritten letter, which he
signed, containing no intimation of his illness.
"I'll write you a letter this Easter
with a lot more pep in it," he promised. "You go on and have your Easter
presents, and flowers, and
eggs, and all, and when you begin back sliding, stop… look… listen1… and I'll be on
the crossing, ringing the bell."
With an ejaculation of surprise, his
mother told us that she had been recently in the home of a traffic
expert, whose large hall was
strikingly decorated with signs for the regulation of traffic.
"I believe that's what he's thinking
of!" she exclaimed.
"Sure, you've got it! I'll ask Sis to
buy you a bell for me, to remind you."
This diversion had completely
banished the gathering sadness of her reminiscences, and she began talking of Washington, whence she had come,
saying that there seemed to be a good deal of pessimism in official
circles concerning war conditions. It will be remembered that the
bombardment of Paris, by a long-distance gun, began March 23d.
1Each of
these words was written in larger script than the preceding one.
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"There are lots of things Washington
doesn't know," Frederick assured her. "The end of the war must come
soon."
We wondered, as I had before, how
much difference there was between his conception of time, as indicated
by the word "soon," and ours.
"None of us can name the day and
hour, but we see the inevitable end coming soon.
Germany knows she is weakened, but doesn't know why. We do, and we have
told you. No nation on earth can fight this fight alone, deserted by all
purposes, both for good and
evil, and with only one force left—Fear."
[Long afterward, Mary K. said to me,
in this connection: "We see the awakening purpose of forces for progress
in your life, and are able to help them in proportion to the vigor with
which that purpose is put into action.
Germany, on the other hand, fights now with only physical power. Eternal
forces are implacably against her, and the forces of destruction have
abandoned her. She has no ally here now. Her unity is destroyed, while
ours is strengthening. The only danger, as far as the war is concerned,
lies in a weakening of actual purpose, forcefully expressed in action.
We are your allies, answering your call and inciting you to endeavor.
When Germany
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began this war she had superhuman
strength, which the world was unprepared to meet, but for every
vibration of pure constructive purpose among the Allied forces we have
added two, and only a weakening of your purpose can defeat us now. Every
individual among you who fails to strive for victory with all his
strength invites disaster."]
Frederick's talk with his mother was
brief that night, and when she arose, to return to her hotel, he said:
"Good night. I am going home with you, if I may."
This seemed to Cass and me a curious
phrase, under the circumstances, and we also commented upon his generous
use of slang, especially in the latest interview, wondering whether it
were characteristic of him.
The next morning his sister, Mrs.
Wylie, arrived with her husband, to spend a day with Mrs. Gaylord in
New York. It chanced that they had
been away from home for several weeks and had seen none of Frederick's manuscript, nor any copy of it. As she read—from the original roll—his
messages of the preceding evening, she constantly exclaimed: "How
characteristic!" and his closing phrase brought tears to her eyes. She
told me, then, that along with a copious use of slang, Frederick had
preserved an odd little formality of phrase,
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even in his closest personal
relations—a trait not common to other members of the family.
Later, in glancing for the first time
through the typewritten record of earlier interviews, again and again
she expressed astonishment at the characteristic quality of his
phraseology, which had not been mentioned to me before. Mrs. Gaylord had
spoken of her vivid consciousness of his personality, imbuing all he
said to her, and had told me, during the earlier days of this
intercourse, more or less about his habit of thought, but it is
characteristic of her to ignore minor details, and only when Mrs. Wylie arrived did I learn anything about his habit of speech.
"Frederick," he announced, when we
invited communication, his bold signature stretching across the whole
width of the paper. "Hello, Sis! This is too good not to be true! Hello,
Dick!" This to Mr. Wylie, whose marriage to his sister had taken place
during the last weeks of his
illness. "Welcome home to the family! We're all in it now, for good and
all. This is the thing we've all needed, I almost as much as the rest of
you, but I did know that sooner or later it must come, so I could bear
it better than you could."
It must not be understood that all
these communications came as
consecutively as they
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are presented here. There were
frequent pauses; sometimes because of our preoccupation in conversation;
sometimes, apparently, because of difficulties of transmission not
explained. Occasionally I stopped to verify a word or a phrase, asking
if it had been correctly taken, and with increasing frequency the pencil
returned without suggestion from me, to cross out false starts. Some of
the latter, which seemed significant, will be indicated from time to time. The following
message, however, came rapidly, without pause.
"We are all of kindred purposes.
That's the reason we cling to each other so. Family, hasn't a thing to
do with it. It was our good fortune to have no forces of disintegration
in our immediate group. We are all builders, in one way or another Not all in the same way,
but all for the great purpose.
This is one of the things I have wanted to say to you. Don't be misled
by transient relationships of that life. Respect them, but don't be
eternally influenced by them,
because when you get over here you'll find that some of the people
you've thought you were most
fond of have simply dropped out. You don't need them, nor they you. Find
your purposes clearly, and stick to them. We all have purpose, but not
all of you there have found out just what yours is.
