Like other students of the “Ultimates,” Mrs. Vanderhook found that her “Attainments” did not mix well with every-day commonplaces. Her husband’s absorption in the drug store, and his fondness for a “Game,” seemed quite to unfit him for Higher Thought.
Indeed, at times Imogene seriously doubted Bill’s understanding of the Unknowable.
Bill was not watching for the subtle changes taking place in his Imogene. But one phase of it seemed to reach his obtunded consciousness, for this made a direct inroad upon his bank account.
The Special Course in “OPTIMISM AND OPULENCE”—for which “Ten Lessons at reduced prices” had captured Mrs. Vanderhook as a special bargain—produced direct results for which even the generous druggist was not prepared.
From the first “All-is-good” to the middle “Opulence-is-MINE” and to the final lesson, “I-AM-IT,” Imogene Vanderhook absorbed and radiated this beautiful Attitude of “I-am-entitled-to-everything-I-can-get.”
Matters of expense were airily dismissed. Bill’s “We-can’t-afford-it” was met by that splendidly wide Optimistic Smile and ignored with that expensively broad sense of Universal Opulence which is so perfectly fascinating in those who do not pay the bills.
The beautiful feeling that “I can tap the Universal for all I need” and that “I have only to affirm OPULENCE and have it,” encouraged the Mayor’s wife to extend her Charge Accounts with a childlike faith in the “Higher Currents of Wealth.”
Then again, Bill had experienced a sense of loneliness at times, when he would come in with a toothache or a touch of gastritis, to be assured that it was all in his Mortal Mind, and that what he supposed was Pain was but an “error” and instead of the earlier coddling to receive but a calm, vague, unsympathetic glance and a frosty little smile of one who “Functioned in the Realities.”
But these were all mere incidents, and the still devoted husband went on earning dollars for his Imogene Silesia to “radiate.”
Thus it was that the Mayor’s wife had been drawn into the rage for “Occultism” and the current “Uplift,” without his knowledge or consent, and by “Holding a Thought” or two and by means of fifty-seven Varieties of Unfoldment, had gradually unfitted herself fully to share her husband’s ambitions and tastes, which still centered in the Drug Store, the Lighting Plant and Politics.