This trade of mine I don't know, can't be sure

But there was something in it, tricks and all!
Really, I want to light up my own mind.

They were tricks,

true, but what I mean to add

Is also true. First, don't it strike you, sir?

--

We're taught is, there's a world beside this world,

With spirits, not mankind, for tenantry;

That much within that world once sojourned here,

That all upon this world will travel there,

And therefore that we, bodily here below,
Must have exactly such an interest

In learning what may be the ways o' the world
Above us, as the same embodied folk
Have, (by all analogic likelihood,)

In watching how things go in the old world,
With us, their sons, successors, and what not.
O yes, with added powers, probably,

Fit for the novel state,- old loves, grown pure,

Old interests understood aright, they watch!
Eyes to see, ears to hear, and hands to help,
Proportionate to advancement: they're ahead,

That's all,

do what we do, but noblier done, Use plate, whereas we eat our meals off delf, (To use a figure.)

Concede that, and I ask

Next, what may be the mode of intercourse

Between us men here, and those once-men there?

First comes the Bible's speech; then, history
With the supernatural element,

you know,

All that we sucked in with our mothers' milk,
Grew up with, got inside of us at last,

Till it's found bone of bone and flesh of flesh.

See now, we start with the miraculous,

And know it used to be, at all events :

What's the first step we take, and can't but take,
In arguing from the known to the obscure?
Why this: "What was before, may be to-day.
Since Samuel's ghost appeared to Saul, of course,

My brother's spirit may appear to me."

Go tell your teacher that! What's his reply?
What brings a shade of doubt for the first time

O'er his brow late so luminous with faith?

"Such things have been," says he, "and there's no doubt Such things may be: but I advise mistrust

Of eyes, ears, stomach, and, most of all, your brain,
Unless it be of your great-grandmother,
Whenever they propose a ghost to you!"
The end is, there's a composition struck;
'Tis settled, we've some way of intercourse

Just as in Saul's time; only, different:
What, when, and where, precisely,

find it out!

I want to know, then, what's so natural

As that a person born into this world,
And seized on by such teaching, should begin
With firm expectancy and a frank look-out

For his own allotment, his especial share
In the secret, his particular ghost, in fine?
I mean, a person born to look that way,
For natures differ: take the painter-sort,
One man lives fifty years in ignorance

Whether grass be green or red,—“No kind of eye
For color," say you; while another picks
And puts away even pebbles, when a child,
Because of bluish spots and pinky veins.

"Give him forthwith a paint-box!" Just the same Was I born... "medium," you won't let me say, Well, seer of the supernatural

-

Everywhen, everyhow, and everywhere, —

Will that do?

I and all such boys of course

Started with the same stock of Bible-truth;

Only, what in the rest you style their sense,

Instinct, blind reasoning but imperative,

This, betimes, taught them the old world had one law

And ours another: "New world, new laws,” cried they :

"None but old laws, seen everywhere at work,”
Cried I, and by their help explained my life

The Jews' way, still a working way to me.
Ghosts made the noises, fairies waved the lights,
And Santaclaus slid down on New Year's Eve
And stuffed with cakes the stocking at my bed,
Changed the worn shoes, rubbed clean the fingered slate
Of the sum that came to grief the day before.

This could not last long: soon enough I found
Who had worked wonders thus, and to what end:
But did I find all easy, like my mates?
Henceforth no supernatural any more?

Not a whit: what projects the billiard-balls?

"A cue," you answer: "Yes, a cue,” said I;

"But what hand, off the cushion, moved the cue? What unseen agency, outside the world,

Prompted its puppets to do this and that,

Put cakes and shoes and slates into their mind,
These mothers and aunts, nay even schoolmasters?"
Thus high I sprang, and there have settled since.

Just so I reason, in sober earnest still,

About the greater godsends, what you call

life.

The serious gains and losses of

my

What do I know or care about your world
Which either is or seems to be? This snap
Of my fingers, sir! My care is for myself;
Myself am whole and sole reality

Inside a raree-show and a market-mob

Gathered about it: that's the use of things.
'Tis easy saying they serve vast purposes,
Advantage their grand selves: be it true or false,
Each thing may have two uses; what's a star?
A world, or a world's sun: does n't it serve

As taper, also, timepiece, weather-glass,

And almanac?

Are stars not set for signs

When we should shear our sheep, sow corn, prune trees? The Bible says so.

Well, I add one use

To all the acknowledged uses, and declare
If I spy Charles's Wain at twelve to-night,

It warns me," Go, nor lose another day,

And have your hair cut, Sludge!" You laugh: and why?

Were such a sign too hard for God to give?

No: but Sludge seems too little for such grace:
Thank you, sir! So you think, so does not Sludge!

When you and good men gape at Providence,