“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

[...] By now he’d taken two hardcover books from a bag, and given them to me. [...] In one he’d written a note on a blank page to Jane, and to me in the other. Check their phrasing for a close approximation of the way he talked. Fred also handed me a thick, neatly tied package of brown paper and yellow string—The Christ Book, he said, which was for Jane and me, and for Prentice-Hall. I didn’t open it, and still haven’t. When I asked him where he was really from, he said Denver, and that his address was inside the package. [...] Nor was I quick-witted enough to ask if he had a family, if anyone knew where he was, or what he did for a living—if he worked, or could—or how he found our house in the first place. I wondered if he was schizophrenic. He appeared to be harmless enough. [...]

[...] He was a youngish man with a mustache. He came inside the porch and I began to explain the situation to him as briefly as I could. “How did you get here?” he asked Fred. [...] “This is difficult to explain briefly, but he came here from Denver, he said, and he has no money, and nowhere to go when he leaves here. He’s given us those books and manuscripts” —I pointed to them, stacked up on the picnic table—“and he wants my wife to read them. [...]

How could he manage to arrive here without a penny in his pocket? I kept wondering if he had some money and change (at least) stowed in one of the suitcases, but he swore—Seth swore for him—that he did not, and finally I believed him. I also believed him when he finally sat down in the driveway and said he was prepared to die in the cold. He could have wanted to sit down from sheer physical exhaustion, yet I think more was involved. [...] “Maybe he’s from town,” Jane said. “Maybe the police will just let him go and he’ll come back.” [...]

“Oh, I mean you no harm,” he said. “Fred doesn’t. But he’s awfully cold....” When I asked him again what he would do if he didn’t get into our place, he said, “Why, I think Fred will die. [...] He’ll just die. I am Seth; I know he’ll be all right.” And with that Fred sat down in the wood chips beside the stump that Frank Longwell had placed for us when he’d built the back porch for us. [...]

[...] He never did display any anger or outright emotional upset. It was just that no matter what one said to him, he replied in the same reasonable, well-spoken, well-mannered tone of voice, which was quite pleasant. [...] At the same time, he accepted almost without question whatever development or course events took: When he realized he couldn’t see Jane, he accepted it finally, in a very reasonable manner. Beyond expressing disappointment at that fact, he did or said nothing else. [...]

[...] “I had to go to the bathroom,” he said, tightening the coat around him. He didn’t seem to be so cold now. I told him I’d called the police, and he nodded. “Fred means you and your wife no harm at all,” he said, speaking for Seth again. [...] I still wanted to know what he was going to do when he’d left here. [...]

[...] Upon scanning the one manuscript, I found several references to Fred writing on it in a series of restaurants in Pennsylvania—which means of course that he didn’t take a direct flight here from Denver. [...] Maybe he landed in Pittsburgh. Maybe he’ comes from Pennsylvania. [...] Too bad she missed him, for as I told her, he’d make beautiful subject matter for a chapter, by inference. [...]

[...] I can’t reproduce everything he said, and how he said it because of the lack of time. [...] I didn’t realize that when Fred’s Seth told me Fred was getting cold, he really meant it. [...]

[...] He sat in the back seat very docilely, in his white shirt and dark-colored tie. Was he secretly relieved at the way things had worked out? [...] But would society—could it—transport him all the way home to Denver, were he telling the truth about his origins? [...]

[...] He wore a white business-type shirt, a tie, no coat, and gray business-type pants. [...] As soon as he started talking I knew we were in trouble. [...]