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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Best Psychic Stories, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Best Psychic Stories
+
+Author: Various
+
+Editor: Joseph Lewis French
+
+Release Date: July 12, 2011 [EBook #36712]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BEST PSYCHIC STORIES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Robert Cicconetti, Mary Meehan and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                             The Best Psychic Stories
+
+                            _Edited with a Preface by_
+
+                               Joseph Lewis French
+
+         _Editor "Great Ghost Stories," "Masterpieces of Mystery," etc._
+
+
+    _Introduction by_
+    Dorothy Scarborough, Ph.D.
+
+    _Lecturer in English, Columbia University
+    Author of "The Supernatural in English Literature,"
+    "From a Southern Porch," etc._
+
+
+    BONI & LIVERIGHT
+    NEW YORK
+
+    Copyright, 1920, by
+    Boni & Liveright, Inc.
+
+    Printed in the Unites States of America
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+The case for the "psychic" element in literature rests on a very old
+foundation; it reaches back to the ancient masters,--the men who wrote
+the Greek tragedies. Remorse will ever seem commonplace alongside the
+furies. Ever and always the shadow of the supernatural invites, pursues
+us. As the art of literature has progressed it has grown along with it.
+To-day there is a whole new school of writers of Ghost-Stories, and the
+domain of the invisible is being invaded by explorers in many paths. We
+do not believe so much more, perhaps, that is, we do not so openly
+express a belief, but art has finally and frankly claimed the
+supernatural for its own. One discerning authority even goes so far as
+to assert that the borders of its domain will be greatly enlarged in the
+wonderful new field of the screen.
+
+There is no motive in a story, no image in poetry, that can give us
+quite the thrill of a supernatural idea. If we were formally charged
+with this we might resent the imputation, but the evidence has persisted
+from the beginning, lives on every hand, and multiplies daily. What we
+have been in the habit of calling the "machinery" of the old Greek
+drama--its supernatural effects--has come finally to be an art
+cultivated with care at the present hour, and has given us some
+wonderful new writers. In fact, few of the best masters for a generation
+now have been able to resist its persistent and abiding charm. Every
+writer of true imagination, almost without exception, including even
+certain realists, has given us at least one story, long or short, in
+which the central motive is purely psychical in the Greek sense of the
+word.
+
+The whole subject opens up a virgin field which has after all only begun
+to be tilled. Within the coming generation we may look for great artists
+to devote their whole powers to it, as Algernon Blackwood is doing
+to-day. A simple underlying reason is enough to account for it all--_the
+new field imposes simply no limit on the imagination_. In addition to
+all that science has taught us, there is illimitable store of myth and
+legend to aid, to draw from, to work in, to work over, as Lord Dunsany
+has shown us. It is the most significant movement in literature at the
+present hour, and whether it is supported by a special background of
+interest--as at present in spiritism--or not, the assertion is logical
+that it is creating a new body of fictional literature of permanent
+importance for the first time in the history of literature. The human
+comedy seems to have been exploited to its final limits; as the art of
+the novel, the art of the stage, but too sadly prove to-day. We have
+turned outward for new thrills to the supernatural and we are getting
+them.
+
+It only remains to be added that the present great interest in
+spiritualism and allied phenomena has made necessary the addition of
+certain material of a "literal" character which we believe will be found
+quite as interesting by the general reader as the purely literary
+portion of the book.
+
+JOSEPH LEWIS FRENCH
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+PREFACE _Joseph Lewis French_
+
+INTRODUCTION _Dorothy Scarborough_
+
+WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG _Jack London_
+
+THE RETURN _Algernon Blackwood_
+
+THE SECOND GENERATION _Algernon Blackwood_
+
+JOSEPH--A STORY _Katherine Rickford_
+
+THE CLAVECIN--BRUGES _George Wharton Edwards_
+
+LIGEIA _Edgar Allan Poe_
+
+THE SYLPH AND THE FATHER _Elsa Barker_
+
+A GHOST _Lafcadio Hearn_
+
+THE EYES OF THE PANTHER _Ambrose Bierce_
+
+PHOTOGRAPHING INVISIBLE BEINGS _William T. Stead_
+
+THE SIN-EATER _Fiona Macleod_
+
+GHOSTS IN SOLID FORM _Gambier Bolton_
+
+THE PHANTOM ARMIES SEEN IN FRANCE _Hereward Carrington_
+
+THE PORTAL OF THE UNKNOWN _Andrew Jackson Davis_
+
+THE SUPERNORMAL: EXPERIENCES _St. John D. Seymour_
+
+NATURE-SPIRITS, OR ELEMENTALS _Nizida_
+
+A WITCH'S DEN _Helena Blavatsky_
+
+SOME REMARKABLE EXPERIENCES OF FAMOUS PERSONS _Dr. Walter F. Prince_
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+THE PSYCHIC IN LITERATURE
+
+
+War, that relentless disturber of boundaries and of traditions in a
+spiritual as well as a material sense, has brought a tremendous revival
+of interest in the life after death and the possibility of communication
+between the living and the dead. As France became nearer to millions
+over here because our soldiers lived there for a few months, as French
+soil will forever be holy ground because our dead rest there, so the far
+country of the soul likewise seems nearer because of those young
+adventurers. The conflict which changed the map of Europe has in the
+minds of many effaced the boundaries between this world and the world
+beyond. Winifred Kirkland, in her book, _The New Death_, discusses the
+new concept of death, and the change in our standards that it is making.
+"We are used to speaking of this or that friend's philosophy of life;
+the time has now come when every one of us who is to live at peace with
+his own brain must possess also a philosophy of death." This New Death,
+she says, is so far mainly an immense yearning receptivity, an
+unprecedented humility of brain and of heart toward all implications of
+survival. She believes that it is an influence which is entering the
+lives of the people as a whole, not a movement of the intellectuals, nor
+the result of psychical research propaganda, but arising from the
+simple, elemental emotions of the soul, from human love and longing for
+reassurance of continued life.
+
+"If a man die, shall he live again?" has been propounded ever since
+Job's agonized inquiry. Now numbers are asking in addition, "Can we have
+communication with the dead?" Science, long derisive, is sympathetic to
+the questioning, and while many believe and many doubt, the subject is
+one that interests more people than ever before. Professor James Hyslop,
+Secretary of the American Society for Psychical Research, believes that
+the war has had great influence in arousing new interest in psychical
+subjects and that tremendous spiritual discoveries may come from it.
+
+Literature, always a little ahead of life, or at least in advance of
+general thinking, has in the more recent years been acutely conscious of
+this new influence. Poetry, the drama, the novel, the short story, have
+given affirmative answer to the question of the soul's survival after
+death. No other element has so largely entered into the tissue of recent
+literature as has the supernatural, which now we meet in all forms in
+the writings of all lands. And no aspect of the ghostly art is more
+impressive or more widely used than the introduction of the spirit of
+the dead seeking to manifest itself to the living. No thoughtful person
+can fail to be interested in a theme which has so affected literature as
+has the ghostly, even though he may disbelieve what the Psychical
+Researchers hold to be established.
+
+Man's love for the supernatural, which is one of the most natural things
+about him, was never more marked than now. Man's imagination, ever
+vaster than his environment, overleaps the barriers of time and space
+and claims all worlds as eminent domain, so that literature, which he
+has the power to create, as he cannot create his material surroundings,
+possesses a dramatic intensity and an epic sweep unknown in actuality.
+Literature shows what humanity really is and longs to be. Man, feeling
+belittled by his petty round of uninspiring days, longs for a larger
+life. He yearns for traffic with immortal beings that can augment his
+wisdom, that can bring comfort to his soul dismayed and bewildered by
+life. He reaches out for a power beyond his puny strength. Aware how
+relentlessly time ticks away his little hour, he craves companionship
+with the eternal spirits. Ignorant of what lies before him in the life
+to which he speeds so fast, he would take counsel of those who know,
+would ask about the customs of the country where presently he will be a
+citizen. He feels so terribly alone that he cries out like a child in
+the dark for supermortal companionship.
+
+Literature, which is both a cause and an effect of man's interest in the
+supernatural as in anything else, reflects his longings and records his
+cries. And when we read the imaginings of the different generations, we
+find that the spirit of the dead is represented almost everywhere.
+Before poetry and fiction were recorded, there were singers and
+story-tellers by the fire to give to their listeners the thrill that
+comes from art. And what thrill is comparable to that which comes from
+contact with the supermortal? The earliest literature relates the
+appearance of the spirits of those who have died as coming back to
+comfort or to take vengeance on the living, but always as sentient,
+intelligent, and with an interest in the earth they have left. All
+through the centuries the wraith has survived in literature, has flitted
+pallidly across the pages of poetry, story and play, with a sad
+wistfulness, a forlorn dignity.
+
+A double relation exists between the literature and the records of the
+Psychical Research Society. Lacy Collison-Morley, in his _Greek and
+Roman Ghost Stories_, speaks of the similarity between ancient tales of
+spirits and records of recent instances. "There are in the Fourth Book
+of _Gregory the Great's Dialogues_ a number of stories of the passing of
+souls which are curiously like some of those collected by the Psychical
+Research Society," he says. Possibly human personality is much the same
+in all lands and all times.
+
+Conversely, some of the best examples of ghostly literature have had
+their inspiration in the records of the society, Henry James's _The Turn
+of the Screw_ being a notable example. Algernon Blackwood, that
+extraordinary adapter of psychic material to fiction, makes frequent
+mention of the Psychical Research Society, and uses many aspects of the
+psychical in his fiction. Innumerable stories, novels, plays and poems
+have been written to show the nearness of the dead to the living, and
+the thinness of the veil that separates the two worlds. There is deep
+pathos in the concept of the longing felt by the dead and living alike
+to speak with each other, to rend the dividing veil, which adds a
+poignancy to literature, even for readers incredulous of the possibility
+of such communication. There are many who are unconvinced of the reality
+of the messages in _Raymond_, for instance,--yet who could fail to be
+touched by the delicate art with which Barrie suggests the dead son's
+return in his play, _The Well-Remembered Voice_? While one may be
+repelled by what he feels is fraud and trickery in some of the psychic
+records, it is impossible not to be moved by such an impressive piece of
+symbolism as Granville Barker's _Souls on Fifth_, where the lonely,
+futile spirits of the dead are represented as hovering near the place
+they knew the best, seeking piteously to win some recognition from the
+living. The repulsive aspects of spirit manifestations have been treated
+many times and with power, as in Joseph Hergesheimer's _The Meeker
+Ritual_, to give one very recent example. The subject has interested the
+minds of many writers who have dealt with it satirically or
+sympathetically, or with a curious mixture of scoffing and respect, as
+did Browning in _Sludge, the Medium_. Even such pronounced realists as
+William Dean Howells and Hamlin Garland have written novels dealing with
+attempts at spirit communication.
+
+Any subject that has won so incontestable a place in our literature as
+this has, possesses a right to our thought, whatever be our attitude of
+acceptance or rejection of its claims to actuality. No person wishes to
+be ignorant of what the world is thinking with reference to a matter so
+important as the spirit. Hence this volume, _The Best Psychic Stories_,
+in presenting these studies in the occult, will have interest for a wide
+range of readers, and Mr. French, the editor, has shown critical
+discrimination and extensive knowledge of the subject. Many who are
+already interested in psychic phenomena will be glad to be informed
+concerning recent and startling manifestations recounted by special
+investigators. The sincerity of a man like W. T. Stead, well known and
+respected on both sides of the Atlantic, cannot be doubted, so that his
+article on _Photographing Invisible Beings_ will have unusual weight.
+Hereward Carrington, author of various books on psychic subjects, and
+considered an authority in his field, gives in _The Phantom Armies Seen
+in France_ a report of occult phenomena widely believed in during the
+war.
+
+Helena Blavatsky, author of _A Witch's Den_, will be remembered as the
+sensational medium who mystified experimenters in various lands a few
+years ago. While most of us can be content not to touch a ghost, we may
+find subject for surprise and wonder in Gambier Bolton's _Ghosts in
+Solid Form_, describing spirits that can be weighed and put to material
+tests, while Dr. Walter H. Prince, well known as a psychic investigator,
+relates remarkable experiments of famous persons, that challenge
+explanation on purely physical bases. These accounts show that modern
+scientific investigation of spiritual manifestations can be made as
+enthralling as fiction or drama. Hamlin Garland remarks in a recent
+article, _The Spirit-World on Trial_, "When the medium consented to
+enter the laboratory of the physicist, a new era in the study of psychic
+phenomena began."
+
+Even those who refuse credence to spirit manifestations in fact, but who
+appreciate the art with which they are shown in literature, should read
+with interest the stories given here. The genius of Edgar Allan Poe was
+never more impressive than in his studies of the supernatural, and
+_Ligeia_ has a dramatic art unsurpassed even by Poe. The tense economy
+with which Ambrose Bierce could evoke a dreadful spirit is evident in
+_The Eyes of the Panther_, and the haunting symbolism of Fiona Macleod's
+_The Sin-Eater_ is unforgetable. Lafcadio Hearn, author of _A Ghost_,
+held the belief that there was no great artist in any land, and
+certainly no Anglo-Saxon writer, who had not distinguished himself in
+his use of the supernatural. The subject of the soul's survival after
+death and its attempts to reveal itself to those still in the folding
+flesh is of interest to every rational person, whether as a matter of
+scientific concern or merely as an aspect of literary art. And the
+possibilities for further use of the psychic in literature are as
+alluring as they are illimitable.
+
+    DOROTHY SCARBOROUGH
+
+    _New York City
+    March 29, 1920_
+
+
+
+
+THE BEST PSYCHIC STORIES
+
+
+
+
+WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG[1]
+
+BY JACK LONDON
+
+[Footnote 1: By permission of The Century Co.]
+
+
+I
+
+He was a very quiet, self-possessed sort of man, sitting a moment on top
+of the wall to sound the damp darkness for warnings of the dangers it
+might conceal. But the plummet of his hearing brought nothing to him
+save the moaning of wind through invisible trees and the rustling of
+leaves on swaying branches. A heavy fog drifted and drove before the
+wind, and though he could not see this fog, the wet of it blew upon his
+face, and the wall on which he sat was wet.
+
+Without noise he had climbed to the top of the wall from the outside,
+and without noise he dropped to the ground on the inside. From his
+pocket he drew an electric night-stick, but he did not use it. Dark as
+the way was, he was not anxious for light. Carrying the night-stick in
+his hand, his finger on the button, he advanced through the darkness.
+The ground was velvety and springy to his feet, being carpeted with dead
+pine-needles and leaves and mold which evidently had been undisturbed
+for years. Leaves and branches brushed against his body, but so dark was
+it that he could not avoid them. Soon he walked with his hand stretched
+out gropingly before him, and more than once the hand fetched up against
+the solid trunks of massive trees. All about him he knew were these
+trees; he sensed the loom of them everywhere; and he experienced a
+strange feeling of microscopic smallness in the midst of great bulks
+leaning toward him to crush him. Beyond, he knew, was the house, and he
+expected to find some trail or winding path that would lead easily to
+it.
+
+Once, he found himself trapped. On every side he groped against trees
+and branches, or blundered into thickets of underbrush, until there
+seemed no way out. Then he turned on his light, circumspectly, directing
+its rays to the ground at his feet. Slowly and carefully he moved it
+about him, the white brightness showing in sharp detail all the
+obstacles to his progress. He saw an opening between huge-trunked trees,
+and advanced through it, putting out the light and treading on dry
+footing as yet protected from the drip of the fog by the dense foliage
+overhead. His sense of direction was good, and he knew he was going
+toward the house.
+
+And then the thing happened--the thing unthinkable and unexpected. His
+descending foot came down upon something that was soft and alive, and
+that arose with a snort under the weight of his body. He sprang clear,
+and crouched for another spring, anywhere, tense and expectant, keyed
+for the onslaught of the unknown. He waited a moment, wondering what
+manner of animal it was that had arisen from under his foot and that now
+made no sound nor movement and that must be crouching and waiting just
+as tensely and expectantly as he. The strain became unbearable. Holding
+the night-stick before him, he pressed the button, saw, and screamed
+aloud in terror. He was prepared for anything, from a frightened calf or
+fawn to a belligerent lion, but he was not prepared for what he saw. In
+that instant his tiny searchlight, sharp and white, had shown him what a
+thousand years would not enable him to forget--a man, huge and blond,
+yellow-haired and yellow-bearded, naked except for soft-tanned moccasins
+and what seemed a goat-skin about his middle. Arms and legs were bare,
+as were his shoulders and most of his chest. The skin was smooth and
+hairless, but browned by sun and wind, while under it heavy muscles were
+knotted like fat snakes.
+
+Still, this alone, unexpected as it well was, was not what had made the
+man scream out. What had caused his terror was the unspeakable ferocity
+of the face, the wild-animal glare of the blue eyes scarcely dazzled by
+the light, the pine-needles matted and clinging in the beard and hair,
+and the whole formidable body crouched and in the act of springing at
+him. Practically in the instant he saw all this, and while his scream
+still rang, the thing leaped, he flung his night-stick full at it, and
+threw himself to the ground. He felt its feet and shins strike against
+his ribs, and he bounded up and away while the thing itself hurled
+onward in a heavy crashing fall into the underbrush.
+
+As the noise of the fall ceased, the man stopped and on hands and knees
+waited. He could hear the thing moving about, searching for him, and he
+was afraid to advertise his location by attempting further flight. He
+knew that inevitably he would crackle the underbrush and be pursued.
+Once he drew out his revolver, then changed his mind. He had recovered
+his composure and hoped to get away without noise. Several times he
+heard the thing beating up the thickets for him, and there were moments
+when it, too, remained still and listened. This gave an idea to the man.
+One of his hands was resting on a chunk of dead wood. Carefully, first
+feeling about him in the darkness to know that the full swing of his arm
+was clear, he raised the chunk of wood and threw it. It was not a large
+piece, and it went far, landing noisily in a bush. He heard the thing
+bound into the bush, and at the same time himself crawled steadily away.
+And on hands and knees, slowly and cautiously, he crawled on, till his
+knees were wet on the soggy mold. When he listened he heard naught but
+the moaning wind and the drip-drip of the fog from the branches. Never
+abating his caution, he stood erect and went on to the stone wall, over
+which he climbed and dropped down to the road outside.
+
+Feeling his way in a clump of bushes, he drew out a bicycle and prepared
+to mount. He was in the act of driving the gear around with his foot for
+the purpose of getting the opposite pedal in position, when he heard the
+thud of a heavy body that landed lightly and evidently on its feet. He
+did not wait for more, but ran, with hands on the handles of his
+bicycle, until he was able to vault astride the saddle, catch the
+pedals, and start a spurt. Behind he could hear the quick thud-thud of
+feet on the dust of the road, but he drew away from it and lost it.
+
+Unfortunately, he had started away from the direction of town and was
+heading higher up into the hills. He knew that on this particular road
+there were no cross roads. The only way back was past that terror, and
+he could not steel himself to face it. At the end of half an hour,
+finding himself on an ever increasing grade, he dismounted. For still
+greater safety, leaving the wheel by the roadside, he climbed through a
+fence into what he decided was a hillside pasture, spread a newspaper on
+the ground, and sat down.
+
+"Gosh!" he said aloud, mopping the sweat and fog from his face.
+
+And "Gosh!" he said once again, while rolling a cigarette and as he
+pondered the problem of getting back.
+
+But he made no attempt to go back. He was resolved not to face that road
+in the dark, and with head bowed on knees, he dozed, waiting for
+daylight.
+
+How long afterward he did not know, he was awakened by the yapping bark
+of a young coyote. As he looked about and located it on the brow of the
+hill behind him, he noted the change that had come over the face of the
+night. The fog was gone; the stars and moon were out; even the wind had
+died down. It had transformed into a balmy California summer night. He
+tried to doze again, but the yap of the coyote disturbed him. Half
+asleep, he heard a wild and eery chant. Looking about him, he noticed
+that the coyote had ceased its noise and was running away along the
+crest of the hill, and behind it, in full pursuit, no longer chanting,
+ran the naked creature he had encountered in the garden. It was a young
+coyote, and it was being overtaken when the chase passed from view. The
+man trembled as with a chill as he started to his feet, clambered over
+the fence, and mounted his wheel. But it was his chance and he knew it.
+The terror was no longer between him and Mill Valley.
+
+He sped at a breakneck rate down the hill, but in the turn at the
+bottom, in the deep shadows, he encountered a chuck-hole and pitched
+headlong over the handle bar.
+
+"It's sure not my night," he muttered, as he examined the broken fork of
+the machine.
+
+Shouldering the useless wheel, he trudged on. In time he came to the
+stone wall, and, half disbelieving his experience, he sought in the road
+for tracks, and found them--moccasin tracks, large ones, deep-bitten
+into the dust at the toes. It was while bending over them, examining,
+that again he heard the eery chant. He had seen the thing pursue the
+coyote, and he knew he had no chance on a straight run. He did not
+attempt it, contenting himself with hiding in the shadows on the off
+side of the road.
+
+And again he saw the thing that was like a naked man, running swiftly
+and lightly and singing as it ran. Opposite him it paused, and his heart
+stood still. But instead of coming toward his hiding-place, it leaped
+into the air, caught the branch of a roadside tree, and swung swiftly
+upward, from limb to limb, like an ape. It swung across the wall, and a
+dozen feet above the top, into the branches of another tree, and dropped
+out of sight to the ground. The man waited a few wondering minutes, then
+started on.
+
+
+II
+
+Dave Slotter leaned belligerently against the desk that barred the way
+to the private office of James Ward, senior partner of the firm of Ward,
+Knowles & Co. Dave was angry. Every one in the outer office had looked
+him over suspiciously, and the man who faced him was excessively
+suspicious.
+
+"You just tell Mr. Ward it's important," he urged.
+
+"I tell you he is dictating and cannot be disturbed," was the answer.
+"Come to-morrow."
+
+"To-morrow will be too late. You just trot along and tell Mr. Ward it's
+a matter of life and death."
+
+The secretary hesitated and Dave seized the advantage.
+
+"You just tell him I was across the bay in Mill Valley last night, and
+that I want to put him wise to something."
+
+"What name?" was the query.
+
+"Never mind the name. He don't know me."
+
+When Dave was shown into the private office, he was still in the
+belligerent frame of mind, but when he saw a large fair man whirl in a
+revolving chair from dictating to a stenographer to face him, Dave's
+demeanor abruptly changed. He did not know why it changed, and he was
+secretly angry with himself.
+
+"You are Mr. Ward?" Dave asked with a fatuousness that still further
+irritated him. He had never intended it at all.
+
+"Yes," came the answer. "And who are you?"
+
+"Harry Bancroft," Dave lied. "You don't know me, and my name don't
+matter."
+
+"You sent in word that you were in Mill Valley last night?"
+
+"You live there, don't you?" Dave countered, looking suspiciously at the
+stenographer.
+
+"Yes. What do you mean to see me about? I am very busy."
+
+"I'd like to see you alone, sir."
+
+Mr. Ward gave him a quick, penetrating look, hesitated, then made up his
+mind.
+
+"That will do for a few minutes, Miss Potter."
+
+The girl arose, gathered her notes together, and passed out. Dave looked
+at Mr. James Ward wonderingly, until that gentleman broke his train of
+inchoate thought.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I was over in Mill Valley last night," Dave began confusedly.
+
+"I've heard that before. What do you want?"
+
+And Dave proceeded in the face of a growing conviction that was
+unbelievable.
+
+"I was at your house, or in the grounds, I mean."
+
+"What were you doing there?"
+
+"I came to break in," Dave answered in all frankness. "I heard you lived
+all alone with a Chinaman for cook, and it looked good to me. Only I
+didn't break in. Something happened that prevented. That's why I'm here.
+I come to warn you. I found a wild man loose in your grounds--a regular
+devil. He could pull a guy like me to pieces. He gave me the run of my
+life. He don't wear any clothes to speak of, he climbs trees like a
+monkey, and he runs like a deer. I saw him chasing a coyote, and the
+last I saw of it, by God, he was gaining on it."
+
+Dave paused and looked for the effect that would follow his words. But
+no effect came. James Ward was quietly curious, and that was all.
+
+"Very remarkable, very remarkable," he murmured. "A wild man, you say.
+Why have you come to tell me?"
+
+"To warn you of your danger. I'm something of a hard proposition myself,
+but I don't believe in killing people ... that is, unnecessarily. I
+realized that you was in danger. I thought I'd warn you. Honest, that's
+the game. Of course, if you wanted to give me anything for my trouble,
+I'd take it. That was in my mind, too. But I don't care whether you give
+me anything or not. I've warned you anyway, and done my duty."
+
+Mr. Ward meditated and drummed on the surface of his desk. Dave noticed
+that his hands were large, powerful, withal well-cared for despite their
+dark sunburn. Also, he noted what had already caught his eye before--a
+tiny strip of flesh-colored courtplaster on the forehead over one eye.
+And still the thought that forced itself into his mind was unbelievable.
+
+Mr. Ward took a wallet from his inside coat pocket, drew out a
+greenback, and passed it to Dave, who noted as he pocketed it that it
+was for twenty dollars.
+
+"Thank you," said Mr. Ward, indicating that the interview was at an end.
+"I shall have the matter investigated. A wild man running loose _is_
+dangerous."
+
+But so quiet a man was Mr. Ward, that Dave's courage returned. Besides,
+a new theory had suggested itself. The wild man was evidently Mr. Ward's
+brother, a lunatic privately confined. Dave had heard of such things.
+Perhaps Mr. Ward wanted it kept quiet. That was why he had given him the
+twenty dollars.
+
+"Say," Dave began, "now I come to think of it that wild man looked a lot
+like you--"
+
+That was as far as Dave got, for at that moment he witnessed a
+transformation and found himself gazing into the same unspeakably
+ferocious blue eyes of the night before, at the same clutching
+talon-like hands, and at the same formidable bulk in the act of
+springing upon him. But this time Dave had no night-stick to throw, and
+he was caught by the biceps of both arms in a grip so terrific that it
+made him groan with pain. He saw the large white teeth exposed, for all
+the world as a dog's about to bite. Mr. Ward's beard brushed his face as
+the teeth went in for the grip of his throat. But the bite was not
+given. Instead, Dave felt the other's body stiffen as with an iron
+restraint, and then he was flung aside, without effort but with such
+force that only the wall stopped his momentum and dropped him gasping to
+the floor.
+
+"What do you mean by coming here and trying to blackmail me?" Mr. Ward
+was snarling at him. "Here, give me back that money."
+
+Dave passed the bill back without a word.
+
+"I thought you came here with good intentions. I know you now. Let me
+see and hear no more of you, or I'll put you in prison where you belong.
+Do you understand?"
+
+"Yes, sir," Dave gasped.
+
+"Then go."
+
+And Dave went, without further word, both his biceps aching intolerably
+from the bruise of that tremendous grip. As his hand rested on the door
+knob, he was stopped.
+
+"You were lucky," Mr. Ward was saying, and Dave noted that his face and
+eyes were cruel and gloating and proud. "You were lucky. Had I wanted, I
+could have torn your muscles out of your arms and thrown them in the
+waste basket there."
+
+"Yes, sir," said Dave; and absolute conviction vibrated in his voice.
+
+He opened the door and passed out. The secretary looked at him
+interrogatively.
+
+"Gosh!" was all Dave vouchsafed, and with this utterance passed out of
+the offices and the story.
+
+
+III
+
+James G. Ward was forty years of age, a successful business man, and
+very unhappy. For forty years he had vainly tried to solve a problem
+that was really himself and that with increasing years became more and
+more a woeful affliction. In himself he was two men, and,
+chronologically speaking, these men were several thousand years or so
+apart. He had studied the question of dual personality probably more
+profoundly than any half dozen of the leading specialists in that
+intricate and mysterious psychological field. In himself he was a
+different case from any that had been recorded. Even the most fanciful
+flights of the fiction-writers had not quite hit upon him. He was not a
+Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, nor was he like the unfortunate young man in
+Kipling's _Greatest Story in the World_. His two personalities were so
+mixed that they were practically aware of themselves and of each other
+all the time.
+
+His one self was that of a man whose rearing and education were modern
+and who had lived through the latter part of the nineteenth century and
+well into the first decade of the twentieth. His other self he had
+located as a savage and a barbarian living under the primitive
+conditions of several thousand years before. But which self was he, and
+which was the other, he could never tell. For he was both selves, and
+both selves all the time. Very rarely indeed did it happen that one self
+did not know what the other was doing. Another thing was that he had no
+visions nor memories of the past in which that early self had lived.
+That early self lived in the present; but while it lived in the present,
+it was under the compulsion to live the way of life that must have been
+in that distant past.
+
+In his childhood he had been a problem to his father and mother, and to
+the family doctors, though never had they come within a thousand miles
+of hitting upon the clue to his erratic conduct. Thus, they could not
+understand his excessive somnolence in the forenoon, nor his excessive
+activity at night. When they found him wandering along the hallways at
+night, or climbing over giddy roofs, or running in the hills, they
+decided he was a somnambulist. In reality he was wide-eyed awake and
+merely under the night-roaming compulsion of his early life. Questioned
+by an obtuse medico, he once told the truth and suffered the ignominy of
+having the revelation contemptuously labeled and dismissed as "dreams."
+
+The point was, that as twilight and evening came on he became wakeful.
+The four walls of a room were an irk and a restraint. He heard a
+thousand voices whispering to him through the darkness. The night
+called to him, for he was, for that period of the twenty-four hours,
+essentially a night-prowler. But nobody understood, and never again did
+he attempt to explain. They classified him as a sleep-walker and took
+precautions accordingly--precautions that very often were futile. As his
+childhood advanced, he grew more cunning, so that the major portion of
+all his nights were spent in the open at realizing his other self. As a
+result, he slept in the forenoons. Morning studies and schools were
+impossible, and it was discovered that only in the afternoons, under
+private teachers, could he be taught anything. Thus was his modern self
+educated and developed.
