The Latest Thing’s wife wafted herself in from somewhere, and they communicated by their brains and eyes.
“Oh, if Nature would only get on a little,” said the Latest Thing. “I am impatient and she is so slow. Not one of our children appear to give the least sign or evidence of advance and improvement.”
“I should hope not, indeed!” telegraphed back his wife. “The females are exactly like me, and the males are exactly like you—bless the little ducks! ‘Improvement!’ They are the most perfect young things you’ll find, seek where you may.”
“Yet I hoped that they——”
“Your old craze. I tell you we are the high-water mark, the crest of the wave, the ultimate best, the triumph of Creation—Perfection!”
But the Latest Thing shook his huge head. “I doubt it,” he flashed back to her.
THE BIOGRAPHY OF PETER PARKINSON
WITHIN the confines of that hidden state rather humorously called “the other world”—as if the worlds numbered no more than two—we enjoy a measure of knowledge which you mundane folks are but now attaining through processes both painful and slow. Thanks to our perfection in a system, towards which your “wireless telegraphy” has already made some distant approach, it is possible for me to tell an interesting tale and cast some light upon a recent literary mystery.
Now when that great and good man Professor Peter Parkinson passed out of life, his notable earthly labours very properly entitled him to a resting-place amongst our great ones, and I was among those privileged men of light and leading invited to bear his pall.
I remember that I walked next to Thomas Gridd, the little busybody who in life for some obscure reason won Peter Parkinson’s regard, and who was left by the Professor as his literary executor. Even during the solemn moment of sepulchral rites, Gridd found time to speak to me.