Classic Audiobook Collection - Seen and Unseen by Emily Katharine Bates ~ Full Audiobook [biography]

Episode Date: March 19, 2024

Seen and Unseen by Emily Katharine Bates audiobook. Genre: biography In Seen and Unseen, Emily Katharine (E. Katharine) Bates presents a candid, globe-spanning memoir of her lifelong investigations into psychic phenomena and spiritualism at the turn of the 20th century. Beginning with early memories shaped by family loss and unsettling dreams, Bates traces how private impressions grew into deliberate experiments, from youthful table-turning sessions to more formal sittings and encounters with mediums. As her travels carry her across America, Australia and New Zealand, and onward through places including India, Russia, and beyond, she records a series of vivid episodes: strange premonitions, apparent messages, haunted rooms, and moments that seem to blur the boundary between ordinary life and an unseen realm. Part travel narrative, part casebook, and part spiritual reflection, Bates writes with the curiosity of an investigator and the emotional honesty of someone trying to make sense of grief, faith, and experience. Whether you read her as a careful witness, a believer, or both, this is an intimate portrait of a restless mind asking a single urgent question: what, if anything, survives beyond what we can see? For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 00 (00:14:00) Chapter 01 (00:31:50) Chapter 02 (01:11:40) Chapter 03 (01:32:38) Chapter 04 (02:09:06) Chapter 05 (02:22:37) Chapter 06 (02:50:38) Chapter 07 (03:15:26) Chapter 08 (03:41:50) Chapter 09 (04:04:26) Chapter 10 (04:33:13) Chapter 11 (04:58:35) Chapter 12 (05:28:55) Chapter 13 (06:04:48) Chapter 14 (06:27:08) Chapter 15 (07:06:15) Chapter 16 (07:28:41) Chapter 17 (08:08:29) Chapter 18 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Seen and Unseen by E. Catherine Bates. Introduction Many years ago, whilst living in Oxford, I was invited by a very old friend who had recently taken his degree to a river picnic, with Nunum, I think, as its alleged object. Unfortunately, the day proved unfavorable, and we returned in open boats, also with open umbrellas. It generally drenched and bedraggled appearance, and nothing to cheer us on. the physical plane, except a quantity of iced coffee, which had been ordered in anticipation of a tropical day. Under these rather trying conditions, I can remember getting a good deal of amusement out of the companions in the special boat, which proved to be my fate. Our host, being a clever

and interesting man himself, had collected clever and interesting people round him on the birds of a feather principle, and I happened to sit between two ladies, one the wife, now alas, the widow, of a man who was to become later on one of our most famous bishops, the other, her bosom friend and deadly rival, the wife of an equally distinguished Oxford Don. The iced coffee combined with the pouring rain may have been partly to blame, but certainly the conversation that went on between the two ladies across my umbrella was decidedly feline. To pass the time, we were valiantly endeavoring to play 20 questions from the bottom of the boat, and the bishop's widow was asking the questions. She had triumphantly elicited the fact that we had

thought of a cinder and an historical cinder, and the 20th and last permissible question was actually hovering on her lips. It was a cinder that Richard Cor de Leon's horse fell upon, she said eagerly. Of course, we all realized that this was a most obvious slip in the case of so highly educated a woman, but the bosom friend could not resist putting out the velvet paw. A little confusion in the centuries, I think, dear, she said sweetly. The unfortunate questioner practically never smiled. again during that expedition, but a still more crushing blow was in store for her.

The conversation turned later upon questions of style and writing or speaking, and with perhaps pardonable revenge, she said to her rival, I always notice that you say one so often, one does this, or that, and so forth. Really, dear? That is curious. Now I always notice that you say I so continually. The third. The third. cut and thrust came with the rapidity of expert fencers, and this brings me to the real gist of my story. It is considered the most heinous offense to say I, and every conceivable device is resorted to, no matter how clumsy, in order to prevent the catastrophe of a writer being forced to speak of himself in the first person. To my mind, there is a good deal of affection and pose about this,

and in anything of an autobiography it becomes insupportable. The writer happened upon one occasion to be present, etc. He who pens these unworthy pages was once traveling to Scotland, etc., etc. Which of us has not groaned under these self-conscious euphemisms? Why not say I and have done with it? We are wont to exclaim in desperation after pages of this kind of thing. Now I propose to say I, and have done with it, and not waste time in trying to find ingenious and wearisome equivalence. That is my first point.

Secondly, in this record of psychic experiences, I mean to keep clear of another intolerable nuisance. I mean the continual introduction of capital letters and long dashes in order to conceal identity in such episodes. The motive is admirable, but the method is detestable. One can only judge by personal experience. I know that when I read a rather involved narrative of sufficiently involved psychic doings, and Mr. Q, Miss B, Mr. C, and Mr. C's maternal aunt, Mrs. G, figure wildly in it. I am driven desperate in trying to force some idea of personality into these meaningless letters of the alphabet. To conceal the identity of Mr. Brown, who was once guilty of seeing a ghost, may be and most frequently is, a point of honor. But why not call him Mr. Smith and say he lived in Buckinghamshire, and thus rouse a definite mental conception in your reader's brain, instead of calling him Mr. Z of W. And thus setting up mental irritation before the ghost comes upon the scene.

Having cleared the ground so far, I will now mention my third and last point. It is usual when writing reminences of any kind to anticipate your reader's criticisms and try to increase his interest in your experiences by a sort of false humility in deprecating their value. The idea is doubtless founded on a sound knowledge of human nature, but it may easily fall in exaggerations. Nothing is, of course, so disastrous as to praise beforehand a person, a picture, a voice, a poem, a book, or anything else in the wide world, in which we wish our friends to take any special interest. Such a course naturally rouses unconscious antagonism in poor, fallen human nature before we even see or hear the object of our later bitter aversion. But there is a medium in all

things, and it is scarcely polite to put the intelligence of our readers sufficiently low to be manipulated by such obvious arts. Moreover, it has been well said that history in any one human being, truthfully told, I would add intelligently assimilated, would be of enthralling interest and value. If this be true on the ordinary physical, intellectual, and spiritual planes, it should not be less true, surely, where a fourth plane of psychic experience is added to the other three? Then again, there is no need to apologize for experiences limited in interest or in amount. These terms are of necessity comparative. For example, my experiences are limited compared with those of some people I have known,

who have been either more highly endowed with psychic gifts or who have considered it advisable to cultivate such gifts to a high point of efficiency. Or lastly, with whom opportunities for experience have been more numerous. But on the other hand, my experiences have been great compared with those of some people, at least equally interested in these subjects. Geographically speaking, I have been peculiarly fortunate, having had the opportunity of witnessing phenomena in this kind in many countries, differing wildly in race, climate, and other conditions. I have been told many times that I could develop clairvoyance, clear audience, or sit as a materializing medium, but have had no desire to go further in these matters. I have seen quite as much

as I wish to see. I have heard quite as much as I wish to hear, and should be very sorry personally to increase either of these psychic possibilities by the practice that makes more perfect. Some consider this lamentable cowardice and want of faith. Each one must judge for himself in such a matter. Faith in this connection may easily degenerate into foolhardiness. Greater is he that is for you than all those who are against you. He has been quoted to me again and again in deprecation of my attitude in these things. It has always appeared to me a matter in which individual judgment must be exercised, and upon which no broad and general lines of conduct can be laid down. One man can cycle 50 miles in a day and dance all night and be the better for the experience. Another attempting

the same feet, but not having the same constitution, might do himself lasting injury. It is exactly the same thing on the psychic plane. Our psychic constitutions differ at least as much as our physical ones. We may overtax either and with similar consequences. We have no right to expect protection or immunity on either plane, where we neglect the warnings of that inner monitor who is always our best guide. As a final word of warning, I would say, beware of your motives in cultivating psychic capacity. it is so easy to mistake love of notoriety, even in one's own little milieu for love of truth. There is always an eager, curious crowd anxious to get messages or hear raps or to see any other little psychic parlor tricks, which we may be induced to play for their benefit.

At first one feels it is almost a sacred duty to satisfy or attempt to satisfy these psychic cormorants, but later wisdom comes with experience. At one time I felt bound to collect my friends and acquaintances around me and tell them all I knew upon these subjects, and doubtless it was right to do so, whilst I felt that way to quote an expressive Americanism. But the inevitable day came when I realized that I had spent my strength and my muffins in vain, for these gatherings generally took the form of tea parties, not too large to cope with single-handed, say from 10 to 20 people. They came at 4.30 p.m. and stayed till 8 p.m. when most of them remembered they ought to have dined at 7.45 p.m. And went away saying how immensely they had enjoyed themselves and how interesting it all was.

And so far as any permanent good came of it, there the matter ended. Believe me, when people are prepared for development of their finer senses, they will come to you. There is no need to go into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in. If they do come, they won't stay. Why should they? They have not got there yet to use a thoroughly hateful and ungrammatical but absolute accurate sentence. If you try to carry them on the back of your own knowledge and experiences, you can do so for a time, but eventually they will struggle down and you will put them down from sheer fatigue, and then they will run back to the spot where you found them, and then to work out their own psychic evolution either in this or in some future term of existence.

When their interest is exhausted to say nothing of your patience, you will hear that they have called you a crank and lamented your wasting your time over such nonsense. That will be your share of the transatlantic. I know this because I have been there. Let every man be persuaded in his own mind, but don't try to persuade anyone else. When the right time comes, he will ask your help and counsel without any persuasion. Of course I'm speaking only of private work. Lectures and Congresses are of the greatest possible value, for no one knows whom he may be

addressing on these occasions, and the seed may be falling into soil, but often unconsciously prepared for its reception. To sum up the whole matter. 1. Be strong in the conviction that eventually good must always conquer evil, but remember also that you individually may have a very bad time, meanwhile, if you go amongst mixed influences, and evoke that which at present you are not strong enough to withstand. 2. Know when to speak and when to be so.

silent. Three, receive what comes to you spontaneously, but never allow yourself to be cajoled or persuaded into developing your mediumship to gratify curiosity, not even on the plea of scientific duty, unless you are fully conscious in your own mind that this is the special work which is laid upon you. And bearing these three simple rules in mind, we may go forward with brave hearts and level heads on the quest which has been so plainly opened out to us in this 20th century. E. Catherine Bates. End of Section 0, read by Ellen Corcoran. Section 1 of Seen and Unseen.

This is a Librevox recording. All Liverwax recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit liverwax.org. Read by Pieternataer. Seen and Unseen by E. Catherine Bates. Early recollections Having set myself to write a personal record of psychic experiences, I must begin at the beginning, as the children say.

When only nine years old I lost my father, the Reverend John Ellison Bates of Christ Church, Dover, and my earliest childish experience of anything supernormal was connected with him. You had been an invalid all my short life, and I was quite accustomed to spending days. at a time without seeing him. His last illness, which lasted about a fortnight, had therefore no special significance for me, and my nurse, elder brother, and godmother, who were the only

three people in the house at the time, gave strict orders that none of the servants should give me a hint of his being dangerously ill. These instructions were carefully carried out, and yet I dreamed three nights running, the three nights preceding his deceased, that he was dead. I was entirely devoted to my father, who had been father, and mother to me in one, and these dreams no doubt broke the terrible shock of his death to me. How well I remember that cold dreary February morning, being hastily dressed by candlelight by strange hands, and then my dear old nurse, who had been by his bedside all night, coming in and telling me the sad news with tears streaming down her cheeks.

It seemed no news at the moment, and yet I had spoken of my dreams to no one, or fear they should come true, having some pathetic, childish notion that silence on my part might avert the catastrophe. In all his previous and numerous illnesses, I had never dreamt that any special one was fatal. During the next few years of school life, my psychic faculty remained absolutely in abeyance. In a fashionable school, surrounded by chattering companions and the usual paraphernalia of schoolwork, classes and masters, I can, however, recall many a time when suddenly everything around me became unreal, and I alone seemed to have any true existence. And even that was for the time merged in a rather unpleasant dream, from which I hoped soon to wake up. This sensation was quite distinct from the one, also well known to me in those days and later, of having done all this before, and knowing just what somebody was about to say.

Probably both these sensations are common to most young people. It would be interesting to note which of the two is the more universal. I pass on now to the time when I was about 18 years old and a constant visitor for weeks and months at a time in the house of my godfather, the archdeacon of the northern diocese. His grandson, then a young student at Oxford, of about my own age, must have been what we should now call a very good sensitive. It was with him that I set at my first stage,

more as a matter of amusement than anything else, and certainly young Morton Freer treated the spirits in the most cavalier fashion. They did not seem to resent this, and he could do pretty much what he liked with them. This may be a good opportunity for explaining that, when I speak in this narrative of spirits, I do so to save constant paraphrases, and I am quite consciously begging the question very often, as a matter of verbal convenience. In those days I don't think we troubled ourselves much about theories, and when we found that Morton and I alone could move a heavy dining-room table, or any other piece of heavy furniture, quite beyond our normal powers, practically without exerting any strength at all, we looked upon it as an amusing experience,

without caring to inquire whether the energy involved had been generated on this side of the veil, or on the other side. We could certainly not have moved such weights under ordinary circumstances, even by putting forth all our combined strength, and we could only do so, for some mysterious reason, when we had been sitting at the table beforehand. Ingenious theories of human electricity, raised to a higher power by making a human battery, etc., etc., were not so common then as now, and we accepted facts without trying to solve their problems. The dear hospitable archdeacon would put his venerable head inside the door now and then,

shake it did us half in fun, and yet a good deal in earnest, and I think he was more than doubtful whether our parlor games were quite lawful. We were very innocent and very ignorant in those days on the subject of psychic laws, and probably this was our salvation, for I can remember no terrible or weird experience, such as one reads of nowadays when Tyros take to experiments. And yet my knowledge and experiences of later days lead me to endorse most heartily the well-known dictum of Lawrence Oliphant, namely that when he saw people sitting down in a casual, irresponsible way to get messages through a table, it reminded him of an ignorant child going into a powder magazine with a lighted match in its hand. Staying in this same house, I can now recall a flying visit from a brother of mine who had just spent three months on leave from India in America, where he had taken introductions and had been the guest of various hospitable nations. and military men, who had shown him round the Washington Arsenal, West Point Academy,

and so forth. My kind old host had begged him to take us on his way back to London, and I remember well his look of utter amazement, when Morton and I had lured him to the table one afternoon, and he was told correctly the names of two or three of these American gentlemen. I must have mentioned them to my sister in my letters, he said, turning to the younger men. I knew this was not the case, but it was difficult to prove a negative. It was a relief, therefore, when my brother suggested what he considered a real test, where previous knowledge on my part must be excluded. Let them tell you the name of a bearer I had once in India.

He lived with me for more than twelve years, always returning to me when I came back from English furlough, and yet at the end of that time he suddenly disappeared, without rhyme or reason, and I have neither seen nor heard of him since. I know my sister has never heard his name. That would be something like a test, but of course it won't come off, he added cynically. The wearisome spelling out began. The table rose up at R, then at A.

Quite wrong, my brother called out in triumph. I knew how it would be when any real test came. Fortunately, too, it is wild to be wrong. neither the letter before nor the letter after the right one, so you cannot wriggle out of it that way. Never mind, Major Bates, said Morton Freer good-naturedly, let us go on all the same and see what they mean to spell out. Fortunately we did so, with the most interesting results,

for the right name was given after all, but spelled in the Hindustani and not the European fashion. The name in true Hindustani was Randin, but Europeans spelled it, Rahm, Dean. And so my brother himself had entirely forgotten when the A was given, that it had any connection with the man's name. When the whole word was spelled out, of course he remembered, and then his face was a study. Good gracious, it is right enough, and that is the real Hindustani spelling, too. I never thought of that when the A came. I think this episode knocked the bottom

out of his skepticism for some years to come. Even now, this case precludes, ordinary and conscious telepathy. Mr. Podmore would be reduced to explaining that the Hindustani spelling was latent in my brother's consciousness, though his normal self-reputated it. Another curious incident, still more difficult to explain upon the thought transference theory, unless we stretched to include a possible impact of all thoughts, at all times and from all quarters of the globe, upon everyone else's brain, occurred under the same hospitable roof.

One of the Archdeacon's nieces came to stay in the house about this time. She was considerably my senior, and was very kind to me, with the thoughtful kindness an older woman can show to a sensitive young girl. This awakened in me an affection which, I am thankful to say, still exists between us. This lady was considerably under 30 years old at the time, but to my young ideas she seemed already in the sear and yellow leaf from the matrimonial point of view. one must remember how different the standard of age was more than thirty years ago it was also the time when marriage was looked upon not only as the most desirable but as almost the only possible career for a woman so when morton and this lady and i were sitting at the table in the gloaming one evening i said with trembling eagerness morton do ask if carey will ever be married for the case seemed to me almost desperate at the advanced age of twenty-seven

or 28. I must mention that for some occult reason, which I have entirely forgotten, I trusted fervently that a Hungarian or Polish name might be given after the satisfactory yes had been spelled out, but alas, nothing of the kind occurred. The table began with a D, and then, successively E, H, A, V were given. No one ever heard of a Polish or Hungarian name of that kind, and I remember saying petulantly, Oh, give it up, Morton, it's all nonsense. Nobody ever heard of a Mr. DeHav. Once more, Morton rescued a really good bit of evidence

by his imperturbable perseverance. Wait a bit, let us see what is coming, he said. I took no further personal interest in the experiment. Either Morton concluded the name was finished, or there was some confusion in getting the next letters, owing doubtless to my impetuous disgust. Anyway, he went on to say, Let us ask where the fellow lives at the present time.

This was instantly answered by Freshwater, and the further information given that he was a widower. None of us knew any man, married or single, who lived at Freshwater, and the incident was relegated to the limbo of failures. Several years later, however, my friend did marry a gentleman whose name, a very pretty one, began with the five despised letters, he was a widower, and had been living in his own house at Freshwater at the time mentioned. She did not meet him until some years after our curious experience.

About the same time, but in the south of England, my attention was again drawn to metaphysics by an experience connected with the death of the famous Marquis of Hastings of horse-racing repute. As a young girl, I lived close to the moat park in Maidstone, where his sister, the present Lady Romney was then living as Lady Constance Martian. The Reverend David Dale Stewart and his wife, he was vicar of Maidstone and I made my home with them for some years after leaving school, were friends of hers, and she sometimes came to see them in a friendly way in the morning. On one of these occasions, when Lady Constance had just returned from paying her brother a visit

in a small shooting box in the eastern counties, I think, Mrs. Stewart remarked that she was afraid the change had not done Lady Constance much good, as she was looking far from well. In those days, Lady Romney was an exceptionally strong and healthy young woman. She said rather impatiently, Well, the fact is, I did a very stupid thing the other day. I never did such a thing before. I fainted dead away for the first time in my life. Asked for the reason of this, she told us that she and her husband and Lord and Lady

Hastings were dining quietly one evening together. two guests who had been expected not having arrived by the train specified looking up bradshaw and finding no other train that could bring them until quite late at night the other four sat down to dinner soup and fish had already been discussed when a carriage was heard driving up to the door and they naturally concluded that their guests had discovered some means of getting across the country by another line lord hastings said tell colonel and mrs blank that we would have discovered some means of getting across the country by another line lord hastings said tell colonel and mrs blank that we began dinner, thinking they could not arrive till much later, but that we are quite alone, and beg they will join us as soon as possible. The servant went to the door, prepared with the message given, flung it open, but no carriage, no horses were there. Everybody had heard it driving up nevertheless. Remembering the old family legend that the carriage and pair is heard driving up the avenue before the head of the Hastings family dies, Lady Romney fainted dead away,

very much to her own surprise and mortification, for she was, and doubtless is still an uncommonly sensible woman, quite above all superstitions. The episode struck me as curious at the time, but the impression passed, and a few days later I went to pay a visit to friends of mine in Buckinghamshire. Soon after my arrival, I happened to mention the story, and was much loved at, as a superstitious little creature to think twice of such nonsense. Of course, everyone had been mistake and in supposing they heard wheels or horses' hoofs. Nothing could be simpler. And yet, before I left that house, three weeks later, all the newspapers were full of long obituary notices of the Marquis of Hastings. These were so interesting that my friend's husband had reached the

second long column in the times, before any of us remembered my story, which had been treated with so much contempt. It suddenly flashed across my mind. Owen, remember the carriage and pair? And how you laughed at me? They were forced to confess, it was certainly rather odd, the usual refuge of the psychically destitute. A shake of the kaleidoscope, and I see another incident before me of more personal interest. At the time of the outbreak of the Afghan war, in the autumn of 1878, I was living with very old friends in Oxford. My brother, of the Ramdin incident, was once more in India, and had been military secretary for some years at Lahore. to Sir Robert Egerton, who was at that time lieutenant-governor of the Punjab.

When the war broke out, my brother, of course, went off to join his regiment for active service. But at the time of my experience, it was impossible that he could have reached the seed of war, and I knew this well. I was in excellent spirits about him, for he had been through many campaigns and loved active service, as all good soldiers do. Moreover, I had just read a charming letter, which Sir Robert Egerton had said. sent him on resigning his appointment as military secretary to take up more active duty to his country. Yet it was just at this juncture, when, humanly speaking, there was no cause for any

special anxiety that I woke up one morning with the gloomiest and most miserable forebodings about this special brother. Nothing of the kind had ever occurred to me before, though he had been through many campaigns in India, China, Abyssinia, and elsewhere. It was an overwhelming conviction of some great and definite disaster to him, and my friends in vain tried to argue me out of such an unreasonable terror by pointing out, truly enough, that he could not possibly be within the zone of danger at that time. I could only repeat, I know that something terrible has happened to him, wherever he is. It may not be death, but it is some terrible calamity. I spent the day in tears and an absolute despair, and wrote to tell him of my conviction.

Allowing for difference of time between Quetta and Oxford, my mental telegram reached me in the same hour that my brother, whilst on the march, and only 30 miles beyond Quetta, was suddenly struck down in his tent by the paralysis, which kept him confined to his chair, a helpless sufferer, for 28 years. Perhaps now that I know so much more of mental currents, I might have received a more definite message as regards the true nature of the calamity. it could not have been more marked, nor more definite, as regards the fact of it. My condition of hopeless misery obliged me to put off all engagements that day,

and I did nothing but fret and lament over him, with the exception of writing the one letter mentioned, in which I told him of my strange and sad experience. In time, of course, the first sharp impression passed, and soon a cheery letter arrived from him, written, of course, before the fatal day. My experience in Oxford occurred on the morning of 4th of December 1878. It was well on in January 1879 before the corroboration arrived, in a letter written to us by a stranger.

Communication was delayed not only by the war, but also by the fact that my poor brother was lying at the time deprived of both movement and speech, and could only spell out later by the alphabet the address of his people at home. of chapter one. An interval of seven years occurs between the events recorded in the last chapter and my first visit to America, which took place in the autumn of 1885. During these years, no abnormal experiences came to me, nor had I the smallest wish for any. The table turnings with Morton Freer were a thing of the past, and were looked back upon by me in the light of a childish amusement rather than anything else. Quite other interests had come into my life, especially as regards

literature and music, and I never gave a thought to spooks or spiritualism, nor did I really know anything about the latter subject. It is true that on one occasion a curate at the great Marlowe had spoken to me about Mr. S. C. Hall and his researches, and I think he must have given me an introduction to the dear old man, for I remember going to see him with a lady friend. He made a great point of this, somewhat to my amusement, and finding a charming old man with silver locks, a fine head, and a nice white, frilly shirt. He spoke of his dear friend, Mrs. Jenkin, whom he considered the only reliable medium, and showed us some sheets full of hieroglyphics, which he said were messages obtained through her influence from his dear wife. It was all so

much Greek to me in those days, and only true sympathy with the poor old man's evident loneliness and adoration of his wife's memory prevented my making merry over the extraordinary delusions of the old gentleman, when my companion and I left his rooms in Sussex villas. Later, I lived two years with Mrs. Lancaster and her daughters whilst looking after an invalid brother in London, and I need scarcely point out that constant intercourse with Professor Ray Lancaster in his mother's house was not calculated to encourage any psychic proclivities, even had these latter not been entirely latent with me at that time. I heard a great deal about the Slade exposure, both from Professor Lancaster and his friend Dr.

Duncan, who often came to us with him. When arranging my American to my American to in 1885, Mrs. Lancaster kindly gave me an introduction to Mrs. Edna Hall, an old friend of theirs, who had been living in their house during the whole period of the slayed trial. This lady, an American, lived permanently in Boston and, curiously enough, in view of the preceding facts, it was she who persuaded Miss Greenlow and me to attend our first seance in Boston. Mrs. Edna Hall had honored Mr. Lancaster's introduction most hospitably, but she was too busy a woman to do as much for her as her kindness suggested, and she had therefore introduced us to another friend, Mrs. Maria Porter, a most picturesque, clever, and characteristic figure in Boston society in the 80s. Both these ladies

accompanied us to the Sisters Berry. Mrs. Edna Hall had no sort of illusions on the subject. She said quite frankly that she only took us there because it was a feature of American life which we ought not to miss, and which would probably amuse us if only by showing the gullibility of human nature. One is always apt to read past experiences in the light of present convictions. Fortunately, I kept a diary at the time and have a faithful record of what took place and which is still more valuable of the impressions formed at the time. The extracts connected with this seance in Boston and later experiences in New York are taken partly from my record at the time and partly from the chapter on spiritualism in America,

published in my book entitled A Year in the Great Republic. Speaking of this first seance in Boston, I see that I have said, I went to the Sister Sbury in a very antagonistic frame of mind, determined beforehand that the whole thing was a swelieu. accompanied by friends who were even more skeptical than myself, if that were possible. I go on then to describe the usual cabinet and pass on to the following extract. And old Egyptian now appeared, and a man in the circle who had been sitting near my friend Miss Greenlow all the evening, went up and spoke to him and then asked that the lady who had

been sitting near him might come up also, which she did. but she said she could distinguish no features, and only felt a warm, damp hand passed over hers. Miss Greenlow was next called up by the spirit of a young man who wished to embrace her, but who was finally proved to be the departed friend of the lady who sat next to her. Miss Greenlow returned to her seat, furious, declaring that it was a horrible, coarse-looking creature unlike anyone she had ever seen in her life. Miss Porter made valiant attempts to investigate the figures who came forth at intervals, but it was invariably waved back by the master of the ceremonies.

Will that lady kindly sit down? This spirit is not for her. It wishes to communicate with its own friends, and she is disturbing the conditions and forcing the spirit back into the cabinet. There were evidently many old stagers there, who flew up like lamplighters on every possible occasion, with exclamations of, Oh, Uncle Charlie, is that you?

How do you do, Gem? And so forth. One old lady in a mob cap and black gown was introduced as a certain sister Margaret who had taught in St. Peter's School, Boston. She came to speak to a former pupil who gave her spiritualistic experiences in such remarkably bad grammar

as reflected small credit on Sister Margaret's teaching of the English language. This girl told us how anxious she had always been to see her old teacher, who had appeared to her several times in the seance room, but never in her old garments, a sort of sister's dress. After wishing very fervently one night, Sister Margaret appeared dressed in a mob cap and gown, saying, don't you see my dress? I came in it at your wish. Yes, answered the girl, and I thank you for gratifying my wish, since which time she added. I have been a firm believer in spiritualism. A young French girl, in draggily black garments and a shock of

thick black hair, then came forward and rushed amongst us, trying to find someone to talk French with her. My friend Mrs. Hall went up first, and then I was told to go up and speak to her. I took hold of her hands and grasped them firmly for a moment. They seemed to be ordinary flesh and blood, but I am bound to confess that they appeared to lengthen out in a somewhat abnormal fashion when the pressure was removed. Her face was very cadaverous, and she spoke in a quick, hurried way as if time were an object. She said she understood a little English but could not speak it. Her mother had been French, her father an Indian. Unbrave Om. It seemed to me that a good deal of kissing and embracing went on. An old gray-headed gentleman was constantly walking up to the cabinet and being embraced by a white figure,

whose arms we could just see thrown around his neck in the dim light. I note here that the light was much less than with Mrs. Stoddard Gray in New York. The only excitement was the chance of some disturbance before we left. Mrs. Porter became more and more indignant with the gross imposture, which culminated when at length she was called up and told that a young man wished to speak with her. She asserted that it was the most horrible, grinning, painted creature who hissed into her ears. The master of the house begged her to be patient and tried to hear what the spirit wished to say, but with a very emphatic, no, no, no, she resumed her seat, amidst a general titter of laughter.

At the last, we were told that three little girls, whose mother sat near the cabinet, wished to materialize, but found it difficult to do so, owing to the absence of children in the audience. The mother seemed very anxious to see them, but suddenly the gas was turned up and the seance declared over, a very abrupt finale to a piece of unmitigated humbug, I should say. These extracts sufficiently show the spirit in which I entered upon my investigations and the result of that spirit. I think even Mr. Podmore would have considered me thoroughly sound on that evening. I have no doubt that the violence of Mrs. Porter's antagonism and the smiling cynicism of Mrs. Hall in the face of the American experience she had proposed for us, added to my own preconceived prejudices.

I am aware that the Barry Sisters have been exposed, thus sharing the fate of all other public mediums. In the light of later experiences, however, I feel sure that I might have received something personally evidential on this occasion had my attitude of mind given hospitality to any possible visitors from the unseen. The next extracts from my diary refer to a seance which we attended in New York, a few days after our arrival there, and some two or three weeks later than the Boston sitting already described. Our stay in Boston had extended to three months from the original fortnight we had planned for the visit.

I had taken a few very good introductions there, to Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Colonel Wentworth Higginson, and others of the Boston alumni, and as several receptions had been kindly arranged for us, and my name had appeared many times during the winter in various local papers, it would have been easy for the Sisters Barry to find out something about me and my companion, and utilize the knowledge by faking up a convenient spirit, who would have talked glibly of my literary tastes, and so forth. None of the sort occurred, however, although our first seance only took place

a week or two before we left Boston, after my three months stay there. This fact should certainly be counted as righteousness to the much-abused sisters. It was the more curious that our first seance in New York, within a few days of our arrival and in a metropolis where at the time we were absolute strangers, should have been so much more successful as regards evidential experiences. I will again quote from my diary of 1886. The medium visited on this occasion was Mrs. Caldwell, who has since died. We knew nothing beforehand of the medium, who lived in a small flat in an unfashionable quarter. Some eight people were assembled in the extremely small room. All were perfect strangers to Miss Greenlow and me, but a fancied likeness in one lady present to a picture I had seen

of Mrs. Beecher Stowe led me to ask if it were she, and I was told that my surmise was correct. There was no room for a cabinet, so a curtain was hung across a tiny alcove, just the ordinary arch found in most rooms of the kind. When I went behind the curtain with the female medium, before the sitting began, there was barely space enough for both of us to turn round in. The carpet on either side of the curtain was one piece. There was absolutely no room for any trapdoor machinery, even could such have been worked successfully in the perfect silence in which we sat, within two feet of the alcove. The room was about the size of the small back dining room in an ordinary London lodging, say in Oxford

or Cambridge Terrace, for example. The medium sat amongst us at first, only going behind the curtain after a few moments when she was under control, as it is called. A little child of hers, who died some years ago at the age of four, is supposed to help in the materializations, but is never seen outside the curtain. If she came out herself, she would not be able to help the others to do so. I mention these things and the words in which they were told to me, offering no comment, but putting the case for the moment as spiritualists would put it, To do this and then give a faithful and unprejudiced account of what took place

seems to me the only fair way of treating such a subject. I was told again and again that too much concentration of thought on the part of the audience was deterrent. This accounts for music as an invariable accompaniment of all such sittings. It seems to harmonize the circle to break up over concentration and may also, unfortunately, serve to cover the doings of dishonest mediums. It must not, however,

be supposed that in this case the materializations went on only whilst we were singing. This might point to a possible trap-door theory, although in a city where flats abound, rooms, not human beings. There would still be the difficulty of getting your downstairs neighbors to look kindly upon such proceedings.

As a matter of fact, We were often sitting in absolute silence when fresh spirits appeared. I can corroborate the assertion that too much concentration of thought upon them proves deterrent to the spirits, for on more than one occasion I heard a voice from the curtain or cabinet saying, Do get the people's minds off us. We can do nothing whilst they are fixed upon us so intensely, as though thought in spirit life corresponded to some physical obstacles on the earth plane.

The first spirit who came, the daughter of an old gentleman sitting near me, intimated through him that she would like me to go up and help her materialize the white veil which all in turn wore, and which, though perfectly transparent, is considered a necessary shield between them and the earth's influences. On the same principle, I suppose that we should put on blue spectacles to protect us from the blinding rays of the sun. She came out from the alcove, held both her hands in front of her, turning them backward and forward that I might be satisfied that nothing was concealed in them. The soft, clinging material of her gown ended up high on the shoulders, so there were no sleeves to be reckoned with. I stood close over her,

holding out my own dress, and as she rubbed her hands to and fro, sort of white lace or net came from heaven, like a foam, and lay upon my gown, which I was holding up towards her. her. I touched this material and held it in my hands. It had substance, but it was light as gossamer, and quite unlike any stuff I ever saw in a shop. The very softest gossamer tool that old ladies sometimes produce, as having belonged to their grandmothers, is perhaps the nearest approach to what I then lifted in my hands. But even this does not accurately describe it. when long enough she took up the veil, unfolded it, covering her head with it, and saying very graciously, thank you to me. Other spirits now appeared for the other people in the room,

who conversed with them in low tones. All these had evidently materialized before and could consequently speak with comparative ease. One, called the angel mother, the mother of the medium, answered questions on the spirit life in a loud American voice, prefacing every remark whether to man or woman by an affectionate, Well, dear! Her answers showed considerable shrewdness but not much depth and were rather wide of the mark. Nell's Seymour, who appears to have belonged to a sort of Christy minstrel company over here,

cracked jokes all the time with a gentleman amongst the audience in good-natured but flippant and very unspiritual manner, and even the ladies joined in the undignified punning and play-upon words that went on all the time. The little child's voice came in as a relief every now and then. She spoke broken childish English, but used the expressions of a grown-up person. She described several spirits as, chying, trying, to come, but not being strong enough. I was becoming drowsy and rather tired of the performance when my attention was once more aroused by hearing that a very beautiful female spirit

with a diamond star on her forehead had appeared and asked for me, saying she had been a friend of mine on earth, and wished to communicate with me. This was conveyed to me by the little child's voice, the spirit herself not having yet emerged from the curtain, but the medium's husband looked behind it and told me of the diamond star, which he said was some order in spirit life. Having no idea who the friend might be, I begged for some further particulars before going up to speak to her. She passed from Earth alive about five years ago and in Germany, answered the medium's husband, who had conducted the conversation behind the curtain. This was less vague, and now for the first time a suspicion of the spirit's identity crossed my mind,

but I would not go up until a name had been given, and I asked for this before leaving my seat. My traveling companion, a recent acquaintance, had never heard me mention the lady in question who had died in Germany at the time specified. The little child said the spirit would give the name through her, and the process was a curious one. Instead of mentioning the whole name or each letter of it to her father, the child described each letter to him as you might describe the lines of the large capitals in a child's reading book. The father guessed the letter from the child's description and asked me if the first one were

correct. It was, but I did not tell him so, merely saying I should like to have the Christian name in full before giving any opinion. in due time the six letters, Muriel, we will call it, were correctly given, and I had then no further excuse for refusing to speak to the spirit. I went up to the curtain, and she appeared in front of it. I have been frequently asked, should you have recognized her as your friend had no name been given? With every wish to be perfectly truthful, I find it difficult to answer this question, for the following reason. None of the materializations I saw were exactly human in face.

There was no idea of a mask or clever get-up. But if one could accept the theory of a body hastily put together and assumed for a time, the result is exactly what might have been expected under the circumstances. My friend in real life was very pale and had exquisitely chiseled features, and the ones I now looked upon were of the same cast, The height was also similar and an indescribable atmosphere of refinement, purity, and quiet dignity, for which she had been remarkable. All this was present with this materialization. More than this, I cannot say, for no materialization I have ever seen, could be truthfully considered

identical with the human original. I did not feel frightened, but I did feel embarrassed, and naturally so, considering how unwilling and grudging my recognition of her individuality must have appeared. She seemed conscious of this, for almost immediately she mentioned her hands, holding them out for inspection and saying, Don't you remember my hands? I was so proud of my hands. Now, as a matter of fact, my friend was noted for her beautiful hands, but she was too sensible and clever a woman to have been conceited about them, and had too much good taste ever to have made their beauty a subject of remark, even to an intimate friend. Moreover, the hands now on evidence, although well-shaped and with tapering fingers, were as little identical with a human hand as the face was identical

with a human face. Casting about for something to say to her, my first thought was for an only and dearly loved married sister of hers, also a friend of mine, and I mentioned the latter in a guarded way, saying, if you are in reality my friend, have you no message for your sister? In a moment and without the slightest hesitation, she said, tell poor Jesse, going on with a message peculiarly appropriate to the facts of the case, but of much too private a nature for publication. Almost immediately afterwards and with no shadow of suggestion from me, she added, poor Jesse, she suffered terribly when I passed away so suddenly. My friend had died in a foreign country under peculiarly sad circumstances.

She was young, beautiful, and accomplished, a prominent local figure in the well-known capital, where she had spent several winters. Her death was so sudden that there was not even time to put off a large, afternoon at home arranged for that day. Moreover, this sister, by a most merciful chance, happened to be spending a few months with her, out of England at the time. These were all special facts, spontaneously referred to by her, but which would not have been applied equally well to the death of any other friend, even supposing such a death to have occurred abroad. The spirit spoke feebly and with difficulty, not having much strength, she told me. I asked if her father,

who had died a few months previously, were with her. Not yet, she said gently, but I know that he is passed over. She then kissed my hand and faded away before my eyes, not apparently returning to the curtain, close to which I stood, but vanishing into thin air. Some ten days later, My friend and I went again to an evening seance at the same house, different people being present on this occasion. A stupid, unintelligent skeptic woman put us all out of harmony by making inane suggestions, always declaring that she would not for the world interfere with the conditions, but doing so all the same.

The angel mother came again, and rather lost her temper, I thought, with an aggravating illogical man in the circle who hammered away about face. Faraday's opinions on the spirit world without much idea of what he was talking about. Nell's Seymour appeared. As well as spoke this time, he took my hand and kissed it, but he does not leave the cabinet as he is the control. It was 11 years on this day since he passed over, so he called it his birthday. A very beautiful female spirit materialized an offer to sit on my lap, an offer I closed with at once. She was some five feet eight inches in height, and a large, well-developed woman. Anticipating the possibility of her resting her feet on the ground,

and so concealing her real weight, I moved my own feet from the ground the moment she sat down, which was easily done, as my chair was a high one. She remained for several minutes in this position, resting of necessity her whole weight upon me, which was about equal to that of a small kitten or a lady's muff, in the days when small muffs were in fashion. There was an appreciable weight, but I have never nursed any baby that was not far heavier. The veil this time was materialized in the usual way

my friend going up to watch the process. My spirit friend appeared again, and more strongly this time, at a public seance where so many are eager to communicate with their friends, it is impossible to monopolize more than a few minutes of the public time, and consequently any communications are hurried and unsatisfactory, as a conversation with an intimate friend in the public reading room of a hotel would be. I pass over another most excellent and evidential incident as a concession to family prejudice. It has already appeared in my book on America entitled A Year in the Great Republic,

and may be found there. At a third materializing seance at the same house, an excitable Italian friend of mine who had never seen anything of the kind before, came with much the same prejudices as I had felt at the Boston seance, and disturbed the conditions very much by his attitude of determined antagonism, whilst his comparative ignorance of English and my feeble Italian made explanations under the circumstances, rather hopeless. The whole circle was put out of harmony, and a dead weight lay upon us all. The materializations continued, it is true, but personally it was a great

relief to me when my excitable friend left, declaring that everything he had seen was physique's impossibly monage. He departed so abruptly as to bring down much abuse upon his absent head for having broken the battery, and almost killed the medium by his sudden disappearance from the circle. This awful threat had so much power over the rest of the party that we sat out to the bitter end, leaving the medium at last in her trance, with husband and son hovering over her in an anxiety which, if acted, showed first-class dramatic power. Meanwhile, I had made the acquaintance of a very beautiful and charming woman in New York to whom I had brought a letter of introduction.

She has had a tragic and remarkable history, is a woman of great mental powers, in addition to a very remarkable beauty, and as of the highest rank, being an Austrian princess, I believe in her own right, and having spent her youth in foreign courts. Apart from these facts, which had been told me by a mutual friend before we met, I knew nothing whatever of her family history, nor whether she had brothers or sisters alive or dead.

I had spoken to her of my curious experiences, and she had discussed the matter with me from the standpoint of a thorough woman in the world, of strong mental power, who had seen too much of life to be dogmatic or narrow in her. her views, but too much also to believe in what is called the supernatural, before every possible natural hypothesis had been admitted and dismissed as untenable. Sitting in her pretty room, the day before I left New York, we had talked for some two hours on the various subjects connected with life and literature, and before the final adieu, she said laughingly, Well, have you been to any more seances? I said no, and I said, no, and I said, and I, and

and that we did not intend to do so, as our time was now short. A few moments of careless talk on the subject ensued, and picking up a newspaper, I cast my eye over the usual list of mediums, clairvoyance, etc. A half-defined wish to see whether any spirit friend would come to me under totally different conditions and surroundings, and in an entirely different quarter of the city, led to my copying out one of the addresses at haphazard.

I could not prevail upon my hostess to accompany me. She is delicate and dreads night air, but I took the slip of paper to my hotel, thinking that my friend there might care to take the cars after dinner to this distant end of the city. My English companion proved rather indifferent and disinclined towards the expedition. This was very natural.

She was not magnetic in temperament and had no expectation of seeing any of her own friends, although, of course, she had seen and spoken to those who came for me. However, a good dinner at the excellent Windsor Hotel fortified us so much after our fatigues that at the last moment we agreed to make one more attempt, no one ourselves included, having known five minutes previously that we should leave the house.

On this occasion, we were ushered into a much more impovered, posing drawing room, and the lady herself was evidently some degrees higher in the social scale than our first mediumistic friend. The arrangements were also quite different. As we sat waiting for a few minutes, having arrived very punctually, Mrs. Gray looked at my friend, and then described an elderly lady with gray hair who was standing over her, but of course invisible to our eyes. Almost immediately, Mrs. Gray began rubbing her knees and complained of pain in them, adding, The impression of Dropsy is being conveyed to me.

This spirit seems to have suffered from disease of that nature. My friend, who was very self-contained and unemotional, gave no clue to the fact that she recognized anyone by this description. But as we were returning home in the cars, she said quietly, It is curious Mrs. Gray should have described that old lady with gray hair. I suppose she meant my mother. She had gray hair and died of dropsy. On my expostulating with this lady for having given the impression that she did not recognize the description at the time she said with conscious pride, you don't suppose I was going to let the woman know she had described my mother. To give a false impression in so good a car. as determined incredulity, seems not only justifiable but actually praiseworthy to many minds. Later in the evening, the seance being in full swing, a spirit dressed in some kind of white sister's dress, appeared at the door of the cabinet, and Mrs. Stoddard Gray asked if anyone in the

circle could speak German, as this spirit did not seem to understand French, Italian, or English, and she herself only recognized German by the sound. A gentleman volunteered his assistance, but apparently without much effect, and being a German scholar, I then offered to come to the rescue. The moment I went up to the figure, she seemed to gain strength and came quite out of the cabinet, and said to me in the most refined German, any readers who have studied the language know that there is as wide a difference between the highest and lowest type of German accent as between an educated Irish accent and an Irish brogue. I'm the Schwaist, mentioning the name of the foreign friend with whom I had been spending that

afternoon. I know that she today, nachmittag, by my sister were. Translation, I am the sister of Madame Schwitz. I know that you spent this afternoon with my sister. She had evidently a strong, almost overwhelming desire to make some communication to me for her sister, but the difficulty in doing so seemed equally strong. It lay beyond the question of language. She spoke with sufficient strength, and I could understand perfectly her well-chosen and well-pronounced words. But some insuperable obstacle seemed to prevent her from telling me what she wished to convey, and the despairing attempt to surmount this was painful in the extreme. I assured her of my willingness to help in any way possible and made a few suggestions, but all in vain. Is it that you are not happy? No, no, that is not it.

It seemed to me some sort of warning that she wished to convey, and had some connection with illness for the words octoon and krenkheit, warning and illness, were repeated more than once, but no definite message came. I then asked if she could write it, and she caught eagerly at the idea. So I borrowed a pencil and some paper and placed them on a small table in the middle of the room with a chair in front of it.

She came quite close to the table. Five gas burners were more than half turned on, so there was plenty of light, sat down and took up the pencil, but almost immediately threw it down again, saying in a most unhappy and, despairing voice. No, no, I can

as self-nich sayben. Translation. No, no, I cannot even write it, and vanished before my very eyes as she rose from the table.

Now had this been the case of fraud and supposing that some woman had means of discovering the name of my New York friend and the fact of my having spent that

very afternoon with her, what would have been easier than to write or give some commonplace message in a language of which she had already proved herself mistress. The episode was so painful that I decided not to write Madame Schwitz about it. I have therefore no absolute corroboration of the fact that the lady mentioned had a sister who became a nun or was connected with some such

establishment and had passed over. This, however, is much more probable than not because in every high-born Catholic family in Austria. One member in a large family almost invariably takes the veil. I have given the real name in this case, hoping Madame Schwarz may perchance come across my book and supply the information needed. I may remark, finally, that three or four months later, whilst traveling in California, I heard from my excitable and skeptical Italian friend, who had given me the introduction to Madame Schwarz. that this lady had a long and most serious illness during my absence in the West, and that her husband and he had both feared she would never recover from it.

The fear, fortunately, proved to be groundless. To return to the sitting, about twenty minutes after the sister had disappeared, a figure in white came forward very swiftly and without a moment's hesitation pointed towards me, saying, quickly, for you. I went up at once, recognizing who it was but determined to give no sign of this fact. The spirit looked at me for a moment with surprise, as one might look at any well-known friend

who passed us on the street without a greeting. As I remained silent, she whispered, Don't you know me? I am afraid I gave the false impression this time and asked for her name. Why, I am Muriel, came the instant answer, mentioning the name of the first first. friend who had appeared to me, after spelling out her name, at the previous seances held in another part of New York. On this third appearance, my spirit friend asked me to kiss her. I must confess that I complied with some amount of trepidation, which proved to be quite unnecessary.