+
+But a problem, as a child, he ever remained. He was known as a little
+demon of insensate cruelty and viciousness. The family medicos privately
+adjudged him a mental monstrosity and a degenerate. Such few boy
+companions as he had, hailed him as a wonder, though they were all
+afraid of him. He could outclimb, outswim, outrun, outdevil any of them;
+while none dared fight with him. He was too terribly strong, too madly
+furious.
+
+When nine years of age he ran away to the hills, where he flourished,
+night-prowling, for seven weeks before he was discovered and brought
+home. The marvel was how he had managed to subsist and keep in condition
+during that time. They did not know, and he never told them, of the
+rabbits he had killed, of the quail, young and old, he had captured and
+devoured, of the farmers' chicken-roosts he had raided, nor of the
+cave-lair he had made and carpeted with dry leaves and grasses and in
+which he had slept in warmth and comfort, through the forenoons of many
+days.
+
+At college he was notorious for his sleepiness and stupidity during the
+morning lectures and for his brilliance in the afternoon. By collateral
+reading and by borrowing the notebook of his fellow students he managed
+to scrape through the detestable morning courses, while his afternoon
+courses were triumphs. In football he proved a giant and a terror, and,
+in almost every form of track athletics, save for strange Berserker
+rages that were sometimes displayed, he could be depended upon to win.
+But his fellows were afraid to box with him, and he signalized his last
+wrestling bout by sinking his teeth into the shoulder of his opponent.
+
+After college, his father, in despair, sent him among the cow-punchers
+of a Wyoming ranch. Three months later the doughty cowmen confessed he
+was too much for them and telegraphed his father to come and take the
+wild man away. Also, when the father arrived to take him away, the
+cowmen allowed that they would vastly prefer chumming with howling
+cannibals, gibbering lunatics, cavorting gorillas, grizzly bears, and
+man-eating tigers than with this particular young college product with
+hair parted in the middle.
+
+There was one exception to the lack of memory of the life of his early
+self, and that was language. By some quirk of atavism, a certain portion
+of that early self's language had come down to him as a racial memory.
+In moments of happiness, exaltation, or battle, he was prone to burst
+out in wild barbaric songs or chants. It was by this means that he
+located in time and space that strayed half of him who should have been
+dead and dust for thousands of years. He sang, once, and deliberately,
+several of the ancient chants in the presence of Professor Wertz, who
+gave courses in old Saxon and who was a philologist of repute and
+passion. At the first one, the professor pricked up his ears and
+demanded to know what mongrel tongue or hog-German it was. When the
+second chant was rendered, the professor was highly excited. James Ward
+then concluded the performance by giving a song that always irresistibly
+rushed to his lips when he was engaged in fierce struggling or fighting.
+Then it was that Professor Wertz proclaimed it no hog-German, but early
+German, or early Teuton, of a date that must far precede anything that
+had ever been discovered and handed down by the scholars. So early was
+it that it was beyond him; yet it was filled with haunting reminiscences
+of word-forms he knew and which his trained intuition told him were true
+and real. He demanded the source of the songs, and asked to borrow the
+previous book that contained them. Also, he demanded to know why young
+Ward had always posed as being profoundly ignorant of the German
+language. And Ward could neither explain his ignorance nor lend the
+book. Whereupon, after pleadings and entreaties that extended through
+weeks, Professor Wertz took a dislike to the young man, believed him a
+liar, and classified him as a man of monstrous selfishness for not
+giving him a glimpse of this wonderful screed that was older than the
+oldest any philologist had ever known or dreamed.
+
+But little good did it do this much-mixed young man to know that half of
+him was late American and the other half early Teuton. Nevertheless, the
+late American in him was no weakling, and he (if he were a he and had a
+shred of existence outside of these two) compelled an adjustment or
+compromise between his one self that was a night-prowling savage that
+kept his other self sleepy of mornings, and that other self that was
+cultured and refined and that wanted to be normal and love and prosecute
+business like other people. The afternoons and early evenings he gave to
+the one, the nights to the other; the forenoons and parts of the nights
+were devoted to sleep for the twain. But in the mornings he slept in bed
+like a civilized man. In the night time he slept like a wild animal, as
+he had slept the night Dave Slotter stepped on him in the woods.
+
+Persuading his father to advance the capital, he went into business, and
+keen and successful business he made of it, devoting his afternoons
+whole-souled to it, while his partner devoted the mornings. The early
+evenings he spent socially, but, as the hour grew to nine or ten, an
+irresistible restlessness overcame him and he disappeared from the
+haunts of men until the next afternoon. Friends and acquaintances
+thought that he spent much of his time in sport. And they were right,
+though they never would have dreamed of the nature of the sport, even if
+they had seen him running coyotes in night-chases over the hills of Mill
+Valley. Neither were the schooner captains believed when they reported
+seeing, on cold winter mornings, a man swimming in the tide-rips of
+Raccoon Straits or in the swift currents between Goat Island and Angel
+Island miles from shore.
+
+In the bungalow at Mill Valley he lived alone, save for Lee Sing, the
+Chinese cook and factotum, who knew much about the strangeness of his
+master, who was paid well for saying nothing, and who never did say
+anything. After the satisfaction of his nights, a morning's sleep, and a
+breakfast of Lee Sing's, James Ward crossed the bay to San Francisco on
+a midday ferryboat and went to the club and on to his office, as normal
+and conventional a man of business as could be found in the city. But as
+the evening lengthened, the night called to him. There came a quickening
+of all his perceptions and a restlessness. His hearing was suddenly
+acute; the myriad night-noises told him a luring and familiar story;
+and, if alone, he would begin to pace up and down the narrow room like
+any caged animal from the wild.
+
+Once, he ventured to fall in love. He never permitted himself that
+diversion again. He was afraid. And for many a day the young lady,
+scared at least out of a portion of her young ladyhood, bore on her arms
+and shoulders and wrists divers black-and-blue bruises--tokens of
+caresses which he had bestowed in all fond gentleness but too late at
+night. There was the mistake. Had he ventured love-making in the
+afternoon, all would have been well, for it would have been as the quiet
+gentleman that he would have made love--but at night it was the uncouth,
+wife-stealing savage of the dark German forests. Out of his wisdom, he
+decided that afternoon love-making could be prosecuted successfully; but
+out of the same wisdom he was convinced that marriage would prove a
+ghastly failure. He found it appalling to imagine being married and
+encountering his wife after dark.
+
+So he had eschewed all love-making, regulated his dual life, cleaned up
+a million in business, fought shy of match-making mamas and bright- and
+eager-eyed young ladies of various ages, met Lilian Gersdale and made it
+a rigid observance never to see her later than eight o'clock in the
+evening, ran of nights after his coyotes, and slept in forest lairs--and
+through it all had kept his secret save for Lee Sing ... and now, Dave
+Slotter. It was the latter's discovery of both his selves that
+frightened him. In spite of the counter fright he had given the burglar,
+the latter might talk. And even if he did not, sooner or later he would
+be found out by some one else.
+
+Thus it was that James Ward made a fresh and heroic effort to control
+the Teutonic barbarian that was half of him. So well did he make it a
+point to see Lilian in the afternoons and early evenings, that the time
+came when she accepted him for better or worse, and when he prayed
+privily and fervently that it was not for worse. During this period no
+prize-fighter ever trained more harshly and faithfully for a contest
+than he trained to subdue the wild savage in him. Among other things, he
+strove to exhaust himself during the day, so that sleep would render him
+deaf to the call of the night. He took a vacation from the office and
+went on long hunting trips, following the deer through the most
+inaccessible and rugged country he could find--and always in the
+daytime. Night found him indoors and tired. At home he installed a score
+of exercise machines, and where other men might go through a particular
+movement ten times, he went hundreds. Also, as a compromise, he built a
+sleeping porch on the second story. Here he at least breathed the
+blessed night air. Double screens prevented him from escaping into the
+woods, and each night Lee Sing locked him in and each morning let him
+out.
+
+The time came, in the month of August, when he engaged additional
+servants to assist Lee Sing and dared a house party in his Mill Valley
+bungalow. Lilian, her mother and brother, and half a dozen mutual
+friends, were the guests. For two days and nights all went well. And on
+the third night, playing bridge till eleven o'clock, he had reason to be
+proud of himself. His restlessness he successfully hid, but as luck
+would have it, Lilian Gersdale was his opponent on his right. She was a
+frail delicate flower of a woman, and in his night-mood her very frailty
+incensed him. Not that he loved her less, but that he felt almost
+irresistibly impelled to reach out and paw and maul her. Especially was
+this true when she was engaged in playing a winning hand against him.
+
+He had one of the deer-hounds brought in, and, when it seemed he must
+fly to pieces with the tension, a caressing hand laid on the animal
+brought him relief. These contacts with the hairy coat gave him instant
+easement and enabled him to play out the evening. Nor did any one guess
+the terrible struggle their host was making, the while he laughed so
+carelessly and played so keenly and deliberately.
+
+When they separated for the night, he saw to it that he parted from
+Lilian in the presence of the others. Once on his sleeping porch, and
+safely locked in, he doubled and tripled and even quadrupled his
+exercises until, exhausted, he lay down on the couch to woo sleep and to
+ponder two problems that especially troubled him. One was this matter
+of exercise. It was a paradox. The more he exercised in this excessive
+fashion, the stronger he became. While it was true that he thus quite
+tired out his night-running Teutonic self, it seemed that he was merely
+setting back the fatal day when his strength would be too much for him
+and overpower him, and then it would be a strength more terrible than he
+had yet known. The other problem was that of his marriage and of the
+stratagems he must employ in order to avoid his wife after dark. And
+thus fruitlessly pondering he fell asleep.
+
+Now, where the huge grizzly bear came from that night was long a
+mystery, while the people of the Springs Brothers' Circus, showing at
+Sausalito, searched long and vainly for "Big Ben, the Biggest Grizzly in
+Captivity." But Big Ben escaped, and, out of the mazes of half a
+thousand bungalows and country estates, selected the grounds of James J.
+Ward for visitation. The first Mr. Ward knew was when he found himself
+on his feet, quivering and tense, a surge of battle in his breast and on
+his lips the old war-chant. From without came a wild baying and
+bellowing of the hounds. And sharp as a knife-thrust through the
+pandemonium came the agony of a stricken dog--his dog, he knew.
+
+Not stopping for slippers, pajama-clad, he burst through the door Lee
+Sing had so carefully locked, and sped down the stairs and out into the
+night. As his naked feet struck the graveled driveway, he stopped
+abruptly, reached under the steps to a hiding-place he knew well, and
+pulled forth a huge knotty club--his old companion on many a mad night
+adventure on the hills. The frantic hullabaloo of the dogs was coming
+nearer, and, swinging the club, he sprang straight into the thickets to
+meet it.
+
+The aroused household assembled on the wide veranda. Somebody turned on
+the electric lights, but they could see nothing but one another's
+frightened faces. Beyond the brightly illuminated driveway the trees
+formed a wall of impenetrable blackness. Yet somewhere in that blackness
+a terrible struggle was going on. There was an infernal outcry of
+animals, a great snarling and growling, the sound of blows being struck,
+and a smashing and crashing of underbrush by heavy bodies.
+
+The tide of battle swept out from among the trees and upon the driveway
+just beneath the onlookers. Then they saw. Mrs. Gersdale cried out and
+clung fainting to her son. Lilian, clutching the railing so
+spasmodically that a bruising hurt was left in her finger-ends for days,
+gazed horror-stricken at a yellow-haired, wild-eyed giant whom she
+recognized as the man who was to be her husband. He was swinging a great
+club, and fighting furiously and calmly with a shaggy monster that was
+bigger than any bear she had ever seen. One rip of the beast's claws had
+dragged away Ward's pajama-coat and streaked his flesh with blood.
+
+While most of Lilian Gersdale's fright was for the man beloved, there
+was a large portion of it due to the man himself. Never had she dreamed
+so formidable and magnificent a savage lurked under the starched shirt
+and conventional garb of her betrothed. And never had she had any
+conception of how a man battled. Such a battle was certainly not modern;
+nor was she there beholding a modern man, though she did not know it.
+For this was not Mr. James J. Ward, the San Francisco business man, but
+one unnamed and unknown, a crude, rude savage creature who, by some
+freak of chance, lived again after thrice a thousand years.
+
+The hounds, ever maintaining their mad uproar, circled about the fight,
+or dashed in and out, distracting the bear. When the animal turned to
+meet such flanking assaults, the man leaped in and the club came down.
+Angered afresh by every such blow, the bear would rush, and the man,
+leaping and skipping, avoiding the dogs, went backwards or circled to
+one side or the other. Whereupon the dogs, taking advantage of the
+opening, would again spring in and draw the animal's wrath to them.
+
+The end came suddenly. Whirling, the grizzly caught a hound with a wide
+sweeping cuff that sent the brute, its ribs caved in and its back
+broken, hurtling twenty feet. Then the human brute went mad. A foaming
+rage flecked the lips that parted with a wild inarticulate cry, as it
+sprang in, swung the club mightily in both hands, and brought it down
+full on the head of the uprearing grizzly. Not even the skull of a
+grizzly could withstand the crushing force of such a blow, and the
+animal went down to meet the worrying of the hounds. And through their
+scurrying leaped the man, squarely upon the body, where, in the white
+electric light, resting on his club, he chanted a triumph in an unknown
+tongue--a song so ancient that Professor Wertz would have given ten
+years of his life for it.
+
+His guests rushed to possess him and acclaim him, but James Ward,
+suddenly looking out of the eyes of the early Teuton, saw the fair frail
+Twentieth Century girl he loved, and felt something snap in his brain.
+He staggered weakly toward her, dropped the club, and nearly fell.
+Something had gone wrong with him. Inside his brain was an intolerable
+agony. It seemed as if the soul of him were flying asunder. Following
+the excited gaze of the others, he glanced back and saw the carcass of
+the bear. The sight filled him with fear. He uttered a cry and would
+have fled, had they not restrained him and led him into the bungalow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+James J. Ward is still at the head of the firm of Ward, Knowles & Co.
+But he no longer lives in the country; nor does he run of nights after
+the coyotes under the moon. The early Teuton in him died the night of
+the Mill Valley fight with the bear. James J. Ward is now wholly James
+J. Ward, and he shares no part of his being with any vagabond
+anachronism from the younger world. And so wholly is James J. Ward
+modern, that he knows in all its bitter fullness the curse of civilized
+fear. He is now afraid of the dark, and night in the forest is to him a
+thing of abysmal terror. His city house is of the spick and span order,
+and he evinces a great interest in burglar-proof devices. His home is a
+tangle of electric wires, and after bed-time a guest can scarcely
+breathe without setting off an alarm. Also, he has invented a
+combination keyless door-lock that travelers may carry in their vest
+pockets and apply immediately and successfully under all circumstances.
+But his wife does not deem him a coward. She knows better. And, like any
+hero, he is content to rest on his laurels. His bravery is never
+questioned by those of his friends who are aware of the Mill Valley
+episode.
+
+
+
+
+THE RETURN[2]
+
+BY ALGERNON BLACKWOOD
+
+[Footnote 2: From _Pan's Garden_, by Algernon Blackwood--Permission of
+the Macmillan Company.]
+
+
+It was curious--that sense of dull uneasiness that came over him so
+suddenly, so stealthily at first he scarcely noticed it, but with such
+marked increase after a time that he presently got up and left the
+theater. His seat was on the gangway of the dress circle, and he slipped
+out awkwardly in the middle of what seemed to be the best and jolliest
+song of the piece. The full house was shaking with laughter; so
+infectious was the gaiety that even strangers turned to one another as
+much as to say, "Now, isn't that funny?"
+
+It was curious, too, the way the feeling first got into him at all, and
+in the full swing of laughter, music, light-heartedness; for it came as
+a vague suggestion, "I've forgotten something--something I meant to
+do--something of importance. What in the world was it, now?" And he
+thought hard, searching vainly through his mind; then dismissed it as
+the dancing caught his attention. It came back a little later again,
+during a passage of long-winded talk that bored him and set his
+attention free once more, but came more strongly this time, insisting on
+an answer. What could it have been that he had overlooked, left undone,
+omitted to see to? It went on nibbling at the subconscious part of him.
+Several times this happened, this dismissal and return, till at last the
+thing declared itself more plainly--and he felt bothered, troubled,
+distinctly uneasy.
+
+He was wanted somewhere. There was somewhere else he ought to be. That
+describes it best, perhaps. Some engagement of moment had entirely
+slipped his memory--an engagement that involved another person, too. But
+where, what, with whom? And, at length, this vague uneasiness amounted
+to positive discomfort, so that he felt unable to enjoy the piece, and
+left abruptly. Like a man to whom comes suddenly the horrible idea that
+the match he lit his cigarette with and flung into the waste-paper
+basket on leaving was not really out--a sort of panic distress--he
+jumped into a taxicab and hurried to his flat to find everything in
+order, of course; no smoke, no fire, no smell of burning.
+
+But his evening was spoiled. He sat smoking in his armchair at home,
+this business man of forty, practical in mind, of character some called
+stolid, cursing himself for an imaginative fool. It was now too late to
+go back to the theater; the club bored him; he spent an hour with the
+evening papers, dipping into books, sipping a long cool drink, doing
+odds and ends about the flat. "I'll go to bed early for a change," he
+laughed, but really all the time fighting--yes, deliberately
+fighting--this strange attack of uneasiness that so insidiously grew
+upwards, outwards from the buried depths of him that sought so
+strenuously to deny it. It never occurred to him that he was ill. He was
+not ill. His health was thunderingly good. He was as robust as a
+coal-heaver.
+
+The flat was roomy, high up on the top floor, yet in a busy part of
+town, so that the roar of traffic mounted round it like a sea. Through
+the open windows came the fresh night air of June. He had never noticed
+before how sweet the London night air could be, and that not all the
+smoke and dust could smother a certain touch of wild fragrance that
+tinctured it with perfume--yes, almost perfume--as of the country. He
+swallowed a draught of it as he stood there, staring out across the
+tangled world of roofs and chimney-pots. He saw the procession of the
+clouds; he saw the stars; he saw the moonlight falling in a shower of
+silver spears upon the slates and wires and steeples. And something in
+him quickened--something that had never stirred before.
+
+He turned with a horrid start, for the uneasiness had of a sudden leaped
+within him like an animal. There was some one in the flat.
+
+Instantly, with action--even this slight action--the fancy vanished;
+but, all the same, he switched on the electric lights and made a search.
+For it seemed to him that some one had crept up close behind him while
+he stood there watching the night--some one, whose silent presence
+fingered with unerring touch both this new thing that had quickened in
+his heart and that sense of original deep uneasiness. He was amazed at
+himself--angry--indignant that he could be thus foolishly upset over
+nothing, yet at the same time profoundly distressed at this vehement
+growth of a new thing in his well-ordered personality. Growth? He
+dismissed the word the moment it occurred to him--but it had occurred to
+him. It stayed. While he searched the empty flat, the long passages, the
+gloomy bedroom at the end, the little hall where he kept his overcoats
+and golf sticks, it stayed. Growth! It was oddly disquieting. Growth
+to him involved, though he neither acknowledged nor recognized the truth
+perhaps, some kind of undesirable changeableness, instability,
+unbalance.
+
+Yet singular as it all was, he realized that the uneasiness and the
+sudden appreciation of beauty that was so new to him had both entered by
+the same door into his being. When he came back to the front room he
+noticed that he was perspiring. There were little drops of moisture on
+his forehead. And down his spine ran chills, little, faint quivers of
+cold. He was shivering.
+
+He lit his big meerschaum pipe, and left the lights all burning. The
+feeling that there was something he had overlooked, forgotten, left
+undone, had vanished. Whatever the original cause of this absurd
+uneasiness might be--he called it absurd on purpose because he now
+realized in the depths of him that it was really more vital than he
+cared about--it was much nearer to discovery than before. It dodged
+about just below the threshold of discovery. It was as close as that.
+Any moment he would know what it was; he would remember. Yes, he would
+_remember_. Meanwhile, he was in the right place. No desire to go
+elsewhere afflicted him, as in the theater. Here was the place, here in
+the flat.
+
+And then it was with a kind of sudden burst and rush--it seemed to him
+the only way to phrase it--memory gave up her dead.
+
+At first he only caught her peeping round the corner at him, drawing
+aside a corner of an enormous curtain, as it were; striving for more
+complete entrance as though the mass of it were difficult to move. But
+he understood, he knew, he recognized. It was enough for that. As an
+entrance into his being--heart, mind, soul--was being attempted and the
+entrance because of his stolid temperament was difficult of
+accomplishment, there was effort, strain. Something in him had first to
+be opened up, widened, made soft and ready as by an operation, before
+full entrance could be effected. This much he grasped though for the
+life of him he could not have put it into words. Also he knew who it was
+that sought an entrance. Deliberately from himself he withheld the name.
+But he knew as surely as though Straughan stood in the room and faced
+him with a knife saying, "Let me in, let me in. I wish you to know I'm
+here. I'm clearing a way! You recall our promise?"
+
+He rose from his chair and went to the open window again, the strange
+fear slowly passing. The cool air fanned his cheeks. Beauty till now had
+scarcely ever brushed the surface of his soul. He had never troubled his
+head about it. It passed him by indifferent; and he had ever loathed the
+mouthy prating of it on others' lips. He was practical; beauty was for
+dreamers, for women, for men who had means and leisure. He had not
+exactly scorned it; rather it had never touched his life, to sweeten, to
+cheer, to uplift. Artists for him were like monks--another sex
+almost--useless beings who never helped the world go round. He was for
+action always, work, activity, achievement as he saw them. He remembered
+Straughan vaguely--Straughan, the ever impecunious friend of his youth,
+always talking of color and sound--mysterious, ineffectual things. He
+even forgot what they had quarreled about, if they had quarreled at all
+even; or why they had gone apart all these years ago. And certainly he
+had forgotten any promise. Memory as yet only peeped at him round the
+corner of that huge curtain tentatively, suggestively, yet--he was
+obliged to admit it--somewhat winningly. He was conscious of this
+gentle, sweet seductiveness that now replaced his fear.
+
+And as he stood now at the open window peering over huge London, beauty
+came close and smote him between the eyes. She came blindingly, with her
+train of stars and clouds and perfumes. Night, mysterious, myriad-eyed,
+and flaming across her sea of haunted shadows invaded his heart and
+shook him with her immemorial wonder and delight. He found no words of
+course to clothe the new unwonted sensations. He only knew that all his
+former dread, uneasiness, distress, and with them this idea of growth
+that had seemed so repugnant to him were merged, swept up, and gathered
+magnificently home into a wave of beauty that enveloped him. "See it,
+and understand," ran a secret inner whisper across his mind. He saw. He
+understood....
+
+He went back and turned the lights out. Then he took his place again at
+that open window, drinking in the night. He saw a new world; a species
+of intoxication held him. He sighed, as his thoughts blundered for
+expression among words and sentences that knew him not. But the delight
+was there, the wonder, the mystery. He watched with heart alternately
+tightening and expanding the transfiguring play of moon and shadow over
+the sea of buildings. He saw the dance of the hurrying clouds, the open
+patches into outer space, the veiling and unveiling of that ancient
+silvery face; and he caught strange whispers of the hierophantic,
+sacerdotal power that has echoed down the world since Time began and
+dropped strange magic phrases into every poet's heart, since first "God
+dawned on Chaos"--the Beauty of the Night.
+
+A long time passed--it may have been one hour, it may have been
+three--when at length he turned away and went slowly to his bedroom. A
+deep peace lay over him. Something quite new and blessed had crept into
+his life and thought. He could not quite understand it all. He only knew
+that it uplifted. There was no longer the least sign of affliction or
+distress. Even the inevitable reaction that set in could not destroy
+that.
+
+And then as he lay in bed nearing the borderland of sleep, suddenly and
+without any obvious suggestion to bring it, he remembered another thing.
+He remembered the promise. Memory got past the big curtain for an
+instant and showed her face. She looked into his eyes. It must have been
+a dozen years ago when Straughan and he had made that foolish solemn
+promise, that whoever died first should show himself if possible to the
+other.
+
+He had utterly forgotten it--till now. But Straughan had not forgotten
+it. The letter came three weeks later from India. That very evening
+Straughan had died--at nine o'clock. And he had come back--in the Beauty
+that he loved.
+
+
+
+
+THE SECOND GENERATION[3]
+
+BY ALGERNON BLACKWOOD
+
+[Footnote 3: _From Ten-Minute Stories_, published by E. P. Dutton & Co.]
+
+
+Sometimes, in a moment of sharp experience, comes that vivid flash of
+insight that makes a platitude suddenly seem a revelation--its full
+content is abruptly realized. "Ten years _is_ a long time, yes," he
+thought, as he walked up the drive to the great Kensington house where
+she still lived.
+
+Ten years--long enough, at any rate, for her to have married and for her
+husband to have died. More than that he had not heard, in the outlandish
+places where life had cast him in the interval. He wondered whether
+there had been any children. All manner of thoughts and questions,
+confused a little, passed across his mind. He was well-to-do now, though
+probably his entire capital did not amount to her income for a single
+year. He glanced at the huge, forbidding mansion. Yet that pride was
+false which had made of poverty an insuperable obstacle. He saw it now.
+He had learned values in his long exile.
+
+But he was still ridiculously timid. This confusion of thought, of
+mental images rather, was due to a kind of fear, since worship ever is
+akin to awe. He was as nervous as a boy going up for a _viva voce_; and
+with the excitement was also that unconquerable sinking--that horrid
+shrinking sensation that excessive shyness brings. Why in the world had
+he come? Why had he telegraphed the very day after his arrival in
+England? Why had he not sent a tentative, tactful letter, feeling his
+way a little?
+
+Very slowly he walked up the drive, feeling that if a reasonable chance
+of escape presented itself he would almost take it. But all the windows
+stared so hard at him that retreat was really impossible now and though
+no faces were visible behind the curtains, all had seen him, possibly
+she herself--his heart beat absurdly at the extravagant suggestion. Yet
+it was odd--he felt so certain of being seen, and that someone watched
+him. He reached the wide stone steps that were clean as marble, and
+shrank from the mark his boots must make upon their spotlessness. In
+desperation, then, before he could change his mind, he touched the bell.
+But he did not hear it ring--mercifully; that irrevocable sound must
+have paralyzed him altogether. If no one came to answer, he might still
+leave a card in the letter-box and slip away. Oh, how utterly he
+despised himself for such a thought! A man of thirty with such a chicken
+heart was not fit to protect a child, much less a woman. And he recalled
+with a little stab of pain that the man she married had been noted for
+his courage, his determined action, his inflexible firmness in various
+public situations, head and shoulders above lesser men. What presumption
+on his own part ever to dream!... He remembered, too, with no apparent
+reason in particular, that this man had a grown-up son already, by a
+former marriage.
+
+And still no one came to open that huge, contemptuous door with its so
+menacing, so hostile air. His back was to it, as he carelessly twirled
+his umbrella, but he felt its sneering expression behind him while it
+looked him up and down. It seemed to push him away. The entire mansion
+focused its message through that stern portal: Little timid men are not
+welcomed here.
+
+How well he remembered the house! How often in years gone by had he not
+stood and waited just like this, trembling with delight and
+anticipation, yet terrified lest the bell should be answered and the
+great door actually swung wide! Then, as now, he would have run, had he
+dared. He was still afraid--his worship was so deep. But in all these
+years of exile in wild places, farming, mining, working for the position
+he had at last attained, her face and the memory of her gracious
+presence had been his comfort and support, his only consolation, though
+never his actual joy. There was so little foundation for it all, yet her
+smile and the words she had spoken to him from time to time in friendly
+conversation had clung, inspired, kept him going--for he knew them all
+by heart. And more than once in foolish optimistic moods, he had
+imagined, greatly daring, that she possibly had meant more....
+
+He touched the bell a second time--with the point of his umbrella. He
+meant to go in, carelessly as it were, saying as lightly as might be,
+"Oh, I'm back in England again--if you haven't _quite_ forgotten my
+existence--I could not forego the pleasure of saying 'How-do-you-do?'
+and hearing that you are well ...," and the rest; then presently bow
+himself easily out--into the old loneliness again. But he would at least
+have seen her; he would have heard her voice, and looked into her
+gentle, amber eyes; he would have touched her hand. She might even ask
+him to come in another day and see her! He had rehearsed it all a
+hundred times, as certain feeble temperaments do rehearse such scenes.
+And he came rather well out of that rehearsal, though always with an
+aching heart, the old great yearnings unfulfilled. All the way across
+the Atlantic he had thought about it, though with lessening confidence
+as the time drew near. The very night of his arrival in London he wrote,
+then, tearing up the letter (after sleeping over it), he had telegraphed
+next morning, asking if she would be in. He signed his surname--such a
+very common name, alas! but surely she would know--and her reply,
+"Please call 4:30," struck him as rather oddly worded. Yet here he was.
+
+There was a rattle of the big door knob, that aggressive, hostile knob
+that thrust out at him insolently like a fist of bronze. He started,
+angry with himself for doing so. But the door did not open. He became
+suddenly conscious of the wilds he had lived in for so long; his clothes
+were hardly fashionable; his voice probably had a twang in it, and he
+used tricks of speech that must betray the rough life so recently left.
+What would she think of him, now? He looked much older, too. And how
+brusque it was to have telegraphed like that! He felt awkward, gauche,
+tongue-tied, hot and cold by turns. The sentences, so carefully
+rehearsed, fled beyond recovery.
