"We do live forever," answered Ah Ben.

"Yes, after death; but I mean here!"

"_There is no such thing as death_!" remarked Ah Ben quietly, as if
he were merely giving expression to a well-established scientific
fact.

"And yet we see it about us every day," Paul replied.

"There you are wrong, for no man has ever seen that which never
occurs!"

"You are quibbling with words," suggested Henley.

"There is a change at a certain period in a man's life, which, from
ignorance, people have agreed to call death. But it is a misnomer,
for man never dies. He goes right on living; and it is generally a
considerable time before he realizes the change that has taken place
in him. He would laugh at the word death, as understood upon earth,
as indeed he frequently does, for he is far more alive than ever
before."

"You speak as if you knew all this," said Paul. "One might almost
imagine that you had been in the other world yourself."

"_Had been_!" exclaimed the old man with emphasis. "_I am in it now,
and so are you. But there is a difference between us; I know that I
am in it, because I can see it, and touch it, and hear it; while you