There was nothing at the least repulsive to the touch, although it was not exactly like kissing anyone on earth, but an indescribable atmosphere of freshness and purity, which, seemed always to surround this friend whilst living, and very apparent under these changed conditions. Another curious little point is that I had entirely forgotten my friend's love of violets. She always wore them when possible, and used violet scent, until I smelt them distinctly whilst speaking to her. It must be remembered that until the day of the sitting, we had never dreamed of going to Mrs. Gray's house, nor had we even heard her name. I picked it out of of a newspaper by chance, amongst at least 30 others. Until past 7 o'clock that evening,

we had not decided to visit her and the seance began at 8 p.m. No single person in the room being present who had been at the house of the other medium some weeks previously. Under these circumstances, it would be difficult to account for the fact of my friend's reappearance on the ground of collusion between two mediums. Moreover, such collusion would not account for the appearance earlier in the evening of a spirit claiming to be the sister of Madame Schvitz. No one hitherto has been able to suggest any intelligent explanation of my personal experiences on these occasions. Conjuring tricks and trap doors are, of course, trotted out by the unintelligent skeptic, but these do not meet the difficulty of an accurate knowledge of names

and of family matters, of comparatively small importance. As I am just now chiefly concerned with presenting incidents in my life rather than in prosing over them, I resist the temptation to go further into the question of materializations, either from the historical or ethical point of view, and pass on to the subject of clairvoyance. End of Section 2. Section 3 of Seen and Unseen. This is a Librevox recording. All Librevox recordings are in the public domain.

For more information or to volunteer, please visit Leibrovox. Papervox.org. Read by Tracy Ann. Seen and Unseen by E. Catherine Bates. Section 3. Chapter 2. Investigations in America, 1885 to 1886. In speaking of clairvoyance, I shall again have recourse to my notes taken at the time of my American visit and on the spot.

I'm quite convinced that where a life has been in any way eventful or at all marked, any fairly developed clairvoyant can in some way sense your mental and moral atmosphere. In some three or four personal cases, the notes taken at the time of such visits paid several thousands of miles apart might almost be read as descriptive of the same interview with different witnesses. My traveling companion, who had led a very uneventful life, seemed to puzzle them much more. There was apparently nothing to lay hold of, and only a very shadowy, indistinct picture was given in consequence. In my own case, the colors were put on freely, firmly, and without the least hesitation,

and in every single instance the sketch was remarkably truthful, and yet would not have described life of one other woman in three or four hundred. That there is a good deal of guesswork done even under the supposed influence of trance is quite evident to me. I am not prepared to say that such trance is, were in no case genuine, but the remarks made during them were frequently of a tentative nature, and the slightest good hit was followed up with as much ingenuity as Sir Richard Owen displayed in putting together his skeleton from a single bone. I was told some six or seven times that my mother, who died during my infancy, was my guardian spirit,

and six times her name was given to me, with some difficulty in one or two cases. but invariably without the smallest guessing on the part of the clairvoyant or any hint from me. One of my most successful interviews in New York was with the Mrs. Parks of Philadelphia, a very pleasant, good-looking, healthy woman, quite unlike the usual cadaverous medium, with whom one is more familiar. Her terms being rather higher than those usually asked in America, where competition has made mediums a cheap luxury. I demure it at first, upon which she said brightly,

Well, don't come if you don't feel like paying that. But I never alter my prices. But I won't take your money if I don't give you satisfaction. Some get satisfaction from one person and some from another. You will soon see if I am telling you the truth about your friends, and I won't take a penny from you if you are dissatisfied. I left the house saying I would think it over, and Mrs. Parks did not at all press me to come.

and from my manner could hardly have expected to see me. I had a most satisfactory interview with her the next day. After referring to my mother's presence and giving her name without any hesitation, she gave me several messages with regard to character, which were singularly appropriate, and finished up by saying, Your mother does not wish you to go to mediums or mix yourself too much up with such persons. It is not necessary for you to do so.

she says you have enough mediumistic power for her to be able to communicate with you directly. I could not help saying, Well, Mrs. Parks, you are going very much against your own interests in giving me this message. I am a perfect stranger to you in this city. I have told you that I am making some little stay here, and as you have given me so much satisfaction, I might have been induced to come and see you several times again before leaving. She laughed and answered,

that is quite true, but I am an honest woman, and I am bound to give you the message that is given to me for you, even when it goes against my interest. Seeing her bright, pleasant home, with every trace of comfort about it, and having received personal proof that money alone was not her consideration, I could not help asking why she continued such an arduous life. Well, she answered, the truth is that I do it now against my own wish. My husband has always objected. to it more or less. He was afraid it might injure my health, and for two years I gave it up entirely. But, she added, the spirits would not leave me alone. It seemed as if I had to come back to it, as if I were refusing to use the powers that had been given to me for the help and comfort of my fellow

creatures. I name a higher price than others, to limit my work and to keep away those who would only come from idle curiosity. She also told me that sometimes she had to give orders beforehand that certain people should not be admitted on any pretext whatever. I can see their spirits round them before they reach the door very often. And I would not have such people bringing such an atmosphere into my house. No, not if they gave me $100 for each sitting. I must mention one more incident connected with this period of my investigations, because it throws a strong light on some obscurity. your problems. Whilst consulting these clairvoyance, in widely different parts of America, two very near relatives of mine were almost invariably described, and the names, one male and

one female, were generally given. The mediums invariably went on to say that the female spirit was further on in development than the male spirit. Now there were circumstances which make this statement, viewed from this world's standpoint, not only absolutely mistaken, but almost ludicrously so. The woman's nature had been a far more faulty one, more impetuous, less balanced, and so forth. The male spirit described had been a man of very exceptional character and spirituality whilst on earth. In spite of these facts, the same mistake as I considered it had consistently been made by every clairvoyant who described them, which, by the by, rules out telepathy as an explanation of these special experiences.

It certainly seems strange that after giving accurate descriptions of the two relatives referred to, names included, each clairvoyant should make exactly the same mistake upon so obvious a matter as the question involved. Some months later, in the course of my travels, I found myself at Denbvreau. in Colorado. We stayed here at first, one day only, to break our journey farther up into the Rocky Mountains. The previous day, when wandering about Colorado Springs, my friend and I had come across a lady doctor by chance, and having asked some trivial question, we were invited into her pretty little house, where we chatted for half an hour on various subjects, including spiritualism.

We gave no account of our experiences, but simply mentioned the fact that we had some interest in the investigation. Hearing this and that we were going on to Denver next day, this lady gave me the address of a young married friend who lived in that city, and who had during the previous two years suddenly developed strong, mediumistic power, but was in no way a professional. She begged us to call, if possible, and I took down the address, but said it was very down. if we could do so in the short time we should have at our disposal. At the end of a long afternoon's drive to the most interesting points of view in Denver, we found ourselves close to the quarter where this young woman lived and called at the house mentioned. The lady was not at home, and a friend who received us explained that it would be

impossible for her to come down in the evening to see us, as she was delicate and not allowed to go out at night. As we were leaving Denver early the next morning, this made a meeting impossible, so we left our cards and a note to explain our visit. Going into the hotel office after dinner that evening, I heard a gentleman inquiring for me by name, saying he had brought his wife to see me. I explained that I was the lady he asked for, and he then said, with the stoical resignation of the typical American husband, I did not like her to come out, but she was bound to have her own way. The lady in question came into my bedroom upstairs after dismissing her husband, and said she preferred a room already permeated by my influence.

She then continued very simply, I do not know whether I shall be able to help you at all, but it seems there is something I have to tell you or explain. When I read your note, I felt bound to come, although my husband tried to dissuade me. It seemed to me as if the spirits came all the way with me in the cars. She then gave me quite a good sitting, but on the ordinary lines, ending up by the description of the relatives mentioned, and by making the usual mistake about their relative spiritual positions. This was all said in trance.

When she returned to consciousness, I said, now, Mrs. Brown, her real name, I must tell you honestly that you have made one cardinal mistake. but I am also bound to say that five or six professional mediums have done just the same as regards the same manner. I then explained, and asked if she could account for such a persistent and obvious misconception. Wait a moment, she answered. Perhaps the spirits will tell me. She looked up with a very intent expression for a minute, as though listening to some explanation which did not cover the ground of her own experience, and then said very quickly, and in a monotonous voice, as though repeating, a verbal message. It has nothing exactly to do with our earthly idea of goodness. Spiritual life can only come to those prepared for it, within the limits of their capacity. The male

spirit you mentioned was a clergyman of the Church of England. He was a very holy man, but he was in some way creed bound. He was a man of strong creed. He clung to his creed here, and cannot quite free himself from it even now, although he has advanced very much in spiritual perception. Now his wife had a very sympathetic, apprehending nature. She can therefore receive spiritual light more fully and freely. That is why she has risen to a higher plane. This is not a question of character so much as of spiritual capacity. And in this, she is the more highly gifted of the two.

She is on a different plane. But she is able to help her husband very much. And in time he will join her and they will progress together. All this was said in a quick-decided way, and without the smallest hesitation. One would hardly have expected a young woman in the midst of the Rocky Mountains to know the exact meaning of the term clergyman of the Church of England, for the word is almost unknown in America, where they speak invariably of a minister. Yet the words were given with quick, firm precision exactly as written down.

Later, in San Francisco, a clairvoyant at once referred to, to my friend Muriel and described her, but in rather vague terms. When I pointed this fact out, she said a little impatiently, as though we were wasting time and quibbling. Oh, well, it does not matter. The spirit tells me you know perfectly well who it is. She has already appeared to you in New York. I had gone to this particular medium with several young friends, who were all in a very skeptical and rather frivolous state of mind. She described an uncle, apparently over the heads of two of my friends, and gave the further information that he was surrounded by water, and appears to have been drowned, also that he was extremely musical.

This was declared to be perfectly untrue, and without a grain of foundation, in fact. The woman looked puzzled and a little mortified, but turned to others in the circle, with better success, let us hope. On our return home, when the young people were telling their mother of the awful humbug. Amid shouts of laughter, the mother said quietly, but surely you remember, my dear children, hearing of your uncle Robert, who was drowned years ago, before any of you were born. He was a great musician. He wanted to give up his life to art, but he was persuaded to take up another profession. I give this as an instance of the hairlessness with which, when we are determined to find fraud, we may do so sometimes at the

expense of truth. These young girls had doubtless heard of their uncle, but the fact had possibly escaped their memories for the moment, and probably they had no wish to recall anything which could cast a doubt on their preconceived notion that the whole thing was a swindle. Before closing the chapter of my American experiences in the years 1885 and 1886, I must give one more personal detail. When investigating various clairvoyance in the eastern states in March and April of the year 1886, I had been told more than once that a guardian band of six spirits was forming round me, and would be later supplemented by another band of six protectors. Whether this had any bearing upon the following incident, I must leave my readers to decide. About three months after this

pronouncement, I found myself at Victoria, Vancouver's Island. Miss Greenlow and I had gone there from San Francisco for a week or two, not being able at that time to make the further trip to Alaska. After a very stormy voyage of two or three days, we reached Victoria one morning about 6 a.m. There was only one large double-bedded room available at the hotel, and we took this on the understanding that two separate rooms should be found for us before the evening. As we lay on our beds for a few hours of much-needed rest, quite suddenly I realized that I saw something abnormal in the air, just above and in front of my head. I mentioned this with much surprise to my companion, who at once suggested the effects of liver after a sea voyage so tempestuous

as ours had been. For the first few moments I was inclined to agree with her, and said so. But very shortly my opinion was altered by the fact that what I saw first as an indistinct blur gradually assumed a definite shape. And I then found there were six little swallows in front of me, apparently connected with each other by a waving ribbon, or so it appeared to me. Opening and shutting one's eyes did not affect the vision. There they remained, both at the moment and for several succeeding years, during which time I was constantly in the habit of seeing my birds, as we used to call them. About six months after their first appearance in the pure, clear atmosphere of Victoria, Vancouver, I was driving across the Black Heath Common on a very bright, frosty day, and looking out of the open window of my carriage. I saw my six birds as usual, but for the first time, parallel with them and lower down, were six new birds of just the same size and appearance, about half an inch between the tips of the wings.

A few days later, the new birds and the old ones had amalgamated, and twelve little swallows floated in the air before my eyes. I could not see them in the house. It needed the background of uninterrupted sky, apparently, to throw them into sufficient relief to be recognized. After some years, this special sign was withdrawn, and others have taken its place. For example, I have seen in the same way, during the last 14 years, an anchor, with the chain attached to it, and caught through one end of the former, a short reaping hook. This, doubtless, has some symbolical meaning. Near the anchor I see a sacrificial altar, with flames rising up from it, then a triangle with loops at the corners, which I was once told was the sign of Nostradamus. Then an old-fashioned mirror in a quaintly shaped frame,

and finally a long staff, with the sign of Ares at one end. I have since realized that this is very much like the staff of faith found on the top of many of the tombs in the Roman catacombs. All these latter emblems come together as a rule, with a connecting thread binding them to each other. I cannot see them at will, but when the atmosphere, is it all clear they are rarely absent, when I have time to look for them. I was much amused once by an earnest Christian scientist, with whom I happened to be spending a few days, on the coast of the eastern counties. She had warned me repeatedly against phenomena of every kind,

spontaneous or induced. On especially bright morning, we were sitting together in a beautiful park, which is thrown open to strangers on special days, and, forgetting my companion's prejudices, I exclaimed involuntarily, I never saw my signs more clearly than just now. There must be something very pure about the atmosphere.

This was too much for my friend, who bent forward eagerly, saying, Do let me try, if I cannot see them too. Well, she tried for the greater part of two hours, but absolutely in vain, and then got up and suggested going home to luncheon. She added naively, I thought they must have something wrong about them,

and I'm quite sure of it now, or I should have seen them. But it had taken her two hours of failure to be absolutely convinced that they came straight from the devil. One sign also birds appeared to me on one occasion only. We had returned to Denver, where Miss Greenlow and I were to separate after a year's constant travel together. She was going back to San Francisco to take steamer for the Sandwich Islands, and thence onto Australia,

whilst I was returning to England for family reasons. I had arranged to dine with the hospitable dean of Denver, the evening of the day of her departure, and I had not realized how much less lonely one would have to have. felt had my journey east corresponded more closely with her journey west, especially as she was obliged to leave the hotel about nine o'clock in the morning. Waking early and lying in bed, feeling very melancholy at the idea of being left behind and alone in the very center of America, I looked up and, to my delight, saw a new sign. Not my little birds this time, but two big, plump father and motherbirds, with a short string attached, not horizontally as before,

but perpendicularly. At the end of this little string was a tiny bird, even smaller than the swallows, being evidently guided by the two big birds, and quite safe in their charge. My room communicated with that of my companion, whose door was open, and I told her of this new sign in the heavens, adding that I hoped it had come to stay. Fortunately, I found a pencil, and made a rough sketch at the time, or I might have been tempted to imagine that I had never seen it at all, for the trio never appeared again,

though I have long to see them, and have certainly required the consolation quite as much many times since that faraway summer morning in Denver, Colorado. On reaching home after this long American trip, I found a budget of letters awaiting me, amongst them a little registered box containing a kind birthday present

from the brother who had been mentioned in the introductions to this book. Was it another case of mental affinity, which had induced him unconsciously to choose a gold brooch with two swallows in golden pearls? Not an uncommon design, but the birds were exactly the same size as those I was in the habit of seeing just at that time. I never told him how extraordinarily apropos his present had proved, but I've always looked upon that brooch as a mascot and have certainly worn it every day

since it came into my possession. End of section three. Section 4 of seen and unseen. This is a Libervox recording. All Libervox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librevox.org. Read by Val Roth.

Seen and Unseen. by E. Catherine Bates Chapter 3, Australia and New Zealand Shortly after the Jubilee of 1887 had taken place, I sailed for Australia and New Zealand. My first psychic experience in the colonies took place in Melbourne, some months after my landing in Tasmania. The wife of one of the prominent citizens in Melbourne had been specially invited to meet me at an afternoon reception in the House of Friends, to whom I had carried letters of introductions, as she was said to be so deeply interested in everything psychic,

and would greatly enjoy hearing my American experiences. Fortunately, the lady arrived late, and we had already enjoyed some interesting conversation before she came. A wetter, wet blanket. It has never been my fortune to encounter. She was a very handsome woman, and therefore good to look at, but in the role of sympathetic audience, she was a miserable failure. She sat with a cold, glassy eye fixed upon me,

whilst I endeavored to continue the conversation which had been interrupted by her arrival. She might just as well have said as have looked the words. Now go on, make a fool of yourself. That is just what I've come to see. The position was hopeless, so I began talking about the weather, which is disagreeable enough from surroundings.

in the hot spring months. It was the end of October, to be useful. Presently, the daughter of the house came up to me and said, Do please go on telling us about your interesting experiences, Miss Bates. We can talk about other things at any time, and we asked Mrs. Burroughs on purpose to meet you. The lady in question had joined another group by this time, so I was able to whisper in reply, I am so very sorry I cannot possibly talk of these things before your friend. She paralyzes me absolutely with any psychic point of view. She is very handsome, and I like looking at her, but I cannot talk to her except about the weather.

How very odd, was the unexpected reply. That is just what Lizzie Maynard said. And I did very much want Lizzie to hear about America, too, but she has gone off to the other end of the room, saying she knows you won't be able to talk while Miss Burroughs is here. This was interesting, for I had not noticed the young girl mentioned, who had not been introduced to me. So when my young hostess asked if she might bring Lizzie to see me at my hotel next day, I gladly acquiesced in spite of feeling very

far from well at the moment. This feeling of melee is increased in the night and was in fact the precursor of a short but sharp attack of a form of typhoid, which was running through the hotel at the time. Being in bed next afternoon about four o'clock, I was dismayed to hear that. that Miss Maynard had arrived to see me, and, moreover, had arrived alone. I had never spoken to the girl, nor even consciously set eyes on her before, but I knew she must have come at least three miles from the suburb where she lived, and would probably refuse to have a cup of tea downstairs during my absence. There was nothing for it, therefore, but to make an effort, order tea to be brought up to my room and send a message, hoping she would not mind seeing me in my bedroom.

She came up, a modest, charming-looking girl of about twenty. I explained the circumstances and apologized for being unable to join the tea party, but felt rather desperate when I realized that even the effort of taking any Sharon conversation was beyond me. Suddenly a brilliant idea passed through my throbbing head. The day before, in planning the visit which Miss Boyle had been unable to carry out herself, She had mentioned that her friend, Lizzie Maynard, was a very good automatic writer. And this seemed a solution of the difficulty.

So when my little friend had finished her tea but was still looking tired from the long walk, I said to her, I am so sorry to be so stupid today, Miss Maynard. I cannot talk, but I can listen. Or do you think possibly you could get a little writing for me? Miss Boyle told me you're out automatically sometimes? I will try, certainly, was the ready response. I never know, of course, what may come, and as this is our first meeting, it may be a little more difficult,

but I should like to try. She found paper and pencil and sat by my bedside, holding the pencil very loosely between the second and third fingers, instead of between the thumb and the first two fingers in the usual way. She continued talking to me during the whole time, and not being well-versed in automatic writing, then. I could not believe that any writing could really be going on in this very casual sort of way. Is any writing really coming? I questioned at last.

Oh, yes, I can't make out the last long word, she said, turning the paper round so that she could see it for the first time. Kindly give me that word again, she remarked casually, and continued her conversation with me. Finally, the three or four sheets of rather large but not always very distinct calligraphy were submitted to me, and I saw that miscellaneous had been the long word at the beginning, which Lizzie had asked to have repeated. The whole message was intensely interesting to me, for it began, I who on earth was known as George Eliot. Now, I had more than once seen, but had never spoken to George Elliott, and

earth life, and although admiring her genius as all who read her books are bound to do, there seemed no very obvious reason why she should come to me. Moreover, Lizzie Maynard, a charming but not highly educated girl, as I discovered later, seemed to know little about the famous author beyond her name. Another and infinitely inferior lady writer had been discussed with bated breath the day before in Lizzie's presence. Her books, just then in the zenith of their popularity, had newly penetrated to the colonies, and were being talked of there as though Minerva herself, helmet and all complete, had suddenly arrived in Melbourne. I had personally been

greatly interested by one of this lady's earlier books, and had a much less definite opinion of the author then than I had at the present moment. Threshing my brains for any sort of tie with George Elliott. I remembered having often stated Oxford as a young woman, when Jowat of Beloyle was entertaining her and Mrs. Lewis in his own home. Of course, there was no question of those faraway days of my being asked to meet such a brilliant star, but it amused me often to hear the dull and uninteresting people of some standing in the university, whom Jowat had not favoured with an invitation, declaring that nothing would have induced them to accept it. This was, however, but a feeble link, even when added to the righteous indignation

when had so often experienced on hearing similar remarks made about a woman too far above her critics, both ingenious and morals, for them to be able to catch the faintest glimpse of her personality. Apparently, it only now lay with me to cease asking why, and accept the goods provided by the gods, making the most of such an opportunity. On these occasions, so many possible questions tumble over each other in the brain that it is difficult to select anyone to start with. At length, I asked the following question. What did George Eliot think of the author who had been so much discussed and so highly applauded on the previous afternoon? Very quickly came the answer. I have no sympathy there, a mere puppet.

certainly this was not thought reading, for my own opinion then was very indefinite, and Lizzie's views as it turned out were as enthusiastic as those of most people in the colony. It was not until several years later that I realized that an extraordinarily apt criticism had been made, for a puppet is made to dance by other entities. I was longing to ask another question, but had some natural hesitation in doing so before such a young girl. Moreover, I feared the answer must almost of necessity be colored by the traditions of the latter, and therefore would be of no great value either way.

But taking my courage in both hands, I put the question. Please ask George Elliott if she now thinks she was justified in the position she took up with regard to George Lewis. The answer came in a flash. Certainly. We are one here, as we will. were on earth. Anything less likely to emanate from the brain of an orthodox young girl can hardly be conceived. Amongst other details, George Eliot said finally that she had come to know my

mother in spirit life, where she was called Stella. Now, my mother's name on earth was Ellen, which has the same root for its origin. Of course, Miss Maynard did not then know whether my mother were alive or dead, and nothing naturally concerning her Christian name. The last statement made by George Elliott on this occasion was that, before another year has rolled by, a great gift would come to me, and I must be very careful to use without abusing it. I was too tired at the moment to ask whether another year rolling by meant a whole year from 28th October 1887, the date of the message, or the end of the current year, namely 31st December, 1887. When the message had come to an end,

Miss Maynard gathered up the scattered sheets and promising to copy them out for me, took her departure and left me to muse, so far as racking brain would allow, on the curious and interesting result of her visit, No cup of tea to thirsty wayfair was ever surely so grandly rewarded. My next adventure had a distant connection with these Australian experiences. I had come out to join the friend, Miss Greenlow, who had been my companion in America, and who had thence sailed to Sydney when I returned for a year to England. She had been anxious for me to rejoin her in Australia, and from thence visit Japan and China,

but my arrival, having been delayed by literary matters, this lady had finally lost patience, and without my knowledge, had gone on to New Zealand and thence, as it turned out, to Samoa. When I heard of the New Zealand episode, there was nothing for it but to follow her there, on a will-of-the-wisp expedition, as it turned out. But fortunately, I was unaware of this at the time. I say fortunately, because had I known that she had already left us to stay, for Samoa, I should certainly have returned to England in despair of tracing her any further, and thereby one of my most interesting experiences would have been lost. The illness in Melbourne already referred to detained me for over a fortnight,

so it was necessary to transfer my New Zealand ticket from one boat to another. So the illness almost must have been one of the factors that was involved in the adventure, as I have called it, for the delay led to my meeting in a friend's house, Mr. Arthur Kitchener, a younger brother of Lord Kitchener, who was introduced to me on a special ground that we were to be fellow travelers to New Zealand a day or two later. As a matter of fact, Mr. Kitchener was on his way from England to New Zealand, where he was superintending a sheep run for his father in those days. He had come out by P&O, and Tren shipped at Mell. Elburn after two or three days delay there. Several other passengers from the Massilia were also

going on to New Zealand, and naturally they felt like old friends after the five or six weeks already spent together. They thought I wanted to be alone, and I thought they wanted to be alone, and so I kept severely to the upper deck, feeling often lonely, and they all remained on the lower deck, wishing I would come down and talk to them sometimes. In spite of these misconceptions on either side, Mr. Kitchener and I became sufficiently friendly for him to give me a very kind and hospitable invitation to spend the last few days of the year at his station about nine miles from Dunback in the Dunedin District. I think I must have told him of my disappointment in missing my companion in Sydney, after traveling so many thousand miles to join her. And doubtless, he felt

some interest in this Stanley and Livingston sort of chase, with two women taking the principal characters. Anyway, the invitation was given and accepted, and he kindly promised to ask one or two people to meet me in his house. All this came to pass some weeks later on my return from New Zealand Lakes, and just before an expedition to the sounds, generally known as the Sounds Trip. This is a pleasure trip, organized for early January, which is, of course, midsummer there. It lasts for 10 days, and gives one the opportunity of seeing to the best advantage these glorious inlets of the sea. My week at the sheep station was to proceed this, as I have explained. In fact, as the steamer sailed late in the afternoon, it was possible to go on board without stopping for the night in Dunedin,

whence we were to sail. But at the last moment, a slight contra-tempts took place. Owing to some delay, the steamer would not be able to leave till Monday instead of the Saturday morning as arranged, and our kind host insisted on extending his hospitality for the two extra days. Now each day there had been some talk about having an impromptu seance, and each day I had successfully evaded the arrangement. I have a great dislike to sitting in casual circles with strangers, and it seemed to me that no good purpose would be served by doing so. It is impossible on these occasions to convince anyone else that you are not pushing or muscle-moving

or generally playing tricks, and it has always seemed to me that the time wasted over mutual recriminations on these points, or the silly jokes that appear inevitable, when two or three human beings at a table get together in a private house might be much more profitably spent. Table turning as a parlor game is about as stupid and aimless an amusement as I know. I represented all this to Mr. Kitchener, but in vain. He had attended some psychic meetings in Dunback or Dunedin, and evidently wished me to reconsider the matter. Also, it happened to be the last day of the year when people are always more inclined to be obliging, I suppose. Anyway, that's Sunday night, 31st December, 1887,

found me sitting down to a table in the drawing-room of that far-away sheep station. As some reward for any virtue, there may have been in yielding my point. I remember suddenly that George Eliot's message on 28th October, two months previously, had been rather vague, and that it might be interesting if the chance came to find out whether, before another year has rolled away, meant a year from 28th October, or the year of which so few hours still remained to us. After the usual inanities, I am sure you are pushing. No, you are, I saw your fingers pressing heavily.

Why, how extraordinary! That is exactly what I thought about you, etc, etc. It was intimated that a spirit was there giving the name of George Elliot, so I put my question at once. I did not mean another year from October last. I referred to this year was the answer. Shall I be able to write automatically, was my next query. No, leave that alone.

It would be very dangerous for you at present. Shall I be able to hear? Shall I become clairaudient? No came the second time. My next question naturally was, then shall I be able to see very soon? yes for you will become clairvoyant for the first time remember my warning to use but not abuse the gift now i must explain that all this time a good deal of the usual kind of joking had been going on moreover i felt intuitively that mr kitchener thought i was deceiving myself in the idea that human muscles could not account for the movements and in fact the very worst possible conditions for getting anything of value were present

So much so that I did not for one moment suppose that it was really George Elliot, or that she would countenance that particular sort of buffoonery. And the incident made no impression upon me at all. I had already taken my hands off the table when someone, Mr. Kitchener, I think, banged it down four times, and then triumphantly observed. Yes, of course you will see somebody during the night, or rather at four o'clock in the morning, you see. The whole thing was a kind of fiasco I had expected, degenerating into a romp, as poor Corny

Gray and used to remark about the Lancers and the stern old lady in the suburban villa. The bathos of the table turning had surely been reached when it came to banging the leg of the table down four times and calmly announcing four o'clock as the time for my first vision. But the remarkable point is that I did have my first vision that night. though it had come and gone long before 4 a.m. It is necessary to remember that the sun rises about 3.30 a.m. during the end of December, or first week in January out there, so it would have been fairly light before 4 a.m. Whereas when I woke out of my first sleep that night, it was pitch dark.

My room was the usual whitewashed apartment to be found in the ordinary colonial station, with a wooden bed standing about two or three feet from the wall and parallel with the only window in the room, which faced the door at the foot of my bed, and was fitted with a very dark green blind on account of the hot summer sunshine. But it was now pitch dark in the room. I woke facing the window,

but turned to my side as one generally does on such occasions, and this brought me face to face with the wall. To my infinite amazement, There stood between the wall and my bed a diaphanous figure of a woman, quite life-size, or rather more, with one arm held out in a protecting fashion toward me, and some drapery around the head. The features were, moreover, quite distinct, and as I afterwards realized, the counterpart of George Eliot's curious and Savannah-Rola-like countenance, but at the moment, oddly enough. I only thought of two things. First, how extraordinary that what had appeared to me

such a silly waste of time overnight should have had any element of reality about it. Then swiftly came the second idea, and how in the world does it happen that I don't feel a bit frightened? I lay there absolutely content and peaceful, with a feeling of blissful satisfaction which I have never exactly realized either before or since that one occasion. Everything is all right. Nothing can really ever go wrong. Nothing at least that matters at all. All the real things are all right.

I can never doubt the truth of these things after this experience. I was promised and the promise has been redeemed. These were the thoughts that passed idly through my brain as I lay, fully awake, and looked up at the comforting woman's figure, for it seemed more, much more than a mere vision. I have spoken of the figure as Diaphanus because it was not as solid as an ordinary human being, but on the other hand I could not see the wall through it. It was too solid for that. Then I remembered a story told in the Athenium, of all papers, and written by Dr. Jefferson, of his experience whilst paying a visit to Lord offered,

and making notes late at night in the library of the house for some literary work on hand. He had finished his notes, put away the book of reference, looked at his watch, found the hands marking 2am, so far as I remember, and had just said to himself, well, I shall be in bed by 2.30 after all. When turning round, he found a large leather chair close to his own,

Tenanted by a Spanish priest in some ancient dress. Thinking it might be a hallucination, he deliberately turned around, away from the priest, rubbed his eyes and then slowly looked back again. Still the priest was there, and Dr. Jefferson then realized for the first time that, although not consciously frightened or alarmed in any way, he was quite unable to speak to the intruder.

So he quietly chose a pencil, sat down, and calmly took his portrait. The priest politely remained until the sketch was completed and then vanished. This story read some years previously, flashed through my brain and I thought, I will try turning around and then see if she is still there. I turned deliberately, facing the window, and then realized that it was pitch dark in my room. Not the faintest glimmer of light came through the heavily shrouded window. Then it can't be four o'clock, was my triumper.

comment. It would have been too disappointing had my distinguished visitor condoned the unblushing, banging down four times of the table leg, by choosing that hour for her arrival in my room. But then again, how could I see her, since the room was quite dark? It was only necessary to turn round once more to the wall to realize that I did see her, in fact, although I ought not to have done so in theory. I saw her as directly as I ever saw a marble statue in the Vatican Gallery by the light of noon. And although I had recalled the Jefferson story so circumstantially, it never struck me that it might be interesting to attempt any conversation and see whether I also were tongue-tied. I did not want to speak. There seemed no special reason for speaking.

It was quite enough to lie there with this blissful feeling of protection and love, folding me round like a cloud with golden lining. And as this consciousness held me in its loving grasp, to my infinite sorrow, the kind protecting figure disappeared, gently and very slowly sinking into the ground on the spot where I had first seen her. And once more all was dark in the room. I lay too happy and peaceful for movement or even speculation for some ten minutes, and then it struck me that I had better light the candle by my side and find out what a clock it might be.

Now, I have a rather accurate idea of time, and can generally tell within a minute or two how long any special work may have taken me. Looking at my watch, I saw it was just 2.25 a.m., so I settled into my mind that I must have seen the figure at 2.15 a.m. or possibly 2.10 a.m. For I think the experience lasted nearly five minutes altogether. Anyway, I felt sure that 10 minutes as nearly as possible had elapsed between the sinking of the figure out of sight and by lighting the match in order to consult my watch. It may have been nine minutes or possibly 11, but I feel confident the time mentioned would be within those limits. Therefore, next morning, when our host appeared and I was chaffed about the vision,

I said boldly, you think at all nonsense, and I confess I did not believe anything that came last night when so much joking was going on, but I was mistaken. I did see, for the first time in my life, anything abnormal, and I repeated my experience, just as I have now written it down. "'incredulous looks greeted me, and then Mr. Kitchener said quietly. "'Oh, yes, you saw something at 4 a.m. I am not at all surprised to hear that.' "'Not at 4 a.m., I answered, but at 2.15 a.m. I made a.m. I made a special note of the time. I was asleep again long before 4 a.m. and never slept better in my life.' He looked puzzled and then suggested that my watch must have gone wrong.

but we compared notes and our watches were registering exactly the same hour within a minute or two. I found out later that having learnt something of the thought transference theory at the Dunedin Circle or Metaphysical Club, which he had attended, Mr. Kitchener had attempted to make me see a vision at 4 a.m. But as he confessed, he had been fast asleep when I did see, an hour and three quarters before his effort started, it would take a very ingenious person to prove that the latter had anything to do with the occurrence. A deeply interesting corroboration reached me, however, a few weeks later,

by which time I had visited the Sounds and many other places of interest and had arrived safely in Auckland in the North Island. On the morning of my vision, I must not forget to mention that I had spoken of it to Mr. Kitchener's faithful Irish housekeeper, whose nationality I know would prevent her from thinking be a mere lunatic. By this time, skepticism had the upper hand, and I was beginning to try to explain away everything in the true Pudmorian spirit. Could Mr. Kitchener or any other person present have to do with the matter? In this case, my blissful feelings would naturally be merely the result of imagination, and easily disposed of on this ground.

So I questioned the little housekeeper when she brought my hot water as to whether it could be possible for Mr. Kitchener or anyone else in the house to have access to a clean sheet or tablecloth and to have masqueraded in the garden outside my room. She indignantly denied the possibility. The linen is all locked up by me. Besides, no one would have been so wicked. It might have frightened you out of your senses, ma'am. Do you suppose the master would have done such a thing? No, I did not really accuse anyone of such a cruel and stupid joke. Moreover, it was a little difficult, even for Podmorian ingenuity,

to explain how man or woman masquerading at a white sheet in the garden outside could convey the fairly solid figure of a fake George Eliot, who stood well between the wall and my bed. and this threw a green blind and curtains when garden and room alike were shrouded in absolute darkness. Foyled in all my attempts to find a sensible solution to the mystery. I determined to write and ask Lizzie Maynard of Melbourne if she could throw any light upon matters, my decision in taking this step being strengthened by the curious coincidence which I had just discovered, that Mr. Kitchener's housekeeper had lived with the Maynard's when they were,

they had had a house in Dan Eden, which was later burnt down, as so often happens in the colonies. Jane had lost sight of the Maynard family for years, and was much excited by my promising to write and tell them of my meeting with her. Of course, I mentioned my strange experience and all the details connected with it, except the exact hour of the occurrence. It was by a pure oversight, as I supposed, that this fact was omitted. I have had reasons. since to believe that I was unconsciously impressed to leave out this special detail, in order that I might receive far better evidence than would have been possible under other circumstances. Had I mentioned the hour of the vision, the imagination of my young friends in Melbourne

might have been at work as regards to the hour of their experience, which was as follows. Several weeks after leaving Dunback, I reached Auckland and received, amongst other letters, one from Lizzie Maynard, in answer to mine. Mr. Kitchener had also written, saying what nice girls my friends the Maynard's must be, and how kindly they had written to his excellent little housekeeper, sending her welcome gifts and saying that her place had never been filled in their hearts and so forth. Lizzie's letter to me began also about the excellences of Jane, and the curious coincidence through which she had been once more put in touch with her. Then she went on to say, It is indeed very remarkable about your experience, dear Miss Bates, but I think you will consider

it much more remarkable when I tell you what we were doing that night. I was spending the weekend with our mutual friends, Captain and Mrs. Boyle, in whose house she and I had encountered Mrs. Burroughs, and Lily Boyle and I were sleeping in the same room as the house was full. On the evening on 31st December, there was a little dance arranged to dance the old year out and the new year in, and at midnight we dispersed, the visitors going home, and those in the house retiring to bed. Lily and I were too much excited to get into bed at once, so I suggested that we should try to compose a letter to Miss Pearl. This being the lady whose writings they greatly admired,

I had allowed them to use my name as an introduction, should they wish to communicate with her at any time. Lizzie went on to say how nervous they were about writing the letter, fearing that so popular an author might not take any notice of the badly expressed letter of two young colonial girls. However, she did her best, and Lily Boyle did her best, and the result was a hopeless failure. Then, continued Lizzie,

a happy thought struck me. George Elliott had used my hand to convey her message to you last October. Might we not remembering this appeal to her to help us in our difficulty? So we gave up trying to write the letter ourselves, took down planchette from its shelf, and started again.

In a few moments, an excellent letter was written, giving your name as an introduction, with all the little points you had specially begged us to remember in connection with Miss Pearl's probable prejudices. It was so splendidly written, and so quickly, that you can imagine our delight. We could not bear to give up Planchette, even after both our names had been signed. And I said pleadingly, oh, don't go away. Do stop and tell us something more. In large letters, as you see, Lizzie enclosed the story. was written very decidedly. No, I cannot stay with you now.

I have promised to go to see Stella's daughter. I remember, dear Miss Bates, that G. Elliot had said your mother's name and spirit life was Stella, so of course we knew that she meant us to understand that she was going to see you. Unfortunately, you did not mention the hour of her visit, but we took the time when enclosed message was written very accurately, in order to tell you about it, and the hour was just 12.30 a.m. Do write and tell us that was the time when she appeared to you. We feel sure it must have been, but our longing to have our idea confirmed,

etc., etc. Now my young friends have evidently entirely forgotten the difference in time between Dunedin and Melbourne, and I must confess to my own amazement when I found that it was considerably over the 60 minutes, which I should have vaguely supposed it to be. In fact, I was rather disappointed to think there was so wide a margin between the two occurrences, until I casually asked a gentleman who was staying at my hotel if he could tell me the difference in time between the two cities. Not exactly I'm afraid, but it is considerably over an hour. Ah, there's a good Atlas, I can easily calculate it for you. He remained silent for a moment, then raising his head said, as nearly an hour and three quarters as possible. This was pretty good evidence of the

practically simultaneous experience of my friends in Melbourne at 12.30 a.m., with my own at 2.15 a.m. in the neighborhood of Dunedin. When I first became acquainted with Mr. Myers shortly after my return from Australia and New Zealand. I told him my story. He was greatly interested, but pointed out that it was useless from the evidential point of view unless I would take the trouble to write one or two letters to the colonies. So I wrote to Mr. Kitchener for confirmation of the fact that I was staying in his house on the night of 31st December 1887 and had told him of my experience next morning, exactly as here related. Then I had to get Miss Lizzie Maynard's testimony with regard to her letter to me, and finally, I think, the testimony of Lily Boyle and her father that Miss Maynard was their guest in Melbourne

on the occasion of the New Year's Eve dance. These letters are presumably still amongst the archives of the Society of Psychical Research, and the story was printed by them in their proceedings some years ago. I may add a last evidential touch by saying that when I met Miss Pearl for the first time after my travels, she referred to the letter she had received, under favour of my introduction, and quite spontaneously remarked upon its excellence, adding, I could scarcely believe that two young Australian girls, as they described themselves to me, could have written such an admirable letter. I did not disclose the real source of the composition,

As the popular author thinks she has no belief in spiritualism. End of Section 4. Section 5 of Seen and Unseen. This is a Librevox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visitlibrovox.org. Read by Alexander Grace. Seen and Unseen by E. Catherine Bates.

Chapter 4. Hong Kong, Alaska, and New York. The spring months of 1888 found me at Brisbane, on route for China, after spending a pleasant month with old friends on a well-known station belonging to the late, Sir Arthur Hodgson, named Eaton Vale, and situated on the beautiful and healthy Darling Downs of Queensland. Before returning to Sydney from New Zealand, my female, Dr. Livingstone, had reappeared upon the scene in the most unexpected manner. Our historical meeting took place in an Auckland hotel

where she suddenly turned up one day, driven back from Samoa by the intense heat. So after some gentle recriminations, she, having supposed a delay on my part might mean an entire change of plan, and I, having supposed, from her letters, that Sydney was such a paradise that she could hardly be dragged from it

even by a flaming sword. We agreed to cry quits and continue our travels together. So Miss Greenlow spent the month of March in Sydney whilst I paid my visit to Queensland, and we met once more at Brisbane to take steamer for Thursday Island, Cape Darwin, and eventually Hong Kong. Only one small matter of psychic interest

occurred during this voyage. I have mentioned in a previous chapter The Little Swallows, which I first saw in San Francisco in the year of 1886. I had been accustomed to seeing them ever since that date, and had been frequently commiserated for incipient eye trouble and consequence by more than one skeptical friend.

On the very day we were, went on board the Hong Kong steamer at Brisbane, a new sign appeared, a single bird holding in its beak a ring with half hoop of five stones, presumably diamonds. I told my friend about this, but neither she nor I could imagine any significance in it. At that time, we had not even met any of our fellow passengers to speak to, for we were all taken up with settling into our caverns and trying to make ourselves as comfortable as circumstances would permit. For a whole week, the same little bird and the same ring were persistently held up before me, and an inkling of the possible meaning broke upon me suddenly.

Within a fortnight of our sailing, this suspicion was confirmed, and the little bird's warning or suggestion amply justified. But that is another story. Curiously enough, the new sign in the heavens was withdrawn as soon as I had grasped its meaning. I must hasten over our delightful stay in Japan, because amongst much of extreme interests from artistic, social, and various other points of view,

nothing occurred which has any special bearing on my present subject. Leaving Japan eventually by sailing from Yokohama to Vancouver, Washington Territory, the old threads were once more put into my hands. We made the acquaintance on board the old P&O Abyssinia of the late Captain MacArthur, a kindly and genial naval man. He was an Australian by birth but belonged to our English Navy and was just returning home on his promotion as commanding. He became rather interested in my queer ideas and ended by suggesting some experiments with the table,

so he persuaded the ship's carpenter to put together a small, rough wooden table. The sittings were held generally after dinner in either my cabin or that of my stable companion, Miss Greenlow. So far as I remember, we three were the only sitters, and I am bound to confess the sittings were sometimes very monotonous, even viewed from the indulgent perspective of a sea voyage. In fact, I can now recall only one incident of any real value. The dear old nurse, spoken of in my opening chapter, had now been for three or four years on the other side of the veil,

but had never given me the slightest sign of her presence, but she came several times during this voyage, and always with the same object, namely to entreat and finally implore me to give up a projected tour in Alaska. Miss Greenlow and I had been prevented from undertaking this, two years earlier when visiting Victoria, Vancouver, and she was very keen to go there from Washington territory on this occasion. I was not keen for the expedition, but had made no strong

objection to it, and it was understood that we should go together. This was a tour which my old nurse now pleaded so anxiously should be given up, so far as I was concerned. It will ruin your health, my darling, she said once more. Don't go there, take my advice. And on one occasion, just before landing, she added, you will find letters awaiting you which will enable you to make other plans. This proved true in a certain way. The first letter opened in the budget which fell to my share, told me of the sudden death of our family solicitor, which would have been a good excuse for a hasty return to England, had any such pretext been necessary. But this was not the case, for my companion, although quite determined to go to Alaska herself, was not in the least inclined to over-persuade

me to accompany her. She was a very independent woman, quite accustomed to traveling alone, and I knew that neither her enjoyment nor her convenience would be affected by my decision, one way or the other. I had no wish to go myself, and moreover, thought it quite probable that my dear old nurse's warnings might be amply justified. But there were other grave considerations to be taken into account, and I still feel that I adopted the right, although not the pleasanter course, when I allowed my fellow passengers to depart east, joking me on my want of faith in the warnings from the spirits, and accompanied my friend very unwillingly to Alaska. My nurses, earnest, and treaties were only too fully justified on the physical plane to

say nothing of the miserable discomfort of the trip, which in those days had to be made in an overcrowded cargo boat. I took a chill in those Arctic regions, which later developed into the longest and most serious illness of my life. It took months to make even a partial recovery, and the effects will remain during my life, yet I have never regretted my decision. This little episode seems to throw some light upon the way such warnings should be treated, to give no heed to them on the one hand, or to follow them blindly, in spite of every other consideration on the other. These seem to me the Skyla and Carreptus of our lives. It shows that we must be must judge for ourselves, we cannot shift the burden of responsibility on any other shoulders.

How could we gain the real education of life were it otherwise? Had I turned my back on Alaska, I should have gained enormously, physically speaking, and yet failed in a moral test. But my dear old nurse, who considered only, probably saw only, the physical evils to be avoided, was entirely in the right from her standpoint. point. The faithful soul was doing her best to shield her nursling from danger. A severe illness was entailed by my Alaska experiences. Livingstone and Stanley were once more separated. In other words, Miss Greenlow was obliged to return to England alone, leaving me to be nursed through a long and painful illness by kind friends and connections in Toronto. One of my doctors,

the brother of my hostess, kindly made time to take me and my nurse to nurse to nurse to York in order that he might put me under the special care of the ship's doctor, and also be able to certify, as required, that I was in a fit condition to undertake the voyage. It was during the day or two spent in New York before sailing that I induced this gentleman to accompany me one evening to a seance held by Mrs. Stoddard Gray, who had been previously mentioned in his narrative. Dr. Theodore Coventon had all the ordinary doctor's prejudices against anything unseen or unknown. He had read my book on America

and considered the chapter on spiritualism a lamentable lapse from the good sense shown in the rest of the book. I represented to him that for a physician to deny all possibilities of hypnotism or mesmerism, thought transmission, etc., meant losing some very valuable aids in his profession

and would probably soon mean being left pretty badly behind in the race. Knowing of no specials good hypnotist in New York, and as there was no time to find one out, I boldly suggested that he should plunge into still deeper debts of folly and accompany me to the house of Mrs. Stoddard Gray. The usual performances went on, but whether owing to Dr. Coverington's attitude of mind or other causes, nothing of any special interest to him or to me occurred. One incident impressed him, I think. Certainly he could suggest no possible explanation of it,

for it happened in a very fair amount of light and close to our feet. A gentleman and a lady were sitting in the circle who had brought with them their little boy, a child of seven years old. I had asked the lady if she considered it wise to bring so young a child into such a milieu several hours after an English child would have been put to bed, and her answer was cheery and characteristic.

