“A wide platform occupied the center of this vast auditorium, and upon this I was carried as by a wave of the sea.  Here I touched the floor; the accompanying crowds dispersed through the hall, which became filled, and as it filled some unnoticed signal ushered the glow of the electric ether in the cylinders, until a glory of radiance mingled with the sunlight and illuminated the audience, whose songs had died away, and who sat in attitudes of attention, their faces upturned, their blue caps shining resplendently, like a surface of tempered steel.

“I stood alone with my former guide, and Chapman.  I felt moved by some singular enthusiasm; the exaltation of the moment possessed me, and unannounced, as yet unquestioned, I rose to my full height upon a narrow rostrum in the platform, and turning from side to side spoke with an elation that seemed to propel my ringing words over the great assembly with the power and shock of a trumpet: 

“‘Men and women,’ I cried, ’I have reached your wonderful world from that habitation of mortal men known to many of you as the Earth, where death ceaselessly destroys generation after generation, and only the incessant processes of birth as quickly renew the falling ranks of life.  To us on earth, the disappearance of those we love and cherish, the sundering of ties which a lifetime of love and companionship has established, the sharp vanishing away into nothingness and silence of the faces and spirits of the great and glorious, the good, the helpful, the true and noble, has made death an awful, hideous, to some a hopeless mystery.

“’We stand on earth speechless before the unseen power which snatches from our caresses all that we most cherish, all that makes our life there worth living.  There is no solution of the mystery, no voice, no return, no message, only a blankness of doubt, misgiving and desperate yearning in those who must continue.  There is indeed with those on Earth a partial confidence by reason of religious faith, but strong as that seems to be, the endless succession of centuries, each crowding the viewless habitations of the dead with the still more and deeper streams of disembodied souls, unaccompanied by any response, any utterance or return, limit or telltale apparition, has somehow filled all minds with a creeping wonder if even the assurances of Revelation can be believed.

“’Dying on the Earth may have continued in historic, and what is called prehistoric time, for over 50000 years, and yet from those unnumbered millions not a cry or a whisper, note, or vision, is heard or seen to betray their destiny, if destiny beyond the grave there is.