+
+Good heavens--the door was open! It had been open for some minutes. It
+moved noiselessly on big hinges. He acted automatically; he heard
+himself asking if her ladyship was at home, though his voice was nearly
+inaudible. The next moment he was standing in the great, dim hall, so
+poignantly familiar, and the remembered perfume almost made him sway. He
+did not hear the door close, but he knew. He was caught. The butler
+betrayed an instant's surprise--or was it over-wrought imagination
+again?--when he gave his name. It seemed to him--though only later did
+he grasp the significance of that curious intuition--that the man had
+expected another caller instead. The man took his card respectfully and
+disappeared. These flunkeys were so marvellously trained. He was too
+long accustomed to straight question and straight answer, but here, in
+the Old Country, privacy was jealously guarded with such careful ritual.
+
+And almost immediately the butler returned, still expressionless, and
+showed him into the large drawing-room on the ground floor that he knew
+so well. Tea was on the table--tea for one. He felt puzzled. "If you
+will have tea first, sir, her ladyship will see you afterwards," was
+what he heard. And though his breath came thickly, he asked the question
+that forced itself out. Before he knew what he was saying he asked it,
+"Is she ill?" "Oh, no, her ladyship is quite well, thank you, sir. If
+you will have tea first, sir, her ladyship will see you afterwards." The
+horrid formula was repeated, word for word. He sank into an armchair and
+mechanically poured out his own tea. What he felt he did not exactly
+know. It seemed so unusual, so utterly unexpected, so unnecessary, too.
+Was it a special attention, or was it merely casual? That it could mean
+anything else did not occur to him. How was she busy, occupied--not
+here to give him tea? He could not understand it. It seemed such a farce
+having tea alone like this--it was like waiting for an audience, it was
+like a doctor's or a dentist's room. He felt bewildered, ill at ease,
+cheap.... But after ten years in primitive lands perhaps London usages
+had changed in some extraordinary manner. He recalled his first
+amazement at the motor-omnibuses, taxicabs, and electric tubes. All were
+new. London was otherwise than when he left it. Piccadilly and the
+Marble Arch themselves had altered. And, with his reflection, a shade
+more confidence stole in. She knew that he was there and presently she
+would come in and speak with him, explaining everything by the mere fact
+of her delicious presence. He was ready for the ordeal, he would see
+her--and drop out again. It was worth all manner of pain, even of
+mortification. He was in her house, drinking her tea, sitting in a chair
+she used herself perhaps. Only he would never dare to say a word or make
+a sign that might betray his changeless secret. He still felt the boyish
+worshipper, worshipping in dumbness from a distance, one of a group of
+many others like himself. Their dreams had faded, his had continued,
+that was the difference. Memories tore and raced and poured upon him.
+How sweet and gentle she had always been to him! He used to wonder
+sometimes.... Once, he remembered, he had rehearsed a declaration, but
+while rehearsing the big man had come in and captured her, though he had
+only read the definite news long after by chance in an Arizona paper.
+
+He gulped his tea down. His heart alternately leaped and stood still. A
+sort of numbness held him most of that dreadful interval, and no clear
+thought came at all. Every ten seconds his head turned towards the door
+that rattled, seemed to move, yet never opened. But any moment now it
+_must_ open, and he would be in her very presence, breathing the same
+air with her. He would see her, charge himself with her beauty once more
+to the brim, and then go out again into the wilderness--the wilderness
+of life--without her, and not for a mere ten years but for always. She
+was so utterly beyond his reach. He felt like a backwoodsman, he was a
+backwoodsman.
+
+For one thing only was he duly prepared, though he thought about it
+little enough--she would, of course, have changed. The photograph he
+owned, cut from an illustrated paper, was not true now. It might even be
+a little shock perhaps. He must remember that. Ten years cannot pass
+over a woman without--
+
+Before he knew it the door was open, and she was advancing quietly
+towards him across the thick carpet that deadened sound. With both hands
+outstretched she came, and with the sweetest welcoming smile upon her
+parted lips he had seen in any human face. Her eyes were soft with joy.
+His whole heart leaped within him; for the instant he saw her it all
+flashed clear as sunlight--that she knew and understood. She had always
+known, had always understood. Speech came easily to him in a flood, had
+he needed it, but he did not need it. It was all so adorably easy,
+simple, natural, and true. He just took her hands--those welcoming,
+outstretched hands--in both of his own, and led her to the nearest sofa.
+He was not even surprised at himself. Inevitably, out of depths of
+truth, this meeting came about. And he uttered a little foolish
+commonplace, because he feared the huge revulsion that his sudden glory
+brought, and loved to taste it slowly:
+
+"So you live here still?"
+
+"Here, and here," she answered softly, touching his heart, and then her
+own. "I am attached to this house, too, because _you_ used to come and
+see me here, and because it was here I waited so long for you, and still
+wait. I shall never leave it--unless you change. You see, we live
+together here."
+
+He said nothing. He leaned forward to take and hold her. The abrupt
+knowledge of it all somehow did not seem abrupt--it was as though he had
+known it always; and the complete disclosure did not seem disclosure
+either--rather as though she told him something he had inexplicably left
+unrealized, yet not forgotten. He felt absolutely master of himself,
+yet, in a curious sense, outside of himself at the same time. His arms
+were already open--when she gently held her hands up to prevent. He
+heard a faint sound outside the door.
+
+"But you are free," he cried, his great passion breaking out and
+flooding him, yet most oddly well controlled, "and I--"
+
+She interrupted him in the softest, quietest whisper he had ever heard:
+
+"You are not free, as I am free--not yet."
+
+The sound outside came suddenly closer. It was a step. There was a faint
+click on the handle of the door. In a flash, then, came the dreadful
+shock that overwhelmed him--the abrupt realization of the truth that was
+somehow horrible--that Time, all these years, had left no mark upon her
+and that _she had not changed_. Her face was as young as when he saw her
+last.
+
+With it there came cold and darkness into the great room. He shivered
+with cold, but an alien, unaccountable cold. Some great shadow dropped
+upon the entire earth, and though but a second could have passed before
+the handle actually turned, and the other person entered, it seemed to
+him like several minutes. He heard her saying this amazing thing that
+was question, answer, and forgiveness all in one--this, at least, he
+divined before the ghastly interruption came--"But, George--if you had
+only spoken--!"
+
+With ice in his blood he heard the butler saying that her ladyship would
+be "pleased" to see him if he had finished his tea and would be "so good
+as to bring the papers and documents upstairs with him." He had just
+sufficient control of certain muscles to stand upright and murmur that
+he would come. He rose from a sofa that held no one but himself. All at
+once he staggered. He really did not know exactly what happened, or how
+he managed to stammer out the medley of excuses and semi-explanations
+that battered their way through his brain and issued somehow in definite
+words from his lips. Somehow or other he accomplished it. The sudden
+attack, the faintness, the collapse!... He vaguely remembered
+afterwards--with amazement too--the suavity of the butler as he
+suggested telephoning for a doctor, and that he just managed to forbid
+it, refusing the offered glass of brandy as well, remembered contriving
+to stumble into the taxicab and give his hotel address with a final
+explanation that he would call another day and "bring the papers." It
+was quite clear that his telegram had been attributed to someone else,
+someone "with papers"--perhaps a solicitor or architect. His name was
+such an ordinary one, there were so many Smiths. It was also clear that
+she whom he had come to see and _had_ seen, no longer lived here in the
+flesh....
+
+And just as he left the hall he had the vision--mere fleeting glimpse it
+was--of a tall, slim, girlish figure on the stairs asking if anything
+was wrong, and realized vaguely through his atrocious pain that she was,
+of course, the wife of the son who had inherited....
+
+
+
+
+JOSEPH: A STORY
+
+BY KATHERINE RICKFORD
+
+
+They were sitting round the fire after dinner--not an ordinary fire--one
+of those fires that has a little room all to itself with seats at each
+side of it to hold a couple of people or three.
+
+The big dining room was paneled with oak. At the far end was a handsome
+dresser that dated back for generations. One's imagination ran riot when
+one pictured the people who must have laid those pewter plates on the
+long, narrow, solid table. Massive medieval chests stood against the
+walls. Arms and parts of armor hung against the panelling; but one
+noticed few of these things, for there was no light in the room save
+what the fire gave.
+
+It was Christmas Eve. Games had been played. The old had vied with the
+young at snatching raisins from the burning snapdragon. The children had
+long since gone to bed; it was time their elders followed them, but they
+lingered round the fire, taking turns at telling stories. Nothing very
+weird had been told; no one had felt any wish to peep over his shoulder
+or try to penetrate the darkness of the far end of the room; the
+omission caused a sensation of something wanting. From each one there
+this thought went out, and so a sudden silence fell upon the party. It
+was a girl who broke it--a mere child; she wore her hair up that night
+for the first time, and that seemed to give her the right to sit up so
+late.
+
+"Mr. Grady is going to tell one," she said.
+
+All eyes were turned to a middle-aged man in a deep armchair placed
+straight in front of the fire. He was short, inclined to be fat, with a
+bald head and a pointed beard like the beards that sailors wear. It was
+plain that he was deeply conscious of the sudden turning of so much
+strained yet forceful thought upon himself. He was restless in his chair
+as people are in a room that is overheated. He blinked his eyes as he
+looked round the company. His lips twitched in a nervous manner. One
+side of him seemed to be endeavoring to restrain another side of him
+from a feverish desire to speak.
+
+"It was this room that made me think of him," he said thoughtfully.
+
+There was a long silence, but it occurred to no one to prompt him. Every
+one seemed to understand that he was going to speak, or rather that
+something inside him was going to speak, some force that craved
+expression and was using him as a medium.
+
+The little old man's pink face grew strangely calm, the animation that
+usually lit it was gone. One would have said that the girl who had
+started him already regretted the impulse, and now wanted to stop him.
+She was breathing heavily, and once or twice made as though she would
+speak to him, but no words came. She must have abandoned the idea, for
+she fell to studying the company. She examined them carefully, one by
+one. "This one," she told herself, "is so-and-so, and that one there
+just another so-and-so." She stared at them, knowing that she could not
+turn them to herself with her stare. They were just bodies kept working,
+so to speak, by some subtle sort of sentry left behind by the real
+selves that streamed out in pent-up thought to the little old man in the
+chair in front of the fire.
+
+"His name was Joseph; at least they called him Joseph. He dreamed, you
+understand--dreams. He was an extraordinary lad in many ways. His
+mother--I knew her very well--had three children in quick succession,
+soon after marriage; then ten years went by and Joseph was born. Quiet
+and reserved he always was, a self-contained child whose only friend was
+his mother. People said things about him, you know how people talk. Some
+said he was not Clara's child at all, but that she had adopted him;
+others, that her husband was not his father, and these put her change of
+manner down to a perpetual struggle to keep her husband comfortably in
+the dark. I always imagined that the boy was in some way aware of all
+this gossip, for I noticed that he took a dislike to the people who
+spread it most."
+
+The little man rested his elbows on the arms of his chair and let the
+tips of his fingers meet in front of him. A smile played about his
+mouth. He seemed to be searching among his reminiscences for the one
+that would give the clearest portrait of Joseph.
+
+"Well, anyway," he said at last, "the boy was odd, there is no
+gainsaying the fact. I suppose he was eleven when Clara came down here
+with her family for Christmas. The Coningtons owned the place then--Mrs.
+Conington was Clara's sister. It was Christmas Eve, as it is now, many
+years ago. We had spent a normal Christmas Eve; a little happier,
+perhaps, than usual by reason of the family re-union and because of the
+presence of so many children. We had eaten and drank, laughed and played
+and gone to bed.
+
+"I woke in the middle of the night from sheer restlessness. Clara,
+knowing my weakness, had given me a fire in my room. I lit a cigarette,
+played with a book, and then, purely from curiosity, opened the door and
+looked down the passage. From my door I could see the head of the
+staircase in the distance; the opposite wing of the house, or the
+passage rather beyond the stairs, was in darkness. The reason I saw the
+staircase at all was that the window you pass coming downstairs allowed
+the moon to throw an uncertain light upon it, a weird light because of
+the stained glass. I was arrested by the curious effect of this patch of
+light in so much darkness when suddenly someone came into it, turned,
+and went downstairs. It was just like a scene in a theater; something
+was about to happen that I was going to miss. I ran as I was,
+barefooted, to the head of the stairs and looked over the banister. I
+was excited, strung up, too strung up to feel the fright that I knew
+must be with me. I remember the sensation perfectly. I knew that I was
+afraid, yet I did not feel fright.
+
+"On the stairs nothing moved. The little hall down here was lost in
+darkness. Looking over the banister I was facing the stained glass
+window. You know how the stairs run around three sides of the hall;
+well, it occurred to me that if I went halfway down and stood under the
+window I should be able to keep the top of the stairs in sight and see
+anything that might happen in the hall. I crept down very cautiously and
+waited under the window. First of all, I saw the suit of empty armor
+just outside the door here. You know how a thing like that, if you stare
+at it in a poor light, appears to move; well, it moved sure enough, and
+the illusion was enhanced by clouds being blown across the moon. By the
+fire like this one can talk of these things rationally, but in the dead
+of night it is a different matter, so I went down a few steps to make
+sure of that armor, when suddenly something passed me on the stairs. I
+did not hear it, I did not see it, I sensed it in no way, I just knew
+that something had passed me on its way upstairs. I realized that my
+retreat was cut off, and with the knowledge fear came upon me.
+
+"I had seen someone come down the stairs; that, at any rate, was
+definite; now I wanted to see him again. Any ghost is bad enough, but a
+ghost that one can see is better than one that one can't. I managed to
+get past the suit of armor, but then I had to feel my way to these
+double doors here."
+
+He indicated the direction of the doors by a curious wave of his hand.
+He did not look toward them nor did any of the party. Both men and women
+were completely absorbed in his story; they seemed to be mesmerized by
+the earnestness of his manner. Only the girl was restless; she gave an
+impression of impatience with the slowness with which he came to his
+point. One would have said that she was apart from her fellows, an alien
+among strangers.
+
+"So dense was the darkness that I made sure of finding the first door
+closed, but it was not, it was wide open, and, standing between them, I
+could feel that the other was open, too. I was standing literally in the
+wall of the house, and as I peered into the room, trying to make out
+some familiar object, thoughts ran through my mind of people who had
+been bricked up in walls and left there to die. For a moment I caught
+the spirit of the inside of a thick wall. Then suddenly I felt the
+sensation I have often read about but never experienced before: I knew
+there was some one in the room. You are surprised, yes, but wait! I knew
+more: I knew that some one was conscious of my presence. It occurred to
+me that whoever it was might want to get out of the door. I made room
+for him to pass. I waited for him, made sure of him, began to feel
+giddy, and then a man's voice, deep and clear:
+
+"'There is some one there; who is it?'
+
+"I answered mechanically, 'George Grady.'
+
+"'I'm Joseph.'
+
+"A match was drawn across a matchbox, and I saw the boy bending over a
+candle waiting for the wick to catch. For a moment I thought he must be
+walking in his sleep, but he turned to me quite naturally and said in
+his own boyish voice:
+
+"'Lost anything?'
+
+"I was amazed at the lad's complete calm. I wanted to share my fright
+with some one, instead I had to hide it from this boy. I was conscious
+of a curious sense of shame. I had watched him grow, taught him, praised
+him, scolded him, and yet here he was waiting for an explanation of my
+presence in the dining room at that odd hour of the night.
+
+"Soon he repeated the question, 'Lost anything?'
+
+"'No,' I said, and then I stammered, 'Have you?'
+
+"'No,' he said with a little laugh. 'It's that room, I can't sleep in
+it.'
+
+"'Oh,' I said. 'What's the matter with the room?'
+
+"'It's the room I was killed in,' he said quite simply.
+
+"Of course I had heard about his dreams, but I had had no direct
+experience of them; when, therefore, he said that he had been killed in
+his room I took it for granted that he had been dreaming again. I was at
+a loss to know quite how to tackle him; whether to treat the whole thing
+as absurd and laugh it off as such, or whether to humor him and hear his
+story. I got him upstairs to my room, sat him in a big armchair, and
+poked the fire into a blaze.
+
+"'You've been dreaming again,' I said bluntly.
+
+"'Oh, no I haven't. Don't you run away with that idea.'
+
+"His whole manner was so grown up that it was quite unthinkable to treat
+him as the child he really was. In fact, it was a little uncanny, this
+man in a child's frame.
+
+"'I was killed there,' he said again.
+
+"'How do you mean, killed?' I asked him.
+
+"'Why, killed--murdered. Of course it was years and years ago, I can't
+say when; still I remember the room. I suppose it was the room that
+reminded me of the incident.'
+
+"'Incident?' I exclaimed.
+
+"'What else? Being killed is only an incident in the existence of any
+one. One makes a fuss about it at the time, of course, but really when
+you come to think of it....'
+
+"'Tell me about it,' I said, lighting a cigarette. He lit one too, that
+child, and began.
+
+"'You know my room is the only modern one in this old house. Nobody
+knows why it is modern. The reason is obvious. Of course it was made
+modern after I was killed there. The funny thing is that I should have
+been put there. I suppose it was done for a purpose, because I--I----'
+
+"He looked at me so fixedly I knew he would catch me if I lied.
+
+"'What?' I asked.
+
+"'Dream.'
+
+"'Yes,' I said, 'that is why you were put there.'
+
+"'I thought so, and yet of all the rooms--but then, of course, no one
+knew. Anyhow I did not recognize the room until after I was in bed. I
+had been asleep some time and then I woke suddenly. There is an old
+wheel-back chair there--the only old thing in the room. It is standing
+facing the fire as it must have stood the night I was killed. The fire
+was burning brightly, the pattern of the back of the chair was thrown in
+shadow across the ceiling. Now the night I was murdered the conditions
+were exactly the same, so directly I saw that pattern on the ceiling I
+remembered the whole thing. I was not dreaming, don't think it, I was
+not. What happened that night was this: I was lying in bed counting the
+parts of the back of that chair in shadow on the ceiling. I probably
+could not get to sleep, you know the sort of thing, count up to a
+thousand and remember in the morning where you got to. Well, I was
+counting those pieces when suddenly they were all obliterated, the whole
+back became a shadow, some one was sitting in the chair. Now, surely,
+you understand that directly I saw the shadow of that chair on the
+ceiling to-night I realized that I had not a moment to lose. At any
+moment that same person might come back to that same chair and escape
+would be impossible. I slipped from my bed as quickly as I could and ran
+downstairs.'
+
+"'But were you not afraid,' I asked, 'downstairs?'
+
+"'That she might follow me? It was a woman, you know. No, I don't think
+I was. She does not belong downstairs. Anyhow she didn't.'
+
+"'No,' I said. 'No.'
+
+"My voice must have been out of control, for he caught me up at once.
+
+"'You don't mean to say you saw her?' he said vehemently.
+
+"'Oh, no.'
+
+"'You felt her?'
+
+"'She passed me as I came downstairs,' I said.
+
+"'What can I have done to her that she follows me so?' He buried his
+face in his hands as though searching for an answer to his thought.
+Suddenly he looked up and stared at me.
+
+"'Where had I got to? Oh yes, the murder. I can remember how startled I
+was to see that shadow in the chair--startled, you know, but not really
+frightened. I leaned up in bed and looked at the chair, and sure enough
+a woman was sitting in it--a young woman. I watched her with a profound
+interest until she began to turn in her chair, as I felt, to look at me;
+when she did that I shrank back in bed. I dared not meet her eyes. She
+might not have had eyes, she might not have had a face. You know the
+sort of pictures that one sees when one glances back at all one's soul
+has ever thought.
+
+"'I got back in the bed as far as I could and peeped over the sheets at
+the shadow on the ceiling. I was tired; frightened to death; I grew
+weary of watching. I must have fallen asleep, for suddenly the fire was
+almost out, the pattern of the chair barely discernible, the shadow had
+gone. I raised myself with a sense of huge relief. Yes, the chair was
+empty, but, just think of it, the woman was on the floor, on her hands
+and knees, crawling toward the bed.
+
+"'I fell back stricken with terror.
+
+"'Very soon I felt a gentle pull at the counterpane. I thought I was in
+a nightmare but too lazy or too comfortable to try to wake myself from
+it. I waited in an agony of suspense, but nothing seemed to be
+happening, in fact I had just persuaded myself that the movement of the
+counterpane was fancy when a hand brushed softly over my knee. There was
+no mistaking it, I could feel the long, thin fingers. Now was the time
+to do something. I tried to rouse myself, but all my efforts were
+futile, I was stiff from head to foot.
+
+"'Although the hand was lost to me, outwardly, it now came within my
+range of knowledge, if you know what I mean. I knew that it was groping
+its way along the bed feeling for some other part of me. At any moment I
+could have said exactly where it had got to. When it was hovering just
+over my chest another hand knocked lightly against my shoulder. I
+fancied it lost, and wandering in search of its fellow.
+
+"'I was lying on my back staring at the ceiling when the hands met; the
+weight of their presence brought a feeling of oppression to my chest. I
+seemed to be completely cut off from my body; I had no sort of
+connection with any part of it, nothing about me would respond to my
+will to make it move.
+
+"'There was no sound at all anywhere.
+
+"'I fell into a state of indifference, a sort of patient indifference
+that can wait for an appointed time to come. How long I waited I cannot
+say, but when the time came it found me ready. I was not taken by
+surprise.
+
+"'There was a great upward rush of pent-up force released; it was like a
+mighty mass of men who have been lost in prayer rising to their feet. I
+can't remember clearly, but I think the woman must have got on to my
+bed. I could not follow her distinctly, my whole attention was
+concentrated on her hands. At the time I felt those fingers itching for
+my throat.
+
+"'At last they moved; slowly at first, then quicker; and then a
+long-drawn swish like the sound of an over-bold wave that has broken too
+far up the beach and is sweeping back to join the sea.'
+
+"The boy was silent for a moment, then he stretched out his hand for the
+cigarettes.
+
+"'You remember nothing else?' I asked him.
+
+"'No,' he said. 'The next thing I remember clearly is deliberately
+breaking the nursery window because it was raining and mother would not
+let me go out.'"
+
+There was a moment's tension, then the strain of listening passed and
+every one seemed to be speaking at once. The Rector was taking the story
+seriously.
+
+"Tell me, Grady," he said. "How long do you suppose elapsed between the
+boy's murder and his breaking the nursery window?"
+
+But a young married woman in the first flush of her happiness broke in
+between them. She ridiculed the whole idea. Of course the boy was
+dreaming. She was drawing the majority to her way of thinking when, from
+the corner where the girl sat, a hollow-sounding voice:
+
+"And the boy? Where is he?"
+
+The tone of the girl's voice inspired horror, that fear that does not
+know what it is it fears; one could see it on every face; on every face,
+that is, but the face of the bald-headed little man; there was no horror
+on his face; he was smiling serenely as he looked the girl straight in
+the eyes.
+
+"He's a man now," he said.
+
+"Alive?" she cried.
+
+"Why not?" said the little old man, rubbing his hands together.
+
+She tried to rise, but her frock had got caught between the chairs and
+pulled her to her seat again. The man next her put out his hand to
+steady her, but she dashed it away roughly. She looked round the party
+for an instant for all the world like an animal at bay, then she sprang
+to her feet and charged blindly. They crowded round her to prevent her
+falling; at the touch of their hands she stopped. She was out of breath
+as though she had been running.
+
+"All right," she said, pushing their hands from her. "All right. I'll
+come quietly. I did it."
+
+They caught her as she fell and laid her on the sofa watching the color
+fade from her face.
+
+The hostess, an old woman with white hair and a kind face, approached
+the little old man; for once in her life she was roused to anger.
+
+"I can't think how you could be so stupid," she said. "See what you have
+done."
+
+"I did it for a purpose," he said.
+
+"For a purpose?"
+
+"I have always thought that girl was the culprit. I have to thank you
+for the opportunity you have given me of making sure."
+
+
+
+
+THE CLAVECIN, BRUGES[4]
+
+BY GEORGE WHARTON EDWARDS
+
+[Footnote 4: By permission of The Century Co.]
+
+
+A silent, grass-grown market-place, upon the uneven stones of which the
+sabots of a passing peasant clatter loudly. A group of sleepy-looking
+soldiers in red trousers lolling about the wide portal of the Belfry,
+which rears aloft against the pearly sky
+
+    All the height it has
+    Of ancient stone.
+
+As the chime ceases there lingers for a space a faint musical hum in the
+air; the stones seem to carry and retain the melody; one is loath to
+move for fear of losing some part of the harmony.
+
+I feel an indescribable impulse to climb the four hundred odd steps;
+incomprehensible, for I detest steeple-climbing, and have no patience
+with steeple-climbers.
+
+Before I realize it, I am at the stairs. "Hold, sir!" from behind me.
+"It is forbidden." In wretched French a weazen-faced little soldier
+explains that repairs are about to be made in the tower, in consequence
+of which visitors are forbidden. A franc removes this military obstacle,
+and I press on.
+
+At the top of the stairs is an old Flemish woman shelling peas, while
+over her shoulder peeps a tame magpie. A savory odor of stewing
+vegetables fills the air.
+
+"What do you wish, sir?" Many shrugs, gesticulations, and sighs of
+objurgation, which are covered by a shining new five-franc piece, and
+she produces a bunch of keys. As the door closes upon me the magpie
+gives a hoarse, gleeful squawk.
+
+... A huge, dim room with a vaulted ceiling. Against the wall lean
+ancient stone statues, noseless and disfigured, crowned and sceptered
+effigies of forgotten lords and ladies of Flanders. High up on the wall
+two slitted Gothic windows, through which the violet light of day is
+streaming. I hear the gentle coo of pigeons. To the right a low door,
+some vanishing steps of stone, and a hanging hand-rope. Before I have
+taken a dozen steps upward I am lost in the darkness; the steps are worn
+hollow and sloping, the rope is slippery--seems to have been waxed, so
+smooth has it become by handling. Four hundred steps and over; I have
+lost track of the number, and stumble giddily upward round and round the
+slender stone shaft. I am conscious of low openings from time to
+time--openings to what? I do not know. A damp smell exhales from them,
+and the air is cold upon my face as I pass them. At last a dim light
+above. With the next turn a blinding glare of light, a moment's
+blankness, then a vast panorama gradually dawns upon me. Through the
+frame of stonework is a vast reach of grayish green bounded by the
+horizon, an immense shield embossed with silvery lines of waterways, and
+studded with clustering red-tiled roofs. A rim of pale yellow
+appears--the sand-dunes that line the coast--and dimly beyond a grayish
+film, evanescent, flashing--the North Sea.
+
+Something flies through the slit from which I am gazing, and following
+its flight upward, I see a long beam crossing the gallery, whereon are
+perched an array of jackdaws gazing down upon me in wonder.
+
+I am conscious of a rhythmic movement about me that stirs the air, a
+mysterious, beating, throbbing sound, the machinery of the clock, which
+some one has described as a "heart of iron beating in a breast of
+stone."
+
+I lean idly in the narrow slit, gazing at the softened landscape, the
+exquisite harmony of the greens, grays, and browns, the lazily turning
+arms of far-off mills, reminders of Cuyp, Van der Velde, Teniers,
+shadowy, mysterious recollections. I am conscious of uttering aloud some
+commonplaces of delight. A slight and sudden movement behind me, a
+smothered cough. A little old man in a black velvet coat stands looking
+up at me, twisting and untwisting his hands. There are ruffles at his
+throat and wrists, and an amused smile spreads over his face, which is
+cleanly shaven, of the color of wax, with a tiny network of red lines
+over the cheek-bones, as if the blood had been forced there by some
+excess of passion and had remained. He has heard my sentimental
+ejaculation. I am conscious of the absurdity of the situation, and move
+aside for him to pass. He makes a courteous gesture with one ruffled
+hand.
+
+There comes a prodigious rattling and grinding noise from above--then a
+jangle of bells, some half-dozen notes in all. At the first stroke the
+old man closes his eyes, throws back his head, and follows the rhythm
+with his long white hands, as though playing a piano. The sound dies
+away; the place becomes painfully silent; still the regular motion of
+the old man's hands continues. A creepy, shivery feeling runs up and
+down my spine; a fear of which I am ashamed seizes upon me.
+
+"Fine pells, sare," says the little old man, suddenly dropping his
+hands, and fixing his eyes upon me. "You sall not hear such pells in
+your countree. But stay not here; come wis me, and I will show you the
+clavecin. You sall not see the clavecin yet? No?"
+
+I had not, of course, and thanked him.
+
+"You sall see Melchior, Melchior t'e Groote, t'e magnif'."
+
+As he spoke we entered a room quite filled with curious machinery, a
+medley of levers, wires, and rope above; below, two large cylinders
+studded with shining brass points.
+
+He sprang among the wires with a spidery sort of agility, caught one,
+pulled and hung upon it with, all his weight. There came a r-r-r-r-r-r
+of fans and wheels, followed by a shower of dust; slowly one great
+cylinder began to revolve; wires and ropes reaching into the gloom above
+began to twitch convulsively; faintly came the jangle of far-off bells.
+Then came a pause, then a deafening _boom_, that well nigh stunned me.
+As the waves of sound came and went, the little old man twisted and
+untwisted his hands in delight, and ejaculated, "Melchior you haf
+heeard, Melchior t'e Groote--t'e bourdon."
+
+I wanted to examine the machinery, but he impatiently seized my arm and
+almost dragged me away saying, "I will skow you--I will skow you. Come
+wis me."
+
+From a pocket he produced a long brass key and unlocked a door covered
+with red leather, disclosing an up-leading flight of steps to which he
+pushed me. It gave upon an octagon-shaped room with a curious floor of
+sheet-lead. Around the wall ran a seat under the diamond-paned Gothic
+windows. From their shape I knew them to be the highest in the tower. I
+had seen them from the square below many times, with the framework above
+upon which hung row upon row of bells.
