f spiritual science; but he said that he would regard Paul's
suggestion, and even admitted that it was, perhaps, natural she should
feel as she did, although he had not anticipated it.

At the table, therefore, Ida was spared any direct reference to herself
as a phenomenon, and although Dr. Hull talked of nothing but spiritualism
and the immortality of past selves, it was in their broad and general
aspects that the subjects were discussed.

"Your nephew," he said to Miss Ludington, "has evidently given much time
and profound thought to these matters; and although I am an old man, and
have been more interested in the spiritual than the material universe for
these many years, I was glad of an opportunity to sit at his feet this
afternoon."

Turning to Paul, he added, "What you were saying about the possibility
that souls, or, at least, spiritual impressions, destined to eternity,
are given forth by us constantly, as if at every breath, is wonderfully
borne out in a passage from a communication I had from Mrs. Legrand
yesterday, to which I meant to have alluded at the time you were
speaking. She said that those who supposed that the spirit-land contained
only one soul for every individual that had ever lived had no conception
of its vastness, and that the stream of souls constantly ascending is
like a thick mist rising from all the earth. The phrase struck me as
strangely strong, but I can conceive now how she might have come to use
it.

"What is your conjecture, or have you none at all," he added, after a
moment's thought, still addressing Paul, "as to the relation which will
exist in the spirit-land among the several souls of the same individual?"

"It seems to me," said Paul, "that the souls of an individual, being
contemporaneous over there, and all together in the eternal present, will
be capable of blending in a unity which here on earth, where one is gone
before another comes, is impossible. The result of such a blending would
be a being which, in stead of shining with the single ray of a soul on
earth, would blaze from a hundred facets simultaneously. The word
'individual,' as applied here on earth, is a misuse of language. It is
absurd to call that an individual which every hour divides. The, earthly
stage of human life is so small that there is room for but one of the
persons of an individual upon it at one time. The past and future selves
have to wait in the side scenes. But over there the stage is larger.