I   WAS sitting at the feet of Rameses II, with Adam at my right and his eldest son at my left, when a distant church bell announced rather prematurely the birth of the new year. Near me lay, in their figured caskets, the mummies of the noblest of ancient Egypt, and the great hissing arc light outside the windows disclosed gently falling snow and glinted or cast shadows of snow laden brambles on the scores of marble figures all around me.

"NEAR ME LAY THE MUMMIES OF THE NOBLEST OF EGYPT." source: The Bossier Banner [Louisiana] Vol 41, no 52 (1909-feb-18) p01

      I was the only living being in the great museum of art, Central park, New York city, where I was serving for the night in the regular watchman's place. Could I have forefelt how utterly horrible it was to be alone there with the statues and the mummies, in the deep silence of the white blanketed park at the hour when graveyards yawn, a clear title to the vast museum itself would not have tempted me to spend that night there and could t have foreseen the weird adventures that were to be mine ere morning —   But let me narrate them in orderly fashion.

      There had been silence for a few minutes. The sexton of the distant church finding that no one followed his load had stopped ringing. I looked at my watch. One minute of midnight. Ugh! How shivery cold it was getting! A rat scurried across the floor over among the mummy cases. I jumped out of my chair in pure fright.

      Suddenly there broke out the usual din with which New York welcomes in the new year. Cannon, bells, steam whistles and revolvers joined in the noise making and amid it all I could hear faintly the faroff chimes of Trinity. But only for a moment. For just then from every pedestal around me, down jumped its marble occupant, striking the marble floor with a stony thump, but instantly stretching limbs and yawning with great show of satisfaction at release from the cramped attitudes of statuehood. That I did not die where I sat was the chief marvel of it all.

THE HALL OF MARBLE RESOUNDED WITH THEIR SALUTATIONS.

      "Happy New Year! Happy New Year!" the hall of marble resounded with their salutations.

      The swarthy bronze Bacchante danced past me with her baby up to Mother Eve and kissed her on the cheek with a loud smack.

      "I love you mother," quoth she, "for the spice you put into life. May the apple crop be good this year and every son of Adam as easily led by the nose as ever!" And she danced away again, holding a hunch of grapes temptingly above the longing mouth of the brown boy baby sitting on her left arm.

      "Mother Eve," spoke Socrates, "the remarks of the Bacchante have caused a discussion to arise Between my master Plato here and myself as to the correctness of the theory put forth by Bernard Shaw — to wit, that it is the woman who pursues the man, all ancient views to the contrary notwithstanding. Will you kindly condescend to settle the question?"

      "Oh, how could Bernard say such a thing?" coyly answered the beautiful and still youthful mother of all mankind as she clasped her hands over her eyes. "Why, Adam followed me all over the garden begging me to name the day before I even spoke to him!"

      "I couldn't help it," confessed Adam sheepishly. "She'd walk past so proudly and so prettily."

      "Didn't I tell you?" triumphantly cried Plato to Socrates.

      "What? Wasn't I right?" angrily retorted the other sage.

      "Oh, stop bickering! You never can settle it. Let's have a drink and a song!" suggested Bacchus.

      "A song! A song!" echoed the ghostly assembly.

      "But who'll sing the noo?" inquired Robert Burns. "I got nae drink for singin' last year. I winna do it again. Let Homer, auld bodie, gie us a stave!"

      "Homer! Homer!" was the cry, and great was the hand clapping.

      The white haired Greek bard cleared his throat and after a few preliminary failures in the intervals of which he begged lenient judgment on the ground that he had a cold and that he had not sung in a couple of thousand years, he trolled forth this lay in fairly good voice:

The president sez that the family's number In aich generation is dwindlin' down small. He fears that a century hence the poor babies Won't have any fathers or mothers at all. Ah, then, isn't he foolish foreseein' calamity! How he would scold at our Adam and Eve, Who, with plenty o' land and as sound as a dollar, Only sent for the doctor three times I believe! An' the two lads that lived, d'ye mind, though the ladies Wor scarce as hens' teeth where the race did abide, Did marry and fast multiply —   Oh, don't worry! In Adam's good breed there's no race suicide!

      Eve's little hands were the last to cease in the patter of applause. By this time my terror had been totally swallowed up in wonder.

