Glimpses Of The Next State.Pdf - Spiritualists' National Union

252Tom: You fell into that soap. That’s enough to make any man sick for a while, isn’t it?S.: I should think so. But I didn’t fall into the soap; if I had, I would have been as deadas a smelt.Tom: You don’t suppose if you had gone into that soap you would have been dead, do you?S.: Of course I would!Tom: No, you wouldn’t have been dead; but it would have been the means of separatingyour spirit from your body, because it would have made your body unfit for your spirit to live in;but you would have been alive just the same. Say, Rob, do you know, sometimes when people meetwith terrible accidents, and are killed, they don’t know what has happened to them?S.: I suppose so.Tom: Now I want to ask you a question, and it is quite a serious question: Did you everhave any idea what the change called death would be like?S.: No, I couldn’t tell.Tom: No; you are a man without an idea; of course, you didn’t have an idea on thatsubject.S.: Do you know why I am a man without an idea?Tom: No—why?S.: Well, no matter what under heaven I used to do, old Aunt Sarah would say, “Whatan idea !—what an idea! “—and I got sick of it.Tom: I don’t blame you. Well, I won’t say an idea; I will say, Did you ever have anythought on that subject?S.: I don’t know as I thought much about it.Tom: Did you go to church?S.: Sometimes. Do you go to church?Tom: No; but I used to—I go to church now, but not the kind of a church that you think Ido.S.: What should I think about what church you go to?Tom: Not a church like you have in your town. Now you understand, don’t you?S.: Yes; that’s a bright man, that is.Tom: You are a pretty good young fellow.S.: There are not a great many tell me that, though.Tom: You were a little wild, but you had a good heart. If you had a cent in your pocket andyou saw a man that was hungry, you would give him half; I don’t know but what you would givehim the whole and go without yourself.S.: That’s Irish blarney.Tom: There’s a fellow here, and his name is Ned.S.: I don’t know about that.Tom: Well, I think I know. He wants me to ask you if you remember the time you and hewent swimming down there by the river—in the river, I mean?S.: I thought that would be just like him to say “by the river.”Tom: He did say so; but I thought that would sound queer. That Ned was a comical fellow,wasn’t he?S.: Yes, he used to go swimming by the river.Tom: Say, Rob, what does Ned mean? He is holding up the queerest kind of an old pokebonnet that I ever saw.S.: Why, that’s what he wore to the ball.Tom: Did you wear a poke bonnet to the ball, too?S.: Of course I did. Say, what are you talking about, anyway?Tom: Why, I am talking about Ned.S.: Why, he’s dead.Tom: He isn’t dead, he has only got out of his body. I never saw you before, and you neversaw me before. All I know, Ned is here and he held up an old poke bonnet.S.: That’s very strange. I don’t know what to think of it.