+
+In the middle of the room was a rude sort of keyboard, with pedals
+below, like those of a large organ. Fronting this construction sat a
+long, high-backed bench. On the rack over the keyboard rested some
+sheets of music, which, upon examination, I found to be of parchment and
+written by hand. The notes were curious in shape, consisting of squares
+of black and diamonds of red upon the lines. Across the top of the page
+was written, in a straggling hand, "Van den Gheyn Nikolaas." I turned to
+the little old man with the ruffles. "Van den Gheyn!" I said in
+surprise, pointing to the parchment. "Why, that is the name of the most
+celebrated of _carillonneurs_, Van den Gheyn of Louvain." He untwisted
+his hands and bowed. "Eet ees ma name, mynheer--I am the
+_carillonneur_."
+
+I fancied that my face showed all too plainly the incredulity I felt,
+for his darkened, and he muttered, "You not belief, Engelsch? Ah, I show
+you; then you belief, parehap," and with astounding agility seated
+himself upon the bench before the clavecin, turned up the ruffles at his
+wrists, and literally threw himself upon the keys. A sound of thunder
+accompanied by a vivid flash of lightning filled the air, even as the
+first notes of the bells reached my ears. Involuntarily I glanced out of
+the diamond-leaded window--dark clouds were all about us, the housetops
+and surrounding country were no longer to be seen. A blinding flash of
+lightning seemed to fill the room; the arms and legs of the little old
+man sought the keys and pedals with inconceivable rapidity; the music
+crashed about us with a deafening din, to the accompaniment of the
+thunder, which seemed to sound in unison with the boom of the bourdon.
+It was grandly terrible. The face of the little old man was turned upon
+me, but his eyes were closed. He seemed to find the pedals intuitively,
+and at every peal of thunder, which shook the tower to its foundations,
+he would open his mouth, a toothless cavern, and shout aloud. I could
+not hear the sounds for the crashing of the bells. Finally, with a last
+deafening crash of iron rods and thunderbolts, the noise of the bells
+gradually died away. Instinctively I had glanced above when the crash
+came, half expecting to see the roof torn off.
+
+"I think we had better go down," I said. "This tower has been struck by
+lightning several times, and I imagine that discretion--"
+
+I don't know what more I said, for my eyes rested upon the empty bench,
+and the bare rack where the music had been. The clavecin was one mass of
+twisted iron rods, tangled wires, and decayed, worm-eaten woodwork; the
+little old man had disappeared. I rushed to the red leather-covered
+door; it was fast. I shook it in a veritable terror; it would not yield.
+With a bound I reached the ruined clavecin, seized one of the pedals,
+and tore it away from the machine. The end was armed with an iron point.
+This I inserted between the lock and the door. I twisted the lock from
+the worm-eaten wood with one turn of the wrist, the door opened, and I
+almost fell down the steep steps. The second door at the bottom was
+also closed. I threw my weight against it once, twice; it gave, and I
+half slipped, half ran down the winding steps in the darkness.
+
+Out at last into the fresh air of the lower passage! At the noise I made
+in closing the ponderous door came forth the old _custode_.
+
+In my excitement I seized her by the arm, saying, "Who was the little
+old man in the black velvet coat with the ruffles? Where is he?"
+
+She looked at me in a stupid manner. "Who is he," I repeated--"the
+little old man who played the clavecin?"
+
+"Little old man, sir? I don't know," said the crone. "There has been no
+one in the tower to-day but yourself."
+
+
+
+
+LIGEIA
+
+BY EDGAR ALLAN POE
+
+     "And the will therein lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth the
+     mysteries of the will, with its vigor? For God is but a great
+     will prevading all things by nature of its intentness. Man doth
+     not yield himself to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save
+     only through the weakness of his feeble will."--JOSEPH
+     GLANVILL.
+
+
+I cannot, for my soul, remember how, when, or even precisely where, I
+first became acquainted with the lady Ligeia. Long years have since
+elapsed, and my memory is feeble through much suffering. Or, perhaps, I
+cannot _now_ bring these points to mind, because, in truth, the
+character of my beloved, her rare learning, her singular yet placid
+caste of beauty, and the thrilling and enthralling eloquence of her low
+musical language, made their way into my heart by paces so steadily and
+stealthily progressive, that they have been unnoticed and unknown. Yet I
+believe that I met her first and most frequently in some large, old,
+decaying city near the Rhine. Of her family I have surely heard her
+speak. That it is of a remotely ancient date cannot be doubted. Ligeia!
+Ligeia! Buried in studies of a nature more than all else adapted to
+deaden impressions of the outward world, it is by that sweet word
+alone--by Ligeia--that I bring before mine eyes in fancy the image of
+her who is no more. And now, while I write, a recollection flashes upon
+me that I have _never known_ the paternal name of her who was my friend
+and my betrothed, and who became the partner of my studies, and finally
+the wife of my bosom. Was it a playful charge on the part of my Ligeia?
+Or was it a test of my strength of affection, that I should institute no
+inquiries upon this point? Or was it rather a caprice of my own--a
+wildly romantic offering on the shrine of the most passionate devotion?
+I but indistinctly recall the fact itself--what wonder that I have
+utterly forgotten the circumstances which originated or attended it?
+And, indeed, if ever that spirit which is entitled Romance--if ever she,
+the wan and the misty-winged Ashtophet of idolatrous Egypt--presided, as
+they tell, over marriages ill-omened, then most surely she presided over
+mine.
+
+There is one dear topic, however, on which my memory fails me not. It is
+the _person_ of Ligeia. In stature she was tall, somewhat slender, and,
+in her latter days, even emaciated. I would in vain attempt to portray
+the majesty, the quiet ease of her demeanor, or the incomprehensible
+lightness and elasticity of her footfall. She came and departed as a
+shadow. I was never made aware of her entrance into my closed study,
+save by the dear music of her low sweet voice, as she placed her marble
+hand upon my shoulder. In beauty of face no maiden ever equalled her. It
+was the radiance of an opium-dream--an airy and spirit-lifting vision
+more wildly divine than the fantasies which hovered about the slumbering
+souls of the daughters of Delos. Yet her features were not of that
+regular mould which we have been falsely taught to worship in the
+classical labors of the heathen. "There is no exquisite beauty," says
+Bacon, Lord Verulam, speaking truly of all the forms and _genera_
+of beauty, "without some strangeness in the proportion." Yet,
+although I saw that the features of Ligeia were not of a classic
+regularity--although I perceived that her loveliness was indeed
+exquisite and felt that there was much of strangeness pervading it--yet
+I have tried in vain to detect the irregularity and to trace home my own
+perception of "the strange." I examined the contour of the lofty and
+pale forehead; it was faultless--how cold indeed that word when applied
+to a majesty so divine--the skin rivalling the purest ivory; the
+commanding extent and repose, the gentle prominence of the regions above
+the temples; and then the raven-black, the glossy, the luxuriant and
+naturally-curling tresses, setting forth the full force of the Homeric
+epithet, "hyacinthine"! I looked at the delicate outlines of the nose,
+and nowhere but in the graceful medallions of the Hebrews had I beheld a
+similar perfection. There were the same luxurious smoothness of surface,
+the same scarcely perceptible tendency to the aquiline, the same
+harmoniously curved nostrils speaking the free spirit. I regarded the
+sweet mouth. Here was indeed the triumph of all things heavenly--the
+magnificent turn of the short upper lip, the soft, voluptuous slumber of
+the under, the dimples which sported, and the color which spoke, the
+teeth glancing back, with a brilliancy almost startling, every ray of
+the holy light which fell upon them in her serene and placid, yet most
+exultingly radiant of all smiles. I scrutinized the formation of the
+chin, and here, too, I found the gentleness of breadth, the softness
+and the majesty, the fulness and the spirituality of the Greek--the
+contour which the god Apollo revealed but in a dream, to Cleomenes, the
+son of the Athenian. And then I peered into the large eyes of Ligeia.
+
+For eyes we have no models in the remotely antique. It might have been,
+too, that in these eyes of my beloved lay the secret to which Lord
+Verulam alludes. They were, I must believe, far larger than the ordinary
+eyes of our own race. They were even fuller than the fullest of the
+gazelle eyes of the tribe of the valley of Nourjahad. Yet it was only at
+intervals--in moments of intense excitement--that this peculiarity
+became more than slightly noticeable in Ligeia. And at such moments was
+her beauty--in my heated fancy thus it appeared perhaps--the beauty of
+beings either above or apart from the earth--the beauty of the fabulous
+Houri of the Turk. The hue of the orbs was the most brilliant of black,
+and far over them hung jetty lashes of great length. The brows, slightly
+irregular in outline, had the same tint. The "strangeness," however,
+which I found in the eyes, was of a nature distinct from the formation,
+or the color, or the brilliancy of the features, and must, after all, be
+referred to the expression. Ah, word of no meaning, behind whose vast
+latitude of mere sound we intrench our ignorance of so much of the
+spiritual! The expression of the eyes of Ligeia! How for long hours have
+I pondered upon it! How have I, through the whole of a midsummer night,
+struggled to fathom it! What was it--that something more profound than
+the well of Democritus--which lay far within the pupils of my beloved?
+What _was_ it? I was possessed with a passion to discover. Those eyes,
+those large, those shining, those divine orbs--they became to me twin
+stars of Leda, and I to them devoutest of astrologers.
+
+There is no point, among the many incomprehensible anomalies of the
+science of mind, more thrillingly exciting than the fact--never, I
+believe, noticed in the schools--that in our endeavors to recall to
+memory something long forgotten, we often find ourselves upon the very
+verge of remembrance, without being able, in the end, to remember. And
+thus how frequently, in my intense scrutiny of Ligeia's eyes, have I
+felt approaching the full knowledge of their expression--felt it
+approaching, yet not quite be mine--and so at length entirely depart!
+And (strange, oh strangest mystery of all!) I found in the commonest
+objects of the universe, a circle of analogies to that expression. I
+mean to say that, subsequently to the period when Ligeia's beauty passed
+into my spirit, there dwelling as in a shrine, I derived from many
+existences in the material world a sentiment such as I felt always
+around, within me, by her large and luminous orbs. Yet not the more
+could I define that sentiment, or analyze, or even steadily view it. I
+recognized it, let me repeat, sometimes in the survey of a
+rapidly-growing vine, in the contemplation of a moth, a butterfly, a
+chrysalis, a stream of running water. I have felt it in the ocean, in
+the falling of a meteor. I have felt it in the glances of unusually aged
+people. And there are one or two stars in heaven, (one especially, a
+star of the sixth magnitude, double and changeable, to be found near the
+large star in Lyra) in a telescopic scrutiny of which I have been made
+aware of the feeling. I have been filled with it by certain sounds from
+stringed instruments, and not unfrequently by passages from books. Among
+innumerable other instances, I well remember something in a volume of
+Joseph Glanvill, which (perhaps merely from its quaintness--who shall
+say?) never failed to inspire me with the sentiment: "And the will
+therein lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth the mysteries of the will,
+with its vigor? For God is but a great will pervading all things by
+nature of its intentness. Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto
+death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will."
+
+Length of years and subsequent reflection have enabled me to trace,
+indeed, some remote connection between this passage in the English
+moralist and a portion of the character of Ligeia. An intensity in
+thought, action, or speech was possibly, in her, a result or at least an
+index of that gigantic volition which, during our long intercourse,
+failed to give other and more immediate evidence of its existence. Of
+all the women whom I have ever known, she--the outwardly calm, the
+ever-placid Ligeia--was the most violently a prey to the tumultuous
+vultures of stern passion. And of such passion I could form no estimate,
+save by the miraculous expansion of those eyes which at once so
+delighted and appalled me, by the almost magical melody, modulation,
+distinctness, and placidity of her very low voice, and by the fierce
+energy (rendered doubly effective by contrast with her manner of
+utterance) of the wild words which she habitually uttered.
+
+I have spoken of the learning of Ligeia; it was immense, such as I have
+never known in woman. In the classical tongues was she deeply
+proficient, and as far as my own acquaintance extended in regard to the
+modern dialects of Europe, I have never known her at fault. Indeed upon
+any theme of the most admired, because simply the most abstruse of the
+boasted erudition of the academy, have I ever found Ligeia at fault? How
+singularly, how thrillingly, this one point in the nature of my wife has
+forced itself, at this late period only, upon my attention! I said her
+knowledge was such as I have never known in woman--but where breathes
+the man who has traversed, and successfully, all the wide areas of
+moral, physical, and mathematical science? I saw not then what I now
+clearly perceive, that the acquisitions of Ligeia were gigantic, were
+astounding; yet I was sufficiently aware of her infinite supremacy to
+resign myself, with a child-like confidence, to her guidance through the
+chaotic world of metaphysical investigation at which I was most busily
+occupied during the earlier years of our marriage. With how vast a
+triumph, with how vivid a delight, with how much of all that is ethereal
+in hope, did I feel, as she bent over me in studies but little
+sought--but less known--that delicious vista by slow degrees expanding
+before me, down whose long, gorgeous, and all untrodden path I might at
+length pass onward to the goal of a wisdom too divinely precious not to
+be forbidden!
+
+How poignant, then, must have been the grief with which, after some
+years, I beheld my well-grounded expectations take wings to themselves
+and fly away! Without Ligeia I was but as a child groping benighted. Her
+presence, her readings alone, rendered vividly luminous the many
+mysteries of the transcendentalism in which we were immersed. Wanting
+the radiant luster of her eyes, letters, lambent and golden, grew
+duller than Saturnian lead. And now those eyes shone less and less
+frequently upon the pages over which I pored. Ligeia grew ill. The wild
+eyes blazed with a too, too glorious effulgence; the pale fingers became
+of the transparent waxen hue of the grave; and the blue veins upon the
+lofty forehead swelled and sank impetuously with the tides of the most
+gentle emotion. I saw that she must die--and I struggled desperately in
+spirit with the grim Azrael. And the struggles of the passionate wife
+were, to my astonishment, even more energetic than my own. There had
+been much in her stern nature to impress me with the belief that, to
+her, death would have come without its terrors; but not so. Words are
+impotent to convey any just idea of the fierceness of resistance with
+which she wrestled with the Shadow. I groaned in anguish at the pitiable
+spectacle. I would have soothed, I would have reasoned, but, in the
+intensity of her wild desire for life--for life--_but_ for life--solace
+and reason were alike the uttermost of folly. Yet not until the last
+instance, amid the most convulsive writhings of her fierce spirit, was
+shaken the external placidity of her demeanor. Her voice grew more
+gentle--grew more low--yet I would not wish to dwell upon the wild
+meaning of the quietly uttered words. My brain reeled as I hearkened,
+entranced, to a melody more than mortal, to assumptions and aspirations
+which mortality had never before known.
+
+That she loved me I should not have doubted, and I might have been
+easily aware that, in a bosom such as hers, love would have reigned no
+ordinary passion. But in death only was I fully impressed with the
+strength of her affection. For long hours, detaining my hand, would she
+pour out before me the overflowing of a heart whose more than passionate
+devotion amounted to idolatry. How had I deserved to be so blessed by
+such confessions? How had I deserved to be so cursed with the removal of
+my beloved in the hour of her making them? But upon this subject I
+cannot bear to dilate. Let me say only, that in Ligeia's more than
+womanly abandonment to a love, alas! all unmerited, all unworthily
+bestowed, I at length recognized the principle of her longing, with so
+wildly earnest a desire, for the life which was now fleeing so rapidly
+away. It is this wild longing--it is this eager vehemence of desire for
+life--but for life--that I have no power to portray, no utterance
+capable of expressing.
+
+At high noon of the night in which she departed, beckoning me
+peremptorily to her side, she bade me repeat certain verses composed by
+herself not many days before. I obeyed her. They were these:
+
+    Lo! 'tis a gala night
+      Within the lonesome latter years!
+    An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
+      In veils, and drowned in tears,
+    Sit in a theater, to see
+      A play of hopes and fears,
+    While the orchestra breathes fitfully
+      The music of the spheres.
+
+    Mimes, in the form of God on high,
+      Mutter and mumble low,
+    And hither and thither fly;
+      Mere puppets they, who come and go
+    At bidding of vast formless things
+      That shift the scenery to and fro,
+    Flapping from out their condor wings
+      Invisible Woe!
+
+    That motley drama!--oh, be sure
+      It shall not be forgot!
+    With its Phantom chased for evermore,
+      By a crowd that seize it not,
+    Through a circle that ever returneth in
+      To the self-same spot;
+    And much of Madness, and more of Sin
+      And Horror, the soul of the plot!
+
+    But see, amid the mimic rout
+      A crawling shape intrude!
+    A blood-red thing that writhes from out
+      The scenic solitude!
+    It writhes!--it writhes!--with mortal
+      The mimes become its food,
+    And the seraphs sob at vermin fangs
+      In human gore imbued.
+
+    Out--out are the lights--out all!
+      And over each quivering form,
+    The curtain, a funeral pall,
+      Comes down with the rush of a storm--
+    And the angels, all pallid and wan,
+      Uprising, unveiling, affirm
+    That the play is the tragedy, "Man,"
+      And its hero, the Conqueror Worm.
+
+"O God!" half-shrieked Ligeia, leaping to her feet and extending her
+arms aloft with a spasmodic movement, as I made an end of these lines,
+"O God! O Divine Father! Shall these things be undeviatingly so? Shall
+this conqueror be not once conquered? Are we not part and parcel in
+Thee? Who--who knoweth the mysteries of the will with its vigor? Man
+doth not yield him to the angels, _nor unto death utterly_, save only
+through the weakness of his feeble will."
+
+And now, as if exhausted with emotion, she suffered her white arms to
+fall, and returned solemnly to her bed of death. And as she breathed her
+last sighs, there came mingled with them a low murmur from her lips. I
+bent to them my ear, and distinguished again, the concluding words of
+the passage in Glanvill: "_Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor
+unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will._"
+
+She died, and I, crushed into the very dust with sorrow, could no longer
+endure the lonely desolation of my dwelling in the dim and decaying city
+by the Rhine. I had no lack of what the world calls wealth. Ligeia had
+brought me far more, very far more than ordinarily falls to the lot of
+mortals. After a few months, therefore, of weary and aimless wandering,
+I purchased and put in some repair an abbey which I shall not name in
+one of the wildest and least frequented portions of fair England. The
+gloomy and dreary grandeur of the building, the almost savage aspect of
+the domain, the many melancholy and time-honored memories connected with
+both, had much in unison with the feelings of utter abandonment which
+had driven me into that remote and unsocial region of the country. Yet,
+although the external abbey with its verdant decay hanging about it
+suffered but little alteration, I gave way with a child-like perversity,
+and perchance with a faint hope of alleviating my sorrows, to a display
+of more than regal magnificence within. For such follies, even in
+childhood, I had imbibed a taste, and now they came back to me as if in
+the dotage of grief. Alas, I feel how much even of incipient madness
+might have been discovered in the gorgeous and fantastic draperies, in
+the solemn carvings of Egypt, in the wild cornices and furniture, in the
+Bedlam patterns of the carpets of tufted gold! I had become a bounden
+slave in the trammels of opium, and my labors and my orders had taken a
+coloring from my dreams. But these absurdities I must not pause to
+detail. Let me speak only of that one chamber, ever accursed, whither in
+a moment of mental alienation, I led from the altar as my bride--as the
+successor of the unforgotten Ligeia--the fair-haired and blue-eyed Lady
+Rowena Trevanion, of Tremaine.
+
+There is no individual portion of the architecture and decoration of
+that bridal chamber which is not now visibly before me. Where were the
+souls of the haughty family of the bride, when, through thirst of gold,
+they permitted to pass the threshold of an apartment _so_ bedecked, a
+maiden and a daughter so beloved? I have said that I minutely remember
+the details of the chamber, yet I am sadly forgetful on topics of deep
+moment; and here there was no system, no keeping, in the fantastic
+display, to take hold upon the memory. The room lay in a high turret of
+the castellated abbey, was pentagonal in shape, and of capacious size.
+Occupying the whole southern face of the pentagon was the sole
+window--an immense sheet of unbroken glass from Venice--a single pane,
+and tinted of a leaden hue, so that the rays of either the sun or moon
+passing through it fell with a ghastly luster on the objects within.
+Over the upper portion of this huge window extended the trellis-work of
+an aged vine which clambered up the massy walls of the turret. The
+ceiling, of gloomy-looking oak, was excessively lofty, vaulted, and
+elaborately fretted with the wildest and most grotesque specimens of a
+semi-Gothic, semi-Druidical device. From out the most central recess of
+this melancholy vaulting depended, by a single chain of gold with long
+links, a huge censer of the same metal, Saracenic in pattern, and with
+many perforations so contrived that there writhed in and out of them, as
+if endued with a serpent vitality, a continual succession of
+parti-colored fires.
+
+Some few ottomans and golden candelabra of Eastern figure were in
+various stations about; and there was the couch, too--the bridal
+couch--of an Indian model, and low, and sculptured of solid ebony, with
+a pall-like canopy above. In each of the angles of the chamber stood on
+end a gigantic sarcophagus of black granite, from the tombs of the kings
+over against Luxor, with their aged lids full of immemorial sculpture.
+But in the draping of the apartment lay, alas! the chief fantasy of all.
+The lofty walls, gigantic in height--even unproportionably so--were hung
+from summit to foot in vast folds with a heavy and massive-looking
+tapestry--tapestry of a material which was found alike as a carpet on
+the floor, as a covering for the ottomans and the ebony bed, as a canopy
+for the bed, and as the gorgeous volutes of the curtains which partially
+shaded the window. The material was the richest cloth of gold. It was
+spotted all over, at irregular intervals, with arabesque figures, about
+a foot in diameter, and wrought upon the cloth in patterns of the most
+jetty black. But these figures partook of the true character of the
+arabesque only when regarded from a single point of view. By a
+contrivance now common, and indeed traceable to a very remote period of
+antiquity, they were made changeable in aspect. To one entering the room
+they bore the appearance of simple monstrosities, but upon a farther
+advance this appearance gradually departed; and, step by step as the
+visitor moved his station in the chamber he saw himself surrounded by an
+endless succession of the ghastly forms which belong to the superstition
+of the Norman, or arise in the guilty slumbers of the monk. The
+phantasmagoric effect was vastly heightened by the artificial
+introduction of a strong continual current of wind behind the
+draperies--giving a hideous and uneasy animation to the whole.
+
+In halls such as these--in a bridal chamber such as this--I passed, with
+the Lady of Tremaine, the unhallowed hours of the first month of our
+marriage--passed them with but little disquietude. That my wife dreaded
+the fierce moodiness of my temper, that she shunned me, and loved me but
+little, I could not help perceiving; but it gave me rather pleasure than
+otherwise. I loathed her with a hatred belonging more to demon than to
+man. My memory flew back--oh, with what intensity of regret!--to Ligeia,
+the beloved, the august, the beautiful, the entombed. I revelled in
+recollections of her purity, of her wisdom, of her lofty, her ethereal
+nature, of her passionate, her idolatrous love. Now, then, did my
+spirit fully and freely burn with more than all the fires of her own. In
+the excitement of my opium dreams (for I was habitually fettered in the
+shackles of the drug) I would call aloud upon her name, during the
+silence of the night, or among the sheltered recesses of the glens by
+day, as if, through the wild eagerness, the solemn passion, the
+consuming ardor of my longing for the departed, I could restore her to
+the pathway she had abandoned--ah, could it be for ever?--upon the
+earth.
+
+About the commencement of the second month of the marriage the Lady
+Rowena was attacked with sudden illness, from which her recovery was
+slow. The fever which consumed her rendered her nights uneasy; and in
+her perturbed state of half-slumber she spoke of sounds and of motions
+in and about the chamber of the turret which I concluded had no
+origin save in the distemper of her fancy, or perhaps in the
+phantasmagoric influences of the chamber itself. She became at length
+convalescent--finally, well. Yet but a brief period elapsed ere a second
+more violent disorder again threw her upon a bed of suffering, and from
+this attack her frame, at all times feeble, never altogether recovered.
+Her illnesses were, after this epoch, of alarming character and of more
+alarming recurrence, defying alike the knowledge and the great exertions
+of her physicians. With the increase of the chronic disease, which had
+thus, apparently, taken too sure hold upon her constitution to be
+eradicated by human means, I could not fail to observe a similar
+increase in the nervous irritation of her temperament, and in her
+excitability by trivial causes of fear. She spoke again, and now more
+frequently and pertinaciously, of the sounds--of the slight sounds--and
+of the unusual motions among the tapestries, to which she had formerly
+alluded.
+
+One night near the closing in of September she pressed this distressing
+subject with more than usual emphasis upon my attention. She had just
+awakened from an unquiet slumber, and I had been watching, with feelings
+half of anxiety, half of vague terror, the workings of her emaciated
+countenance. I sat by the side of her ebony bed, upon one of the
+ottomans of India. She partly arose, and spoke, in an earnest low
+whisper, of sounds which she then heard, but which I could not hear, of
+motions which she then saw, but which I could not perceive. The wind was
+rushing hurriedly behind the tapestries, and I wished to show her (what,
+let me confess it, I could not all believe) that those almost
+inarticulate breathings, and those very gentle variations of the figures
+upon the wall, were but the natural effects of that customary rushing of
+the wind. But a deadly pallor overspreading her face had proved to me
+that my exertions to reassure her would be fruitless. She appeared to be
+fainting, and no attendants were within call. I remembered where was
+deposited a decanter of light wine which had been ordered by her
+physicians, and hastened across the chamber to procure it. But as I
+stepped beneath the light of the censer, two circumstances of a
+startling nature attracted my attention. I had felt that some palpable
+although invisible object had passed lightly by my person; and I saw
+that there lay upon the golden carpet, in the very middle of the rich
+luster thrown from the censer, a shadow--a faint, indefinite shadow of
+angelic aspect, such as might be fancied for the shadow of a shade. But
+I was wild with the excitement of an immoderate dose of opium, and
+heeded these things but little, nor spoke of them to Rowena. Having
+found the wine, I recrossed the chamber and poured out a gobletful which
+I held to the lips of the fainting lady. She had now partially
+recovered, however, and took the vessel herself, while I sank upon an
+ottoman near me, with my eyes fastened upon her person. It was then that
+I became distinctly aware of a gentle footfall upon the carpet and near
+the couch; and in a second after as Rowena was in the act of raising the
+wine to her lips I saw, or may have dreamed that I saw, fall within the
+goblet, as if from some invisible spring in the atmosphere of the room,
+three or four large drops of a brilliant and ruby-colored fluid. If this
+I saw--not so Rowena. She swallowed the wine unhesitatingly, and I
+forbore to speak to her of a circumstance which must, after all, I
+considered, have been but the suggestion of a vivid imagination,
+rendered morbidly active by the terror of the lady, by the opium, and by
+the hour.
+
+Yet I cannot conceal it from my own perception that, immediately
+subsequent to the fall of the ruby-drops, a rapid change for the worse
+took place in the disorder of my wife, so that, on the third subsequent
+night the hands of her menials prepared her for the tomb, and on the
+fourth I sat alone with her shrouded body in that fantastic chamber
+which had received her as my bride. Wild visions, opium-engendered,
+fluttered, shadow-like, before me. I gazed with unquiet eye upon the
+sarcophagi in the angles of the room, upon the varying figures of the
+drapery, and upon the writhing of the parti-colored fires in the censer
+overhead. My eyes then fell, as I called to mind the circumstances of a
+former night, to the spot beneath the glare of the censer where I had
+seen the faint traces of the shadow. It was there, however, no longer;
+and breathing with greater freedom, I turned my glances to the pallid
+and rigid figure upon the bed. Then rushed upon me a thousand memories
+of Ligeia--and then came back upon my heart with the turbulent violence
+of a flood the whole of that unutterable woe with which I had regarded
+_her_ thus enshrouded. The night waned; and still, with a bosom full of
+bitter thoughts of the one only and supremely beloved, I remained gazing
+upon the body of Rowena.
+
+It might have been midnight, or perhaps earlier, or later--for I had
+taken no note of time--when a sob, low, gentle, but very distinct,
+startled me from my revery. I _felt_ that it came from the bed of
+ebony--the bed of death. I listened in an agony of superstitious
+terror--but there was no repetition of the sound. I strained my vision
+to detect any motion in the corpse--but there was not the slightest
+perceptible. Yet I could not have been deceived. I _had_ heard the
+noise, however faint, and my soul was awakened within me. I resolutely
+and perseveringly kept my attention riveted upon the body. Many minutes
+elapsed before any circumstance occurred tending to throw light upon the
+mystery. At length it became evident that a slight, a very feeble and
+barely noticeable tinge of color had flushed up within the cheeks, and
+along the sunken small veins of the eyelids. Through a species of
+unutterable horror and awe, for which the language of mortality has no
+sufficiently energetic expression, I felt my heart cease to beat, my
+limbs grow rigid where I sat. Yet a sense of duty finally operated to
+restore my self-possession. I could no longer doubt that we had been
+precipitate in our preparations--that Rowena still lived. It was
+necessary that some immediate exertion be made, yet the turret was
+altogether apart from the portion of the abbey tenanted by the
+servants--there were none within call, and I had no means of summoning
+them to my aid without leaving the room for many minutes--and this I
+could not venture to do. I therefore struggled alone in my endeavors to
+call back the spirit still hovering. In a short period it was certain,
+however, that a relapse had taken place, the color disappeared from both
+eyelid and cheek, leaving a wanness even more than that of marble; the
+lips became doubly shrivelled and pinched up in the ghastly expression
+of death; a repulsive clamminess and coldness overspread rapidly the
+surface of the body; and all the usual rigorous stiffness immediately
+supervened. I fell back with a shudder upon the couch from which I had
+been so startlingly aroused, and again gave myself up to passionate
+waking visions of Ligeia.
+
+An hour thus elapsed, when--could it be possible?--I was a second time
+aware of some vague sound issuing from the region of the bed. I
+listened--in extremity of horror. The sound came again--it was a sigh.
