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The Philosophy Of Relative Existences
by
She smiled, and shook her head, and closed the book. “I would like to do that,” she said, “but if you are really a man you must not know what you are going to do.”
“Oh, tell me, tell me,” cried Bentley from below, “do you know a book called ‘Stellar Studies,’ by Arthur Bentley? It is a book of poems.”
The figure gazed at him. “No,” it said, presently, “I never heard of it.”
I stood trembling. Had the youthful figure before me been flesh and blood, had the book been a real one, I would have torn it from her.
“O wise and lovely being!” I exclaimed, falling on my knees before her, “be also benign and generous. Let me but see the last page of my book. If I have been of benefit to your world; more than all, if I have been of benefit to you, let me see, I implore you–let me see how it is that I have done it.”
She rose with the book in her hand. “You have only to wait until you have done it,” she said, “and then you will know all that you could see here.” I started to my feet and stood alone upon the balcony.
“I am sorry,” said Bentley, as we walked toward the pier where we had left our boat, “that we talked only to that ghost girl, and that the other spirits were all afraid of us. Persons whose souls are choked up with philosophy are not apt to care much for poetry; and even if my book is to be widely known, it is easy to see that she may not have heard of it.”
I walked triumphant. The moon, almost touching the horizon, beamed like red gold. “My dear friend,” said I, “I have always told you that you should put more philosophy into your poetry. That would make it live.”
“And I have always told you,” said he, “that you should not put so much poetry into your philosophy. It misleads people.”
“It didn’t mislead that ghost girl,” said I.
“How do you know?” said Bentley. “Perhaps she is wrong, and the other inhabitants of the city are right, and we may be the ghosts after all. Such things, you know, are only relative. Anyway,” he continued, after a little pause, “I wish I knew that those ghosts were now reading the poem which I am going to begin to-morrow.”