      "Now you see, if Taft hadn't gone to Cuba," Noah was overheard saying behind a pillar to Commodore Perry as the hand clapping ended.

      "He's at it again," cried somebody, and all laughed uproariously.

      "I would suggest that more consideration be shown for the feelings of individual members of the company," spoke up John the Baptist warmly.

      "Oh don't lose your head over it," advised Shakespeare wearily.

      "I knew you'd say that," retorted the saint. "Bacon said it to me last year."

      "Wouldn't that kill you?" sourly suggested Ben Jonson to Moses, making a motion as of cutting off the great leader's head.

      "Please don't speak to me about killing. Don't speak of it at all. 'Twill only raise Cain!"

      "How about the Egyptian?" angrily retorted the fratricide. "I want you let me alone. I'm the son of respectable parents anyway, and no foundling can" —

      "Peace! Peace!" cried the god Pan, rushing in between them. "I'm going to play you all a tune."

      "How much do you expect for this?" asked Diogenes of me, picking up the lantern from between my feet.

*       *       *       *       *       *      *

      Ting-a-ling-ling — the small doorbell. I shrank until I could feel the cold air between me and my clothes But —   I rubbed my eyes. It was true. Every statue was on its pedestal and in its customary attitude. My former terror was full upon me.

      Tin-a-ling-ling! In desperation I seized my lantern door and started to the door.

      "Who's there?"

      "Open the door, Michael It's bad weather out here. Happy New Year!"

      Mechanically and as if spellbound by the words I opened the small side door to which the tinkling bell was fastened. The dim rays of my lantern pierced a swirl of snowflakes and fell upon the features of a cheery looking man of about thirty, well set up, well dressed, who carried in his left hand a wreath of snow powdered roses.

      "Why, this is not Michael?" he half queried, half asserted, stepping back.

"WHY, THIS IS NOT MICHAEL?" HE HALF QUERIED. source: The Bossier Banner [Louisiana] Vol 41, no 52 (1909-feb-18) p01

      "If you mean Michael Ryan, the regular watchman, no. The poor fellow was taken suddenly ill, and I, who came from college to seek a very different position from the curator, was asked to take his place for the night and agreed."

      "Well, well! And now may I come in, please? It is a regular New Year's morning custom of mine, as Ryan well knows. Yes? Thank you."

      He came in shaking the snow from his overcoat and stamping it from his shoes. Could he come in? Could Providence have sent to me any New Year's gift more agreeable than the companionship of a human being at that midnight hour and in that weird company?

      I glanced at the marble figures. The shadows of flake laden boughs moved upon them again and the electric light glinted blue white from their polished surfaces And they were demure and quiet and still as death.

      Down to the mummy hall, as though he knew every step of the way, marched the stranger, rose wreath in one hand, dripping hat in the other. I followed with my lantern. He paused at one inlaid coffin, knelt and placed the wreath on it. I drew near and read on its brazen label:

◈				◈
			Lady of the House of Im-Ri-Ska Who Lived In the Reign of Rameses II.
◈				◈

      The man rose and walked silently and with lowered head toward the door, I following. As he put on his hat and turned to me at the door, smiling the request that he be allowed to pass forth, an overpowering curiosity to know the meaning of his strange act seized me, and I said:

      "Will you be kind enough to sit down with me for an hour or so? It's lonely here, and, besides, I am all curiosity to know why you put the wreath on the mummy lady's casket."

      "I will linger and tell you, sir, with pleasure," said he.

      He sat in my chair, and I seated myself on the pedestal of Rameses II. Looking up at the massive stone features, he said as if to himself:

      "Not a bit like him, of course, wholly idealized." Then to me:

      "I am a sculptor, with a studio in the city, and am rated as a little lower than second class, I believe. I am to be married today. The bride is good looking and is beautiful of soul. When I come here a year hence she will accompany me, and two wreaths will be deposited on the casket of the Lady of the House of Im-Ri-Ska.

      "My one fad is private theatricals, and I have appeared in many a play at the houses of friends and received the polite plaudits and congratulations of the company. On one such occasion I was introduced to a Miss Mary Mattledge, the daughter of a wealthy produce broker of this city.

