If we continue to ask for the truth but refuse to listen, humankind will be forever doom to destruction. American leadership of the Second Wave World was increasingly challenged by the rise of Russia. Russian and other socialist nations portrayed themselves as anti-imperialist friends of the colonial peoples of the World. In 1916, a year before he took power, Lenin had written a slashing attack on the capitalist nations for their colonial policies. His Imperialism became one of the most influential books of the century and still shapes the thinking of hundreds of millions around the World. However, Lenin saw imperialism as a purely capitalist phenomenon. Capitalist nations, he insisted, oppressed and colonized other nations not out of choice but out of necessity. A dubious iron law, put forward by Marx, held that profits in capitalist economies showed a general, irresistible tendency to decline over time. Because of this, Lenin held, capitalist nations in their final stage were driven to seek “super-profits” abroad to compensate for diminishing profits at homes. Only socialism, he argued, would free colonial peoples from their oppression and misery, because socialism had no built-in dynamic requiring their economic exploitation. What Lenin overlooked is that many of the same imperatives that drove capitalist industrial nations operated in socialist industrial nations as well. They, too, were part of the World money system. They, too, based their economies on the divorce of production from consumption. They, too, needed a market (albeit not necessarily a profit-oriented market) to reconnect producer and consumer. They, too, needed raw materials from abroad to feed their industrial machines. And for these reasons they, too, needed an integrated World economic system through which to obtain their necessities and sell their products abroad. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

Indeed, Lenin, at the very same time he attacked imperialism, spoke of socialism’s aim “not only to bring that nations closer together but to integrate them.” As Russian analyst M. Senin has written in Socialist Integration, Lenin by 1920 “regarded the drawing together of nations as an objective process which…will finally and ultimately lead to the creation of a single World economy, regulated by…a common plan.” This, if anything, was the ultimate industrial vision. Externally, socialist industrial nations were driven by the same resources needs as capitalist nations. They, too, needed cotton, coffee, nickel, sugar, wheat, and other goods to feed their fast-multiplying factories and their urban populations. Russian had (and still has) enormous reserves of national resources. It has manganese, lead, zinc, coal, phosphates, and gold. However, so had the United States of America, and that stopped neither nation from seeking to buy from others at the cheapest possible price. From its inception Russian entered this system and accepted the “normal” ways of doing business, it immediately locked itself into conventional definitions of efficiency and productivity—definitions that were themselves traceable back to early capitalism. It was compelled to accept, almost unconsciously, conventional economic concepts, categories, definitions, accounting methods, and units of measurement. Socialist managers and economist, exactly like their capitalist counterparts, thus calculated the cost of producing their own raw materials as against the cost of purchasing them. They faced a straight “make or buy” decision of the kind capitalist corporations confront every day. And it soon became apparent that buying certain raw materials on the World market would be cheaper than trying to produce them at home. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

Once this decision was made, sharp Russian purchasing agents fanned out into the World market and bought at prices previously set at artificially low levels by imperialist traders. Russian trucks rolled on rubber bought at prices that were probably determined ab initio by British merchants in Malaya. Worse, in recent years the Russians (who maintain troops there) paid Guinea six dollars ($80.76 in 2021 dollars) per ton for bauxite when Americans were paying twenty-three dollars ($309.57 in 2021 dollars). India has protested that the Russians overcharge them 30 percent on imports and pay 30 percent too little for Indian exports. Iran and Afghanistan received subnormal prices from the Russians for natural gas. This Russia, like its capitalist adversaries, benefited at the expense of the colonies. To have done otherwise would have been to slow its own industrialization process. Russia was also driven toward imperialist policies by strategic considerations. Faced with the military might of Nazi Germany, the Russians first colonized the Baltic states and made war on Finland. After World War II, with troops and the threat of invasions, they helped install or maintain “friendly” regimes throughout most of Eastern Europe. These countries, more industrially advanced than Russia itself, were intermittently milked by the Russians, justifying their description as colonies or “satellites.” “There can be no doubt,” writes the neo-Marxist economist Howard Sherman, “that, in the years immediately following the Second World War, Russians removed a certain amount of resources from Eastern Europe without giving equal resources in payment…There was some direct plunder and military reparations….There was also join companies established with Russian predominance in control and Russian exploitation of profits from these countries. There was also extremely unequal trade agreements that amounted to further reparations.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

At present there is apparently no direct plunder and the joint companies have disappeared, but adds Sherman, “There is much evidence that most of the exchanges between Russia and most East European countries are still unequal—with Russia coming out best.” How much “profit” is extruded by these means is difficult to determine, given the inadequacy of published Russian statistics. It may well be that the costs of maintaining Russian troops throughout Eastern Europe actually outweigh the economic benefits. However, one fact is indisputably clear. While the Americans built the IMF-GATT-World Bank structure, the Russians moved toward Lenin’s dream of a single integrated World economic system by creating the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) and compelling the Eastern European countries to join it. COMECON countries are forced by Moscow not only to trade with one another and with Russian but to submit their economic development plans to Moscow for approval. Moscow, insisting on the Ricardian virtues of specialization, acing exactly like old imperialist powers vis-à-vis African, Asian, or Latin American economies, has assigned specialized functions to Eastern European economy. Only Romania has openly and staunchly resisted. Claiming that Moscow has tried to turn it into the “petrol pump and garden” of Russia, Romania has set out to achieve what it calls multilateral development, meaning a fully rounded industrialization. It has resisted “socialist integration” despite Russian pressures. In sum, at the very time that the United States of American assumed leadership of the capitalist industrial nations and built its own self-serving mechanisms for integrating the World economic system after World War II, the Russian built a counterpart of this system in the part of the World they dominated. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

No phenomenon as vast, complex, and transforming as imperialism can be described simply. Its effects on religion, on education, on health, on themes in literature and art, on racial attitudes, on the psycho-structure of whole peoples, as well as more directly on economics, are still being unraveled by the historians. It no doubt had beneficial accomplishments to its credit as well as atrocities. However, its role in the rise of Second Wave civilization cannot be overemphasized. We can think of imperialism as the supercharger or accelerator of industrial development in the Second Wave World. How rapidly would the United States of America, Western Europe, Japan, or Russian have been able to industrialize without infusions of food, energy, and raw materials from outside? What if the prices of scores of commodities like bauxite, manganese, tin, vanadium, or copper had been 30 to 50 percent higher for a period of decades? The prince of thousands of end-products would have been correspondingly higher—in some cases, no doubt, so high as to make mass consumption impossible. The shock of oil price increases in the early 1970’s gave only a pale hint of the potential effects. Even if domestic substitutes had been available, the economic growth of the Second Wave nations would in all probability have been stunted. Without the concealed subsidies made possible by imperialism, capitalist and socialist, Second Wave civilization might well be today where it was in 1920 or 1930. The grand design should now be clear. Second Wave civilization cut up and organized he World into discrete nation-states. Needing the recourses of the rest of the World, it drew First Wave societies and the remaining primitive peoples of the World into the money system. It created a globally integrated marketplace. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