+Rushing to the corpse, I saw--distinctly saw--a tremor upon the lips. In
+a minute afterward they relaxed, disclosing a bright line of the pearly
+teeth. Amazement now struggled in my bosom with the profound awe which
+had hitherto reigned there alone. I felt that my vision grew dim, that
+my reason wandered, and it was only by a violent effort that I at length
+succeeded in nerving myself to the task which duty thus once more had
+pointed out. There was now a partial glow upon the forehead and upon
+the cheek and throat, a perceptible warmth pervaded the whole frame,
+there was even a slight pulsation at the heart. The lady _lived_; and
+with redoubled ardor I betook myself to the task of restoration. I
+chafed and bathed the temples and the hands and used every exertion
+which experience and no little medical reading could suggest. But in
+vain. Suddenly, the color fled, the pulsation ceased, the lips resumed
+the expression of the dead, and, in an instant afterward, the whole body
+took upon itself the icy chilliness, the livid hue, the intense
+rigidity, the sunken outline, and all the loathsome peculiarities of
+that which has been, for many days, a tenant of the tomb.
+
+And again I sunk into visions of Ligeia--and again, (what marvel that I
+shudder while I write?) _again_ there reached my ears a low sob from the
+region of the ebony bed. But why should I minutely detail the
+unspeakable horrors of that night? Why should I pause to relate how,
+time after time, until near the period of the gray dawn, this hideous
+drama of revivification was repeated; how each terrific relapse was only
+into a sterner and apparently more irredeemable death; how each agony
+wore the aspect of a struggle with some invisible foe; and how each
+struggle was succeeded by I know not what of wild change in the personal
+appearance of the corpse? Let me hurry to a conclusion.
+
+The greater part of the fearful night had worn away, and she who had
+been dead, once again stirred--and now more vigorously than hitherto,
+although arousing from a dissolution more appalling in its utter
+hopelessness than any. I had long ceased to struggle or to move, and
+remained sitting rigidly upon the ottoman, a helpless prey to a whirl of
+violent emotions, of which extreme awe was perhaps the least terrible,
+the least consuming. The corpse, I repeat, stirred, and now more
+vigorously than before. The hues of life flushed up with unwonted energy
+into the countenance, the limbs relaxed, and, save that the eyelids were
+yet pressed heavily together and that the bandages and draperies of the
+grave still imparted their charnel character to the figure, I might have
+dreamed that Rowena had indeed shaken off utterly the fetters of Death.
+But if this idea was not even then altogether adopted, I could at least
+doubt no longer, when arising from the bed, tottering, with feeble
+steps, with closed eyes, and with the manner of one bewildered in a
+dream, the thing that was enshrouded advanced boldly and palpably into
+the middle of the apartment.
+
+I trembled not--I stirred not--for a crowd of unutterable fancies
+connected with the air, the stature, the demeanor of the figure, rushing
+hurriedly through my brain, had paralyzed--had chilled me into stone. I
+stirred not--but gazed upon the apparition. There was a mad disorder in
+my thoughts--a tumult unappeasable. Could it, indeed, be the living
+Rowena who confronted me? Could it indeed be Rowena at all--the
+fair-haired, the blue-eyed Lady Rowena Trevanion of Tremaine? Why, _why_
+should I doubt it? The bandage lay heavily about the mouth--but then
+might it not be the mouth of the breathing Lady of Tremaine? And the
+cheeks--there were the roses as in her noon of life--yes, these might
+indeed be the fair cheeks of the living Lady of Tremaine. And the chin,
+with its dimples, as in health, might it not be hers?--but _had she
+then grown taller since her malady_? What inexpressible madness seized
+me with that thought! One bound, and I had reached her feet. Shrinking
+from my touch she let fall from her head, unloosened, the ghastly
+cerements which had confined it, and there streamed forth into the
+rushing atmosphere of the chamber huge masses of long and dishevelled
+hair; _it was blacker than the raven wings of midnight_! And now slowly
+opened the eyes of the figure which stood before me. "Here then, at
+least," I shrieked aloud, "can I never--can I never be mistaken--these
+are the full and the black, and the wild eyes of my lost love--of the
+Lady--of the LADY LIGEIA."
+
+
+
+
+THE SYLPH AND THE FATHER[5]
+
+By ELSA BARKER
+
+[Footnote 5: By permission of the author of _War Letters of the Living
+Dead Man_ and Mitchell Kennerley.]
+
+
+Passing yesterday along the line where the great French army stands
+before its powerful opponent, and marking the spirit of courage and
+aspiration which makes it seem like a long line of living light, I saw a
+familiar face in the regions outside the physical.
+
+I paused, highly pleased at the encounter, and the sylph--for it was a
+sylph whom I met--paused also with a little smile of recognition.
+
+Do you recall in my former book the story of a sylph, Meriline, who was
+the companion and familiar of a student of magic who lived in the rue de
+Vaugirard in Paris?
+
+It was Meriline that I met above the line of light which shows to
+wanderers in the astral regions where the soldiers of _la belle France_
+fight and die for the same ideal which inspired Jeanne d'Arc--to drive
+the foreigner out of France.
+
+"Where is your friend and master?" I asked the sylph, and she pointed
+below to a trench which spoke loud its determination to conquer.
+
+"I am here, to be still with him," she said.
+
+"And can you speak to him here?" I asked.
+
+"I can always speak with him," she answered. "I have been very useful to
+him--and to France."
+
+"To France?" I enquired, with growing interest.
+
+"Oh, yes! When his commanding officer wants to know what is being
+plotted over there, he often asks my friend, and my friend asks me."
+
+"Truly," I thought, "the French are an inspired people, when the
+officers of armies ask guidance from the realm of the invisible! But had
+not Jeanne her visions?"
+
+"And how do you gain the information desired?" I asked, drawing nearer
+to Meriline, who seemed more serious than when we met some years before
+in Paris.
+
+"Why," she answered, "I go over there and look around me. I have learned
+what to look for, he has taught me, and when I bring him news he rewards
+me with more love."
+
+"And do you love him still, as of old?"
+
+"As of old?"
+
+"Yes, as you did back there in Paris."
+
+"Time must have passed slowly with you," said the sylph, "if you call a
+few years ago 'as of old'."
+
+"Are a few years, then, as nothing?"
+
+"A few years are as nothing to me," she replied. "I have lived a long
+time."
+
+"And do you know the future of your friend?" I asked.
+
+A puzzled look came over the face of Meriline, and she said, slowly:
+
+"I used to know everything that would happen to him, because I could
+read his will, and whatever he willed came to pass; but since we have
+been out here he seems to have lost his will."
+
+"Lost his will!" I exclaimed, in surprise.
+
+"Yes, lost his will; for he prays continually to a great Being whom he
+loves far more than me, and he always prays one prayer, 'Thy will be
+done!' It used to be his will which was always done; but now, as I say,
+he seems to have lost his will."
+
+"Perhaps," I said, "it is true of the will as was once said of the life,
+and he that loses his will shall find it."
+
+"I hope he will find it soon," she answered, "for in the old days he was
+always giving me interesting things to do, to help him achieve the
+purposes of his will, and now he only sends me over there. I don't like
+_over there_!"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because my friend is menaced by something over there."
+
+"And what has his will to do with that?"
+
+"Why, even about that, he says all day to the great Being that he loves
+so much more than me, 'Thy will be done.'"
+
+"Do you think you could learn to say it, too?" I asked.
+
+"I say it after him sometimes; but I don't know what it means."
+
+"Have you never heard of God?"
+
+"I have heard of many gods, of Isis and Osiris and Set, and of Horus,
+the son of Osiris."
+
+"And is it to one of these that he says, 'Thy will be done'?"
+
+"Oh, no! It is not to any of the gods that he used to call upon in his
+magical working. This is some new god that he has found."
+
+"Or the oldest of all gods that he has returned to," I suggested. "What
+does he call Him?"
+
+"Our Father who art in heaven."
+
+"If you also should learn to say 'Thy will be done' to our Father who is
+in heaven," I said, "it might help you toward the attainment of that
+soul you were wanting and waiting for, when last we met in Paris."
+
+"How could our Father help me?"
+
+"It was He who gave souls to men," I said.
+
+The eyes of the sylph were brilliant with something almost human.
+
+"And could He give a soul to me?"
+
+"It is said that He _can_ do anything."
+
+"Then I will ask Him for a soul."
+
+"But to ask Him for a soul," I said, "is not to pray the prayer your
+friend prays."
+
+"He only says----"
+
+"Yes, I know. Suppose you say it after him."
+
+"I will, if you will tell me what it means. I like to do what my friend
+does."
+
+"'Thy will be done,'" I said, "when addressed to the Father in heaven,
+means that we give up all our desires, whether for pleasure or love or
+happiness, or anything else, and lay all those desires at His feet,
+sacrificing all we have or hope for to Him, because we love Him more
+than ourselves."
+
+"That is a strange way to get what one desires," she said.
+
+"It is not done to get what one desires," I answered.
+
+"But what is it done for?"
+
+"For love of the Father in heaven."
+
+"But I do not know the Father in heaven. What is He?"
+
+"He is the Source and the Goal of the being of your friend. He is the
+One that your friend will re-become some day, if he can forever say to
+Him, Thy will be done."
+
+"The One he will re-become?"
+
+"Yes, for when he blends his will with that of the Father in heaven, the
+Father in heaven dwells in his heart and the two become one."
+
+"Then is the Father in heaven really the Self of my friend?"
+
+"The greatest philosopher could not have expressed it more truly," I
+said.
+
+"Then indeed do I love the Father in heaven," breathed the sylph, "and I
+will say now every day and all day, 'Thy will be done' to Him."
+
+"Even if it separates you from your friend?"
+
+"How can it separate me from my friend, if the Father is the Self of
+him?"
+
+"I would that all angels were your equal in learning," I said.
+
+But Meriline had turned from me in utter forgetfulness, and was saying
+over and over, with joy in her uplifted face, "Thy will be done! Thy
+will be done!"
+
+"Truly," I said to myself, as I passed along the line, "he who worships
+the Father as the Self of the beloved has already acquired a soul."
+
+
+
+
+A GHOST[6]
+
+BY LAFCADIO HEARN
+
+[Footnote 6: From _Karma_ (Boni & Liveright).]
+
+
+I
+
+Perhaps the man who never wanders away from the place of his birth may
+pass all his life without knowing ghosts; but the nomad is more than
+likely to make their acquaintance. I refer to the civilized nomad, whose
+wanderings are not prompted by hope of gain, nor determined by pleasure,
+but simply compelled by certain necessities of his being--the man whose
+inner secret nature is totally at variance with the stable conditions of
+a society to which he belongs only by accident. However intellectually
+trained, he must always remain the slave of singular impulses which have
+no rational source, and which will often amaze him no less by their
+mastering power than by their continuous savage opposition to his every
+material interest. These may, perhaps, be traced back to some ancestral
+habit--be explained by self-evident hereditary tendencies. Or perhaps
+they may not,--in which event the victim can only surmise himself the
+_Imago_ of some pre-existent larval aspiration--the full development of
+desires long dormant in a chain of more limited lives.
+
+Assuredly the nomadic impulses differ in every member of the class, take
+infinite variety from individual sensitiveness to environment--the line
+of least resistance for one being that of greatest resistance for
+another; no two courses of true nomadism can ever be wholly the same.
+Diversified of necessity both impulse and direction, even as human
+nature is diversified! Never since consciousness of time began were two
+beings born who possessed exactly the same quality of voice, the same
+precise degree of nervous impressibility, or, in brief, the same
+combination of those viewless force-storing molecules which shape and
+poise themselves in sentient substance. Vain, therefore, all striving to
+particularize the curious psychology of such existences; at the very
+utmost it is possible only to describe such impulses and preceptions of
+nomadism as lie within the very small range of one's own observation.
+And whatever in these is strictly personal can have little interest or
+value except in so far as it holds something in common with the great
+general experience of restless lives. To such experience may belong, I
+think, one ultimate result of all those irrational partings,
+self-wrecking, sudden isolations, abrupt severances from all attachment,
+which form the history of the nomad--the knowledge that a strong silence
+is ever deepening and expanding about one's life, and that in that
+silence there are ghosts.
+
+
+II
+
+Oh! the first vague charm, the first sunny illusion of some fair
+city, when vistas of unknown streets all seem leading to the
+realization of a hope you dare not even whisper; when even the shadows
+look beautiful, and strange façades appear to smile good omen through
+light of gold! And those first winning relations with men, while you are
+still a stranger, and only the better and the brighter side of their
+nature is turned to you! All is yet a delightful, luminous
+indefiniteness--sensation of streets and of men--like some beautifully
+tinted photograph slightly out of focus.
+
+Then the slow solid sharpening of details all about you, thrusting
+through illusion and dispelling it, growing keener and harder day by day
+through long dull seasons; while your feet learn to remember all
+asperities of pavements, and your eyes all physiognomy of buildings and
+of persons--failures of masonry, furrowed lines of pain. Thereafter only
+the aching of monotony intolerable, and the hatred of sameness grown
+dismal, and dread of the merciless, inevitable, daily and hourly
+repetition of things; while those impulses of unrest, which are Nature's
+urgings through that ancestral experience which lives in each one of
+us--outcries of sea and peak and sky to man--ever make wilder appeal.
+Strong friendships may have been formed; but there finally comes a day
+when even these can give no consolation for the pain of monotony, and
+you feel that in order to live you must decide, regardless of result, to
+shake forever from your feet the familiar dust of that place.
+
+And, nevertheless, in the hour of departure you feel a pang. As train or
+steamer bears you away from the city and its myriad associations, the
+old illusive impression will quiver back about you for a moment--not as
+if to mock the expectation of the past, but softly, touchingly, as if
+pleading to you to stay; and such a sadness, such a tenderness may come
+to you, as one knows after reconciliation with a friend misapprehended
+and unjustly judged. But you will never more see those streets--except
+in dreams.
+
+Through sleep only they will open again before you, steeped in the
+illusive vagueness of the first long-past day, peopled only by friends
+outstretching to you. Soundlessly you will tread those shadowy pavements
+many times, to knock in thought, perhaps, at doors which the dead will
+open to you. But with the passing of years all becomes dim--so dim that
+even asleep you know 'tis only a ghost-city, with streets going to
+nowhere. And finally whatever is left of it becomes confused and blended
+with cloudy memories of other cities--one endless bewilderment of filmy
+architecture in which nothing is distinctly recognizable, though the
+whole gives the sensation of having been seen before, ever so long ago.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meantime, in the course of wanderings more or less aimless, there has
+slowly grown upon you a suspicion of being haunted--so frequently does a
+certain hazy presence intrude itself upon the visual memory. This,
+however, appears to gain rather than to lose in definiteness; with each
+return its visibility seems to increase. And the suspicion that you may
+be haunted gradually develops into a certainty.
+
+
+III
+
+You are haunted--whether your way lie through the brown gloom of London
+winter, or the azure splendor of an equatorial day--whether your steps
+be tracked in snows, or in the burning black sand of a tropic
+beach--whether you rest beneath the swart shade of Northern pines, or
+under spidery umbrages of palm--you are haunted ever and everywhere by a
+certain gentle presence. There is nothing fearsome in this haunting--the
+gentlest face, the kindliest voice--oddly familiar and distinct, though
+feeble as the hum of a bee.
+
+But it tantalizes--this haunting--like those sudden surprises of
+sensation _within_ us, though seemingly not _of_ us, which some dreamers
+have sought to interpret as inherited remembrances, recollections of
+preëxistence. Vainly you ask yourself, "Whose voice? Whose face?" It is
+neither young nor old, the Face; it has a vapory indefinableness that
+leaves it a riddle; its diaphaneity reveals no particular tint; perhaps
+you may not even be quite sure whether it has a beard. But its
+expression is always gracious, passionless, smiling--like the smiling of
+unknown friends in dreams, with infinite indulgence for any folly, even
+a dream-folly. Except in that you cannot permanently banish it, the
+presence offers no positive resistance to your will; it accepts each
+caprice with obedience; it meets your every whim with angelic patience.
+It is never critical, never makes plaint even by a look, never proves
+irksome; yet you cannot ignore it, because of a certain queer power it
+possesses to make something stir and quiver in your heart--like an old
+vague sweet regret--something buried alive which will not die. And so
+often does this happen that desire to solve the riddle becomes a pain;
+that you finally find yourself making supplication to the Presence;
+addressing to it questions which it will never answer directly, but
+only by a smile or by words having no relation to the asking--words
+enigmatic, which make mysterious agitation in old forsaken fields of
+memory, even as a wind betimes, over wide wastes of marsh, sets all the
+grasses whispering about nothing. But you will question on, untiringly,
+through the nights and days of years:
+
+"Who are you? What are you? What is this weird relation that you bear to
+me? All you say to me I feel that I have heard before, but where? But
+when? By what name am I to call you, since you will answer to none that
+I remember? Surely you do not live; yet I know the sleeping-places of
+all my dead, and yours I do not know! Neither are you any dream--for
+dreams distort and change; and you, you are ever the same. Nor are you
+any hallucination; for all my senses are still vivid and strong. This
+only I know beyond doubt--that you are of the Past; you belong to
+memory--but to the memory of what dead suns?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then, some day or night, unexpectedly, there comes to you at least, with
+a soft swift tingling shock as of fingers invisible, the knowledge that
+the Face is not the memory of any one face; but a multiple image formed
+of the traits of many dear faces, superimposed by remembrance, and
+interblended by affection into one ghostly personality--infinitely
+sympathetic, phantasmally beautiful--a Composite of recollections! And
+the Voice is the echo of no one voice, but the echoing of many voices,
+molten into a single utterance, a single impossible tone, thin through
+remoteness of time, but inexpressibly caressing.
+
+
+IV
+
+Thou most gentle Composite!--thou nameless and exquisite Unreality,
+thrilled into semblance of being from out the sum of all lost
+sympathies!--thou Ghost of all dear vanished things, with thy vain
+appeal of eyes that looked for my coming, and vague faint pleading of
+voices against oblivion, and thin electric touch of buried hands--must
+thou pass away forever with my passing, even as the Shadow that I cast,
+O thou Shadowing of Souls?
+
+I am not sure. For there comes to me this dream--that if aught in human
+life hold power to pass, like a swerved sunray through interstellar
+spaces, into the infinite mystery, to send one sweet strong vibration
+through immemorial Time, might not some luminous future be peopled with
+such as thou? And in so far as that which makes for us the subtlest
+charm of being can lend one choral note to the Symphony of the
+Unknowable Purpose--in so much might there not endure also to greet
+thee, another Composite One--embodying, indeed, the comeliness of many
+lives, yet keeping likewise some visible memory of all that may have
+been gracious in this thy friend?
+
+
+
+
+THE EYES OF THE PANTHER[7]
+
+BY AMBROSE BIERCE
+
+[Footnote 7: From "_In the Midst of Life_" (Boni & Liveright).]
+
+
+I
+
+ONE DOES NOT ALWAYS MARRY WHEN INSANE
+
+A man and a woman--nature had done the grouping--sat on a rustic seat,
+in the late afternoon. The man was middle-aged, slender, swarthy, with
+the expression of a poet and the complexion of a pirate--a man at whom
+one would look again. The woman was young, blonde, graceful, with
+something in her figure and movements suggesting the word "lithe." She
+was habited in a gray gown with odd brown markings in the texture. She
+may have been beautiful; one could not readily say, for her eyes denied
+attention to all else. They were gray-green, long and narrow, with an
+expression defying analysis. One could only know that they were
+disquieting. Cleopatra may have had such eyes.
+
+The man and the woman talked.
+
+"Yes," said the woman, "I love you, God knows! But marry you, no. I
+cannot, will not."
+
+"Irene, you have said that many times, yet always have denied me a
+reason. I've a right to know, to understand, to feel and prove my
+fortitude if I have it. Give me a reason."
+
+"For loving you?"
+
+The woman was smiling through her tears and her pallor. That did not
+stir any sense of humor in the man.
+
+"No; there is no reason for that. A reason for not marrying me. I've a
+right to know. I must know. I will know!"
+
+He had risen and was standing before her with clenched hands, on his
+face a frown--it might have been called a scowl. He looked as if he
+might attempt to learn by strangling her. She smiled no more--merely sat
+looking up into his face with a fixed, set regard that was utterly
+without emotion or sentiment. Yet it had something in it that tamed his
+resentment and made him shiver.
+
+"You are determined to have my reason?" she asked in a tone that was
+entirely mechanical--a tone that might have been her look made audible.
+
+"If you please--if I'm not asking too much."
+
+Apparently this lord of creation was yielding some part of his dominion
+over his co-creature.
+
+"Very well, you shall know: I am insane."
+
+The man started, then looked incredulous and was conscious that he ought
+to be amused. But, again, the sense of humor failed him in his need and
+despite his disbelief he was profoundly disturbed by that which he did
+not believe. Between our convictions and our feelings there is no good
+understanding.
+
+"That is what the physicians would say," the woman continued, "if they
+knew. I might myself prefer to call it a case of 'possession.' Sit down
+and hear what I have to say."
+
+The man silently resumed his seat beside her on the rustic bench by the
+wayside. Over against them on the eastern side of the valley the hills
+were already sunset-flushed and the stillness all about was of that
+peculiar quality that foretells the twilight. Something of its
+mysterious and significant solemnity had imparted itself to the man's
+mood. In the spiritual, as in the material world, are signs and presages
+of night. Rarely meeting her look, and whenever he did so conscious of
+the indefinable dread with which, despite their feline beauty, her eyes
+always affected him, Jenner Brading listened in silence to the story
+told by Irene Marlowe. In deference to the reader's possible prejudice
+against the artless method of an unpracticed historian the author
+ventures to substitute his own version for hers.
+
+
+II
+
+A ROOM MAY BE TOO NARROW FOR THREE, THOUGH ONE IS OUTSIDE
+
+In a little log house containing a single room sparely and rudely
+furnished, crouching on the floor against one of the walls, was a woman,
+clasping to her breast a child. Outside, a dense unbroken forest
+extended for many miles in every direction. This was at night and the
+room was black dark; no human eye could have discerned the woman and the
+child. Yet they were observed, narrowly, vigilantly, with never even a
+momentary slackening of attention; and that is the pivotal fact upon
+which this narrative turns.
+
+Charles Marlowe was of the class, now extinct in this country, of
+woodmen pioneers--men who found their most acceptable surroundings in
+sylvan solitudes that stretched along the eastern slope of the
+Mississippi Valley, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. For more
+than a hundred years these men pushed ever westward, generation after
+generation, with rifle and ax, reclaiming from Nature and her savage
+children here and there an isolated acreage for the plow, no sooner
+reclaimed than surrendered to their less venturesome but more thrifty
+successors. At last they burst through the edge of the forest into the
+open country and vanished as if they had fallen over a cliff. The
+woodman pioneer is no more; the pioneer of the plains--he whose easy
+task it was to subdue for occupancy two-thirds of the country in a
+single generation--is another and inferior creation. With Charles
+Marlowe in the wilderness, sharing the dangers, hardships and privations
+of that strange unprofitable life, were his wife and child, to whom, in
+the manner of his class in which the domestic virtues were a religion,
+he was passionately attached. The woman was still young enough to be
+comely, new enough to the awful isolation of her lot to be cheerful. By
+withholding the large capacity for happiness which the simple
+satisfactions of the forest life could not have filled, Heaven had dealt
+honorably with her. In her light household tasks, her child, her husband
+and her few foolish books, she found abundant provision for her needs.
+
+One morning in midsummer Marlowe took down his rifle from the wooden
+hooks on the wall and signified his intention of getting game.
+
+"We've meat enough," said the wife; "please don't go out to-day. I
+dreamed last night, O, such a dreadful thing! I cannot recollect it, but
+I'm almost sure that it will come to pass if you go out."
+
+It is painful to confess that Marlowe received this solemn statement
+with less of gravity than was due to the mysterious nature of the
+calamity foreshadowed. In truth, he laughed.
+
+"Try to remember," he said. "Maybe you dreamed that Baby had lost the
+power of speech."
+
+The conjecture was obviously suggested by the fact that Baby, clinging
+to the fringe of his hunting-coat with all her ten pudgy thumbs, was at
+that moment uttering her sense of the situation in a series of exultant
+goo-goos inspired by sight of her father's raccoon-skin cap.
+
+The woman yielded: lacking the gift of humor she could not hold out
+against his kindly badinage. So, with a kiss for the mother and a kiss
+for the child, he left the house and closed the door upon his happiness
+forever.
+
+At nightfall he had not returned. The woman prepared supper and waited.
+Then she put Baby to bed and sang softly to her until she slept. By this
+time the fire on the hearth, at which she had cooked supper, had burned
+out and the room was lighted by a single candle. This she afterward
+placed in the open window as a sign and welcome to the hunter if he
+should approach from that side. She had thoughtfully closed and barred
+the door against such wild animals as might prefer it to an open
+window--of the habits of beasts of prey in entering a house uninvited
+she was not advised, though with true female prevision she may have
+considered the possibility of their entrance by way of the chimney. As
+the night wore on she became not less anxious, but more drowsy, and at
+last rested her arms upon the bed by the child and her head upon the
+arms. The candle in the window burned down to the socket, sputtered and
+flared a moment and went out unobserved; for the woman slept and
+dreamed.
+
+In her dreams she sat beside the cradle of a second child. The first one
+was dead. The father was dead. The home in the forest was lost and the
+dwelling in which she lived was unfamiliar. There were heavy oaken
+doors, always closed, and outside the windows, fastened into the thick
+stone walls, were iron bars, obviously (so she thought) a provision
+against Indians. All this she noted with an infinite self-pity, but
+without surprise--an emotion unknown in dreams. The child in the cradle
+was invisible under its coverlet which something impelled her to remove.
+She did so, disclosing the face of a wild animal! In the shock of this
+dreadful revelation the dreamer awoke, trembling in the darkness of her
+cabin in the wood.
+
+As a sense of her actual surroundings came slowly back to her she felt
+for the child that was not a dream, and assured herself by its breathing
+that all was well with it; nor could she forbear to pass a hand lightly
+across its face. Then, moved by some impulse for which she probably
+could not have accounted, she rose and took the sleeping babe in her
+arms, holding it close against her breast. The head of the child's cot
+was against the wall to which the woman now turned her back as she
+stood. Lifting her eyes she saw two bright objects starring the darkness
+with a reddish-green glow. She took them to be two coals on the hearth,
+but with her returning sense of direction came the disquieting
+consciousness that they were not in that quarter of the room, moreover
+were too high, being nearly at the level of the eyes--of her own eyes.
+For these were the eyes of a panther.
+
+The beast was at the open window directly opposite and not five paces
+away. Nothing but those terrible eyes was visible, but in the dreadful
+tumult of her feelings as the situation disclosed itself to her
+understanding she somehow knew that the animal was standing on its
+hinder feet, supporting itself with its paws on the window-ledge. That
+signified a malign interest--not the mere gratification of an indolent
+curiosity. The consciousness of the attitude was an added horror,
+accentuating the menace of those awful eyes, in whose steadfast fire her
+strength and courage were alike consumed. Under their silent questioning
+she shuddered and turned sick. Her knees failed her, and by degrees,
+instinctively striving to avoid a sudden movement that might bring the
+beast upon her, she sank to the floor, crouched against the wall and
+tried to shield the babe with her trembling body without withdrawing her
+gaze from the luminous orbs that were killing her. No thought of her
+husband came to her in her agony--no hope nor suggestion of rescue or
+escape. Her capacity for thought and feeling had narrowed to the
+dimensions of a single emotion--fear of the animal's spring, of the
+impact of its body, the buffeting of its great arms, the feel of its
+teeth in her throat, the mangling of her babe. Motionless now and in
+absolute silence, she awaited her doom, the moments growing to hours, to
+years, to ages; and still those devilish eyes maintained their watch.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Returning to his cabin late at night with a deer on his shoulders
+Charles Marlowe tried the door. It did not yield. He knocked; there was
+no answer. He laid down his deer and went around to the window. As he
+turned the angle of the building he fancied he heard a sound as of
+stealthy footfalls and a rustling in the undergrowth of the forest, but
+they were too slight for certainty, even to his practiced ear.
+Approaching the window, and to his surprise finding it open, he threw
+his leg over the sill and entered. All was darkness and silence. He
+groped his way to the fire-place, struck a match and lit a candle. Then
+he looked about. Cowering on the floor against a wall was his wife,
+clasping his child. As he sprang toward her she rose and broke into
+laughter, long, loud, and mechanical, devoid of gladness and devoid of
+sense--the laughter that is not out of keeping with the clanking of a
+chain. Hardly knowing what he did he extended his arms. She laid the
+babe in them. It was dead--pressed to death in its mother's embrace.
+
+
+III
+
+THE THEORY OF THE DEFENSE
+
+That is what occurred during a night in a forest, but not all of it did
+Irene Marlowe relate to Jenner Brading; not all of it was known to her.
+When she had concluded the sun was below the horizon and the long
+summer twilight had begun to deepen in the hollows of the land. For some
+moments Brading was silent, expecting the narrative to be carried
+forward to some definite connection with the conversation introducing
+it; but the narrator was as silent as he, her face averted, her hands
+clasping and unclasping themselves as they lay in her lap, with a
+singular suggestion of an activity independent of her will.
+
+"It is a sad, a terrible story," said Brading at last, "but I do not
+understand. You call Charles Marlowe father; that I know. That he is old
+before his time, broken by some great sorrow, I have seen, or thought I
+saw. But, pardon me, you said that you--that you--"
+
+"That I am insane," said the girl, without a movement of head or body.
+
+"But, Irene, you say--please, dear, do not look away from me--you say
+that the child was dead, not demented."
