your body, and sashay down to little old 'Frisco. Slide up to Third
and Market just about two or three a.m. when they are running the morning
papers off the press. Read the latest news. Then make a swift sneak for
San Quentin, get here before the newspaper tug crosses the bay, and tell
me what you read. Then we'll wait and get a morning paper, when it comes
in, from a guard. Then, if what you told me is in that paper, I am with
you to a fare-you-well."

It was a good test. I could not but agree with Oppenheimer that such a
proof would be absolute. Morrell said he would take it up some time, but
that he disliked to such an extent the process of leaving his body that
he would not make the attempt until such time that his suffering in the
jacket became too extreme to be borne.

"That is the way with all of them--won't come across with the goods," was
Oppenheimer's criticism. "My mother believed in spirits. When I was a
kid she was always seeing them and talking with them and getting advice
from them. But she never come across with any goods from them. The
spirits couldn't tell her where the old man could nail a job or find a
gold-mine or mark an eight-spot in Chinese lottery. Not on your life.
The bunk they told her was that the old man's uncle had had a goitre, or
that the old man's grandfather had died of galloping consumption, or that
we were going to move house inside four months, which last was dead easy,
seeing as we moved on an average of six times a year."

I think, had Oppenheimer had the opportunity for thorough education, he
would have made a Marinetti or a Haeckel. He was an earth-man in his
devotion to the irrefragable fact, and his logic was admirable though
frosty. "You've got to show me," was the ground rule by which he
considered all things. He lacked the slightest iota of faith. This was
what Morrell had pointed out. Lack of faith had prevented Oppenheimer
from succeeding in achieving the little death in the jacket.

You will see, my reader, that it was not all hopelessly bad in solitary.
Given three minds such as ours, there was much with which to while away
the time. It might well be that we kept one another from insanity,
although I must admit that Oppenheimer rotted five years in solitary
entirely by himself, ere Morrell joined him, and yet had remained sane.

On the other hand, do not make the mistake of thinking that life in
solitary was one wild orgy of blithe communion and exh