However, rampant industrialism was more than an economic, political, or social system. It was also a way of life and a way of thinking. It produced a Second Wavy mentality. This mentality stands today as a key obstacle to the creation of a workable Third Wave civilization. At this stage I must turn aside to deal with a rather simple-minded illusion. When we point out that what the Christians mean is not to be identified with their mental pictures, some people say, “In that case, would it not be better to get rid of the mental pictures, and of the language which suggests them, altogether?” However, this is impossible. The people who recommend it have not noticed that when they try to get ride of human-like, or as they called, “anthropomorphic,” images they merely succeed in substituting images of some other kind. “I do not believe in a personal God,” says one, “but I do believe in a great spiritual force.” What he has not noticed is that the word “force” has let in all sorts of images about winds and tides and electricity and gravitation. “I do not believe in a personal God,” says another, “but I do believe we are all parts of one great Being which moves and works through us all”—not noticing that he has merely exchanged the image of a fatherly and royal-looking man for the image of some widely extended gas or fluid. A girl I knew was brought up by “higher thinking” parents to regard God as a perfect “substance”; in later life she realized that this had actually led her to think of Him as something like a vast tapioca pudding. (To make matters worse, she disliked tapioca.) We may feel ourselves quite safe from this degree of absurdity, but we are mistaken. If a human watches one’s own mind, I believe one will find that what profess to be specially advanced or philosophic conceptions of God are, in one’s way of thinking, always accompanied by vague images which, if inspected, would turn out to be even more absurd then the man-like images aroused by Christian theology. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

For man, after all, is the highest of things we meet in sensuous experience. He has, at least, conquered the globe, honoured (though not followed) virtue, achieved knowledge, made poetry, music and art. If God exists at all it is not unreasonable to suppose that we are less unlike Him than anything else we know. No doubt we are unspeakably different from Him; to that extent all human-like images are false. However, those imagines of shapeless mists and irrational forces which, unacknowledged, haunt the mind when we think we are rising to the conception of impersonal and absolute Being, must be very much more so. For images, of the one kind or of the other, will come; we cannot jump off our own shadow. As far, then, as he adult Christian of modern time is concerned, the absurdity of the images does not imply absurdity in the doctrines; but it may be asked whether the early Christian was in the same position. Perhaps one mistook the images for true ones, and really believed in the sky palace or the decorated chair. However, as we have seen, even this would not necessarily invalidate everything that one thought on these subjects. The child in our example might know many truths about poison and even, in some particular cases, truths which a given adult might not know. We can suppose a Galilaean peasant who thought that Christ had literally and physically “sat down at the right hand of the Father.” If such a man had then gone to Alexandria and had a philosophical education he would have discovered tht the Father had no right hand and did not sit on a throne. Is it conceivable that he would regard this as making any difference to what he had really intended, and valued, in the doctrine during the days of his naivety? For unless we suppose him to have been not only a peasant but a fool (two very different things) physical details about a supposed celestial throne-room would not have been what he cared about. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

What mattered must have been the belief that a person whom he had known as a man in Palestine had, as a person, survived death and was now operating as the supreme agent of the supernatural Being who governed and maintained the whole field of reality. And that belief would survive substantially unchanged after the falsity of the earlier images had been recognized. Even if it could be shown, then, that the early Christians accepted their imagery literally, his would not mean that we are justified in relegating their doctrines as a whole to the lumber-room. Whether they actually did, is another matter. The difficulty here is that they were not writing as philosophers to satisfy speculative curiosity about the nature of God and the Universe. They believed in God; and once a human does that, philosophical definiteness can never be the first necessity. A drowning man does not analyze the rope that is flung at him, nor an impassioned lover consider the chemistry of his mistress’s complexion. Hence the sort of question we are now considering is never raised by the New Testament writers. When once it is raised, Christianity decides quite clearly that the naïf images are false. The sect in the Egyptian desert which thought that God was like a man is condemned: the desert monk who felt he had lost something by its correction is recognized as “muddle-headed.” All three Persons of the Trinity are declared “incomprehensible.” God is pronounced “inexpressible, unthinkable, invisible to all created beings.” The Second person is not only bodiless but so unlike humans that is self-revelation had been His sole purpose He would not have chosen to be incarnate in a human form. We do not find similar statements in the New Testament, because the issue has not yet been made explicit: but we do find statements which make it certain how that issue will be decided when once it becomes explicit. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

The title “Son” may sound “primitive” or “naïf.” However, already in the New Testament this “Son” is identified with the Discourse or Reason or Word which was eternally “with God” and yet also was God. He is the all-pervasive principle of concretion or cohesion whereby the Universe holds together. All things, and specially Life, arouse within Him, and within Him all things will reach their conclusion—the final statement of what they have been trying to express. It is, of course, always possible to imagine an earlier stratum of Christianity from which such ideas were absent; just as it is always possible to say that anything you dislike in Shakespeare was put in by an “adapter” and the original play was free from it. However, what have such assumptions to do with serious inquiry? And here the fabrication of them is specially perverse, since even if we go back beyond Christianity into Judaism itself, we shall not find the unambiguous anthropomorphism (or human-likeness) we are looking for. Neither, I admit, shall we find its denial. We shall find, on the one hand, God pitched as living above “in the high and holy place”: we shall find, on the other, “Do not I fill Heaven and Earth? saith the Lord.” We shall find that in Ezekiel’s vision God appeared (notice the hesitating words) in “the likeness as the appearance of a man.” However, we shall find also the warning, “Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves. For ye saw no manner of similitude on the day that the Lord spake unto you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire—lest ye corrupt yourselves and make a graven image.” Most baffling of all to a modern literalist, the God who seems to live locally in the sky, also made it. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

