former age, looking at things as I then beheld them, perceiving
wherein I judged rightly, and wherein I erred, and tracing the
progress of those causes which are now developing their whole
tremendous power, you will derive instruction, which you are a fit
person to receive and communicate; for without being solicitous
concerning present effect, you are contented to cast your bread upon
the waters. You are now acquainted with me and my intention. To-
morrow you will see me again; and I shall continue to visit you
occasionally as opportunity may serve. Meantime say nothing of what
has passed--not even to your wife. She might not like the thoughts
of a ghostly visitor: and the reputation of conversing with the
dead might be almost as inconvenient as that of dealing with the
devil. For the present, then, farewell! I will never startle you
with too sudden an apparition; but you may learn to behold my
disappearance without alarm.

I was not able to behold it without emotion, although he had thus
prepared me; for the sentence was no sooner completed than he was
gone. Instead of rising from the chair he vanished from it. I know
not to what the instantaneous disappearance can be likened. Not to
the dissolution of a rainbow, because the colours of the rainbow
fade gradually till they are lost; not to the flash of cannon, or to
lightning, for these things are gone as so on as they are come, and
it is known that the instant of their appearance must be that of
their departure; not to a bubble upon the water, for you see it
burst; not to the sudden extinction of a light, for that is either
succeeded by darkness or leaves a different hue upon the surrounding
objects. In the same indivisible point of time when I beheld the
distinct, individual, and, to all sense of sight, substantial form--
the living, moving, reasonable image--in that self-same instant it