Mermaids
Who would not, if they could, believe in mermaids? Surely all save those who have no sense of the beautiful—of poetry, flowers, painting, music, romance; all save those who have never built fairy castles in the air nor seen fairy palaces in the fire; all save those whose minds, steeped in money-making, are both sordid and stunted. That mermaids did exist, and more or less in legendary form, I think quite probable, for I feel sure there was a time in the earth's history when man was in much closer touch with the superphysical than he is at present. They may, I think, be classified with pixies, nymphs, and sylphs, and other pleasant types of elementals that ceased to fraternise with man when he became more plentiful and forsook the simple mode of living for the artificial.
Pixies, nymphs, sylphs, and other similar kinds of fairies are all harmless and benevolent elementals, and I believe they were all fond of visiting this earth, but that they seldom visit it now, only appearing at rare intervals to a highly favoured few.
The Wandering Jew
No story fascinated me more when I was a boy than that of Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew. How vividly I saw him—in my mental vision—with his hooked nose, and wild, dark eyes, gleaming with hatred, cruelty, and terror, spit out his curses at Christ and frantically bid him begone! And Christ! How plainly I saw Him, too, bathed in the sweat of agony, stumbling, staggering, reeling,
and tottering beneath the cross he had to carry! And then the climax—the calm, biting, damning climax. "Tarry thou till I come!" How distinctly I heard Christ utter those words, and with what relief I watched the pallor of sickly fear and superstition steal into the Jew's eyes and overspread his cheeks! And he is said to be living now! Periodically he turns up in some portion or other of the globe, causing a great sensation. And many are the people who claim to have met him—the man whom no prison can detain, no fetters hold; who can reel off the history of the last nineteen hundred odd years with the most minute fluency, and with an intimate knowledge of men and things long since dead and forgotten. Ahasuerus, still, always, ever Ahasuerus—no matter whether we call him Joseph, Cartaphilus, or Salathiel, his fine name and guilty life stick to him—he can get rid of neither. For all time he is, and must be, Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew—the Jew Christ damned.
Attendant Spirits
I believe that, from the moment of our birth, most, if not all of us, have our attendant spirits, namely, a spirit sent by the higher occult powers that are in favour of man's spiritual progress, whose function it is to guide us in the path of virtue and guard us from physical danger, and a spirit sent by the higher occult powers that are antagonistic to man's spiritual progress, whose function it is to lead us into all sorts of mental, moral, and spiritual evil, and also to bring about
our path some bodily harm. The former is a benevolent elemental, well known to the many, and termed by them "Our Guardian Angel"; the latter is a vice elemental, equally well known perhaps, to the many, and termed by them "Our Evil Genie." The benevolent creative powers and the evil creative powers (in whose service respectively our attendant spirits are employed) are for ever contending for man's superphysical body, and it is, perhaps, only in the proportion of our response to the influences of these attendant spirits, that we either evolve to a higher spiritual plane, or remain earth-bound. I, myself, having been through many vicissitudes, feel that I owe both my moral and physical preservation from danger entirely to the vigilance of my guardian attendant spirit. I was once travelling in the United States at the time of a great railway strike. The strikers held up my train at Crown Point, a few miles outside Chicago; and as I was forced to take to flight, and leave my baggage (which unfortunately contained all my ready money), I arrived in Chicago late at night without a cent on me. Beyond the clothes I had on, I had nothing; consequently, on my presenting myself at a hotel with the request for a night's lodging, I was curtly refused. One hotel after another, one house after another, I tried, but always with the same result; having no luggage, and being unable to pay a deposit, no one would take me. The night advanced; the streets became rougher and rougher, for Chicago just then was teeming with the scum of the earth, ruffians of every
description, who would cheerfully have cut any man's throat simply for the sake of his clothes. All around me was a sea of swarthy faces with insolent, sinister eyes that flashed and glittered in the gaslight. I was pushed, jostled, and cursed, and the bare thought of having to spend a whole night amid such a foul, cut-throat horde filled me with dismay. Yet what could I do? Clearly nothing, until the morning, when I should be able to explain my position to the British Consul. The knowledge that in all the crises through which I had hitherto passed, my guardian spirit had never deserted me, gave me hope, and I prayed devoutly that it would now come to my assistance and help me to get to some place of shelter.