There Is a River

by Thomas Sugrue

  “It certainly does,” Gertrude said.

  The discussion lasted until past midnight. Next day it was resumed. Thereafter, at meals and in the evenings, reincarnation and Life Readings were the subjects of conversation.

  Hugh Lynn remained skeptical. To him it all smacked of occultism, and occultism was something he associated with shady fortunetellers, women who believed in theosophy, and Hindus wearing turbans and bending over crystal balls.

  Yet the reasonableness of the theory pounded away at him and he found that, skeptical as he was, the thing was changing his life. When he saw an ill-tempered boy, or an awkward boy, or a crippled boy, he immediately thought of karma. His attitude toward the boy was shaped by the thought that the boy was paying for something, and should therefore be helped and cheered. Quite suddenly he found himself understanding and wanting to help the unfortunate and handicapped.

  Through a friend of Lammers’s, a scholarship had been secured for him at Moraine Park, a fashionable private high school. Progressive education had been installed at Moraine Park, and there was a grammar school section which his brother Ecken, now nearly six, attended.

  This was the only part of Lammers’s plans which he was able to carry out. The boys had the best schooling available, but that was as far as the well-being of the family went. Money was scarce, and there was never any certainty about where the next sum would come from. The chicken for Christmas dinner was scrawny; there were no adequate clothes for the bitter weather; the rent for the office room at the Phillips Hotel was unpaid for months.

  The man who helped most was Thomas B. Brown, an inventor who was troubled with a tendency to deafness. By following the advice of the readings he was able to improve his hearing, and thereafter bought much of Edgar’s time for readings on the problems he encountered in his laboratory.

  Another man who helped was Madison Byron Wyrick, then plant superintendent of Western Union in Chicago. Wyrick had diabetic tendencies and was helped by following a diet outlined in the readings. In this diet, as in every one ever outlined for a diabetic, the reading stressed Jerusalem artichokes, a natural source of insulin.

  Other men were interested, and tentative plans were made to form an association and erect a hospital. One group, with cooperation promised from several doctors, wanted to build in Chicago. Another group chose a rural site about a hundred miles from Dayton.

  The readings vetoed both suggestions. Virginia Beach, the information said, was the place to build. It gave reasons: Edgar Cayce should live near large bodies of water. It was best for his health and for his psychic abilities. It was also best for psychic work of any kind to be carried on near water. It was best that people, coming for readings, travel over water to get them. It would put them in the right vibration and help them to cooperate in the “experiment.” The attitude of the person asking for the reading was of great importance.

  Moreover, Virginia Beach was overnight from New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington. Many people would find it possible to make the trip, yet it would sufficiently remove them from their occupations and distractions.

  Also, the area of Tidewater Virginia was to be of increasing importance in the future, financially and commercially. It was the ideal spot for such plans as were being formed around the work; they could best be accomplished there.

  The insistence on Virginia Beach threw a damper on the general idea of a psychic society. The groups gradually broke up and only individuals, with their own problems and approaches, were left.

  One of these was Morton Harry Blumenthal, a short, quiet, amiable young Jew. He was a stockbroker in New York, in partnership with his brother Edwin. Through Dave Kahn—who had gone to New York on the advice of readings and entered the furniture business—he heard of Edgar and came to Dayton to get a physical reading. He was troubled with a running ear. Following a series of treatments, the ear improved. He got a Life Reading, and several supplementary readings on the appearances which were listed for him. A boyhood interest in philosophy was reawakened. He began to get readings on all kinds of metaphysical and theological questions.

  Meanwhile his brokerage business prospered. He and his brother were then in their middle thirties. They had come originally from Altoona, Pennsylvania, where their father ran a tobacco store. Morton had studied for a while at the University of Pittsburgh. In New York the boys had worked hard, finally achieving their ambition—a seat on the exchange. Edwin, a canny trader, worked on the floor. Morton remained in the office of the company. On a generally rising market they were slowly getting rich.

  When Morton heard that the readings insisted on Virginia Beach as a location for any hospital or permanent organization founded on the readings, he was enthusiastic. He believed in following the readings exactly, and Virginia Beach would be convenient for him.

  “You must go there,” he told Edgar. “I’ll provide the money.”

  Edgar wondered what calamity would overtake Morton’s finances, now that he had decided to back the readings. Everyone who had undertaken the task had gone broke. Was Morton the right one? Was he the Jew the readings had foretold? He agreed to the change. It couldn’t be much worse than Dayton, and if Morton’s promises collapsed, they would at least be stranded in the spot chosen by the readings.

  First there was a trip to New York for a set of readings on the proposed organization, and to meet friends of Morton’s and Dave’s who had heard of Edgar and wanted to meet him and see him demonstrate.

  Gertrude was now conducting all readings, and the results were better and more uniform. She had decided that so long as the fortunes of the family were with the readings, she ought to do as much as she could to make them successful. Moreover, there was the matter of Edgar’s health. The conductor was the link between the medium and his normal state of existence. One as close and as sympathetic as a wife would make a better connecting rod. The readings agreed with this theory, and suggested that for Life Readings the medium change the position of his body. He had always reclined with his head to the south, in a straight north-south line. By lying with his head to the north, the information said, he would avoid the dizzy spells experienced sometimes after a Life Reading. “Matter of polarity” was the explanation given.

