Tom Clark and His Wife / Their Double Dreams, And the Curious Things that Befell Them Therein; Being the Rosicrucian's Story

Dear Charles T——s:
Since we parted at the Golden Gate, the weight of a world has rested on your shoulders, and I have suffered much, in my journeyings up and down the world, as wearily I wandered over Zahara's burning sands and among the shrines and monuments of Egypt, Syria, and Araby the blessed; separated in body, but united in soul, we have each sought knowledge, and, I trust, gained wisdom. Our work is just begun. One portion of that work consists in the endeavor to unmask villainy, and vindicate the sanctity and perpetuity of marriage. In this little work I have tried to do this, and believe that if the magic talisman herein recommended as a sovereign balm for the strifes and ills of wedlock, be faithfully used, that the great married world will adopt your motto and my own, and become convinced that in spite of much contrary seeming WE MAY BE HAPPY YET!
To you, and to such this book is
Affectionately dedicated by your friend and the world's,
P. B. RANDOLPH.
He used to pace rapidly up and down the deck for a minute or two, and then, suddenly striking his forehead, as if a new thought were just pangfully coming into being at the major foci of his soul, he would throw himself prone upon one of the after seats of the old Uncle Sam, the steamer in which we were going from San Francisco to Panama, and there he would lie, apparently musing, and evidently enjoying some sort of interior life, but whether that life was one of reverie, dream, or disembodiedness, was a mystery to us all, and would have remained so, but that on being asked, he very complaisantly satisfied our doubts, by informing us that on such occasion he, in spirit, visited a place not laid down in ordinary charts, and the name of which was the realm of Wotchergifterno, which means in English, Violinist's Meadow (very like Fiddler's Green ). When not pacing the deck, or reclining, or gazing at the glorious sunsets on the sea, or the still more gorgeous sun-risings on the mountains, he was in the habit of— catching flies ; which flies he would forthwith proceed to dissect and examine by means of a microscope constructed of a drop of water in a bent broom wisp. Gradually the man became quite a favorite with both passengers and officers of the ship, and not a day passed but a crowd of ladies and gentlemen would gather around him to listen to the stories he would not merely recite, but compose as he went along, each one containing a moral of more than ordinary significance. It was apparent from the first that the man was some sort of a mystic, a dreamer, or some such out-of-the-ordinary style of person, because everything he said or did bore an unmistakable ghostly impress. He was sorrowful withal, at times, and yet no one on the ship had a greater or more humorous flow of spirits. In the midst, however, of his brightest sallies, he would suddenly stop short, as if at that moment his listening soul had caught the jubilant cry of angels when God had just pardoned some sinful, storm-tossed human soul.