Spirit. "I have inferred something of this very vaguely from my experiments. For instance, I gather that you put on hair in the daytime, and take it off when you are—where you are at the present time. Also, I have noticed that when the coverings which at present conceal you are pulled away, you invariably replace them. Am I to deduce from that that you try to keep your bodies warm and your heads cool at night?"
Myself. "Well, that's a trifle complicated. About the hair, you understand, some of us lose our hair—it comes out, we don't know why—in middle life, as mine has, and women and some men are rather ashamed of this and wear—er—other people's hair in the daytime to hide the defect."
Spirit. "Why?"
Myself. "Oh, vanity. We want to appear younger than we really are."
Spirit. "Why?"
The Researcher bent a little lower over his notebook as he said:
I seem to have written "Damnation" at this point; but so far as I can remember I did not speak the word aloud. You will see, however, that I tried my best to be patient in what were really the most exasperating circumstances. But I will miss the next page or two, and come to more interesting material. Ah I here:
Spirit. "This thing you call death, or dying? Am I to understand that it corresponds to what we call incarnation?"
Myself. "We are not sure. Some of us believe that our actual bodies will rise again in the flesh; others that the body perishes and the spirit survives in an uncertain state of which we have very little knowledge; others, again, that death is the end of everything."
Spirit. "In brief, you know nothing whatever about it?"