In returning to my mental endeavors, I gladly confess that before I had passed out of my teens, my lack of a common school education caused me deep regret, but I braced myself bravely against adversity and soon found myself working evenings over the very rudiments of language which I had spurned in the old Birch School House.

After my marriage to Mary Hoyt, she took me in hand and together evenings we read "The Hoosier School Master," "Belle of Ores Islands," "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and many other good books, after which I struck in for myself with Webster's unabridged at my elbow. By working days and studying nights I soon became conversant with Stowe, Eliot, Dickens, Shakespeare and that class of literature which illustrates human nature. Later I took up the sciences, geology, astronomy and what else I cared for, together with the languages under private instructors, which, with my experience at Evanston, gave me a comparatively good understanding as to how these great subjects are handled in our classical institutions of learning. I never aspired to scholarship; my ambition is to discern truth.

For diversion I am usually working up some subject which, when formed into a book, I present to my friends, never thinking of recompense, as my business affords me more than I need, and as to notoriety, I have no ambition that way.

"Jim Hall and the Richardsons" was my first literary endeavor. It evolved out of my long siege in ferreting out the chronological trail of the Stafford branch of Richardsons.

"Rose Lind" is an assumed exposure of the far-reaching evil influences of the grain gamblers on the Chicago Board of Trade.

"Eight Days Out" is a burlesque on Phillip, on my visit to the Soo.

"Mina Faust" is a long love story.

"Chicago's Black Sheep" is a figurative illustration of the criminal dens of Chicago, and the work of the Salvation Army.

"Personality of the Soul" is a review of the prevailing religion, as I found them in my extensive travels.

"Twilight Reflections" is an accumulation of indications that mineral, vegetable and animal existence are the direct result of scheming and are being held or driven by an incomprehensible will power. Also, that the animal, especially man, possesses slight creative power.

Somehow, I cannot think of the soul as something evolving from nothing, or as beginning its existence with the formation of the body, but rather as descending to or ascending from former existence.

Pre-existence is in harmony with the teachings of Jesus, reason and eternal life. The animated body comes into existence through transformation from pre-existence. If that quality, to present, to consider, to decide, exists it must be a transformation of some kind of pre-existence. To affirm that God gave or created does not imply that He gave or created from that which He did not have.

I will not question the Divine Power or intelligence, but I challenge man to produce an indication of existence only as transformation or evolution from existence. The only way to blot out memory is through unconsciousness, and we know it does not do it. Eternal life is for all, but souls, even in this life, often drift far apart.

The unfathomable, incomprehensible, unthinkable dark pocket of forgetfullness conceals memory but it does not annihilate it. If time admits of no before, space of no beyond and matter of no annihilation, then the law of continuity is established; and if we do now live, we have lived and will live forever. Eternal life must include the past as well as the future. Life from God is a declaration of pre-existence. Existence beginning at conception or birth assumes something evolving from nothing.