thousand."

"How long have you been married?" said the other.

[Illustration: A Venetian café.]

"Only about six months. I was married last July, and we went for a trip
abroad. We were married quietly, and left almost immediately afterwards,
so we thought, on our return, it would not be a bad plan to give a
Christmas Eve dinner, and invite some of our friends. That," he said,
hesitating a moment, "was last night. Shortly after dinner, I began to
feel rather ill, and went upstairs to rest for a while; and if what you
say is true, the first thing I knew I found myself dead."

"Alive," corrected the other.

"Well, alive, though at present I feel I belong more to the world I have
left than I do to the world I appear to be in. I must confess, although
you are a very plausible gentleman to talk to, that I expect at any
moment to wake and find this to have been one of the most horrible
nightmares that I ever had the ill luck to encounter."

The other smiled.

"There is very little danger of your waking up, as you call it. Now, I
will tell you the great trouble we have with people when they first come
to the spirit-land, and that is to induce them to forget entirely
the world they have relinquished. Men whose families are in poor
circumstances, or men whose affairs are in a disordered state, find it
very difficult to keep from trying to set things right again. They have