The Monticellonian., 1917-03-01

Faul Tarrant clapped him on the shoulder and laughed heartily My dear doctor, that is a joke" he said.
 Don't they make jokes in your coun- try?"
 To be sure," the little doctor an- swered, puffing vigorously at his cigar. And they also say true things in joke"
 Do you mean that one can choose ones parents?" I asked. Why, if that were so, who would choose to be reborn in poor family? Would not unfit parents be sterile? How can you support your contention?"
 You must remember" answered Doctor 1mmanuel, Ythat when the soul Is ready to put on new garments of flesh, 1t is not in touch with the phys ical world of life. It wants to get there. But it Is groping in the dark Why is a thistle born a thistle and not rose? Because the thistle na- ture instinetively seeks incarnation in that form which best expresses it's limited individuality-the thistle. So With us. The soul that struggles up ward toward the earth life has no VI sion of the world; it does not see it's future parents, or know their world ly circumstances. But it's need for Arth, and that of myriad other souls, produces that ferment in the hearts of men and women which we call love what Schopenhauer called the de- sire of the unborn to spring into ex- lstenee. Then, guided by it's protect ing spirit, it's deeper self, it's immortal part, or God, as you prefer to use the term, the soul comes to it's own And thus it is born on earth again"
 Well, doctor" Tarrant answered, but how do you make out that it chooses it's parents then?"
 It chooses them within certain linn it's, just as you and l, MT Tarrant, may choose to live in Madison avenue, New York, or Piccadilly, London. but not in Mecca or the planet Venus. Of course, l am now theorizing largely, but l should say that the soul can rush in hastily when the chance offers and the desire for rebirth is as in- tense as the plants yearning toward the light-or it can wait till it's in sttnet tells it that it has found more suitable environment"
 We were all silent Granted his first contention that of reinearnation, the little Greek doctor had an anean- nily convincing manner of establish ing his chain of argument. If we do live again-there is the old, fascinat- ing speculation which has engrossed the minds of so many of the profound est thinkers in all agesi If so, Wsat more natural than that we can eXer- else selection? But Immanuel never halted until he hammered home an abstraction with a fact. l knew he meant to advance proofs; I saw him shift his knee and flick the ash off his cigar; then he began speaking again in his penetrating, emphatic bary- tone.
 'I was thinking" he said, "of a case which happened some years ago on the occasion of my first visit to Eng lapd. It was related to me by one of Gyeen Xictorias doctors, but did not tell him the explanation. I was simple then, and afraid of the sledge- hammer of public opinion. Now l say what I think. and do not care. It was a professional confidence, but the man who told me is dead.
 If the man had been wiser. he might have been born into the royal estate" said Doctor Immanuel. But souls are in touch with one another in the world beyond: and when he felt that the woman whom he had loved in life was gone from him into the world of the flesh once more he could not wait He was reborn too soon; he rushed into life so that he might find her again and know her in her new physical portraiture. Poor soul! He was like huater that pursues white butterfly into dark tunnel, or one who seeks the fabled lee Maiden over moraines and treacherous creyasses.
 So much for my prelude; now l will be more matter of-fact. The girl was a princess of one of those media tized German houses which, though they have lost their thrones and lands, enjoy royal honors and are welcomed in every European court. Her pa rents often stayed at Osborne, in the Isle of Wight. when Queen Victoria was alive In fact, the girl had been born unexpectedly in Osborne castle. a little more than 20 years before, and England was her second home. Indeed, her mothers family traced it's descent back to a scion of noble Saxon stock which flourished in the early centuries after the Norman Con quest, and my investigations led me to conclude Princess Bertha to be the present manifestation of a personality which was last on earth as Edatha, lady who, Saxon chroniclers relate, was betrothed to Prince William, the son of Henry l. of England, who was drowned in the English channel while crossing from Normandy about the year 1120.
 Let me interpose here, gentlemen, to gay that the old theory of the di- viIJ right of kings was founded upon very much more than the mere selfish desire to control and perpetuate the kingly power. The phrase the Lords anointed' represents certain truths which may best explain by saying that. except under certain rare circum- stances, kings and queens are reborn as kings and queens, and do not al ternate in sex, as is believed to be usual among less prominent folks. This is due. l believe, to this fact: those who play prominent role in bictory ora co dominated hl their mas