  The readings were consulted for details of the organization and people to run it. In these matters the information was dogmatic to the point of monotony. Over and over again it insisted that no device of law or plan of control could do the slightest good unless there was the proper spirit among the members of the organization and its leaders. “Let those serve who wish to serve; let those be chosen who choose to offer themselves.” There had to be an ideal, and it had to be lived as well as believed. Since such an organization was to be founded on the idea of service, its members would have to be servers. Since its purpose was to enlighten, its members would have to be enlightened.

  “That’s what it has always said,” Edgar explained to Morton, “and that’s why all the attempts to do something with it have failed. The people involved have wanted to get something out of it for themselves.”

  Morton nodded. “I understand,” he said. “It won’t be that way this time. When can you move to the beach? I’ve secured a house for you there. If you like it, I’ll buy it for you.”

  “Buy it?”

  “Yes, it’s on Thirty-fifth Street. The number is 115. You’d better write it down; and you’d better hurry if you want to get there for any of the season. August is nearly over.”

  Edgar didn’t hear the last part. He went to find Gertrude. She sat down suddenly when he told her the news.

  “A house of our own that’s bought and paid for?” she said. “It’s too much.”

  “Let’s hurry and go down there,” Hugh Lynn said, “before it’s too late to swim.”

  “It won’t be so cold there in the winter,” Miss Davis—who had become Gladys to the family—said.

  SEVENTEEN


  They stepped off the bus into a howling northeast storm that had whipped the sea to a white fury and transformed the road on which they stood into a trough of brown mud. Slowly they trudged up Thirty-fifth Street, raising their faces into the rain to look for their new home.

  It stood on a sand hill, on the south side of the street, staring at empty lots and, beyond them, where the coast turned inward, at the ocean. There was no walk leading to it, no driveway. The lights had been blown out by the storm. Edgar made a tour of inspection and reported that there was no furnace. It was a summer residence, with a fireplace for chilly nights.

  The storm lasted three days. When it ended, they went out to examine Virginia Beach. It was a forlorn sight. Down by the ocean the old boardwalk, ravaged by storms, had been entirely dismantled; its wreckage strewed the sand. A new, concrete sea wall was to be erected, but construction had not begun. Most of the hotels were closed; all the shops but those at Seventeenth Street, the center of town, were shut up. Practically all the houses were boarded up. It was September; the season was over.

  The homes of the permanent residents were widely scattered, each one tucked away in a cluster of silent summer homes. There were no neighbors within three blocks of Thirty-fifth Street. The only grocery store was at Seventeenth Street. There was a delivery once a day, maybe.

  After they were settled, they spent their evenings by the fireplace holding impromptu debates. The subject was always the same: “Why did the readings send us to Virginia Beach?”

  The beach for fifty years had been a fashionable summer resort for Virginians and North Carolinians. It had grown slowly, changed little, until the 1920s. Now it was experiencing a boom created by the motorcar. Automobiles made it accessible as a weekend retreat for a large section of the Virginia and North Carolina population, and it became a target for tourists. It was also practical as a suburban area for Norfolk residents, some of whom were building year-round homes. A gigantic hotel, the Cavalier, was about to be built, and with it as a nucleus the local Chamber of Commerce planned to make a bid for the New York trade. The Cavalier laid out two golf courses, set up a riding academy, and fostered an exclusive dancing and supper club.

  All this was just beginning. They could see the foundations of the Cavalier being erected; they walked along the ocean and watched construction of the sea wall; they read in the Virginia Beach News—a weekly—of sales of land and permits for building. But they knew no one, they had no neighbors, and time was heavy on their hands. The ocean was their best friend.

  One day Gertrude, wandering through the dunes across the street, came upon a heap of bricks, apparently discarded. Joyfully the whole family set to work, carted the bricks to the house, and built a walk. The delivery boy for the grocery store reported the event to his employer, and there was quite a bit of talk around town about “the enterprising Yankees on Thirty-fifth Street who are building their own walk.”

  Most of the readings were for Morton. He got them on every subject and on every aspect of the subjects. He sent long letters describing his reactions to the answers given his questions and asked questions on these reactions. His enthusiasm freshened daily. He took courses in philosophy at night, and the problems raised by his studies were presented to the readings. His thoughts, his dreams, his feelings, his hunches, his plans, all were presented for analysis. He telephoned once, sometimes twice, a day. He came to the beach whenever he could.

  Morton worked hard to build his philosophy into a complete system. The complexity of the problems he sought to solve was his chief difficulty. Sometimes the questions were answered, but he did not understand the answers. Sometimes he was told that the answer was beyond human comprehension. Often he was told that unless he incorporated the truths he was discovering into his personality and lived them, they would do him more harm than good.

  Once when he was told that Arcturus is the next stop for souls leaving the solar system and that this star represents the point of choice for the soul’s next adventure, he asked what was the state of the soul’s evolution when it was able to reach Arcturus.

  “This may not be given,” was the answer.