The reason why the modern literalist is puzzled is that one is trying to get out of the old writers something which is not there. Starting from a clear modern distinction between material and immaterial one tries to find out on which side of that distinction the ancient Hebrew connection fell. He forgets that the distinction itself has been made clear only by later thought. Many glimpses have come suddenly and spontaneously to those who never followed any particular technique intended to bring them on. Nevertheless, it is undoubtedly true that as many if not more glimpses have come to those who follow some technique chosen from the variety which have been transmitted from traditional sources or supplied by authentic contemporary ones. The principle which makes union with the Overself possible is always the same, albeit on different levels. Whether it appears as humility in prayer, passivity to intuition, stillness in meditation, or serenity despite untoward circumstances, these attitudes temporarily weaken the ego and lessen its combination. They temporarily silence the ego and give the Overself the opportunity to touch us or work through us. So long as the ego dominates us, we are outside the reach of the Overself and separated from its help. The notion that it is first necessary to become a monk or to live like a saint before one can hope to acquire this knowledge is erroneous. One must find the inner self, and this of itself will purify us, subdue passions, and tame selfishness. When the magic touch of the Overself falls upon us, our long-held foolishness withers away, and out tightly clutched vices die off and disappear. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

That which is aware of the World is not the World. That which is aware of the ego is not the ego. When this awareness is isolated, the human “experiences” the Overself. If one will try to perceive the mind by which one perceives the World, one will be practising the shortest, most direct technique of discovering the Overself. This is what Ramana Maharshi meant when he taught, “Trace the ‘I’ to its source.” All that a human knows and experiences is a series of thoughts. There is only one exception and that, in most cases, remains usually as an unrealized possibility. It is when one discovers one’s being. Here thinking is not active, would in fact prevent the discovery if not reined in at the proper point. Here, in this private paradise, knowing and experiencing are one. H.G. Wells, writing in 1901, predicted for his British readers the reasons why the nineteenth-century pattern of movement from countryside to city would be reversed in the twentieth century: “The first of these is what is known as the passion for nature…and secondly, there is the allied charm of cultivation, and especially gardening, a charm that is partly also the love of dominion, perhaps, and partly a personal love for the beauty of trees and flowers and natural things. Through that we come to the third factor, that craving…for a little private imperium such as a house or cottage “in its own grounds” affords; and from this we pass on the intense desire many women feel…for a household, a separate scared and distinctive household, built and ordered after their own hearts, such as in its fullness only the country permits. Add to these things the healthfulness of the country for young children, and the wholeness isolation that is possible from much that irritates, stimulates, prematurely, and corrupts in crowded centers, and the chief positive centrifugal inducements are stated,” (H.G. Wells, Anticipations, Harper & Brothers, New York, 1901, pp. 55-56). #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

However, in spite of all this glorification of the suburbs, the dominant role of the central city was explicitly or implicitly acknowledged. Suburbs were clearly sub. I was automatically assumed that suburbs were appendages of cities, and it was assumed that the great bulk of the urban population would remain city dwellers. Suburbanization was for the affluent, not the average. Thus, suburbanization and suburban imagery prior to the contemporary post-World War II period did not imply any abandonment of the city in other respects. The city was still the core and the suburbs a residential property. Moving one’s families to the suburbs meant a residential decision and no more. Factories, offices, and retail establishments stayed in the city. Men of business routinely commuted into their offices in the central district without any thought that the offices should suburbanize. One might move one’s family out of the city, but that in no way meant family members were exiling themselves outside the city walls. The same railroads that allowed businessmen to commute provided frequent service to allow woman and children to shop in downtown theater and concerts. Unlike today, suburbanites of the 1890s, or of the 1940s, routinely went downtown for shopping or an evening out. Until into the 1960s, the best restaurants and the first-run movies still were located downtown and were routinely supported by commuting suburbanites. The railroad and the electric streetcar, by converging their tracks on the center of the city, emphasized rather than diminished the role of the downtown as the core of the metropolitan area. Until the mass suburbanization following World War II, the role and economic strength of the core was further increased rather than weakened by adding outlying residential suburbs. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

To social reformers and progressives of the early century, the spread of suburbanization not only provided better housing for those who could afford it, it also helped alleviate the terrible crowding and human deprivation of central-city slums. Suburbia was to be the hope of the future. Suburbanization and is accompanying decentralization were seen as reducing central-city densities. Decreasing urban housing densities was seen as permitting urban children to be brought up in a more healthful environment. Basically, social reformers were expressing what would become known half a century later as the theory of trickle-down housing. As the affluent left older neighbourhoods for new housing on the outskirts, those city working-class and poor who could not move out themselves could at least move into better housing being left behind. When mentioned at all, suburbs were often portrayed not as a social problem, but as a social solution. While the work of translating the golden plates was in progress, there was no one working to earn money with which to buy food, clothing, and other necessities for the family of Joseph. He was a poor man and was often concerned about their needs, but every time they needed something God seemed to provide it. Help came from friends in unexpected ways. When Joseph Knight, and old farmer for whom Joseph had worked as a boy, heard about the work Joseph was doing for the Lord, he wanted to help. Though Mr. Knight lived thirty miles away, he often brought the Smith family a wagonload of supplies and food from his farm. He made it possible for Joseph and Oliver to spend more time on the Lord’s work without having to worry about how they were going to provide for the family. Mr. Knight was so anxious to know how he might do more to assist in this work that Joseph prayed that the Lord might speak to him about his friend. In the revelation to Mr. Knight the Lord said: “A great and marvelous work is about to come forth among the children of men. Behold, I am God, and give heed to my word. Behold, the field is white already to harvest; therefore, whoso desireth to reap, let one thrust in one’s sickle with one’s might, and reap while the day lasts, that one may treasure up for one’s soul everlasting salvation in the Kingdom of God. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

“Yea, whosoever will thrust in one’s sickle and reap, the same is called of God; therefore, if you will ask of me you shall receive, if you will knock it shall be opened unto you. Keep my commandments, and seek to bring forth and establish the cause of Zion. Behold, I speak unto you, and also to all those who have desires to bring forth and established this work. No one can assist in this work, except one shall be humble and full of love, having faith, hope, and charity, being temperate in all things whatsoever shall be entrusted to one’s care. Give heed with your might, and then your care called. Amen.” Other friends who helped Joseph were the Peter Whitmer family of Fayette, New York. There were five boys and four girls in this family. David Whitmer was particularly a god friend or Oliver Cowdery. Joseph’s parents had sopped at the Whitmer home on their way back from a visit in Harmony. They told these good people the wonderful story of the Angel and the golden plates. The Whitmers believed the story and wanted to help Joseph even though they had not yet met him. One day while Joseph and Oliver were working on the translation, Joseph was looking through the Urim and Thummim. Instead of seeing the words of the book there, he read a commandment telling him to write a letter to David Whitmer asking him to come right away with his horse and wagon to take Joseph and Oliver to his home, because wicked people were trying to stop the work of translating. When David received the letter he showed it to his family. They talked about it and decided it was right for him to go, but that first he must do some farm work which needed to be done immediately. David prayed to God for help in doing this work. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