Well, I guess we shouldn't have much peace at home if we didn't bring Charlie along with us to see his granny. We took him once, and since then he was. He always insists upon coming. He loves talking to his granny, and he is not a bit afraid of her. At this moment, a small, frail woman stepped out from the cabinet and came right up towards us, motioning to the little grandson that she wished him to go into the cabinet with her. This he did without a moment's hesitation, and the curtain fell and concealed them both from view.

The interview lasted for some minutes, and when the little boy reappeared, he was holding his granny by the hand and was evidently on the best of terms with her. I do not expect my readers to believe me, but this is exactly what happened next. The child had brought some toys, a little train and some building blocks, to get Granny to play with him as usual, and the fragile old lady knelt down on the floor and played with him just as any ordinary Granny might have done, only with far more agility. In the very midst of their brick building and train starting, a terrible catastrophe occurred, which spoiled the rest of the evening for the poor child. Granny had evidently forgotten that her time was limited by conditions of which we are still

profoundly ignorant. Quite suddenly, and without a word of warning, she disappeared, not into the cabinet at her back, but right through the carpet under our feet, and well within a yard of the said feet, and this with two or three gas jets burning over our heads. There was no mistake about it. Dr. Coverton and I were sitting next to the father and mother, whilst the child and his grandmother played at our feet. One moment she was there,

the next she had disappeared like a flash into a mere cloud of mist, and even this was quickly withdrawn, apparently through the floor. No trapdoor theory could account for this, because the woman had disappeared, and only the wisp of ethereal garments remained before the latter were also dissipated. We must moreover note the difficulty of working a trapdoor immediately under the feet of a skeptical young physician

who had once investigated the carpet hoping in vain to find in it some solution of the mystery. I have already mentioned that the whole incident took place in light sufficiently good to read a book without straining the eyes. The poor little boy was terribly upset and sobbed bitterly. His parents said they had brought him many times before, and such a fiasco had never before taken place.

Mrs. Stoddard Gray was very indignant about it. Too bad. She ought to have known she was staying too long and risking a fright for the child. If she had only gone back into the cabinet, he would not have been frightened, but she stayed too long and had not enough strength to get back. The child was too thoroughly frightened

and upset to admit of a hand. consolation and the parents were obliged to take him away, still sobbing and asking why Granny had gone away like that and given him such a fright. A year later in London, I took Dr. Coventon by appointment to see Dr. Carl Hansen, who was then giving hypnotic treatment and also doing some work in demonstrations for the Society for Psychical Research. Dr. Hansen tried in vain to put either Dr. Theta, Carverington, or myself under the influence, so was obliged to have recourse to his wife.

Naturally, this was considered a most suspicious circumstance by my companion, but I noticed that he was very much interested in his conversation with her, from the medical point of view, and he was sufficiently honest to admit that he could not explain what happened in his presence upon any normal hypothesis. End of Section 5. Section 6 of Seen and Unseen. This is a Libervox recording.

all Librevox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librevox.org. Read by Piotr Nader. Seen and Unseen by E. Catherine Bates. India, 1890 to 1891. In the month of November 1890, I started with a young friend for my first visit to India. My companion was still at the age when social India was naturally more interesting to her than either the historical or mystical aspects of the country.

And for myself, I went there in those days rather to see the glorious buildings of a magnificent past than with any view of resting occult secrets from the fakirs and yogis of the present. It was well, perhaps, that once ambitions were so limited by the possible, for I am very much inclined to think that Mystic India is and must remain a sealed book for the English. We must always remember the natural prejudices of a conquered race towards the conqueror. In addition to this, the Hindustanis consider, and who shall say without ample cause, that Englishmen are hopelessly bornet and sunk in materialism, incapable of exercising an imagination which they don't possess,

with a top-dressing of conventional orthodoxy, so far as their own special religion is concerned, but with nothing but ridicule or thinly veiled contempt for the very true. religious channels through which other races may be taking their spiritual food. We have given them only too much reason for these conclusions. As a consequence of this state of things, English men and women are looked upon as quite impossible from the Indian point of view, and a devout and educated Hindu would no more think of discussing his transcendental ideas with such people, than we should think of discussing

delicate questions of art in its various branches, with the first village yokel we happened to meet in the road. I was confirmed in these ideas by noticing the difference in the welcome accorded to a charming young Swedish lady whom we met at Benares on our wedding tour. She has brought excellent native introductions from her own country, where certain Rajas and Maharajas had been entertained by her king, and thanks to these, and as she said, to the fact of my not being English, she had access to many interesting places and took part in interesting functions, from which the rest of us were debarred. I am hoping to pay a third visit to India someday, with the special object in view of a cult investigation. It remains to be seen whether, by any

fortunate accident, I may then be more successful in encountering anything more interesting than the ordinary clever conjurers, who sometimes poses Fakhirs, and may be found by the tourists. on every hotel veranda in India. Meanwhile, I am limited by the title of my book to personal incidents, as to which I find one or two notes in my Indian diary. Making the usual tour, but including Lahore, where my brother had lived at government house for several years as military secretary to Sir Robert Egerton,

who was in his day, Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab, we came in due course to Delhi. Our first day there was devoted to tracing mutiny, relics of all kind, and about 4 p.m. in the afternoon we drove out to the famous ridge to see the mutiny memorial. This, as most people nowadays know, is a red sandstone tower with staircase of rough stone inside, and small windows pierced through at varying intervals. It stands upon an extensive marble flooring, which is inscribed with the names of the various regiments,

officers and men, who took part in the renowned siege and died for their kind. country in consequence. As we drove towards the memorial, the whole place seemed to be in a flatter of excitement. Hundreds of coolies were flocking round, and we both remarked how much more interested they appear to be in these monuments of past events than the corresponding class of English laborers would have been. But on arrival, we found that there was no question of intelligent historical interest. The fact was that a poor coolie, who had just climbed up the memorial tower by the inner staircase had fallen out of one of the windows described and was lying on the marble floor below at the far side from us crushed and dying. We were told that an Englishman had, fortunately, been present and had driven off at once for a doctor, so nothing could be done for the poor man until the latter arrived. Meanwhile, our native servant, Bobaji, had of course, rushed off to see what was to be seen of the tragedy,

and, rather to my horror, my girlfriend seemed about to follow his example. It was terrible to think of the poor man lying there in his death agony, but he was already surrounded by natives, and no real hope could be given without fear of doing more harm than good before the doctor was brought to the spot. Therefore merely to go and look on, without being able to succour, seemed to me an added horror to the tragedy, and I turned round rather sharply on my young friend and expostulated with her. As a matter of fact, she did

not go, but I am obliged to mention the incident as accounting for a certain momentary excitement and annoyance on my part, which proved to be factors in the story about to be related. allowing for the friends of time between Delhi and London, a very old friend of mine, Lady Windcoat, who was then living in London, where I was in the habit of visiting her constantly when in town, was lying in bed, resting after a disturbing night, at the very hour of our visit to the Mutiny Memorial. It was about noon in England, she was fully awake and had been reading. Looking at her watch, she realized it was time to make a move if she meant to come down for luncheon. Suddenly the door opened, and I walked into her bedroom, and right round the bed, until I stood between her and the window, which was to her left as she lay in bed. I was dressed in ordinary outdoor attire, and seemed much excited and annoyed about something. I was talking continuously, as it seemed to her, but she could not make out any connected sentences, and wondered what had upset me so much.

She spoke to me, asking what had happened, but I took no note. of her questions, standing with my face to the window and my back to her for a few moments. Then I turned round and deliberately retraced my steps, past the ottoman, skirting round the bed, and was just disappearing through the door, when she made a final effort to attract my attention, asking a very practical question. Emmy, do tell me before you go what number you are staying at in Oxford Terrace, the part of town where I always stayed at that time. Lady Windcoat said

You made no answer at all But whisked out of the door in a great hurry And then, for the first time I remembered That you were in India It had all seemed so natural As you had often been in my bedroom That I only thought at the moment That you must have returned unexpectedly to London

From the country My only anxiety was to know Which number on the terrace would find you In case you had changed your address there Now all this was fortunately written out to me by my friend on the very day that it happened, that is, 8th of January, 1891, and crossed my letter to her, telling her of the incident. My letter was written a day or two later, I think, but I was keeping a strict diary at that time,

and under date of the 8th of January have the record of the event, corresponding with the date of Lady Windcoat's letter to me. Both my diary and Lady Wincote's letter were shown to Mr. Myers, on my return to England, also my letter which crossed this one from Lady Windcoat to me. He was greatly interested in the account. Probably, in any case, I should have written to tell this friend of the incident on account of a conversation I had with Baba G when he returned from his ghastly entertainment. I had looked inside the memorial and had seen that the stone steps were crumbling away

and looked very unsafe. So when he came back and said, something bad inside their legation, Lady Sahib. I concluded, naturally, that he was referring to the state of the staircase, and attributing the poor Cooley's fall to some such cause. But he denied this strenuously. No, no, Lady Sahib, some bad the bill inside there. He threw Cooley over. Then he went on to tell us that on one special night in the year, no native men, woman or child in the whole city could be induced to pass the mutiny memorial at midnight. The few daring souls who had passed there, had found the tower all lighted up inside, and the sepoys and the British soldiers

had come back and were fighting their battles over again. The man spoke in simple good faith and assured me that all Delhi people knew this to be a fact, and gave the place a wide berth on that anniversary. The idea of the bad devil throwing the poor coolie down from the top of the tower, followed by this curious legend, interested me as a bit of folklore. But my companion was drastic in her remarks. Silly nonsense, Babaji, was her reception of the story, and this made me feel intensely sorry for the moment

that Lady Wincote, who would have been as much interested as myself, should not have been present. Did this moment of intense desire for her project itself into the appearance she saw in her room? Who can say? Certainly it was a curious coincidence that she should see me in an annoyed and excited state just when I was feeling annoyed and excited, so many thousand miles away.

Delhi seems to have been specially favourable to psychic experiences, for I find another one recorded on the very day succeeding the last event. My friend having some slight ailment, I had driven out alone with our native servant, and we made a long tour returning about 6 p.m. past Ladlow Castle, of famous mutiny memory, and still, in the year 1891, a government bungalow. The present Tsar of Russia was traveling through India at the time as Sarevich with his cousin, Prince George of Greece,

and they were expected to arrive in Delhi that same evening. The royal party and suite were to be lodged at Ludlow Castle and were expected within an hour. Bobaji jumped off the box of my carriage and urged me to, Go look, see! No, Bobaji, drive on, can't go look, see. see, they no let me in. Yes, yes, Lady Sahib, he said eagerly, everything ready, all gone away, nobody in there yet. With our English notions this seems inconceivable, but it proved to be absolutely true.

I went in, expecting to be turned back ignominiously, before I had crossed the hall, but there was positively no one there. The place was like a city of the dead. Yet within an hour a banquet arranged for about seventy people was to take place. I made the best of my opportunity, ranged through the numerous bedrooms, with hanging Japanese blinds shutting them off, and each one inscribed with the card of the special Russian or Greek general who formed part of the suite. At length I strolled into the dining room. A long, narrow room arranged for the coming festivity.

At least sixty to seventy covers were laid. The flowers arranged on the tablecloth in the pretty, artistic, Indian fashion, all the beautiful glass and civil. placed in readiness. Nothing was wanting but the presence of the guests, for whom all this preparation had been made. The short Indian twilight was already upon us, as I stood there for a moment, contrasting the dead and almost eerie silence, with the lights and laughter that would so quickly replace it. A fireplace was close to me, as I stood at the far end of the room, looking down the whole length of the table. Glancing up, I realized that the only picture in the room was hung over this fireplace.

The picture in question had no artistic value. The painting was flat and poor. Even the subject did not strike me for the first moment as anything very remarkable. It was the portrait of a man in the prime of life, about 35, I should have supposed, with the long whiskers and rather prim pose of a portrait made by an evidently poor artist,

probably 30 or 40 years previous to my visit. But as I looked again, a curious sensation came over me. In spite of the painter's failure to convey anything more like a living man than a dead-pressed rose is like a living rose, there was something in the eyes of the portrait

that held me, something that rose above the artist's limitations. At the same moment I was conscious of a presence behind my back, of somebody who was looking at the picture with me, of somebody who was saying to me, but not with the outer, but an inner voice, that is a picture of me, but I am not there. I am here, close to you, behind your shoulder,

I am looking at it with you. The impression was so strong that it seemed almost as if a hand were pressing on my shoulder. I turned round involuntarily, but no one was there. Then I looked at the picture again, and always with the same weird sensation that the man whom the picture represented had been strong enough to make me feel his actual presence in the room, although I could see nothing. There was no name on the picture of either subject or artist, no possible clue to identify, and looked at as a picture alone. There was nothing in the flat, conventional presentment of the features

to account for my experience. This made it the more remarkable. I could scarcely tear myself away from the almost overwhelming sense of the presence of some strong and strangely magnetic personality, but the fast-fading twilight warned me not to risk an ignominious retreat. So I went hurriedly through the large and handsome drawing-room, which was filled with portraits, chiefly of deceased governors and generals,

many of them admirably painted, and a striking contrast to the one poor and commonplace picture already seen. The absolute incongruity between the impression received and the object which roused it led me to make inquiries, in spite of my friend's jokes over my powers of imagination. Anyway, I am going to clear this up, I said with determination, and in a few days my perseverance was rewarded, and my impression amply justified by finding that I had been looking at the portrait,

feeble and poor as it was, of Brigadier General Nicholson. None of my readers need to be told that if any dead man could impress himself upon the living, this would be the man capable of such a feat. To this day there is a small religious sect in India called the Nicola Sign, who have handed down the memory of this god rather than man who had to dismount from his horse occasionally to thrash his would-be worshippers and put a stop to their inconvenient adoration. Nicholson's brilliant achievements in the mutiny, his absolute control over men of the most diverse character, the devotion with which he inspired his soldiers and his own glorious death

in the very moment of victory, all these are matters of history. I feel glad and grateful to have known, even for a few passing moments, what that influence had been, and when I found out Brigadier General Nicholson's grave at Delhi, after my Ludlow Castle experienced, I left my flowers on the grave of an honored acquaintance, rather than of a man known to me only through historical records. One more incident, or rather coincidence, and I must close my Indian chapter. This also is connected with the mutiny and with Delhi, but the special coincidence, to which I refer, took place at Agra. When my friend and I were staying at the hotel there in the early spring of 1891, one of my oldest and most valued friends is Lieutenant Colonel Alfred S. Johns, recipient of the Victoria Cross, formerly of the Ninth Lancers, and one of my oldest and most valued friends is Lieutenant Colonel Alfred S. Johns, recipient of the Victoria Cross, formerly of the Ninth Lancers, and one of my oldest. of our mutiny heroes. As everything connected with that historical tragedy seems to have perennial

interest for every Englishman, no matter what his creed or politics, I make no excuse for furnishing some details connected with my friend's career. His record from Hart's army list is as follows. Lieutenant Colonel Johns was present at the Battle of Budliki Sarai, and at Delhi throughout the siege operations, including the assault and capture of the city, having been deputy assistant quartermaster general, from the 8th of August to the 23rd of September 1857, served with the nine slancers in Greatheads pursuing column, and was present in the action of Bolim Shuhur and Aligur and Battle of Agra, where he was dangerously wounded, having received a musket shot wound and 22 sabercats. He was mentioned in the despatch of Sir Hope Grant on three

different occasions and has received the Victoria Cross for taking a nine-pounder gun with the assistance of some men from his squadron in the action of Budli Kisarai, meddle with clasp and brevet of major. Although as a child I had heard of the bravery and the terrible wounds of one who was to become later in life one of my greatest friends, the actual details of the Agra catastrophe were hazy in my memory. Two things, however, had remained firmly embedded in my mind. First, that a brother officer had told me that he was standing close by Colonel Jones when, as a young officer, the latter attended the Levy to receive his Victoria Cross, and that the queen was so much agitated by his appearance that she could hardly pin it on. Also, that this brother-officer

heard her whisper to her husband, My God, Albert, look at that poor boy, he has been cut to pieces. The other childish memory is that the tash had been turned into a hospital at the time of the mutiny, and that my friend, amongst others, had been nursed there. This latter proved to have been a mistake on the part of my informants. It was the Motimosege, the Pearl Mosque, which was turned to this account, and in which my friend was nursed back to life, to the surprise of all who knew the extent of his disaster. It is especially important for people blessed. It is especially important for people blessed or cursed, with psychic gifts, to give no occasion to the enemy, by exaggeration, or inexact memory of details. So, with the wholesome dread of a well-read reviewer before my eyes,

I determined to go to the fountain-head and ask Colonel Johns himself to supply me with the true incidents which make the Agra episode a moving picture before our eyes. He has kindly consented to do this, and I give the narrative in his own words. After the fall of Delhi, a column under General Greathead was sent down to Lacknow, and as three squadrons of the Ninth Lancers were told off to go, I resigned my staff appointment and went with my troop. After two fights, Bolim Shuhur and Aligur, we were hurried off to Agra, 66 miles in 36 hours. But on arrival, we found that the Agra people had recovered from their fright, and Greathead was full enough to believe their story that the enemy was twelve. miles away and therefore took a ground for our camp just by the graveyard and parade ground which you will remember there was a high crop of sugar-cane concealing everything beyond the parade ground and after most of the officers of the whole force had gone off to agra fort to breakfast with friends cannon-shot began to fall amongst us and everyone had time to fall in as the horses had not been unsaddled my squadron consisting of french's and my troops were told off as an escort to Blount's battery, field artillery, which formed the left of the line,

consisting of our other two squadrons, more field artillery, eighth and seventh regiments, etc., all moving to the front through high crops. Then we saw the enemy, 700 or 800 yards off, and Blunt unlimbered his guns and began to fire, when we soon saw a body of cavalry moving off across our front to turn our left flank, and Blount said we must go back to defend our camp. So he limbered up, and we all, that is, our squadron and Blan's guns, began to struggle back through the high crops. But Blunt said we must leave one troop with two of his guns, and French's troop was stopped for the purpose. Instead of staying with it, he felt so sure we should have a chance at the cavalry we had seen, mutineers, that he came on with me,

and together we formed up my troop on the parade ground close to blunt's guns which we saw already unlimbered a squadron of irregular mutinit cavalry was coming in our direction over the parade ground with a blue squadron of mutinite regular cavalry in support both trotting so of course we went for the red head of the echelon they formed then i saw french shot and the hind quarters of his great horse pass round the left flank of my little troop. Then I gave the word gallop, and the Red Squadron, to my surprise, halt it. Observing its leader, taking aim at me with his carbine, I inclined a little to my left in order to stick him, never dreaming that I should be hit

before I could do so, and I was almost within reach before he fired, and his bullet went through my bridle arm, so I had to take my reins on my sword-hand and jam my horse into my ranks, just behind the squadron leader, who had shot me. Now to clear up your mystery about my being left to my fate, I had specially asked Colonel Johns how he happened to be left alone amongst the sepoys, whose numbers were

registered by his sabercats in so ghastly a fashion. I was not left to my fate. On the contrary, the man on the left of my troop, who alone could see, put his lance through the squadron leader, and stayed about outside the ring, trying to get to me to the last, and got the victory across on my report to that effect. My troop occupying, in double rank, about 20 yards, went straight on after the 20 yards or so front of the enemy's probable front of perhaps 50 yards. So there were plenty of swords left to mob round me and to keep off the men who tried to save me. Of course, my men were quite right in pursuing the broken force as they did right of the field. This account has the immense advantage of being taken verbatim from Colonel General General.

John's letter just received by me. It has the disadvantage that such a letter, from a brave man, would naturally possess, that is, that of minimizing his share in the episode, to the point of making it difficult for the lay mind to realize where the heroism came in. Which heroism is the vital point in my coincidence? Fortunately, I have the best authority for saying that the blunt mentioned in this record always maintained that Colonel Alfred Johns has saved his guns. It appears that at the time of the unexpected attack from the enemy, Colmell Jones and two or three friends, who had not gone to the fort, were breakfasting under the shade of the cemetery wall when the alarm was given. My friend, wishing to rest his charger after the long forced march from

Agra, had taken a spur troop horse, saddled with a hunting saddle. When the round shot began to fall, there was no time to get his charger. There was nothing for it, but to put on sword and pistol and ride straight in to the enemy's ranks. No wonder the poor people shut up in Agra were enthusiastic over this charge of cavalry in their shirt-sleeves, as they called it. In 1891 I was staying in Agra at the hotel with my friend of the Delhi incident. A certain major Pulford, who had come to Agra to raise some ponies, divided us at the tabledot. He and I had been neighbours for two or three days, when he asked me carelessly, one evening what I had been doing that afternoon, as my friend confessed to having taken a day off.

Now, I had spent that afternoon at the touch, and had made many inquiries about the tradition that the building had once been turned into a hospital. No one knew anything about it. One old Hindu, evidently thinking I wished him to say yes, remembered hearing that this had been the case about eight years ago. This last artistic touch of accuracy was fatal to his an affidase and I turned away in disgust. So I told Major Pulford my story and we laughed over the well-known fact that a Hindu of that class always tries to find out what you wish him to say and then says it. Major Pulford asked why I was so keen on the subject, because a very old friend of mine was badly wounded at Agra during the mutiny and from a child I have had the impression that he

was nursed in the taj. No, he answered, I am sure the taj. was never used as a hospital, but I think the pearl mosque may have been. This would account for the mistake, probably. Now, the point in this incident is the fact that I had not mentioned my friend's name to Major Poulford. Had the name been a more distinctive one, I might have mentioned it, although realizing that Major Pulford was too young a man to have known anything the mutiny at first hand. We talked casually on the subject for a few minutes, and then he said, Of course I was a baby at the time, but I have read and heard any amount about it, naturally. My boyish hero was a fellow named Johns of the ninth Lancers,

who was so awfully plucky in their celebrated charge, when surprised by the enemy on the Agra parade ground. I know nothing about the fellow, except what I have read. I believe he is alive still, but they say he was almost cut to pieces then. That is the friend whom I thought had been nursed in the Taj, was my astonished answer. Major Pulford's delight was unbounded to have come by so strange a coincidence, even thus near to the hero of his youth.

For myself, I recognised that I had set next to the only man, probably then in India, who could have given me the accurate and precise details of the whole affair. I know every inch of the ground and just where it all happened, he said eagerly, do let me drive you and your friend over there tomorrow in my buggy, and I will point out every detail. He did so next day, leaving me with the most vivid impression of the scene of my friend's gallant fight for life

against such overwhelming odds, that he should still be alive and active, nearly fifty years later, seems little short of a miracle. End of Section 6. Section 7 of Seen and Unseen. This is a Librevox recording. All Librevox recordings are in the public domain,

For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librevox.org, read by Piotr Natter. Seen and Unseen by E. Catherine Bates Sweden and Russia, 1892 Traveling in Sweden in the spring of 1892, I carried with me from England an introduction to the Swedish consul at Gothenburg. One of the sisters of this gentleman was married to an Englishman, a Mr. Romilly, and he and his wife chanced to come over for a visit during my stay. Speaking of psychic matters, one day, Mr. Romilly told me the story of his first cousin, a well-known woman of title, and her Egyptian necklace.

A present had been made to her, I think on her marriage, of a very beautiful Egyptian necklace with stones of the exquisite blue shade, so well known by travellers in Egypt. These special stones, alas, must evidently have been genuine and rifled from some old tomb. for the owner of the necklace appeared one night by the lady's bedside and warned her that she would have no peace so long as she persisted in wearing his property. So the lady very wisely locked up the necklace in her dressing-room and fondly trusted the Egyptian ghost would be satisfied. Not a bit of it.

In a short time he appeared again and told her that she would be haunted by his unwelcome presence so long as the necklace remained in her possession. She then drove off with it and deposited it with her lawyer, who locked it up in a tin case, doubtless with a secret smile at his noble client's superstitions. But Nemesis lay in wait for him, and the last thing Mr. Romilly had heard upon the subject was that the lawyer himself was made so exceedingly uncomfortable by the attentions of the Egyptian gentleman, that he was obliged to have necklace and tin case buried together in his back garden. To have forced a lawyer into such extreme measures was certainly a score for the ghost. A few months later, I met the heroine of the story at a friend's house at tea,

and speaking of her relation who had married a Swedish wife and whom I had met in Gothenburg, I alluded discreetly to the story of the blue necklace. My companion at once endorsed it in Toto, and did not seem at all annoyed by the fact that her cousin had mentioned it to me. I remember that Mrs. Romilly laid the cards for me with astonishing success and told me she had learned the mystic lore from an old Finnish nurse who had been brought over from Finland by her own Swedish grandfather when quite a young girl and had lived in the family until her death. She assured me that the Finns were specially gifted in all kinds of gypsy lore. From Stockholm we paid a visit to Russia and in St. Petersburg I had my first personal experience since leaving. home. We had engaged as courier during our stay in the city, a German who had lived there for 40 years, named Kunze, I think. We were staying in the Hotel de France, and this man

told me one day that a celebrated French modiste had rooms in our hotel, having come there to show her beautiful Parisian costumes, and to take orders as usual from the Russian royal family and ladies of the court. He also mentioned the French woman's recent misfortune in in hearing, since her arrival in Russia, that her trusted manager in Paris had disappeared suddenly, carrying away with him 100,000 francs. Two nights later, I had gone to bed, as usual, about 10.30 p.m., and must have slept for nearly four hours, when I awoke, feeling the heat very oppressive. It was almost the end of June at the time. Getting out of bed to open my window still farther, I gazed down upon the country-yard which it overlooked,

noting the absolute stillness of the house and the hot, oppressive air outside. Suddenly, this stillness was rent by the most horrible and appalling shrieks. Peel after peel rang out. I have never heard anything so ghastly, nor so blood-curbling, either before or since. For a moment it seemed that one must be dreaming. What horrors to justify such awful shrieks could be taking place at this quiet hour and in this quiet, respectable hotel. Nothing less than murder suggested itself to me,

and I quickly crossed the room and turned the key in the lock. My next thought was for my companion, the Miss Greenlow of American Days. She was sleeping next door to me, with an intervening door between us. I hummed loudly upon this, and finally opened it. I knew she always locked her outer door, but feared she might go into the passage, not realizing the danger in the moment of waking and might fall into the murderer's hands.

So I called out, Wake up, wake up, Miss Greenlow, but don't open your door. Someone is being murdered out there. I had heard every other door in the passage opening and the scared inmates rushing to and throw, so there was no question of feeling bound to give the alarm. Miss Greenlow, being an extremely lymphatic person,

was still sleeping the sleep of the just, I gave her a good shake at last, finding knocks and calls of no avail, but she only turned over, sleepily, murmuring, Oh, it's all right, I don't suppose there is anything much the matter. To go to bed again. So I returned to my own room, and as the horrible screams had now ceased, I opened the door very gently and looked down the dimly lighted passage. My room was a corner one, exactly at the head of the white staircase,

to the left-hand side for anyone mounting the stairs. Exactly opposite my door, with a wide passage between, was the room which had been pointed out to me as belonging to the famous French modiste. Miss Greenlow was evidently the only person in the hotel who had slept through the horrors of that night, for small groups were gathered together at various points along the corridor, and at every door some scared man or woman was looking out, anxious like myself, to solve the dreadful mystery. At that moment my eyes lighted on my special German waiter, talking in a hushed whispered to a Muzdik,

in the usual red coat. So I beckoned to him, and very reluctantly he came to my door. Being asked in German what was the meaning of the shrieks we had heard, he said at once that a lady had been taken ill suddenly. The man was a bad liar, and the child would have seen that he was repeating a made-up story. But nothing more could beget out of him, so I dismissed him impatiently saying, what is the good of telling me such nonsense, I shall find out for myself tomorrow. Once more I shut and locked the door, and lay for an hour or two, thinking over the ghastly

disturbance, and wondering who could have been the hapless victim. It was now about 5 a.m. and full dawn. As so often happens, even after the most sleepless night, I dozed off often, and slept for more than an hour, and during my sleep I dreamed, and this was my dream. It must first be noted that the wide staircase I have described as passing close to my room was thence continued upward to the next floor. In my dream or vision I saw distinctly a woman in a night white gown, with dark hair streaming down her back, rushing up this second flight of stairs

in the most distrapped and reckless fashion. In one hand she held a knife and was trying to stab herself with it, as a Muzdik, in crimson coat, rushed after her. and endeavoured to wrench it out of her hand. Two or three other people ran up the stairs behind her, but only this peasant seemed to have the courage or presence of mind to grapple with her. In a few moments, as it seemed to me, the vision, so startling and clear-cut, faded away,

and I sank into a dreamless sleep, I suppose, for it was past six a.m. when I woke, finally. When the German waiter appeared with my breakfast, I said rather curtly to him, you need not have troubled to make up that foolish story last night. I know what happened. I have seen it. He looked very incredulous, so I went on. The lady was trying to kill herself, and rushed up to the next floor with a knife in her hand.

I saw the Mujdik run after her and forced it from her. The man was absolutely speechless. He said not one syllable, either of corroboration or of denial, but left the room as quickly as possible, looking scared and certainly, left the impression upon my mind that my vision represented what had actually taken place an hour or two previously to my great surprise however our respectable and dependable courier kunce gave quite a different version of the affair he came as usual to my room to take his orders for the day miss greenlow being present and at once referred to the terrible tragedy ah poor lady you remember my telling you about her the other day and how her manager had run away with all that money now this frightful misfortune has happened to her and no one knows if she will survive it she is still alive however and is to be taken to the hospital at one p m but what has happened i said impatiently rather irritated if the truth must be told by his mysterious allusions and miss greenlow's assumption of profound indifference of course no self-respecting person having calmly slept through such a tragedy could be otherwise than indifferent

next morning. Quincy's story was far more artistic than that of the waiter and was skillfully interwoven with shreds of truth, as I discovered later. He said that the poor lady was in the habit of making herself a cup of tea in the middle of the night when wakeful, also that she wore wide, hanging muslin sleeves with her night attire. She had risen, as usual, from a sleepless bed to make tea with her little etna. Unfortunately, she had set fire to a sleeve, which at once burned up, and in a few moments she was enveloped in flames, owing to the flimsy material she wore. Then the shrieks began, which had so thrilled our nerves. A Russian gentleman, sleeping near her, was awakened by the noise, and knowing that she was

a rich woman, and had brought many valuables with her, he concluded she was being murdered. So he rushed to the rescue with a revolver, found the burning woman, and he and the Muzjik at length succeeded in putting out the flames. The story was well told. and perfectly credible miss greenlow could not resist pointing out how entirely it annihilated my vision no suicide no knife no rush up the staircase nothing in fact that might have been and of course must have been a mere freak of imagination during my troubled sleep in the face of quinces's quiet and detailed statement i could only agree with her and so the matter rested for some months the poor woman meanwhile remained in the hospital and her son and daughter were telegraphed for from Paris. We found them at the hotel on our return there, three weeks later from Moscow. There was then some slight hope of ultimate recovery,

but within six or seven weeks from the accident, the unfortunate woman died from shock and exhaustion. From Russia we returned to Stockholm and Christiania, where Miss Greenlow took the steamer for whole, and I went up into the Doverafeld Mountains to join a Swedish friend, already mentioned in my chapter on India. I told her my story of the poor French modiste and her sad and painful accident, also about my curiously vivid and yet inaccurate vision, and we discussed the latter in quite an SPR spirit. We were then in a very remote part of the Dovrefelds, where foreign papers were practically inaccessible. I had left my friend in Norway and returned to England a week or two before receiving a very interesting letter from her. In it, she said, I have just got hold

of some French papers, and I see that poor woman you told me about had just died in Petersburg, and the real story has now come out. It seems that it was suicide after all, so your vision was quite true. She had received large sons in advance for commissions from some of the Russian nobility and had either spent or speculated with them. That was why she had to invent the story of an embezzling manager to cover her own shortcomings. But the truth was leaking out in spite of her endeavors, and she made up her mind to commit suicide, rather than face the horrors of a Russian prison. The paper goes on to say that she chose a most terrible death, little realizing what the torture would be. It seems that she waited till the middle of the night, you described,

and then covered her whole body with oil and set fire to it. This accounts, of course, for the horrible shrieks you heard. In her awful agony, she seized a knife that she had either secreted or found in her room, rushed out into the passage in a blaze, and when the Muzdik tried to stop her, she ran from him and attempted to stab herself, as she made her way up the stairs. All this, you seem to have seen accurately, also the fact that the Muzdik pursued her, and succeeded in runching the knife from her hands before she had injured herself with it. The paper mentions that a Russian gentleman had gone to the rescue when he heard the shrieks, but this was before she got hold of the knife,

and it was the Musjik alone who saved her, in the end, from immediate death. During this Russian visit we had gone down to Moscow from Petersburg, and here again a curious adventure befell me. It was, as I have said, in the height of the summer, and one was thankful to have a large, handsome room with three windows looking over the square, and the famous Kremlin palace in the distance. My room was divided into two,

unequal parts, separated from each other by a door, which was, during the hot season, thrown wide open and fastened back securely. Between this door and the one opening into the outer corridor, the washing apparatus stood, and also a wardrobe of white painted deal, with a very poor lock to it, as I discovered later. On retiring to rest the first night, I locked the outer door, undressed in this ante-room, and finally hung up my gown in the wardrobe I have mentioned. Then, after looking out of the windows on the fast-diminishing crowd below in the square, I went to bed, feeling quite cheerful, and looking forward to a long night's rest after journey which had been hot and tiring. As so often happens, one was probably overtired,

and sleep was not to be wooed by any of the usual methods. In vain, I'm in vain, I'm I counted sheep, getting over a hedge, added a hundred up backward and forward, tried deep breathing and other little parlour games. It was absolutely useless. Twelve o'clock struck, then the half hour, and I gathered from the stillness below that the good Moscow citizens had retired to their respective homes. This seemed an added insult. Then one o'clock struck, and after that I lay for a seeming eternity before two strokes from the clock. lock outside indicated the half hour. Scarcely had the reverberation ceased when I heard cautious sounds in the corridor, which gave me a good fright, and made me regret the silence I had found so irksome. The outer door of my room was quietly being opened, creaking on its hinges in the most ordinary and commonplace way, but evidently opening under a very wary hand. Then I could not

have locked it after all. And yet, I felt so convinced that I had done so. Certainly I had intended to do so on my first night in a strange hotel. The best I could hope was that some other new arrival had mistaken his room and was returning late, and consequently trying to be as quiet as possible. This flashed through my mind and brought a moment's comfort. I expected to see a man's head round the open door at the foot of my bed, and to hear a hurried apology, and still more hurried retreat. I say a man's head.

for the footsteps, though so quiet and cautious, were without doubt immense footsteps. But several moments passed in horrible suspense. The outer door had creaked on its hinges and opened without a shadow of doubt. Where was the man? The door had not closed again, so far as I could hear. From my bed I could not command a view of the smaller portion of the room, where, presumably, he must be hidden. There was nothing but the wash-hand stand and the wardrobe.

there. What could he be doing or waiting for? My comforting supposition of a mistake in the number of his room, made by an innocent guest, could not be stretched wide enough to account for the long pause. Perhaps it was some robber lurking about the passages. He had tried my door gently and found it open. I had heard the door creak on its hinges, in spite of all his care. Now he was doubtless waiting to make sure that this noise had not a way. awakened me before beginning his operations. This was the only reasonable supposition, and I lay in absolute terror for some minutes, fearing to stir, or almost to breathe at such close quarters, and quite incapable of rising and putting an end to my terrible suspense. I longed to hear

the next quarter strike, but nothing relieved the dead silence in my room or in the streets outside. At long last the quarter to two struck, and something in the friend-line. tones of the massive clock relieved the tension and gave me courage, the courage of desperation to strike a match and light my candle before starting on a tour of discovery. The middle door was fastened back as I had found it when taking possession of the room. In any case, that was not the door which had been opened. The sound came from the outer door. I must find out if anyone were hiding in the little dressing room, and in any case I must lock the outer door. And in any case, I must lock the outer door, which I had felt so certain I had locked on coming up to my room. I passed through

the open inner door with fear and trembling. To my relief, the small apartment was apparently empty. The wardrobe stood partly open, but nothing more terrible than my own gown was inside it. Then I made my way to the outer door, which gave on to the corridor, determined to make sure of locking it firmly this time. After all, it must have been a wandering guest, who had discovered his mistake at once, and retreated noiselessly. I have seldom been more absolutely dumbfounded than when I turned the handle of that door, preparatory to locking it, and found that it was securely locked already, just as I had supposed. How could the hindress have creaked then, and whose cautious footsteps had I heard? Once more my eyes fell upon the wardrobe, with

its cheap varnish and lock. I had certainly not locked this overnight. Could it have creaked itself farther open? It did not, for the moment, strike me, that the noise came from another quarter, and that the footsteps were still to be explained. I was only too thankful to find the barrest apology of an explanation. So I locked the wardrobe as carefully as possible, noticing that the lock was not one of the first quality, and once more retired to bed, and put out. my candle, greatly relieved. Scarcely ten minutes had passed, as I afterwards ascertained, when the whole scene was enacted once more.

The same cautious thread, the same sound of the outer door, creaking slowly on its hinges. There was nothing in the least uncanny about it per se. It was just the normal noise that any late comer would make who was thoughtful enough, dot to disturb a sleeping house. But my impatience got the better of my fears this time, I was not going to be decoyed out of bed a second time on a wild goose chase. It must have been that wardrobe door after all.

As to the footsteps, I don't know and I don't care. The cheap lock must have given way, and I shall find the wardrobe door has swung open. I am sure. With this comforting assurance I turned round, and in a few minutes fell into a deep sleep after the varied excitements of the night. Next morning I stepped gaily into the smaller division, of the room to begin my toilet, and triumphantly turned round to convince myself of the truth of my theory about the wardrobe door. To my infinite astonishment and perplexity, the wardrobe was

securely locked, just as I had left it in the middle of the night. I have never had any explanation of this mystery, but I changed my fine, big room for a much less desirable one that morning, and made some excuse about wishing for a quieter room at the back of the house. The next evening, sitting in my new abode with my travelling companion, she showed far more interest in my adventure than in the Petersburg tragedy and subsequent vision of mine. So much so that I invited her to take a pencil and see if she could get any sort of explanation of the mystery, for although not at all intuitive, she knew something of what is called automatic writing. I give her narrative, not as being in the slightest degree evidential, but for its intrus. intrinsic interest, and because I am personally convinced that she had not sufficient imagination to have made it up on the spur of the moment. Miss Greenlow's message was to the following effect.

About fifty years previously, a Russian gentleman, an officer, I think, but I am not certain of this, and his mistress had occupied this large front room. The man had spent all day at a rifle competition, combined with some sort of merry-making, and had returned home very late. at one thirty a m in fact very much the worse for drink he had opened the door very carefully trusting he should find the lady asleep but unfortunately she was not only wide awake but extremely annoyed by his late return and the state in which he had come back to her a desperate quarrel had ensued and getting frightened by his violence she seized his rifle giving him a blow on the head with the butt end of it hoping to stun him but with no idea of murder in her mind. Whether she gave a more severe blow in her nervousness than she had intended, or whether the rifle fell on some specially vital spot was not explained in the writing. Anyway, the blow proved fatal, to her extreme regret and remorse. Under these circumstances, one would have

supposed that it would be more reasonable for the lady to haunt the room, and not the gentleman, but I tell the tale as it was told to us. It is, however, remarkable that in most of these stories, is the victim who appears, determined to enact the scene of his or her death, and not the murderer. I think we were also told, by the by, that I had slept in the room on the anniversary of the occurrence. It was obviously impossible to get any corroboration of such a story. Two small points in it, however, were proved to be true. The Moscow hotels, as a rule, were comparatively modern at the time of our visit, and therefore the fifty years ago seemed highly improbable. We learned to, however, through a few discreet questions later that this particular hotel had been in existence

so far back as fifty years, and also that rifle competitions had taken place on certain occasions in those far-off days. For the rest, I claim nothing. I have truthfully recounted my experience without a word of exaggeration, and have never been able to account for it normally. The explanation given to us is, of course, just whereof the paper it was written upon from any evidential point of view. End of section 7. Section 8 of Seen and Unseen.

This is a Librevox recording. All Librevox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit Librevox.org, read by Piotr Natter. Seen and Unseen by E. Catherine Bates. Sweden and Russia, 1892. Continued.

Taking my experiences chronologically, I must now carry my readers back to England, where the autumn of this year found me in London. I had been asked to recommend a house for paying guests, well situated, in the west end of London, and newly started by a lady who had been left a widow with very slender provisions. Several kind women had interested themselves in the case, and had wisely suggested thinking out a means of livelihood in the future, rather than merely supplying present ones. It would be difficult to imagine a person less suited for the sort of employment chosen,

but this is another story. I never care to recommend anything or anybody of which or of whom I have no personal knowledge. At the same time, I was anxious to help my kindly acquaintance in her philanthropy, and as I had arranged to spend some weeks in London that autumn, to be near an invalid brother, it struck me that I might stay in the house so strongly recommended, instead of taking private rooms as usual. So I journeyed to Sussex Gardens, found a charming house, newly furnished and decorated,

and as clean as the proverbial new pin, and moreover, a very good-looking mistress of the house, still a youngish woman of five or six and thirty. She spoke most warmly of the kindness she has received from the lady who had given me her address, shown to be some pleasant rooms, and the arrangement was quickly completed. I chose a small sitting-room, in addition to my bed,

room, although, as a matter of fact, this was scarcely necessary, as I was the first guest received. Only one deaf lady appeared upon the scene during the six weeks I spent there. I had not been forty-eight hours in the house before I discovered that my hostess was a convinced and very remarkable psychic. Naturally, she was delighted to find someone to whom she could speak of her various experiences without being laughed at or put down as a lunatic. At the same time I am bound to confess that Mrs. Peters, although extremely interesting, was also rather agitating and clearly much to erratic to make an entirely satisfactory chatelle.

She was given to reading Aurora Lee instead of ordering dinner, and had to be sent for occasionally to sit at the head of the table, with a volume of browning or tennyson firmly clutched in her reluctant hand. Even when duly found and delivered, curious things happened during the meals, especially at dinner in the evening when she often put down knife and fork and directed my attention to the far end of the handsome dining-room where she was wont to see the ghost of her late husband look dear miss bates surely you must see him dear henry i mean there he stands beard and all just between the sofa and the wall i can see him as clearly as i see you i am bound to say i never did see dear henry but the fine tabbycat certainly saw some something in that corner, for it would rush most frantically to the sofa, jump on to the one end, and sit staring at Henry, presumably, with its tail stuck out and its fur rising up,

glaring into the corner with a look of combined fear and fascination. My little sitting-room was invaded at all hours by my two interesting landlady, who would suddenly remember some thrilling experience which she wished to share with me. At length I took to my bed for three days, not in the least ill, but simply for a much-needed rest in the midst of all these excitements. A day or two after emerging from this haven of peace, I received a visit from a young lady whose parents were well known to me in Yorkshire, and who had recently become engaged to a very rich man, many years her senior, in fact, considerably older than her own father, who had lately passed away. The daughters of this family were all devoted to their father, and most of the visit was occupied in giving me details of his last illness, and in my sympathizing with her upon his loss. It was, in fact, far more a visit of condolence than of congratulation upon her future prospects of happiness.

As to the latter, I found it difficult to be quite truthful, and yet conveniently ecstatic. To marry a man nearly old enough to be your grandfather struck me as risky, to say the least, of it, even with all the emolions, which riches and position undoubtedly add to domestic life. The young woman in question did not at all resent my frankness on the subject, but assured me that her greatest consolation in thinking of her late father was the fact that she was about to make a marriage which he had always wished, and of which he had emphatically given his approval on his deathbed. I told him that I had decided upon it, just before he died, and he was so relieved and happy about it, she said simply, as she turned to leave the room.

Having mentioned that a younger sister was also in town, I sent a message to the latter, asking her to take early dinner with me on the following Sunday, which happened to be my only spare day, just then. On the evening of this visit from the coming bride, I had accepted an invitation to a large musical party in the house of the lady who had begged me to interest myself in Mrs. Peters. It was within a stone's throw of Sussex Gardens, and I came down to dinner at 7.30 p.m., intending to dress later, and go round there about 9 p.m. For an hour or so before dinner, I had been conscious of a growing despondency, to which I could attribute no cause, and this increased so much during the meal that Mrs. Peters noticed it at last, and asked me if I were feeling unwell. No, not unwell, but I am absolutely miserable and cannot imagine why.

have not had bad news? Was the next remark, I feared you must have had, seeing you so silent and not able to eat anything. In answer to this, I said that I had not even the excuse of hearing of other people's misfortunes, for a young lady had been calling upon me that afternoon, who was about to make what the world calls a very successful marriage. I did not, however, mention her name, as Mrs. Peters knew none of my friends. Dinner over, I felt still so unaccountably wretched that I determined to give up the evening party and to write my excuses. Mrs. Peters did her best to combat this decision, fearing that her kind benefactress might be disappointed,

and also urging that the evening's enjoyment would cheer me up. But finding me inexorable, she then said, Well, if you have quite determined not to go, shall I come into your sitting-room and see if we can get any explanation of your curious feeling of depression? I closed with this suggestion, knowing Mrs. Peters to be a really remarkable sensitive. So we sat in the dark for a few minutes, and then I heard a soft fo-foo on Mrs. Peter's silk gown, and knew she was tracing out words with her hand in a fashion of her own. It is a spirit that young lady brought with her, she announced at length.

The spirit has remained here with you, and is worried about this marriage you spoke of. She wants you to try and break it off. She seems to have been nearly related to the lady, or perhaps a godmother. Anyway, she takes great interest in her. Will she give a name? I asked. Eliza is all I get. Mrs. Peters replied. It then occurred to me that my young friend's name was Eliza,

and that she had been so named after a great aunt, to the best of my recollection, and as she was invariably called Elsa, by friends and relations alike, it was only by chance that I remembered hearing her teeth. eased about her far less romantic baptismal name. I asked if no surname could be given, thinking at the moment that it would be Waverly, the family name. But my thought was evidently not transferred to Mrs. Peters, who said she could not get the

name accurately, but that it was certainly not Waverly. I found later that the great Aunt Eliza had a name entirely different from that of her descendants. Nothing further happened on this occasion, except that I sent a message to Great Aunt Eliza. to say that nothing would induce me to take the responsibility of trying to break off any marriage either by the advice of people in this sphere or in any other sphere in this case i should have had neither the authority nor the influence to make any such unwise attempt sunday came round in due course and brought the bride's younger sister then a girl of twenty-four or twenty-five we discussed the usual midday sunday dinner of roast beef and yorkshire pudding Mrs. Peters, sitting at the head of the table, eye on her right hand, and Carrie Waverly next to me. Suddenly, realizing that my remarks to the latter were receiving very scant attention,

I looked up and found the girl's black eyes fixed in a basilisk stare upon our unfortunate hostess, whose own eyes were cast down, but who appeared uneasy and troubled by the determined gaze of the guest. At length the poor woman threw down her knife and fork, rose hastily from the dinner, table and made her way eagerly to the sofa at the other end of the room, where she lay down at full length, murmuring, I can't stand it any longer. Carrie Waverly was at length induced to come away to my sitting-room and leave the poor woman in peace, which she did, asserting her complete innocence, and assuring me she, only wanted to see if she could make Mrs. Peters look up at her.