+
+"Yes, that one--I am the second. I was born three months after that
+night, my mother being mercifully permitted to lay down her life in
+giving me mine."
+
+Brading was again silent; he was a trifle dazed and could not at once
+think of the right thing to say. Her face was still turned away. In his
+embarrassment he reached impulsively toward the hands that lay closing
+and unclosing in her lap, but something--he could not have said
+what--restrained him. He then remembered, vaguely, that he had never
+altogether cared to take her hand.
+
+"Is it likely," she resumed, "that a person born under such
+circumstances is like others--is what you call sane?"
+
+Brading did not reply; he was preoccupied with a new thought that was
+taking shape in his mind--what a scientist would have called an
+hypothesis; a detective, a theory. It might throw an added light, albeit
+a lurid one, upon such doubt of her sanity as her own assertion had not
+dispelled.
+
+The country was still new and, outside the villages, sparsely populated.
+The professional hunter was still a familiar figure, and among his
+trophies were heads and pelts of the larger kinds of game. Tales
+variously credible of nocturnal meetings with savage animals in lonely
+roads were sometimes current, passed through the customary stages of
+growth and decay, and were forgotten. A recent addition to these popular
+apocrypha, originating, apparently, by spontaneous generation in several
+households, was of a panther which had frightened some of their members
+by looking in at windows by night. The yarn had caused its little ripple
+of excitement--had even attained to the distinction of a place in the
+local newspaper; but Brading had given it no attention. Its likeness to
+the story to which he had just listened now impressed him as perhaps
+more than accidental. Was it not possible that the one story had
+suggested the other--that finding congenial conditions in a morbid mind
+and a fertile fancy, it had grown to the tragic tale that he had heard?
+
+Brading recalled certain circumstances of the girl's history and
+disposition of which, with love's incuriosity, he had hitherto been
+heedless--such as her solitary life with her father, at whose house no
+one apparently was an acceptable visitor, and her strange fear of the
+night by which those who knew her best accounted for her never being
+seen after dark. Surely in such a mind imagination once kindled might
+burn with a lawless flame, penetrating and enveloping the entire
+structure. That she was mad, though the conviction gave him the acutest
+pain, he could no longer doubt; she had only mistaken an effect of her
+mental disorder for its cause, bringing into imaginary relation with her
+own personality the vagaries of the local myth-makers. With some vague
+intention of testing his new "theory," and no very definite notion of
+how to set about it he said gravely, but with hesitation:
+
+"Irene, dear, tell me--I beg you will not take offense, but tell me--"
+
+"I have told you," she interrupted, speaking with a passionate
+earnestness that he had not known her to show, "I have already told you
+that we cannot marry; is anything else worth saying?"
+
+Before he could stop her she had sprung from her seat and without
+another word or look was gliding away among the trees toward her
+father's house. Brading had risen to detain her; he stood watching her
+in silence until she had vanished in the gloom. Suddenly he started as
+if he had been shot, his face took on an expression of amazement and
+alarm: in one of the black shadows into which she had disappeared he had
+caught a quick, brief glimpse of shining eyes! For an instant he was
+dazed and irresolute; then he dashed into the wood after her, shouting,
+"Irene, Irene, look out! The panther! The panther!"
+
+In a moment he had passed through the fringe of forest into open ground
+and saw the girl's gray skirt vanishing into her father's door. No
+panther was visible.
+
+
+IV
+
+AN APPEAL TO THE CONSCIENCE OF GOD
+
+Jenner Brading, attorney-at-law, lived in a cottage at the edge of the
+town. Directly behind the dwelling was the forest. Being a bachelor, and
+therefore by the Draconian moral code of the time and place denied the
+services of the only species of domestic servant known thereabout, the
+"hired girl," he boarded at the village hotel where also was his office.
+The woodside cottage was merely a lodging maintained--at no great cost,
+to be sure--as an evidence of prosperity and respectability. It would
+hardly do for one to whom the local newspaper had pointed with pride as
+"the foremost jurist of his time" to be "homeless," albeit he may
+sometimes have suspected that the words "home" and "house" were not
+strictly synonymous. Indeed, his consciousness of the disparity and his
+will to harmonize it were matters of logical inference, for it was
+generally reported that soon after the cottage was built its owner had
+made a futile venture in the direction of marriage--had, in truth, gone
+so far as to be rejected by the beautiful but eccentric daughter of Old
+Man Marlowe, the recluse. This was publicly believed because he had told
+it himself and she had not--a reversal of the usual order of things
+which could hardly fail to carry conviction.
+
+Brading's bedroom was at the rear of the house, with a single window
+facing the forest. One night he was awakened by a noise at that
+window--he could hardly have said what it was like. With a little thrill
+of the nerves he sat up in bed and laid hold of the revolver which, with
+a forethought most commendable in one addicted to the habit of sleeping
+on the ground floor with an open window, he had put under his pillow.
+The room was in absolute darkness, but being unterrified he knew where
+to direct his eyes, and there he held them, awaiting in silence what
+further might occur. He could now dimly discern the aperture--a square
+of lighter black. Presently there appeared at its lower edge two
+gleaming eyes that burned with a malignant luster inexpressibly
+terrible! Brading's heart gave a great jump, then seemed to stand still.
+A chill passed along his spine and through his hair; he felt the blood
+forsake his cheeks. He could not have cried out--not to save his life;
+but being a man of courage he would not, to save his life, have done so
+if he had been able. Some trepidation his coward body might feel, but
+his spirit was of sterner stuff. Slowly the shining eyes rose with a
+steady motion that seemed an approach, and slowly rose Brading's right
+hand, holding the pistol. He fired!
+
+Blinded by the flash and stunned by the report, Brading nevertheless
+heard, or fancied that he heard, the wild high scream of the panther, so
+human in sound, so devilish in suggestion. Leaping from the bed he
+hastily clothed himself and pistol in hand, sprang from the door,
+meeting two or three men who came running up from the road. A brief
+explanation was followed by a cautious search of the house. The grass
+was wet with dew; beneath the window it had been trodden and partly
+leveled for a wide space, from which a devious trail, visible in the
+light of a lantern, led away into the bushes. One of the men stumbled
+and fell upon his hands, which as he rose and rubbed them together were
+slippery. On examination they were seen to be red with blood.
+
+An encounter, unarmed, with a wounded panther was not agreeable to their
+taste; all but Brading turned back. He, with lantern and pistol, pushed
+courageously forward into the wood. Passing through a difficult
+undergrowth he came into a small opening, and there his courage had its
+reward, for there he found the body of his victim. But it was no
+panther. What it was is told, even to this day, upon a weather-worn
+headstone in the village churchyard, and for many years was attested
+daily at the graveside by the bent figure and sorrow-seamed face of Old
+Man Marlowe, to whose soul, and to the soul of his strange, unhappy
+child, peace--peace and reparation.
+
+
+
+
+PHOTOGRAPHING INVISIBLE BEINGS
+
+BY WM. T. STEAD
+
+    "Millions of Spiritual creatures walk the earth
+    Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep."
+
+    --MILTON
+
+
+It was during the South African War that my father obtained one of his
+best authenticated spirit photographs, so I think that it is well to
+give here his own account of his experiments in that direction. He
+writes:
+
+"While recording the results at which I have arrived, I wish to
+repudiate any desire to dogmatize as to their significance or their
+origin. I merely record the facts, and although I may indicate
+conclusions and inferences which I have drawn from them, I attach no
+importance to anything but the facts themselves.
+
+"There is living in London at the present moment an old man of
+seventy-one years of age, a man of no education; he can write, but he
+cannot spell, and he has for many years earned his living as a
+photographer. He was always in a small way of business, a quiet,
+inoffensive man who brought up his family respectably, and lived in
+peace with his neighbors, attracting no particular remark....
+
+"When he started in business as a photographer it was in the days when
+the wet process was almost universal, and he was much annoyed by finding
+that when he exposed plates other forms than that of the sitter would
+appear in the background. So many plates were spoiled by these unwelcome
+intruders that his partner became very angry, and insisted that the
+plates had not been washed before they were used. He protested this was
+not so, and asked his partner to bring a packet of completely new plates
+with which he would take a photograph and see what was the result. His
+partner accepted the challenge, and produced a plate which had never
+previously been used; but when the portrait of the next sitter was
+taken, there appeared a shadow form in the background. Angry and
+frightened at this unwelcome appearance he flung the plate to the ground
+with an oath, and from that time for very many years he was never again
+troubled by an occurrence of similar phenomena.
+
+"About ten years ago he became interested in spiritualism, and to his
+surprise, and also to his regret, the shadow figures began to re-appear
+on the background of the photographs. He repeatedly had to destroy
+negatives and ask his customer to give him another sitting. It did his
+business harm, and in order to avoid this annoyance he left most of the
+photographing to his son.
+
+"I happened to hear of these curious experiences of his and sought him
+out. I found him very reluctant to speak about the matter. He said
+frankly he did not know how the figures came; it had been a great
+annoyance to him, and it gave his shop a bad name. He did not wish
+anything to be said about the matter. In deference, however, to repeated
+pressing on my part, he consented to make experiments with me, and I
+had at various times a considerable number of sittings.
+
+"At first I brought my own plates (half plate size). He allowed me to
+place them in his slide in the dark room, to put them in the camera,
+which I was allowed to turn inside-out, and after they were exposed I
+was permitted to go into the dark room and develop them in his presence.
+Under these conditions I repeatedly obtained pictures of persons who
+were certainly not visible to me in the studio. I was allowed to do
+almost anything that I pleased, to alter the background, to change the
+position of the camera, to sit at any angle that I chose--in short to
+act as if the studio and all belonging to it was my own. And I
+repeatedly obtained what the old photographer called 'shadow pictures,'
+but none of them bore any resemblance to any person whom I had known.
+
+"In all these earlier experiments the photographer, whom I will call Mr.
+B----, made no charge, and the only request that he made was that I
+should not publish his name, or do anything to let his neighbors know of
+the curious shadow pictures which were obtainable in his studio.
+
+"After a time I was so thoroughly satisfied that the shadow photographs,
+or spirit forms, were not produced by any fraud on the part of the
+photographer, that I did not trouble to bring my own marked plates--I
+allowed him to use his own, and to do all the work of loading the slide
+and of developing the plate without my assistance or supervision. What I
+wanted was to see whether it would be possible for me to obtain a
+photograph of any person known to me in life who has passed over to the
+other side. The production of one such picture, if the person was
+unknown to the photographer, and he had no means of obtaining the
+photograph of the original while on earth, seemed to me so much better a
+test of the genuineness of the phenomena than could be secured by any
+amount of personal supervision of the process of photography, that I
+left him to operate without interference. The results he obtained when
+left to himself were precisely the same as those when the slides passed
+only through my own hands. But, although I obtained a great variety of
+portraits of unknown persons, I got none whom I could recognize.
+
+"In a conversation with Mr. B-- as to how these shadow pictures, as he
+called them, came on the plate, I found him almost as much at sea as
+myself. He said that he did not know how they came, but that he had
+noticed that they came more frequently and with greater distinctness at
+some times than at others. He could never say beforehand whether they
+would come or not. He frequently informed me when my sitting began that
+he could guarantee nothing. And often the set of plates would bear no
+trace of any portrait save mine.
+
+"He was very reluctant to continue the experiments, and used to complain
+that after exposing four plates with a view to obtaining such pictures
+he felt quite exhausted. And sometimes he complained that his 'innards
+seemed to be turned upside-down,' to use his own phrase. I usually sat
+with him between two and three in the afternoon, and on the days which I
+came he always abstained from the usual glass of beer which he took with
+his midday meal. If I came unexpectedly, and he had had a single glass
+of beer, which formed his usual beverage, he would always assure me
+that I need not expect any good results. I, however, never found any
+particular difference in the results.
+
+"We often discussed the matter together. And he was evidently working
+out a theory of his own, as any one might under such circumstances. He
+knew that when he was excited or irritated he got bad results. Hence he
+often used to keep a music-box going, for the music, in his opinion,
+tended to set up good and tranquil conditions. He said he thought
+something must come out of him--what, he did not know, but something was
+taken out of him, and with this something he thought the entities,
+whoever they were, built themselves up and acquired sufficient substance
+to reflect the rays of light so as to impress the sensitive plate in his
+camera. He also thought that his old camera had become what he called
+magnetized, and although it was an old-fashioned piece of furniture,
+which I not only examined myself, but have had examined by expert
+photographers, nothing could be discovered within or without it which
+would account for the results obtained. He also was of the opinion that
+even although he did not touch the photographic plate, it was necessary
+for him to touch or to hold his hand over the photographic slide, and
+also to hold his hand over the plate when it was in the developing bath.
+His theory was that in some way or other this process magnetized the
+plate and brought out a shadow portrait.
+
+"One peculiarity of almost all the shadow pictures obtained in all these
+series of experiments is that they have around them the same kind of
+white drapery which is so familiar to those who have taken part in a
+materializing séance. Sometimes this drapery is more voluminous than at
+others; often, when the conditions are good, the form which at first
+appears with its head encompassed with drapery will appear on the second
+plate without any drapery. On asking Mr. B-- what explanation he could
+give for this, he said he did not know, but he believed that the bodily
+appearance assumed by the spirit was very sensitive and needed to be
+shielded from currents, which might harm it. But when harmony prevailed
+they could venture to remove the drapery, and be photographed without
+it. Whatever may be the value of Mr. B--'s theory, there is little doubt
+that something is given off from his body which can be photographed. The
+white mist that appears to emanate from him forms into cloudy folds out
+of which there protrudes a more or less clearly defined face with human
+features. Sometimes this white and misty cloud obscures the sitter, at
+other times it seems to be condensed as if it were in the process of
+being worked up into a definite form for the completion of which either
+time or some other conditions were lacking. It was also noticeable that
+the entity--whoever it may be--which builds up the form, who is giving
+off sufficient solidity to impress its image upon the plate in the
+camera, having once created a form, will use it repeatedly without any
+change of position or expression. This will no doubt seem a great
+stumbling-block to many. But the fact is as I have stated it, and our
+first business is to ascertain facts, whether they tell for or against
+any particular hypothesis. It may be that the disembodied spirit, in
+order to establish its identity, constructs, out of the 'aura' given off
+by the photographer or other medium, a mask or cast bearing the
+unmistakable resemblance to the body which it wore in its sojourn on
+earth. Having once built it up for use in the studio, it may be easier
+to employ the same cast again and again instead of building up a new one
+at each fresh sitting. Upon this point, however, I shall have something
+to say further on.
+
+"I was very much interested in the results I obtained, although as none
+of the photographs were identified I did not deem the experiment
+completely successful. I was very anxious to induce Mr. B-- to devote
+some months to an uninterrupted series of experiments, and asked him on
+what terms I could secure his services. But he absolutely refused; he
+said he did not like it, it made him unwell, made people speak ill of
+him, and it did not matter what terms were offered, he would not
+consent. He was an old man, he said, and he could not find out how these
+things came; and, in short, neither scientific curiosity nor financial
+consideration would induce him to consent to more than an occasional
+sitting. I therefore dropped the matter, and for some years I
+discontinued my experiments.
+
+"I had a friend who often accompanied me to Mr. B--'s studio, where she
+had been photographed both with and without shadow pictures appearing on
+the background. We often promised each other that if either of us passed
+over we would come back and be photographed by Mr. B-- if possible, in
+order to prove the reality of spirit return. Shortly after this my
+friend died. But it was not until nearly four years after her death, at
+the request of a friend who was very anxious to know whether she could
+communicate with those on the other side, that I went back to Mr. B--'s
+studio.
+
+"He had always been slightly clairvoyant and clairaudient. He told me
+that a few days before I had written asking for the appointment, my
+deceased friend had appeared in the studio and told him that I was
+coming. This reminded me of her promise, and I said at once that I hoped
+he would be able to photograph her. He said he didn't know; he was
+rather frightened of her, for reasons into which I need not enter, but
+if she came he would see what he could do. My friend and I sat together.
+The first plate was exposed, nothing appeared in the background. When
+the second plate was placed in the camera Mr. B-- nodded with a quick
+look of recognition. We saw nothing. After he had exposed the second
+plate and before he developed it he asked us to change seats. We did
+this, and as he was exposing the third plate he said, 'I am told to ask
+you to do this,' and then when he closed the shutter he said, 'it is
+Mrs. M--.' On the fourth plate there appeared a picture of a woman whom
+I had never seen before, and whom my friend had never seen, neither had
+Mr. B--. When the plates came to be developed I found the second and
+third plates contained unmistakable likenesses of my friend Mrs. M--.
+These portraits were immediately recognized by my friend as unmistakable
+likenesses of the deceased Mrs. M--. It will be objected that she had
+frequently been photographed by the same photographer, and that he had
+simply faked a photograph from one of his old negatives. I don't believe
+that this is possible, for these portraits, although recognized
+immediately by every one who knew her, including her nearest relative,
+are quite different from any photograph she ever had taken in life. She
+certainly never was photographed enveloped in white drapery, nor do I
+believe that Mr. B-- had any negative of any of her portraits in his
+possession. But I fully admit that from the point of view of one who
+wishes to exclude every possibility of error, the fact that Mrs. M-- had
+been frequently photographed in her lifetime by the same photographer
+renders it impossible to regard these photographs as conclusive
+testimony as to their authenticity as a photograph of a form assumed by
+a disembodied spirit. I have mentioned that on the fourth plate there
+appeared a portrait of an unknown female. On my return I was showing the
+print of this shadow picture to a friend when she startled me by
+declaring that the shrouded form which appeared behind me in the
+photograph was a portrait of her mother who had died some months before
+in Dublin. I had never seen her mother, my friend did not know of her
+existence, neither did the photographer, nor does he to this day. It was
+only many months afterwards that I was able to obtain a photograph of my
+friend's mother, but it was taken when she was a comparatively young
+woman and bore no manner of resemblance to the portrait of the lady who
+appeared behind me. Her daughter, however, had not the slightest
+hesitation in asserting that it was her mother, that she had recognized
+her instantly, and that it was a very good portrait of her as she
+appeared in the later years of her life. This startled me not a little,
+and convinced me that I had a good prospect of attaining some definite
+results as an outcome of my experiments.
+
+"Mr. B--, encouraged by this success, was willing to continue his
+experiments, and this time I insisted upon paying him for his work.
+
+"From this time onward the occurrence of photographs that were
+recognizable on the background of the photographs taken by Mr. B--
+became frequent. Sometimes the plates were marked; but not invariably.
+For my part I attach comparatively no importance to the marking of
+plates and the close supervision of the operator. The test of the
+genuineness of a photograph that is obtained when the unknown relative
+of an unknown sitter appears in the background of the photograph, is
+immeasurably superior to precautions any expert conjurer or trick
+photographer might evade. Again and again I sent friends to Mr. B--,
+giving him no information as to who they were, nor telling him anything
+as to the identity of the persons' deceased friend or relative whose
+portrait they wished to secure; and time and again when the negative was
+developed the portrait would appear in the background, or sometimes in
+front of the sitter. This occurred so frequently that I am quite
+convinced of the impossibility of any fraud. One time it was a French
+editor, who finding the portrait of his deceased wife appear on the
+negative when developed, was so transported with delight that he
+insisted on kissing the photographer, Mr. B--, much to the old man's
+embarrassment. On another occasion it was a Lancashire engineer, himself
+a photographer, who took marked plates and all possible precautions. He
+obtained portraits of two of his relatives and another of an eminent
+personage with whom he had been in close relations. Or again, it was a
+near neighbor, who, going as a total stranger to the studio, obtained
+the portrait of her deceased daughter.
+
+"I attach no importance whatever to the appearance of portraits of
+well-known personages, which might easily be copied from existing
+pictures, but I attach immense importance to the production of the
+spirit photographs of unknown relatives of sitters who are unknown to
+the photographer, who receives them solely as a lady or gentleman who is
+one of my friends.
+
+"Although, as I have said, I do not attach much importance to
+photographs appearing of well-known men, I confess that I was rather
+impressed by one of my most recent experiments. I received a message
+from a medium in Sheffield, who is unknown to me, saying that Cecil
+Rhodes, who had then been dead about nine months, had spoken to her
+clairaudiently, and had told her to ask me to go to the photographer's,
+and that he would come and be photographed. The medium was a stranger to
+me, and I confess that I received the message with considerable
+skepticism. However, when she came up to town I accompanied her to the
+studio. She declared that she saw Cecil Rhodes, and that he spoke to
+her, and that he was standing behind me when the plate was exposed. When
+the plate came to be developed, although there was one well-defined
+figure standing behind me and several other faces half visible in the
+background, there was no portrait of Cecil Rhodes. I was not surprised,
+and went away. A month afterwards I went to have another sitting with
+the photographer. I chatted with him for a short time, and then he left
+the room for a moment. When he came back he said to me: 'There is a
+round-faced well set-up man here with a short moustache and a dimple in
+his chin. Do you know him?' 'No,' I said, 'I don't know any such man.'
+'Well, he seems to be very busy about you.' 'Well,' I said, 'if he comes
+upstairs, we shall see what we can get.' 'I don't know,' said he. When I
+was sitting, he said, 'There he is, and I see the letter R. Is it Robert
+or Richard, do you think?' 'I don't know any Robert or Richard,' I said.
+He took the picture. He then proceeded with the second plate, and said,
+'That man is still here, and I see behind him a country road. I wonder
+what that means.' He went into the dark room, and presently came out and
+said, 'I see "road or roads." Do you know any one of that name?' 'Of
+course,' I said, 'Cecil Rhodes.' 'Do you mean him as died in the
+Transvaal lately?' said he. I said 'Yes.' 'Well,' he said, 'was he a man
+like that?' 'Well, he had a moustache,' I said. And sure enough, when
+the plate was developed, there was Cecil Rhodes looking fifteen years
+younger than when he died.
+
+"Some other plates were exposed. One was entirely blank, on two others
+the mist was formed into a kind of clot of light, but no figure was
+visible, the fifth had a portrait of an unknown man, and on the sixth,
+when it came to be developed, there was the same portrait of Cecil
+Rhodes that had appeared on the first, but without the white drapery
+round the head.
+
+"Of course it may be said that it was well known that I was connected
+with Cecil Rhodes and that the photographer therefore would have no
+difficulty in faking a portrait. I admit all that, and therefore I would
+not have introduced this if it had stood alone, as any evidence showing
+that it was a _bona fide_ photograph of an invisible being. But it does
+not stand alone, and I have almost every reason to believe in the almost
+stupid honesty, if I may use such a phrase, of the photographer. I am
+naturally much interested in these latest portraits of the African
+Colossus. They are, at any rate, entirely new, no such portraits, to the
+best of my knowledge--and I have made a collection of all I can lay my
+hands on--exactly resembling those portraits which I obtained at Mr.
+B--'s studio.
+
+"I will conclude the account of my experiments by telling how I secured
+a portrait under circumstances which preclude any possibility of fake or
+fraud. One day when I entered the studio, Mr. B-- said to me, 'There is
+a man come with you who has been here before; he came here some days ago
+when I was by myself; he looked very wild, and he had a gun in his hand,
+and I did not like the look of him. I don't like guns, so I asked him to
+go away, for I was frightened of the gun, and he went. But now he has
+come with you, and he has not got his gun any more, so we will let him
+stop.' I was rather amused at the old man's story and said, 'Well, see
+if you can photograph him.' 'I don't know as I can,' he said, 'I never
+know what I can get,'--which is quite true, for often the photographs
+which he says he sees clairvoyantly do not come out on the plate. While
+he was photographing me, I said to him, 'If you can tell this man to go
+away, you can ask him his name.' 'Yes,' said he. 'Will you do so?' I
+said. 'Yes,' he said. After seeming to ask the question mentally, he
+said, 'He says his name is Piet Botha.' 'Piet Botha,' I said, 'I know no
+such name. There are Louis and Philip, and Chris Botha. I have never
+heard of Piet; still they are a numerous family and there are plenty of
+Bothas in South Africa, and it will be interesting to ask General Botha,
+when he arrives, whether he knows of any Piet Botha.' When the negative
+was developed, sure enough there appeared behind me a photograph of a
+stalwart bearded person, who might have been a Boer or a Russian moujik,
+but who was certainly unknown to me. I had never seen a portrait of any
+one which bore any resemblance to the photograph.
+
+"When General Botha arrived I did not get an opportunity of asking him
+about the photograph, but some time afterwards I asked Mr. Fischer, one
+of the delegation from the South African Republics, to look at the
+photograph, and if he got an opportunity to ask General Botha if he knew
+of such a man as Piet Botha. Mr. Fischer said he thought he had seen the
+face before, but he could not be certain. He departed with the
+photograph. Some days afterwards Mr. Wessels, a member of the delegation
+with Mr. Fischer, came down to my office. He said, 'I want to know about
+that photograph that you gave Mr. Fischer.' 'Yes,' I said, 'what about
+it?' 'I want to know where you got it.' I told him. He replied
+disdainfully, 'I don't believe in such things; it is superstition;
+besides, that man didn't know Mr. B--; he has never been in London; how
+could he come there?' 'What,' I said, 'do you know him?' 'Know him!'
+said Mr. Wessels. 'He is my brother-in-law.' 'Really!' I said. 'What did
+they call him?' 'Pietrus Johannes Botha, but we always called him Piet
+for short.' 'Is he dead, then?' I said. 'Yes,' said Mr. Wessels, 'he was
+the first Boer officer who was killed in the siege of Kimberley; but
+there is a mystery about this; you didn't know him?' 'No,' I said. 'And
+never heard of him?' 'No,' I said. 'But,' he said, 'I have the man's
+portrait in my house in South Africa, how could you get it?' 'But,' I
+said, 'I never have had it.' 'I don't understand,' he said, moodily, and
+so departed. I afterwards showed the photograph to another Free-State
+Boer who knew Piet Botha very well, and he had not the slightest
+hesitation in declaring that it was an unmistakable likeness of his dead
+friend.[8]
+
+[Footnote 8: Referring to this photo elsewhere, he wrote:--"This at
+least is not a case which telepathy can explain. Nor can the hypothesis
+of fraud hold water. It was by the merest accident that I asked the
+photographer to see if the spirit would give his name. No one in
+England, so far as I have been able to ascertain, knew that any Piet
+Botha ever existed.
+
+"As if to render all explanation of fraud or contrivance still more
+incredible, it may be mentioned that the _Daily Graphic_ of October,
+1889, which announced that a Commandant Botha had been killed in the
+siege of Kimberley, published a portrait alleged to be that of the dead
+commandant, which not only does not bear the remotest resemblance to the
+Piet Botha of my photograph, but which was described as Commandant Hans
+Botha!"]
+
+"This is a plain, straightforward narrative of my experiences; they are
+still going on. But if I continue them forever I don't see how I am
+going to obtain better results than those which I have already secured.
+At the same time I must admit that when I have taken my own kodak to the
+studio and taken a photograph immediately before Mr. B-- had exposed his
+plate, I got no results. The same failure occurred with another
+photographer whom I took, who took his own camera and his own plates,
+and took a photograph immediately before and immediately after Mr. B--
+had exposed his plate, and secured no result. Mr. B--'s explanation of
+this is that he thinks he does in some way or other magnetize, as he
+terms it, the plate, and that there is some effluence from his hand
+which is as necessary for the development of the psychic figure as the
+developing liquid is for the development of an ordinary photograph. This
+explanation would no doubt be derided as, I presume, wiseacres would
+have derided the first photographers when they insisted upon the
+necessity of darkness whilst developing their plates. What I hold to be
+established is that in the presence of this particular individual, Mr.
+B--, who at present is the only person known to me who is able to
+produce these photographs, it is possible to obtain under test
+conditions photographs that are unmistakably portraits of deceased
+persons; the said deceased persons being entirely unknown to him, and in
+some cases equally unknown to the sitter. Neither was any portrait of
+such person accessible either to the sitter or the photographer; neither
+was either the sitter or the photographer conscious of the very
+existence of these persons, whose identity was subsequently recognized
+by their friends.[9]
+
+[Footnote 9: Miss Katharine Bates was present when the Piet Botha
+photograph was taken under the exact conditions specified by my father.]
+
+"I am willing to admit that no conceivable conditions in the way of
+marking plates and supervising the actions or the operations of the
+photographer are of the least use, in so much as an expert conjurer can
+easily deceive the eye of the unskilled observer. But what I do maintain
+is that it is impossible for the cleverest trick photographer and the
+ablest conjurer in the world to produce a photograph, at a moment's
+notice, of an unknown relative of an unknown sitter, this portrait to
+be unmistakably recognizable by all survivors who knew the original in
+life. This Mr. B-- has done again and again. And it seems to me that a
+great step has been made towards establishing the possibility of
+verifying by photography the reality of the existence of other
+intelligences than our own."
+
+The photographer alluded to in this article is Mr. Boursnell. He died
+shortly after it was written, and although father experimented with
+others, he never obtained such convincing and satisfactory results.
+
+
+
+
+THE SIN-EATER
+
+By Fiona Macleod
+
+    SIN.
+
+    _Taste this bread, this substance: tell me
+    Is it bread or flesh?_
+
+    [_The Senses approach._]
+
+    THE SMELL.
+
+    _Its smell
+    Is the smell of bread._
+
+    SIN.
+
+    _Touch, come. Why tremble?
+    Say what's this thou touchest?_
+
+    THE TOUCH.
+
+    _Bread._
+
+    SIN.
+
+    _Sight, declare what thou discernest
+    In this object._
+
+    THE SIGHT.
+
+    _Bread alone._
+
+    --CALDERON,
+    _Los Encantos de la Culpa_
+
+
+A wet wind out of the south mazed and mooned through the sea-mist that
+hung over the Ross. In all the bays and creeks was a continuous weary
+lapping of water. There was no other sound anywhere.