Then he set out to do the farm work and was able to do it quicker than he had ever done it before. He was amazed that it was done so quickly, and wondered how it was done by whom. The family realized that God had performed a miracle in getting the work finished so quickly. They urged him to take his horses and wagon and go immediately to Pennsylvania. It was a two days’ drive, and when he arrived Joseph and Oliver were ready to go with him. They started immediately. On their arrival at the Whitmer home, Joseph and Oliver were able to work on the translation without fear of being stopped. Three of the Whitmer boys—David, Peter, Jr., and John—became great friends to Joseph and wanted to know how they might help in the Lord’s work. Revelations were given in June to each of these young men. God spoke to them much as he had done to Joseph Knight. They were told that if they desired to help they might do so, and they were warned always to keep the commandments of the Lord and to seek to bring forth and establish Zion. The words of the Lord, Jesus Christ, to David Whiter were: “If you shall ask the Father in my name, in faith believing, you shall receive the Holy Ghost, which giveth utterance, that you may stand as a witness of the things of which you both hear and see; and also, that you may declare repentance unto this generation. The words of Christ to both John and Peter, Jr., were: the most worth unto you, will be to declare repentance unto this people, that you may bring souls unto me, that you may rest with them in the Kingdom of my Father.” The entire Whitmer family were anxious to help in the Lord’s work. Joseph and Oliver stayed with these friends until the work of translation was complete and the copyright was secured. The first thing about monastic life? You have to live in peace and harmony with others. To do that you have to discipline yourself in a thousand ways. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

It is not a small thing to live in a religious community. It is not an easy thing to converse for a lifetime without a quarrel and to preserve faithfully all the way to death, as the Last Book of the New Testament encourages us to do (2.10). Blessed is he who lived well within the walls and came to a felicitous end! If you want to survive and make progress inside the walls, you have to consider yourself an exile and wanderer outside the walls. That is what the Author of the Letter to the Hebrew encouraged the Jewish people in the Diaspora to think (11.13). If you wan to live the life of a monk, then you have to live the life of Christ. Not an easy thing to do. The World will think you are a clown. That is what Paul wrote to the First Corinthians centuries ago (4.10), and as we have come to know, his point was very well made. The habit and the tonsure of help precious little in the making of a monk, A complete change of life and a program of mortification are what make the Devout monk. If questions about God or salvation persist, the monk will find nothing but tribulation and pain. Serenity is hard to maintain, but thinking oneself the least and the lowliest does help a little. You entered the monastery to serve, not to rule. You have been called to long suffer and long labour, no to longue around and tell long stories. With these hard tasks Humankind is proved like gold in the furnace. Inside the walls no one can survive unless one has wished from the bottom of one’s heart to flatten oneself in front of God. “The eyes of those who have sight will not be closed, and the ears of those who have hearing will listen,” Isaiah 32.3. “One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see,” reports John 9.25. Why is it that two people hearing the same gospel, reading the same Scriptures, apprehending the same Universe, can perceive things do different? #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

Some who observed Jesus’ words and deeds perceived Him as crazy: “He has a demon, and is out of His mind.” Others saw him differently: “These are not the words of one who has a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?” What was foolish to some was to others the power of God.  If we view religious experiences as in some ways like other perceptual experiences, we can better understand how this might be. Perceptions arise from the interaction of stimulus and perceiver, between what is out there and what goes on in our heads, emerges our perceptions. Those who study human perception and its implications for scientific and religious knowledge have sometimes gravitated to one of two extremes. The subjectivist extreme discounts the importance of the objective stimulus. It sees our perceptions as arbitrary mental constructions, as meanings that we impose willy-nilly on the World out there. If that alone were true, we could no drive a car, nor could we hope to walk out of the room without walking into a wall. Our skill at responding to our physical environment assures us that there is an objective World out there and that we process its information with remarkable accuracy and efficiency. The objectivist or naïve realist extreme assumes that our experience mirrors reality. As we perceive it, so it is. By this view, truth can be achieved simply by checking our scientific theories against the perceived facts of nature and our religious doctrines against the perceived facts of Scripture. How you and I perceive something does indeed depend on the stimulus; our perceptions—and the theories and doctrines built upon them—are not arbitrary. However, the extreme of this view discounts the importance of the state of the perceiver. Perceptions also depend on where our attention is drawn, on our prior experience, and on our expectations. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

To take up an air of indifference to the actual and physical surroundings, to asset oneself that the circumstances do not matter, may be mere pretention or pathetic self-deception. Environmental conditions do matter. Flesh and blood, nerve and body have reactions and responses which laugh at out theory. The search for mental, moral, and emotional causes of bodily effects is valid only in a proportion of cases, not in all cases. For there are physical laws governing the physical body, laws which, when broken, automatically bring punishment. Those who neglect the body and break the laws of its health can gain no cure by mental means but only a temporary respite. Philosophy grants at once that physical causes like bad environment, faulty heredity, broken hygienic laws, germ infections, and improper feeding may cause disease. The emptiness of conventional salutations and the futility of conventional greetings are no realized because they are not thought about. What is the use of formally wishing anyone good health when one is constantly breaking hygienic laws and this moving nearer towards ill health? Instead of writing such phases in letters to one or uttering them on parting from one, it might be more beneficial in the end to draw one’s attention to those neglected laws. However, to do that would be to sin against the sacredness of convention. The shock of such reminders might hurt one’s feelings but it might also arouse one to take a different course. If so many sicknesses are the effects of preventable abuses, is it not rational to tie oneself down to a regime which prevents those causes? Then, so far as humanly possible, we have dome what we can to gain and retain good health, and if sickness comes it will be “by an act of God” and not by our own. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