I explained to her that, sensitives may be as much upset by this sort of thing, as another person would be by a blow on the back. She looked incredulous, and then said cheerfully, Well, if it is as bad as that, don't you think you ought to go and see how she is? Two for yourself and your own curiosity, and one for her, I thought. But I took the hint, and found Mrs. Peters still prostrate on the sofa, but full of apologies for her sudden collapse. You must have thought me so very rude, etc., etc.

I reassured her on this point, and to express, regret that my visitor should have upset her so much by looking so fixedly at her. It was not her fault, said Mrs. Peters eagerly. It was the man standing over her. He had his hand upon her shoulders, and was trying so hard to influence her, and she was resisting it all the time, and the whole conflict of their wills was thrown upon me. And I could not stand it at last. This was why I left the table, she gasped out.

Could you describe the man at all? Quite clearly, she said, I shall never forget his face. I saw him so distinctly. She then proceeded to describe in detail the very clear-cut features and bushy eyebrows of Kerry Waverly's father, giving also his coloring, which was very distinctive. I suggested trying to find out what he wanted to say to his daughter, but this distressed Mrs. Peters so much that I was sorry to have made the suggestion. No, no, dear Miss Bates, don't ask me to do that. dear henry never likes my taking messages from strangers i have promised him that i would never do it without his permission it upsets me so much and i feel so weak already so i came away promising to look in later to see if i could do anything for her carrie was naturally greatly interested by the accurate description given of her father and was very impatient for me to pay mrs peters a second visit i went in presently and found the latter standing up and in a state of

great excitement. She had, in fact, been on the point of coming to us when I entered. Dear Henry told me to take that message after all, were the words with which she greeted me. There was some misunderstanding between the father and this daughter, and he wants her to know that it is all right now. This seemed to me most improbable, as the devoted daughters and father were always on terms of the greatest harmony and mutual understanding, yet it proved to be quite true. Mrs. Peters continued. He is very much upset about this marriage. He tells me he was so anxious for it when on this side, but now he sees all the difficulties and possible dangers. But he says it is too late to reconsider the step now. Only he is so very anxious to secure

the interests of his daughter before she marries. He wishes to know whether her settlement is signed. It is not one of which he would have approved. And he says there are two houses. And he says there are two houses. and one ought to be settled upon her. You must ask about it, dear Miss Bates. He is most decided and so dreadfully upset about it all, because he said it was he who urged the marriage upon her. I spend the following fifteen or twenty minutes as a sort of messenger-boy between Mrs. Peters in the dining-room

and Carrie Waverly in my sitting-room. Needless to say, I knew nothing at all about the settlements, or how many houses the prospective bridegroom might possess, and having no sort of curiosity about the financial affairs of my neighbours, it was not at all pleasant to be employed in this way. Mrs. Peters, on the contrary, seemed to know everything connected with the estate and the marriage settlement, except the fact that the latter had not yet been signed, although reluctantly passed by both the ladies' trustees,

wherefore this special limitation in the father's knowledge, it is impossible to say. He certainly showed no limitation in his knowledge of the bridegroom's character and disposition, and gave the most elaborate and detailed instructions as to how his daughter should behave towards her husband, and where she might, with advantage, cultivate tact and patience. My advice to Miss Waverly was to say nothing on the subject to her sister, but she wisely, as it turned out, determined to take the responsibility of telling her everything. she telegraphed to me next day, asking if she might come and see Mrs. Peters and bring the bride with her. This was done, and they arrived, with several photographs large and small of the father,

and also of the bridegroom for identification. Kerry, in fact, tried, a little unfairly perhaps, to make Mrs. Peters identify the wrong person by forcing in to notice a large photograph of the bridegroom, some years senior to the father, and saying carelessly, "'There, Mrs. Peters, that is the face you saw yesterday of my father, is it not?' But Mrs. Peters would have none of it. She looked staggered for a moment, then caught sight of the second picture, and turned to it with relief.

"'This is the face I saw, whether it is your father or not,' she answered with decision. The bride begged for a private interview with Mrs. Peters, which lasted for a considerable time. Of course I knew nothing of this interview, nor should I feel at liberty to speak of it if I did know. I may, however, be permitted to say that I have the bride's own assurance, that the accurate knowledge then given her of her future husband's characteristics, physical and mental, and the best way of dealing with them,

made all the difference in her married life. During that interview, Mrs. Peters also told her the number of years she would be married, and the prophecy was accurately fulfilled, which is the more remarkable, because, as a rule, it seems impossible to predicate time, even when events can be foreseen. I am happy to add that the marriage turned out a complete success, and that a marriage settlement was made more in accordance with the father's wishes, although neither trustees nor principal in the transaction had any idea

that the actual arrangements were in any way due to the strongly expressed wishes of a discarned spirit. If this book should ever fall into their hands, and they should trace the story in spirit, of the thick veil I have thrown over all the circumstances, I can only trust that, in gratitude for the results, they may become reconciled with the channel through which these were made possible. People may say, what a terrible idea that a father or a husband should trouble himself about such sordid details as money, houses, etc. But this is an extremely foolish remark, although it may appear very spiritual on the surface. It is surely,

the most natural thing in the world that a near relation, if permitted, should endeavor to secure comfort and happiness for a dearly loved wife or daughter, especially when, as in the above case, he felt mainly responsible for a state of affairs which might have turned out so disastrously, save for his loving care and foresight, exercised as these were from the other side of the veil. At any rate, it disposes once for all of the weary old quibono argument, which is so futile and yet so constantly and triumphantly quoted by stupid people who seem to took upon it as a patent extinguisher for any psychic gifts or experiences it is mainly in order to meet this senseless observation that i have included this story in my reminiscences most of us are debarred from answering the quibon a bray by the fact that our most helpful experiences are generally of a too intimate and of an sacred nature to be given to a scoffing world but this instance has the advantage of dealing entirely with material matters and thus being on a level with the ordinary intelligence nobody can say in this case no good was done it only remains to be deeply shocked by the undignified

nay almost blasphemous intervention in mundane affairs of a spirit who should certainly have had some more worthy occupation it is another case of the old man and the donkey if discorned spirits don't trouble about the personal affairs of those on earth the cuybono argument is hurled at them if they do they are called blasphemous and irreverent the mention of the waverly family reminds me of an incident which took place when i was staying in their house in the country a year or two earlier than the time of which I am writing. I have reserved it purposely as a sequel to this last story, which is in its proper chronological setting. In the year 1889, I was spending a pleasant fortnight with the Waverleys in Yorkshire, at the very time when a dear old friend of mine,

Mrs. Tennant, was dying in London. I had seen her only a week or two before, but had no knowledge of her illness, as we were not in constant correspondence, although there was a deep and strong affection between us. I did not even hear of her death, in fact, till a few weeks after it took place, having missed the announcement in the papers. When Mrs. Tenant's sister, Mrs. Lane, wrote me the details,

I had left Yorkshire and was staying with cousins in Worcestershire. Thinking over the dates mentioned in describing the illness, I realized with a shock of pained surprise that the final state of unconsciousness must have set in the very evening when I was enjoying myself in Yorkshire at a large dinner party given by my host and hostess. It seemed terrible to think that my dear and much-loved friend should have been lying unconscious upon her deathbed, and that no word or sign should have come to me. Then, suddenly, I remembered a curious little incident connected with that dinner party. I had been admiring a pretty little slate-colored kitten belonging to the house, which was

was calmly sitting upon the grand piano after dinner, when the ladies were alone in the drawing-room. After the gentleman joined us, I was deep in conversation with my host, a remarkably interesting and intelligent man, when I noticed a small black kitten run past my dress. Probably I should have remarked upon it had we been less occupied in talking, for I am extremely fond of cats and animals in general. I did glance up, as a matter of fact, and satisfied myself that it was not the little Slate-colored Kitty, which sat in still triumph on the piano. Besides, this kitten was black, not Slate. I thought no more of it, until the guests had left, and Mrs. Waverly and I were going upstairs

to bed. She and I were very affinative, but neither she nor her family had any special interest in psychology. On this occasion, however, she said rather mysteriously, I think something will happen tonight to you. A good many joke. had been made about the probably uncanny atmosphere of my room, and the various spooks who were doubtless sharing it with me, so I laughed, thinking this was only the usual family joke. But Mrs. Waverly was quite in earnest. At first she would give no reason for her remark, fearing I should tell her daughters,

and that she would be laughed at, in consequence. Reassured on this point, she said to me quite seriously, Whilst you were talking to my husband this evening, I saw a black kitten run straight across your dress, just opposite to me. Well, of course I saw the kitten, I answered to her surprise, but there is nothing very remarkable about the black kitten in the house. But we have no black kitten in the house, or anywhere on the premises. Where did it go to? You never saw it again? No, it was not an ordinary kitten, and I did not suppose till this moment that anyone.

had seen it but myself. It was a fact that no one but Mrs. Waverly and I had seen any kitten, but the slate-coloured one, already mentioned. Thinking over this in the light of the said news of my dear old friend's death, and noting the correspondence in time between her loss of consciousness, and the appearance of the mysterious black kitten, seen only by Mrs. Waverly and myself, it was impossible not to ask in the depths of my heart whether, per chance, the spirit of my faithful friend had been trying to send me some symbol of her approaching death. It may be objected that black cats are generally connected with good luck. Well, I think my dear London mother, as she called herself sometimes, would have explained

this apparent contradiction very simply. She had lived through much sorrow, and was often oppressed by sore doubts of the cosmic love. I never knew any woman with such strong and passionate human sympathy, and to such fine spirits, the world, under present conditions, must always offer terrible problems. Her sympathies were sometimes too keen for that robust faith, which can always say, God's in his heaven, all's right with the world. Yet her last words were, I am so tired, and God will understand, and I am so glad to go. To finish my chapter on a merrier note, I will mention an amusing episode. connected with the evening of the black kitten's appearance.

Among the guests invited to that dinner party was a clergyman squire, a man of some means who had taken orders. A squerson is the portmanteau name for such a gentleman in Yorkshire, I believe, one who combines squire and parson. This particular specimen of the genus was both a vegetarian and a celibate. The latter fact had been made clear to me by the many regrets expressed in the neighbourhoods. that he had remained a bachelor, owing to religious scruples. The vegetarianism was equally certain, for I had heard orders given for special dishes to be prepared

for this guest, and sitting next to him at the dinner table, I knew that he had not touched either meat or game, although it was not a fast day. After dinner, when the gentleman had joined us in the drawing room, the conversation turned upon psychic matters, and my experiences in America of a few years before. This extreme high churchman denounced all these lock, stock and barrel. He believed that everything might have happened as described,

but was equally certain that the devil alone could have had a hand in such going zone. Perhaps it will be wise to explain that he did not make use of this latter expression. My host, instead of coming to the rescue, which he might have done,

as one of the cloth, looked much amused when I fueled it most of my adversary's theological balls. At length, being unaccustomed to such irreverent handling, my enemy lost his temper, and, as usual, on such occasions, he tried to take my wicked by quoting texts against me. Well, all I can say is that everything you have told us is in direct opposition to holy writ. In fact, we are specially warned in the scriptures that in the latter days, seducing spirits shall arise. At this fatal moment, when the theological closure was descending upon my unhappy head,

a really brilliant thought occurred to me. Was it a seducing spirit or a friendly intelligence who reminded me that my opponent had only quoted half the text, the half that suited him? I pointed this fact out meekly. He looked puzzled, and probably had honestly forgotten what he did not wish to remember. Finished the text, what do you mean? he said irritably. So I finished it for him.

In the latter days, seducing spirits shall arise, forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats. He had pressed me very hard and rather unfairly. Still, the Council of Perfection would have been to refrain from the command that, if I were a celibate and vegetarian, it was not the text I should have chosen

with which to clinch an argument. End of Section 8. Section 9 of seen and unseen. This is a LibriVox recording. All Libbywarks recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Read by Yoganan. Seen and Unseen by E. Catherine Bates.

An interlude. I have headed this chapter and interlude for the following reason. It is the only one in this book which does not record personal experience. An opportunity came to me at Florence two years ago of hearing one of the best old-fashioned Christmas ghost stories I ever came across. Also a ghost story which has two rather unique advantages. First, it has never been published before. Secondly, the recipient was the matron of a boy's school, a well-known one, and wrote out her experiences within 12 hours of their occurrence. Now, the matron of the mother of the

a large boys' school must of necessity be an exceptionally practical woman and a daily experiences can scarcely tend to increase undue romance or imagination. When I add that the story was given to me and a copy of the original letter placed in my hands by a sister of two of the schoolboys who were under the matron's supervision, I shall have clear the way for my ghost to appear upon the scene. I must add, however, that I met this sister, a young widow in Florence, two years ago. She then told me this story, finding that I was intimately acquainted both with the county and the small county town where it happened. The matron had gone there for the

prosaic purpose of taking the baths for a rheumatism. The adventure took place in the early morning of 14th April 1875 and was recorded within a few hours in a long letter written by the recipient to her favorite cousin. My friend Mrs. Parker's brothers being at school at the time begged to be allowed to read this letter and take a copy of it. The copy was made by the sister, then a young girl, and I have it in my hands at the present moment of writing. It is of course necessary to change the name of the county and town as the old family mansion, let in lodgings in 1875,

has since been sold and turned into a boarding house. Mrs. Barker's mother made an expedition to this town a few years ago to verify the facts and went over the house which has been considerably altered and reconstructed inside since 1875. The small part mentioned the story is not built over entirely, as a town has increased in popularity owing to its barts, and the family portraits here mentioned have been removed since the house was sold.

I shall now quote verbatim from the maintenance letter written on the morning of experiences. The Priory Grantwich, 14th April 1875 My dear Eddie When you asked me once for a ghost story, I dare say you as little expected as I did, how soon I would have to reveal to you an experience which will doubtless give you as it has me, much ground for thought and speculation about those mysterious laws which rule the spirit world. How true it is that thought and feeling annihilate time and space. Since last night I seem to have lived through half a lifetime such an effect have its events had upon my inner life.

But before I begin to relate the strange circumstances, I have to tell you, I must describe to you more particularly this house in which they happened. I think I told you that the Priory where I am now lodging is an old mansion belonging to the Carbury family. For some years past, it has been led to the present occupiers who make the rent by letting lodgings. Some ancient pieces of furniture remain and a great many portraits, none of the early estate, but a handsome and respectable collection, soldiers, bishops and judges in their uniforms, robes and wicks, and ladies with powdered hair, hoops and trains. Of these portraits, two have engaged my attention especially from the first moment of seeing them, but I am not going to speak of them yet. My first object is to give you an idea of the house, or rather that part of it, with which my story is connected. I think I've told you that

the grand stairs goes up from the inner hall, and that around the staircase runs again, gallery, in this gallery and in the hole below are hung most of the portraits. On the first turn and landing of the staircase, there is a door opening into a trellised walk which leads into the garden. On a level with this door is a large window which looks on to sweeps of soft turf shadowed by fine trees. Standing often to look from this window, as I passed up and down the staircase, one tree has always riveted my attention.

It's a large old plant tree standing by itself and having a strange millenalienable. call a decayed look about it. I noticed why I cannot imagine that on one side of it the ground was bare and black, though everywhere else the grass was green and fresh. I mentioned this because it had struck me before the strange events occurred, which I am going to tell you. You must now go with me to the top of the staircase. Just at the top, on your right hand, hangs one of the portraits I mentioned. It's a life-sized painting of Captain Richard Carberry who landed on the 19th September 1738 in the colony of Georgia with General Oglethorpe's regiment.

Opposite to this, on the other side of the gallery, is a portrait of a lady, with black, resolute bros in full voluptuous mouth and chin. She has a high colour, an exquisite hand and arm, and an Amazonian bearing. Passing from the gallery, you enter a long passage, leading to other passages and staircases with which we have nothing to do. I only want you now to become acquainted with my own rooms. As you enter the passage from the gallery, two doors open, one on either hand. To the right is my sitting room, a square cheerful room looking on the street,

to the left is my bedroom, which will require a more particular description. It's a large, low room. As you enter from the passage, the window which looks into the garden is opposite to you. In the middle of the wall to your right hand stands the bed, and opposite to that, the fireplace, and, as a little. as you will see, if you have taken in my description, just at the back of the portrait of the lady with a black eyebrows, is another door.

Opposite to this last is yet another which caught my attention when I first entered the room from a peculiarity about it. The upper part of this door is of glass, rendered opaque by being washed a line with some red substance. As soon as I was alone in the room, I tried to open this door, but it was firmly fastened. I don't know why I should have felt disquited by this circumstance, but certainly I did feel annoyed.

I thought at first that it probably opened into a dressing room. There must have been a strong light behind it, for a red light always fell on that side of the room, through the colour glass, and I could see that red light in the morning before any light penetrated the window blind. I think I have now told you all that is necessary for understanding my experience.

I must ask you to remember that yesterday was the 13th of April. I went to bed about 11 o'clock and soon fell asleep. I could not, however, have slept long, before I awoke with an unusual feeling that something strange was going to happen. I awoke, not as one does in the morning, with a drossier-resol not go to sleep again because it is time to get up, but as one awakes when a journey or some similar event is imminent, for which one's faculties have to be clear and one's body active and alert. I was rather wondering at and enjoying the unusual clearness and energy of thought of which I felt capable,

when the clock in the halls began striking, and almost a doubt, the same moment, the clock of the old church of St. Andrew began striking also. I knew that both were striking twelve, though I did not count the blows, but just as the last stroke of the church clock died away, another sound caught my ear. The door by the fireplace gave a loud crack and then opened as if with some difficulty. The red door at the same time rattled as if someone were trying vainly to open it. The room had previously been dark, but I now plainly saw a tall figure come through the doorway and stand near the foot of the bed. There was a dull yellowish light round the figure which illuminated, leaving the rest of the room in darkness.

But this yellow light, I perceived, became red at one point of the figure's left side, and shone down on the floor with a red glow like that which came through the opposite door. The operation stood quite silent whilst I looked at it. The features and figure were familiar to me, for there were those of Captain Richard Carberry in the portrait, who had gone out to Georgia with the regiment of his excellency, General Oglethorpe. As soon as I was sure of this, I said, You are Captain Richard Carberry? The operation nodded.

Why do you come to me? I said. Cannot you speak? He seemed to have some difficulty in doing so, but after two or three efforts, such as one makes to move a rusty hinge, he parted his lips and said, Yes, I am Richard Carberry, and I am come to make you a witness.

A witness of what? I said. Can I be of use to you? You come from the spirit world. Is it then permitted to mortals to have personal intercourse with spirits? He held up his hands as if to silence me. Listen to me, he said. You are not frightened of me? No, I replied. Nor did I feel the slightest awe of fear. I felt stimulated. A kind of electricity ran through my veins. I longed earnestly to learn something of the mysterious realm from which he came, but I had no vulgar or superstitious fear.

Nor need you have any dread, he returned. I have no wish, no power to hurt you, but you must listen to my story. Once in 50 years I am allowed to leave my grave and revisit the scene of my tragical death, and this must always be on the 14th of April, which is the anniversary of the event. I am also permitted to recount my story if I find anyone sleeping in this room who is willing to listen to me. Are you willing? There is evidently some mistake here in the figures given by the ghost or received by the matron. If his death took place in 1741, three years after landing in Georgia, his first spirit return was due in 1791, the second 1841 and the third, nor till 1891.

It appears to have been anticipated by sixty years if the dates given are correct. A friend suggests that once in 50 years does not necessitate exact intervals of 50 years. End of footnote. I replied that I should gladly hear what he had to tell, but would he allow me to ask you one question? He inclined his head in assent, and I said I had always thought that the spirits of the dead, if they were allowed to appear on Earth, came with shadowy and skeleton forms. why did he appear with flesh like a living man ah he said that is owing to the peculiarity of my grave i'm buried in salt have you anything more to ask said my visitor nothing more at present i replied i'm ready now to hear your story i will make it as short as possible and not detain you long you have noticed my portrait in the gallery yes and that of the lady opposite my cousin

Lucretia Carberry. Certainly. Here, Red Door was violently shaken. She cannot open it, said Captain Carberry. It is sealed. When I went out to Georgia, he resumed in 1738, I was engaged to be married to her. We had been betrothed by our parents in our childhood, and family reasons made it almost a necessity that we should be united. But as we grew up, neither of us were anxious to fulfill the engagement. And to tell the truth, I was glad of the summons to join my regiment. However, after three years in that distant colony, I came home, having made it my mind, I would marry Lucretia, and settle down on the family property, which could only be enjoyed by that means, for we were the

only representatives of the family, and the property was so left by our fathers that only by marrying could be enter into possession, either by marrying or by the death of one of us. When the whole of the property would go to the other. I knew that Lucretia was at the old house at Grantwich and I came straight to her. I had written to say that she might expect me, and she received me with apparent kindness and agreed to all my propositions about a marriage. I arrived late at night, and she let me into the house herself and got foot for me. We supped together, and she pledged me in a cup which I now know was struck to make me sleep heavily. I then retired to my room.

This room, this bed on which you now lie. What I am now going to tell you has been made clear to me since. At the time, I was conscious of nothing. As soon as I got into the bed, I fell asleep. And whilst I thus slept, Lucretia came through that door, pointing to the red door opposite, and stabbed me to the heart. I will show you the instrument with which she did it, if you like.

Pray do, I said, and he unbetter. in his scarlet uniform coat and drew from his left side a slender dagger or stiletto. I looked at it with great interest and asked if I may take it my hand. Certainly, if you wish it, he said. But I do not advise to touch it. It is rusty now from the salt, but I assure you it was bright and keen when she drove it into my heart. The stroke was so cleverly aimed that I died instantly. Lucrezia then made a signal which was answered by the entrance of

a man, and between them they carried my body through the door by which I entered tonight. He paused, and I thought he looked more ghastly. Is something the matter? I asked. I am thinking, he answered, that I can show you the rest, if you will follow me. But I must tell you that when we leave this room and enter the gallery, it is possible the murderers will follow us. Shall you be afraid? Not in the least, I said. I will follow you with pleasure. But you must allow me to put something on, as I'm suffering from rheumatism, and I'm afraid of the cold and damp. By all means, said Captain Carberry. I will wait for you in the gallery. I then got up and put

on my dressing gown and slippers, whilst I was doing so, I heard it rustling the passage as a woman passing slowly along. I found Captain Carberry, and followed him along the gallery without looking round, but when we reached the end of the gallery and turned to go down the first flight of stairs, I saw the lady with the black bros, whom I know know to be Lucretia Carberry, the murderous, standing in the doorway between the gallery and the passage. I do not think she can come any farther, said my guide, and he opened the door leading from the staircase into the garden. I am showing you just where they brought me, Shady.

Who was the man? I asked. I never knew his name, but she married him afterwards. He then moved across a lawn to the bare spot under the plain tree. Here he stopped and pointing downwards showed me on the bare ground an exact outline of the dagger which he had drawn from his side. Here they dug my grave and here they buried me. A salt spring washes over me. At this moment the great clock of St. Andrews struck one. All that you have told me is very sad and strange, I said.

But now, will you allow me to ask you why you have appeared to me? Is there anything you want done on earth that I can do? Is there any restitution to be made or justice to be administered? Anything that you require, I am ready to do, if you will grant me one favor when you return to the spirit real. I had been speaking with my eyes fixed on the ground, but now happening to raise them, I was surprised to see that my companion appeared to be sinking into the ground.

My time is up, he said. Remember, and as his head disappeared, his words came in a hollow sense. sepulperal voice from beneath that spot of black earth, remember you are my witness. I was left standing alone under the plain tree with a thought that in returning to my room, I might probably meet the restless spirit of Lucretia Carberry. Nothing of the kind, however, occurred.

I passed through the doors that had opened at the touch of Captain Carberry, and I noticed that they closed behind me without any effort on my part. I regained my bed, and almost immediately fell asleep. All had passed so naturally, and as a matter of course that only when I woke this morning and thought over the events of the night did I realize that I had passed through such an experience as is given to few human beings. You see, dear Eddie, that my narrative has taken so long to write that I have no time to speak of other things even if I could bring my mind to think of anything else, which I confess I should have great difficulty in doing.

Ever, you are very affectionate, M. Porter copied verbatim from Miss Porter's letter written on the morning of 14th April 1875. So ends the story, with apologies to the SPR. I claim nothing for it beyond the following facts. The Priory still existed Grantwich and is known to have been the family mansion of the Carberry family. Miss Porter was undoubtedly matron of the school where my friend's brothers were educated. She was a woman of unblemished character and truthfulness, and would certainly not have invented this long and detailed account of her personal experiences within a few hours of their occurrence.

My friend most certainly copied this letter, which her brothers had obtained leave to read from their school matron, Miss Porter herself. Lastly, my friend Mrs. Parker's mother, who is still alive, verified the existence of the priory, as I have called it, in the town of Grantwich, and it had been turned into a boarding-house at the time of a visit, having been previously let in lodgings. Also she found that Captain Richard Carberry was supposed to have died in Georgia in the year 1741 as is inferred in the story. As the murderous and her accomplice alone seemed to have been aware of his return on that fateful night, this would be the natural opinion of the world. As an old associate of the SPR and quite conversant over their methods, two criticisms of the story at once suggest themselves, in addition to the confusion of dates which might perhaps be excused, owing to the abnormal nature of the interview described. But the obvious Portmorean remark would be that the whole adventure was a dream on the part of Miss Porter, induced by interest in the two-family portrait she had seen and the curious sensations she had experienced in looking at a specially gloomy tree in the park. This would certainly cover the ground, but it proves perhaps rather too much. It requires very robust faith in unfaith to suppose that a sensible, practical woman suffering from rheumatism should carry a dream to the verge of her own.

following a dream man into the garden and grounds of the house. It may be urged that she dreamt all this also, but that way madness lies. We must be able to formulate that certain acts of arts took place during full consciousness or daily life would become impossible and moral responsibility would cease. Miss Porter might have been in a dream all through the night, granted. But in these cases, it is the morning that brings counsel. We are all aware of the extraordinary lifelike dreams which, with a written of normal memory, we recognize his dream visions, no matter how vivid and credible they may have appeared to us in the night.

But with Miss Porter, this normal process was reversed. She went to sleep quite calmly, and first realized upon waking in the morning how thoroughly abnormal her experiences had been. I pass on to the next criticism, which, a little editing on my part could have averted. Is it credible that a woman, while he just recovering from the same, surprise and marvel of such an experience should write about it within a few hours to her favorite cousin as if she were preparing a story for the family herald. I confess that this was my own feeling when the record was placed in my hands. We must, however, remember first that the precipient was obviously a lady of great courage or she would not have followed a ghost into the garden. secondly that she has been a keen observer and very accurate in details probably many generations of schoolboys passing through her hands may have quickened her perceptions in

both these ways as for the stilted style that presents little difficulty when one remembers that people of a certain rank in life never use a short word when a long one will answer the purpose i claim nothing for the story beyond the points already mentioned these are matters of fact each one must interpret it according to his own own views and prejudices. It is quite enough for me to be responsible for the truth and accuracy of my own experiences to which we will now return. Note, since writing the above, I have consulted the Century Encyclopedia and find there, Oglethorpe, James Edward, born in London, December 21, 1696, died at Cranham Hall, Essex, England, 1785, an English general and philanthropist. He projected the

colony of Georgia for insolvent debtors and persecuted protestants conducted the expedition for his settlement 1733 and returned to England 1743. The apparent discrepancy between the day 1733 given in the encyclopedia and the 1738 of Captain Carberry's Gaussly narrative may be due to one of two causes. The young girl copying Miss Porter's letter may have mistaken a three for an ate rather easily. Again, Captain Carberry did not state that he landed with General Oglethorpe 19 September 1738, but with General Oglethorpe's regiment. This latter may have been a reinforcement sent out to the General after his first landing in the colony. The end of Section 9. Section 10 of Seen and Unseen. This is a Libervox recording. All Libervox

recordings are in the public domain. For more and for more and from or to volunteer, please visit Librevox.org. Read by Val Roth. Seen and Unseen by E. Catherine Bates. Chapter 7. Lady Caithness and Avenue Wegram Having spent the winter months in 1894 from January to April in Egypt, I was returning thence to the latter month with my friend Mrs. Judge of Windsor. Our route was via Paris, and I had arranged to spend a week there in the same hotel as a young Swedish lady, whom I first met in India, and who has been referred to more than once in this record.

She told me she had made the acquaintance that winter of the famous Countess of Cathness and Duchess de Pomer, and thinking it would interest me to meet this lady, she had asked for permission to introduce me to her. As it turned out, Madame Bruegel was unable to accompany me to the house, having several engagements for the afternoon, but she promised to put in an appearance later. So Mrs. Judge and I drove off to the well-known mansion in the Avenue de Wagram, and were received very cordially by Lady Keithness. I had once tried to read a very obtruse and mystic book by this lady,

and had heard her spoken of as a more or less hopeless lunatic, who imagined herself Mary Queen of Scots, and so forth. otherwise I went without prejudice and being accustomed to judge for myself in such matters came to the conclusion that Lady Caveness was an extremely shrewd woman, with her head remarkably well screwed on as the saying is, as regards her claims to be Mary Queen of Scots, I never heard these from her own lips, although I saw her daily for a week and we had many interesting talks.

She certainly did claim to be in very close relations with the ill-fated queen of Scotland, but I do not know what views she may have held privately as to varied manifestations of the one spirit. I had heard Lord Monkswell propound an interesting theory, with Archdeacon Wilberforce in the chair, to the effect that as one short earth life gave small scope for spiritual experience and development, he thought it quite possible that the same spirit might have several bodily manifestations simultaneously, and that the judge and the criminal might conceivably be one and the same individual in two personalities. It is possible that Lady Cathness may have had some such view, not theoretically, as was the case with Lord Monswell,

but as a matter of conviction, and apart from the limits of time and space involved in the conception of the latter. I can only say that I never heard. I never heard. her speak of Mary Queen of Scots, except as an entity quite distinct from herself. But that she carried the Marie cult to great extremes is an undoubted fact. The hall and rooms on the ground floor of the Avenue Wegram House were arranged and furnished in close imitation of Holyrood Palace. I counted over 50 miniatures and other pictures of the Scottish Queen in the Countess's beautiful bedroom alone, and later on she'll have to speak more definitely of one life-sized and exquisitely painted portrait of the queen. But to return to this first reception,

I must confess that a somewhat inconveniently keen sense of humor found only too much nourishment on this occasion. The countess was magnificently dressed, as was usual with her, in priceless lace falling over her head and shoulders, and a beautiful tiara and various colored jewels arranged over the lace. This was eccentric, perhaps, considering the occasion, but not laughable. Lady Cathness, in addition to geniality, had enough quiet dignity to carry off the lace and jewels with success. I was chiefly amused by the attitude of adoring humility and flattering appreciation shown by the numerous ladies already assembled when we arrived. Only one man was present, and he was a priest.

Later, I learned to appreciate the friendliness of the Abbotty, and to admire his intellectual courage and manliness. For the moment, seeing him surrounded by these female worshippers, hanging upon his lips as he discoursed to us about new readings of old truths, one was irresistibly reminded of certain scenes in Molière's femmevent. A lively little American lady, married to an Italian count, plied him with numerous questions in fluid French, spoken with an atrocious accent. Finally, she wished to hear the Abba's views upon Melchizedek.

In the midst of other questions and answers, the kind of little man managed to turn round to her with a cheery, Ah, Madame la Comtesse, Corle Cusadec, we reviendon to do you suite to Melchizedek. All the affairs of the religious universe were being wound up in a similar pace and in like fashion, and this final word of cheerful assurance would have proved absolutely disastrous to me had I not been sitting close to my friend and able to whisper to her, please dig your nails into my wrist hard. Any bodily pain was preferable to the hysterical laughter which had been so long suppressed and seemed now imminent. But there was worse to come.

An Englishwoman, the very type of the characteristic British spinster turned around and addressed Monsieur Labie, in labored and extremely British French. I must leave the accent to be imagined and supplied by my reader. But, Monsieur La Abbe, it's the plaintiffestortizme, who we'll us signet there? He turned round upon her in his wrath. But, madame, oh, mademoiselle, no prince can convey the utter scor. in contempt of that last word. The rest of the sentence was lost to us

in a loud laugh of the genial good-tempered woman, "'Moiselle, mademoiselle, "'I've been married a venton, "'and I six infants.' "'The whole scene was too funny for words, "'and with the exception of this good lady, "'all present took themselves "'as seriously as the university dawn.

"'It was a real relief "'when the solemnity, of the reception broke up, and we were ushered into the adjoining dining room for an excellent tea. Here I came upon my Swedish friend, who had only just arrived and missed all the fun. She told me there was to be a seance held in the house next day, and that she had been asking the countess if I might not be present. It might amuse you, Cat, was her reverent way of putting it. Unfortunately, there seems to be some difficulty about it.

At this moment, Lady Caithness came up and cordially expressed, her regrets that she could not accede to Madame Bruegel's suggestion. Had you been staying until next week, Miss Bates, I would have gladly arranged for it, but tomorrow is a very special occasion. As a matter of fact, I have promised Monsieur Petit that no one shall be present except himself and me, and the two female mediums, of course. On Wednesday we are to have a crowded meeting here. All the well-known people of Paris will come, And then Monsieur La Abbey will read his paper explaining that he can no longer blind his eyes to the new light breaking upon the world through scientific discovery, etc. But that he remains a loyal son of the church, if the church will allow him to do so, it is of course a very trying and anxious ordeal.

For many priests will be present, also a cardinal and one or more of our bishops. So the seance tomorrow will be specially devourable. to receiving last-minute instructions for the paper he is about to read, and some words we trust of encouragement and hope. Of course, I hasten to assure Lady Cathness of my full comprehension of her point, and added that I was only sorry she should have been asked to alter her arrangements on my account. But you will join us on Wednesday at the meeting, I trust. It will be held at 3 p.m. in a large room on the ground floor,

which is arranged for such gatherings. I shall expect you then, so we will not say goodbye. This was heaping coals of fire on my head, for so observant a woman as Lady Cathness must have noticed my difficulty in keeping a grave face earlier in the afternoon. Now comes a curious point. As we left the house, Madam Bruegel, in expressing disappointment about the next evening, added,

and yet somehow I think he will go, after all. Yes, I said involuntarily, I believe I shall go, but I cannot think how it will come about. Nothing could be more decided than what we have just heard, and I cannot possibly put off my journey to England at the end of this week. I think we were both a little disappointed when no letter arrived by the morning's post. Local letters often come by second post, urged my friend, who was very keen upon her pre-sentiment. A long morning, at the Louvre prevented my reaching home until 1 p.m. when the Degener La Farchette was halfway through its course.

No letter on my plate. So Madame Brugel and I agreed that the wish must have been farther to the thought with both of us and put the matter out of our heads once and for all. At 2.30 p.m., however, a Depeche letter arrived for me. Lady Cathness wrote to beg that I would make a point of being with her that evening by nine p.m. You will think this very inconsistent with what I told you yesterday, she wrote. But I said only what was the exact truth as matters then stood.

It is the queen herself who has communicated with me this morning, and insists upon your being present this evening. The Abbe and I can only bow to this decision. I need not tell you how pleased I shall be personally to greet you this evening. I was shown again into the spacious bedroom of the Countess, where she received in general, quite after the manner of the French kings in the days of the old monarchy. Her bed was quite a state bed, too, with its beautiful silk furnishings and heavy velvet hangings. On the wall behind this was a very valuable fresco painting,

representing Jacob's ladder with the angels ascending and descending, executed by a famous modern artist. We soon descended to the ground floor, and passing through a large lecture room of which Lady Cadeness had spoken, and which had sufficient guilt and cane chairs to seat a large audience, we stepped down some marble stairs

into a small but exquisitely appointed room. It was a sort of chapel, in fact, built by the Queen's instructions, and used for all purposes and occasions of direct communication with her. A general impression remains with me of rare woods and exquisite marbles, and the walls were hung with framed tapestries representing various scenes in the queen's life. To me, the most striking and beautiful thing in the room was a full-length, life-sized portrait of Mary herself, so arranged that a hidden lamp threw its soft light on the features. whilst the hanging velvet curtains of deep crimson on either side concealed the frame of the picture

and conveyed the illusion that a living woman was standing there ready to receive her guests. I have never seen anything more perfect than the way in which this impression was conveyed without a jarring note of sensational effect. The two French women mediums were already in the room, and I am bound to say that they did not attract me pleasantly, impress me very favorably. They were mother and daughter, and Harpy was written large over either countenance. Doubtless they were very good mediums, in spite of this fact. They must have been so, unless one supposes that Lady Cathness and the Abbe Petit wear themselves abnormally strong

sensitives, in which case one would have thought this extraneous help would have been unnecessary. We sat down at a fairly large wooden table, polished, but without once. covering of any kind, and having only one solid support to it, coming from the center, passing down as a single wooden pillar, and spreading out in the usual fashion at the bottom. I had noted this on first entering the room. The two women sat together on my right-hand side. On my left was the abbey, and the countess sat exactly opposite to me, with a printed alphabet pasted onto a card, and a long pencil as pointer. This made up the party. At a side table placed some distance away

sat a young pleasant French lady who was writing automatically all the time, a secretary to the Countess, I believe. This young lady had no possible connection with the table. The seance began with a few words of prayer from the Abbe for Light and Guidance. The process was as follows. First, the Countess, and then I, took the printed alphabet

and pointed silently and at a fair pace to the, the letters going on from one to the other without pause. At the letter needed, the table did not rise, but gave it sound more like a bang than a rap. I had never heard anything quite so loud and definite in my long investigation. The sounds seemed to come from within the wood, as in ordinary raps, when these are genuine, but it was far louder and more rapid and decided than the usual seance rap. There was no hesitation, no gathering up a forest, Any amount of vitality was evidently present, and the intelligence, from whatever source, was unerring. The Countess and I were the only two persons who held the alphabet and pointed,

and when she held it, the mediums could not have seen the letters from their position at the table with regard to hers. Yet the letters were banged out, I can use no other expression, with absolute accuracy, and at a pace which, quick to start with, became more and more rapid as we weary, of the monotonous task and handed the alphabet to each other in turn. When the name of God or our Lord came, only the first letter was indicated, and then the table swayed slowly to and fro in a very reverent and characteristic way for a few seconds,

after which we began the alphabet again for the next word. When these loud bangs came, I could trace the reverberation in the wood, and it seemed to me practically impossible. that the harpies could be producing them by any unlawful methods whilst sitting in full light and with immovable faces the daughter writing down the letters as quickly as these were indicated one did not feel quite comfortable about making investigations in a private house without being invited to do so again if the women were tricking and i caught them at it there was always a chance of a disagreeable scene with people of their class on the other hand it was losing a great opportunity to refrain as a mere matter of courtesy. Also, I comforted myself by thinking that if anyone needed to feel ashamed, it would be the ones who cheated, and not the detective. So, I pushed my

chair a little nearer to the table, and the next time the countess took the alphabet from me and the bangs were in full swing, I put my foot cautiously, but very effectually, entirely round the one leg of the table, moving it also up and down freely. Not a vestige of another foot, nor even of the flimsyest particle of dress or other obstruction. I could positively and distinctly hear the reverberation of the loud bangs on the wood between me and the center of the table, whilst my own leg and foot were firmly embracing the single wood pillar

upon which the latter stood. So the harpies were justified so far as this one phenomenon was concerned. the letters written down so rapidly by the daughter on large sheets of paper presented an apparently hopeless jumble. But when the sitting was over at the last, the Abbey and I were able to make out the words and sentences without great difficulty. He being accustomed to the task, and we then found a long, coherent and at any rate perfectly sensible message addressed to him, and referring to the points of his coming discourse. This had to be proved. upon its own merits and without prejudice arising from the fact that St. Paul's name was given as the author. It was quite as helpful as some of the Apostle's letters, with the advantage of being

up to date as regarded the question in hand. After all, the Abbey was about to embark upon an enterprise requiring much courage and great tact in the forlorn hope that the walls of narrow orthodoxy and priestcraft might fall down before the trumpets of advancing knowledge and light. It may or may not have been St. Paul who stood by the Abbey with words of encouragement that night, but I for one find no difficulty in thinking it conceivable that the great apostle should take a keen interest in the evolution of the planet upon which he once lived. The charming young lady delivered up her script also. It was interesting and well-written. but the only paragraph which remains in my memory was an excellent analysis of the initial

difference between Christianity and Theosophy. The Abbey kindly copied it out for me the next day, but I must quote from memory. Christianity is a stretching down of the divinity to man. Theosophy is the attempt of man by his own efforts to reach the divine. This seems to me both terse and true. We had sat from 9 p.m. till 1 a.m. And I think we were all relieved when an adjournment for supper was suggested by Lady Caithness. Her son, the Duke de Pomer, joined us for this part of the evening and was introduced to me. My enjoyment of the excellent fare, after so many hours of exhaustion, was only tempered by an unfortunate and violent quarrel between the mother and daughter mediums on the score of the age of the latter.

The mother declared her daughter was 45. The daughter said, not a day over 35, and intimated that she surely might be supposed to know her own age. The mother, however, murmured provocatively. I, I said more than that. And so, the wrangle went on until I made a diversion by taking leave of my hostess and promising to be present at the lecture the following afternoon, which, by the way, had become this afternoon

by the time I left the hotel Wagram. When I entered the house once more, it was to be shown into the large lecture room previously described, which was already three parts full, and very shortly entirely so. Lady Caithness had kindly reserved a front seat for me so I could see and hear without difficulty. On the raised platform stood my friend, the Abbey,

looking very grave and rather nervous. A cardinal, two bishops, and some half-dozen priests were seen. seated close to him, and very shortly the lecture, which was, I think, extempary, began. The Abbey was so magnificently in dead earnest and without any suspicion of pose that one could not fail to be deeply impressed by the scene. It needed all the help of a sincere purpose and a brave heart to stand up amongst those of his own cloth, and in face of a partially indifferent and partially unfriendly audience to declare boldly the faith that was in him, a faith that

burned all the more brightly and warmly from the fact that it was being purged of the superstitions, which must always become the accretions of every form of religion, the clinging ruffeuse of weed and shell, which from time to time must be scraped off the bottom of the grand old ship if it is to convey us safely from port to harbor. The cardinal sat twirling his big seal ring, with a look of cynical amusement on his face, or so it seemed to me. As the Abbey proceeded to mention the advances made in science, and the necessity for a restatement of all truths,

which should bring them into line with other truths of the 19th century, proving the essential unity of all truth, and breaking down the fallacy that the vital part of religion and the vital part of science have anything to fear from one another. The Cardinal's face was a study to me. Yes, of course, we know all that, you and I. But what is the use of making this fuss about it? We belong to a system, and this system has worked very well for centuries past,

and will work very well for centuries to come if fools don't attempt to upset the coach by restatements and readjustments, as they are called. The people don't want restatements. They want a dead certainty, and that is just what we give them. All this I seem to read in his clever cynical countenance, indirect opposition to the thrilling sentences of the Abbe Petit, as he leaned forward and said with uplifted finger and prophetic intensity. The Lumire is van der Vennu, me frere,

et si you, do you serene less, cell in van aglis. It is impossible to you. to exaggerate the affectionate solemnity of this appeal to his brother priests. The tragic note was relieved later by an amused smile which rippled round the audience. This puzzled me until a kind French lady sitting next to me explained that the audience were amused by the Trey cher frere, dearly beloved, brethren, with which the Abbey addressed them in this rather unorthodox lecture.

It was evidently looked upon as a curious bit of professional surveillance. On the following day, Thursday, I was invited to lunch with Lady Caithness at 2pm, and being a punctual person I arrived at that hour. The powdered footman announced that his mistress had not yet emerged from her bedroom, and showed me up into the dining room adjoining where I waited her. In a few minutes I was joined here by the Abbey, who politely expressed his sorrow that he had not known of my arrival earlier. As we sat chatting together, he told me a curious experience

of his of the previous night, which will certainly cause the enemy to smile, if not, to blast fame. He said, of course in French, I was sitting last night in my room which looks over the back of the house and where I can hear no sounds from the

avenue, and I was talking to La Rena. Suddenly, "'Ele ma frappé on and then said she must leave me at once in order to meet the Duchess who had just returned home. At that moment, twelve o'clock struck from a neighbouring church, and I looked at my watch and found it was indeed midnight. When Madame la Duchess comes in, I am most anxious to find out whether she and the Duke were returning home at that hour. You will be my witness, madame, that I have told you of this occurrence before seeing the Duchess. I assured him that I would

gladly testified to this, and in a few moments the Duke de Pomer arrived, and almost immediately after him, Lady Cathness emerged from her bedroom on the other side of the dining-room. We sat down to luncheon, and I was much amused by the form of the Abbey's question later in the meal. Madame la Duchess, Pugége of you demand designee in discreet. In calhoun, you are you? Revenu y'er, oh, swore. Lady Caithness looked a little surprised, but answered readily enough. Well, it must have been past midnight. I did not notice very specially.

Not past midnight, mother, corrected the Duke de Pomer. I heard a clock strike twelve, just as we were driving through the port Coucher. Bien, madame, what'sse I've said? Demanded the Abbey, turning to me in triumph. He then repeated his story, and I was able to certify that he had already mentioned it to me on my arrival. The following day I took my leave of Lady Caveness, with a happy remembrance of her and her great kindness and hospitality to me during this pleasant week.

