I waited for company, what I judged to be twenty minutes; but no one came. Then I reasoned thus: It is probable that when a man dies he has his individual road to travel and must travel it alone. As no two men are exactly alike, so, most likely, no two travel the same road into the other world. I reflected that as eternal existence was now assured, I had no need to hurry, and so walked very leisurely along, now stopping and looking at the scenery, or looking back over the road, if, perchance, some one might come along, and occasionally turning and walking backward, and thus watching the road behind me for company I so strongly desired. I thought certainly some one from the other world would be out to meet me, though, strangely enough, I thought of no person whom above others I desired to see. Angels or fiends, one, I said, will come out to meet me - I wonder which it will be? I reflected that I had not believed all the Church tenets, but had written and taught verbally a new and, I believed, a better faith. But, I reasoned, I knew nothing, and where there is room for doubt there is room for mistake. I may, therefore, be on my way to a terrible doom. And here occurred a thing hard to describe.

At different points about me I was aware of the expressed thought, "Fear not, you are safe!" I heard no voice, I saw no person, yet I was perfectly aware that at different points, at varying distances from me, some one was thinking that thought for my benefit, but how I was made aware of it was so great a mystery that it staggered my faith in its reality. A great fear and doubt came over me and I was beginning to be very miserable, when a face so full of ineffable love and tenderness appeared to me for an instant as set me to rights upon that score.

Suddenly I saw at some distance ahead of me three prodigious rocks blocking the road, at which sight I stopped, wondering why so fair a road should be thus blockaded, and while I considered what I was to do, a great and dark cloud, which I compared to a cubic acre in size, stood over my head. Quickly it became filled with living, moving bolts of fire, which darted hither and thither through the cloud. They were not extinguished by contact with the cloud, for I could see them in the cloud as one sees fish in deep water.

The cloud became concave on the under surface like a great tent and began slowly to revolve upon its perpendicular axis. When it had turned three times, I was aware of a presence, which I could not see, but which I knew was entering into the cloud from the southern side. The presence did not seem, to my mind, as a form, because it filled the cloud like some vast intelligence. He is not as I, I reasoned: I fill a little space with my form, and when I move the space is left void, but he may fill immensity at his will, even as he fills this cloud. Then from the right side and from the left of the cloud a tongue of black vapour shot forth and rested lightly upon either side of my head, and as they touched me thoughts not my own entered into my brain.

These, I said, are his thoughts and not mine; they might be in Greek or Hebrew for all power I have over them. But how kindly am I addressed in my mother tongue that so I may understand all his will.

Yet, although the language was English, it was so eminently above my power to reproduce that my rendition of it is as far short of the original as any translation of a dead language is weaker than the original; for instance, the expression, "This is the road to the eternal world," did not contain over four words, neither did any sentence in the whole harangue, and every sentence, had it been written, must have closed with a period, so complete was the sense. The following is as near as I can render it:-

"This is the road to the eternal world. Yonder rocks are the boundary between the two worlds and the two lives. Once you pass them, you can no more return into the body. If your work was to write the things that have been taught you, waiting for mere chance to publish them, if your work was to talk to private individuals in the privacy of friendship - if this was all, it is done, and you may pass beyond the rocks. If, however, upon consideration you conclude that it shall be to publish as well as to write what you are taught, if it shall be to call together the multitudes and teach them, it is not done and you can return into the body".

The thoughts ceased and the cloud passed away, moving slowly toward the mountain in the east. I turned and watched it for some time, when suddenly, and without having felt myself moved, I stood close to and in front of the three rocks. I was seized with a strong curiosity then to look into the next world.

There were four entrances, one very dark, at the left between the wall of black rock and the left hand one of the three rocks, a low archway between the left hand and the middle rock, and a similar one between that and the right hand rock, and a very narrow pathway running around the right hand rock at the edge of the roadway.

I did not examine the opening at the left - I know not why, unless it was because it appeared dark, but I knelt at each of the low archways and looked through. The atmosphere was green and everything seemed cool and quiet and beautiful. Beyond the rocks, the roadway, the valley, and the mountain range curved gently to the left, thus shutting off the view at a short distance. If I were only around there, I thought, I should soon see angels or devils or both, and as I thought this, I saw the forms of both as I had often pictured them in my mind. I looked at them closely and discovered that they were not realities, but the mere shadowy forms in my thoughts, and that any form might be brought up in the same way. What a wonderful world, I exclaimed, mentally, where thought is so intensified as to take visible form. How happy shall I be in such a realm of thought as that.

I listened at the archways for any sound of voice or of music, but could hear nothing. Solid substances, I thought, are better media of sound than air, I will use the rocks as media, and I rose and placed my left ear to first one rock and then the other throughout, but could hear nothing.