It has been my task during these last weeks of life to write this account of these wonderful experiences, and to leave them to the world as an assurance—­to how many will it give a new delight in living, to how many will it remove the bitterness of living, to how many may it bring resignation and hope—­that the blight of Death is only an incident in a continuous renewal of Life.

   (End of Mr. Dodd’s MS.)

Note by Mr. August Bixby Dodan.

Mr. Dodd died January 20, 1895.  He never recovered from the severe shock caused by hemorrhage, after receiving the second message from his father and recorded above.  He appreciated the imminence of death acutely, and struggled to complete, as he has, the narrative of his life.  My daughter was not again seen by Mr. Dodd, though he received several letters from her, which were found beneath his pillow after his demise.

I was with Mr. Dodd constantly during the latter days of his illness, and then promised him that I should secure the publication of his remarkable story.

I am not willing to hazard any conjecture as to the more extraordinary features of this narrative.  I can very positively, however, affirm my complete confidence in Mr. Dodd’s honesty.  I knew both his father and himself very well, and through a long intimacy found them both consistently conforming to a very high type of character, courage, and intellectual integrity.

The MS. of Mr. Dodd was handed to me by himself, and I recall with a pathetic interest his smile of appreciative gratitude as I received it, and gave him my earnest assurance that it should be printed, and that the world would be made acquainted with his experiments and their results.

Mr. Dodd was the residuary legatee of his father, and his own will made during his last sickness, appointed me as his executor.  My daughter was made his sole heir, with two exceptions; small amounts in favor of his assistants—­Jeb Jobson and Andrew Clarke were mentioned in his will—­and these sums have been paid by myself to each.

A series of extraordinary misfortunes, for which I am myself measurably to blame, resulted in the complete disappearance of the fortune inherited by my daughter.  Her own death and that of my wife, following upon this disaster, though in no way connected with it, obliterated—­and here again I admit a very grievous culpability—­the remembrance of the MS. of Mr. Dodd and my own promises as to its publication.

I found the MS. of Mr. Dodd carefully wrapped up at the bottom of a trunk of papers, and confess that I opened the package it formed with a bitter sense of self-reproach.  Mr. Dodd had expected to publish this paper in New York, and had requested that it should be forwarded to that city.  I have at last complied with his wishes, and the MS. leaves my hands, absolutely unchanged, consigned through the kind intervention of a friend, to a publishing house in that western metropolis.  I am unable to add anything more to this statement, which, in itself, I fear conveys considerable censure to the undersigned.