      "Did you ever in sweeping past some lovely, or at least striking, piece of scenery in a sixty mile an hour express get the notion that you had seen that place before? Everybody has, and it is the same with faces, but the memory strains in vain, and we are forced to accuse it of attempting to deceive.

      "Well, it struck me on being introduced to Miss Mattledge that we had met before, and I told her of the curious trick my recollection was trying to play me. Singularly, she had the identical feeling regarding me. I ran my life through for her in search of the possibility of a former meeting, but all without result.

      "'Mr. Morton,' she said — that is my name, Peter Morton — 'I have some literary ambitions, and this meeting of ours suggests to me a possible plot for a story or theme for a play. When it is ready I will have papa invite you to dinner some evening so that I may have the benefit of your opinion on it.'

      "So one fine day about six weeks later a polite note of invitation from the old gentleman reached my workshop, and I decided to accept. Seven o'clock found me taking my seat at the board of the produce merchant, between him and his daughter.

      "In due time the conversation led to Miss Mary's literary efforts. She had built a play upon the incident of our meeting. Would I not read it aloud for papa by and by, so that it might have the benefit of my powers of elocution?

      "Who could say her nay?

      "The conversation naturally proceeded on the lines of the metaphysical and mystic. I spoke about having a sad failure of a test in telepathy. A friend and I had agreed while leaning over a certain mummy case in this museum that at a certain hour and minute we were each to write down what the other was then concentrating his mind upon. I wrote that he was thinking ‘Morton and his fads are equally humbugs, and he'll buy a nice wine supper for this folly;' but, in fact he had his mind fixed sternly on the Lord's Prayer.

      "Mr. Mattledge laughed heartily, but Miss Mary looked very pale and serious. Her great black eyes were gazing straight into mine, with a strange light burning in them.

      ‘And you! What did you project into the air for him?' she asked in trembling tones.

      "‘Oh another goose rhyme,' I answered truthfully. ‘Dickory, dickory dock, the mouse ran up the clock, and so on.'

      "‘That was last Sunday week at 9:30 p. m.,' she said, rising and quivering from head to foot.

      "I rose to my feet in astonishment. Was it possible that she had received my test message? ‘My poor girl, calm yourself,' her father said, going to her and endeavoring to induce her to seat herself again.

      "‘Let me get my manuscript, papa, and show Mr. Morton the response he got,' she begged, and he let her go.

      "Sure enough the identical words I had received and had written down as coming from my friend were in the passionate love speech of Judith in her play: ‘What cruel fate keeps us separate through successive incarnations? When you were a gallant Union officer in the civil war, my father a Confederate general forbade our union. In the Revolution a British bullet sent you from me on the eve of our wedding. The great fire of London separated us and long before, many centuries before, were you and I — Marcus Junius Agricola and Julia — flung to the lions in the Roman amphitheater. Ah, how many many times has the cup of happiness been dashed from our lips since your cruel father, Rameses II., exiled you, the Prince Hep-to, lest you should wed me, the only daughter of the house of Im-Ri-Ska.'

      "She had written of herself and of me. She had projected her thought in search of the one soul to which her soul was attuned. It is but a variation of the perfection of wireless telegraphy."

      Morton paused as if overcome by deep emotion.

      "But how did she come to know of these incarnations and preserve her identity through them?" I asked

      ‘Very simply," he answered. "She became interested in the occult in her Egyptian days. A priest of Isis told her to repeat to herself several hundred times a day the declaration that she was Im-Ri, the lady of the house of Im-Ri-Ska, assuring her that sooner or later, she would come across her own mummy and that the haunting declaration forever fleeting through her memory would enable her to identify herself. She must then impress upon her soul the then present personality and so on.

      "She remembers six or seven incarnations but we have been united through telepathy more often than that — more often than that But only to be parted each time."

      He buried his face in his hands for a moment, and then rising and shaking hands with me in silence, he walked to the door, and I let him pass out into the night. I listened to the crunching of the snow and then locked up again and turned to my statues.

      Had I been dreaming about their antics? I don't know. Had I been dreaming about him? No. There was the wreath on the mummy casket, that was certain, and certain it is that not for millions would I welcome the new year in again in that museum.

*       *       *       *       *       *      *

      The morning papers of Jan. 2 told that a well known sculptor named Peter Morton had been killed by a collision between his carriage and a street car the day before as he was on his way to the house of his fiancee.

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