I next found myself standing upon a sandy shore, watching and listening to the roar of the surging waves as they came rolling in to my feet. All was wild and tempestuous. How I had come here I could not tell; through what tortuous, devious paths I had wandered I could not explain. I felt that I had passed through a fiery furnace. I was still scathed and smarting from the sting of accusing memory. I felt a touch upon my shoulder, and turning gazed into a pair of kindly, sympathetic eyes, the eyes of one whom I felt was to be my friend and brother; of one whose name shall yet be sung throughout the length of Old England; one who passed from earth a few years before myself, at the early age of thirty-two. I gazed into the eyes of Robert Brough, poet and friend. Instantly I knew I had met one who would assist and teach me what my spirit required.
“I have come to help you,” he said, grasping my hand in a hearty clasp; “I have long followed you, I was at the Poet’s Council, and saw you enter. Noting your movements, watching the expression of your countenance, I understood your condition, and when you rushed forth I followed, feeling that I might be able to assist you. I have since kept you in sight, but owing to the clouds that enwrapped you, I have been heretofore unable to make my presence known. Now that the force of your emotions is spent, and you are beginning to grow calm and collected, I come to offer you my assistance, and to show you how to nobly retrieve the past, and find perfect peace for your soul. Will you accept my aid?”
I grasped the hand still holding my own, and cried in a voice choked with emotion: “I will! I will! only show me the way, and I will follow you?”
“To you,” continued my friend, pointing to the surging billows before us, “this scene is presented as a type of the desolate, lonely shore, and the warring billows of passion-haunted thoughts, upon which man may recklessly wreck his whole existence; but, beyond the sandy waste, and the ocean’s depths, there are calm waters, and sweet, smiling fields where we may find redemption, and make that restitution necessary to peace of mind. Come with me and I will guide you to health and happiness. Concentrate your thought upon me, and remain passive.”
I did so, and instantly I found my companion and self transported from the dreary shore to the same valley I had entered on my first visit to the immortal world. “You wonder at my mode of transportation,” said Robert, noting my surprise, “but you will soon become used to it, for it is the spirit’s true mode of rapid traveling. We have only to fix our will upon the place to which we wish to go, and instantly space is annihilated, and we are there. When you have thrown off a few more of the conditions of your earth life, you will be able to understand this law, and many others; and in order that you may do so, I wish you to plunge into yonder mist arising before us.”
But a few feet from us there ascended from the depths of a small lake a heavy bank of mist or vapor, and, in compliance with the request of my friend, I plunged into this fog, which, upon my doing so, seemed to penetrate every atom of my being.
When I emerged I seemed indeed to have been born again, to have received a baptism that had washed away much that was heavy and gross in my system, and I felt light as air, and almost imponderable.
“Now you begin to feel something like a spirit,” said my friend, seating himself upon a mossy bank, and motioning me to a seat beside him; “you are becoming regenerated; look at yourself, and you will perceive a change; you can also see, hear, and feel clearer and better; all your senses are awakened and quickened, because the spirit is beginning to work free from the crudities of materiality.”
It was indeed true; my senses did seem to be intensified ten-fold; distance lent no obstruction to my view; my vision appeared to be unlimited. I could perceive forms, radiant in angelic beauty, moving to and fro; towns and cities gleaming white in the sunlight where before my sight was bounded by the horizon, and I could see nothing but the limits of the beautiful valley, and no human being but our two selves.
My hearing, too, was quickened; for sweet, harmonious sounds stole upon my ear, where before I had heard nothing; all my senses seemed to be trebly alive, and awakened to activity; my outer structure, too, had grown so clear and fair as to become almost transparent, while my garments had assumed a purity of appearance I had never noticed before.