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Find it, and follow it fearlessly.
There, that's off my chest!"
Mr. Wylie spoke of the "upside-down
stunt," of which some one had
written him, and I said it had been done chiefly to convince me—to show me, in Frederick's
phrase," who was running it."
"You know now who is running it," he
contributed, "but you're certainly formal with strangers!"
In the midst of some talk of ours,
the pencil swung off with vigor, writing, "Sis!" in huge script, like a
joyous exclamation, ending in strong circles. "Just wait till I catch
Dad!" he went on. "And Babe, too! All of us together! Margaret will have
to forget her formality then, I tell you!"
Mrs. Wylie mentioned the common
impression that personality must be transmuted by death into something
remote and strange— that only the soul survived. "Of course, we love the
soul of any one dear to us," she said. "But, after all, the thing we
know best, and therefore love best, is the habit of thought—the
characteristic mental attitude, and it is so wonderful to find Frederick
unchanged—just like himself."
"Sure! Why not?" he returned. "You
people must learn that this isn't 'like himself.' It
is
himself. Right here on the job,"
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“Those words!" His mother and sister
exchanged startled glances. Then they told me that just before his long
struggle for life on this plane ended, when during six months his powers
of recuperation had repeatedly astonished surgeons and nurses, he opened
his eyes, to find his father bending over him, and whispered for the
last time: "On the job."
"I've always been on it since, too,"
he rapidly assured them, "and
longing to tell you so. You never can know, until you try it, how we
hate to be left out. We're on the job as you can't even imagine, and it
makes us sort o' sick that we can't get it over to you of our own love
and purpose."
He interrupted the talk following
this with: Trot along to lunch! I want to start going and not stop.
Get it over, do!"
So we trotted, and got it over as
soon as possible, though throughout the meal he insisted upon having a
voice in the conversation, writing messages on all the blank paper we
had about us, and over the
backs of the available menu cards.
"You can't lose me, and needn't try,"
he told me, and when I protested that he was making it impossible for me
to finish my luncheon, he retorted: "You have a perfectly good left
hand. Eat with that,"
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Several times Mr. Wylie expressed
his interest in what he called "the upside-down stunt," and when we
were again seated about a writing-table, Frederick "demonstrated."
"Incidentally, Dick," he mentioned,
starting at my right and writing toward my left, "you wanted to see this
work. Well, here you are. This is the way it is done."
As this began, Mrs. Gaylord smiled,
pulling her chair nearer to
the table, where she could watch every movement of the pencil.
"Sit up closer, Mother dearest,"
Frederick continued, "and everybody hold hands." Looking slightly
bewildered, she held out her hands to the others. I said that he had
used a figure of speech, but she thought he had meant it literally, and
we referred the question to him. "Yes, all but your writing-hand," he
said; so we all joined hands, and I asked why.
"Just to make us know more surely
that we are all one and indivisible, from now on through eternity.
Easter resurrection for every one of us. We are all born again, to some
extent, by our communion in this way; I more than you, because I have
left the flesh behind. But to you has come new life, new force, new
purpose, new faith, through your touch with this life of pure spirit. It
is truly your resurrection.
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This is your Easter message. Hail!
And be happy ever after!"
I anticipated none of this message,
and its tenor surprised me greatly. Before I had recovered from my
astonishment Mrs. Gaylord exclaimed: "That must be the Easter letter he
promised me!" Immediately he signed it. "Frederick, to Mother and all of
you."
We spoke of the relation of this
whole revelation to orthodox religion, and some one said that it was not
in accordance with the Bible.
"Yes., it is," he contradicted. "You
have never learned to read the Bible in this light. The great prophecies
have always been phrased in the language, and more or less in the
spirit, of the time in which they were uttered. This is the first time
in the history of the world when physical science has been sufficiently
advanced to enable us to tell the people the truth in terms they would
truly understand. Prophecies have been veiled, apparently, not because
the truth was vague, but because men were not prepared to understand it
in all its details. Nor are they now. But this is to be the whole truth,
as far as it can be understood now by your prophets and people. And for
the first time it is possible to give it to you directly in this way, without
pretense or mystery,
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book or bell, a natural law operating
naturally and freely, through
an accredited messenger who makes no claim to inspiration."
In the course of our drifting talk
his mother remembered that Mrs. Z—— had tried to convey a warning
through her from Frederick to Mr. Wylie, but had been unable to tell her
what it concerned. After some effort to discover its connection,
suggesting possible journeys
or business ventures, Mrs. Z—— had finally said that Dick was about to
do something, she did not know what; but whatever it was, Frederick said
he must not do it. Mrs. Gaylord now asked Frederick what he had
intended to say.