Alcoholic drinks must be banned not only for obvious reasons—their effect upon the mind, the emotions, and the passions—but also for their effect upon the body itself. The human who is trying to purify it cannot afford to admit into one’s organism the foul microbes of decomposition which they contain. Those who have witnessed the ghastly results of becoming addicted to drugs may not know that at a certain point the addict may become involved very easily with what is called “black magic.” This is the forbidden path which seeks to obtain a higher spiritual result by the wrong means, by forbidden means and, in the end, causes a human to lose one’s own soul and become a slave of evil forces. Strong alcohol paralyses the brain centre controlling spiritual and intuitive activity for two hours of drinking it. Those who take such stimulants and still want to unfold spiritually should restrict their drink to water, milk, and fruit juices like cranberry juice. Smoking not only harms the body but also depresses the mind. The cumulative and ultimate effect of the poison which it introduces is to lower the emotional state by periodic moods of depression. Drug experience may lead to hallucination, obsession, paranoid monstrous prehuman evolutionary images, or highly overdrawn images of human experience. It is the strong spirits which influence a human more dangerously than the harsh words. It is they which tend to drag one downward to the savage plane of development. Some of the people who have shivered at the thought of inaugurating health reforms or conforming to productive lifestyles come nevertheless to do so in later years. Why? Because they were given a strong enough incentive.  Attacked by heart disease, they were warned by physician to abandon unhealthy foods, too much sodium, excessive sugar, and alcohol; suffering from different sicknesses, they had to abandon their Worldly ways; others who were gluttons were ordered to curb their meals to more modest proportions. Here the incentive of avoiding earlier death enabled them to accept an abhorred discipline. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

How strange and wonderful is our home, our Earth, with its swirling vaporous atmosphere, its flowing and frozen climbing creatures, the croaking things with wings that hang on rocks and soar through fog, the furry grass, the scaly seas…how utterly rich and wild. Yet some among us have the nerve, the insolence, the brass, the gall to whine about the limitations of our Earthbound fate and yearn for some more perfect World beyond the sky. We are none of us good enough for the World we have. May there be abundant peace from Heaven, and life for us and all of America; and say ye, Amen. May He who establisheth peace in the Heavens, grant peace unto all America; and say ye, Amen. There is none like our God; there is none like our Lord; there is none like our King; there is none like our Saviour. Who is like our God? Who is like our Lord? Who is like our King? Who is like our Saviour? We will give thanks unto our God; we will give thanks unto our King; we will give thanks unto our Saviour. Blessed be our God; blessed be our Lord; blessed be our King; blessed be our Saviour. Thou art our God; Thou art our Lord; Thou art our King; Thou art our Saviour. Thou art our Saviour. Thou art He unto whom our fathers burnt the fragrant incense. Scholars increase peace in the World, as it is written in Scripture: “When all thy children shall be taught of the Lord, great shall be the peace of thy children.” Great peace they that love America and the word of God; and there is no stumbling for them. Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces. For the sake of my brethren and friends, I would say, Peace be with thee! For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I would seek thy good. The Lord will give strength unto His people; the Lord will bless His people with peace. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

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People do not understand how their destructive moods, thoughts, and emotions affect the cerebro-spinal system and through that eventually the intestinal organs to the degree of creating poisons within those organs. It is not enough to take care of the diet and to eliminate foods which are harmful to physical health. It is equally necessary to take care of thoughts and feelings, and to eliminate all those which are harmful both to spiritual and physical health. Little girls still play at diving their future husband’s occupation using a variety of methods including the old rhyme, “Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief.” It is quite innocent in the twenty first century, but it was anything but innocent for the two seventeenth century girls who believed that they had conjured up a specter in the shape of a coffin. It was no wonder that they began to display hysterical symptoms, and that one of them was followed with diabolical molestations to her death. John Hale does not name the children, but the one who was cured was most probably Elizabeth Parris, the minister’s nine-year-old daughter. She disappeared from Salem Village late in March, when her father sent her to the household of Stephen Sewall in Salem Town, possibly because fits were known to be communicable and he wanted her removed from contact with those who were still having them. The other girl was probably Parris’ eleven-year-old niece, Abigail William, although we have no way of being sure; there is very little information about the later lives of the afflicted girls. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

Tradition has it that they were assisted in their occult experiments by Tituba, a girl who was enslaved by Samuel Parris. Mr. Parris had brought Tituba to New England from Barbados, where he had been a merchant before becoming a clergyman. Tituba, like her husband John, was a Carib Indian, and it was suspected that she was the one who introduced the girls to using the egg and glass as a method of divining, which is similar to crystal gazing, as the white of an egg is poured into a glass being substituted for the fortuneteller’s crystal ball. Certainly she would often have been charged with the care of the children, and certainly she was soon involved in another occult experience. In any case, the two girls were very sick. So were several of their friends who has also, presumably, been experimenting with the occult. Chief among these were Ann Putnam, Jr. (twelve years old), May Warren (twenty), Mercy Lewis (nineteen), Mary Walcott (sixteen), and Elizabeth Hubbard (seventeen). Mr. Parris took them to various doctors, but they grew steadily worse. When Doctor Griggs made his diagnosis of witchcraft Mr. Parris apparently did not at first accept it; he simply continued the prayer and fasting which he hoped would cure the girls. If the minister was not anxious to believe the children were bewitched, the neighbours were. They began to ask the girls who was afflicting them, but at first they were unable to answer. It was then that Mary Sibley, the aunt of Mary Walcott, turned to white magic to break the witches’ spell. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

On February 25, 1692 she went to the minister’s Indians that he had enslaved, John and Tituba, and had them prepare a witch cake from a traditional English recipe, meal mixed with the children’s urine. It was baked in the fire and then fed to the Parris dog, presumably on the theory that the animal was a familiar—a messenger assigned to a witch by the Devil. The minister was appalled when he discovered, a month later, what had been done. Mary Sibley’s witch cake was, as Mr. Parris put it, “a going to the Devil for help against the Devil.” He lectured her privately about it and before the entire congregation called her to deep humiliation for what she had done. She acknowledged her sinfulness in tears, but I was far too late. The witch cake had been baked, and by it, as Mr. Parris said, “the Devil hath been raised among us, and his rage is vehement and terrible; and, when he shall be silenced, the Lord only knows.” Because the witch cake worked—another instance of the efficacy of magic in a society which believes in it. Now the girls were able to name their afflicters: Tituba herself, and Sarah Good and Sarah Osburn—two old women of dubious reputation. When these names were known four yeomen of Salem Village in the County of Essex—Joseph Hutchinson, Thomas Putnam, Edward Putnam, and Thomas Preston—appeared before their magistrates and swore out warrants for suspicion of witchcraft. The warrants were issued on February 29, 1692 and on March 1, 1692 the three accused women were examined by two Salem magistrates who were to conduct the majority of the preliminary examinations: John Hathorne (whose great-great-grandson Nathaniel added a “w” to the family name) and Jonathan Corwin. The accused women did not make a very good showing. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

Sarah Good behaved with all the malic and deceit one could expect of a witch. When she was asked who it was afflicted the children if he did not, she was quite willing to accuse her fellow-prisoner Sarah Osburn. Her husband, William testified “he was afraid that she either was a witch or would be one very quickly.” When Mr. Hathorne asked if he had any concrete evidence of her practicing witchcraft he replied that he had not; he thought her a witch for “her bad carriage to him.” “Indeed,” said he, “I may say with tears that she is an enemy to all good.” Besides this unintentional pun he offered the information that he had seen a “strange tit or wart” on his wife’s body, the implication being that this was a so-called “witch’s tit” at which the Devil and his familiars sucked the blood of the witch. Her four-year-old daughter Dorcas also testified against her, announcing that her mother had familiars: “three birds, one black, one yellow, and that these birds hurt the children and afflicted persons.” John Hathorne asked most of the questions and established the judicial attitude that was to prevail throughout most of the examinations and the trials. Rather than adopting the stance of impartial investigator, as Willard had done at Groton in 1671, and Cotton Mather at Boston in 1688, he acted more like a prosecuting attorney than a magistrate, assuming the guilt of the person under examination and trying to force a confession with bullying questions. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

“Sarah Good, what evil spirit have you familiarity with?”