  He began to write a book to be called Heaven on Earth. It began: “The soul of man cries out for peace! The spirit protests, raising each experience to emotional heights, from which sensuous ecstasy we must inevitably fall into the opposite depths of disillusionment and disappointment. Excitement, but not real or lasting happiness, results from a so-called thrill. A sensation may not be drawn out to become permanent, or, in other words, happiness is not to be found by living the present moment as though it would last eternally.”

  —

  It was a bleak winter. There was nothing to do but give readings for Morton, huddle around the fireplace, or walk along the beach and through the dunes. Hugh Lynn attended a business school in Norfolk and was gone all day. Ecken went to the local public school.

  Spring came early, and Edgar got to work. He laid out a garden and built a chicken house. He planted a lawn, and made flower boxes for the porch. Morton had paid promptly for each of his readings, and there was money in the bank. The family bought a Ford and a furnace. Hugh Lynn was told he could go to college in the fall. He thumbed through stacks of catalogues, and then had a reading and asked where he should go.

  He was told to enter Washington and Lee University, at Lexington, Virginia, because there he would meet many boys with whom he had been associated in his past lives, and he would have an opportunity to make practical tests of reincarnation. He was still skeptical of the theory.

  “I’ll go up there and either prove it or disprove it,” he said. Summer, they found, was heavenly at the beach. The houses that had been empty all winter filled with people; all along Atlantic Avenue, from the Cavalier to beyond Seventeenth Street, shops and hotels opened. The population swelled from three hundred to thirty thousand. Hugh Lynn saw so many pretty girls that he stopped being afraid of them.

  He left for college in mid-September.

  On October 20th, Edgar received a wire from his sister Annie in Hopkinsville. His mother, who had been ailing for a long time, was much worse. Would he give a check reading for her? When he woke from the reading, Gertrude and Gladys were crying. “You must go home at once, Edgar; she can’t live,” Gertrude said.

  He arrived in Hopkinsville on the morning of the 22nd. His mother met him at the door. She was pale and obviously weak, but smiling.

  “I’m so glad you came,” she said. “I need you.”

  During the morning the squire drew him aside and suggested that he give another reading. While she was resting, it was taken, but the result was the same: “The soul is about to take flight; do not grieve.”

  That evening she felt worse; she went to bed and did not get up again. She died on the evening of the 26th. Edgar was sitting by her. She was conscious and aware to the last, talking to him, smiling at him.

  “Son, you’ve kept your old mother alive a long time,” she said, “but I’m going now . . .

  “We’ve been good friends. You’ve been a good son . . .

  “Stay close to your father and your sisters. They look to you for guidance. God has given you something He hasn’t given to everyone . . .

  “Be faithful to the trust . . .

  “Never forget to pray. Never give a reading when you can’t take Jesus with you . . .

  “It’s hard to go, but your prayers have been answered, down there at the beach. I know you will stay there and succeed . . .

  “Someone is waiting for me . . .”

  —

  On May 6, 1927, The Association of National Investigators was incorporated in the state of Virginia. Its motto was: “That We May Make Manifest Our Love for God and Man.” Its purpose was: “To engage in general psychic research, and to provide for the practical application of any knowledge obtainable through the medium of psychic phenomena.

  “Alt
hough founded upon the psychic work of Mr. Edgar Cayce, and although the immediate basis of its formation was to further foster and encourage the physical, mental, and spiritual aid that thousands have and are receiving from Mr. Cayce’s endeavors in the psychic—the primary purpose—is education: the education of the individual, that he may attain a closer relationship to the higher powers of his own mind, that he may for and by himself achieve greater development of mind, as well as greater material benefit, for his physical being in the material environment. The achievement of our purpose will enable the human race to use for its own good, in every department of its life, physical and spiritual, an introspective method of obtaining knowledge, that individuals may so develop their intuitional forces as to become able to be guided by a higher dimensional viewpoint, the viewpoint that such intuitional development brings self-realization of possessing. This is the all-embracing aim and deeper purpose, the whole ideal, of this Association.”

  Edgar didn’t quite understand all this (it was Morton’s prose) but he got the general idea, and the idea was that a hospital was to be built and the readings scientifically studied.

  Morton was president. His brother Edwin, Dave Kahn, Wyrick and Brown, Hugh Lynn, and a Virginia Beach real estate operator, F. A. Van Patten, were the vice-presidents. Edgar was secretary and treasurer, Gladys was assistant secretary. There was a board of governors, consisting of Dave, Edwin, and a Chicago businessman, Franklin F. Bradley. The board of trustees contained the officers and governors, plus Gertrude and the wives of Dave and Morton.

  The bylaws provided that any person requesting a reading had first to become a member of the Association, agreeing that he was participating in an experiment in psychic research. This protected Edgar and the Association from any legal prosecution. It had never happened, but with the anticipated publicity it was a possibility.

  Members were to have access to the facilities of the Association: its hospital, library, records, research data, etc. All readings were to be considered the property of the person for whom they were secured, but copies were to be kept by the Association and extracts could be made by students, providing the identity of the owner was withheld. Owners could give permission for the examination and study of their readings or could request that friends be allowed to see them.