+
+Thus was it at daybreak; it was thus at noon; thus was it now in the
+darkening of the day. A confused thrusting and falling of sounds through
+the silence betokened the hour of the setting. Curlews wailed in the
+mist; on the seething limpet-covered rocks the skuas and terns
+screamed, or uttered hoarse, rasping cries. Ever and again the prolonged
+note of the oyster-catcher shrilled against the air, as an echo flying
+blindly along a blank wall of cliff. Out of weedy places, wherein the
+tide sobbed with long, gurgling moans, came at intervals the barking of
+a seal.
+
+Inland, by the hamlet of Contullich, there is a reedy tarn called the
+Loch-a-chaoruinn.[10] By the shores of this mournful water a man moved.
+It was a slow, weary walk that of the man Neil Ross. He had come from
+Duninch, thirty miles to the eastward, and had not rested foot, nor
+eaten, nor had word of man or woman, since his going west an hour after
+dawn.
+
+[Footnote 10: Contullich: i.e. Ceann-nan-tulaich, "the end of the
+hillocks." Loch a chaoruinn means the loch of the rowan-trees.]
+
+At the bend of the loch nearest the clachan he came upon an old woman
+carrying peat. To his reiterated question as to where he was, and if the
+tarn were Feur-Lochan above Fionnaphort that is on the strait of Iona on
+the west side of the Ross of Mull, she did not at first make any answer.
+The rain trickled down her withered brown face, over which the thin gray
+locks hung limply. It was only in the deep-set eyes that the flame of
+life still glimmered, though that dimly.
+
+The man had used the English when first he spoke, but as though
+mechanically. Supposing that he had not been understood, he repeated his
+question in the Gaelic.
+
+After a minute's silence the old woman answered him in the native
+tongue, but only to put a question in return.
+
+"I am thinking it is a long time since you have been in Iona?"
+
+The man stirred uneasily.
+
+"And why is that, mother?" he asked, in a weak voice hoarse with damp
+and fatigue; "how is it you will be knowing that I have been in Iona at
+all?"
+
+"Because I knew your kith and kin there, Neil Ross."
+
+"I have not been hearing that name, mother, for many a long year. And as
+for the old face o' you, it is unbeknown to me."
+
+"I was at the naming of you, for all that. Well do I remember the day
+that Silis Macallum gave you birth; and I was at the house on the croft
+of Ballyrona when Murtagh Ross--that was your father--laughed. It was an
+ill laughing that."
+
+"I am knowing it. The curse of God on him!"
+
+"'Tis not the first, nor the last, though the grass is on his head three
+years agone now."
+
+"You that know who I am will be knowing that I have no kith or kin now
+on Iona?"
+
+"Ay; they are all under gray stone or running wave. Donald your brother,
+and Murtagh your next brother, and little Silis, and your mother Silis
+herself, and your two brothers of your father, Angus and Ian Macallum,
+and your father Murtagh Ross, and his lawful childless wife, Dionaid,
+and his sister Anna--one and all, they lie beneath the green wave or in
+the brown mould. It is said there is a curse upon all who live at
+Ballyrona. The owl builds now in the rafters, and it is the big sea-rat
+that runs across the fireless hearth."
+
+"It is there I am going."
+
+"The foolishness is on you, Neil Ross."
+
+"Now it is that I am knowing who you are. It is old Sheen Macarthur I am
+speaking to."
+
+"Tha mise ... it is I."
+
+"And you will be alone now, too, I am thinking, Sheen?"
+
+"I am alone. God took my three boys at the one fishing ten years ago;
+and before there was moonrise in the blackness of my heart my man went.
+It was after the drowning of Anndra that my croft was taken from me.
+Then I crossed the Sound, and shared with my widow sister Elsie McVurie
+till _she_ went; and then the two cows had to go; and I had no rent, and
+was old."
+
+In the silence that followed, the rain dribbled from the sodden bracken
+and dripping loneroid. Big tears rolled slowly down the deep lines on
+the face of Sheen. Once there was a sob in her throat, but she put her
+shaking hand to it, and it was still.
+
+Neil Ross shifted from foot to foot. The ooze in that marshy place
+squelched with each restless movement he made. Beyond them a plover
+wheeled, a blurred splatch in the mist, crying its mournful cry over and
+over and over.
+
+It was a pitiful thing to hear--ah, bitter loneliness, bitter patience
+of poor old women. That he knew well. But he was too weary, and his
+heart was nigh full of its own burthen. The words could not come to his
+lips. But at last he spoke.
+
+"Tha mo chridhe goirt," he said, with tears in his voice, as he put his
+hand on her bent shoulder; "my heart is sore."
+
+She put up her old face against his.
+
+"'S tha e ruidhinn mo chridhe," she whispered; "it is touching my heart
+you are."
+
+After that they walked on slowly through the dripping mist, each dumb
+and brooding deep.
+
+"Where will you be staying this night?" asked Sheen suddenly, when they
+had traversed a wide boggy stretch of land; adding, as by an
+afterthought--"Ah, it is asking you were if the tarn there were
+Feur-Lochan. No; it is Loch-a-chaoruinn, and the clachan that is near is
+Contullich."
+
+"Which way?"
+
+"Yonder, to the right."
+
+"And you are not going there?"
+
+"No. I am going to the steading of Andrew Blair. Maybe you are for
+knowing it? It is called the Baile-na-Chlais-nambuidheag."[11]
+
+[Footnote 11: "The farm in the hollow of the yellow flowers."]
+
+"I do not remember. But it is remembering a Blair I am. He was Adam, the
+son of Adam, the son of Robert. He and my father did many an ill deed
+together."
+
+"Ay, to the stones be it said. Sure, now, there was, even till this
+weary day, no man or woman who had a good word for Adam Blair."
+
+"And why that ... why till this day?"
+
+"It is not yet the third hour since he went into the silence."
+
+Neil Ross uttered a sound like a stifled curse. For a time he trudged
+wearily on.
+
+"Then I am too late," he said at last, but as though speaking to
+himself. "I had hoped to see him face to face again, and curse him
+between the eyes. It was he who made Murtagh Ross break his troth to my
+mother, and marry that other woman, barren at that, God be praised! And
+they say ill of him, do they?"
+
+"Ay, it is evil that is upon him. This crime and that, God knows; and
+the shadow of murder on his brow and in his eyes. Well, well, 'tis ill
+to be speaking of a man in corpse, and that near by. 'Tis Himself only
+that knows, Neil Ross."
+
+"Maybe ay and maybe no. But where is it that I can be sleeping this
+night, Sheen Macarthur?"
+
+"They will not be taking a stranger at the farm this night of the
+nights, I am thinking. There is no place else for seven miles yet, when
+there is the clachan, before you will be coming to Fionnaphort. There is
+the warm byre, Neil, my man; or, if you can bide by my peats, you may
+rest, and welcome, though there is no bed for you, and no food either
+save some of the porridge that is over."
+
+"And that will do well enough for me, Sheen; and Himself bless you for
+it."
+
+And so it was.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After old Sheen Macarthur had given the wayfarer food--poor food at
+that, but welcome to one nigh starved, and for the heartsome way it was
+given, and because of the thanks to God that was upon it before even
+spoon was lifted--she told him a lie. It was the good lie of tender
+love.
+
+"Sure now, after all, Neil, my man," she said, "it is sleeping at the
+farm I ought to be, for Maisie Macdonald, the wise woman, will be
+sitting by the corpse, and there will be none to keep her company. It is
+there I must be going; and if I am weary, there is a good bed for me
+just beyond the dead-board, which I am not minding at all. So, if it is
+tired you are sitting by the peats, lie down on my bed there, and have
+the sleep; and God be with you."
+
+With that she went, and soundlessly, for Neil Ross was already asleep,
+where he sat on an upturned claar, with his elbows on his knees, and his
+flame-lit face in his hands.
+
+The rain had ceased; but the mist still hung over the land, though in
+thin veils now, and these slowly drifting seaward. Sheen stepped wearily
+along the stony path that led from her bothy to the farm-house. She
+stood still once, the fear upon her, for she saw three or four blurred
+yellow gleams moving beyond her, eastward, along the dyke. She knew what
+they were--the corpse-lights that on the night of death go between the
+bier and the place of burial. More than once she had seen them before
+the last hour, and by that token had known the end to be near.
+
+Good Catholic that she was, she crossed herself, and took heart. Then
+muttering
+
+    "Crois nan naoi aingeal leam
+    'O mhullach mo chinn
+    Gu craican mo bhonn."
+
+    (The cross of the nine angels be about me,
+    From the top of my head
+    To the soles of my feet),
+
+she went on her way fearlessly.
+
+When she came to the White House, she entered by the milk-shed that was
+between the byre and the kitchen. At the end of it was a paved place,
+with washing-tubs. At one of these stood a girl that served in the
+house--an ignorant lass called Jessie McFall, out of Oban. She was
+ignorant, indeed, not to know that to wash clothes with a newly dead
+body near by was an ill thing to do. Was it not a matter for the knowing
+that the corpse could hear, and might rise up in the night and clothe
+itself in a clean white shroud?
+
+She was still speaking to the lassie when Maisie Macdonald, the
+deid-watcher, opened the door of the room behind the kitchen to see who
+it was that was come. The two old women nodded silently. It was not till
+Sheen was in the closed room, midway in which something covered with a
+sheet lay on a board, that any word was spoken.
+
+"Duit sìth mòr, Beann Macdonald."
+
+"And deep peace to you, too, Sheen; and to him that is there."
+
+"Och, ochone, mise 'n diugh; 'tis a dark hour this."
+
+"Ay; it is bad. Will you have been hearing or seeing anything?"
+
+"Well, as for that, I am thinking I saw lights moving betwixt here and
+the green place over there."
+
+"The corpse-lights?"
+
+"Well, it is calling them that they are."
+
+"I _thought_ they would be out. And I have been hearing the noise of the
+planks--the cracking of the boards, you know, that will be used for the
+coffin to-morrow."
+
+A long silence followed. The old women had seated themselves by the
+corpse, their cloaks over their heads. The room was fireless, and was
+lit only by a tall wax death-candle, kept against the hour of the going.
+
+At last Sheen began swaying slowly to and fro, crooning low the while.
+"I would not be for doing that, Sheen Macarthur," said the deid-watcher
+in a low voice, but meaningly; adding, after a moment's pause, "_The
+mice have all left the house_."
+
+Sheen sat upright, a look half of terror, half of awe in her eyes.
+
+"God save the sinful soul that is hiding," she whispered.
+
+Well she knew what Maisie meant. If the soul of the dead be a lost soul
+it knows its doom. The house of death is the house of sanctuary; but
+before the dawn that follows the death-night the soul must go forth,
+whosoever or whatsoever wait for it in the homeless, shelterless plains
+of air around and beyond. If it be well with the soul, it need have no
+fear; if it be not ill with the soul, it may fare forth with surety; but
+if it be ill with the soul, ill will the going be. Thus is it that the
+spirit of an evil man cannot stay, and yet dare not go; and so it
+strives to hide itself in secret places anywhere, in dark channels and
+blind walls; and the wise creatures that live near man smell the terror,
+and flee. Maisie repeated the saying of Sheen, then, after a silence,
+added:
+
+"Adam Blair will not lie in his grave for a year and a day because of
+the sins that are upon him; and it is knowing that, they are here. He
+will be the Watcher of the Dead for a year and a day."
+
+"Ay, sure, there will be dark prints in the dawn-dew over yonder."
+
+Once more the old women relapsed into silence. Through the night there
+was a sighing sound. It was not the sea, which was too far off to be
+heard save in a day of storm. The wind it was, that was dragging itself
+across the sodden moors like a wounded thing, moaning and sighing.
+
+Out of sheer weariness, Sheen twice rocked forward from her stool, heavy
+with sleep. At last Maisie led her over to the niche-bed opposite, and
+laid her down there, and waited till the deep furrows in the face
+relaxed somewhat, and the thin breath labored slow across the fallen
+jaw.
+
+"Poor old woman," she muttered, heedless of her own gray hairs and
+grayer years; "a bitter, bad thing it is to be old, old and weary. 'Tis
+the sorrow, that. God keep the pain of it!"
+
+As for herself, she did not sleep at all that night, but sat between the
+living and the dead, with her plaid shrouding her. Once, when Sheen gave
+a low, terrified scream in her sleep, she rose, and in a loud voice
+cried, "_Sheeach-ad! Away with you!_" And with that she lifted the
+shroud from the dead man, and took the pennies off the eyelids, and
+lifted each lid; then, staring into these filmed wells, muttered an
+ancient incantation that would compel the soul of Adam Blair to leave
+the spirit of Sheen alone, and return to the cold corpse that was its
+coffin till the wood was ready.
+
+The dawn came at last. Sheen slept, and Adam Blair slept a deeper sleep,
+and Maisie stared out of her wan, weary eyes against the red and stormy
+flares of light that came into the sky.
+
+When, an hour after sunrise, Sheen Macarthur reached her bothy, she
+found Neil Ross, heavy with slumber, upon her bed. The fire was not out,
+though no flame or spark was visible; but she stooped and blew at the
+heart of the peats till the redness came, and once it came it grew.
+Having done this, she kneeled and said a rune of the morning, and after
+that a prayer, and then a prayer for the poor man Neil. She could pray
+no more because of the tears. She rose and put the meal and water into
+the pot for the porridge to be ready against his awaking. One of the
+hens that was there came and pecked at her ragged skirt. "Poor beastie,"
+she said. "Sure, that will just be the way I am pulling at the white
+robe of the Mother o' God. 'Tis a bit meal for you, cluckie, and for me
+a healing hand upon my tears. O, och, ochone, the tears, the tears!"
+
+It was not till the third hour after sunrise of that bleak day in that
+winter of the winters, that Neil Ross stirred and arose. He ate in
+silence. Once he said that he smelt the snow coming out of the north.
+Sheen said no word at all.
+
+After the porridge, he took his pipe, but there was no tobacco. All that
+Sheen had was the pipeful she kept against the gloom of the Sabbath. It
+was her one solace in the long weary week. She gave him this, and held a
+burning peat to his mouth, and hungered over the thin, rank smoke that
+curled upward.
+
+It was within half-an-hour of noon that, after an absence, she returned.
+
+"Not between you and me, Neil Ross," she began abruptly, "but just for
+the asking, and what is beyond. Is it any money you are having upon
+you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Nothing?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Then how will you be getting across to Iona? It is seven long miles to
+Fionnaphort, and bitter cold at that, and you will be needing food, and
+then the ferry, the ferry across the Sound, you know."
+
+"Ay, I know."
+
+"What would you do for a silver piece, Neil, my man?"
+
+"You have none to give me, Sheen Macarthur; and, if you had, it would
+not be taking it I would."
+
+"Would you kiss a dead man for a crown-piece--a crown-piece of five good
+shillings?"
+
+Neil Ross stared. Then he sprang to his feet.
+
+"It is Adam Blair you are meaning, woman! God curse him in death now
+that he is no longer in life!"
+
+Then, shaking and trembling, he sat down again, and brooded against the
+dull red glow of the peats.
+
+But, when he rose, in the last quarter before noon, his face was white.
+
+"The dead are dead, Sheen Macarthur. They can know or do nothing. I will
+do it. It is willed. Yes, I am going up to the house there. And now I am
+going from here. God Himself has my thanks to you, and my blessing too.
+They will come back to you. It is not forgetting you I will be.
+Good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye, Neil, son of the woman that was my friend. A south wind to
+you! Go up by the farm. In the front of the house you will see what you
+will be seeing. Maisie Macdonald will be there. She will tell you what's
+for the telling. There is no harm in it, sure; sure, the dead are dead.
+It is praying for you I will be, Neil Ross. Peace to you!"
+
+"And to you, Sheen."
+
+And with that the man went.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Neil Ross reached the byres of the farm in the wide hollow, he saw
+two figures standing as though awaiting him, but separate, and unseen of
+the other. In front of the house was a man he knew to be Andrew Blair;
+behind the milk-shed was a woman he guessed to be Maisie Macdonald.
+
+It was the woman he came upon first.
+
+"Are you the friend of Sheen Macarthur?" she asked in a whisper, as she
+beckoned him to the doorway.
+
+"I am."
+
+"I am knowing no names or anything. And no one here will know you, I am
+thinking. So do the thing and begone."
+
+"There is no harm to it?"
+
+"None."
+
+"It will be a thing often done, is it not?"
+
+"Ay, sure."
+
+"And the evil does not abide?"
+
+"No. The ... the ... person ... the person takes them away, and...."
+
+"_Them?_"
+
+"For sure, man! Them ... the sins of the corpse. He takes them away; and
+are you for thinking God would let the innocent suffer for the guilty?
+No ... the person ... the Sin-Eater, you know ... takes them away on
+himself, and one by one the air of heaven washes them away till he, the
+Sin-Eater, is clean and whole as before."
+
+"But if it is a man you hate ... if it is a corpse that is the corpse of
+one who has been a curse and a foe ... if...."
+
+"_Sst!_ Be still now with your foolishness. It is only an idle saying, I
+am thinking. Do it, and take the money and go. It will be hell enough
+for Adam Blair, miser as he was, if he is for knowing that five good
+shillings of his money are to go to a passing tramp because of an old,
+ancient silly tale."
+
+Neil Ross laughed low at that. It was for pleasure to him.
+
+"Hush wi' ye! Andrew Blair is waiting round there. Say that I have sent
+you round, as I have neither bite nor bit to give."
+
+Turning on his heel, Neil walked slowly round to the front of the house.
+A tall man was there, gaunt and brown, with hairless face and lank brown
+hair, but with eyes cold and gray as the sea.
+
+"Good day to you, an' good faring. Will you be passing this way to
+anywhere?"
+
+"Health to you. I am a stranger here. It is on my way to Iona I am. But
+I have the hunger upon me. There is not a brown bit in my pocket. I
+asked at the door there, near the byres. The woman told me she could
+give me nothing--not a penny even, worse luck--nor, for that, a drink of
+warm milk. 'Tis a sore land this."
+
+"You have the Gaelic of the Isles. Is it from Iona you are?"
+
+"It is from the Isles of the West I come."
+
+"From Tiree ... from Coll?"
+
+"No."
+
+"From the Long Island ... or from Uist ... or maybe from Benbecula?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Oh well, sure it is no matter to me. But may I be asking your name?"
+
+"Macallum."
+
+"Do you know there is a death here, Macallum?"
+
+"If I didn't I would know it now, because of what lies yonder."
+
+Mechanically Andrew Blair looked round. As he knew, a rough bier was
+there, that was made of a dead-board laid upon three milking-stools.
+Beside it was a claar, a small tub to hold potatoes. On the bier was a
+corpse, covered with a canvas sheeting that looked like a sail.
+
+"He was a worthy man, my father," began the son of the dead man, slowly;
+"but he had his faults, like all of us. I might even be saying that he
+had his sins, to the Stones be it said. You will be knowing, Macallum,
+what is thought among the folk ... that a stranger, passing by, may take
+away the sins of the dead, and that, too, without any hurt whatever ...
+any hurt whatever."
+
+"Ay, sure."
+
+"And you will be knowing what is done?"
+
+"Ay."
+
+"With the bread ... and the water...?"
+
+"Ay."
+
+"It is a small thing to do. It is a Christian thing. I would be doing
+it myself, and that gladly, but the ... the ... passer-by who...."
+
+"It is talking of the Sin-Eater you are?"
+
+"Yes, yes, for sure. The Sin-Eater as he is called--and a good Christian
+act it is, for all that the ministers and the priests make a frowning at
+it--the Sin-Eater must be a stranger. He must be a stranger, and should
+know nothing of the dead man--above all, bear him no grudge."
+
+At that Neil Ross's eyes lightened for a moment.
+
+"And why that?"
+
+"Who knows? I have heard this, and I have heard that. If the Sin-Eater
+was hating the dead man he could take the sins and fling them into the
+sea, and they would be changed into demons of the air that would harry
+the flying soul till Judgment-Day."
+
+"And how would that thing be done?"
+
+The man spoke with flashing eyes and parted lips, the breath coming
+swift. Andrew Blair looked at him suspiciously; and hesitated, before,
+in a cold voice, he spoke again.
+
+"That is all folly, I am thinking, Macallum. Maybe it is all folly, the
+whole of it. But, see here, I have no time to be talking with you. If
+you will take the bread and the water you shall have a good meal if you
+want it, and ... and ... yes, look you, my man, I will be giving you a
+shilling too, for luck."
+
+"I will have no meal in this house, Anndramhic-Adam; nor will I do this
+thing unless you will be giving me two silver half-crowns. That is the
+sum I must have, or no other."
+
+"Two half-crowns! Why, man, for one half-crown...."
+
+"Then be eating the sins o' your father yourself, Andrew Blair! It is
+going I am."
+
+"Stop, man! Stop, Macallum. See here--I will be giving you what you
+ask."
+
+"So be it. Is the.... Are you ready?"
+
+"Ay, come this way."
+
+With that the two men turned and moved slowly towards the bier.
+
+In the doorway of the house stood a man and two women; farther in, a
+woman; and at the window to the left, the serving-wench, Jessie McFall,
+and two men of the farm. Of those in the doorway, the man was Peter, the
+half-witted youngest brother of Andrew Blair; the taller and older woman
+was Catreen, the widow of Adam, the second brother; and the thin, slight
+woman, with staring eyes and drooping mouth, was Muireall, the wife of
+Andrew. The old woman behind these was Maisie Macdonald.
+
+Andrew Blair stooped and took a saucer out of the claar. This he put
+upon the covered breast of the corpse. He stooped again, and brought
+forth a thick square piece of new-made bread. That also he placed upon
+the breast of the corpse. Then he stooped again, and with that he
+emptied a spoonful of salt alongside the bread.
+
+"I must see the corpse," said Neil Ross simply.
+
+"It is not needful, Macallum."
+
+"I must be seeing the corpse, I tell you--and for that, too, the bread
+and the water should be on the naked breast."
+
+"No, no, man; it...."
+
+But here a voice, that of Maisie the wise woman, came upon them, saying
+that the man was right, and that the eating of the sins should be done
+in that way and no other.
+
+With an ill grace the son of the dead man drew back the sheeting.
+Beneath it, the corpse was in a clean white shirt, a death-gown long ago
+prepared, that covered him from his neck to his feet, and left only the
+dusky yellowish face exposed.
+
+While Andrew Blair unfastened the shirt and placed the saucer and the
+bread and the salt on the breast, the man beside him stood staring
+fixedly on the frozen features of the corpse. The new laird had to speak
+to him twice before he heard.
+
+"I am ready. And you, now? What is it you are muttering over against the
+lips of the dead?"
+
+"It is giving him a message I am. There is no harm in that, sure?"
+
+"Keep to your own folk, Macallum. You are from the West you say, and we
+are from the North. There can be no messages between you and a Blair of
+Strathmore, no messages for _you_ to be giving."
+
+"He that lies here knows well the man to whom I am sending a
+message"--and at this response Andrew Blair scowled darkly. He would
+fain have sent the man about his business, but he feared he might get no
+other.
+
+"It is thinking I am that you are not a Macallum at all. I know all of
+that name in Mull, Iona, Skye, and the near isles. What will the name of
+your naming be, and of your father, and of his place?"
+
+Whether he really wanted an answer, or whether he sought only to divert
+the man from his procrastination, his question had a satisfactory
+result.
+
+"Well, now, it's ready I am, Anndra-mhic-Adam."
+
+With that, Andrew Blair stooped once more and from the claar brought a
+small jug of water. From this he filled the saucer.
+
+"You know what to say and what to do, Macallum."
+
+There was not one there who did not have a shortened breath because of
+the mystery that was now before them, and the fearfulness of it. Neil
+Ross drew himself up, erect, stiff, with white, drawn face. All who
+waited, save Andrew Blair, thought that the moving of his lips was
+because of the prayer that was slipping upon them, like the last lapsing
+of the ebb-tide. But Blair was watching him closely, and knew that it
+was no prayer which stole out against the blank air that was around the
+dead.
+
+Slowly Neil Ross extended his right arm. He took a pinch of the salt and
+put it in the saucer, then took another pinch and sprinkled it upon the
+bread. His hand shook for a moment as he touched the saucer. But there
+was no shaking as he raised it towards his lips, or when he held it
+before him when he spoke.
+
+"With this water that has salt in it, and has lain on thy corpse, O Adam
+mhic Anndra mhic Adam Mòr, I drink away all the evil that is upon
+thee...."
+
+There was throbbing silence while he paused.
+
+"... And may it be upon me and not upon thee, if with this water it
+cannot flow away."
+
+Thereupon, he raised the saucer and passed it thrice round the head of
+the corpse sunways; and, having done this, lifted it to his lips and
+drank as much as his mouth would hold. Thereafter he poured the remnant
+over his left hand, and let it trickle to the ground. Then he took the
+piece of bread. Thrice, too, he passed it round the head of the corpse
+sunways.
+
+He turned and looked at the man by his side, then at the others, who
+watched him with beating hearts.
+
+With a loud clear voice he took the sins.
+
+"_Thoir dhomh do ciontachd, O Adam mhic Anndra mhic Adam Mòr!_ Give me
+thy sins to take away from thee! Lo, now, as I stand here, I break this
+bread that has lain on thee in corpse, and I am eating it, I am, and in
+that eating I take upon me the sins of thee, O man that was alive and is
+now white with the stillness!"
+
+Thereupon Neil Ross broke the bread and ate of it, and took upon himself
+the sins of Adam Blair that was dead. It was a bitter swallowing, that.
+The remainder of the bread he crumbled in his hand, and threw it on the
+ground, and trod upon it. Andrew Blair gave a sigh of relief. His cold
+eyes lightened with malice.
+
+"Be off with you, now, Macallum. We are wanting no tramps at the farm
+here, and perhaps you had better not be trying to get work this side
+Iona; for it is known as the Sin-Eater you will be, and that won't be
+for the helping, I am thinking! There--there are the two half-crowns for
+you ... and may they bring you no harm, you that are _Scapegoat_ now!"
+
+The Sin-Eater turned at that, and stared like a hill-bull. _Scapegoat!_
+Ay, that's what he was. Sin-Eater, Scapegoat! Was he not, too, another
+Judas, to have sold for silver that which was not for the selling? No,
+no, for sure Maisie Macdonald could tell him the rune that would serve
+for the easing of this burden. He would soon be quit of it.
+
+Slowly he took the money, turned it over, and put it in his pocket.
+
+"I am going, Andrew Blair," he said quietly, "I am going now. I will not
+say to him that is there in the silence, A chuid do Pharas da!--nor will
+I say to you, Gu'n gleidheadh Dia thu,--nor will I say to this dwelling
+that is the home of thee and thine, Gu'n beannaic-headh Dia an
+tigh!"[12]
+
+[Footnote 12: A chuid do Pharas da! "His share of heaven be his." Gu'n
+gleidheadh Dia thu, "May God preserve you." Gu'n beannaic-headh Dia an
+tigh! "God's blessing on this house."]
+
+Here there was a pause. All listened. Andrew Blair shifted uneasily, the
+furtive eyes of him going this way and that, like a ferret in the grass.
+
+"But, Andrew Blair, I will say this: when you fare abroad, _Droch caoidh
+ort!_ and when you go upon the water, _Gaoth gun direadh ort_! Ay, ay,
+Anndra-mhic-Adam, _Dia ad aghaidh 's ad aodann ... agus bas dunach ort!
+Dhonas 's dholas ort, agus leat-sa!_"[13]
+
+[Footnote 13: Droch caoidh ort! "May a fatal accident happen to you"
+(_lit._ "bad moan on you"). Gaoth gun direadh ort! "May you drift to
+your drowning" (_lit._ "wind without direction on you"). Dia ad aghaidh,
+etc., "God against thee and in thy face ... and may a death of woe be
+yours.... Evil and sorrow to thee and thine!"]
+
+The bitterness of these words was like snow in June upon all there. They
+stood amazed. None spoke. No one moved.
+
+Neil Ross turned upon his heel, and, with a bright light in his eyes,
+walked away from the dead and the living. He went by the byres, whence
+he had come. Andrew Blair remained where he was, now glooming at the
+corpse, now biting his nails and staring at the damp sods at his feet.
+
+When Neil reached the end of the milk-shed he saw Maisie Macdonald
+there, waiting.
+
+"These were ill sayings of yours, Neil Ross," she said in a low voice,
+so that she might not be overheard from the house.
+
+"So, it is knowing me you are."
+
+"Sheen Macarthur told me."
+
+"I have good cause."
+
+"That is a true word. I know it."
+
+"Tell me this thing. What is the rune that is said for the throwing into
+the sea of the sins of the dead? See here, Maisie Macdonald. There is no
+money of that man that I would carry a mile with me. Here it is. It is
+yours, if you will tell me that rune."
+
+Maisie took the money hesitatingly. Then, stooping, she said slowly the
+few lines of the old, old rune.
+
+"Will you be remembering that?"
+
+"It is not forgetting it I will be, Maisie."
+
+"Wait a moment. There is some warm milk here."
+
+With that she went, and then, from within, beckoned to him to enter.
+
+"There is no one here, Neil Ross. Drink the milk."
+
+He drank; and while he did so she drew a leather pouch from some hidden
+place in her dress.
+
+"And now I have this to give you."
+
+She counted out ten pennies and two farthings.
+
+"It is all the coppers I have. You are welcome to them. Take them,
+friend of my friend. They will give you the food you need, and the ferry
+across the Sound."
+
+"I will do that, Maisie Macdonald, and thanks to you. It is not
+forgetting it I will be, nor you, good woman. And now, tell me, is it
+safe that I am? He called me a 'scapegoat', he, Andrew Blair! Can evil
+touch me between this and the sea?"
+
+"You must go to the place where the evil was done to you and yours--and
+that, I know, is on the west side of Iona. Go, and God preserve you. But
+here, too, is a sian that will be for the safety."
