emerged from a deep slumber, I was aware that there was a companion at my
side. Nothing could be more gracious than the way in which this being
accosted me. I will speak of it as she, because there was a delicacy, a
sweetness, a divine purity, about its aspect that recalled my ideal of
the loveliest womanhood.

"I am your companion and your guide," this being made me understand, as
she looked at me. Some faculty of which I had never before been
conscious had awakened in me, and I needed no interpreter to explain the
unspoken language of my celestial attendant.

"You are not yet outside of space and time," she said, "and I am going
with you through some parts of the phenomenal or apparent universe,--what
you call the material world. We have plenty of what you call time before
us, and we will take our voyage leisurely, looking at such objects of
interest as may attract our attention as we pass. The first thing you
will naturally wish to look at will be the earth you have just left.
This is about the right distance," she said, and we paused in our flight.

The great globe we had left was rolling beneath us. No eye of one in the
flesh could see it as I saw or seemed to see it. No ear of any mortal
being could bear the sounds that came from it as I heard or seemed to
hear them. The broad oceans unrolled themselves before me. I could
recognize the calm Pacific and the stormy Atlantic,--the ships that
dotted them, the white lines where the waves broke on the shore,--frills
on the robes of the continents,--so they looked to my woman's perception;
the--vast South American forests; the glittering icebergs about the
poles; the snowy mountain ranges, here and there a summit sending up fire
and smoke; mighty rivers, dividing provinces within sight of each other,
and making neighbors of realms thousands of miles apart; cities;