She made me promise to let her know whatever I might happen to be passing through Paris. I wrote to her the next year, when about to make a short stay in Paris on returning from Algeria, and received an answer from the Riviera. She had been wintering there, and had been packed and ready for the rich. return to Paris when an obstinate chill had upset all plans. She begged me to go to the Avenue Wegram when I arrived and find out the latest news of her, as the doctors might give leave for the journey at any moment. Ten days later, I did go to her house and interview the lady's secretary, not the one I had seen, who was very grudging in her answers and gave me the impression that she

was accustomed to deal with persons who had some axe to grind by claiming acquaintance with the countess. I did not happen to have the letter in my pocket which authorized my visit, and should probably not have produced it in any case. So I turned away rather shortly, leaving my card saying, I must trouble you to forward this at once to Lady Cathness. The moment the secretary saw my name, her manner entirely changed, and became as servile as it had been cavalier. Miss Bates, I see, oh, certainly I shall communicate at once with her ladyship. I had no idea it was Miss Bates. Pray, excuse me. So many come and ask for the Duchess, and we have to be so very particular. But of course you must be the lady the

Duchess is so very fond of. She has mentioned you often, and warned us to receive you with every courtesy. And that is my last recollection of the kindly woman who died a few months later. No, not absolutely my last recollection. Visiting Scotland in 1896, I made a point of going to Holyrood Chapel for the express purpose of finding her grave. The plain stone slab and simple inscriptions seemed at first a curious contrast to the gorgeous magnificence of her home and dress and surroundings. Yet I am inclined to think that they represented a side of her character which was quite as real as the other. In like manner, no one who knew of her only as a wild visionary could have realized the shrewd, practical woman of business and of common sense who shared the personality of Countess

of Cadness and Duchess de Pomer. I remember that Mr. Frederick Myers made the same remark to me after a visit he paid to her, just after my return to England for the purpose of arranging batters with regard to her generous bequest to the Society of Psychical Research. End of Section 10. Section 11 of Seen and Unseen. This is a Lipervox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain.

For more information or to volunteer, please visitlippervox.org. Read by Val Roth. Seen and Unseen by E. Catherine Bates. Chapter 13. From Oxford to Wimbledon From Paris to England is not a long cry, and by next reminiscence is connected with the University of Oxford. I was spending a few days there with a friend in the spring of 1896, and went with her one afternoon

to an Oxford tea party, with its usual sprinkling of women, married and unmarried. A few dawns captured as a question of friendship, and more than a few undergraduates. Amongst the latter, I chanced to hear the name of a very well-known bishop, whom I had first met and known rather intimately when I was a young girl, and he a young married curate. I had also known his wife, a few years my senior, very intimately in those far-off days, so my curiosity was aroused to know if the young man in this Oxford drawing-room should chance to be a son of this bishop, whom we will call the Bishop of Grandchester. I found that my surmise was correct. The young man was introduced to me, and we were soon deep in an interesting

conversation about his parents, especially his mother, who had died when he was barely three years old. He knew little or nothing about her. His father had married again, and his paternal grandmother, still alive in 1896, and never cared for his mother, from feelings of jealousy probably. So there was no one to speak to the boy about her, and he was naturally delighted to hear all my girlish recollections of her. Do come and have tea with me tomorrow afternoon, or any day that suits you, he said eagerly. I have one or two old photographs taken of my mother when she was young, and I should like so much to know which of them you consider the best. Of course I agreed to go, Mr. Blake Mason promising to ask a chum to entertain my hostess, whilst he and I discussed the

photographs in the old days before he was born. Returning home from his rooms that February evening, I was conscious once more of an unaccountable depression, and also a certain amount of nervous irritability which other sensitives will understand, and which often precede some psychic happening. Just after we had finished dinner, it struck me suddenly, and for the first time, that my discomfort might be connected with my afternoon visit. This young man's mother might be wishing to impress me in some way. I found that this was the fact, but felt unequal to going further into the matter that night. I promise to listen to anything she might wish to say next morning, and having given this promise, all unpleasant and disturbing influences disappoint.

and I had a good night's rest. Next morning after breakfast, my host has said very practically, Now, do get this matter off your mind at once, or you will be worried about it all day. I am going to order dinner and shall then be in the drawing room so you can have this room entirely to yourself. I sat down, and a very beautiful message was given to me by the friend of my girlhood. She was evidently very much perturbed and very anxious about something connected with her youngest son, whom I had met for the first time two days previously, and about whose affairs I need scarcely say. I was in a state of profound ignorance. The little mother was anxious not to give him away or betray confidences, and so her words were very guarded. There was evidently nothing in the least dishonorable or in any way

unworthy of her son in question. I gathered rather that he might be contemplating some step which she, from her water outlook, considered undesirable and inexpedient, possibly even disastrous in the future. It was no business of mine, and I make it a point of honor not to try to guess more than I am told, and to forget what I am told as soon as possible, where the affairs of other people are involved. This is fortunately easy for me as a rule, but in this case, one sentence remains even now ringing in my ears, and if the son ever comes across this record, I hope he will forgive my reproducing his mother's last beautiful words to me. Tell my darling boy that life is so solemn and true love,

so sacred a thing. Tell him to be very, very sure lest he lose the substance. in pursuing the shadow. The first sentence is given verbatim. In the second, my memory may be producing the sense without the exact wording, but I have no doubt at all that my words practically convey what the mother wished for me to tell her boy. This message gave me a hard problem to solve. What should I do with it? On the other hand, my having agreed to take the message tacitly bound me to let him have it. the other hand, there were various questions to consider. In the first place, Mr. Blake Mason might probably, and very naturally, resent my writing to him on this subject, especially as I had no

reason to suppose he had any knowledge of psychic matters. Secondly, he might suppose, quite untrually, that I had heard some private affairs of his disgust, and had taken upon myself to convey a personal warning, under cover of his dead mother's wishes. This was perhaps exaggerating a possibility, which nevertheless could not be ignored. Thirdly, he might consider me a harmless lunatic, conveying a message which had no slightest foundation in truth. Fourthly, it might, on the other hand, give him the impression that his mother must have some access to his most private affairs, in which case he might become intensely interested in psychic matters, to the exclusion of more mundane affairs, always a danger with young people, not to mention other possibilities of

psychic disaster from inexperienced investigators. I went over all these chances con to put against the one pro of his mother's loving anxiety and my sense of responsibility to her. Finally, I decided that there was no choice left for me but to send the message and trust the consequences to a higher wisdom. I did this, adding a few words of explanation and also of warning, in case he should recognize my absolute bona fides in his mother's personality, and become too much absorbed by these psychic possibilities. Unfortunately, I added, in his own interests, that it was not necessary to acknowledge the letter. her. It would doubtless reach him, and I had nothing more to do with the matter. I left Oxford next day, and have never seen the young man since, nor have I ever heard from him. I concluded that he was annoyed, or that the message was quite wide of the mark. I never doubted his mother's presence

with me, but I might have failed to reproduce her words to her son with sufficient accuracy for recognition. Anyway, I put the matter out of my head as one of those trying episodes to which all sensitives are exposed at times when they think more of conscience than personal convenience. Three or four years passed before the corroboration of that message came to me in a rather curious manner. A cousin of mine, having been badly wounded in the West African War, was sent to a London Hospital to have the bullet which had puzzled all local surgeons located and extracted. He was at the hospital for several weeks during the London season of 1899, I think. During these weeks, I, in common with many other friends and relations, was in the habit of

paying him occasional visits. I had gone to say goodbye to him on leaving town, when by chance, as we call it, he mentioned for the first time the name of his ward sister, adding how charming and kind and capable she had proved. By the way, she is a daughter of the Bishop of Grandchester, he added. You know everybody, Cousin, Emmy. Perhaps you know her, he said smiling. No, I don't know her, Bertie, but I knew her mother and father very well many years ago. Nothing would satisfy him, but that I should ask to see her when I left the hospital. And as he seemed really anxious on the point, I promised to do so, though inwardly a very from disturbing a busy woman. I asked the hall-porter for her, but said I had no special business

and would not ask to see her unless she happened to be quite free. In a few moments he returned, and showed me to a pretty sitting-room on the ground floor, saying that the sister would be with me shortly. The door opened again to admit a bright, pleasant-looking young woman of seven or eight who gave me a most cordial greeting when she heard my name saying, Oh yes, Frank told me all about meeting you at Oxford. I did not feel very keen about talking of Frank just then. But we sat down and had a long half-hour's chat on much the same lines as my conversation with her brother three years before. I had said goodbye, and she had accompanied me across the hall to the fine stone steps, leading from the hospital.

She had, in fact, turned towards her own apartments, when I felt I must ask her one more question. So I turned and hurried back to her. Did your brother Frank ever tell you a letter he received from me in Oxford? I asked. Oh, yes, she answered with a touch of embarrassment. Then I continued. I never heard from him about it. I told him he need not write at the time. But I have been afraid he was hurt or annoyed and thought it in them. impertinence on my part, perhaps. Did Frank never write? she asked, with genuine astonishment.

I know he intended to do so. Certainly he was not annoyed in any way, far from it. He was intensely interested. And I have the best of reasons for knowing that that message from our mother made a very great difference in his life. I thanked her for these words without asking any further, as I have said it was no affair of mine from first to last, but the verification after such a lapse of time was doubly satisfactory to me. Again I ask, how about the quobona argument? Another shake of the kaleidoscope and I find myself at Wimbledon, staying with a friend, now alas, passed away,

who had then a pretty house not far from the common, and with whom I often spent a few days when in London. On this occasion, she had asked some friends to meet me at tea, amongst them Mrs. Alfred Wedgwood, to whom I had introduced her some years previously, and my friends, V.C. Desertus and his wife. A Miss Farquhar, whom I knew very slightly, was sharing a sofa with me. She sitting at one end and I at the other, leaving a vacant space between us. Mrs. Wedgwood was talking to Mr. Desertes at the moment, but suddenly looked across the room at our sofa and began describing very graphically an old man of benevolent aspect sitting

between Miss Farquhar and myself, leaning on a stick and wearing a soft felt hat. He has long hair, almost down to his coat collars, and he looks such a dear kind old man, Mrs. Wedgwood said. Then turning round, she added, surely some of you must recognize him. He is so very clear and distinct in his whole personality. Mrs. Desertes whispered something to her husband, who asked at once if the old gentleman's hair was very white. Yes, quite white, said Mrs. Wedgwood, hopefully. And curly and long?

Yes, curly and quite long. Reaching to his collar, continued Mrs. Wedgwood still more confidently. But our hopes were dashed when Mr. Desertes turned round dryly to his wife. Then it cannot possibly be my friend. father, as you suggested, his hair was white but quite short. It was a cruel blow, but Mrs. Wedgwood still affirmed that she had never seen anyone more distinctly, whether we recognized him or not. I may here mention that I had been sleeping very badly in this house for some nights past, and regretted this the more, because I was shortly going to stay with a friend at Windsor for my first, fourth of June,

and wish to be specially bright and well for the coming festivities. These bad nights were later proved to have some connection with the benevolent old gentleman just described. Now I will continue the sequence of events. Mrs. Wedgwood's clairvoyant description had been forgotten by us all, as I supposed, long before the afternoon came to an end. It had passed unrecognized and other interesting matters arose in conversation. The following day, Miss Farquhar wrote a line to my hostess, asking if she might come to tea towards the end of the week, as she had something very interesting to tell us. She came, of course, and thus unfolded her budget. None of you seemed very much impressed about the old gentleman Mrs. Wedgwood described here the other day. But her words were so graphic that I felt sure she was really seeing him at the moment, so I determined to try and find out something about him.

I went to an old lady I know, one of the oldest inhabitants, and asked her if she knew anything of your predecessors in this house. She told me an elderly couple had lived here, a husband and wife, that the husband had died, and that although the wife lived away from Wimbledon now, she could not bear to part with the house which her husband had been so fond of. So let it. In fact, my friend seemed to think she must be your present landlady. This was said to my hope. and proved to be quite true. The house had been let through an agent, and as the present owner lived in a distant country, nothing was known of her personally by my friend. Then Mrs. Farquhar continued, hearing that the old man was so devoted to the house rather suggested a reason

for Mrs. Wedwood seeing him here. So I asked my old lady if she had known this gentleman, and if so, would she describe him? She did this, almost word for word, as Mrs. Wedgwood had seen him. Also, she added that he was a good deal of an invalid, often sat indoors, with a hat on for fear of drafts, and carried a stick, upon which he constantly leaned for support.

This was very satisfactory. We applauded Miss Farquhar's detective instincts, and promised to let Mrs. Wedgwood know about the matter. The latter took it all very quietly, only remarking that she felt sure someone ought to be able to find out about the old man? A sudden thought struck me that my disturbed nights and uncomfortable feelings in a very cheerful and pretty bedroom might possibly be connected with the same old man.

Without saying a word about this, I asked Mrs. Wedgwood to come up into my bedroom before she returned to London. And then I told her that I could not sleep and had not had a peaceful night since I arrived. Could she find out what was the cause? as Wedgwood looked round for a moment, and then said in the most casual way, Not the smallest doubt of the cause. It is the old man, of course. He is earthbound, I expect, and taunting the house.

You had better take a message from him if you want to get rid of him. I would help you if I could, but I shall be late for my train if I don't start at once. Next morning I took the poor old gentleman's message, which began with an apology and regrets for disturbing me. but went on pathetically. You must forgive me. I was so very anxious to send a message to my wife, and I saw that you were as sensitive and could take it from me. I did not realize that it might cause you so much discomfort.

That lady called me earthbound. But if I am, it is only through my deep love for my wife, and I am permitted to watch over her. I was drawn here by my old affection for this house, and also by your presence here, knowing you could help me. He then gave the message, of which I can only remember that it was most touching in its expressions of deep affection and a watchful care for his widow. As we did not know this lady's present address,

and could not procure it without raising inconvenient questions, my hostess and I settled that she should lock up the message, in the hope that some day we might be able to forward it. A year later, I had a most unpleasant experience of being made to feel seriously ill when I came down for a night from town. And as another clairvoyant assured me that this resulted from the message remaining undelivered and the poor old man's frantic endeavors to reach his wife's consciousness, I told my Wimbledon friend that something must be done.

Either she must procure the lady's address, Koot Kekut, or I could not come down again to Wimbledon, unless the step was taken. Under pressure of this determination of mine, the address was procured, and this led to a rather unpleasant experience. I wrote a very courteous letter to the lady in closing the message, and explaining that I was quite debarred from visiting my Wimbledon friend unless it was delivered, that I hoped, therefore, she would excuse my sending it, after more than a year. years' consideration of the question. I further intimated that although she might consider me a lunatic for my pains, I trusted there could be nothing to vex or hurt her in so touching an evidence of her

husband's constant care and love. However little faith she might be disposed to place in the source from which the message was supposed to emanate. The answer came as a shower bath on my unfortunate head. The old lady was furious. She had never heard of such wicked nonsense. Her dear husband was quite the gentleman, both in clothes and appearance, and he was not old, not a day over 68 when he died, etc, etc. It would have been amusing if it had not been rather pitiful to think of the poor young man of 68, trying so hard to reach. such a termagent. Later, I heard the military man, through whom the old lady's address had been given to my Wimbledon hostess, had asked the husband of the latter if I were a lunatic by any chance.

And this is how some of us welcome our friends from the other side of the veil. The marvel to me is that love can still be stronger than death, in face of such ingratitude and stupidity. I have all I already mentioned my extreme sensitiveness to the atmosphere, psychic, of rooms, especially rooms where one sleeps. I find another instance of this in my notes. I was paying a first visit to a friend in the south of England, and a very bright, cheerful room had been allotted to me there. From the first night, I felt a strong influence of a man in the room.

Kindly note that I do not say the influence of a strong man. On the contrary, the character appeared to me that of an essentially weak man, weak rather than wicked, sensual as well as sensuous, self-indulgent and greatly wanting in grit and willpower. My hostess had two sons, one whom I knew the other living abroad whom I had never met. The influence I felt was certainly not that of the son I knew, who was both manly and strong-willed, a fine woman. soldier, and hard as nails, as men would say. I feared it might be the other son, however,

and took an early opportunity of asking to see a photograph of the latter. My mind was quite set at rest. It was certainly not this man's influence that I had felt so strongly in my room. Asking my hostess, who had chiefly occupied the room? She said at once, both my sons have slept there at different times, adding, I am sure you have some of your queer ideas about the room. What is the matter with it? I told her. Now that I am quite convinced that neither of your sons is implicated,

I will describe to you the character of the man, whom I feel sure must have slept in that room and has left a strong psychic influence behind him. I then mentioned the characteristics already given, and one or two more which have escaped my memory. My skeptical friend looked a little surprised. She said nothing at the moment, but crossed the room to a cabinet.

Went she took a photograph of a man which I had never seen and placed it in my hands. I am bound to confess, she added, that you have exactly described the character of my brother-in-law, who certainly has occupied the room more than once. The sequel to this little incident is rather significant. A year or two later, this lady and I, having both succumbed to influenza and bronchitis, were sent off to the same place abroad to recuperate. Her attack had ended sooner than mine, so that I joined her there. And one of the first pieces of news she gave me was of the death of this brother-in-law, adding, poor fellow. He died from a very painful disease and suffered terribly. He had grave faults, but as you said, they came from weakness rather than wickedness. At any rate, he was humble-minded,

for he wrote a touching letter to me, when I lost a very dear relation lately, wondering why such a valuable life should have been taken and such a useless log as himself be left alive. This poor man had only just passed over when I joined my friend, and I felt that he was in a very bewildered and sad state of mind. I could realize his presence so clearly, partly no doubt, from having sensed his character so strongly that the obvious thing seemed to be to try to help him on his new plane of life. To the superficial mind, it appears very absurd and equally irrelevant to suppose that a faulty creature on this side the veil can help a faulty creature on the other side. Personally, I have never had any difficulty in realizing the power of prayer for those who have passed beyond our mortal sight.

Surely we are one large family, whether here or there. The best way to make children love each other is to persuade them to help each other. Is it strange that the same rule should apply to the universe that applies to the tiny portion of it? that we know? Anyway, I am quite sure in this case that my prayers did help and comfort this poor man and his dark experience. In a few weeks, the position seemed altogether lightened. He thanked me for my sympathy and companionship, and I have never heard of him since. The cavaler will say it once, could not someone else have done the work equally well, either a near relation in the other sphere, or a ministering angel?

The answer is, certainly, they could have done it equally well, probably far better. But the point is, that it happened to be the bit of work put into my hands, and at least I did my best. What more can any of us say?

Again, I ask, how about the quibona argument? End of Section 11. Section 12 of Seen and Unseen. This is a Livervox recording. All Librevox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit liverbox.org, read by Pieternater.

Seen and Unseen by E. Catherine Bates. Chapter 9. Hauntings by the Living and the Dead, 1896. In the same year, 1896, I remember another curious incident. I was staying in London during the season, and some girls, My girlfriends were very anxious that I should meet a lady whom they knew intimately and wished me to know also. As so often happens under these circumstances, we were not in the least degree interested in each other, but that has nothing to do with my story. The girls had asked various other friends, but this special lady was the raison d'etre of the tea party,

and they begged me to come in good time, because Mrs. Halifax had several other engagements and could not pay them a long visit. so I dressed hurriedly in order to keep the appointment and went to the house, feeling rather bored by the whole arrangement, little dreaming that it would be the occasion of such an interesting personal experience. The lady turned out to be exceedingly prosperous and extremely uninteresting, from my point of view. Probably she would have given her ideas of me in much the same way. I realized that she had brought a son and a daughter with her, but did not know that another young man, whose face I have never seen, was also a son of hers. I talked to the mother for the conventional quarter of an hour, and then turned with relief to the other son, whom she had mentioned, and with whom I found several old friends in common. Meanwhile, the room was filling up with guests. Amongst these late comers I noticed the entrance of a man whose face did not impress me at all favorably. He looked dissipated and conceited. I did not speak to this man, but my strong impression

about him is a factor in the story. When the lady par excellence of the entertainment rose to leave the room, followed by her son and daughter, I noticed that a second young man was also in her train, but I had not seen him previously, for the very good reason that he had been sitting behind my back all the afternoon. I did not see his face even now. My attention had been diverted from the Halifax party as they rose to take leave, and I only noticed the back, of the second young man as they left the room, and was told later that this was another son of Mrs. Halifax, no other comment upon him being made. In those days I was able to do more work on the psychic plane than at present, and often tried to help sad or wandering spirits by

praying for them when made conscious of their presence near me. When I woke in the night, after this tea party, therefore, and felt a presence near me, it did not at first alarm me in any way. When fully awake, however, I quickly realized that this was no poor, sad, bewildered spirit, but a very malignant and revengeful one. I did not recognize the sex at the moment. In fact, my consciousness was entirely engrossed by realizing that this was a question of my prayers being needed by no spirit more urgently than my own. Something very malignant was in the room, something or someone far too actively and insistently wrathful and malignant to listen to any prayers or intreaties. This conviction grew so strong upon me that I lighted my candle and getting out of bed

prayed for protection against the evil thing that was present in my room. I think I must have remained at least ten minutes on my knees and I can remember distinctly the feeling of alarm and hopelessness that came over me when I realized how strong were the powers of darkness, and how little my prayers seemed to avail me. Shortly, however, faith returned, and with it the confidence of victory. I returned to my bed quite calm and strong, and fell asleep, knowing that the malignant presence was no longer there to worry and torment me. I have always found it as easy to communicate with incarnate spirits at the distance as with the discarnate ones, so on awaiting in the morning, and remembering,

my disagreeable experience, I asked a friend, still in the body, what was the meaning of it? I had made up my mind that if it were in any way connected with the visitors of the previous afternoon, it must be with the dissipated-looking young man, for whom I had conceived an instinctive aversion. To my infinite surprise, his name was not given, but that of the younger Halifax's son. It was Henry Halifax. It is a spirit which was haunting him, and came to you afterwards. Now, as I had not even seen this young man, as already explained, I could not bear to think of any false and fanciful accusation being made against him, so remonstrated with my friend. Do be careful in giving me the name. Are you quite sure you mean Henry Halifax? Are you not

thinking of Mr. Lusby? mentioning the name that had been given me of the other gentleman. No, I mean Henry Halifax. But I did not even see him, I heard. No, but you were sitting with your back to him all afternoon. Don't you know the back is more psychically sensitive than any other part of the body? Nothing was said about the malignant spirit beyond the fact that it was someone haunting Henry Halifax. The matter, once explained, I put it out of my head, having no special curiosity as to the reason of the haunting, and supposing it might have been some male acquaintance of his.

That morning I went down to my Wimbledon friend for a night, I arrived in time for luncheon on Saturday morning, and after a pleasant walk on the common in the afternoon, my friend suggested our coming home by a certain florist's shop, as she wished to buy some plans for her drawing room. I had already met this florist's wife, a very spooky person who had been introduced to us by Mr. Myers and the Society of Psychical Research. She was a handsome, fresh-colored, practical woman, with nothing of the weird and pallid ghost-seye. about her comely face, but she had had some wonderful experiences, and her children also, and these had already been imparted to Mr. Frederick Myers. When the business part of our interview was concluded, Mrs. Leverett turned to me and said, Well, ma'am, I am glad to see you again in these parts.

Have you had any curious experiences since I last saw you? Now, Mrs. Leverett had so many curious experiences of her own, as to which she was warned to be very voluble, that I had never before known her express curiosity about those of anybody else. This just flashed through my mind as I answered her. No, nothing particular, Mrs. Leverett. By and by, I had a rather disagreeable experience last night, but it had been explained,

and in a few words I mentioned what has already been described at length. From my words, she must have gathered that I supposed the haunting spirit to be that of a man, and that I did not attach much importance to it anyway. as we left the shop my charming hostess who was equally beloved by those in her own class and those out of it turn round and said pleasantly we must hurry home now mrs leverett but do come up to-morrow and see miss bates she does not leave me till the evening and i know you will enjoy having a talk with her mrs leverett promised to come and appeared next morning having first ascertained that the sceptical husband of my hostess would not be upon the premises he does laugh at me so ma'am she said apologetically so she was brought straight up to my bedroom next day and we had an interesting talk over her own strange adventures Suddenly she looked up and said, "'A propos de Beauette, how about that young man, ma'am?

What are you going to do about him?' "'What young man?' I said, honestly puzzled. "'And what can I do about any young man?' The Halifax incident had so completely faded from my mind that I could not, for the moment, imagine what she meant. "'The young man you told me about yesterday afternoon, ma'am,' Mrs. Leverett answered stoutly. "'But I can't do anything about him.

What should I do?' then she took up her parable in these words well ma'am i have been thinking a deal about that young man since yesterday it seemed to take a sort of hold upon me it seems given to me ma'am that it is a young woman who is haunting him a young woman who is not in his own rank in life someone whom he wronged i was amazed by these words and still more by the keen interest mrs leverett showed in the subject but what can i do in the matter even if it be as you say was my next question well ma'am they give me to understand that the young man must be made to confess he will never have any peace until he does it seems to me you might get him to confess now there could be no question of confession on the outer plane as the young man was a perfect stranger to me, and there was small chance of our ever meeting again. But I was aware that Mrs. Leverett was not speaking of the outer plane, so I agreed to take pencil and paper, and see if I could bring the spirit of Henry Halifax to me, and having done so, whether I could induce him to tell me the truth. He came, but for a long time would

say neither yes nor no. What business is it of yours? Was the constant reply to my questions. And I am bound to say it appeared a very pertinent one, from the ordinary point of view. Clearly it was no business of mine, but Mrs. Leverett was so much in earnest, and had impressed me so strongly with what had been given to her, that I felt I must persevere in the young fellow's own interests. So I explained that I had no wish to pry into his private affairs, from any mere unworthy curiosity, but that having myself felt the malignant presence that was said to be haunting him, and being told that only confession would remove it, I hoped he would consider the matter seriously,

before obstinately closing the door of opportunity now open to him. Who could foretell when he might have another chance? A long pause succeeded these words. I felt that the angry, irritable mood was passing over, and when my hand was next influenced to write, the words that came were not the usual curt none of your business but an apology for his rude reception of my efforts to help him and a full confession which entirely bore out mrs leverett's impressions he told me that it was only too true that he had betrayed a young woman in a different rank of life from his own she had died in childbirth the preceding midsummer and had died cursing him for his perfidy ever since it was now late in june he had been haunted by her presence, seeing nothing, but always conscious of a malignant spirit, tempting him to his own destruction. The mental agony was so great that he told me he did not think he could endure it much longer,

and had almost decided to put an end to his life. Little realizing, poor fellow, that bad as his life might be, the next phase would be far worse for him. after trying to soothe and comfort him without in any way minimizing the weight of his sin or attempting to lessen his remorse for it it struck me that it would be well to try and have a little talk with his poor young victim so saying goodbye and promising to remember him in future I asked mentally for her spirit to come

and then tried to influence her in the direction of forgiveness it was a hard struggle and no wonder The poor young woman had trusted him, had been deceived, and finally launched into another sphere without any preparation for it. What wonder that she haunted the man who had wronged her so terribly through pure selfishness, and that any love she had ever borne him had long since turned into deadly hate. It needed both time and patience to rouse even mere passive feelings towards him. I spoke of his deep remorse and misery. At first she only answered that she was very glad to hear it, because it showed she had succeeded in making her presence felt.

By degrees, however, a more womanly view of the subject seemed to come to her. After all, he was the father of her child, the poor little baby that had mercifully followed its mother into the great unseen. She had loved him once, by her own showing. I made the most of this point, and very slowly, very grudgingly, she gave me the promise I asked for. that is, that she would at least cease this revengeful haunting, even if she could not yet feel more kindly towards the one who had injured her so deeply. Having extracted this promise, I felt that no more could be done for the time being, and Mrs. Leverett, who had been sitting in unwonted silence during both interviews, then took her leave. I have given this case and its treatment very much inextenso, not only because it may be helpful to other, dealing with airing and revengeful spirits, but because on my return to London, every

important point in this true narrative was amply corroborated. It took some time and a good deal of tact before the case was complete. First, I learned that Henry Halifax was by no means a persona grat in the house when I first met him, and that my young friends there had only been allowed to ask him under some protest, and because the rest of his family were to be present. Asked why this should be the case, their answers were naturally vague. They only knew he was not very welcome. Of course, I did not pursue the matter with these young people. They told me, however, that he was very much changed of late, and seemed so often moody, unhappy, and discontented. I am sure we should be happy enough if we had such luxurious

home and all that money, said one of them naively. Now, I happened to know rather intimate at that time another friend of the Halifax family, a woman considerably older than the young girls mentioned, and as she had some little knowledge of psychic possibilities, I determined to lay the whole story before her, trusting to her honor to keep it to herself, and not to allow any prejudice against Henry Halifax to arise in her mind should she know nothing of the circumstances. She had known the family from her childhood, and I knew, therefore, would not be influenced by the word of an outsider under these circumstances. But I discovered that the confession of Henry Halifax, the spirit, was no illusion on my part,

but the absolute truth. Young, handsome, rich, with all the world before him, he was only 24 at the time, this lady had been greatly puzzled by his intense depression of the last few months, and told me that he was constantly speaking of suicide. It was supposed to be a purestable. It was supposed to be a purely physical condition by his parents and others. She, however, knew an intimate man-friend of his. By one of those not uncommon mistakes, whereby each one supposes the other to be in the confidence of a mutual acquaintance, she had discovered that the real trouble was mental rather than physical, and that the death of the young woman of lower social position, in childbirth, last midsummer, was an actual fact. Needless to say how great was her astonishment,

to find that the whole story had been made known to me through such a curious train of circumstances. First, my experience of the malignant spirit. Secondly, my happening to go to Wimbledon next day, and mention the circumstances to the wife of the florist there. Thirdly, her strong, and, as it proved, quite accurate impressions upon the subject. And fourthly, my two interviews, first with the betrayer, and then with the betrayed on the psychic plane. Some few months later I was asked by the lady just mentioned,

if I should object to meeting Sir Henry Halifax at dinner next evening. Not at all was my answer. In fact, I felt it might be part of some psychic plan that I should do so. Evidently, this was not the case, for at the last moment a telegram came to his hostess to say he was unexpectedly prevented from returning to town. So we have never met at all, but I trust the confession may have been as efficacious,

as Mrs. Leverett was told that it would be. Anyway, I can testify that the gentleman in question is now happily married, and therefore presumably no longer haunted by the revengeful spirit, who has long since, let us trust, found happiness and peace in a higher world than this. Speaking of hauntings by the so-called dead reminds me of haunting by the so-called living. In the same year, 1896, I was stained,

in Cambridge for the first time in my life. Oxford, I have known since girlhood, but this was my first visit to the sister university. Needless to say, however, that I have met many men who have graduated there. Not knowing the town of Cambridge myself, I had never made it a subject of discussion, and ten years ago I was not even aware that such a street as Trampington Street existed, difficult as it may be for Cambridge people to credit this statement. In any case, most emphatically, I did not know that a very old friend of mine, who became later in life a judge, had ever lived in this street. Having been a sailor in youth, he had gone up to Cambridge comparatively late.

This was shortly before my acquaintance with him began, not knowing Cambridge at all. The question of where he lived there had never entered into our conversations together. Probably I took it for granted that he was living in his college, Peterhouse. The strong feeling of friendship between us had become a warmer sentiment on his side, and this led later, and inevitably, to a thorough break in our pleasant relations with each other. Long years passed, during which I neither saw nor heard of my friend. I knew that he had married, and had had a somewhat successful career as a barrister in London, and that was all I knew about him. after staying for a week or two with friends in the neighbourhood of Cambridge in 1896, I had taken rooms for a month in Cambridge, inviting one of these friends to stay with me as my guest.

We came upon these special rooms in a curious way. Having worked through a list of those suggested to us by a friend, none of which quite suited, I heard by the merest chance that possibly I might find what I wanted in Trampington Street, at the house of a very respectable Cambridge tradesman. We went there, but only to find that the rooms vacant could not be ready for me at the time specified, as some old customers were coming to them for three or four days. But I want them for a month, I expostulated.

The landlady was firm. She could not disappoint these people after promising to take them in. In spite of my disappointment, I admired her so much for this strict sense of honor that I determined to look at the rooms in case of requiring any at a future date. We went upstairs. The rooms were exactly what I required, and very clean and well furnished, so it ended by my agreeing to take them for a week later, although at a considerable inconvenience. It was in this casual way that I entered the house about the middle of May 1896.

My friend was not able to join me until the morning after my arrival, so I spent the first evening alone and retired to bed rather early. I slept well enough during the earlier part of the night, but awoke about 2 a.m., having had a tiresome, worrying dream about the very man I have mentioned, who had certainly not been in my thoughts for many months, or possibly years. Even when fully awake, his influence was still in the room with me, and falling asleep again, there he was once more in my dream, tweeting me with him. my want of appreciation of him in the past, and suggesting what a much more successful career

I might have had through marrying him. This sort of thing went on for the rest of the night. Either I woke up with a disagreeable start, still feeling the man's influence in the room, or sank into a troubled sleep, to be once more at the mercy of his reproaches. When morning came, I was only too thankful to get up, and when my friend arrived on her bicycle about noon, asked me how I had slept in the strange house, I was forced to confess that my night had been much troubled by dreams about an old friend, of whom she had never heard by and by. Oh, well, we all dream about old friends sometimes, she said, but I am afraid in this case your dreams were not pleasant. You look tired out. Anyway, it is a mercy that it was not F's.

And so, with a joke, the matter dropped, but the following night the trouble was renewed. Even then I did not in any way connected with the room in which I was sleeping, and I said nothing next day to my friend on the subject. But the third night matters had gone beyond a joke. The influence was stronger than ever, the gibes and reproaches more accentuated, and in addition to these, there was on my side the exasperation engendered by three sleepless nights. Instead of feeling depressed, as on the two previous occasions,

the worm turned at last. I spoke out loudly in my vexation as though the man himself were there listening to me. Well, I said, I have no one kindly feeling towards you of any kind. If you have nothing better to do than to come worrying me and keeping me awake in this way, it just shows how wise I was not to marry you. You have nothing to do with my life now, and you can go. Standing up in this way to the ghost of the living had a most excellent effect upon my mind. at any rate. I felt intensely relieved, and soon fell into a long and dreamless sleep.

This last experience first suggested the idea that this old friend must have some special connection with that house. In the morning I confessed to my friend that my second night had been as disturbed as the first, and the last the worst of all, adding, that man is simply haunting the place. I am determined to try and find out if he ever lodged here. this was by no means easy as it turned out his college career was already buried in the snows of some twenty-five years moreover when i questioned the young daughter of our landlady as to how long her parents had lived in the house she said at once just seventeen years ma'am father and mother came here the year i was born this did not help me much i asked who had rented the house previously Referring the question to her mother, she told me it had been taken from some people who had left Cambridge, and, Mother thought they were both dead now.

This was a second cul-de-sac for me. But I was determined to go on with my investigations, simply grounded upon the strong conviction that such repeated experiences must have some foundation, in fact. The girl saw I looked disappointed. Did you want to know about anyone who lived here long ago? she ventured timidly. Yes, I wanted to find out whether an old friend of mine ever lodged here. He belonged to Peterhouse,

was my answer. Ah, then, I'm sure he would not have lodged here, said the girl confidently. None of the Peterhouse gentlemen come here. It is always the Pembroke men who come to this house. It seemed fated that I should hear no more about my living ghost.

A few days later, however, the luck turned. I was told quite casual, that Mr. Pound, the well-known Cambridge chemist, had occupied our house years before, and I determined to verify this some day. As Mr. Pound combined the post-office with his drugs, one often went into the shop, but hitherto I had only seen his assistants. Going in one day with my friend for some stamps, Mr. Pound himself handed them to me. Here was my chance. I must confess that I hesitated to ask such an apparently absurd question,

on such slender grounds in any case was it likely that he would remember the names of all the undergraduates in the university who might have lodged with him twenty or thirty years before i whispered to my friend shall i ask him but she did not here so even this small encouragement was denied me i was actually turning to leave the shop when resolution at length took the reins and i found myself asking is it true mr pound that you lived many years ago at number blank trumpington street quite true was the ready answer i went there in the year fifty-five i quote this from memory but it was in the fifties certainly i wanted to ask a question about a gentleman who may have lodged with you a good deal later than that about seventy i should think and i mentioned the name of my friend mr pound's brow cleared at once and he looked up with a beaming smile Mr. Forbes, he said, why, of course I remember him well. He lodged with me over 18 months. Then, turning to his assistant, he told him to go into the parlor and bring out the large photograph album. There was my friend, sure enough, with his big dog, the very photograph I had of him given me in the early days of our acquaintance. Mr. Pound was full of reminiscences.

My friend had evidently been a prime favorite with him, and it was some of the same. some minutes before I could squeeze in my crucial question. It seemed almost impossible to expect him to remember the exact room occupied by Mr. Forbes, considering there were two or three sets of rooms in the house, in addition to several bedrooms which were led separately. But even here Mr. Pound's memory proved invaluable. Which room he slept in? Why, of course, I remember distinctly.

He had the large front sitting-room and the bedroom at the back of it, over our living room in those days. So I was living in Mr. Forbes's sitting-room and sleeping in the bedroom he had occupied for more than 18 months. My Cambridgeshire friend was, fortunately, present as a witness that no word of mine had indicated this fact before Mr. Pound corroborated my intuitive impression. She said afterwards, laughingly,

that Mr. Myers would certainly think I had got up a special ghost story for him, the moment I set foot in Cambridge. However this may be, both he and Professor Sidgwick were greatly interested in it, for, as they explained, there were fifty accounts of haunting by the dead, to one such example of haunting by the living. Of course, such a case presents innumerable difficulties. Still, this alien fact remains, that after a lapse of nearly thirty years,

I traced the rooms occupied by an old friend in a city I had never before entered, and that this knowledge did not come to me by chance but as the result of a series of investigations started by me solely on account of the experiences that came to me in a house and in a room of which i had absolutely no previous knowledge those interested in these subjects will naturally ask do you suppose that the spirit of mr forbes came to you at the moment of your remarks to him and his to you if so was he conscious of any such experience i can answer this last question decidedly and in the negative for four years later circumstances brought me once more within the orbit of mr forbes's life he was then living in the north of england and he and his wife and i have discussed the question more than once we can only suppose that the impression of his presence did in some way cling to the surroundings that my sleeping there even in complete ignorance of his tenancy enabled me as a sensitive to pick up to my sleeping there even in complete ignorance of his tenancy enabled me as a sensitive to pick up this special influence from many others presumably present, and that the memories of the past galvanized the impression into some sort of temporary astral existence. The entity to whom I seemed to be speaking was doubtless not the Judge Forbes of later life, but some distorted image

of his earlier days of disappointed and often reproachful affection. When Mr. Myers suggested that I should get Mr. Pound to sign a paper, mentioning that he had told me that Mr. Forbes had occupied these special rooms twenty-seven years previously, the latter did so readily, only remarking that he had naturally concluded that I knew my friend had lodged with him. Pound will smell a rat if I go, said Mr. Myers, so I went myself, and thus the story was made evidentially complete. End of Section 12. Section 13 of Seen and Unseen.

This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. Please visit Libravox.org. Read by Victor Dorf, Seen and Unseen by E. Catherine Bates, Chapter 10, Further Experiences in America. My second visit to America was paid in the year of the Diamond Jubilee, 1897. After wintering in the West Indies, I went on to America in the spring.

chiefly with the view of meeting Mrs. Piper for the first time, and securing a few sittings with her, if possible. Footnote 5. The portion of this chapter referring to Mrs. Piper and her controls is published by kind permission of Mr. Ralph Shirley, editor of the Occult Review, in which my article under this heading appeared in March 1906. End footnote. I was writing some articles for Borderland at the time, and Mr. Stead was specially anxious for me to take this opportunity of sampling the famous American sensitive. This proved no easy task. My visit to Boston, unfortunately, occurred at the very time when an organized attempt was being made by the American branch of the Society for Psychical Research to get into some sort of evidential communication with the late Mr. Stanton Moses through his controls, imperatorial. rector, etc. In vain I wrote to Dr. Hodgson, to whom I carried letters of introduction, telling him of my chief reason for visiting America a second time. Even the plea that I had known

Mr. Stanton Moses in Earth Life and that we had several intimate friends in common was of no avail. Dr. Hodgson expressed regrets, but assured me that no sittings could be allowed under existing circumstances and that it was impossible to make any exception to this rule. We seemed to have arrived at a cul-de-sac when a bright idea struck me. Why not ask the unseen themselves for a decision in the matter? I wrote again, therefore, to Dr. Hodgson, suggesting this idea, and mentioning that I should arrive in Boston on a certain date and could be found at the Hotel Bellevue in that city. The next day, but for one, after my arrival, and quite early in the morning, Dr. Hodgson came to call upon me. It was my first sight of that genial and delightful personality. At the very moment

of shaking hands, he said cheerily, and with a look of half-reuthful amusement, and with a look of half-reuthal amusement in his own discomfiture. Well, you've got to come. They insist upon it, so there's nothing more to be said. My preconceived ideas of a critical, elderly, and white-haired professor taking himself very seriously were dissipated on the spot. And this was the beginning of a sincere and loyal friendship between us which lasted for nine years on this sphere, and will last, I trust and believe, through whatever forms of existence may succeed to this one. We made arrangements at once for my joining Dr. Hodgson next morning at Arlington Heights, where my first sitting with Mrs. Piper took place, and where I met for the first time this refined and interesting-looking

woman. I was told that with the advent of the Imperator and Stanton Moses's controls, the character of Mrs. Piper's mediumship had undergone a complete change. The former communications through the voice ceased and gave place to automatic writing, except at the moment of return to the physical body, when a chance sentence or two might be uttered during the transition period, but that these were not always intelligible to the listener. Mrs. Piper's arm and hand became curiously dead and limp when unconsciousness set in. The blood departed, leaving it as white and helpless as that of a corpse. By degrees, this dead look disappeared.

The blood flowed once more through the veins, and as I noticed this change, the hand moved gropingly towards the pencil held out by the body. Dr. Hodgson, and finally grasped it. The letters, long practice, and infinite patients were invaluable in making out the often rather illegible script. The hospitality he gave to all attempts at definite communications, however vague and shadowy at first, the infinite patience with which he repeated again and again a question not fully comprehended. All this, combined with intelligent criticism, alert, dispassionate judgment, and balance of mind made an investigator of psychic phenomena very rarely to be met in a world where most of us

events in a marked degree they default to no colite. To combine sympathy, patience, and receptivity with cool and critical judgment is well-nigh impossible for ordinary men and women. Dr. Richard Hodgson certainly solved the problem to a very remarkable extent. The first thing that struck me in the two sittings I had with Mrs. Piper, was the hopeless breakdown of the thought transference theory as accounting for the automatic writing. The ostensible reason for my presence at Arlington Heights was the idea entertained by the controls that, having known Mr. Stanton Moses in Earthlife, I might be able to facilitate his communications. I hope this may have been the case, but if so, it was certainly not due to any

power of thought transference I may have possessed. Again and again, I asked for names of friends we had known in common, but nearly always in vain. Even when, in despair of getting these normally, I concentrated my mind consciously on some short and easy name, the latter was not given. Yet next day, some of these names would appear spontaneously on the script, when my mind was entirely occupied by other subjects. References were made to Mr. Moses' lack of appreciation for music, and he asked whether our mutual friend, Mrs. Stratton, still played list. He also referred to his visiting the Strattons and finding them playing duets together in London. On my return to town, Mrs. Stratton fully endorsed the fact that Mr. Moses disliked music. This was unknown to me,

but she denied emphatically that she and her husband ever played duets in his presence. Mr. Stratton, however, corrected this impression and reminded her of several occasions when Mr. Moses had come to them from university college, found them at the piano, and being on very intimate terms had begged they would finish the passage or movement, and on one or two occasions this had been done. These slight but evidential incidents, forgotten by Mrs. Stratton herself, and unknown to me, were conveyed quite correctly in the automatic script through Mrs. Piper, 3,000 miles across the Atlantic, and nearly six years after the death of Mr. Stanton Moses. The most convincing test upon these occasions, however, was the reference to a Mrs. Lane,

the lady to whom Mr. Moses had been engaged when he passed away. Very few of his friends knew of this engagement, even in England. Dr. Hodgson, who had never met Stanton Moses in Earth Life, had naturally not heard of it. It was only by chance that I knew anything of the matter, and this merely through once meeting the lady at Mrs. Stratton's house sometime after Mr. Moses died. On that occasion, Mrs. Lane had a young daughter with her. I knew nothing of any other members of the family. During my second visit to Mrs. Piper, I mentioned meeting this lady, already a dim memory with me, and the control at once asked if I had met a sister also. I answered no, remarking that a young daughter had been with her.

The writing at once continued in these words. Well, now I'm giving you this as a test. She has a sister, and one who has been the cause of the deepest sorrow of her life. You will find this is true when you go back to England. These words were amply justified. On applying to Mrs. Stratton for information, she denied the possibility of there being any truth in the test. She said, I have come to know Mrs. Lane quite intimately since you met her here. I don't believe she has any sister. Anyway, I'm quite sure she would have told me if a sister had caused her such sorrow as you mentioned. I persevered, however, in getting at the truth of the matter by writing to Mrs. Lane herself, and almost entire stranger, and asking if she cared to hear the references to herself in the Piper records. If so, would she come and lunch with me? She came, and when I reached the passage about the sister, expecting that she would endorse Mrs. Stratton's denial, I noticed, to my great surprise,

that her eyes filled suddenly with tears, and that she was literally unable to speak through emotion. The tears ran down her cheeks, when at length she said in a broken voice, That is the most convincing test he could have given me. No, I have never mentioned that sister even to Mrs. Stratton, kind and good as she's been. By this time I had spoken of Mrs. Stratton's denial of the sister's existence. I could not speak of her to anyone. She was the cause of the greatest sorrow in my life,

but no one upon earth knew this except Mr. Stanton Moses. I was engaged to him at the time, and he was the natural person to turn to in my deep tribulation. No one else ever heard of the circumstances. At this second sitting of mine, Mr. Stanton Moses spoke also of a valuable watch he had possessed and expressed some regret that it had not been given to Mrs. Lane at the time of his death. I knew nothing at all about any watch of his, but on appealing to one of his executors, an old friend of mine, found there was such a watch which had been a presentation one

and was of considerable value. Upon the death of Mr. Moses it had been given, quite with the approval of Mrs. Lane, to the son of a very old and esteemed friend. This executor also told me, as a curious coincidence, that when I was staying with the excitable sensitive in Sussex Gardens, mentioned in a previous chapter, and he and his wife had come to tea with me one afternoon to be introduced to this remarkable lady. She had given him a similar message about the same watch, purporting to come from Stanton Moses. I remember perfectly well having asked Mr. and Mrs. Harrington to come to tea with me one afternoon to meet my eccentric landlady, and I also remember his having a long talk with her whilst his wife and I were immersed in our own conversation. But I heard no details of this talk. He had merely said how much interested he had been in meeting Mrs. Peters, and that she evidently had some mediumistic power. I was certainly curious that the watch should have been mentioned, first in Sussex Gardens, London,

and six years later in Arlington Heights, Boston, and that on each occasion the same wish with regard to it should have been expressed. During this Arlington Heights sitting, the second one, Mr. Moses also referred to an MS, of which I knew nothing at the time. This illusion also was verified by his other executor, the late Mr. Alaric Watts, upon my return to England. During this visit to America, I also came across a Mr. Napton Thompson, a hard-headed Yorkshire man, who had invented a new kind of smokeless combustion stove, which must have been a good one, for our shrewd American cousins were employing him to put up these stoves in several public buildings, including the Smithsonian Institute in Washington. Mr. Thompson combined psychic proclivities with his smokeless invention,

and had become greatly interested in the New York medium Mrs. Stoddard Gray, who has been already mentioned in connection with my own investigations, twelve years previous to my present visit. We had written to tell Mr. Stead of his experiences, which included several in which the Julia of Julia's letters had purported to be present. Mr. Stead had turned this gentleman over to me by giving me an introduction, accompanied by the request that I should see the man and report what I thought about him and his wonderful experiences.

