“Tell us, Juan, of your other lives, if you have the remembrance of any. Mrs. Serrano is interested in ‘Memory Fluid,’” said Miss Hinckley.
“That is what I came to tell you; but I do not feel so sad about what I know as I did a while ago. First I took two tablespoonfuls of ‘Memory Fluid.’ In three minutes afterwards I was astonished to see myself a little boy, walking down the street in South America, holding the hand of the ‘Plunger from Kansas.’ I nearly fainted at the shock it gave me. I heard him say: ‘Poor lad; his mother is gone. They are hot on my tracks, after five years of dodging here, and were it not for the lad I would end my existence now. What would you do, son, if you had no papa to care for you?’ he asked, turning to me. I swelled up in great fashion, and replied: ‘I would join the circus and be the clown.’ He was shocked, of course; no doubt, he wished me to be a plunger like himself. Imagine my feelings, Miss Hinckley, when I was forced to realize that I was born into my first existence the son of the ‘Plunger from Kansas.’”
“You were not to blame, Juan, and now that you remember, see that in your next physical existence you do not enter an inharmonious physical dwelling,” replied Helen Hinckley.
“How interesting,” added Mrs. Serrano. “Tell us, Señor Juan, did you join the circus and become a clown?”
Helen Hinckley smiled at her inquisitiveness, and continued: “Certainly, friend Juan, tell us all about yourself in other lives.”
“I did, madam, and lived the life of a clown up to a ripe old age. I broke my neck by turning a double somersault, and died without the least pain,” said Juan.
“And did you live again before now?” eagerly asked Mrs. Serrano.
“Yes,” replied Juan, as he heaved a great sigh; “that calamity happened to me.”
“Why do you call it a calamity?” asked Mrs. Serrano.
“Because I presented myself into a family who were intent upon opening up missionary schools—that was in Chicago—and if they couldn’t make the children believe as they did, by giving them a sweet cake now and then, they used a club, and the children said they believed as they did whether they did or not. When I was ten years old I heard my father say that he had raked in five thousand dollars that year, over and above expenses. When I told him he had committed a great sin, he gave me a lick with a great club, over the back. In about an hour my soul fled, and just before I passed over, I remember I thought how glad I would be to get rid of such a life. You can hardly imagine how conceited I was about my past, before taking ‘Memory Fluid.’ I thought if I had lived at all, I certainly had been a man of very great note. I even imagined myself in one life Julius Cæsar; in another George Washington; and yet another, the great, though not very beloved, Santa Ana. That was the cause of my sad face when I first learned the truth. It was a great fall for my feathers. I have knowledge now, and I do not care for the vanities of life,” concluded Juan, as he rose to leave the room.