Life — January 10, 1884 — page 5: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

‘LIFE: clay pipe at a neighboring street lamp, he limped toward the distant Post, with only such a limp as can be acquired in Government brogans. * * * * * * * Sun up on the prairie, and an hundred Federal soldiers awake to the morning light to find every mule in the train gone, and, stranger still, every one of these Federal warriors had to relieve his nose from the ungrateful presence ofa tight-fitting clothes-pin, deftly fitted on. An excited search for the missing animals discovered Yallerhammer, the last of the Pie-Eaters, in a neighboring gulch, his arm clasping a three-gallon spirit jug, his breath gone, and the fatal liquor oozing forth over his manly breast. Yallerhammer was dead ; but in his aboriginality he had found a use for clothes- pins. 19 A MATTER oF CorseE.—A fost mortem. A BUDDING poet sings : “ There is a pleasant void within my heart.” To judge from the conclusion, the vacuum has pervaded the rest of his anatomy, and even gone to his head, as they say of strong drink. A tour de fours—A coaching trip. THE Prince or WALES.—Dr. Birch. A NEw departure in banking—made by a New Jer- sey cashier. rc AN ALLEGORY ON THE BANKS OF THE NILE. HAS MAN SEVEN SOULS? Jt is only lately, when the light of science has established the postulate of the non-existence of the soul into a fact of con- sciousness, and the unregenerate children of Adam, long scathed by theological fires and tortured by dim forebodings, are drinking bumpers to the good old deity Pan, that an English pundit revives a Druidical doctrine, and shakes the world to its -centre by the startling announcement that man has seven souls. Mr. Gerald Massey is so well known in the poetic world as a scien- tist, and in scientific circles as a poet, that his Poly-Psychic Hypothesis is the most important contribution to the scientific literature of the day. At one time it was felt, through the influ- ence of the late Mr, Emerson, that man might have, at least, two souls—the soul proper, and the over-soul, Also Goethe made Faust explain, in the terrible inquisition of his conscience : “ Two souls, alas! reside within this breast, And each withdraws from and repels his brother.” But even the Rosicrucians and their ardent apostle, Robert Flood, did not concede as many as three souls to man, or that the soul was divisible into several component parts, each perfect in its | kind; and thus, modern science finds itself in the position of Hercules after he had severed a head from the monster in the Lernian marshes, for no sooner has it extinguished the light of one soul than seven other souls spring up in its place! It would be premature to predict the altitude of Andover and of the evangelical pulpit, upon Mr. Massey’s disclosure, and also | whether there is enough spiritual food in the gospels of all nations for the seven souls of man. One thing, however, is certain: There will be a ‘‘ boom” in the ministry, as every convert to the new faith will need a spiritual adviser for each soul. nd each may embrace anew tenet, or experience a separate rejuvenescence; as, for example, one soul may be converted to Buddhism, another to Roman Catholicism, another to Episcopacy, and so on, thus harmonizing the contentious forces in the spiritual world and uniting the sons of men into one brotherhood. The millenium is clearly in sight. We owe a great debt to Mr. Gerald Massey, the poet-psychologist and revealer of truth. H.V.S. comicbooks.com