“Do not give yourself so much useless work, friend Julio. I know the man’s genealogy as well as his present name. I make it my business to find out the pedigree of all such animals, such scorpions, and to air their old skeletons, in the hope of helping them to take on a new life; to hide their dry, marrowless bones with new flesh and blood.”
The “Subject” on the table moved; then sat upright; rubbed his eyes; looked beseechingly towards the door and cried out: “Marriet, Marriet, have you forgotten that I loved you in that time long ago?”
The four other occupants of the room turned to face the woman he was thus beseeching, and behold, she was gone.
CHAPTER V.
LIQUID FROM THE SUN’S RAYS.
Early the next morning the beautiful and progressive capital of Chihuahua was in a state of more than usual bustle.
Some time previous to this day a large body of her representative citizens, amongst whom were more than a thousand progressive women, had called upon the Governor en masse, and secured his consent to lecture upon, “Liquid from the Sun’s Rays.”
Chihuahua is a magnificently built city of over more than one-half a million inhabitants. It is a large mining center, railroad center, and educational center. Recently its fame had spread abroad. The eyes of the entire civilized world are riveted upon it. It is the home and abiding-place of the greatest scientists the world had ever known.
Scientific men and women from all over the world came every day to see the city; the country which produced such marvels of scientific wonder and spiritualistic progress. The object in gathering such a large body together to call upon and entreat the Governor to deliver an address upon his and his coworkers’ great scientific discovery, was their knowledge of his great timidity; of how he personally disliked to appear before the public and recount the wonders accomplished by their “Memory Fluid.”
Through his book, “Liquid from the Sun’s Rays,” they had gained their first and only knowledge of their brilliant townsmen’s discovery. Committees of from ten to one hundred had at various times since reading the Governor’s wonderful book, besought him to deliver a public address upon the subject, for their benefit. Invariably he put them off in a polite way, saying: “At some future time.” Hoping, of course, that they would weary at his many refusals, and cease to ask for a personal explanation; that they would be satisfied with reading his work.
Such was not the case. Persistence on the part of his fellow-citizens won.