“None.”

“Why do you hurt these children?”

“I do not hurt them. I scorn it.”

“Who do you employ, then, to do it?”

“I employ nobody.”

“What creature do you employ then?”

“No create, but I am falsely accused.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

To cover up an unhealthy condition is not to cure it. And so long as a human is immersed in an entirely separative and selfish outlook, so long as one habitually fears, worries, holds grudges, or hates, so long must one be regarded as “sick” and “unwell.” We laugh at what we call he folly of our ancestors, and their notions of destiny, and he malignant influences of the stars. For what will our children deride us? Perhaps for dreaming that friendship was a reality, and that constant love dwelt upon the Earth. There is no credulity more blind, no ignorance more childish, than that of the sage who tries to measure Heaven and Earth and the things under the Earth, with the small two-foot-rule of one’s own brains. Dare we presume to argue concerning any mystery of the Universe, it is inexplicable, and therefore impossible? What I must confess is to me a thorough ghost story; its external and circumstantial evidence being indisputable, while its psychological causes and results, though not easy of explanation, are still more difficult to be explained anyway. The ghost, like Hamlet’s was an honest ghost. For her daughter—an old lady, who bless her good and gentle memory! has since learned the secret of all things—I learnt this veritable tale. ‘My dear,’ said Mrs. Winchester to me—it was in the early days of table-moving, when young folk ridiculed and elder folk were shocked at the notion of calling up one’s departed ancestor into one’ dinner table, and learning the wonders of the angelic World by bobbings of a hat or the twirling of a plate;–‘My dear,’ continued the Mistress, ‘I do not like playing at ghosts.’ #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

She looked serious, as if she hardly liked to speak about ghosts, either from a sense of awe or from fear of ridicule. However, no one could have laughed at any illusions of the gentle lady, who never uttered a harsh or satirical word to a living soul; and this evident awe was rather remarkable in one who had a large stock of common sense, little wonder and no ideality. I was rather curious to hear Mrs. Winchester’s ghost story. ‘My dear, it was long time ago, so long that you may fancy I forget and confuse the circumstances. However, I do not. Sometimes I think one recollects more clearly things that happened in one’s teens—I was eighteen that year—than a great many nearer events. And besides, I had other reasons for remembering vividly everything belonging to this time—for I was in love, you must know.’ She looked at me with a mild depreciating smile, as if hoping my youthfulness would not consider the thing so very impossible or ridiculous. No; I was all interest at once. ‘In love with Mr. Winchester,’ I said, scarcely as a question, being at that Arcadian time of life when one takes a natural necessity, and believes as an undoubted truth, that everybody marries one’s first love. ‘Yes, my dear; Mr. Winchester. He was a young gentleman of good parts; and he was very found of me. Proud, too, rather. For though you might not think it, my dear, I was actually a beauty in those days.’ I had very little doubt of it. The slight lithe figure, the tiny hands and feet—if you had walked behind Mrs. Winchester you might have taken her for a young woman still. Certainly, people lived slower and easier in the last generation than it ours.  #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

‘Yes, I was the beauty of Bath. Mr. Winchester fell in love with me there. I was much gratified; for I had just been reding Miss Burney’s Cecilia, and I thought him exactly like Mortimer Delvil. A very pretty tale, Cecilia; did you read it?’ ‘No,’ I replied. ‘Was it his ghost you saw?’ ‘No, my dear, no; thank goodness, he was still alive. He used to call me and was a good friend of the family. Ah!’ with a slow shake of the head, half pleased, half pensive, ‘you would hardly believe, my dear, what a very pretty fellow he was.’ I could scarcely smile thinking about these last century novels and the loves of our great-grandmothers. I listened patiently to the wandering reminiscences which still further delayed the ghost-story. ‘We had been staying in New Haven, Connecticut; my father Leonard Pardee was a carriage manufacture, and he was married to my mother Sarah Burns. We were staying at the Kneeland Townsend house, I was passionately fond of Gothic architecture, and had often admired this window, but I had thought had never seen it look do beautiful before. The mansion’s history dated back to the founding of the New Haven Colony in the 1630s. It was the Townsend mansion, my dear, that I remember we took of last walk on East Shore—my mother, Mr. William Winchester, and I—before she went back home our home at 186 Sherman Avenue. She was very restless to go, being too delicate for the Townsend gaieties. Besides, she had a large family a home, of which I was the second youngest. My dear mother had gone about with me, taken me to all the shows and sighs that I, a hearty and happy girl, longed to see, and entered into them with almost as great enjoyment as my own. But tonight she was pale, rather grave, and steadfastly bent on retuning home. We did all we could to persuade her to the contrary, for on the next night but one was to have been the crowing treat of all our New Haven pleasures: we were to see Halmet at the Bethel Opera House, with Edward O’ Connor Terry and Adelaide Neilson! Think of that, my dear. Ah! you have no such sights now. Even my grave father longed to go, and urged in his mild way that we should put off our departure. But my mother was determined. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

‘It had never crossed my mind to wish to part from her, or to enjoy any pleasure without her. Though my lips said nothing, perhaps my sad eyes said only too much, and my mother felt it. She walked with us a few yards, slowly and thoughtfully. I could see her now, with her pale face, tired face, under the cherry-coloured ribbons of her hood. She had been very handsome as a young woman, and was most sweet-looking still—my dear, good mother!

‘Mr. Winchester overwhelmed my mother with his delight and gratitude. She walked up and down for some time longer, leaning on his arm—she was very fond of him; then stood looking on the beach, upwards and downwards.

‘“I suppose this is my last walk in New Haven. Thank you for all the care you have taken of me. And when I am gone home—mind, mind, William, that you take special care of Sarah.’’

