The Great Keinplatz Experiment - Page 2

fact was,
however, that Fritz was a knowing and long-headed fellow.
Months before he had lost his heart to young Elise, the blue-eyed,
yellow-haired daughter of the lecturer. Although he had succeeded
in learning from her lips that she was not indifferent to his suit,
he had never dared to announce himself to her family as a formal
suitor. Hence he would have found it a difficult matter to see his
young lady had he not adopted the expedient of making himself
useful to the Professor. By this means he frequently was asked to
the old man's house, where he willingly submitted to be
experimented upon in any way as long as there was a chance of his
receiving one bright glance from the eyes of Elise or one touch of
her little hand.

Young Fritz von Hartmann was a handsome lad enough. There were
broad acres, too, which would descend to him when his father died.
To many he would have seemed an eligible suitor; but Madame frowned
upon his presence in the house, and lectured the Professor at times
on his allowing such a wolf to prowl around their lamb. To tell
the truth, Fritz had an evil name in Keinplatz. Never was there a
riot or a duel, or any other mischief afoot, but the young
Rhinelander figured as a ringleader in it. No one used more free
and violent language, no one drank more, no one played cards more
habitually, no one was more idle, save in the one solitary subject.

No wonder, then, that the good Frau Professorin gathered her
Fraulein under her wing, and resented the attentions of such a
mauvais sujet. As to the worthy lecturer, he was too much
engrossed by his strange studies to form an opinion upon the
subject one way or the other.

For many years there was one question which had continually
obtruded itself upon his thoughts. All his experiments and his
theories turned upon a single point. A hundred times a day the
Professor asked himself whether it was possible for the human
spirit to exist apart from the body for a time and then to return
to it once again. When the possibility first suggested itself to
him his scientific mind had revolted from it. It clashed too
violently with preconceived ideas and the prejudices of his early
training. Gradually, however, as he proceeded farther and farther
along the pathway of original research, his mind shook off its old
fetters and became ready to face any conclusion which could
reconcile the facts. There were many things which made him believe
that it was possible for mind to exist apart from matter. At last
it occurred to him that by a daring and original experiment the
question might be definitely decided.

"It is evident," he remarked in his celebrated article upon
invisible entities, which appeared in the Keinplatz