But I
know, to Miss Dodan's fresh, healthy, human life there was something
weirdly repellent in this thought of communication with the dead. She
thought of it with a nervous dread and excitement. It just kept me in
her thoughts a little shrouded in mystery and superiority and closed a
little the avenues of absolute confidence and peaceful self-surrender.
I had forgotten nothing, although at first an overwhelming sense of the
uselessness of the attempt, the almost grotesque absurdity of expecting
to hear from beyond the limits of the earth's atmosphere any word
transmitted through a mechanical invention, upon the earth's crust, made
me feel somewhat ashamed of my preparations, yet I arranged every
portion of the receiver and exercised my best skill to give it the most
delicate adjustment.
Whenever I had occasion to rest I either sent an assistant to the post,
or kept on my pillow, adjusted to my ear, a telephone attachment to the
Morse register, so that its signals might instantly receive attention.
At length as time wore on I arranged a bell signal that might summon us
to the register.
On the occasion of this visit by the Dodans I was in the loft at the
receiver which was in a room to one side of that we called "the
equatorial," where the telescope was suspended. I was as usual waiting
for a message that never came, and my failing hopes, made more and more
transitory by the brightness of the southern spring and all the instant
present industry of the fields below me on the low-lands, seemed to
dissolve into a mocking phantom of derisive dreams.
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