So I asked Mr. Thompson to call upon me and arranged to be present with him next day, Saturday, at Mrs. Stoddart-Gray's circle. I found that he had taken up his abode with the medium and her son during his short stays in New York, with the openly expressed intention of finding out if there were any trickery behind the scenes. He had, however, convinced himself of her bona fides, and was deeply interested in the interviews he was able to obtain by means of these mediums, with a daughter he had lost some years previously. He was much pleased to find that I knew Mrs. Gray already, and could also testify to some very remarkable phenomena occurring to me at her house. So I met him there next afternoon with every expectation of a good sitting.

These hopes, however, were entirely destroyed, owing to the presence of a noisy, vulgar man whom they called the Whiskey King. He made the most inane remarks, cracked stupid jokes, antagonized every respectable person in the room, I should suppose, and as all this took place without a word of protest from the Lady of the House, one can only conclude that she considered it worth her while to endure his vulgarities. Certainly the afternoon was spoiled for the rest of us, and I remarked upon this to a very pleasant, smart-looking, young American lady when the sitting was over, and we had retired to the reception room to find raps and galoshes, etc.

Oh, yes, wasn't he just exasperating, she said, with ready sympathy? She looked much too young and smart and good-looking for the ordinary type of investigator, and I could not refrain from asking how she had come into this galere. She explained her position readily, and it was very interesting to me. She was a young married lady, and had first been brought to the house six months before by a cousin of hers who was staying with them in New York and thought the experience might be amusing. We just came in for a joke, she said, but something happened which interested me so much

that I have come again several times, and until today have always had an interesting time. Then she told me about her first sitting. I had noticed upon her ungloved hand a very beautiful scarabaeus, set in fine gold and evidently by an artist in the craft. Yes, it is a Tiffany setting, she observed, seeing my eyes drawn to it. She took off the ring and gave it into my hands. That ring is really the cause of my being here today, she continued. The scarabas was given to me some years ago by Professor,

sir, she gave the name of a well-known American Egyptologist. He made a great pet of me when I was a child, and I begged it from him. When I was going to be married last year, he insisted upon having it set for me by Tiffany as a wedding present, and he then told me there was no doubt at all about its being a genuine antique. He had come across it many years before by a curious chance when traveling in Egypt, and had been assured that it was a genuine Cleopatra relic. I can't answer for that, he said laughing, but it is certainly many centuries old. I have no doubt it is genuine so far as age goes. While the night my cousin and I came here together, I did not take off my gloves until after we had gone into the seance room, so no one could have seen my ring. And you know Mrs. Gray's

sittings always begin in the dark. I took my gloves off when I found we had to sit in a circle holding hands, and one of the first materializations was announced to be that of Cleopatra. Author's note, I had seen Cleopatra more than once in 1886 in the same house. She rushed across the room in the complete darkness, seized my right hand, amongst all the hands in a circle of twenty people or more, almost tore this special ring from my finger, and said in a tone of indescribable grief and longing, Mine, mine! Ah! Hem! Hem!

This was sufficiently startling, even apart from the mention, of Kham as the ancient name for Egypt, in a milieu of this kind. The ring was faithfully restored later in the evening, and the young lady who owned it had been sufficiently impressed by the circumstances to confide them to her kind professor, and also to pay more than one visit to Mrs. Stoddard Gray since the episode had occurred, which was just six months before our meeting there. During this second visit to America, I made the acquaintance, and I trust I may say, gained the friendship of Miss Lillian Whiting, so well known by many thousands of grateful readers. We saw a great deal of each other in Boston, and during one of my long chats with her in her

pretty sitting room at the Brunswick Hotel, she told me of the visit of Lady Henry Somerset and Miss Francis Willard to that city some years before our conversation. Miss Whiting also mentioned a friend who had accompanied these two ladies, and who had been taken ill, and had died very suddenly in the hospital at Boston. I never met the lady, said Miss Whiting, but Miss Willard and Lady Henry told me they had been obliged to leave their friend behind owing to an attack of influenza

and asked me to call upon her some day. I went a day or two later carrying some fruit and newspapers with me. The matron, whom I knew well, said her patient was doing splendidly and was likely to be leaving in a few days, but that as I was a stranger, it would perhaps be better for me not to come in and see her that afternoon. So I left my little gifts and was shocked next day to hear of her sudden and quite unexpected death.

By the by, I believe she was Sted's Julia. I'm not sure about this, but somebody told me so lately. Miss Whiting then mentioned the lady's name, which I withhold as Mr. Stead still makes use of it, as a test, when strangers profess to be in communication with Julia. The day following the seance just described as taking place in New York, Mr. Napton Thompson called at my hotel to ask me to accompany him to Mrs. Stoddard Gray as he had arranged to have a short writing seance that afternoon.

The son was the agent, as usual. On this occasion, he had an alphabet mounted on a card and pointed to the letters in turn, whilst his mother wrote them down as indicated. Thinking I would verify Miss Whiting's story, if possible, my first question was, can Sted's Julia give me her surname? Julia O was spelled out, and then the O was given again. They often do that, said Mrs. Gray casually. Begin the name over again, I mean.

So it passed at that. The rest of the letters corroborated the surname mentioned by Miss Whiting. Then I asked, In what country did you pass away? Europe or America or elsewhere. America was spelled out at once. In what city? Boston.

Was it in a private house, a hospital, a hotel, or where did you die? In a hospital was again spelled out. How long ago? Five years was the answer. I may note here that Miss Whiting had not mentioned the number of years, only having said a few years ago when speaking of the event. Five years proved to be true. My last question was,

What was your age when you passed over? 23 was the answer. This last I felt sure must be wrong. Miss Whiting had not mentioned any age, but it seemed to me unlikely that so young a woman should have been traveling around the country with two temperance lecturers. When these answers were being given, Mrs. Gray's son, the medium,

asked if he might put one hand on my wrist to come into magnetic conditions with me. I agreed to this, but said I should, turn my eyes away from the alphabet, lest my muscles should give him any unconscious indications. When I sent these answers to Mr. Stead on returning to England, I wrote down Julia O, ignoring the repetition of the O. And in connection with the other answers told him, of course, of my previous conversation with Miss Whiting, which reduced the whole episode to one of possible thought transference. In answering me, he said, I'm glad Julia was able to give her name, even if it were thought transference.

But, as a matter of fact, it's not her whole name which she received. She always signed her letters to me, Julia O, O. This makes rather a good bit of evidence, seeing that the second O had been given, but discarded by Mrs. Gray and myself as a repetition of the first letter of the surname. To resume my experiences with Mr. Napton Thompson, in the evening of this writing incident, Mrs. Gray had another public seance, at which I was again present, Mr. Thompson's sitting on one side of me. After some materializations, for other members of the circle had appeared, Mrs. Gray announced that Stead's Julia was present in the cabinet and wished to speak to me.

I went up at once, and the form came out and stood in very fair light from the gas-burners. She seized my hands with every appearance of delight and eagerness, and her grasp was strong and tense. It is my peculiarity always to notice hands very accurately. They always seem to me to indicate character very closely, and apart from this, I'm attracted by people who have well-shaped hands, not necessarily small ones, and find it very difficult to ignore clumsy or ugly fingers, which unfortunately never escape my notice. Now, the medium's hands were broad, short, and flabby, as I had had plenty of opportunities of noting in the afternoon when he held my wrist.

The hands which grasped mine now were, on the contrary, well-made, small, and rather narrow. The true type of the American female hand. Mr. Thompson had come up also to greet Julia, and I whisper to him, Do ask Julia if there was not a mistake about her age this afternoon. No, you ask the question yourself, Miss Bates, he answered. So I said rather eagerly, Julia, do tell us, please, if there was not a mistake this afternoon in your age. The answer was 23. Is that correct?

A very emphatic shake of the head signifying no was the reply to this last question, but no sounds proceeded from the lips. Disappointed by this, I asked, Can you not speak to us? She made a little gesture of rather helpless descent, and Mrs. Gray, who stood by, explained that probably all her strength had gone to building up the materialized body sufficiently, to make it visible to us.

Julia bowed her head in assent to this, and then, still speechless, retired once more behind the curtains. I did not mention this appearance of Julia when writing to Mr. Stead on my return. I was so anxiously hoping that she might have tried to impress the fact of having appeared to me upon his consciousness as a test. But he said nothing about it in his first letters. So I let the matter alone for a time determining to tell him someday, but much disappointed by the usual failure in getting corroborative evidence. A week later, however, at the end of a long letter on other subjects, I put this short P.S. in a casual way to him. Did Julia ever tell you that she had appeared to me in New York? In answering my letter, he replied, also in a P.S. By the by, to answer your last query, yes. Julia told me weeks ago that she had appeared to you in New York, but that she could not give you her age on that occasion, because she was not accustomed to speaking through the embodiment.

Now, in sending the list of questions and answers to Mr. Stead, I had merely marked against the answer as to her age, 23, that doubtless it was an error, but I had never hinted to him that I had asked her to correct the error in New York, or that she had been unable to speak on that occasion. This again was a good bit of independent evidence. I will now give a description of Mr. Napton Thompson's interview with his daughter, on the same evening that Julie appeared to me. I have already said that the magnet which drew Mr. Thompson to these seances was the opportunity given to him of meeting and talking to a daughter, who had passed away some years previously. On this special evening, the daughter materialized as usual,

and came out from the cabinet. As Mr. Thompson was sitting next to me at the time, I could distinctly hear Mrs. Gray whispered to him, Would you not like to take your daughter into the other room, Mr. Thompson? It is rather crowded here tonight. You would be quieter in there. Mr. Thompson got up at once and greeted the materialized form, and they disappeared through the folding doors to the reception room. Other matters of interest were occurring, and I had quite forgotten the absence of Mr. Thompson in the dimly lighted room. In those days, the light was always dim at first, until I found he was again occupying the seat next to my own. I had not noticed his return and asked him at once what he had done with his daughter. A good half hour must have elapsed

between his disappearance in return. He said quite simply, and as a matter of course, oh, she did not care to come back into this crowded room. We had half an hour's chat, and then she dematerialized in the other room and I returned alone. I can only repeat that Mr. Napson-Thompson was a shrewd, practical Yorkshireman and a very successful man of business, as was proved by the orders he received in America for the stoves he had invented. He was certainly under the impression that he could be trusted to recognize his own daughter when allowed the privilege of half an hour's conversation with her, tete-a-tete in a private room.

I cannot end this chapter without saying something about Keeley of Philadelphia and his intuitional genius. I had hoped to have the opportunity of meeting this wonderful man during my last stay in Philadelphia, USA, March 1897. but was disappointed in this expectation. Therefore, on the outer plane, my connection with Keely never went beyond a single interview with his wife. But this is a record of personal intuitions as well as of personal events,

and I know no one with regard to whom my intuitions, absolutely lacking in any physical ground of proof or even mental ground of comprehension, have been stronger or more obstinate. At the time of my first visit to America, so far back as 1885, I had not the faintest conception of Keely's work, or what he claimed to have discovered, or to be on the track of discovering. I never heard his name mentioned without being told at the same time that he was either a silly madman or a conscious imposter. And as I came with an

entirely unprejudiced mind, for I had never heard of Keely before landing in America, it would have been natural to accept this universal opinion. Yet something stronger than reason was always silently contradicting these assertions when made in my presence. Friends and acquaintances alike in those days laughed at Keeley's claims, and denounced his boasted discovery as pure imposture. Tizant, tisn't, tisn't! That persistent little voice kept whispering in my ear all the time, like a naughty, obstinate child who contradicts from sheer ignorance,

or was it a spiritual intuition? time alone can answer that question. Anyway, I kept my ideas to myself, for they had no foundation in fact at the time of which I speak. In 1897, the position for me was altered. A sensible and dependable friend of mine, a well-known banker in Philadelphia, described to me his experiences and those of other prominent citizens during a demonstration of Mr. Keely's powers, and the old insistent voice that spoke to my ignorance before, spoke now to some glimmering understanding of the claim put forth. This claim, even then jeered at by the world at large, had to wait shivering in the cold another nine years before Mr. Frederick Soddy clothed it in respectable,

scientific garb, by speaking publicly of the possibilities in the future connected with atomic disintegration and consequent liberation of energy. But the yelping curs of calumny that pursued Keely during his lifetime are still upon the dead man's tracks. His methods were fraud and imposture anyway. His wires were tubes containing compressed air, and so forth. The M. F.H. of this pack of hounds was the son of a lady whose name will always be honorably mentioned with that of Keely as one of his most generous supporters. The initial misfortune in the whole matter was the forming and starting of the Keely Motor Company to utilize the discovery, which should have first been placed under the protection of science. Ignorant and

impatient shareholders thought only of their own material advantages and dividends. They were Keeley's first enemies, with their sensational and premature advertisements of results and 200 horsepower engines ready to patent, etc., whilst the poor man was still struggling with his tremendous problem, that is, to control the force that he had discovered. He attempted this first by confining it, but it blew everything to atoms and his own fingers off into the bargain. Occultists, including Madame Blavatsky, always declared this latent atomic energy was a fact, but that Keely would never be allowed to demonstrate it, for the world was not yet prepared for such a tremendous dynamic force to be let loose upon it, and that the most serious abuses

and disasters would follow, if once he succeeded in bringing his discovery into practical working order. They said it would be one of two things. Either Keely's experiments in this direction would continue to fail in the crucial point necessary, or that if he succeeded, it would be his own death warrant, lest any mischief should accrue from his making his methods public. In view of these pronouncements, the succeeding events in Keely's career are interesting. The Times, USA, of 6th March 1898, contained the following announcement, under Keely's own signature. After 25 years' labor, I have solved the problem of harnessing the ether,

which elsewhere he says is only the medium of the force he discovered. And adapting it to commercial uses. I have finished experimenting. My work is now complete. Signed, John W. Keeley. On 18th November of this same year, he died. Within two months, his generous friend and patron, Mrs. Blommer, Field Moore followed him to another sphere. Keeley's final discovery of the means of harnessing

the ether, as he calls it, was through holding it in rotation instead of in confinement. I'm allowed to quote an extract from a private letter with regard to this statement. Quote, this instrument ruptures the luminous envelopes of the hydrogen corpuscles, liberating the mysterious substance which is put into such high rotation that it forms its own wall of confinement at 420,000 revolutions per second, as calculated. Independent of this rotation in the tube, where it is projected, it could be no more held in suspension than a ray of sunshine could be held in a darkened room, end quote. I have been given to understand that a faithful account of everything that has occurred in connection

with Keely's discovery has been compiled and will be published when the time comes for the to be made known. It is, of course, possible that this disclosure may be anticipated by the arrival of another crank and imposter of the Keely type. Let us trust he may arise from within and not from without scientific circles, and thus avoid his martyrdom. Meanwhile, it may be interesting to quote from a published letter of LaSelle Scott, the government physicist from Forestgate, who visited Keely's workshop in the interest of science, and who was allowed to cut and bring away with him pieces of the wire Keeley was using, said to be tubes by the wise acres. The following is the essential portion of Mr. LaSalle's Scott's letter. I only admit courteous

expressions of gratitude to the editor and to the institutions and individuals alike of the beautiful city of Philadelphia where he was able to carry out his investigations. Letter from Mr. LaSalle's Scott to the editor of the public ledger, Philadelphia. The only corrections of sufficient importance to the general sense of my observations at the Franklin Institute last Wednesday night to call for notice in your otherwise admirable report are the following. Although my observations were only put forward as preliminary, and as much as I have not yet completed the outlined program I had in view, no words actually used by me justified the expression that I had formed no very definite opinions. On the contrary, I stated more than once the very definite opinion that Mr. Keely has demonstrated to me in a way which is absolutely unquestionable the existence of a force hitherto unknown.

The conditions under which the experiments were carried out, as I distinctly stated, were such as to preclude the possibility of the results obtained being due to any ordinary source of power, evident or concealed. Moreover, I satisfied myself that the rotation of the vibratine was neither due to, nor accompanied by, any traces of electricity or magnetism. So far my opinion is and was expressed as being of the most definite kind possible. I stated, and the statement was greeted by the audience with great and prolonged applause, that after a little adjustment of the sympathetic transmitter,

it was found that by the sounding of one of the small, English tuning forks I had brought with me from the other side of the Atlantic upon the said transmitter, I could myself start the vibrodine, and cause it to revolve rapidly, without Mr. Keely's intervention, and I exhibited to the meeting the fork actually used by me. Thanking you in anticipation, etc., I am, sir, yours obediently, W. LaSalle's Scott. One would have supposed that this testimony, in addition to that of other scientists and practical electricians, would have sufficed to disintegrate atomic stupidity and columny, and liberate the forces of humility and sane investigation, but prejudiced ignorance dies hard.

To end my chapter on a pleasanter note than this, I will quote from a private letter which I have been privileged to read the beautiful words in which Keeley describes his own achievements. I have no power that is not communicated to me in the same way that this machine receives its power, through celestial radiation from the soul of matter, the mind force of the creator, whose instrument I am. I know who is leading me and making all things work together for good. End of Section 13. Section 14 of Seen and Unseen. This is a Librevox recording.

all Librevox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visitliborvox.org. Read by Piotr Natter. Seen and Unseen by E. Catherine Bates, a haunted castle in Ireland. In the year 1898, I was spending a few days in Castle Rush, which has been described by Mr. W. T. Stead as the most haunted castle in Ireland. It is one of the few old Irish castles still inhabited, and is naturally haunted by the ghosts of the past in every meaning of the world. At the time of my stay I was recovering from a severe illness, and, in fact, was sent off to bed immediately upon arrival by my kind hostess,

who, with true hospitality, thought more of her guests' comfort than the conventionalities of life, and would not hear of my lingering even to make acquaintance with my host on the dark autumnal evening of my own. arrival. This had taken place after driving many miles and waiting for a drear long time in the little inn of a small Irish township. My doctor would not hear of any railway travelling just then, so the whole forty miles from my last stopping place had to be negotiated between the carriages of my past and present hospitable hosts. As a matter of fact, I believe I slept in one of the haunted rooms, but it looked cheerful enough when I entered from the gloom and darkness outside, and a dainty little dinner sent up by my kind friends below,

and eaten, when snugly tucked in between the sheets and resting on soft downy pillows, was enough to drive all thoughts of ghostly visitors from my head. I am thankful to say that I neither heard nor saw anything during my short visit, and should not even have known that my room had had any evil reputation, but for the visit of an eccentric and clever old lady. who had been specially asked to the castle to meet me. After luncheon we adjourned to my bedroom at her suggestion, and she said casually, Ah, you have this room, I see. It was terribly haunted once,

but I held a sort of little service here some time ago and cleared them all out. I must explain that this good lady took a very optimistic view of her own capacities and powers in general, and spoke, from the psychic point of view, with the honest pride that a flesh and blood charwoman might display ongoing over premises that she had thoroughly scrapped and cleaned out. One morning after breakfast, my hostess, Mrs. Kent, called to me to come quickly and see a curious sight. It was a pouring wet day, one of those days when the heavens open and derain the sands into buckets. I could see nothing more remarkable than the damp autumnal leaves, the bare trees swaying in the wind-washed spaces and the pouring ceaseless rain. Don't you see that

girl over there? I looked again and did see a girl just emerging from a clump of beaches and carrying a small trunk upon her head. What an extraordinary day to choose for travelling, I said dryly. Ah, that is Irish superstition, rejoined my hostess. That is my last kitchen-maid, you see. She is walking seven miles with that trunk on her head, sooner than wait a few hours, when I could have sent her to the station. Is she mad? Was my natural comment. Oh no, only desperately frightened. She has not been here a week yet, and she is much too terrified to be coherent. All I can make out is that nothing on earth would induce her to spend another night at rush. I could have sent her over to Marley easily

tomorrow morning at eight o'clock, but she would not hear of it. And whether she has really seen anything, or only been frightened by the stories of the other servants, I don't know. Anyway, she has certainly the courage of her opinions, and is prepared to suffer for them. I would rather meet half a dozen ghosts than carry that trunk on my head seven miles in this pouring rain. Then, turning round carelessly, she remarked, I suppose you have not seen or heard anything, Miss Bates, since you came. I hope not, for I am sure you are not strong enough for mundane visitors yet, let alone the other kind. We were passing through the handsome circular hall at the time, and I said eagerly,

Oh no, thank goodness, I've seen and heard nothing. I don't think I should be allowed to see anything whilst I'm so weak and poorly. Almost at the moment of saying these words, something impelled me to place my hand upon a particular spot in the great stone wall by my side. But there is something here I don't like, I said tapping it, something uncanny, but I don't know what you. this. Mrs. Kent made no remark, and I thought no more of the circumstances until the following year, when I was told by Mr. Stead that Mrs. Kent was over in England, and had been

lunching with him and asking for me. She was giving me a most graphic account of the way you spotted those skeletons at Rush Castle, he said. I was completely puzzled by this remark. I had never spotted a single skeleton, to my knowledge, either at Rush or elsewhere. and i told him so but he persisted in saying that mrs kent had told him a very different story and that most certainly she had mentioned me as the percipient she must have mixed me up with somebody else was my final comment no doubt many people have queer experiences there and she might naturally make such a mistake well i gave her your address and she is writing to ask you to have tea with her at the club so you and she can fight it out there he said and the conversation drifted into other channels. Next afternoon I met Mrs. Kent at her club, and before leaving, fortunately remembered the curious mistake about the skeletons I had spotted.

But you did spot them, she said laughing. Don't you remember my asking you if you had noticed anything curious, or heard or seen anything during your visit? At first you said, thank goodness no, but immediately afterwards you put your hands on a particular part of the circular part of the circular hall and said, There is something uncanny just here, something I don't like.

Yes, I remember all that, but what of it? You never told me anything about skeletons. Of course not. You were not in a condition of health to discuss such eerie questions just then. All the same you had located the exact spot

where only a week before your visit, my husband's agent told him that two skeletons had been found bricked up. She then explained that the agent had been on the estate for many years, even before the death of the late owner of Rush, her father-in-law. Having some business with her husband the week before my arrival, this agent had casually mentioned that he and the former owner had found these skeletons in

the very spot indicated by me, about 40 years previously, and strange to relate, had bricked them up again instead of burying them. This last fact may account, in part at least, for the spooky reputation of Castle Rush. All good psychics know that nothing disturbs a spirit so much as any informality about his funeral arrangements. To return to my visit to Castle Rush, some years previously I had met, on an oriental steamer sailing from Ceylon to Naples, a brother of the owner of Rush. He was a sailor, and as hard-headed and practical a man as it has ever been my lot to meet, it was in no way through meeting him that my visit to Rush came about, but owing to my acquaintance with Mrs. Kent and her family.

I had been greatly taken by the genial common sense of this Captain Kent, and was much grieved to hear of his death when I stayed with his sister-in-law. It had occurred shortly before my visit, and under said circumstances. On the surface he was certainly more lacking in sentiment than anyone I ever met, but must have been capable of very deep affection. When I met him, he had only been married for a few months. His wife died within two years of their marriage, and going for a short holiday to Castle Rush soon afterwards,

he said to his sister-in-law, I should not live a year after her, I know. He was the last kind of man to make such a speech, as both Mrs. Kent and I observed when she mentioned it to me. But he was quite right all the same, she added, He died just three days within the year from the time of his wife's death. Yet he was an exceptionally strong, sturdy and wiry man at the time of his great sorrow. From Castle Rush I was going to the south of Ireland to visit relations at Cork.

On the morning of my departure I was down in the drawing room, rather wondering why I had been brought to this old Irish castle. No special object seemed to have been achieved by my visit. I did not even know then that I had discovered two skeletons. In those days I found so often some train of circumstances, a borrowed book, a stranger coming across my path, some unexpected visit paid, which were later found to have been factors in a special experience,

that I was rather surprised to realize that I was leaving the most haunted castle in Ireland, and that nothing had happened. But in the very moment of saying this to myself, A curiously insistent impression came to me quite suddenly and out of the blue. The impression was that the brother of my host, Captain Kent, was wishing very urgently to communicate something through me. I did not feel equal to taking any message at the time. I had already explained that I was only just recovering from a severe illness. Lunch and a long drive to the station and a weary railway journey lay before me,

so I determined to do nothing until I was safely established with my cousins. near Cork. After a long, cold and wet journey, I arrived in pouring rain, my train being more than an hour late. The kind general who came to meet me was still patiently standing on the platform, but one of the two cars he had engaged for me and my baggage had taken itself off. As the train was descending in waterspouts, I need scarcely say it was the covered car which had driven away. This meant a thorough wedding for my cousin's and me. How all the luggage, including a large bicycle and two people, in addition to the driver, was ever piled up on that small, outside Irish car I have never been able to understand.

Suffice it to say, the miracle was performed, and we drove up a hill at an angle of about 45 degrees into the bargain. Clearly, these were not ideal conditions for receiving automatic messages. I was put to bed at once with hot bottles and hot soup. and soon forgot my past troubles in a long refreshing sleep i was still in the invalid stage of breakfast in bed and when this had been cleared away the remembrance of captain kent flashed into my mind and i found pencil and papers at once in order to redeem my promise the message was rather a curious one and its opening sentence evidently referred to the eccentric old lady whom i had mentioned as being asked to meet me at luncheon at castle rush so far as i can remember them the words very characteristic of captain kent's genial but rather brusque style ran as follows after speaking of the alleged hauntings at castle rush as having only too much foundation in fact he went on it's all rubbish that old woman saying that she had cleared them all away nothing of the kind there are plenty of malicious spirits about still and now that an heir is coming to rush they are keener than ever to try and work some mischief no use saying anything to tom his brother he will only laugh and say it is all skittles but tell my little sister-in-law to pray pray pray this is all they need and all she needs either

now this was not exactly the message one cared to send to a rather recent acquaintance to begin with the reference to mrs kens valued friend in the opening sentence was scarcely polite then again the prophecy of an heir to rush was one that a regret should have been made as it would probably only lead to disappointment mrs kent's first child had been a little son from whose loss she had never recovered when i was staying at the castle two nice little girls old enough to come down to early dinner at our luncheon hour comprised the family another child was certainly expected to arrive about christmas time my visit was paid in september but mrs kent herself was fully convinced that this would be another girl as she said rather sadly it seemed a pity to disturb her mind by raising false hopes but as usual i felt bound to send the message with the customary explanations and apologies. Mrs. Kent was greatly interested by it and by the pray, pray, which, as she explained to me, had a very special meaning to her. It had only struck me as an exceedingly unlikely message for the Captain Kent I had known to send to anyone. I am glad to be able to record that the Christmas gift did arrive in the shape of a baby boy,

air to rush, who is still alive and flourishing, thank God. I hear, hear of a year, that he calls himself the master, with a true Irish brogue, and lords it over his elder-sisters in the regular chieftain style. To this year belongs another strong impression of psychic atmosphere left in a room which I occupied in the south of England. It was a most comfortable room, with nothing in the least ghostly about it. Merely I had an unpleasant feeling that controversies and discussions had taken place in the room, and that a want of harmony hung about it in consequence. On mentioning this rather tentatively to the master of the house, a very orthodox clergyman, I was told, Oh dear, no, nothing of the kind, you are certainly mistaken.

But when an opportunity arose, I changed my room and felt much more comfortable in consequence of doing so. Several times I had noticed on the whole table letters which had come by post, addressed to another clergyman whose name I had not heard, and who was certainly not staying. in the house. Remarking upon this casually to a nice young governess one day, she said at once that the gentleman in question had spent several months with Mr. and Mrs. Dale in the Vicarage, but that he had died a few weeks before my arrival. He slept in the room you had when you first came, by and by. I was so glad when you changed your room. He was a clergyman, I see, was my next remark, and I looked at the envelope which had led to this explanation.

Yes, he was in orders, but he had become a complete agnostic for some years. During the last few weeks of his life, when he had to keep his bed, Mr. Dale was always going up there, and having long arguments and discussions with him, but I don't suppose it did much good. It only worried him very much. He was too ill to listen to long arguments then, and wanted just kind, soothing words, I should have thought. As the girl retreated to the schoolroom, I naturally pondered over this fresh testimony to the truth of psychic atmosphere. No sensitive could question the fact, but at present we know little or nothing of the laws which condition the fact. My friend, Mr. W.T. Steady, kindly allows me to mention another incident connected with personal experience of mine in the year 1898. In the opening month of that year, he lost a much value-to-reliable. friend who had worked for him loyally, both in his office and also with regard to some of his philanthropic schemes. This lady, in a fit of delirium, incident upon a severe attack of illness,

threw herself out of a window in her flat. A fortnight before this sad occurrence, she had seen another resident in the same set of flats throw herself out of the window, and Mr. Stead has always feared that this acted as a suggestion upon her mind in delirium, and led her to do the same thing. Her own account of the cause of her action differs somewhat from this impression, as will be seen later. Mr. Stead was naturally greatly affected by Mrs. Morris's sudden death, and the circumstances attending it, and having some of her hair cut off after her death,

he sent portions of it to at least twelve well-known quillervoyance, hoping to receive some satisfactory solution of the mystery, and also, possibly, a sign decided upon. between him and this lady. They were both interested in psychic matters and had agreed to believe in no communications from the other side purporting to come from one or other of them unless this preliminary sign were given.

Mrs. Besant, an intimate friend of Mr. Stead, was one of the oracles consulted and was very confident of being able to find out all details including the mystic sign. But both she and Mr. Ledbetter were as absolutely unsuccessful as less gifted mortals proved to be, in spite of exceptional opportunities for coming in touch with the most noted psychics, in spite of the valuable clue given by her cut after death,

the test seemed quite hopeless, since twelve of the best clairvoyance had been consulted, and all had failed in turn. A few weeks after hearing about this from Mr. Stead, I was invited by an old friend in London to meet at her house at luncheon, Miss Rowan Vincent, a non-professional sensitive, well known to many of my readers.

I had never seen this lady before, and had little speech with her during the meal. She was talking very earnestly to a military man, the son-in-law of our hostess, while the latter and I were having an interesting conversation to ourselves. General Maxwell, having a train to catch, did not accompany us to the drawing-room. On arrival there, Miss Rowan Vincent said to me very kindly,

can i do anything for you now miss bade shall i try if i can see anything for you something induced me quite against my will to say do you ever get messages by writing miss vincent no i have never done so but i can try she answered rather eagerly how i bewailed my stupidity in making such a suggestion i had diverted her mind from her own special gift which was that of seeing a person's psychic surroundings and had switched her on to an entirely novel and untried experiment i had not even the excuse of being specially interested in automatic writing which was so easily obtained at home whereas i was greatly interested in seeing whether any of my other side friends could make themselves perceptible through this sensitive. However, the mischief was done past remedy. The suggestion had taken firm root in Miss Rowan Vincent's mind, and she was not to be diverted from it. So I resigned myself patiently to the results of my own foolish remark, whilst she took pencil and paper and sat down expectantly. Soon she looked up, the writing having already begun. Do you know any William? There seems to be some message from a William as far as I can make out. Having had a

favourite cousin of that name, I told her it might be quite correct, and I should be glad to receive any message that came. A few moments passed, and then, Miss Vincent said in a puzzled tone, it is not from William, the message is to some William. I cannot understand it at all. She pushed the paper rather impatiently towards me, written upon it clearly, but faintly were these words. Dear William, I want to explain to you how I came to fall out of that window. It was not my fault, really. Someone came up behind and pushed me.

Ethel. The signature was rather indistinct, but one unmistakable to me. But then I knew the Christian name of Mr. Stead's friend, and realized at once that she was taking this opportunity of sending a message to him. I asked Miss Vincent what name was written as the bottom of the paper. paper. It looks like Ethel, she said, but it is not very clear. I will ask the spirit to write it again. A very bold and unmistakable signature was at once given. I concealed my excitement and said quietly to Miss Vincent, I think I know from whom the message comes and for whom it is intended, but to make

quite sure it would be very satisfactory if the spirit could give through you a sign agreed upon by the sender and the recipient, and unknown to everyone else. Well, I will try, said Miss Vincent at once. She had scarcely touched the pencil when it began describing a circle. There is no doubt about my having to make a circle, she said laughing. Oh, now I'm to put a cross into it, she added. Within a few seconds both these were given, and to our great delight, as well as to his, the sign was recognized by Mr. Stead as being the one agreed upon, and which had hopelessly puzzled all the other mediums.

End of Section 14. Section 15 of Seen and Unseen. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Read by Mari MacLean. Seen and Unseen by E. Catherine Bates. Chapter 12, 1900 to 1901

I must now note a curious episode connected with my friend Judge Forbes, whose astral influence I had traced clinging to the rooms he once occupied in Cambridge. As before mentioned, he had married, and I had lost sight of him and his whole family for many years, but we had several mutual friends through whom I had heard of the birth of his only son and only child, and later of the boy being sent to Eaton, and eventually and during the Army. This was very shortly before the breaking out of the South African War, and the young fellow was one of many who were drafted from India after a few months' service there to help to defend their Queen's possessions and their countrymen's lives and property

in South Africa. Later, Young Forbes was shut up in Ladysmith and one cold, dismal day in January, 6th January, 1900, I was lying very ill in bed with a severe bronchial attack in the house of my eldest brother in Hampshire. When the latter came home one evening from the Winchester Club and told us the celebrated sortie and the death of three young English officers, the name of Forbes of the Royal Rifles figured amongst these, and I felt convinced that it must be the only child of my old friend. Without hesitation, I prepared to write a few short lines of sympathy with the heartbroken father. In vain, my sister-in-law protested against my concluding at once that it must be the judge's son, since other members of the family of the same name were known to be in the army. I had not a moment's doubt

that this was the boy already mentioned, and even a silence of over 20 years seemed to present no difficulty in expressing one's deep sympathy in the face of such a sorrow. The real drawback lay in my weak state of health and physical inability to write more than a few lines, but in these I expressed a hope that in time my poor friend might come to realize that his boy was as much alive and as near to him as ever, perhaps nearer. It will indicate how indebted how entirely all relations between us had been broken off for many years when I say that I did not even know the judge's private address and was forced to send my letter to his court. In a day or two, I received a very touching and grateful answer, pathetic not only in its grief, but even more in his

frankly avowed inability to derive any consolation from the thoughts that my short note had suggested. Resignation to the inscrutable will of God was the keynote of the letter. In some far distant future he might be permitted once more to see his beloved son, but meanwhile all was gloom and misery. The episode was over. I had expressed my sincere sympathy with an overwhelming sorrow. I had received a most kind and appreciative answer. No more could be done in the matter. This was my conclusion, but evidently not the conclusion of young Talbot Forbes. I had never seen this boy in my life, nor his mother, but I suppose my old friendship with his father and my deep sympathy with the latter enabled the son to approach me soon after he had passed into the next sphere. Anyway, he made me conscious of his presence by my

bedside during the greater part of the night following my receipt of his father's letter. Owing to my severe illness, I was sleeping very little, and once or twice in the night, an attendant came in to make up my fire and keep the temperature of the room even, so that I had ample opportunity for realizing the presence of my hitherto unknown visitor. Those who know what hearing with the inner ear means will realize the method through which the following conversation took place so far as I can now recall it. Talbot. Yes, it is Talbot Forbes. I want to speak to you. Please listen to me. I want to tell you you must do more for them than this. You have to help them about me. E.K.B. Who do you mean by them? Talbot. My parents, of course, don't you understand what I am saying?

You have to do more for them. You must make them know I am close to them. Now, I could only suppose that he wished me to write again to his father and explain more fully my own ideas on the subject of our departed friends. As this would have involved a wearisome and almost certainly useless discussion on a topic which I had reason to know was very distasteful to the boy's father, I said rather shortly, and I am afraid was some of the petulance of an invalid, Oh, do be quiet and leave me alone. I have done all I can, and there is no more to be said about it. I am very sorry for you, but I really can't help you in this. I don't know your mother or what her views about it may be. And as for your father, well, I am not going to worry and torment him about ideas

that he dislikes and disapproves of, and just now, too, when he is so miserable. No, I won't do it, not even if you come and worry me about it every night. I was feeling ill and weary and longing for sleep and hope this would be a quietest to my young friend. Not a bit of it. His next remark was, what does it matter what you think or what you mean to do or not to do? You have to help them, not to think about your own feelings. This was frank at any rate, but not altogether convincing. Soon afterwards, tired out with the discussion, I really did fall asleep and only woke a short time before my breakfast and daily budget of letters arrived. Amongst these letters was one in an unknown handwriting, which proved to be from Mrs. Forbes, saying she had seen my letter to her husband,

and begging that I would tell her the grounds I had for my assurance that those we love are close to us after the great change we call death. Evidently, the boy knew that this letter was coming to me and was trying to prepare me to answer it in such a way as should help him to convince his mother of his continued existence in her immediate presence. As this case is one well known to the Society for Psychical Research, the lady I have called Mrs. Forbes appearing on their records

both as Mrs. Scott and under the pseudonym I have borrowed from them, it is unnecessary to go into further details. Suffice it to say that my nocturnal visitor was success. in his aim. I answered his mother's letter as he wished. This led to a long correspondence between us and to my making her acquaintance shortly afterwards and renewing my old friendship with her husband. Mrs. Forbes had several sittings with Mrs. Thompson and other mediums, became convinced of her son's presence with her, and very soon was independent of outside assistance in communicating with him. The judge also declared himself unable to resist the evidence,

but I don't think he ever quite honestly rejoiced in his convictions. It is hard to eradicate prejudices and traditions after 50 years of age, and the human element in his son's bright and happy messages always seem to worry and perplex him a little. He knows all about it now. Much as I deplore the earthly disappearance of such an old and faithful friend of my youth, I can sincerely rejoice in thinking of him as once more united with his son, in ways that will no longer appear to him unnatural or undesirable. During the judge's lifetime and after the son's death, I often stayed with him and his wife

in their northern home. Mrs. Forbes used frequently to say, It was Talbot who brought us all three together, we must remember. Peking story. It was during my first visit to Judge and Mrs. Forbes in the north of England that another curious experience came to me. This happened on the 4th of July, 1900, for I remember saying to Mrs. Forbes next morning, I shall remember the date from its being American Independence Day.

It was the year of the Boxer Rebellion in China, when the Peking Embassy was in a state of siege, and by July, almost all hoped that any Europeans would be saved from their dire peril had faded away. The memorial service, arranged by a too eager dignitary of the church to take place in St. Paul's, had certainly been adjourned at the last moment, but as days and weeks passed and the little garrison was still unrelieved, very little hope was entertained. In fact, by July, most people hoped and believed that their troubles must be already over through the merciful interposition of death. A connection of mine, whom I had known well when she was a child but had not seen for many years, was shut up with her husband, children, and sister in the Peking Embassy at the time.

Thousands were lamenting her sad fate and I naturally amongst them, but I wish to make clear that owing to the years that had elapsed since I had seen this special member of the family, it was not in any sense a very personal sorrow, nor was I then, nor am I now aware of any special tie of affinity between this lady and myself. I had gone to bed about 11 o'clock on the night of 4th July, 1900, and had been in bed about half an hour without any attempt at going to sleep when suddenly I felt extremely alert in mind, very much as Miss Porter described herself in the Captain Carbury episode. Almost immediately upon this feeling of mental alertness came the conviction that Mabel McLeod, as I will call her,

was in the room close to me and that she was in some dire and urgent need of help. Instantaneous help, I mean. I could neither see nor hear on this occasion. I only knew these facts through some power of intuition. All the more remarkable because having made up my mind that all was over at the embassy, I had not been thinking of her or her fellow sufferers for some days past. My thoughts were fully engaged at the time with the grief of my host and hostess. With the knowledge of Mabel's presence came also the conviction that she was still alive in the physical body and that it was no ex-garnate spirit that was appealing to me for help. The impression was so vivid. The impression was so vivid, that I called out instinctively. What is it, Mabel? What can I do for you? There was no response,

either by outward or inner voice, only the insistent appeal for help and knowledge of some imminent danger at hand for her. I am trying to explain that something more than the usual hourly peril in which they must be living, if on this side the veil, was implied by the impression I received. It was some acute and additional danger which threatened her at the moment, feeling it was useless to waste time trying to find out by writing or other means what the exact nature of this danger might be, I jumped out of bed as quickly as possible, saying, Never mind trying to make me understand, I will pray for you, whatever it is. So I knelt down and prayed most earnestly that this poor woman whose spirit had appealed for help

at some dread crisis might be comforted, and delivered from any dangerous threatening her at the time. I had been very comfortably tucked up in bed looking forward to the pleasant drowsiness which promises sleep, and I am quite sure I should not have put myself to all this inconvenience without a very strong motive. When I felt the poor tormented spirit was calmed and soothed by the atmosphere of prayer, I returned to my bed and eventually fell asleep. Next morning I told Mrs. Forbes of my experience, making the remark quoted about the date. The following week she and I were together at one of the meetings of the Society for Psychical Research, at the close of which, in shaking hands with Mr.

Frederick Myers, I begged him to make a note of my experience and the date. "'Ah, Miss Bates,' he said, taking out a small notebook, "'I will make a note of it, but I fear there is not the remotest chance of any of them having been alive ten days ago.' "'Then my experience goes for nothing,' I answered. "'It was a living woman, not an excarnate one, who came to my bedside on the Fourth July. Later, when the embassy was relieved, and this lady who had presented such a stiff upper lip to

fortune, was once more safe at home for a much-needed rest. I found that she had gone through a special time of accentuated suffering, just when I felt her presence in my room. Her husband was down with dysentery, and she had not enough food either for him or for her poor little children, and the strain was almost too great, even for that brave soul. Of course, she had been quite unconscious of any appeal to me, but she has Scottish as well as Irish blood in her veins, and this heredity may have enabled her subconscious self to sense my locality, and to realize my power and will to help her in her desperate need. Truly, it was a case of vain is the help of man or woman either, but we know too little of

spiritual laws to be able to deny offhand the efficacy of any earnest prayer. I saw Mr. Myers make a note of the circumstance, but unfortunately this cannot be found amongst his papers. I asked Mrs. Myers about it, and she remembered distinctly her husband having mentioned the case to her when he returned home after that meeting. But when I last saw her, she had hunted amongst his papers in vain for the note which he made at the time. Early in January, 2001, the day after Lord Roberts' triumphant procession through London, I went to spend some weeks at an open-air cure in Devonshire, high up in the hills and in a bleak part of the county. Several severe illnesses had left me so super-sensitive to colds and drafts that it seemed a vital

necessity to take some such drastic step, even at this inclement time of the year, unless I were prepared to sink into a state of chronic invalidism, and become a burden to myself and my neighbors for the rest of my natural life. An old friend was second in command in this special establishment, which she had asked me to recommend, and a bright thought struck me that I might do my friend a good turn and myself also by spending a few weeks in the house. I did not bargain, however, for the deep snow which fell on the very day after my arrival, nor for the howling west winds which continued to blow through the whole of my stay. In these parts, the west wind corresponds with our eastern variety, and is quite as cold and disagreeable.

nor were the surroundings inside of a very cheerful nature. All the other patients, six or seven, were quite young girls, and all more or less consumptive. Several of them were very attractive, which made it seem all the more sad. Without exception, all were or had been engaged to be married as the coping stone to this tragedy of their lives. In several cases, the engagements had been broken off, sometimes by mutual consent, on the score of health. In a few exceptions where love had proved stronger than prudence and common sense, it was equally melancholy to realize that the future could hold nothing but disappointment on the one side and a hopeless regret on the other. Under these circumstances, it was perhaps only to be expected that my first impressions of the

establishment should not be entirely colloer de rose, yet the house itself was pleasant enough, and the view from the drawing-room windows was simply magnificent, including sea as well as more. curtainless windows with sashes thrown wide open and chilly linoleum to replace warm carpets were rather a trial to the uninitiated early in January with deep snow on the ground and fires none too plentiful. In addition to these drawbacks, I had another personal one. Coming in the middle of the winter, it was naturally Hobson's choice as regarded the bedrooms. All the best and warmest aspects had been appropriated in the autumn, and an ugly little room with cold west outlook and depressing mustard-colored, distempered walls. fell to my lot. Yet even these facts did not sufficiently account for the extremely depressing effect of that room upon me. Has anyone died here lately? Was my first and natural query in a house of this kind? I had heard the girls casually mentioned two gentlemen patients who had been in the house the previous year. One of these had gone into rooms in a neighboring town with his nurse. I did not hear what had become of the other one and had not sufficient curiosity to ask the question. My friend reassured me

by saying she was sure no one had died recently in my room. She had only lately come to the house herself, as I knew, having been matron for some years of a small hospital in the country. The second poor gentleman, who was a patient here, did die in the house, I believe, but that was months ago, she said, and I understand that he had Laura Pierce's room, mentioning one of the girls who had a specially cheerful apartment. It seemed quite natural that a sick man, confined to his bed should occupy a large and sunny room, so I thought no more of the matter. Still, I was always conscious of an unpleasant and sad atmosphere in my own room and took occasion one day to ask the lady at the head of the establishment whether she knew anything of the predecessors in the house.

