nd she come right out
with it, and I'd a good deal rather she hadn't," said the captain,
ruefully. "I didn't want to rake it all over ag'in, I'm sure." And then
he recollected himself, and was silent, which his audience must confess
to have regretted for a moment.

"I used to think a good deal about such things when I was younger, and
I'm free to say I took more stock in dreams and such like than I do now.
I rec'lect old Parson Lorimer--this Parson Lorimer's father who was
settled here first--spoke to me once about it, and said it was a
tempting of Providence, and that we hadn't no right to pry into secrets.
I know I had a dream-book then that I picked up in a shop in Bristol
once when I was there on the Ranger, and all the young folks were beset
to get sight of it. I see what fools it made of folks, bothering their
heads about such things, and I pretty much let them go: all this stuff
about spirit-rappings is enough to make a man crazy. You don't get no
good by it. I come across a paper once with a lot of letters in it from
sperits, and I cast my eye over 'em, and I says to myself, 'Well, I
always was given to understand that when we come to a futur' state we
was goin' to have more wisdom than we can get afore'; but them letters
hadn't any more sense to 'em, nor so much, as a man could write here
without schooling, and I should think that if the letters be all
straight, if the folks who wrote 'em had any kind of ambition they'd
want to be movin' back here again. But as for one person's having
something to do with another any distance off, why, that's another
thing; there ain't any nonsense about that. I know it's true jest as
well as I want to," said the cap'n, warming up. "I'll tell ye how I was
led to make up my mind about it. One time I waked a man up out of a
sound sleep looking at him, and it set me to thinking. First, there
wasn't any noise, and then ag'in there wasn't any touch so he could feel
it, and I says to myself, 'Why couldn't I ha' done it the width of two
rooms as well as one, and why couldn't I ha' done it with my back
turned?' It couldn't have been the looking so much as the thinking. And
then I car'd it further, and I says, 'Why ain't a mile as good as a
yard? and it's the thinking that does it,' says I, 'and we've got some
faculty or other that we don't know much about. We've got some way of
sending our thought like a bullet goes out of a gun and it hits. We
don't know nothing except what we see. An