Mirages

Abstract Turning fifty, Kelso planned to enlist “in the invincible little army of Liberalism” by lecturing across the country and publishing his books. A report he published from the road tried to explain desert mirages. In New York City, he met with other freethinkers and arranged to have some of his books printed. In Rochester, New York, he met with reformers and spiritualists. But his health would not permit him to be a public lecturer. For months, the disappointment nearly paralyzed him. On a train trip he saw another mirage and reflected that the weary desert traveler who leaves the true path to pursue a phantom lake was like people “who have left the paths of reason, science, and common-sense to follow the phantoms” of religion. Yet he himself soon converted to spiritualism, convinced that the spirits of his dead children hovered about to comfort him.