It struck me that the psychic atmosphere in my room might be connected with some of them. Miss Hunter replied laughingly, I can't tell you anything about them, for the very good reason that they don't exist. I am the first tenant of this house. It was only built two years. It was only built two years ago, and remained vacant for the first twelve months. Then I told her very cautiously of my feeling about my room, and that I had supposed it might have to do with someone who had slept there before she took the house. Two or three of the young girls were in the room at the time, and it struck me that one of them, the one who was there for her second winter, looked a little surprised and interested, but the matron passed off the subject with a few bantering words, and again I had

no suspicion of the truth. Six weeks passed, and my last night in the house had arrived. My My nurse friend was in the habit of giving me massage twice a day before getting up in the morning and the last thing at night. She left me on this occasion about 10.30 p.m., expressing a hope that I should soon sleep and have a good night before my long journey next day. Not much doubt of that, I murmured, why I'm half asleep already. And I turned round, tired and yet soothed by the massage, and soon fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

Several hours must have passed when I woke up trembling and terror-struck after passing through an experience which seems as vivid to me today as on that February night or early morning. My heart was beating, my limbs trembling, beads of perspiration covered my face as I discovered later. No wonder. I had been through an experience from which few, I imagined, returned to tell the tale, for I had passed through every detail of dying and dying a very hard and difficult death. Body and soul were being literally torn apart in spite of the desperate effort to cling together, and my spirit seemed to be launched into unknown depths of darkness and possible horror. It was the feeling that I did not know where I was going, nor what awaited me, that seemed so

terrible. This and the horrible fight for mastery between my poor body and soul, and some unknown force that was inexorably set upon dividing them. This so far as I can express it exactly describes the experience I had just gone through and from which I had awakened in such abject terror. As the beating of my heart subsided, and I could think more calmly, I remembered with startling distinctness that in the very worst of the struggle I had been vainly endeavoring to say that text in the 23rd Psalm, which begins, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. I could say the first part of it quite easily, but some fiendish enemy seemed bent upon preventing

my saying the last sentence. And in my terrible dream, rescue and safety depended upon my getting to the end of the text. I tried again and again, always to be driven back in despair before the crucial words were uttered. At last, with a desperate effort, I seemed to shake off the incubus which was weighing me down, and I finished the words triumphantly, and so loud that I had positively wakened myself up by shouting them out. With returning memory, I knew this had happened, and hearing a door opened and shut on the half-landing below my room, I thought for the moment that someone must have heard me and must be coming to see what was the matter. I looked at my watch just 2.30 a.m. No one appeared, and to my relief, I remembered that this was just the hour when either Miss Hunter

or my friend went round to the invalids giving them milk or bovril in the night. I had no inclination to seek out either of these ladies. The horror was passed, and no one could undo what I had endured. So I lay quiet, and in course of time managed to go. go to sleep again, not waking until the servant came into my room to light the fire at 7.30 a.m. It happened to be a certain mini on this occasion, a very respectable young woman who had accompanied Miss Hunter when she gave up the matronship of a well-known hospital and who had therefore been with her since this establishment had been started. My night's experience convinced me so absolutely that in spite of all that had been said the gentleman patient had died in this room, and that I had

just gone through his death agonies, that instead of asking any question, that, question about it. I said very quietly to Minnie as she was on her knees lighting my fire. The poor gentleman who died here last summer died in this room I find. Yes, ma'am, she said quietly, not knowing as it turned out that any mystery had been made about the fact. My personal friend was guiltless of any deceit, for she had been told the story about Laura Pierce's room, but the young girls confessed when I went down to breakfast that they had been specially warned not to let me know the true facts. Miss Hunter did not appear at breakfast as she was suffering from a chill, so I went to her bedroom to say goodbye before going up to London. Feeling naturally

annoyed and rather shaken by my night's experience, I said to her rather dryly, you need not have taken the trouble to deceive me about my room, Miss Hunter, nor to warn the girls to do the same. I know that gentleman died there, for I have just gone through his experiences, and then I told her about my terrible night, although forced to admit the facts Miss Hunter fought every inch of the ground so far as the painful experiences were concerned. Such an excellent man, so interested in everything, a clergyman, my dear Miss Bates, and so good, how could there be anything painful connected with his death, etc., etc. I suggested that as Christians we had the most overwhelming proof that holiness of life does not always preclude even mental suffering at death, but she would not hear of this argument

and doubtless considered it blasphemous. By dint of questioning, however, I made two discoveries. First, that the death was quite unexpected. The man had only been a fortnight in the house, and when I expressed surprise that he should have been moved there so late in a fatal illness, she said unguardedly, Oh, but he was very slightly ill when he came. It was more a preventive measure. None of us had any idea that he was a dying man the symptoms developed so suddenly. I also elicited another fact, i.e. that this delightfully interesting personality, so intellectual, so full of interest in everything, to quote Ms. Hunt,

Hunter's words, had died at the age of 40 in the very prime of life. No wonder, under the circumstances of so short an illness in the very zenith of life and enjoyment that body and soul should have been loath to separate and thus free the imprisoned spirit, but Miss Hunter was adamant and would admit nothing. Just before leaving her, it struck me that I had not yet told her about the text, so I repeated that episode, and then for the first time a startled look came into her eyes. She was taken by surprise and said hastily, That is extraordinary. I was with him when he died in the night, and he kept on asking for that text.

That is not so remarkable. Many might have asked for that text, but I stopped once or twice after the first sentence, and he kept on urging me. Say it to the end, Miss Hunter. Say it to the end. Later, the good lady even consented to write out the evidential points in this story, which I sent at once to my friend, Dr. Richard Hodgson. Immediately upon my return to London on this occasion, I was attacked quite suddenly by a very

acute form of rheumatism, which laid me on my back, perfectly helpless for several days. When the doctor arrived, his first question was, have you had any special shock lately? This particular form of rheumatism does not generally come on with so little warning unless there has been a previous shock. I was about to deny this, thinking he referred to unexpected news, but with the memory of my Devonshire experience so keen and clear, I felt bound to tell him that I had certainly had a shock to my nerves 24 hours previously. Soon after this sudden and sharp attack of illness, I found myself in Portugal for the first time in my life. I had gone there with an English friend, Mrs. Frampton, in order to be near

connections who had lived in the country for many years. A cousin and I spent a delightful afternoon in that Sintra paradise of Montserra, with General and Mrs. Sartorius, who were living there at the time of my visit to Portugal. I have heard that even this charming house could tell strange tales if only walls could speak. It is easy to imagine that any spirits carnate or discarnate might deem it a privilege to haunt so exquisite a spot. Personally, I can only testify to the hospitality of our kind host and hostess and the excellence of the spirit of Roeboor, which refreshed our weary bodies and made the walk back to the Cintra Hotel through the lovely woodland paths, a thing of beauty and a joy forever. To return to Lisbon, my friend Mrs. Frampton had never been present at any sort of psychic

phenomena, so we planned a little sitting for her during one of these Lisbon evenings. She and I descended in solemn state to the fine library of our host on the ground floor, whilst his wife and sister elected to remain in the drawing room upstairs. A sister-in-law also begged to be excused from accompanying us, and spent the whole time occupied by our seance in playing moody and sanky hymns, doubtless hoping thereby to exercise the evil spirits whom we should presumably evoke. Unfortunately, she did not play loud enough to divert the attention of the Portuguese cook, who promptly gave warning next day, saying she could not stand these devilish practices. We had failed to realize that the very wall close to which our small table was placed divided the kitchen from the large ground floor

library, so the poor woman doubtless sat with her ear well jammed up against this partition, and considered every wrap of the table leg on the floor a distinct footstom. step of the devil. Nothing more terrible happened to us that evening than being forced to look up our English history once more in Hume and Green's short history of the English people, both of which volumes were close at hand. For the whole seance might have been an easy lesson in English history, with John Duke of Northumberland, Lady Jane Grey, the Earl of Lester, and the famous Elizabeth as its exponents. All these purported to be with us that evening, and I am bound to say that all dates and details mentioned, which our middle-aged memories could not verify at the moment,

were in every case corroborated by reference to the library books later. It was just before leaving England for Portugal that I first met a lady with whom I have since become more intimate under rather exceptional circumstances. These latter were unknown to me at the time. My brother, Colonel C.E. Bates, was living at this time, 1901, in rooms in Cambridge Terrace, and the drawing-room floor was occupied by a Miss Isabel Smith, who was then only a name to us both. His landlady had given him to understand that this lady had connections in India and was the niece of a general propert, still on the active list and an old friend of my brothers in Indian days. The last Sunday before starting for Lisbon, I called in as usual to

spend the afternoon in Cambridge Terrace and found that the drawing-room lady had just been paying him a visit and had left him most enthusiastic. This visit surprised me because my brother, being a very great invalid, had an inveterate dislike to meeting strangers, with whom he generally found it difficult to carry on any lengthy conversation. But this visitor had evidently been an exception. My brother expressed some regret that I should have missed seeing her, so to please him, I suggested sending his valet upstairs with his compliments, and asking if I might pay the lady a short visit should she be disengaged. She came downstairs kindly, a second time, and we had a pleasant chat, whilst my brother and an old Indian brother officer carried on their conversation. I left England a few

days later and scarcely expected to see or hear any more of Miss Isabel Smith. Fate, however, ordained otherwise. Some weeks elapsed and then I received a letter from my brother mentioning the curious circumstances that he had just heard had led to his making the acquaintance of this pleasant neighbor. It is too long a story to write, he concluded, but I will tell you all about it next time we meet. He did so, and his account exactly tallies with the same. the one Miss Isabel Smith, now Mrs. Finch, has kindly written out for me for insertion in this volume. I will quote the latter from her own words. I must premise that Miss Smith turned out to be naturally clairvoyant and clairaudient, rather to the disgust of my brother, who considered

himself superior to these superstitions. Her narrative is interesting not only in itself, but because it is an object lesson in the curious hits and misses in psychic investigation. In this case, a spirit confessed to an impersonation, but it was an impersonation of the brother of a man whom my brother had really known in India, a fact entirely apart from any possible knowledge on the part of Miss Smith, who had never met my brother at the time of her adventure. I will now give Miss Smith's narrative. When at Grindelwald in the winter 1900 to 1901, an excarnate entity came and spoke to me, he seemed much interested in the South African campaign, told me he had been a soldier, burst in the rifle brigade, then in the Indian Army. When I asked his name, he said he was

Henry Arthur Chomley, the name of a celebrated ambassador was the one given, that he was a brother of Sir Frederick Chomley, and had been in the Rifle Brigade and in India, and had passed over two or three years before. When shortly afterwards I returned to Cambridge Terrace, he realized the changed surroundings and asked where I was. On learning I was in rooms, he asked whether there was anyone else in the house, and on my telling him there was a paralyzed military man downstairs named Bates, he exclaimed, what, Charlie Bates? I knew him very well in India. Do ask him if he remembers me. I said I did not know the gentleman, but would certainly ask him if an opportunity should occur. A few days after this, a message was brought up to me from Colonel Bates,

asking for my uncle, General Propert's address in Burma. This gave me the opening. I wrote giving the required information and suggested that I might come and have a talk with him. In my next conversation with Colonel Chumley, I told him all this, and he again said, Mind you ask him about me. I answered, how can I when I don't know what Colonel Bates' ideas are on these subjects? He might look on me as a dangerous lunatic. Colonel Chumley remarked, I think you will find that he is interested in psychic matters. I discovered that this was true, for on my first visit I saw a copy of the SPR proceedings lying on the table. I found him interested but unable to get beyond the subliminal consciousness theory. A few days later, I asked

Colonel Bates if he had ever met a Colonel Henry Arthur Chumley in India. He thought for a moment, then said, Chomley, why, of course I knew a Chomley, but I don't know his Christian name. He was a brigade major at Me and Meir, and I took over the bridge from him and bought his horses, etc. Where did you know him? I then told him of the spirit who had given me the name of Henry Arthur Chumley, who said he had known him in India and had over and over. again begged to be remembered to him. The day following this conversation, Colonel Bates sent me up his army list, open, and marked at the name of Colonel Walter Chomley, and a note explaining that it was not Henry Arthur but Walter Chomley whom he had known at me and mere. I then asked Henry Arthur

if his name was Walter or Henry Arthur. He said Henry Arthur, surely I ought to know my own name. Colonel Bates told the story to you the next time you, I.E. E.K. Bates, came to see him, and I remember we discussed it together when we met again. Shortly afterwards, you wrote to tell me that you had looked up a Debrecht for 1895 and had there found Colonel Henry Arthur Chomley, a brother of Sir Frederick Chomley, of the Rifle Brigade, etc. So that Henry Arthur Chomley was evidently alive in that year and had been in the Rifle Brigade. I was much pleased to get this corroborative evidence, though the mistaken initials must have been Colonel Bates's error and apologized to Colonel Henry Arthur Chomley in in the unseen. A few weeks later, however, you wrote again and told me that you had been

staying with a friend who drove you over to call upon Colonel and Mrs. Henry Arthur Chumley, that he was a brother of Sir Frederick Trumley, and was certainly alive, although not at home, at the time of your visit. This information startled me, and my guide at my request went to look up the Swadisant Colonel to find out what it all meant. The latter then confessed to having taken a friend's name, said a sudden impulse came over him when I first asked his name, and having told one lie he felt bound to go on deceiving me, but that he had known both Colonel Bates and Colonel Henry Arthur Chumley in India, and that his own real name was Anstruther. This was Miss Smith's narrative. Now, out of this curious jumble of true and false, two points remain clear. My brother

had known a Chumley in India and had succeeded him as Brigade Major at Me and Mir. This Chumley was a brother of Sir Frederick Chumley, the well-known diplomatist, but his name was Walter, not Henry Arthur. Yet Sir Frederick had a brother named Henry Arthur, and the impersonating Anstruther had borrowed the wrong brother's name when trying to pose as the friend of Colonel Charles Bates. To make confusion worse confounded, Walter Chumley was alive, as well as Henry Arthur at the time of Miss Maple Smith's experiences, for I have seen his death within the last eight months. The second point is that personally my brother and I had reason to be grateful to the deceiving and Struther, he was certainly the means of introducing a pleasant acquaintance to my brother and to me.

Miss Mabel Smith's experience at Grindelwald reminds me of one of my own in the same place during the following year. I had gone there with a cousin who was eager for skating and tobogaining in January 1902 on my way to Rome. After a pleasant week at a charmingly quiet and comfortable hotel, the Alpenruhe, I believe, was the name, my cousin wished for purposes of policy to change over to a more famous but noisy and overcrowded one. So on the evening of 3 February, we found ourselves in this immense caravanseri, having exchanged our large, comfortable, steam-heated rooms for small, oblong apartments, each provided with three doors as well as the window, and a wood fire to be fed from small five-franck baskets, and always going out at that. There was deep snow on the ground

and a heavy fog of snow falling when we made our change, so that one was not in the most brilliant spirits, and being suddenly thrust in the midst of a big, heterogeneous company of strangers is never exhilarating. Our bedrooms, though small and not specially comfortable, were perfectly commonplace the very last milieu with which one would have associated any interesting experience. The window of my room faced the door into the passage. My bed lay between the two, right and left of it were two other doors, each communicating with other occupied rooms. Therefore, I thought little the first night of noises and moving of furniture, taking for granted that these must be occurring either right or left of me, and that the clearness of the atmosphere

accounted for my odd impression that a table and chair between my bed and the window were being moved. The following night, 4th February, however, this fact was indisputable. I had heard both my neighbors retire to bed by 10 p.m., as so many do who have been skating and tobogganing all day long. I had sat up reading for half an hour beyond this and went to bed at 11 p.m., by which time there was perfect silence in the hotel, as no special entertainment was going on. Very shortly, this movement of the furniture began again, unmistakably in my room this time. Curiously enough, it did not frighten me at all, nor suggest burglars, a far greater terror to me than ghosts. I cannot at this distance of time remember why the idea of Mr. Myers should have come to me in

connection with these noises, but I am quite certain that I did think of him at the time and fully expected his name to be given when I asked if anyone wished to speak to me and were trying to attract my attention by moving the furniture about. I was greatly to my surprise, therefore, that the name of Gifford was given. I may here note that this was the real name given to me. He said he was a judge, one who had lived 50 or 60 years previously, that he had once unintentionally condemned an innocent man to be hanged, and he was evidently still greatly perturbed about this and begged for my prayers. All this put Mr. Myers entirely out of my head, unfortunately, as events proved. I had some further talk with Judge Gifford, but do not remember it in detail. Next morning I told my cousin

of my experience, and on the evening of the following day mentioned it in the presence of some neighbors at Taub le Doet, who had introduced psychic subjects to us. This gentleman and his wife were both impressed and yet incredulous, and when my cousin laughingly declared that Gifford had come to her the second night, but that she told him she was too tired out to listen to him, we all three supposed that she was turning the whole subject into ridicule. This would have been quite characteristic of her, although I have always thought she had some media mystic faculty, and was one of the many people whom I should advise to leave these matters alone. I was the more convinced that she was merely chafing on this occasion, because when I warned our acquaintances of her powers of

exaggeration in making fun of things, she said nothing. But when we had returned to our rooms that night, she remarked quite quietly, but he did come, Emmy, when you said that at Tabledote about my exaggerating things, I let it pass, because very often it is true. But what I said this evening was absolutely correct, though perhaps it is as well those people should not believe it. Someone did come to my bedside last night and said, I am Gifford, will you listen to me? And I said, no, not tonight, I am too tired, just as I told you. I think poor Gifford came again more than once to me, but I had done all I could for him and explained this, adding that he must now leave me alone, which he did. Later, my cousin returned to Paris and I went on to Rome, where I received a letter

from Dr. Richard Hodgson in closing some piper script. F. W. H. Myers communicating, said that he had come to me on the evening of 4th February, that I seemed to recognize him, and that he thought he had got his message through to me and hope that I should write to Dr. Hodgson to that effect. In answering Dr. Hodgson's letter, I denied the Myers episode in toto so far as my consciousness was concerned. In fact, the Gifford incident put all else so entirely out of my mind that I fear I did not even mention to Dr. Hodgson that my first thought that night had been connected with Mr. Myers. Anyway, the next letter from Boston enclosed an account of a sitting where Mr. Myers came and apologize for having misled Dr. Hodgson about my recognition of him. His words were almost

literally as follows. I am extremely sorry, my dear Hodgson, about that affair with Miss Bates. I should not have thought of mentioning it to you that had I not felt convinced that she recognized me. Her astral body was quite aware of my presence and I quite thought she had realized it on the physical plane. The italics are mine. It would seem that the Myers message was in the very active transmission from my astral to my normal consciousness when this man Gifford must have come switching off the telephone for Mr. Myers and getting onto it himself. Probably his great distress of mind would have made him the stronger force of the two for the time being. There must always be many disappointments of this kind in our research. There is always something which so nearly succeeds and then just fails at last.

This must be the case where conditions are so fine and subtle and so easily disturbed, and where our own ignorance of many necessary factors is so profound, this makes it nonetheless disheartening at times. Later I made an attempt with my friend Baroness Rosencrantz of Rome to get a message through the other way, i.e. from Mr. Myers and myself to Dr. Hodgson via Mrs. Piper. The Baroness and I had a little sitting alone, wrote one or two short messages with a couple of extracts from Mr. Myers' own writing, sealed up the envelope carefully, and I forwarded it to Dr. Hodgson. But the test failed. Two years, later Dr. Hodgson spoke of the letter as being still intact. End of Chapter 12. Section 16 of Seen and Unseen. This is a Liverbox recording. All Liverbox recordings are in the public domain.

For more information or to volunteer, please visit liverbox.org. Read by Piotr Natter. Seen and Unseen by E. Catherine Bates. A second visit to India, 1903. My second visit to India took in the early months of 1903, and I approached it this time from Burma. Fielding Hall's soul of a people had thrown its magic spell over me, and Miss Greenlow and I were both anxious also to see the far-famed Schwed-Dagan Temple. I came to the conclusion from what I saw, and still more from what I heard, that Mr. Fielding Hall must have appealed sometimes to his imagination for his facts, and allowed an exquisite poetical fancy to cast its glamour even over these.

But the beautiful golden temple of Rangoon defies all powers of exaggeration. We went there again and again, and wandered amongst its endless small temples, representing various forms of worship, including even a Chinese joss house, which is stamped upon my memory through a disaster, which I have always connected with this special temple, rung superstition there would be. We had spent several weeks upon the Irawaddy River, had wandered through beautiful, dusty mandalay, had explored Bamo and marvelled over the exquisite visions of fairy-like beauty,

painted anew for us morning and evening on this most glorious river, and had finally returned to Rangoon for a few days' rest, before starting for Calcutta. It was an exquisite evening, just before our departure, when we went, towards sunset, to say farewell to the Shwedagon. At that hour it is to be seen at its best, for the level rays of the eastern sun light up the golden cuba, into startling and fairy-like magnificence.

Having watched this glorious spectacle for some minutes, the air grew chilly compared with the intense heat of the day, and darkness was coming on a pace as we turned to retrace our steps. A few days before we had noticed a Chinese Joss House standing in one corner of the huge elevated platform upon which the Shwedagon rests. In the maze of buildings, and owing to the swiftly falling darkness, we could not at once locate this temple, and most unfortunately for me, with the stupid persistence,

which such a failure sometimes brings, both Miss Greenlow and I were determined to find it out before leaving the Golden Temple. At last a joyous exclamation warned me that my friend had been successful in her quest. The first time I had seen this Joss House, I had run up the steps heedlessly, but felt such an unpleasant influence on entering it, that I came away at once. once, and only regret not having been equally prudent the second time. Miss Greenlow was gazing at some grotesque carvings in one corner of the temple, still dimly visible, and called out to me to come and look at them also. Very reluctantly I joined her, and stood for a few minutes waiting, till she was ready to leave. There was something so gloomy,

so uncanny and depressing, I must even say malignant in the building at this twilight hour, that I could stand the influence no longer, and as Miss Greenlow seemed inclined to linger, I hurried down the stone steps, saying, I can't stay in that place, I will wait for you at the top of the marble stairs. Now, these steps, broken and dirty, and lined by small booths selling every imaginable toy and bit of tinsel, including small models of the various temples, led by steep flights up and down from the huge platform of ground I have mentioned. Some small ling boys were crowding round as Miss Greenlow rejoined me, clamoring to be allowed to light us down the steps. A very necessary precaution, for the darkness was quickly replacing the exquisite sunset coloring.

I am, as a rule, rather a remarkably sure-footed person, and the lanterns of the boys threw ample light upon the steps. Yet the first moment of my descent I was considerably surprised to find myself at the bottom of the first, of hard marble steps. I had no recollection of a slip even. One moment I was standing, carefully prepared to descend, the next I was lying on my back at the bottom of a long flight of steps, with the ling boys gaping in astonishment. They could not have been more astonished than I was. The very swiftness of the fall was probably my salvation,

otherwise I think my spine must have been injured. As it was, I was very much hurt, however. The pain was intense for a time, and the muscles of my back were so swollen that they stood up in ridges as big as a good-sized finger for some time after the escapade. In fact, it was quite six weeks before our local trouble was over, and many more weeks before I had recovered from the unexpected shock. I have had several falls in my life, but never one other where there was absolutely no preliminary warning or sense of slipping, however swift. the experience was exactly that of being suddenly hurled down these steps by some outside force i can only add that it deeply deplored my unguarded words to miss greenlow when i told her i was sure there was some malignant spirit in the jos house Perhaps he wished politely to demonstrate the correctness of my remark. The short voyage from Rangoon to Calcutta was made pleasant by the kindness of a European friend in Rangoon who came to see us off and asked if he should introduce to me a little

Burmese lady, very rich and very devoutélte, who was on board with us, going to Calcutta, to pay a visit to her husband who lived in that city. She's one of our principal native residence, my Rangoon friend explained to me before introducing her. She is also intensely interested in her Buddhist religion, and I think this may interest you, from what you have told me of your investigations. So the little lady was duly presented, and thinking to open our conversation pleasantly, I remarked that Mr. Rowell had told me that she was much interested in religious questions, and although not a theosophist myself, I numbered several of them amongst my friends. But I found myself quite on

wrong track. She screwed up her little mouth, as if tasting some nasty medicine, and then said in excellent colloquial English. Oh, they are no good at all. They have muddled everything up, and got it all wrong. This is why we are beginning to write tracts and sent out missionaries. The great Buddha made no propaganda. Neither did we for many, many centuries. We believe that people must grow into this knowledge. But now, when you, Western people come and take little bits of our system and piece them together all wrong, well then we are forced to show you what is the truth. It's like a puzzle map and all you theosophists are trying to fit the pieces in wrong side upward. And she finished with a merry and

apologetic laugh, remembering no doubt that I had spoken of having friends among these stupid muddlers. She gave me quite a number of the tracts of which she had spoken, setting forth the true Buddhism, and mostly printed in Mandalay, and I made a point of passing these on to some of the friends I had mentioned to her. I can only trust they were appreciated and efficacious in reducing the confusion, resulting from trying to adapt Eastern mysticism to Western consumption. Our conversation became still more interesting when I discovered that a mysterious fellow-passenger of ours on board the Devonshire, sailing from Marston, Marseilles to Rangoon had taken this voyage at the expense of the Burmese lady,

and I am sorry to say, had occasioned her a great and quite inexcusable disappointment. This man, whom I will call Dr. Grunet, was a professor at a celebrated university in the south of Europe, and was certainly a scholar, if not a gentleman. He had studied the Buddhist writings very deeply, and his name had been conveyed to this Burmese lady as that of one eager to throw off all the ties of kinship. and retire, like the great Buddha himself, from the world, and find repose and enlightenment in a Burmese monastery. The only thing lacking in carrying out this excellent resolve was, as usual, money. The native lady, delighted to hear of so learned a gentleman, and one holding such an honorable position in Europe,

being converted to the tenets of her religion, and thus wishing to give the best example of their influence upon him, agreed joyfully to forward the funds for his journey, and to make arrangements for his stay in Rangoon before proceeding to Mandalay, where he was to be received as a Buddhist priest after a certain course of initiation. We had all remarked Dr. Gruney on board, partly because he was so thin and tall, and walked the deck so persistently in fine weather or foul, partly because he owned an exceptionally fine and long beard, which parted and waved in the breeze. as he passed to and fro in his lonely perambulations. I never saw him speak to anyone on board except my own table companion Dr. Gull, the secretary of the church missionary society, and a very interesting and intelligent man. The latter was also a distinguished Arabic scholar

and had lent me some striking monographs he had written on the Mohamedan faith, striking both by the scholarship and breadth of view and tolerance, which one does not generally associate, with the society that he represented. I had seen him more than once in the company of Dr. Grunet, and when we reached Colombo, and read in the papers handed to us on board that our ship contained the famous European professor, who was journeying to Mandalay to become a Buddhist priest

after a touching farewell with wife and children, Dr. Gall expressed both astonishment and incredulity. He never said a word about it to me, was his remark. I know he has studied the Buddhist religion very deeply, and he is anxious to get access to some manuscripts which he hopes to find in Burma, but that is not the same thing as becoming a priest. I expect the papers have exaggerated the facts. As a matter of fact, Dr. Grunet certainly gave a lecture on Buddhism in Colombo on the day of our arrival, for one of our fellow passengers had the curiosity to be present. But he also told me nothing had been said about the lecturer becoming a priest. The matter did not specially interest me, but on arrival at Rangoon, the only decent hotel was crowded,

and most of us had to put up with a very inferior class of accommodation. A few hours of this establishment sufficed for most of the passengers, who promptly went up country or on the river. But Miss Greenlow and I were obliged to spend three or four days in Rangoon, and Dr. Grunet was, at first, our only companion, so of course we spoke to each other in self-defense. He talked of his home life and university work, and casually mentioned the death of his wife five years previously, and the children who were awaiting him at home. This certainly talled more with Dr. Gull's ideas than the sensational Colombo newspaper account of his wife and children, to whom, like the great Buddha, he had bidden an eternal farewell.

Naturally, one did not touch upon this delicate subject, but I asked him how long he expected to remain in Rangoon. To my surprise he said at once that his stay was quite uncertain, he might even be returning by the Devonshire, which was to sail within a week of her arrival. It seemed a long and expensive journey to take for so short a stay, but doubtless he had business reasons, and the matter dropped from my mind. When we returned, three or four weeks later, he was no longer in Rangoon, apparently, and I did not expect to come upon his tracks again. the Burmese lady explained the Grune mystery with some bitterness, and no wonder. Having come out free, upon the understanding with her, already mentioned, she had taken a room for him at the hotel, and had busied herself in buying blankets and a carpet and other small luxuries

to break the Mandalay monastery to him as gently as possible. When three days passed, and he made no sign of moving on, she quietly intimated that it might be as well to begin the new life. without delay, and said she had written to her brother, himself a priest in the monastery, to meet Dr. Grunet at Mandalay, and present him to the authorities at the monastery. This must probably have been about the time that I asked him innocently how long he would be staying in Rangoon. His plan had doubtlessly been to go to Mandalay in a dilettante sort of fashion, and to live in the monastery for a time, with the hope of getting access to some valuable

and little-known manuscripts. But it did not suit his plans at all to be met at once by the brother of his benefactress, and kept under the eye of this priest, who knew exactly the circumstances under which he had been enabled to take the long journey from Marseille. Being evidently a prudent man, he determined to seize the first opportunity for retreat from an impossible situation. How he raised enough money for the return voyage is not known. My Burmese acquainted, thought he must have applied to one of the consulates, and that his university position would doubtless ensure his raising a loan. Anyway, he shipped himself surreptitiously once more on board the Devonshire, and arranged that the letter, containing the usual excuse of a sudden telegram

from Marseilles announcing the unexpected death of a near relation, should not be handed to his benefactress until the anchor was safely weighed. It was not a pleasant story, and treachery is no less perfidious for having an intellectual motive. I felt glad that Dr. Gune was not a fellow countryman. Having disburdened herself on this one point of righteous indignation, our little Burmese lady became as bright and cheery as a child, wearing her collection of pretty native dresses, which could all have been packed easily into fair-sized doll-strung, with a singular grace and charm. When the tender arrived to disembarkas in Calcutta, her husband came with it and was speedily introduced. We had tea with them a few days later in their

handsome Calcutta flat, and this gave me the opportunity for a long and interesting talk with the husband who proved to be a most intelligent and open-minded man. He spoke of Fielding Hall's delightful book with appreciation tinged by kindly amusement. He has been many years in the country, but he still judges us as a foreigner. When I suggested that the judgment was at least very flattering to the Burmese, this Burmese gentleman laughed and said, Flattering? Yes, but not always quite true. One must see from inside, not from outside, to be quite true in one's judgments, and no foreigner can see from outside. It is a question of race and heredity, not of having spent 20 or 30 years, or even a lifetime in a foreign land.

I suggested that those who saw from inside only might also lack some essential factor in forming an accurate judgment. He agreed heartily to this, adding, Yes, indeed, the ideal critic must have lived neither too near nor too far, mentally, as well as physically. Also, he must have intuition. Now, Mr. Fielding Hall is an artist as well as a poet, but in judging my country, he lets his intuition run riot sometimes, as well as his imagination. After reporting this conversation, it is unnecessary to add that my Burmese friend spoke English rather better than I did myself. We then talked about the position of women in Burma and how much this had been extolled and held up as an object lesson to the rest of the world. If the position of woman is the true test of a nation's civilization, as has been so often affirmed, then certainly Burma must be in the van of the nations.

yet this is scarcely borne out by facts. I put this point as politely as I could, and my mind was at once said at ease by the purely impersonal way in which he met my remark. Of course we are not in the van of the nations, and yet it is quite true that our women have an exceptional position,

quite a good enough one for an election cry for the women's suffrage. Ah, yes, I have been in England, he added with a merry twinkle in his little black eyes. but you must realize that the unique position of women with us is somewhat accidental. It is not the result of philosophical or moral conviction on the part of our men. It has been the natural outcome of circumstances and the question of expediency rather than of ethics. So it was not really a test paper for us at all.

Our frequent wars in the past have taken the men out of their homes and the women, at such times, were left alone to cope with not only the domestic, but the agricultural problems. All business of this kind passed through their hands, and in time they developed the qualities of industry, good judgment, and power of taking responsibility necessary for success in such a life. Then, when the husbands came back and found everything going on so well and without trouble to themselves, they were only too glad to fall in with the existing state of things. We, Burmese, are lazy fellows, after all. We can ride. to a big call, but if our women will look after our business for us, we are quite content to smoke our pipes in peace and look on. And of course, the one who makes the wheels go round is the one who really drives the coach. Believe me, there is more of expediency than nobility in the attitude of our men towards our women, and more of laziness than either, perhaps. But Fielding Hall would call this blasphemy, I'm afraid. And so, with a joking word, our interest

talk came to an end, leaving me with a sincere hope that I might someday meet again, both the intelligent husband and the charming wife. I found the air at Simla quite marvelous for psychic possibilities, and this was certainly a great surprise to me, nor was it only a question of altitude and a dry atmosphere. Missouri and the Deradun are celebrated for the purity of air and climate generally, but the influences there were quite different. Even Peshawar, with its glorious crown of snow-capped mountains, brought no special psychic atmosphere to me,

nor the Kiber Pass, where I had thoroughly expected to be haunted by the horrors of the past. Nothing of the kind occurred. The beauty of the day, when we visited the historic pass, was only to be matched by its own extreme natural beauty, but no haunting memories hung round it for me. Perhaps a night passed in those rocky defiles might have brought some weird experience, but no European would be allowed to woo adventure in this way,

even with delaudible desire for advance in psychological phenomena. But I stayed there quite long enough to prove, for the hundredth time, that an attitude of expectation acts with me as a deterrent rather than encouragement, where the unseen is in question. I had heard so much of similar society and seamless scandals, and so little of seemla beauty and loveliness. In nature, I mean, not human nature. It is true we were there at the most exquisite time in the year, when the air was still fresh and keen,

when the last snows and the first blooms of rhododendrons were greeting each other, when the long stretches of valley, brown and purple and emerald green, lay like soft velvet in the immense distances towards the horizon line. As I looked at all this day after day, it seemed to me that Simla, without its crowds of social butterflies, male and female, and the dust and the flies, and even the heat that they bring with them, was one of the most exquisitely beautiful spots that the great creator ever thought out in his mind. Nowhere have I seen such a velvety effect of rolling hill and soft mountainside, such gorgeous atmospheric visions, such a carnival of beauty and color.

we must have seen simla at the most ideal time in the year or people must become blaze and blinded to its intoxicating beauty thanks to tennis tournaments and government house receptions and the whole stupid social mill not even the beauties of the kashmir have dimmed the memory of simla for me and i would not go there again and in the season for anything that could be offered to me all beauty is sacred and i guard jealously my sacred memory of the place known to so many merely as a byword for folly and flirtation some strange and curious experiences came to me there both in automatic writing and other ways but these are of too private a nature for publication and so with the beauty of simla and the romance of kashmir as jewels in my memory i must end my second visit to india it is said that pleasant as well as painful experiences are apt to run in three I trust this may be the case. If so, it will mean that once again I shall tread upon Indian soil. End of Section 16. Section 17 of Seen and Unseen. This is a Librevox recording. All Librevox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visitlibrivox.org. Read by Pietrenatter.

Seen and Unseen by E. Catherine Bates. Chapter 14 A Family Portrait and Psychic Photography In the very heart of Warwickshire, there is a beautiful old halftimber hall approached by a noble avenue of Elms. The hall has come down from father to son in the direct line for nearly 600 years, as the dates upon the front of the house testify. The present squire is not only an old friend of my early youth,

but is connected through marriage, and he and his wife and I have always been very friendly terms. He is the usual type of fox-hunting squire and county magistrate, did good service during the South African war by raising a core of yeoman tree from the estate, and going out with them to fight his country's battles. And, needless to say, he received a hearty ovation from his wife and his county when he returned to them in safety. He is devoted to his beautiful house and estate, and is the last man to entertain fancies or superstitions in connection with either. It is necessary to give these few words of explanation before relating an incident in my life,

for which I have always found it difficult to account, except on the supposition, that some germ of psychic sensitiveness may exist, even under the hunting squire's pink, coat and top boots. I have known Greba Hall since I was a child, and all its quaint old family portraits, especially those in the fine oak-paneled hall, with the old, old-fashioned open fireplace and dogs of the 15th century. But there were so many of these pictures must together that I have never distinguished one from the other, with the exception of the few immediate ancestors of my friend. Some years ago I was staying with a lady who lived

about three miles from Greba, and we had driven over there to have tea with the squire's wife, whom I will call Mrs. Lyon. The friend I have mentioned had become interested in psychic matters since my acquaintance with her, and I had discovered that she possessed some psychometric capacity. In the interest of non-psychic readers, I may explain that psychometry is the science of learning to receive impressions and intuitions from the atmosphere surrounding any material object, a letter, a ring, a piece of pebble or shell, and so forth. We seem capable of impressing all material objects with our personality, and naturally this is especially the case in letters written and science.

by us. The lady with whom I was then staying, Mrs. Fitzherbert, had tried receiving impressions from letters several times, at my suggestion, and always with more or less success. We had been speaking of this with Mrs. Lyon, who was always very sympathetic, and she suggested giving one of her own letters to Mrs. Fitzherbert to be psychometrised. The letter was sitting facing a door which led from the hall to an inner room, and over this door hung a half-length portrait of an old gentleman, whom I had never specially remarked before, as the picture was hung rather high, and there was nothing very characteristic about the face. Mrs. Fitzherbert glanced at the portrait once or twice as she held the letter,

and began her remarks upon the writer, but I had no reason to suppose that the glance was other than casual and accidental. She gave, however, a very remarkably accurate description, as it turned out, of Miss Lyons' unknown friend, both as to his character. and the special and rather unique conditions of his life. I was feeling naturally gratified that my pupil should have acquitted herself so well when she suddenly uttered a little expression of pain and complained of severe headache. I knew that she suffered from these headaches at times and was therefore not surprised by her asking leave to ring for the pony carriage at once,

and we were soon on our way home. Mrs. Fitzherbert was driving the pony, and as we turned out of the long Elm Avenue, she murmured in a tone of relief. How thankful I am to have got away from that old man, I knew he was telling me what to say about that letter. But afterwards he wanted to give me some message himself, and I could not understand it, and that is what made my head so bad. Then she explained, seeing my bewilderment, that she was referring to the old gentleman, whose portrait hung over the door I have mentioned.

I suggested that we had better to. try to find out what the old man wanted to say, and we arranged to do so that evening after dinner. But as Mr. Fitzherbert, who had a very charming tenor voice, elected to come in and sing to us, the old gentleman's communication had to be postponed until the morning. Mrs. Fitzherbert and I sat down in the drawing-room the next day, armed with pencils and paper, so soon as her domestic duties were over. She was most anxious that I should take the message, but this seemed to me absurd, considering that I had received no sort of impression about the picture

and could not even recall the face. So she took up the pencil very unwillingly, and after some difficulty the name of Richard Lyon was given, with the information that he had owned Greba, and had passed over to the next sphere over 130 years previously. But when it came to trying to find out what he wanted to say, she professed herself quite unable to grasp it. and passed the pencil determinedly over to me. Much to my surprise, for I had seemed to have no link with the old man at all, he was able to write through my hand with great ease. He explained to me that he had been much devoted to the property,

had lived only to improve it in every possible way, and that through his concentration of interest on this one subject, his life had been a very limited one, and that now he could not get away from the remembrance of his earth life and his beloved Greba. I suppose he is trying to explain that he is earthbound, suggested Mrs. Fitzherbert. Yes, that is just the truth,

was the eager response through my hand, and it is so sad to think that my own descendants are the ones to keep me imprisoned in this way. I am told that I could progress, as they call it here, and be much happier if I could only forget Greba, even for a time. And it worries me to see things done so differently and not to be able to do anything myself for the old place.

There is no happiness for me here. Do ask them to set me free. He continued rather pathetically. But they do not want to hold you down, I answered, tell me how they do it and what you wish them to do. The old man then explained the position very carefully and sensibly. He admitted that his own deep love for his old property and surroundings and his failure in life to develop any other very well.

very deep affection, was chiefly in fault. But he added that his portrait being hung there in the whole of his descendants was also very unfortunate for him. It drags me down, I don't know why, but I am sure I could get away more easily if they would not keep that picture in the old hall. A few more practical questions elicited the following instructions. He said the picture might remain in the county, so long as it was not in any house owned by a liable. There were several members of the family in Warwickshire, or it might be sent to London or elsewhere, and kept by members of the Lyon family so long as they were not in the direct descent and did not live in his old county.

We drove over to Greba that afternoon and took the message with us, knowing there was no fear of encountering the gypes of my fox-hunting friend at 3pm on any weekday in the hunting season. Mrs. Lyon was extremely interested. She not only endorsed the Richard Lyon and his dates, but told us that he had done an immense deal for the property, as her husband had often impressed upon her, and that at his death, about 130 years before,

he had lain in state for three days in the very hall where we had taken our tea and where his picture now hang. This was great encouragement, so we put our heads together, wondering how the poor old man's entreaty might be complied with. Mrs. Lyon remembered that several of the old portraits were shortly to be sent to a picture dealer in the neighboring town, some ten miles away, to be cleaned. But this special picture was not in need of restoration, unfortunately.

Still, I could put it with the others, and let it go to Warwick, and then tell the men not to do anything with it. But what would Edward say? Can you imagine he's allowing the picture to be taken down upon this evidence? From an acquaintance with Edward, extending over large tracts of years, I was forced to admit that even my robust imagination could not reach so far. Skittles! Or, confounded cheek, would be his mildest reply to such a request, even from a friend of his youth. I did not care to think how much further his indignation might carry him.

But I felt so strongly that something outside myself had inspired the message, with its accurate instructions, that at last I prevailed upon Mrs. Lyons to promise she would mention the matter to her husband, and thus leave the responsibility of refusal with him. She did so, and the refusal was all my fancy had painted, and more. Several months passed, and the following spring I was once more in the neighbourhood, staying with my own relations this time, who were related also to the squire and his wife. The first piece of news I received at dinner the night of my arrival, was that the Greba Hall picture had been sent in to Warwick.

I could hardly believe my ears. My relatives could tell me nothing beyond the fact, and advised my paying an early visit to Greba Hall during the absence of the master. I did this, and Mrs. Lyon told me all she knew about the matter, which was not very much. After you were here last, she said, I spoke to Edward, as I promised, and of course he laughed the whole thing to scorn, and was very rude about our tomfoolery. yes i know all about that i answered hastily but what happened afterwards after i left warwickshire i mean that was the queerest part of it all she resumed a few days after you had gone away he stood under the picture one evening coming in from hunting and waiting for tea in the hall and said as he looked up at old richard lyon do you suppose i should allow your picture to be taken down you who did so much for my property of course not

this happened once or twice at intervals then he said nothing but i used to notice that he always looked up at the picture whenever he came into the hall or stood by the fireplace at last about three months ago he turned round suddenly and said when are you going to send those pictures to be cleaned now you know i had been keeping the other pictures back with a dim hope that edward might relent but i saw it was quite useless so i told him they were going next day To my intense surprise, he said rather abruptly, then send this picture with them, and don't ask me any questions. His wife took the hint and waited for no second bidding. Off went the picture to the Warwick shop, and there it remained for nearly six months. When it came back eventually, the squire was very triumphant on the subject, but I was equally triumphant in pointing out that nothing could alter the fact

that the picture had been sent away, in spite of his earlier denunciate. of our folly. Also, I suggested that a good deal can happen in six months on either side of the veil, and that no doubt poor old Richard Lyon had had ample opportunity to get free, as he called it, thanks to the unaccountable action of his descendant. I have reserved this story for my last chapter for two reasons. It happened within the last few years, but I cannot remember the exact date, and dare not inquire from my irasible hunting friend, and also it did not specially link on to any of the previous incidents described. I must now pass on to the autumn months of 1905, which found me in Eastburn, where I have various kind friends.

I had been going through a time of great anxiety, owing to family reasons, and went down to Eastbourne with every prospect of finding rest and peace there. I arrived on the 11th of November, and the first few days amply justified my host. hopes. Then a feeling of the most intense depression came over me, quite unexpected and unaccountable. My family anxieties and responsibilities were happily over. I had been able to make a wise, and, as it turned out, most admirable choices, in finding a fresh attendant for an invalid brother, and there was nothing now to be done but to rest on my oars, and be thankful that a most trying time, requiring infinite patience and tact, was over.

when this unaccountable depression came on so suddenly i put it down to reaction and expected it to pass away with returning strength after the heavy strain but it increased as the weeks passed on into december and did not lift until eight a m on the morning of the twenty-second of december then i had one of the most vivid experiences of my life as suddenly as they had enveloped me some weeks before so did the heavy clouds now roll off leaving me with a sense of freedom and exultation, such as I have seldom experienced. This sense of freedom and joy and happiness was so marked that I mentioned it at once to an intimate friend who came to see me that day after breakfast. I said to her, I can only describe it as if one had suddenly been let out of prison or taken from a dark, dismal room into one with glorious sunshine streaming through the windows, where the very sense of being alive is sufficient joy. In fact, I never felt so thoroughly alive before.

And the curious thing is that there is no apparent reason for this. Nothing is changed. I have not even had any specially pleasant letters. Life is just the same on the outer. But on the inner? Well, I cannot describe it. But can't you account for it at all? Asked my friend, who had been with me through all the depressing influences of the former weeks,

and was astounded, as well as delighted, by the inexplicable change. in my spirits. Well, it is the day after the shortest day, I said laughing, but it has never had such an extraordinary effect upon me before. All day long this exuberant feeling of delight and happiness remained. I had no specially spiritual or religious experience in connection with it, but rather the happy feeling of confidence that a child might have, who, after wandering about in unknown lands and thorny paths, suddenly found himself transported.

with no effort of his own, to the dear, familiar house and loving home faces. Five days later, in a private letter, I read the first allusion to the death of Dr. Richard Hodgson. It came to me in a letter from Mrs. Forbes, not as a fact, but as an uncorroborated report, which would probably be found incorrect. There is nothing about it in the Times this morning, so I don't suppose it is true. These were her exact words. I don't think I ever really doubted the truth of it. it, although it came as a bolt out of the blue. Only a few days previously, a letter from an intimate

friend of Dr. Horsson in America, he had brought us together, mentioned her having seen him lately, and thinking he was really much depressed over his work and other matters. Though doubtless if I taxed him with this, he would say it was quite untrue, but I feel quite convinced that it is true. These words had not at the time given me any clue to my own curious depression, but when the first rumour of his death reached me i felt convinced that it was true and that i must have taken on his joyful conditions when he first found himself on the other side of the veil i can only surmise therefore that the weeks of my depression may have corresponded with feelings alluded to by his intimate friend although less intuitive if not less valued associates may have noticed nothing but his usual cheery and genial spirits A telegram sent to Mr. Stead showed me clearly that my inquiry had been his first intimation of anything wrong. Then, in despair of getting accurate information, I wrote to Sir Oliver Lodge, who kindly responded at once, confirming my worst fears.

