The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars / Being the Posthumous Papers of Bradford Torrey Dodd

foregoing record with any certainty, or indeed, in any way. Absolute ignorance of that language, except the brief mention in my father's communications, received by myself from th

ose unparalleled messages he has told me of the desire of the Martians to communicate with the earth, and as the Martians themselves are largely made up of transplanted human spirits, the possibility of doing so would have been c

eless telegraphy would place us more readily in touch with the sidereal universe than with distant points upon our earth, presuming indeed, that, except for the intervening envelopes of atmosphere attached to our or any neigh

or so. Examination and inquiry showed us no contiguous source of the message and it seemed most improbable that it had come to us from any distant part of the earth, as we had become a

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iness and a sort of mild vertigo. I had become exceedingly endeared to him. I found him a most unusual companion, and un

acquaintances in Christ Church. A family of Tontines and a gentleman and his daughter by the name of Dodan had often visited us, and while we had become somewhat a subject of perenni

tories was boundless. When I found myself alone with her at the big telescope adjusting everything with-oh! such exquisite precision-and then sometimes discovered my hand resting upon hers, or my head touching those silken brown curves of hair that framed her white brow and reddening cheeks, the throbbing pleasure was so sweet, so

ss and her cheerful art at the piano would, I know, cheer him, inured too long to his lonely life, subject to the periodic returns

the steep hillside that slanted from our plateau to the lowlands, and was soon lost from view in a turn of the road, which

rried to our little reception room and library, where a few of my father's "Worthies of Science" decorated the walls, which for the most part were cove

w days ago my father had journeyed. I caught in her face, as I entered, an anxious and disturbed glance, and I felt a

ange; does not know us when we talk to him, and wanders in a talk about 'magnetic waves'

istakable. I asked a few questions and was convinced that my father was the victim of some sort of shock, p

stray touch of her floating hair, or the accidental stubbing of her foot against my own. It seemed a short, delicious drive. I fear my heart was almost equally divided between apprehension for my father's health and the joy of simple nearness to th

d alertness, which made him so original and delightful a companion. At length, by a week's nursing, during which Miss Dodan and myself were frequen

must put me also in the spirit world, while she, in whose heart my own trustingly lived, has been taken away, I think wisely and prudently, to live with her father's people in a charming, rus

I was coming out of my room when I found Miss Dodan also emerging from her own bedroom at the opposite end of an upper hall. We met and I said: "Mis

ered. "Aren't y

eed not misunderst

r an English trait, you Am

oped any disadvantages of that sort w

ly into my eyes: "You mean," she inqui

t, but I did not hesitate: "Of course, I am sorry to leave you, more sorr

and with a laugh and a quick movement toward the stairway she exclaime

ll in a group of people-her parents, my father, visitors and servants-and I saw he

Martian Hill," as Mr. Dodan, in reference to my father's infatuation over his

by a stout yellow cord, a bright red skull cap, a sort of sandal shoe, picked out with silver ornaments, his arms covered with loose, puckered sleeves of lace, dotted with black extending up to the close fitting sleeves of the

tly I recall it-almost ideally lovely that morning, and I compared him in my thoughts with the father of Romola, only as wearing a more youthful expression. He was seated when I came in, and as his eyes encountered mine, I detected the traces o

me attack of paralysis. A slight aphasia occurred this morning. It, too, as suddenly disappeared. But these warnings cannot be neglected. I and you must at

on this subject and my reflections

ng vigorous in our fresh moments and feeble when we are fatigued or exhausted. It is related by Sir Henry Holland that on one occasion he descended, on the same day, two mines in the Hartz Mountains, remaining some hours in each. In the second mine he

quite constructed in a series of molecular arrangements of our nervous tissues. No doubt there is memory also in that subtle fluid that survives death, but

as to leave even in the spirit flesh an impression. In this same little book of Bain's this sentence occurs: 'Retention, Acquisition, or Memory, then, being the power of continuing in the mind, impressions that are no longer stimulated by the original agent, and of recalling them at after-times by pure

g like this wireless telegraphy, I must imbed in my mind the whole system we have developed, and especially make myself almost intuitively familiar with the Morse alphabet. Beating, beating,

asonable assurance that death does not end all. As I think of it, as I look forward to meeting your mother, the whole prospect of death grows wonderfully interesting and sublimely welcome. And yet, my son, you, you who have been so patient, so kind, giving up your life for my co

most frantic ecstacy. It seemed to me so natural, nurtured in the

odels of our transmitters and receivers. This excitement lasted a long time and it did seem psychologically certain that

ography and drawing of the surfaces of our planetary neighbors. Mars particularly fascinated him, for he had, b

ather and I were very familiar, had been in correspondence with certain astronomical centers with reg

the planet and showed many features represented on the Schiaparelli charts. W.F. Denning in 1885, remarked upon "the seeming permanency of the chief lineaments on Ma

ce Observatory was able to redetect Schiaparelli's canals, which elicited the remark that "the reality of the existence of the delicate markings discovered by the keen-s

ility in the equatorial region of Mars. M. Perrotin recorded changes in the Kaiser Sea (Schiaparelli's Syrtis Major). This spot, usually dark, was seen on May 21, 1886, "to be covered with a luminous cloud forming regular and parallel bands, stretching from northwest

n places, but with a general fixity of character which led him to believe that the appearances were not atmospheric. He indeed attributed to Mars an attenuated atmosphere and thought that some of the vagaries in its surface characters were due to variations in our own atmosphere He did not

reviously observed, amongst these an apparent channel through the polar ice cap. Some of these seemed double, running from near the equator to the neighborhood of the North Pole. The place called Lydia disappeared and reappeared. A strange puzzling statement was made that the canals could be traced straight across seas and continents in the line of the meridian. M. T

crevasses, rectilinear fissures, etc., of continental masses of ice. Again (Bulletin de l'Academie

e of the planet in a continued article in Himmel und Erde, a popular astron

mmented on by Prof. W.H. Pickering in the "Sidereal Messenger."

chine, which was made up of a substance more than half of whose mass had been converted into repelling particles. Such a fabric would leave the earth, pass the limits of its attraction with an accelerating velocity and move through space. In such a way Mr. Stranger

r center draws the earth and Mars so together that on some parts of the earth's surface the attraction of Mars would overcome that of the earth and

est in view of the actual knowledge now vouchsafed to the world

rt of a mild possession. It seemed to me that there was a moderate aberration involved in his deeply seated convictions, and when sometimes I saw him walking past the windows on the pl

It was indeed pathetic to see his strenuous and repeated efforts to assure me that he remembered all the parts of the telegraphic apparatus, and his smile of saddened self-depreciation when he hesitated over some detail. At l

eaking spirits, and her womanly tenderness, her brave grace, and the joy my loving

st Church cemetery by his own request, althoug

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h 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

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 som

d to my ear, a telephone attachment to the Morse register, so that its signals might instantly receiv

telescope was suspended. I was as usual waiting for a message that never came, and my failing hopes, made more and more transitory by the brightness of th

ne, that made the color come and go upon my cheeks, and as I turned hastily to descend to them while the breathing earth seemed to send upward it

d my pad and wrote. The Abyss of Death was bridged! From behind the veil of that inexorable silence which lies beyond the grave came a voice-and what a voice! The clicking of a telegraphic

sistants, pale with wonder, stood around me. The measured tappings were the ghostly voices of another world. This message began at 10 a.m., Sept. 25, 1