“Eurania, Cavitorus,
“October 6th.
“How balmy the air! How grandly the old sun sweeps along the rim of this great world! For one such scene New York would give a ‘million,’ and every eye would dim with watching the face of the flaming wheel, and every neck would ache, and every soul would shudder with awe. But, would not the Shadowas like to see Old Sol passing over their heads every twenty-four hours, and give them three-hundred and sixty-five days during the year, instead of having him whirl about their heads, hip high, giving one night seven months long, and but a hundred and sixty days of variable length? But it’s all in being used to things.
“Well, I must off to the meeting. I am invited to the platform, and I shall have plenty to record this evening, for to-day is nineteen hours long. Oh, how weird!
“Later, evening.
“What o’clock is it? I don’t know. I know it was nineteen hours after the old sun first flitted around Mt. Lena, that it finally retired, and how can a ‘new chum’ keep track of his running on such erratic lines? To make it more confusing, this is the self same old sun that mine eyes have been looking upon for, lo! these thirty wasted years. Who would have thought that sedate old watchman could ever play such pranks? Then, too, on the same little old world! Am I waking? Am I sane, or is this but a hideous delirium?
“I feel sure that all is unreal, that I am the sport of some jesting destiny—but I will play my part; then, if the vision be not a mockery, I will not have wasted too much time.
“What an eventful day! Yet, as long as it has been, or even seems to have been, every hour has been crowded with bewildering incidents—only bewildering to me, however, for how unlike the hurry, the confusion, the bustle, the noise and hilarity seen on such occasions on the upper crust! How different from a horse-race in England, an election-day in France, or a Fourth of July in America!
“What a happy, orderly, handsome, and amiable people, these. Even their Deities are amiable. Their temples of worship breathe, not only hope for the future, but appreciation for the blessings of to-day. With them, it is not a crown of glory afterwhile, but a living joy. Without the sorrow of Gautama, the gods of this under-world are as loving and as amiable. But why should not the Deities be amiable?
“‘God made man,’ the preacher saith,
‘From a handful of dust, by a whiff of breath.’
‘No,’ say the sages, ‘man made God,
From nothing at all, by creative nod;
Organ for organ, and limb for limb,
In the image of man, created he Him.