"'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.
"'But back of Religion, back of experience, back of rational doubt or
infidelity, the heart keeps up its importunate cry of hope. We dare not
crush out within us the sweet thought of reunion. Upon that earth I lost
a wife, who summed up to me everything of value, virtue, and beauty
human life can claim. The passionate desire to regain her, the defiant
mutiny of my heart against any thought of her annihilation, made me
turn to the shining hosts of heaven for reassurance. In them somewhere I
believed the vanished soul of my companion had flown. This wonderful
world was known to me, and what the wise men of the Earth said of its
possible population. It was then that with my son I devised, following
certain suggestions, a system of wireless telegraphy. We have both, my
son and myself, felt certain that some disturbance was recorded by our
instrument from some planet beyond the earth. From that moment my son
and myself felt convinced that we might be permitted to bring about a
release of the inhabitants of the Earth from the narrow limits of its
own surface, and launch out upon the spaces of the universe the messages
that would return to us with some news of other worlds, or bring
assurance that the Death of the world was but the swinging door to some
new existence.
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