grace, and the joy my loving heart felt in seeing her, enabled me to go
through the trial of death and separation.

All was finished. My father was buried in Christ Church cemetery by his
own request, although thus separated by a hemisphere from his wife.

* * * * *

A year had passed. I had received nothing. Mr. and Miss Dodan came to
the observatory. They both were acquainted with the singular
prepossessions which controlled both myself and my father, and I think
Mr. Dodan was himself, though he admitted nothing, most curious and
interested in the whole matter. Miss Dodan frankly said she was. But I
know, to Miss Dodan's fresh, healthy, human life there was something
weirdly repellent in this thought of communication with the dead. She
thought of it with a nervous dread and excitement. It just kept me in
her thoughts a little shrouded in mystery and superiority and closed a
little the avenues of absolute confidence and peaceful self-surrender.

I had forgotten nothing, although at first an overwhelming sense of the
uselessness of the attempt, the almost grotesque absurdity of expecting
to hear from beyond the limits of the earth's atmosphere any word
transmitted through a mechanical invention, upon the earth's crust, made
me feel somewhat ashamed of my preparations, yet I arranged every
portion of the receiver and exercised my best skill to give it the most
delicate adjustment.

Whenever I had occasion to rest I either sent an assistant to the post,
or kept on my pillow, adjusted to my ear, a telephone attachment to the
Morse register, so that its signals might instantly receive attention.