"She didn't get my message. I was
trying to tell him not to be fearful about anything." Mr. Wylie is
sometimes prey to nervous apprehension and worry. "It keeps us back and
we can't help him as we're trying to do. Open up, Dick! Let us in and
we'll all pull together." This apparently touched some situation unknown
to me, for Mr. and Mrs. Wylie
exchanged glances, and instantly Frederick made his quick circles. "(O) That's
it! Now we're off! No, it isn't incredible," he added, replying to
some comment of theirs. "It's the truest thing you ever heard. But Mrs.
Z—— can't get beyond externals."
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This seems to be a very good example
of the way certain messages are confused by the persons through whom
they come. In this case, while the intended warning was conveyed, a
purely subjective and spiritual message was so distorted, however
unconsciously and unintentionally, that it was given an objective and
material significance.
Asked whether an acquaintance of
theirs would be helped by a
knowledge of their intercourse with him, he said: "She is not ready
for this yet. Few people,
comparatively, are free enough to accept it. It has been forbidden by
the church, ridiculed by the laity, and labelled 'poison, don't touch'
by neurologists and the scientific, half-baked intellectuals."
"Fake mediums have done a lot to
bring it into disrepute," Mr. Wylie suggested.
"That's the reason for some of it.
Another reason, less obvious to you, but equally potent, is that
people who had the sensitiveness to be messengers frequently lacked the
purpose of truth fundamentally, and though thinking they were honest,
entertained devils unaware….
That is the reason so many people have gone to pieces, mentally and physically. The
purposes of disintegration caught them and destroyed them. But this
time, we beat them to
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"All philosophies have had some
foundation of truth," he told us, a little later, "or they would not
have been permitted to live. This new faith will be attacked by the
disintegrating forces, in an attempt to discredit it as a patchwork of
philosophies. The new truths they will ignore, or flatly deny. But this
is the whole truth, as far as it can be told now. Believe it, follow it,
preach it, live it, and we shall truly build that structure I told you
of, Mother dearest, of force, light, and sweetness—which is you. I seem to be
doing a darned lot of
preaching!"
"It isn't like you, either," his
mother remarked.
"You see, we've got to get this
over. It's imperative."
At that, she said it was like him,
after all, because he had always talked eagerly to the family about
his "job," whatever it might be, adding: "Is it 'imperative' because of
the war and the sorrow? Or because the time is ripe?"
"It's because there's the very devil
of a fight coming, and we've got to gather every force we have, and
unite it."
"Is beating the Germans helping the
constructive force? Or is the war merely the awakening through
suffering?"
"Germany has been united in purpose
as a
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destructive force for many years.
They gave themselves deliberately, not as individuals, but as a people,
to what parsons call the powers of darkness. We know them to be forces
of disintegration, which found in Germany their strongest ally in the
civilized world. We've been fighting Germany and her purposes here for
years, I find. Suffering makes people readier to listen to truth, but
beating Germany was as necessary to the world's health as sanitation to
a hospital."
"That's a clear and explicit
statement," some one said.
"We are perfectly definite and
explicit about questions of eternal purpose. The difficulty with most
people is that they want to know how much U. S. Steel will go up next
Tuesday, or whether to give the baby soothing-syrup."
After some interchange concerning his
father and younger sister, he
said, "I want to write them an Easter greeting." So we got a fresh roll of paper, and he wrote a
brief but tender letter, which was sent to them that night.
"Which one of us will be best able to
do this?" Mrs. Wylie asked.
"… The time will come when this sort
of thing is unnecessary. We can talk without material aid…. We never
know when the power is going
to develop. It's much like an
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electric current. You never know it's
there until you feel it—until
your signal comes over the wire…. Try it out, all of you. We know no more about who can do it than you
do, except in cases of extraordinary power." Some time afterward,
however, he warned them of the dangers of attempting to handle this
force, intimating that great conservation of energy in other directions
should accompany the endeavor.
His mother spoke of his being happy,
and he returned: "Perfectly happy now, thank you. It's the eternal
thing, really started. I hate to have this party break up, but anyhow it
isn't for long. I've been away longer, when I lived there, than I shall
be now, and we are all of us
as sure of the next meeting, and the next good time, as we were then."
"He knows it is ending, and we must
go to our trains," Mrs. Gaylord said.
"Not ending at all. Beginning!
Hooray!"
On that triumphant note they took
their departure, Mrs. Gaylord westward bound, the Wylies to New England;
but, owing to a defective timepiece, both missed their trains. Within an
hour, Mrs. Wylie telephoned me that her mother had caught—by the
narrowest margin—a later train, hoping to secure sleepingaccommodation
after leaving, a dubious
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venture in these days of diminished
service and crowded trains. We
arranged to dine and spend the evening together.
Afterward, it occurred to me that
Frederick might prefer to be with his mother that night, and I asked Mary K.
about it.
"Frederick has engaged his mother in
(O)…"
"What does that mean now?" I
interrupted. Bliss?" "Yes… and
will come here to-night to see the others."
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