‘These words, and the tone in which they were spoken, fixed themselves on my mind—first, from gratitude, not unmingled with regret, as if I had not been so considerate to her as she to me afterwards—But we often err, my dear, in dwelling too much on a word. We finite creatures have only to deal with ‘’now’’—nothing whatever to do with ‘’afterwards.’’ In this case, I have ceased to blame myself or others. Whatever was, being past, was right to be, and could not have been otherwise. My mother went home next morning, alone. We were to follow in a few days, though she would not allow us to fix any time. Her departure was so hurried that I remember nothing about it, save her answer to my father’ urgent desire—almost command—that if anything was amiss, she would instantly let him know. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

‘We went to the play. Ah, you know nothing of what a play is, now-a-days. You never saw Lilian Adelaide Neilson and Edward O’Connor Terry. Though in dresses and shows it was far inferior to the Hamlet you took me to see last week, my dear—and though I perfectly well remember being on the point of laughing when in the most solemn scene, it became clearly evident that the Ghost has been drinking. Strangely enough, no after events connected therewith—nothing subsequent ever drove from my mind the vivid impression of this first play. Strange, also, that the play should have been Hamlet. Do you think that Shakespeare believed in—in what people call “ghost”?’

I could not say; but I thought Mrs. Winchester’s ghost a very long in coming. She was visibly affected, and it was not without an effort that she proceeded in her story.

 ‘I wish you to understand exactly my position that night—a young girl, her head full of enchantment of the stage—her heart of something not less engrossing. Mr. Winchester had supped with us, leaving us both in the best of spirits; indeed my father had gone to bed, laughing heartily at the remembrance of he antics of Mr. Grimaldi, which has almost obliterated the Queen of Hamlet from his memory, on which he ridiculous always took a far stronger hold than the awful or sublime. I was setting—let me see—at the window, chatting with my maid, Stella, who was brushing the powder out of my hair. The window was open half-way, and looking out on East Shore; and the summer night being very warm and starry, made it almost like sitting out of doors. There was none of the awe given by the solitude of a midnight closed room, when every sound is magnified, and every shadow seems alive. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

‘As I said, we had been chatting and laughing; for Stella and I were both very young, and she had a sweetheart, too. She, like every one of our household, was a warm admirer of Mr. Winchester. I had just been half scolding, half smiling at her praises of him, when St. Paul’s great clock came booming over the silent ocean.

‘“Eleven,’’ counted Stella. “Terrible late we be, Mistress Sarah: not like Bath hours, I reckon.”

‘“My mother will have been in bed an hour ago,” said I, with a little self-reproach at not having thought of her till now. The next minute my maid and I both started up with a simultaneous exclamation.

‘“Did you hear that?”

‘“Yes, a bat flying against the window.”

‘“But the lattices are open, Mistress Sarah.” #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

‘So they were; and there was no bird or bat or living thing about—only the quiet summer night, the beach nearby and the stars.” “I be certain sure I heard it. And I think it was like—just a bit like—somebody tapping.”

‘“Nonsense, Stella!” But it had struck me thus—though I said it was a bat. It was exactly like the sound of fingers against a pane—very soft, gentle fingers, such as, in passing her flower-garden, my mother used often to tap outside the school-room casement at home. “I wonder, did father hear anything. It—the bird, you know, Stella—might have flown at his window, too?”

‘“Oh, Mistress Sarah!” Stella would not be deceived. I gave her the brush to finish my hair, but her hand shook too much. I shut the window, and we both sat down facing it. At that minute, distinct, clear, and unmistakable, like a person giving a summons in passing by, we heard once more the tapping on the pane. But nothing was seen; not a single shadow came between us and the open air, the bright starlight. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

‘Startled I was, and awed, but I was not frightened. The sound gave me even an inexplicable delight. But I had hardly time to recognize feelings, still less to analyse them, when a loud cry came from my father’s room.

“Sarah,–Sarah!”

‘Now my mother and I had both one name. I ran to his locked door, and answered.

‘It was a long time before he took any notice, though I head him talking to himself, and moaning. He was subject to bad dreams. So my first alarm lightened. I stood listening, knocking at intervals, until at last he replied.

‘“What do’ee want, child?’’

‘“Is anything the matter, father?’’

‘“Nothing. Go to bed, Sarah.”

‘“Did you not call? Do you want any one?’’

‘“Not thee. O Sarah, my poor Sarah,’—and he seemed to be almost sobbing, ‘Why did I let thee leave me!” #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

“‘Father, you are not going to be ill? It is not anxiety, is it?’ (for that was the time when he wanted my mother most, and indeed, when he was wholly unmanageable by any one but her.)

‘“Go away. Get to thy bed, girl; I don’t want ‘ee.’

‘I thought he was angry with me for having been in some sort the cause of our delay, and retired very miserable. Stella and I sat up a good while longer, discussing the dreary prospect of my father’s having a fit of the anxiety here at the Townsend estate lodgings, with only us to nurse him, and my mother away. Our alarm was so great that we quite forgot the curious circumstances which had first attracted us, till Stella spoke up, form her bed room.

‘“I hope master beant going to be very ill, and that—you know—came for a warning. Do’ ee think it was a bird, Mistress Sarah?’”

‘”Very likely. Now, Stella, let us go to sleep.”

‘But I did not, for all night I heard my father groaning at intervals. I was certain it was the anxiety, and wished from the bottom of my heart that we had done home with mother. What was my surprise when, quite early, I heard him rise and go down, just as if nothing was ailing him! I found him sitting at the breakfast-table in his travelling coat, looking very distraught and miserable, but evidently bent on a journey. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

‘“Father, you are not going to the manor at Sherman Avenue?”

‘“Yes, I be.”

‘ “Not till the evening coach starts,” I cried, alarmed. “We can’t, you know?”

‘“I’ll take a post-chaise, then. We must be off in an hour.”

‘An hour! The cruel pain of parting—(my dear, I believe I used to feel things keenly when I was young)—shot through me—through and through. A single hour, and I should have said goodbye to William—one of those heart-breaking farewells when we seem to leave half of our poor young life behind us, forgetting that the only real parting is when there is no love left to part from. A few years, and I wondered how I could have crept away and wept in such intolerable agony at the mere bidding goodbye to William—William, who loved me. Every minute seemed a day till he came in, as usual, to breakfast. My red eyes and my father’s headaches explained all.

‘“Doctor Hooker, you are not going?”

‘ “Yes, I be,” repeated my father. He sat moodily leaning on the table—would not taste his breakfast. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

‘“Not till the night coach, surely? I was to take you and Mistress Sarah to see Mr. Gilbert Stuart, the Legislature’s commissioned painter.”

