Here he gasped for breath. After a pause he gathered himself together for another effort, and went on.
"You tried it on Pompey. He was never trained, and of course you failed. If you are afraid of handling Brutus, you can train Pompey--as I did Brutus."
The tamer stopped again to get breath, and the pause was longer than those which preceded it. He was weak unto death. The faint reflection of a smile flitted over his features as he said in a hoarse whisper,
"My last performance now--no postponement--on account of the weather."
After another long pause, in the same hoarse whisper, he said,
"This secret--will be a fortune--to you, Jim Rounders. Now shake hands--and let--me die."
And two hands clasped. One was warm, and pulsating with vigorous life, but the other was dead. As Rounders held the lifeless one in his, he resolved to renounce the ungrateful profession; but after the burial of the dead tamer, the ruling passion took possession of him again, and he did not rest until he had performed the "meat-jerk" with Brutus. Indeed, he was not satisfied to walk in the footsteps of Brinton, but became in his turn a creator of a Biblical drama, which he called "Daniel in the Lion's Den."
First I would give thee--nay, I may and will, Thoughts, memory, prayers, a sacred wealth unguessed, My soul's own glad and beautiful bequest, Conveyed in voiceless reverence, deep and still, As angels give their thoughts and prayers to God! Next I would yield, in service freely made, All of my days and years, thy needs to fill; To bear or heavy cross, or thorny rod, Glad of my bondage, deeming it most meet: Oh, mystery of love, as strange as sweet, That love from its own wealth should be repaid! Last, I would give thee, if it pleased thee so, And for thy pleasure, wishing it increased, My woman's beauty, heart and lips aglow; But this, dear, last--so soon its charm must fade, It is, indeed, of all my gifts, the least!
The arraignment of Dr. Slade, the spiritual medium, before a London magistrate, on a charge of vagrancy, suggests the rather trite remark that "history repeats itself."
Spiritualism is literally "as old as the hills." Lying in a manner dormant through long years, it has had its periodical outcroppings; as, when absolutely prohibited by an edict of Israel's first king, B. C. 1060; when it was abjured by the Council of Ancyra of Galatia, in A. D. 314; and again when ranking highest among the popular delusions of a people boasting of their civilization and culture, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and seventy-six.