He was good enough to send me later the particulars of the event supplied by Professor William James. It was a bitter blow for us, but for him how joyous an awakening. I am grateful for having heard, through personal experience, even a dim reflection of that wonderful new life, so overwhelming and so exuberant, that its race could reach to the hearts of some of those who had been honored by his friendship. On comparing notes, I found that, allowing for difference of time, 48 hours must have elapsed between his physical departure and my experience of his awakening to new conditions. There may be various ways of accounting for this. The spirit may not have been wholly freed at once from its physical envelope, but may have remained possibly, in some condition of unconsciousness, after the strangely sudden severance of the tie that binds body and soul together.

Note, since the above was written, I have received an explanation of the lapse of time between the passing of Dr. Hodgson, 20th of December, and my experience of 22nd of December 1905. on the sixth of february nineteen o seven i had the privilege of a sitting with miss mccready who not only gave an accurate description of dr hodgson's personal appearance and of his sudden call but added that this spirit wished to explain to me that he had not been able to get entirely away from the body for quite two days after physical death and that meanwhile he must have been in a state of trance miss mccreedy did not know the name of the spirit whom she described so accurately, and whose message was thus conveyed to me. Signed, E.K.B. End of note.

Some time after Dr. Hodgson left us, a friend in London wrote to me that she had either just read or heard, that he had made some communication to the effect that he was not very happy, as he had regarded his work only from the intellectual point of view. This seemed to me a most unlikely sort of message to come from such a man. In such cases, there is nothing like that. going to the fountainhead for information, and this came to me in the following words, which are, I think, characteristic and certainly sensible. My work was intellectual.

How could I regard it from any other point of view? That has nothing to do with the spiritual side of things. My spiritual life was very latent, it is true, but it was sincere, so far as it went. And in this more favorable atmosphere, the buds are unfolding, and I am learning more and more of the love and wisdom which I always dimly saw and appreciated. It is the attitude of mind which is all important, and my attitude, though critical, was never obstructive, as you know. I should like to say a few words now on the subject of superstitions. We are all superstitious in various ways and upon different points. I may laugh at your superstition because it does

not happen to appeal to me, but you may be quite sure you could find out my Achilles' keel if we lived together long enough. The only difference between people is that some are honest about their superstitions and others are not. I met a lady, not long ago, at a foreign table dot who started our acquaintance by remarking that she was thankful to say that she had not a single superstition. Before we had spent ten days under the same roof, I discovered that she believed in portents and lucky stones and the whole bag of tricks, and possesses.

the power of seeing people in their astral bodies. This is to introduce my own strongest superstition, which is a horror of seeing the new moon for the first time through glass. Breaking glass is almost as disastrous, in my experience, even if the article itself only costs a few pence. Now, I do not, for one moment, suggest that either one or the other is the cause of my subsequent misfortunes. No one surely can be childish enough to suppose such a thing, yet I have known sensible people labour this point in order to show me the folly of my ways and thoughts. Again, I am quite aware that some people may break as much glass or china as the proverbial bull, and see the moon through the former medium every month of their lives, and not be a penny

the worse for it beyond the amount of their breakages. I only maintain that for me these two things are invariably the precursors of misfortune. When people say to me, how can a sensible woman like yourself be so foolish as to think such things, I can only truthfully answer that I should be very much more foolish if so many years of my life had passed without my noticing the sequence of events. But to explain the phenomena is quite another matter. It seems to me quite reasonable that, allowing the possibility of influence is coming to us from the other side, some sign, no matter how trivial, might be impressed upon us as a gentle warning to be prepared for disasters, more or less severe. Another curious thing is this. I have never found that

avoiding seeing the moon through glass in any artificial way prevents disaster. I used to let kind friends, indulgent to my folly, lead me blindfold up to the window, carefully thrown open for my benefit. I can remember a most elaborate scene of precaution once in an American railway carriage between Philadelphia and Boston, when a charming American lady, about to lecture on woman's suffrage, and grateful to me for some points I had given her with regard to the woman's question in New Zealand, insisted upon having a heavy window pulled up by a negro attendant when she found out my little weakness. It was all to no avail. Left alone, I should most certainly have seen the moon through glass on that occasion, and I felt, even at the moment,

that I had not really altered anything by falling in with the kind American lady's suggestion. In September 1906 I was going through a course of baths at Buxton, and on a certain Sunday, 2nd of September, I saw the moon through glass in my bedroom window in the most unmistakable way. There was no friendly cloud, no other twinkling light to throw the smallest shepherding, of doubt upon the fact. There was much good-humoured laughter over my superstition in the house, but I knew some trouble was on its way, little dreaming that it was one which would alter my whole life. On the Wednesday morning, 5th of September, I received the first intimation of what proved to be the last illness of a brother who has been mentioned in these pages already,

and who had been an invalid for nearly thirty years. A point to be noticed is that on the Sunday, when the sign came to me he was in his usual health and even on monday went out for a long drive the first attack of angina pectoris only came on in the middle of night on monday to tuesday third to fourth of september later when the disease had become acute and i was in the south of england living in hourly suspense and receiving telegrams and letters several times a day another curious incident occurred which has a bearing upon our subject As my readers are probably aware, in this sad and painful illness, the only proof of unselfish affection which one can give may be to keep away from the patient, when you know that all is being done for him, that skill and devotion may suggest. The smallest agitation is almost certain to bring on a fresh attack of the terrible pain, and so long as there is any hope of a rally, or, in fact, any consciousness that can possibly result in increased suffer. everyone should be kept away from the patient except those who are in actual and necessary attendance. This naturally entails great mental distress and suffering upon those who are living from hour to hour in a state of tension and suspense. After more than a fortnight of alternate hopes and fears, the position became almost unendurable,

and I was making all preparations for a visit to the patient, or at least to the house where he lay, against my better judgment. When letters and the telegram arrived imploring me not to come, as a short visit from another relative had proved most disastrous, in bringing on another attack of the terrible pain, from which he never really rallied. Under these distressing circumstances, there could be but one course open to me. I was staying with my kind friends, Admiral and Mrs. Asborne Moore, at this sad time, and can never feel sufficiently grateful for their goodness to me. and sympathy with my distress. The Admiral, as many of us know, is a most persevering student of psychic science, and I think it was by his suggestion, or at any rate with his approval,

that I determined to pay a visit to a lady of whom he had spoken to me. Mrs. Arnold, a daughter-in-law of Sir Edwin Arnold, who is a gifted clairvoyant. I went alone to the house that she might not be able to connect me with my host and hostess, and the interview was a remarkable one. There were many evidential points given, which, for family reasons, it is impossible to publish. She gave me the crystal ball to hold for a good five minutes, in order that it might become impregnated by my influence, and then she took it from me, and began making a series of statements without pausing for a moment or attempting to fish, to use a technical term. These statements included my own life and studies and chief interests, and the number and sex of my

immediate family. Also, the attitude of the various members towards myself. And in each case, the special statement was absolutely correct. Her first words were, You are in great anxiety, I see. It is about the illness of an elderly man. Two people with whom you are in very intimate relations are ill, I see, but I will tell you now of the one you wish to hear about especially. She went on to describe not only my brother's surroundings and illness at the time, but also his permanent state of paralysis, adding that he was now in the country, for she saw green trees all round him and waving grass. As my brother's life for many years had been spent entirely between London and the seaside,

this was a good bit of evidence. As a matter of fact, he was spending a few weeks in a country cottage for the first time in his life. The single point where she failed was as to the time of his passing away. She saw at once that the illness was one from which he could not permanently recover, and gave the approximate time very tentatively. We cannot see times exactly. They come only in symbols. For instance, I see now falling leaves. It looks like an autumn scene. And so I infer that means later on, perhaps October or November. This, as I have said, was the only mistake in the whole interview. My brother passed to the higher life on the 24th of September. When I saw his valet in town later, I asked him about the trees, and he explained that, owing to the great heat, the leaves were all over the ground, and gave an autumnal look to everything. Most of us noticed the same appearance in London and elsewhere, even quite early in September 1906. The second friend, lying dangerously ill, was a puzzle to me at the time, but within five days of my brother's transition, I heard of the death of Judge Forbes. who was one of my most intimate friends, as Mrs. Arnold had truly observed.

His illness was a very short one, but on comparing notes with members of his family, I found that he had taken to his bed three days before my visit to Mrs. Arnold, and was already seriously ill, although I had no knowledge of the fact for more than a week after my interview with her. Before closing these personal records, I must say a few words on the much-vexed question of psychic. photographs. As my friend, Admiral Ashbourne Moore observes in a letter received from him, as I write these words, we are dealing with a great mystery here. He is himself one of those who, by persevering efforts, is helping us to solve the mystery. It is certainly the branch of psychic

science which promises the best results from an evidential point of view, but it must be a case of each man his own photographer. There is always a tendency in human nature to be over credulous as to our own achievements, and over-sceptical as to those of our neighbours. So for many years, probably, we shall only accept our very own psychic photographs as quite genuine, but when a sufficient number of people are convinced by their personal experiences in this line of research, there will be some hope that the subject will go through the usual stages. 1. Impossible and absurd.

2. Possible but very improbable. 3. possible and not even abnormal, four, finally, normal and just what we knew all about from the first. Meanwhile, some of us have been experimenting with professional assistance, and in these cases the question is not, can such photographs be faked?

We all know nowadays that faking photographs is the easiest of all possible frauds. I have spent many a half hour doing the faking myself with an amateur photographer by sitting for so many seconds in a chair and then vacating it in favour of some other spook. No, the whole question at present must be determined by our recognition or non-recognition of the photographs produced.

If Mr. Bonsnell or any other photographer can produce, as he has done, my old nurse, who died 23 years ago, and was never photographed in her life, then we must find some other suggestion than that of common or garden faking. as a solution of the mystery. There she sits, as in life, with a little knitted shawl round her shoulders, and the head of a tiny child upon her lap.

The eyes are closed, and give a dead look to the face. Yet the features are, to me, quite unmistakable, and no one knew the dear old woman as well as I did. Again I have, in my little picture gallery, an old and very well-known Oxford professor, in whose house I state many times, Quite unexpectedly he appeared on one of Mr. Borsnell's plates last summer, and although this special photograph is fainter than the one just described, the likeness can only be denied by

someone more anxious to be skeptical than truthful. I compared the photograph with an engraving of the professor in much earlier life, which is to be found in the life published since he passed away, with an artist friend who had not known him. We went over the features one by one, and And my friend said she noticed only one small difference, the exact length of the upper lip. And this, she considered, would be amply accounted for by the lapse of time between the two pictures and the slight lengthening of the upper lip, owing to loss of teeth. The professor passed away as an old man. The picture engraved in the life represents him as he was at least twenty years before his death.

But the most interesting point to me in this photograph is the appearance on his lap of a much loved dog, a rather large fox terrier named Bob. I had not noticed Bob until a daughter of the professor pointed him out to me, and now I cannot understand having missed him at first. Bob was not only the most important person in the Oxford household, but he was good enough to be very fond of me, so it seems to me quite natural that he should have come with his master to pay me a visit. I remember arriving at the house one dark winter's evening after an absence of over two years, and Bob's welcome to me was so ecstatic that he nearly knocked me down in a vain attempt to get his paws round my neck. I heard the professor, who was always rather jealous of Bob's affections, say in a whisper to his wife,

Most touching thing I ever saw that dogs welcome when Miss Bates arrived. Dear Bob, I'm so glad he can still come and see me with his dearly loved master. Another shuffle of the photographs brings to the top a sweet girlish face, and figure sixteen summers or something less. She appeared first upon a plate in the summer of 1905, but so indistinctly as to the face that I could not recognize it. A few months ago, the same figure appeared again, but quite clearly this time and involuntarily. As I looked at it, I exclaimed, why, of course, it is Lily Blake. Now it is nearly thirty years since I met this charming child during my first visit to Egypt. She and her father, a way.

well-known physician and her aunt were spending a six weeks holiday in Cairo, and I saw more of her than would otherwise have been the case, because she was the playmate of another young girl, the child of friends of mine at Sheppard's Hotel. Lily was a sweet-looking, delicate girl, with soft, sleepy blue eyes, and was always dressed in a simple artistic fashion. A few months after our return to England I saw in the papers the death of this pretty child, she was little more at the time. I wrote a letter of condolence and sympathy, which was at once answered by the aunt in very kind fashion, and since then I had seen nothing to remind me of

Lily, until this last year has brought her once more within my can. I am only too thankful to realize that any influence so pure and beautiful as hers may be around me sometimes in my daily life. And now, let me say, in the words of our great novelist, Come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out. Only, I trust, in this case, we have managed to rise a little above the usual atmosphere of vanity fair. Surely the aim of all psychic research should be to give us a scientific, as we have already thank God a spiritual foundation for the hope that is in us. Spirit photographs and spirit materializations and abnormal visions or abnormal sounds amount to very little,

if we look upon them as an end in themselves, and not as the symbols and the earnest of those greater things which I hath not seen nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of men to conceive. I remember, years ago, in the course of a deeply interesting conversation with Phillips Brooks, the late Bishop of Massachusetts, that I asked him what he thought about modern theology, which was just then becoming a cult in his native town of Boston. There was a great deal of talk at the time about the new philosophy, and the wonderful phenomena said to accompany its propaganda. Sir Edwin Arnold had written his Light of Asia, and Oliver Wendell Holmes had welcomed it with wandering awe as something approaching a new

revelation. And smaller people were talking about the historical Blavatsky teacups and hidden heirlooms found in Indian gardens, and some of us were wondering how soon we should learn to fly and what would come next. The bishop's answer to my question was so genial, so characteristic and showed such divine common sense. It is not a question of flying, he said. I should like to fly as much as anybody, and a queer sort of bird I should appear. He was well. over six feet and broad in proportion. If you suddenly found you could fly, he continued, it would be absorbing on Monday morning, intensely interesting on Tuesday, interesting on Wednesday, and quite pleasant on Thursday.

But by the end of the week it would be getting normal, and you would want to discover some other new power. No, believe me, the real question is not flying, but where you would fly and what you would do when you got there. This sums up the case in a nutshell, and seems to me only another way of saying, Don't forget the spiritual significance beneath the scientific symbol. And I would add, let us all join hands in the interesting and absorbing work of trying to make our symbols as scientific as we can, by finding out the laws which govern them, as well as all other things in this universe of love and law.

Probably we are here to learn, above all things else, that love and law are one. Many people have had far more remarkable experiences than mine, for various good reasons I have carefully abstained from any attempt to cultivate, or in any way increase the sensitiveness which is natural to me. I can only assure my readers that my record has been absolutely accurate. In many cases it would have been very easy to write up the stories in the stories in the some far more dramatic form, but by doing so the whole aim and object of my book would have been destroyed. I wanted to trace the thread of what we at present consider abnormal through the whole skein

of a single life, hoping thereby to encourage others to do the same. It is only by putting these things down, if not for publication, then in some diary or commonplace book, that we can realize how far our normal life is, even now and here, interpret penetrated by another plane of existence. And so, farewell to all kind readers who have followed me to the end of my personal record of curious events, curious chiefly by reason of our present imperfect knowledge. End of Section 17. Section 18 of Seeing and Unseen. This is a Librevox recording. All Librevox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or devolent.

here, please visit Libavox.org. Seen and Unseen by E. Catherine Bates. Appendix 1. Much has been said of the folly and triviality of all messages coming, or purporting to come, from the unseen. I think here, as elsewhere, Lake claims to like, and we get very much what we deserve, or rather, to put it in a more philosophical and Emersonian way, we receive what belongs to us.

Emerson tells us in one of his most illuminating passages that everything which belongs to our spiritual estate is coming to us as quickly as it can travel. All the winds of heaven, all the waves of earth, are bringing it to us, and neither angel nor devil can prevent our taking what is ours or rejecting what is not ours. This is a universal law,

and applies to automatic writing as to everything else. Emphatically, we get what belongs to our spiritual estate. Therefore, any casual and general remarks as to the foolishness of all automatic writing must of necessity be made by those who are ignorant of this spiritual law or whose experience of such messages is very limited. I intend to give a few which I have myself received in the form of an appendix to my book. With one exception, they all come from a very dear friend, who passed into the other sphere little more than a year ago, under peculiarly happy circumstances. I do not wish to give

his name, although it would add considerably to the interest of the narrative. I shall therefore call him, Mr. Harry Denton. The messages will be given exactly in the form in which they were received and without any editing. We never discussed theological ideas from any standpoint of creed, but I imagine that my friend, when here, would have looked upon Jesus Christ as one of the many inspired teachers of the world, and that his views were cosmic rather than religious in any narrow sense, and certainly religious in the broad sense of the term, rather than theological. The first conversation, for this is a better description of my friend's communications than the word, message, refers to my own attitude, as compared with that of a lady friend of

mine regarding Jesus of Nazareth. H.D. I see a great stream of light round you, Kate, and it seems to have come with your truer conception of Jesus Christ. It is all right for your friend to say she prefers to put the matter aside and leave it alone. alone. That is just the best thing she can do, in fact the only thing she can do at present. The seed is still underground, and the moment of emergence has not come. To try and force it above ground just now would be fatal. It would also be immature and uncalled for. The old husks of man-made creeds must drop off gradually, leaving the bud they protected intact, not be torn off by an impatient hand. So far her instinct seems to me a true one, but the case is widely

different for you. The husks have fallen off, as a matter of fact, and the discomfort and sense of something wrong arose from your knowing that you are only striving desperately to clutch on to them when the fine, strong bud was there, able and ready to take its proper share of sunshine and rain, and even to bear the cold winds of misrepresentation and misunderstanding if need be. Quit you like men. Be strong. That is your lesson book.

And you will never feel happy or content until you are learning it. Surely you must feel how much you have gained since you faced your own facts. E.K.B. Yes, Harry. I do. But I don't quite understand your position. Are you at the same point of view? H.D.

No, not yet. It is all rather foreign to my previous notions. I thought of Jesus of Nazareth as a great teacher, one of the great teachers of the world, but I had still to learn his unique position as regards our chain of worlds. They tell me here that he was the first to attain the full stature of the divine man, as he existed in the thought of the absolute. Spiritual evolution is the process, apparently the only process, whereby a son of God, in this sense, can appear,

and the bonds of time have been necessary to produce this fine flower of humanity. Your own band are helping me to understand this. Having attained, being the anointed one, it is given to him to bring the whole race after him. This is quite a different conception from my former one, and the one held by most of those whom in the old days we called Unitarians, you have had to unlearn, or rather to drop. some of the husks of old tradition which have been guarding the truth for you, whereas I have still to come up to the truth. But the point reached will be the same,

whether the approach to it is from the north or south. Do you see? In Christ Jesus, they tell me, we are all new creatures, as a matter of fact, because consciously or unconsciously, we are working together with him to realize and manifest ourselves, as made after the image of the image of the fact. God. He is the example and the pledge for us. St. Paul saw this, of course, and your present

the position illuminates his teaching for me enormously. So I have much to thank you for, Kate. It is easier to learn from those we know and trust than from strangers. And moreover, when we can learn from the loved ones on earth, as well as through the loved ones here, it makes the links in the golden chain complete and helps us to realize the unity and society and solidarity of our common existence, in the father, with the son, H.D. Two, another morning I had told H.D. that I had been reading an article in the 19th century and after, I think entitled, Anagnostics Progress, and asked if he had sensed it through me at all. H.D. Yes, we will begin with that this morning. I am very glad you read it,

for it is curiously like my own experiences in the same line since coming over here and thereby coming into such direct touch with you i have been able to grasp the key to much that puzzled me on the other side as my views became more spiritualized i saw there must be more truth in the christian religion than outsiders supposed and yet i knew it could not be absolutely true in the form in which it has been handed down that for me was unthinkable because i saw it would be a sudden and catastrophic incursion upon a cosmos of law and order it would mean god working in the highest departments of his creation as he is never seen to work in the lower one and my faith in him prevented my entertaining such an idea. Schemes and plans of salvation belong to the comparative childhood of the race, not to the full-grown spiritual man. They are still in the fairy tale stage, holding a truth, but acting only as the husk of the truth.

The unity of the race, the necessity for self-sacrifice in realizing that unity, that by giving our life for our brothers we save our lives, life, which is that unity in which the brethren are included, all this I could accept in Christ's teaching or the teaching of the apostles, but the rest, the detail, the carefully arranged scheme of the atonement, etc. As dogmatic doctrines, all these seem to me so obviously the desperate attempts of man at a certain stage of development to fit in the spiritual facts with the most probable theories. And to say that men who wrote of these things were inspired and, therefore infallible, was absurd. Even in my short life, I had seen the world pass through several

stages of belief and assimilate them in turn. As a child, I was told that God was angry with people for sinning and breaking His commandments, and so Jesus Christ offered to come and die on the cross to appease his just wrath. That seemed a great puzzle to me, because, although it might account for what happened before Christ came and until he came. I could not understand why God should go on letting people come into the world, who would break his laws, and make him still more angry for centuries and centuries. That seemed to me as a child so unnecessary. Later I was told it was not God's anger, but his sense of justice that had to be appeased and satisfied, which was a distinct step in advance.

A little later, however, I read that this was not the hidden truth of the doctrine. The religious world, the thoughtful section of it, now arrived at the idea that it was not God who needed to be satisfied or appeased in any of his attributes, but man, and that God, in the person of his son, came into the world to reconcile the world to him and not himself to the world. This was a complete boulevance of the whole situation, though it came so gradually that few appreciated that fact. The last suggestion appeared to me by far the most luminous. In human life it is invariably the lower nature that needs to be reconciled and conciliated,

whilst the higher nature, in proportion to its development, is forgiving and tolerant and wide-minded, and does not prate about its own high sense of justice requiring to be appeased. The best type of man punishes a wrongdoer in order that he may learn to do better and leave off tormenting and wronging his fellow creatures, not to appease any instinct in his

own breast, for that would be egotism, no matter how we might try to disguise the fact. Now it would be a blot upon the best conceivable man, to be egotistical, a for to theory must it be upon God. To conceive otherwise is to make God in the likeness of the lower and not the higher

and humanity. I thought all that out very clearly. Still, this crooks remained for me that to be suddenly, at any arbitrary moment in the world's history, obliged, as it were, to send an absolutely divine part of himself into the world was the way a man would act faced by an unforeseen catastrophe, but not the way in which God has acted throughout the rest of our history. A succession of teachers, enlightening the world by degrees and culminating in the anointed son of god the flower of humanity this is entirely in line with the processes of nature and the laws of god so far as we know them all progress has its culminating point the bonds have passed to produce the most exquisite crystals the highest forms of vegetation of animals of men then came the slow processes of civilizing and educating men the dim instincts of fear and propitiation, merging by slow degrees in the first conceptions of love as something apart from desire, and so forth, was I to be expected to shut my eyes to all these known facts,

and bolt down the theories contained in one book written by human authors, no matter how admirable. I felt it was impossible. Then I remembered with relief that these very dogmas, as a matter of fact, were in so fluent a state that my own bare 50 years of living hadn't seen at least four different high water marks. Here again, therefore, under my very eyes, was the universal law of progress working, the moment it could work, by being released from the swaddling clothes of the Roman Catholic Church, which so far as it is orthodox, is fossilized. I saw also that the whole body of descent had moved on,

taking up its pegs and planting them a little further on each time, till a city temple, with its widening theology, was an established fact. Progress everywhere, slow but sure, and the pace getting quicker. Even in my short span, still the uniqueness of Jesus of Nazareth and his influence over the 19 centuries was a puzzle. Buddha's influence has lasted longer. Muhammad's almost as long. The two cancel anyway. But I have always recognized an advance in the teaching of Jesus Christ.

He brought a fresh element in the personal note of the sunship with God. I was at this point when I came over here. Now, through your mind I have been able to see, and oddly enough, to quicken in your soul, the seed already planted there. They tell me the illumination came to you years ago, at Oberamauga. No, not when you were there for the passion play, four years earlier. You took it in with your head then, not with your heart. Old traditions were too strong, I suppose, and you had not made up the last little bit of your mind to be true to the convictions that had come to you through your prayers for light.

And so you have gone on, see-sawing to and fro, not really believing the old orthodox ideas, but not courageously sweeping them away for yourself. So although the key was in your hands, you have not used it until now. You have given me the key, and I have been allowed as my New Year's gift to fit it in the door. This is how Jesus Christ has stood so long at the door of your heart and not. He could only enter through the one door, namely that one opened in the highest point of your spiritual realization. I see now that he comes in at that door in each soul, and as spiritual evolution unfolds in each heart, so is the special position of that door shifted. But the fact of his presence is the vital one.

It was not possible for him to do otherwise than hide his face, as it were, whilst you were barring his only door of access, that is, your true point of realization. It all seems so clear to me now, and this is how he comes to so many in different guises. He is the perfected manifestation of God as the divine man, the flower of humanity. But he can come into the heart in the narrowest creed,

so long as the holder of that creed is at his true point of growth, and not trying to stifle God's gift of ever-advancing truth by cowardly want of trust, or fear of being worse off in the end by being absolutely honest to himself and his own convictions in the present. It has been a long message, and you have taken much of it awkwardly, but on the whole it represents what I wanted to do. You say, HD. 3.

HD. I feel now that you want to know what I meant by telling Miss R. It was the likeness to the old world which puzzled me here. You see, we have all imbibed traditional ideas with our mother's milk, however much our intellects may have modified them. Instinct is stronger than intellect, because it is more elemental. The first thing that struck me was that truths which are latent on earth. are made manifest here.

Here comes an interpolation. You can take my words so easily that we must guard against wasting time in mere verbosity. I must teach you to condense more. We must strike some sort of balance between my brevity and your amplification. At present, it is as well

to get the instrument into proper working order before worrying too much over these details. He then resumed. It is as if you turn the old earth garment inside out and saw the very fabric of it, which the earth looms have hitherto concealed by the warp and woof of the manufactured article. For instance, you are told on earth that you are making your own future conditions by right or wrong thinking. Here, you see the absolute material results of right and wrong thinking, just as if you were looking at two

different patterns woven by two different workers. I said material results because matter here is just as real as it was on earth and just as illusory. In one sense, in both spheres, your matter is unreal to us. Our matter is unreal to you. The truth is both are shadows cast by an antecedent reality on the screens of the universe. The screens are the schoolhouses through which humanity learns its lessons. Don't be worried. There is no real difficulty in using your hand. It is only trying to compromise between your redundancy and my brevity. Earth is like a gallery of sculpture. Note by E.K.B. This simile had flashed through my brain, and H.D. at once said, yes, that is very good. You started it, and I pick it up and apply it. All the figures and groups are perfected and complete in

their marble or bronze or terracotta, as the case may be. Some groups or figures are noble, others mediocre. Others again may be sensual and degrading, but they have one quality in common. For good or bad, they are ready-made. Now go into the sculptor's studio, having studied well in the great sculpture galleries of the world. You go to the studio, we will suppose, as a pupil. He puts a lump of clay into your hands, and for the first time you are invited to model your own statues and figures, to embody your own ideas in this clay, which corresponds to thought stuff here. You are even made to understand that your houses will only be worthily furnished by the work of your own hands. Here, it is the work of your own hearts, of your loving or unloving

thoughts. So the first lesson we learn over here is that thought is not only creative power, as you are often told on earth, but it is also the very stuff out of which the creation must be molded. It is, in very truth, the clay of the modeler. Shakespeare said truly enough, we are such stuff as dreams are made of, but he was referring to our embodied selves. The difference between the two worlds seems to me, so far as I have arrived, as the difference between the pupil in the sculpture gallery and in the experimental studio, the chief part of the earth modeling is ready-made, made by the racial thought stuff and the racial manipulation of it.

Here, for the first time, we must turn to and take a hand in the work ourselves. It would not be possible to give such individual power in any lower sphere than this, for it would be misused and would lead to terrible tragedies. You see some slight hints of this in what is called black magic, the willful and intentional throwing of evil conditions on other people, making hard and cruel images of them in the mind, and so forth. But all that is as child's play to what would happen if the absolute clay were put into their hands, as it is here.

It is the difference between thinking out an ugly picture and painting it and hanging it up in a gallery. For we have objectivity here, as with you, Naturally, what comes into objective existence has more power than what remains latent. The latter can only influence exceptionally sensitive souls, and that to a comparatively small extent, whereas the former, here as with you, has a much farther range of the influence. So this sort of gunpowder is not given to us until we are old enough to know better than to burn our fingers with it in trying to make fireworks. at the same time as all stages of evolution overlap it is inevitable that some hint of these possibilities should be already in your world woe be to those who misuse them you have taken enough for this morning h d

the friend i have called mr harry denton during his psychic researches came as many others have done very strongly under the influence of imperator the chief of the stainton Moses controls. I knew that this was the case, especially during the last three or four years of my friend's life, and I always rather resented the fact, for the limitations of Imperator have always appealed to me so strongly, as to dim, perhaps unduly, his undoubted claims to appreciation. I have read many of the private Stainton Moses' records,

thanks to my friendship with the executor with whom these journals were left. And in all those referring to Imperator's communications, there was to my mind the same note of cocksureness and mental tyranny. There was too much of finality and self-assertion, too much of, thus saith the Lord, about Imperator's remarks for my rebellious soul. I could never be strongly impressed by any personality, however admirable, that so palpably exacted allegiance and unquestioning obedience.

These must be the unconscious tribute to the genius of holiness as to any other sort of genius, never an enforced levy upon us. So at least it seems to me, certainly I would not escape one sort of priestcraft to set up another in its place, whether the niche be filled by Mrs. Besson or Mrs. Eddy or Mr. Sinat, or any other fallible fellow-creature. Not even Imperator can strike me as infallible, and his own evident belief in that direction does not affect the question. It seemed to me rather to be deplored that Mr. Denton, with his wide outlook and cosmic conceptions, should fall so strongly under any special influence, even that of the admirable Imperator. So I was curious to know what his

views were upon this subject from the other side of the veil. I will now leave him to speak for himself. H.D. You want me to tell you just my position about the Imperator group before and since I passed to this side? That is easily done. Remember, the teaching I got through Imperator was practically the first spiritual teaching I ever had, the first I mean, of course, that I could assimilate, because it appealed to my reason as well as to my sense of the fitness of things, and therefore I can never feel sufficiently grateful to him and his group, and I see that they can teach many who would not be amenable to a more distinctly spiritual appeal. Imperator is a great force in his way,

a sort of plow that goes over the hard, kicked up earth, and throws it open to the sunshine and rain, and all nature's beautiful influences to all the possibility of divine influences on the corresponding sphere. But the limitation of Imperator I see clearly now, as you always appear to have done. He is, as you say,

too final and too dogmatic. This is at once his weakness and his strength, his weakness because it limits his own spiritual receptivity, his strength because it focuses his power in dealing with materialistic minds. A more spiritually true perspective in his communications would roll out half the souls to whom his appeal is made. Stanton Moses has also progressed beyond the imprater influence, and this is why the communications between them had become so clogged and so liable to error.

S.M. could not switch on to the old wires, as he had been. the days when his horizon was bounded by them. This accounts, I see, for much of the misconception and apparent inconsistency of the remarks made through Mrs. Piper, but it was very disheartening for the investigator as time went on and the light became more and more clouded. Then there was the additional fact to be faced that Mrs. Piper herself became, psychically, rather than physically, exhausted, and less able to be faced. to be used from this side.

Now I see you want to know about Frank Strong, and what he said about sin existing only on your plane, and how inconsistent this was with the previous teachings of Stainton Moses, who was supposed to be speaking through Frank's assistance. It is so difficult to explain everything in black and white when there are so many shades of gray, so many degrees and amounts to be considered. It is like a question in mechanics. With increased momentum, you get an increased rate as multiplied by space. I am not an expert, but this is practically true.

In the same way, spiritual perception acts with increased momentum. All sin is failure in spiritual perception. Spiritual perception corresponds with the momentum of a falling body and mechanics. Only in divine mechanics is it a rising body, but the same law holds good. You say truly that an action can only be called sinful when the sinner knows the higher and deliberately turns to the lower. That is true, but it is only half a truth.

It is still the lack of knowledge that causes sin. With the fullness of knowledge of the higher, only another way of putting fullness of spiritual perception must come the righteousness of life. It is the broken gleams, the little knowledge, which is truly a dangerous thing, for it brings responsibility and therefore the capacity for sinning. Yet the choice between good and evil fully made is the schoolmaster to bring us to the full realization of our nature as sons of God.

Now when Frank came over here, he was so greatly impressed by the dynamic force of spiritual perception that for the time he lost all sense of proportion and accuracy of judgment. Compared with the old earth temptations, those in his sphere seemed nonexistent, whilst the temptations to goodness were enormously increased. What wonder that in the delightful sensation caused by his sense of moral and spiritual freedom from old shackles, he should exclaim with youthful fervor, sin is only possible in your sphere. It is unknown here. Any communications of which he formed the channel would of necessity be colored by this dominant idea of his. Everything is a question of degree, and he is learning that

lesson now, I find. He says, Why do people in the earth life quote our words as if we were Delphic oracles? Why, indeed? But I am afraid I did much the same whilst so strongly under the Imperator influence. E.K.B. Why is Imperator so slow in throwing off his own spiritual limitations? H.D. I can read your minds so easily. It is quick and alert, and has already answered its own question. It is because he has a work to do on your plane amongst those who cannot come in touch with a higher spiritual development. There are spiritual as well as scientific martyrs. You must remember. And he is one of them.

but the divine economy works very beautifully here. He is not conscious of any spiritual limitation, and therefore he is happy in his work. And the martyrdom I spoke of is unconscious. When it becomes conscious, with him, it will mean that his present plane of work is finished and that he will be removed to another form so soon as he is prepared to teach there.

He is essentially a teacher, and a valuable one. For those who have not soared beyond his present perceptions, it is all so much more simple and reasonable than you suppose. It is these crusted old creeds that have misrepresented actual conditions, and yet they also have been, as Imperator, doing their own work amongst the people to whom they have acted as necessary stepping stones. That is enough for today.

Take a rest now. H. D. 5. The following conversation between Mr. Denton and myself, the last of the series which I proposed to give, took place I see at Buxton 4th September 1906. There had been some correspondence in the Daily Telegraph about time as a fourth dimension, and I asked my friend if he could say anything to me on the subject. His reply was as follows. Time is really a form of perception, not a thing in itself. Do you understand? Your limitation of perception you call time.

Another limitation is called distance. This is also an illusion or a limitation, whichever you choose to call it. The white ray is the absolute. The spectroscope gives you the limitation which makes the color is perceptible to your human eyes. For the one who is free from these limitations, all colors exist and are present in consciousness at the same moment. But they must be split up and observed severally to enter into the earth consciousness. It is exactly the parallel of time. Events in time coincide with the colors in the ray.

All exist simultaneously for the one who is free from limitations. all must be brought into sequence for the one who is bound by limitations. This is really the key to so many puzzles and accounts for so many occult phenomena. As we transcend the normal earth limits ever so little, so do we develop these abnormal powers, as they are called. But here, as everywhere, the reality is just the converse of the apparent. The true norm is the perfect ray, the ceaseless sound. the perfect vision, and the abnormal is the limitation upon the earth, or upon any succeeding

plain, short of the absolute. But naturally we consider that normal, which happens to be our standpoint for the moment. Already to me the earth limitations appear abnormal, and my more extended capacities mark the norm of existence for me. This must be the case naturally. Pre-vision, be more accurately termed, whole vision, seeing the whole and not the tiny section. In moments of intense joy or realization of any kind, time seems to cease, and a moment may hold an eternity. Any absorbing emotion, joyful or sorrowful, may bring this experience. For the moment, you are out of yourselves. This is literally true. You are living in the next Dimension. Time and space no longer exist for you. Most of you have had some such experience,

but of necessity it can be a flash only in the midst of your normal life. Ask me something now. EKB, a man writing lately in the Daily Telegraph of Time as a Fourth Dimension, said something about the cube as being an infinite number of flat planes of infinite tenuity, heaped up one over the the other. To the person who knew only length and breadth, the cube would have no existence. Such a person would realize only an infinite number of planes in sequence, yet they would all coexist for the three-dimensional man of the present day. The suggestion appeared to be that, in exactly a similar way, events which to the three-dimensional man can only be perceived normal in sequence would coexist for a four-dimensional being. This would mean practically the annihilation

of time as giving sequence. Do you see truth in this idea? And can you tell me if it extends also to space? HD. Certainly, that is just what I meant as regards distance. All limitations are mental. As a matter of fact, we have them here, but in infinitely fewer than in the old earth life. Mind has always been able to flash from pole to pole and to affect those at a distance, because mind and distance occupy two different planes. The latter is an earth limitation, as the veil lifts a little, even on your side, so you become conscious that mind has these powers, but the powers were always there. It merely means that you have come up with your own mental capacities to some small degree.

E.K.B. Is there any help here for my constant problem? Why should one's individual life be only now evolving in eternity? Do you see what I mean? H.D. Yes, but I hardly know the answer to that tremendous problem. Still, I will try to suggest a few thoughts to you. To be conscious of holiness and virtue, we must have known its antithesis. evil and separation, which are really synonymous. Separation from holiness is evil. It is a condition, a limitation. It is to the divine essence, just such a limitation as time is to the mortal. Separation is therefore the antecedent cause of all limitations. These must exist where the wholeness or holiness is absent. I must use the language of earth, or you would not understand.

stand. Logically, of course, holiness can never be absent, since it is the cause of all existence, but it is apparently absent. And this apparent absence, this separation, this evil, in fact, acts as a spectroscope. It analyzes, and thus brings into our consciousness the white ray of the divine nature. We can go no further than that. The divine chemistry, beyond this fact, must remain a mystery, probably for ages to come. We cannot tell why. Things are thus arranged. We only know that it is so. As well ask, why? The white ray of light gives out its colors only through separating them, but it is easier to speak of the coordination of events. Take your own suggestion of the cube. That will help us best. Take it that each life is a cube of planes,

of experiences. These experiences are coexistent and knit together, as firmly in the life of a human being as the many planes are coexisting and knit together in a mathematical cube. You can dissect a cube and slice off infinitesimal small planes in sections. So is the individual life sliced off into an infinite number of planes by the sequences of time, our three-dimensional condition. But these experiences, greater small, important or trivial, from your point of view, exist in the cube of that person's earth pilgrimage, as the colors exist in the white ray. The ray may be split up into sequence, but the colors belong to it all the same, and by a perfectly seeing eye would be known and recognized without the help of the spectroscope. The true seer is the one

who sees the cube of your life, before whom it is spread out, without time separations, into planes of experience. This is the real secret of all foretelling. Such people, when honest, have some amount of access to the cube of earth life, some more, some less. Many mix up and confuse what they see, but they do see beyond the plain section which time gives to the normal human being. I think you have taken enough now, I will only add that, of course, as you know, there is nothing arbitrary in the cube of life, as I have called it. It is built up of necessary experiences and necessary consequences, but it is built up by love and wisdom, the two elements of the divine nature, in which we live and move and have our being. H.D. 6. The next selection that I shall give,

from my automatic script comes from an entirely different personality, which can be sufficiently indicated by the initials E.G. E.G. Worship is a necessary part of each soul's training, and we can only worship that which we feel to be above and beyond ourselves. As we grow older and become more developed in spiritual consciousness, so do we tend more and more to worship the inner and intangible, rather than the outer and manifest. So whilst the instinct of worship is always the same, the objects and methods must continually change with our own advancing realization and unfolding consciousness.

Those limitations which once made for reverence are in time found to be cramping and to lead to superstition. It is the same with the education of either children or of childish nations. In both cases a disson. of power is necessary to command obedience, because the childish mind can only apprehend from the outer and realize the existence of that which it sees physically demonstrated. Tell a child of tender years that to be naughty is to be unhappy, and in 99 cases out of 100, he will neither understand nor believe you, but take away his toys or his sweets,

or put him in a corner, make him, in fact, physically aware of the true. truth that to be naughty is to bring unpleasant consequences upon himself, and you have taken the only argument which he is capable of realizing at a certain point of consciousness. That is why certain nations, at the child point of development, must be treated as children. They don't realize the appeal to the spiritual, and will only misconceive you and your motives, and read cowardice in your attempt to treat them from a standpoint that they have not reached. It is the same with certain religions, and this is the cause of much failure in mission work. Theosophy and Roman Catholicism appeal strongly to comparatively immature minds, those who care

more for form than for essence and are always in the immature stage. They love big words and mysterious sayings and doings. To have something apart from others, whether it be happiness or knowledge, is their idea of bliss. Hence, in most of the most of the same. theosophist, as in all Roman Catholic converts, you find this note of immaturity and monopoly. I say converts, because those born in the Roman Catholic faith are on different ground. Their spiritual life may grow and develop in spite of the creed limitations into which fate has cast them. But those who deliberately choose such limitations give the best possible proof of their own standpoint. And the same may be said also of all strict creed religions.

They have their great and valuable uses, as prison bars have their uses in a community which has not learnt to respect the rights and property of its neighbors. Withdraw these bars, and you let loose upon society a pestilential cruder of murderers and marauders. Relax the bars of creed, and you will find the same result. But as bars are not necessary for the advanced souls who recognize that to murder or defraud their fellow creatures leads to their own misery, apart from any detection or punishment, so creeds are not necessary, under a corresponding evolution of the spiritual instinct, which tallies with the social and moral instincts noted above. And as treadmills and oakum-picking can be dismissed in the one case,

so can much of the theological machinery for the discipline and punishment of sinners against spiritual laws be dispensed with, in the case of those who are, spiritually speaking, coming of age. They come then into the full liberty of sons of God, and shall be no more treated as servants, but as sons, as the apostle puts it. This brings me to my special subject. There are many things of great and transcending interest which we are obliged to keep secret from our younger children, partly because they would fail to understand, but but still more because they would misunderstand, and this to their own heart and disadvantage,

not to speak of possible injury to others through them. Spiritual evolution is the true doctrine, but it is not food for babes in spiritual life. To have an unlimited series of advancing lives and advancing experiences unfolded before their eyes would not only dismay and bewilder, but would also paralyze their energy for good and terribly augmenting. their capacity for evil, for the not good, until they are sufficiently versed in spiritual experience to realize the difference between purity and impurity, good and evil, God and the

world, fame and peace, pleasure and happiness, the peace which passes understanding and the false glamour of sensual passion and sensuous self-indulgence, so long it is dangerous for them to know, with absolute certainty, the real facts of the case. Even the terrible and abhorrent pictures of an eternal hell of endless flames and of undying worms have had their uses. In this form alone could the thoroughly immature mind be made to realize the discomfort and misery that would inevitably attend wrongdoing. It was a truth, although not a literal truth, Many literal truths convey a false impression to the immature mind, whilst a symbolic truth may convey as true an impression as such a mind is capable of receiving. The old ideas of heaven and hell are already doomed, but other ideas, equally untrue from the literal point of view, still hold their own, and will be more slowly eradicated.

It is well this should be so. The world at large is not prepared yet to take this further step. frequent examinations have been found useful and inevitable in school training both as a test of progress and still more as an encouragement if you tell a school of boys and girls in january that a grand examination will be held the following december do you suppose they will work as well and as diligently as if they knew there will be short examinations at easter and more important ones at good-summer Again, if you tell boys of ten years old who are learning a little history, geography, and arithmetic, just in the rule of three and simple fractions, with perhaps a little Latin, of the algebra and euclid and conic sections of higher mathematics, and Latin and group verse and Hebrew and philosophy, which they must someday confront,

you will puzzle and paralyze their brains, and leave only a sense of misery and revolt and helplessness, which will quickly show forth in reckless despair, even concerning the tasks which are well within their present capacity. God, in His infinite wisdom, of which ours is the feeblest reflection, acts in precisely the same way as wise fathers and wise teachers. Your earth is more or less of an infant school, but before leaving it, some of you must prepare for the higher classes and learn to take your own spiritual responsibilities.

It is seen that in these days of reaction and readjustment, many minds are puzzled and perplexed by the old doctrines, which they have outgrown, and which were never more than the outer husk and protection for the inner kernel, the casket for the jewel of spiritual truth. The one term of probation, the one chance for progress, the immediate heaven or hell, the great white throne of judgment, instant and inevitable, all these correspond with the frequent examiner. with the good and bad marks, the judging of the schoolwork at the end of each term. The only difference lies in the fact that the schoolboy knows he has other terms in front of him, and we are all aware that this is a very unfortunate fact where an idle boy is concerned. How often you may hear them say, never mind, I'm a bit behind now, but I have three years more. I shall catch up later, and this is probably just what they fail to do, for with such characters it is always, tomorrow. That is to see the Reformation which so often comes

only when life has taught its hard lessons to the defaulter. Is it not apparent, therefore, that there has been wisdom and goodness in our very theological mistakes and illusions? The opposition to spiritualistic teachings has its good and healthy side. It is really the fierce antagonism of the undeveloped nature towards a truth it dimly apprehends to be ahead. of its own development, and, tiresome as it seems, and is, from one point of view, it is the best safeguard for the world at large. Unimaginable horrors would come to pass upon the earth, or power, as well as knowledge, put into the hands of the crude and undeveloped. It would be arming savages with Winchester rifles and quick-firing guns. Never regret, therefore, this opposition,

even whilst fighting against it in individual cases. Both must grow together till the harvest, the tears and wheat, the crude and the developed, and the former are the enormous majority. This is the reason why all truth must be borne into each world through a fight and an agony, for it always comes as an advance upon normal conditions, no matter in which sphere it may be, and it is through the struggle that the victory comes, and the light is born.

Let people jeer and deride when they hear of a future life, not so very different from your own, of houses and lectures and boats and horses, of pet animals, and so forth. Those who jeer and deride or talk of blasphemy are still at the orthodox stage, when it is well for them to know only of one school, of one term, of one chance,

and of an immediate and final judgment for the deeds done on earth. Others are old enough, spiritually speaking, to know the truth, that is, that God is in all of an infinite series of spheres, through which each traveling soul must pass, gaining ever-fresh light, growing ever into fresh knowledge and realization of divine beauty and divine love. Spheres differing little externally from the one left behind, but enormously in the capacities and qualities which, by degrees, the soul will unfold in the cosmic journey. The outer will become more and more the result of the inner condition.

For the creative faculty, scarcely born with you, flourishes in the ascending spiral. Down here you are babes, with your clothes made for you, your bottles filled for you, and dependent on others for the conditions of life. But by degrees you will enter on the full responsibility and the full jewel, and glory of independent existence, which yet will be unified, first into the life of the affinities, the true and completed being, and then into the life of that body of Christ, of which St. Paul speaks in his prophetic moments, where there shall be neither Greek nor Jew, barbarian, Scythian, bond, nor free, but Christos, the glorified and crowned humanity,

shall be in all, God in man, the coping stone of the building, whose foundations were laid as man, the image and likeness of God, in God. End of Section 18. End of Seen and Unseen by E. Catherine Bates.