There Is No Unbelief
him in the same way and added to his British rival’s already plethoric list.
Consider, too, the trusting nature of the editor of the Farmer’s Advocate, who apparently never suspected that his favorite contributor was a thief, in spite of the activities of that other editor in Wisconsin.
Consider, finally, the impossibility of both the above stories being true; and yet, in spite of them, there is every reason to believe both that McCreery wrote “There Is No Death,” and that Mrs. Case wrote “There Is No Unbelief.”
Their mistake seems to have been that they were overeager to prove it; or perhaps it was only Mrs. Case who was overeager, for McCreery promulgated the story first. It was originally told by him in 1869, and repeated ad infinitum until he died. Whether he invented Bulmer will never be known. Perhaps not, since the thing might have happened once. But it is inconceivable that it should have happened twice in exactly the same way. Undoubtedly Mrs. Case had read McCreery’s story somewhere and adopted it, consciously or unconsciously, as her own. She was nearly seventy years old when her story was published in the Free Press, and perhaps her mind had failed a little.
Biographical data about Lizzie York Case are exceedingly scant. In 1905 she visited at Oak
87
