Argosy All-Story Weekly, October 7, 1922 — page 106: what you’re looking at

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

252 pened, it was decided to make no further attempt to bury it; and next day the body was cremated. Now it is open to any one who may read this tale to reject the incident of this emer- gence of the coffin altogether, and account for the other strange happenings by the comfortable theory of comcidence. He can certainly satisfy himself that one Bertha Acres did die at sea on this particular Thursday, and was buried at sea; there is nothing extraordinary about that. Nor is it the least impossible that the weights should have slipped from the canvas shroud, and that the body should have been washed ashore on the coast by Tarleton—why not Tarleton, as well as any other little town near the coast?—nor is there anything in- herently impossible in the fact that the grave, as originally dug, was not of sufficient dimensions to receive the coffm. That all these incidents should have hap- pened to the body of a single individual is odd, but then the nature of coincidence ts to be odd. They form a startling series, but unless coincidences are startling, they e¢s- - cape observation altogether. So, if you re- ject the last incident here recorded, or ac- count for it by some local disturbance, an earthquake, or the breaking of a spring just below the grave, you can comfortably recline on the cushion of coincidence. For myself, I give no explanation of these @ We ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. events, though my brother-in-law brought forward -one with which he himself is per- fectly satisfied. Only the other day he sent me, with considerable jubilatien, a copy of indicates his theory. The original work was in Latin, which, mistrusting my scholarship, he kindly. translated for me. I transcribe them exactly as he sent them to me. The reader will probably guess whom the word “he” refers to. This is the translation: Gnostic Kterature gives us two certain im- stances of his reincarnation. In one his spirit was incarnated in the body of a man, in the other, in that of a woman, fair of outward aspect, and of a pleasant conversation, but held in dread and in horror by those who came into more than casual intercourse with her. She, it is said, died on the anniversary of his death, but of this I have no certain infor- mation. What ts sure is that when the time came for her burial, the kindly earth would receive her not, but, though the grave was dug deep and well, it spewed her forth again. Of the man in whom his cursed spirit was reincarnated, it is said that being on a voyage when he died, he was cast overboard with stones to sink him, but the sea would not suffer him to rest in her bosom, but slipped the weights from him, and cast him forth again on to the coast. How be it when the full time of his expiation shall have come and his deadly sin forgiven, the corporal body, which is the cursed receptacle of his spirit, shall at length be purged with fire, and so he shall, in the infinite mercy. of the Almighty, have rest, and shall wander no more. U A CLOTHES CALL | BOUGHT some clothes, and, truth to tell, it very soon occurred to me That suit was made, alas! to sell— The test of gullibility! The trousers sadly want repairs, They are not what they should have been; My cry is now, “ Tears. idle tears!” I know exactly what they mean. So, come, my spouse, with finger sheath, Come, partner of my joys and woes, Come, armed like Curtius to the teeth, And bid the yawning chasms close! La Touche Hancock. comiclbooolx C©