‘“Let the Legislature and painters alone lad; I be going home to my Sarah.”

‘Mr. Winchester used many arguments, gay and grave, upon which hung with earnest conviction and hope. He made things so clear always; he was a man of bright parts, and had great influence over my father.

‘“Sarah,” he whispered, “help me to persuade the Doctor. It is so little time I beg for, only a few hours; and before so long a parting.”

Ay, longer than he thought, or I.

‘“Children,” cried my father at last, “you are a couple of love birds. Wait till you have been married twenty years. I must go to my Sarah. I know there is something amiss at home.”

#RandolphHarris 15 of 21

‘I should have felt alarmed, but I saw Mr. Winchester’s smile; and besides, I was yet glowing under his fond look, as my father spoke of our being “married twenty years.”

‘“Father, you have surely no reason for thinking this? If you have, tell us.”

‘My father just lifted his head, and looked me woefully in the face.

‘“Sarah, last night, as sure as I see you now, I saw your mother.”

‘“Is that all?” cried Mr. Winchester laughing; “why, my good sir, of course you did; you were dreaming.”

‘ “I had not gone to sleep.”

‘“How did you see her?”

‘“Coming into the room just as she used to do in the bedroom at home with the candle in her hand and the baby asleep on her arm.”

#RandolphHarris 16 of 21

‘“Did she speak?” asked Mr. Winchester, with another and rather youthful smile; “remember, you saw Hamlet last night. Indeed, sir—indeed, Sarah—it was a mere dream. I do not believe in ghosts; it is not possible, it is against human wisdom—nay, even Divinity itself.”

‘William spoke so earnestly, so justly, so affectionately, that perforce I agreed; and even my father became to feel rather uncertain. He, a businessman, the head of a family, to yield o a mere superstitious fancy, springing probably from a hot supper and an over excited brain! To the same cause Mr. Winchester attributed the other incident, which somewhat hesitatingly I told him.

‘“Dear, it was a bird; nothing but a bird. One flew in at my window last spring; it had hurt itself, and I kept it, and nursed it, and petted it. It was such a pretty, gentle little thing, it put me in mind of Sarah.”

‘“Did it?” said I.

‘“And at last it got well and flew away.”

‘“Ah! that was not like Sarah.” #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

‘Thus, my father being persuaded, it was not hard to persuade me. We settled to remain till evening. William and I, with my maid Stella, went about together, chiefly in Mr. Kneeland Townsend’s Gallery, and in the quiet shade of our favourite East Shore location. And if for those four stolen hours, and the sweetness in them, I afterwards suffered untold remorse and bitterness, I have entirely forgiven myself, as I know my dear mother would have forgiven me, long ago.’

Mrs. Winchester stopped, wiped her eyes, and then continued—speaking more in the matter-of-fact way that seniors speak than she had been lately doing.

‘Well, my dear, where was I?’

‘On the harbourside East Shore Park.’

‘Yes, yes. Well, we came home to dinner. My father always enjoyed his dinner, and his nap afterwards; he had nearly recovered himself now: only looked tired from loss of rest. William and I sat in the window, watching the barges and wherries down the harbour; steamers were still new technology then, you know. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

‘Some one knocked at the door with a message for my father, but he slept so heavily he did not hear. Mr. Winchester went to see what it was; I stood at the window. I remember mechanically watching the red sail of a Margate hoy that was going down the river, and thinking with a sharp pang how dark the room seemed, in a moment, with William not there.

‘Re-entering, after a somewhat long absence, he never looked at me, but went straight to my father.

‘“Sir, it is almost time for you to start” (oh! William). “There is a coach at the door; and, pardon me, but I think you should travel quickly.”

‘My father sprang to his feet.

‘“Dear sir, indeed there is no need for anxiety now; but I have received news. You have to get home, sir!”

‘“Sarah, my Sarah!” Without another word my father rushed away without his hat, leaped into the post-chaise that was waiting, and drove off.

#RandolphHarris 19 of 21

‘“William!” I gasped.

‘“My poor little girl—my own Sarah!”

‘By the tenderness of his embrace, not lover-like, but brother-like—by his tears, for I could feel them on my neck—I knew, as well as if he had told me, that I should never see my dear mother any more.’

‘She had died at home in bed,’ counited the Mistress after a long pause—‘died at night, at the very hour and minute when I had heard the tapping on the window-pane, and my father had thought he saw her coming into his room with a baby on her arm, perhaps to remind them of when they were young and in love and had their first child. A parting memory for him to hold in his imagination until they were reunited in Heaven.’

‘What a strange story!’

‘I do not ask you to believe in it. How and why and what it was I cannot tell; perhaps it was foreshadowing my life. I only know it assuredly was so.’ #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

‘And Mr. Winchester?’ I enquired, after some hesitation.

The Mistress shook her head. ‘Ah, my dear, you will soon learn how very, very seldom one marries one’s first love, but I did. However, something unspeakable happened to the love of my life and my baby girl. My family was cursed. Don’t’ blame him; it was not his fault. Don’t blame him—my dear—don’t blame him. It was as well perhaps, as things turned out.’ I am going to plant a heart in the Earth, water it with love from a vein. I am going to praise it with the push of muscle and care for it in the sound of all dimensions. I am going to leave a heart in the Earth so it may grow and flower, a heart that throbs with longing that adores everything green, that will be strength and nourishment for birds, that will be the sap of plants and mountains. We will revere Thee and sanctify Thee in the mystic utterance of the holy seraphim who hallow Thy name in the sanctuary described in the vision of Thy prophet: And the seraphim called unto one another saying: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole Earth is full of His glory. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21

Sarah Winchester is a very mysterious lady, and perhaps her haunting started in New Haven, at the time she met William Winchester. It is also possible that the Townsend Estate in New Haven was the inspiration for her glorious mansion, or maybe it was the mansion on Sherman avenue, or may both? But no one will ever know for sure. All we know is the occult dazzles so many. The Winchester Mansion has gone through many changes throughout the centuries.

MANSION TOUR

Mansion Tours have been built with social distancing protocols in mind, with one way tour paths and features the larger rooms in the mansion.  Guests will be able to experience the house like never before, with ample space and time in each room. The Mansion Tour ticket also includes access to the Victorian Gardens. Unlock the secrets of the Winchester Mystery House learn about Sarah Winchester’s vast Estate with all-new audio and content.

Advance ticket purchase is required as capacity is very limited. Tickets may be purchased online at http://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com. To limit one on one contact, tickets will not be sold onsite. https://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/tours/https://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/tours/