The Monticellonian., 1917-02-22
THE PROFESSORS PEACH TREES



 soul descends first into plants"
 ''Plants!" shouted Tarrant. You mean that 1 shall come back as a geranium?"
 No, my dear fellow" answered Inn manuel, smiling T mean that the body-making potentialities may first be concentrated and focused so to speak, in some plant medium-for a while Have you never heard cf the Dryads, the Greek spirits of the trees?"
 Tt strikes me" I suggested, that we are getting off the track. Suppose we return, first to Pelorus Jack, and then to the professor"
 "Pelorus Jack-yes. Well, he was simply dolphin who formed the agreeable habit of meeting all income ing ocean steamships and piloting them into the harbor of Melbourne was it Sydney? Anyway, he became so famous and popular that the com monwealth government made it a crime to kill him. And. until within the last year or so he was a constant fea- ture of interest to the passengers. But 1 instaneed him as an example of a soul becoming entangled in animal form. Now I will hark back to Pro lessor Garretson.
 'Thirty-five years ago Andrew Gar retson, then a young man of twenty. came to this country from Scotland and settled in Prince George county, Maryland. lie was a well-te-do youth. his father having recently died and left him, the only child, modest an nual competence. 1 believe his pur- pose in leaving Scotland was to es- cape the memories of some boyish love affair Whatever it was, it was nothing lasting, although at the time he probably thought that it was You see even in those days he was sus- ceptible-just shy, bright, affection ate lad who picked out Maryland of all places in the world, as he thought by whim, but really because he was controlled by far-reaching purposes.
 Mary Lassalle was the only daugh- ter of one of the professors at the university. LassalIe meeting Garrett son, took a fancy to him, and after some thought the young Seotchman. who was of studious disposition, de- termined to enroll at the university, and endeavor to become one of the faculty after his graduation That was the sort of quiet life that appealed : to him-and he has never had reason to regret his decision.
 The two young people fell madly in love with each other. It was one of those romantic attachments rare in that day and time, though not so rare as now. There was a sort of spiritual bond between them which made each almost a portion of the other; it was almost as though the same soul animated both bodies So unworldly was their love that the thought of marriage was looked upon by both only as something ultimate and remote. Professor Lassalle and his wife looked favorably upon the engagement: it was arranged that the young people should be married as soon as Garretson completed his course and obtained the position which would obviously lie open to one of his talent. As you may know he is one of the few classicists in America of worldwide reputation.
 The year 1880 was one remarkable for many things. Among these was the spiritualist craze, which was run ming through America like fire True 1t was long before this that the . Fox sisters had laid the foundations of the modern Spiritualist cult at Rochester; but in the late seventies there was remarkable recrudescence ] of this superstition. Impudent 'medi- ums' imposed upon the gullible all through the large and small cities of the country-they do yet, I am told but then the imposture was compara- lively new. It did not pass over even the quiet little home of the Las sales where Garretson boarded The two elders and the young people often sat round the table and laid on hands, with the usual obtaining of amusing and impossible communications. We know now that these forces are noth- ing but thought impressions. either of the sitters or of others. cast of and congealing round this magnetic nucleus-mere rubbish from the worlds psychic waste baskets, so tc | say. But to the young people all this was very real. They lived in world peopled with invisible intelligence and to them death was nothing more than a simple transition from one con dition to another, hardly different. !, "If I should die before you An l drew said Mary Lassalle, I shal f come back to you. 1 shall never ge 5 far from you, beloved, not for a mo : ment, till you rejoin me.
 7 Andrew Garretson always remem day Mary was taken i'll with conges . tion of the lungs. She never recoy cred. The chill settled deep into hel 5 system; tuberculosis, the dread dis - ease of that period, supervened. II l vain they closed the windows anC + condemned her to a single, unventi lated room. She grew rapidly wors, ' and died less than three months afte 2 the onset of the disease-died witt her hands in Garretson's, and be l. head on his breast, and her eye l. turned up to his in confidence of tn, }. continuance of their love through al . mortal changes
 r For weeks after the funeral An s drew Garretson was out of his mind + When at last the loving nursing 0