To please her eye this ardent admirer rendered his appearance as alluring as his manners. Independent of tailors, and with everything at hand, this astral man got himself up regardless of expense, and thought on his costumes at will, to meet the requirements of the fashion plates. He frequently would surprise her with rapid transformations of raiments, posing successively in the distinctive garbs of many nations, races and times.
Perhaps at breakfast it was some Oriental potentate in royal robes who hovered by her side. At lunch a velvet coated artist, at dinner a gorgeous Indian chief, whose picturesque scalp-lock, beads and feathers and whose thrilling war-whoop delighted her refined taste.
And Alonzo would discourse to her oft and long of the beauties and practices of “Meditation.”
“But I’ll be switched”—she would say at times, “if I can understand your kind of mysticism.”
Whereupon the seer, smiling indulgently, would with all perspicuity reply,—
“Of course you don’t. I don’t expect you to. That isn’t what we’re here for. Nobody understands mysticism; for don’t you see, if they did, or could, or were likely to, there wouldn’t be any mysticism left, and then—why, my occupation is gone.”
“Why, sure; I hadn’t thought of it that way”—his Mate would murmur, and then she would add, “How sweet to be taught by one so wise.”
Moreover, this proficient prestidigitator constituted himself her private secretary and astral errand boy. He not only precipitated her social correspondence upon kid-finished, but he thus prepared all of her “advanced thought” papers, thereby saving her long hours over the Encyclopedia Britannica. Still more, he would read to her all letters and notes received, thus saving her the trouble of breaking the seals; and to amuse and gratify her, would peep—astrally, of course—and report upon the private correspondence and the private affairs of her friends in Kankakee.
And this was but one of the many offices and arts he exploited to charm his Affinity. And so it came to be an every-day occurrence that following any social invitation into the exclusive circles of Kankakee, Imogene would call to her “Llama Lonnie,” or her “Lonnie Bird,” and say, “Please won’t you just run over to Mrs. Dr. this, or Mrs. Judge that, and rubber a while? Then,” she would say,—“I’ll know what to wear and who is invited and how much it’ll cost, etc.”