+
+Thereupon, with swift mutterings she said this charm: an old, familiar
+Sian against Sudden Harm:
+
+    "Sian a chuir Moire air Mac ort,
+    Sian ro' marbhadh, sian ro' lot ort,
+    Sian eadar a' chlioch 's a' ghlun,
+    Sian nan Tri ann an aon ort,
+    O mhullach do chinn gu bonn do chois ort:
+    Sian seachd eadar a h-aon ort,
+    Sian seachd eadar a dha ort,
+    Sian seachd eadar a tri ort,
+    Sian seachd eadar a ceithir ort,
+    Sian seachd eadar a coig ort,
+    Sian seachd eadar a sia ort,
+    Sian seachd paidir nan seach paidir dol deiseil ri diugh narach ort,
+      ga do ghleidheadh bho bheud 's bho mhi-thapadh!"
+
+Scarcely had she finished before she heard heavy steps approaching.
+
+"Away with you," she whispered, repeating in a loud, angry tone, "Away
+with you! _Seachad! Seachad!_"
+
+And with that Neil Ross slipped from the milk-shed and crossed the yard,
+and was behind the byres before Andrew Blair, with sullen mien and
+swift, wild eyes, strode from the house.
+
+It was with a grim smile on his face that Neil tramped down the wet
+heather till he reached the high road, and fared thence as through a
+marsh because of the rains there had been.
+
+For the first mile he thought of the angry mind of the dead man, bitter
+at paying of the silver. For the second mile he thought of the evil that
+had been wrought for him and his. For the third mile he pondered over
+all that he had heard and done and taken upon him that day.
+
+Then he sat down upon a broken granite heap by the way, and brooded deep
+till one hour went, and then another, and the third was upon him.
+
+A man driving two calves came towards him out of the west. He did not
+hear or see. The man stopped; spoke again. Neil gave no answer. The
+drover shrugged his shoulders, hesitated, and walked slowly on, often
+looking back.
+
+An hour later a shepherd came by the way he himself had tramped. He was
+a tall, gaunt man with a squint. The small, pale-blue eyes glittered out
+of a mass of red hair that almost covered his face. He stood still,
+opposite Neil, and leaned on his _cromak_.
+
+"Latha math leat," he said at last; "I wish you good day."
+
+Neil glanced at him, but did not speak.
+
+"What is your name, for I seem to know you?"
+
+But Neil had already forgotten him. The shepherd took out his
+snuff-mull, helped himself, and handed the mull to the lonely wayfarer.
+Neil mechanically helped himself.
+
+"Am bheil thu 'dol do Fhionphort?" tried the shepherd again: "Are you
+going to Fionnaphort?"
+
+"Tha mise 'dol a dh' I-challum-chille," Neil answered, in a low, weary
+voice, and as a man adream: "I am on my way to Iona."
+
+"I am thinking I know now who you are. You are the man Macallum."
+
+Neil looked, but did not speak. His eyes dreamed against what the other
+could not see or know. The shepherd called angrily to his dogs to keep
+the sheep from straying; then, with a resentful air, turned to his
+victim.
+
+"You are a silent man for sure, you are. I'm hoping it is not the curse
+upon you already."
+
+"What curse?"
+
+"Ah, _that_ has brought the wind against the mist! I was thinking so!"
+
+"What curse?"
+
+"You are the man that was the Sin-Eater over there?"
+
+"Ay."
+
+"The man Macallum?"
+
+"Ay."
+
+"Strange it is, but three days ago I saw you in Tobermory, and heard you
+give your name as Neil Ross to an Iona man that was there."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Oh, sure, it is nothing to me. But they say the Sin-Eater should not be
+a man with a hidden lump in his pack."[14]
+
+[Footnote 14: i.e. With a criminal secret, or an undiscovered crime.]
+
+"Why?"
+
+"For the dead know, and are content. There is no shaking off any sins,
+then--for that man."
+
+"It is a lie."
+
+"Maybe ay and maybe no."
+
+"Well, have you more to be saying to me? I am obliged to you for your
+company, but it is not needing it I am, though no offense."
+
+"Och, man, there's no offense between you and me. Sure, there's Iona in
+me, too; for the father of my father married a woman that was the
+granddaughter of Tomais Macdonald, who was a fisherman there. No, no; it
+is rather warning you I would be."
+
+"And for what?"
+
+"Well, well, just because of that laugh I heard about."
+
+"What laugh?"
+
+"The laugh of Adam Blair that is dead."
+
+Neil Ross stared, his eyes large and wild. He leaned a little forward.
+No word came from him. The look that was on his face was the question.
+
+"Yes, it was this way. Sure, the telling of it is just as I heard it.
+After you ate the sins of Adam Blair, the people there brought out the
+coffin. When they were putting him into it, he was as stiff as a sheep
+dead in the snow--and just like that, too, with his eyes wide open.
+Well, someone saw you trampling the heather down the slope that is in
+front of the house, and said, 'It is the Sin-Eater!' With that, Andrew
+Blair sneered, and said--'Ay, 'tis the scapegoat he is!' Then, after a
+while, he went on, 'The Sin-Eater they call him; ay, just so; and a
+bitter good bargain it is, too, if all's true that's thought true!' And
+with that he laughed, and then his wife that was behind him laughed,
+and then...."
+
+"Well, what then?"
+
+"Well, 'tis Himself that hears and knows if it is true! But this is the
+thing I was told: After that laughing there was a stillness and a dread.
+For all there saw that the corpse had turned its head and was looking
+after you as you went down the heather. Then, Neil Ross, if that be your
+true name, Adam Blair that was dead put up his white face against the
+sky, and laughed."
+
+At this, Ross sprang to his feet with a gasping sob.
+
+"It is a lie, that thing!" he cried, shaking his fist at the shepherd.
+"It is a lie."
+
+"It is no lie. And by the same token, Andrew Blair shrank back white and
+shaking, and his woman had the swoon upon her, and who knows but the
+corpse might have come to life again had it not been for Maisie
+Macdonald, the deid-watcher, who clapped a handful of salt on his eyes,
+and tilted the coffin so that the bottom of it slid forward, and so let
+the whole fall flat on the ground, with Adam Blair in it sideways, and
+as likely as not cursing and groaning, as his wont was, for the hurt
+both to his old bones and his old ancient dignity."
+
+Ross glared at the man as though the madness was upon him. Fear and
+horror and fierce rage swung him now this way and now that.
+
+"What will the name of you be, shepherd?" he stuttered huskily.
+
+"It is Eachainn Gilleasbuig I am to ourselves; and the English of that
+for those who have no Gaelic is Hector Gillespie; and I am Eachainn mac
+Ian mac Alasdair of Strathsheean that is where Sutherland lies against
+Ross."
+
+"Then take this thing--and that is, the curse of the Sin-Eater! And a
+bitter bad thing may it be upon you and yours."
+
+And with that Neil the Sin-Eater flung his hand up into the air, and
+then leaped past the shepherd, and a minute later was running through
+the frightened sheep, with his head low, and a white foam on his lips,
+and his eyes red with blood as a seal's that has the death-wound on it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the third day of the seventh month from that day, Aulay Macneill,
+coming into Balliemore of Iona from the west side of the island, said to
+old Ronald MacCormick, that was the father of his wife, that he had seen
+Neil Ross again, and that he was "absent"--for though he had spoken to
+him, Neil would not answer, but only gloomed at him from the wet weedy
+rock where he sat.
+
+The going back of the man had loosed every tongue that was in Iona.
+When, too, it was known that he was wrought in some terrible way, if not
+actually mad, the islanders whispered that it was because of the sins of
+Adam Blair. Seldom or never now did they speak of him by his name, but
+simply as "The Sin-Eater." The thing was not so rare as to cause this
+strangeness, nor did many (and perhaps none did) think that the sins of
+the dead ever might or could abide with the living who had merely done a
+good Christian charitable thing. But there was a reason.
+
+Not long after Neil Ross had come again to Iona, and had settled down
+in the ruined roofless house on the croft of Ballyrona, just like a fox
+or a wild-cat, as the saying was, he was given fishing-work to do by
+Aulay Macneill, who lived at Ard-an-teine, at the rocky north end of the
+machar or plain that is on the west Atlantic coast of the island.
+
+One moonlit night, either the seventh or the ninth after the earthing of
+Adam Blair at his own place in the Ross, Aulay Macneill saw Neil Ross
+steal out of the shadow of Ballyrona and make for the sea. Macneill was
+there by the rocks, mending a lobster-creel. He had gone there because
+of the sadness. Well, when he saw the Sin-Eater, he watched.
+
+Neil crept from rock to rock till he reached the last fang that churns
+the sea into yeast when the tide sucks the land just opposite.
+
+Then he called out something that Aulay Macneill could not catch. With
+that he springs up, and throws his arms above him.
+
+"Then," says Aulay when he tells the tale, "it was like a ghost he was.
+The moonshine was on his face like the curl o' a wave. White! there is
+no whiteness like that of the human face. It was whiter than the foam
+about the skerry it was; whiter than the moon shining; whiter than ...
+well, as white as the painted letters on the black boards of the
+fishing-cobles. There he stood, for all that the sea was about him, the
+slip-slop waves leapin' wild, and the tide making, too, at that. He was
+shaking like a sail two points off the wind. It was then that, all of a
+sudden, he called in a womany, screamin' voice--
+
+"'I am throwing the sins of Adam Blair into the midst of ye, white dogs
+o' the sea! Drown them, tear them, drag them away out into the black
+deeps! Ay, ay, ay, ye dancin' wild waves, this is the third time I am
+doing it, and now there is none left; no, not a sin, not a sin!
+
+    "'O-hi O-ri, dark tide o' the sea,
+    I am giving the sins of a dead man to thee!
+    By the Stones, by the Wind, by the Fire, by the Tree,
+    From the dead man's sins set me free, set me free!
+    Adam mhic Anndra mhic Adam and me,
+    Set us free! Set us free!'
+
+"Ay, sure, the Sin-Eater sang that over and over; and after the third
+singing he swung his arms and screamed:
+
+    "'And listen to me, black waters an' running tide,
+    That rune is the good rune told me by Maisie the wise,
+    And I am Neil the son of Silis Macallum
+    By the black-hearted evil man Murtagh Ross,
+    That was the friend of Adam mac Anndra, God against him!'
+
+"And with that he scrambled and fell into the sea. But, as I am Aulay
+mac Luais and no other, he was up in a moment, an' swimmin' like a seal,
+and then over the rocks again, an' away back to that lonely roofless
+place once more, laughing wild at times, an' muttering an' whispering."
+
+It was this tale of Aulay Macneill's that stood between Neil Ross and
+the isle-folk. There was something behind all that, they whispered one
+to another.
+
+So it was always the Sin-Eater he was called at last. None sought him.
+The few children who came upon him now and again fled at his approach,
+or at the very sight of him. Only Aulay Macneill saw him at times, and
+had word of him.
+
+After a month had gone by, all knew that the Sin-Eater was wrought to
+madness because of this awful thing: the burden of Adam Blair's sins
+would not go from him! Night and day he could hear them laughing low, it
+was said.
+
+But it was the quiet madness. He went to and fro like a shadow in the
+grass, and almost as soundless as that, and as voiceless. More and more
+the name of him grew as a terror. There were few folk on that wild west
+coast of Iona, and these few avoided him when the word ran that he had
+knowledge of strange things, and converse, too, with the secrets of the
+sea.
+
+One day Aulay Macneill, in his boat, but dumb with amaze and terror for
+him, saw him at high tide swimming on a long rolling wave right into the
+hollow of the Spouting Cave. In the memory of man, no one had done this
+and escaped one of three things: a snatching away into oblivion, a
+strangled death, or madness. The islanders know that there swims into
+the cave, at full tide, a Mar-Tarbh, a dreadful creature of the sea that
+some call a kelpie; only it is not a kelpie, which is like a woman, but
+rather is a sea-bull, offspring of the cattle that are never seen. Ill
+indeed for any sheep or goat, ay, or even dog or child, if any happens
+to be leaning over the edge of the Spouting Cave when the Mar-tarv
+roars; for, of a surety, it will fall in and straightway be devoured.
+
+With awe and trembling Aulay listened for the screaming of the doomed
+man. It was full tide, and the sea-beast would be there.
+
+The minutes passed, and no sign. Only the hollow booming of the sea, as
+it moved like a baffled blind giant round the cavern-bases; only the
+rush and spray of the water flung up the narrow shaft high into the
+windy air above the cliff it penetrates.
+
+At last he saw what looked like a mass of seaweed swirled out on the
+surge. It was the Sin-Eater. With a leap, Aulay was at his oars. The
+boat swung through the sea. Just before Neil Ross was about to sink for
+the second time, he caught him and dragged him into the boat.
+
+But then, as ever after, nothing was to be got out of the Sin-Eater save
+a single saying: Tha e lamhan fuar! Tha e lamhan fuar!--"It has a cold,
+cold hand!"
+
+The telling of this and other tales left none free upon the island to
+look upon the "scapegoat" save as one accursed.
+
+It was in the third month that a new phase of his madness came upon Neil
+Ross.
+
+The horror of the sea and the passion for the sea came over him at the
+same happening. Oftentimes he would race along the shore, screaming wild
+names to it, now hot with hate and loathing, now as the pleading of a
+man with the woman of his love. And strange chants to it, too, were upon
+his lips. Old, old lines of forgotten runes were overheard by Aulay
+Macneill, and not Aulay only; lines wherein the ancient sea-name of the
+island, _Ioua_, that was given to it long before it was called Iona, or
+any other of the nine names that are said to belong to it, occurred
+again and again.
+
+The flowing tide it was that wrought him thus. At the ebb he would
+wander across the weedy slabs or among the rocks, silent, and more like
+a lost duinshee than a man.
+
+Then again after three months a change in his madness came. None knew
+what it was, though Aulay said that the man moaned and moaned because of
+the awful burden he bore. No drowning seas for the sins that could not
+be washed away, no grave for the live sins that would be quick till the
+day of the Judgment!
+
+For weeks thereafter he disappeared. As to where he was, it is not for
+the knowing.
+
+Then at last came that third day of the seventh month when, as I have
+said, Aulay Macneill told old Ronald MacCormick that he had seen the
+Sin-Eater again.
+
+It was only a half-truth that he told, though. For, after he had seen
+Neil Ross upon the rock, he had followed him when he rose, and wandered
+back to the roofless place which he haunted now as of yore. Less
+wretched a shelter now it was, because of the summer that was come,
+though a cold, wet summer at that.
+
+"Is that you, Neil Ross?" he had asked, as he peered into the shadows
+among the ruins of the house.
+
+"That's not my name," said the Sin-Eater; and he seemed as strange then
+and there, as though he were a castaway from a foreign ship.
+
+"And what will it be, then, you that are my friend, and sure knowing me
+as Aulay mac Luais--Aulay Macneill that never grudges you bit or sup?"
+
+"_I am Judas._"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"And at that word," says Aulay Macneill, when he tells the tale, "at
+that word the pulse in my heart was like a bat in a shut room. But after
+a bit I took up the talk.
+
+"'Indeed,' I said; 'and I was not for knowing that. May I be so bold as
+to ask whose son, and of what place?'
+
+"But all he said to me was, '_I am Judas_.'
+
+"Well, I said, to comfort him, 'Sure, it's not such a bad name in
+itself, though I am knowing some which have a more home-like sound.' But
+no, it was no good.
+
+"'I am Judas. And because I sold the Son of God for five pieces of
+silver....'
+
+"But here I interrupted him and said, 'Sure, now, Neil--I mean,
+Judas--it was eight times five.' Yet the simpleness of his sorrow
+prevailed, and I listened with the wet in my eyes.
+
+"'I am Judas. And because I sold the Son of God for five silver
+shillings, He laid upon me all the nameless black sins of the world. And
+that is why I am bearing them till the Day of Days.'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And this was the end of the Sin-Eater; for I will not tell the long
+story of Aulay Macneill, that gets longer and longer every winter; but
+only the unchanging close of it.
+
+I will tell it in the words of Aulay.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"A bitter, wild day it was, that day I saw him to see him no more. It
+was late. The sea was red with the flamin' light that burned up the air
+betwixt Iona and all that is west of West. I was on the shore, looking
+at the sea. The big green waves came in like the chariots in the Holy
+Book. Well, it was on the black shoulder of one of them, just short of
+the ton o' foam that swept above it, that I saw a spar surgin' by.
+
+"'What is that?' I said to myself. And the reason of my wondering was
+this: I saw that a smaller spar was swung across it. And while I was
+watching that thing another great billow came in with a roar, and hurled
+the double spar back, and not so far from me but I might have gripped
+it. But who would have gripped that thing if he were for seeing what I
+saw?
+
+"It is Himself knows that what I say is a true thing.
+
+"On that spar was Neil Ross, the Sin-Eater. Naked he was as the day he
+was born. And he was lashed, too--ay, sure, he was lashed to it by ropes
+round and round his legs and his waist and his left arm. It was the
+Cross he was on. I saw that thing with the fear upon me. Ah, poor
+drifting wreck that he was! _Judas on the Cross!_ It was his _eric_!
+
+"But even as I watched, shaking in my limbs, I saw that there was life
+in him still. The lips were moving, and his right arm was ever for
+swinging this way and that. 'Twas like an oar, working him off a lee
+shore; ay, that was what I thought.
+
+"Then, all at once, he caught sight of me. Well he knew me, poor man,
+that has his share of heaven now, I am thinking!
+
+"He waved, and called, but the hearing could not be, because of a big
+surge o' water that came tumbling down upon him. In the stroke of an oar
+he was swept close by the rocks where I was standing. In that
+flounderin', seethin' whirlpool I saw the white face of him for a
+moment, an' as he went out on the re-surge like a hauled net, I heard
+these words fallin' against my ears:
+
+"'An eirig m'anama.... In ransom for my soul!'
+
+"And with that I saw the double-spar turn over and slide down the
+back-sweep of a drowning big wave. Ay, sure, it went out to the deep sea
+swift enough then. It was in the big eddy that rushes between Skerry-Mòr
+and Skerry-Beag. I did not see it again--no, not for the quarter of an
+hour, I am thinking. Then I saw just the whirling top of it rising out
+of the flying yeast of a great, black-blustering wave, that was rushing
+northward before the current that is called the Black-Eddy.
+
+"With that you have the end of Neil Ross; ay, sure, him that was called
+the Sin-Eater. And that is a true thing; and may God save us the sorrow
+of sorrows.
+
+"And that is all."
+
+
+
+
+GHOSTS IN SOLID FORM
+
+BY GAMBIER BOLTON
+
+Ex-Pres. The Psychological Society, London, F.R.G.S., F.Z.S., etc.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+"_A single grain of solid fact is worth ten tons of theory._"
+
+"_The more I think of it, the more I find this conclusion impressed upon
+me, that the greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to
+SEE something and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people
+can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can
+see. To SEE clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion all in
+one._"--JOHN RUSKIN.
+
+
+WORKING HYPOTHESIS
+
+That under certain known and reasonable conditions of temperature,
+light, etc., entities, existing in a sphere outside our own, have been
+demonstrated again and again to manifest themselves on earth in
+temporary bodies materialized from an, at present, undiscovered source,
+through the agency of certain persons of both sexes, termed
+"sensitives," and can be so demonstrated to any person who will provide
+the conditions proved to be necessary for such a demonstration.
+
+
+CONDITIONS
+
+Looking back to the seven years of my life which I devoted to a careful
+and critical investigation of the claim made, not only by both
+Occidental and Oriental mystics but by well-known men of science like
+Sir William Crookes, Professor Alfred Russel Wallace, and others--that
+it was possible under certain clearly defined conditions to produce,
+apparently out of nothing, fully formed bodies, inhabited by
+(presumably) human entities from another sphere--the wonder of it still
+enthralls me; the apparent impossibility of so great an upheaval of such
+laws of Nature as we are at present acquainted with being proved clearly
+to be possible, will remain to the end as "the wonder of wonders" in a
+by no means uneventful life.
+
+For, as compared with this, that greatest of Nature's mysteries--the
+procreation of a human infant by either the normal or mechanical
+impregnation of an ovum, its months of foetal growth and development in
+the uterus, and its birth into the world in a helpless and enfeebled
+condition, amazing as they are to all physiological students--sinks into
+comparative insignificance when compared with the nearly instantaneous
+production of a fully developed human body, with all its organs
+functioning properly; a body inhabited temporarily by a thinking,
+reasoning entity, who can see, hear, taste, smell and touch: a body
+which can be handled, weighed, measured, and photographed.
+
+When these claims were first brought to my notice I realized at once
+that I was face to face with a problem which would require the very
+closest investigation; and I then and there decided to give up work of
+all kinds and to devote years, if necessary, to a critical examination
+of these claims, to investigate the matter calmly and dispassionately,
+and, in Sir John Herschel's memorable words, "to stand or fall by the
+result of a direct appeal to facts in the first instance, _and of strict
+logical deduction from them afterwards_."
+
+And, as I have said, the result has been that the apparently impossible
+has been proved to be possible--_the facts have beaten me_, and I accept
+them whole-heartedly, admitting that our working hypothesis has been
+proved beyond any possibility of doubt, and that these materialized
+entities can manifest themselves to-day to any person who will provide
+the conditions necessary for such a demonstration.
+
+Who they are, what they are, whence they come, and whither they go, each
+investigator must determine for himself, but of their actual existence
+in a sphere just outside our own there can no longer be any room for
+doubt. As a busy man, theories have little or no attraction for me. What
+I demand, and what other busy men and women demand in an investigation
+of this kind is that there should be a reasonable possibility of getting
+hold of _facts_, good solid facts which can be demonstrated as such to
+any open-minded inquirer, otherwise it would be useless to commence such
+an investigation. And we have now got these facts, and can prove them on
+purely scientific lines.
+
+The meaning of the word materialization, so far at least as it concerns
+our investigation, I understand to be this: the taking on by an entity
+from a sphere outside our own, an entity representing a man, woman, or
+child (or even a beast or bird), of a temporary body built up from
+material drawn partially from the inhabitants of earth, consolidated
+through the agency of certain persons of both sexes, termed sensitives,
+and moulded by the entity into a semblance of the body which (it
+alleges) it inhabited during its existence on earth. In other words, a
+materialization is the appearance of an entity in bodily, tangible form,
+i.e., one which we can touch, thus differing from an astralization,
+etherealization, or apparition, which is, of course, one which cannot be
+touched, although it may be clearly visible to any one possessing only
+normal sight.
+
+Let me, then, endeavor to describe to the best of my ability, and in
+very simple language, how I believe these materializations to be
+produced, and the conditions which I have proved to be necessary in
+order that the finest results may be obtained.
+
+I will deal first with the question of _the conditions_, as without
+conditions of some kind no materialization can be produced, any more
+than a scientific experiment--such as mixing various chemicals together,
+in order to produce a certain result--can be carried out successfully
+without proper conditions being provided by the experimenter. What,
+then, do we mean by this word "conditions"?
+
+Take a homely example. The baker mixes exactly the right quantities of
+flour, salt, and yeast with water, and then places the dough which he
+has made in an oven heated to just the right temperature, and produces a
+loaf of bread. Why? Because the conditions were good ones. Had he
+omitted the flour, the yeast, or the water, or had he used an oven over
+or under-heated, he could not have produced an eatable loaf of bread,
+because the conditions made it impossible.
+
+This is what is meant by the terms "good conditions," "bad conditions,"
+"breaking conditions."
+
+The conditions, then, under which I have been able to prove to many
+hundreds of inquirers that it is possible for materialized entities to
+appear on earth, in solid tangible form, are these:
+
+First, light, of suitable wave-length, i.e. suitable color, and let me
+say here, once and for all, that I have proved conclusively for myself
+that _darkness is not necessary_, provided that one is experimenting
+with a sensitive who has been trained to sit always in the light.
+
+On two occasions I have witnessed materializations in daylight; and
+neither of Sir William Crookes's sensitives--D. D. Home or Florrie Cook
+(Mrs. Corner)--would ever sit in darkness, the latter--with whom I
+carried out a long series of experiments--invariably stipulating that a
+good light should be used during the whole time that the experiment
+lasted, as she was terrified at the mere thought of darkness.
+
+I find that sunlight, electric light, gas, colza oil, and paraffine are
+all apt to check the production of the phenomena unless filtered through
+canary-yellow, orange, red linen or paper--just as they are filtered for
+photographic purposes--owing to the violent action of the actinic (blue)
+rays which they contain (the rays from the violet end of the spectrum),
+which are said to work at about six hundred billions of vibrations per
+second. But if the light is filtered in the way that I have described,
+the production of the phenomena will commence at once, the vibrations of
+the interfering rays being reduced, it is said, to about four hundred
+billions per second or less.
+
+In dealing with materializations we are apt to overlook the fact that we
+are investigating forces or modes of energy far more delicate than
+electricity, for instance. Heat, electricity, and light, as Sir William
+Crookes tells us, are all closely related; we know the awful power of
+heat and electricity, but are only too apt to forget--especially if it
+suits our purpose to do so--that light too has enormous dynamic potency;
+its vibrations being said to travel in space at the incredible speed of
+twelve million miles a minute;[15] and it is therefore only reasonable
+to assume that the power of these vibrations may be sufficient to
+interfere seriously with the more subtle forces, such as those which we
+are now investigating.
+
+[Footnote 15: 186,900 miles a second (J. Wallace Stewart, B.Sc.).]
+
+Secondly, we require suitable heat vibrations, and I find that those
+given off in a room either warmed or chilled to sixty-three degrees are
+the very best possible; anything either much above this, or more
+especially, much below this, tending to weaken the results and to cheek
+the phenomena.
+
+Thirdly, we require suitable _musical_ vibrations, and, after carrying
+out a long series of experiments with musical instruments of all kinds,
+I find that the vibrations given off by the reed organ--termed
+"harmonium" or "American organ"--or by the concertina, are the most
+suitable, the peculiar quality of the vibrations given off by the reeds
+in these instruments proving to be the most suitable ones for use during
+the production of the phenomena; although on one or two occasions I have
+obtained good results without musical vibrations of any kind, but this
+is rare.
+
+Fourthly, we require the presence of a specially organized man or woman,
+termed _the sensitive_, one from whom it is alleged a portion of the
+matter used by the entity in the building up of its temporary body can
+be drawn, with but little chance of injury to their health. This point
+is one of vital importance, we are told, for it has been proved by means
+of a self-registering weighing-machine on which he was seated, and to
+which he was securely fastened with an electrical apparatus secretly
+hidden beneath the seat, which would at once ring a bell in an anteroom
+if he endeavored to rise from his seat during the experiment, that the
+actual loss in weight to the sensitive, when a fully materialized entity
+was standing in our midst, was no less than sixty-five pounds!
+
+Before employing any person, then, as a sensitive for these delicate,
+not to say dangerous, experiments, he or she should be medically
+examined, in the interests of both the investigator and the sensitive,
+and should their health prove to be in any way below par, they should
+not be permitted to take part in the experiment until their health is
+fully restored.
+
+I have been permitted to examine the sensitive at the moment when an
+entity, clad in a fully-formed temporary body, was walking amongst the
+experimenters; and the distorted features, the shrivelled-up limbs and
+contorted trunk of the sensitive at that moment proclaimed the danger
+connected with the production of this special form of phenomena far
+louder than any words of mine could do.
+
+Needless to say, sensitives for materializations are extremely rare, not
+more than two or three being found to-day amidst the teeming millions
+who inhabit the British Islands; although a few are to be found on the
+European continent, and several in North America, where the climatic
+conditions are said to be more favorable for the development of such
+persons.
+
+Now, what constitutes a sensitive, and why are they necessary?
+
+Sensitives through whom physical phenomena (including materializations)
+can be produced have been described, firstly, as persons in whom certain
+forces are stored up, either far in excess of the amount possessed by
+the normal man or woman, or else differing in quality from the forces
+stored up by the normal man or woman; and secondly, as persons who are
+able to attract from those in close proximity to them--provided that the
+conditions are favorable--still more of the force, which thus becomes
+centered in them for the time being. In other words, a sensitive for
+physical phenomena is said to be a storage battery for the force which
+is used in the production of physical phenomena--including
+materializations--although it is by no means improbable that such highly
+developed sensitives as those required for this special purpose may be
+found to possess extra nerve-centers as compared with those possessed by
+normal human beings. But whether this hypothesis be eventually proved or
+not, there seems to be but very little doubt that "whatever the force
+may be which constitutes the difference between a sensitive and a
+non-sensitive, it is certainly of a mental or magnetic character, i.e.,
+a combination of the subtle elements of mind and magnetism, and
+therefore of a _psychological_, and not of a purely _physical_
+character."
+
+But why is a sensitive necessary? you ask. Think of a telephone for a
+moment. You wish to communicate with a person who is holding only the
+end of the wire in his hand, the result being that he cannot hear a
+single word. Why is this? Because he has forgotten to fit a receiver at
+his end of the wire, a receiver in which the vibrations set up by your
+voice may be centralized, focussed, a receiver which he can place to his
+ear, and in doing so will at once hear your voice distinctly--but
+without this your message to him is lost.
+
+And it is said that this is exactly the use of the sensitives during our
+experiments, for they act as "receivers" in which the forces employed in
+the production of the phenomena may be centralized, focussed, their
+varying degrees of sensitiveness enabling them to be used by the
+entities in other spheres for the successful production of such
+phenomena, we are told.
+
+And lastly, we require about twelve to sixteen earnest and really
+sympathetic men and women--persons trained on scientific lines for
+choice--all in the best of health; men and women who, whilst strictly on
+their guard against anything in the shape of fraud, are still so much in
+sympathy with the person who is acting as the sensitive that they are
+all the time sending out kindly thoughts towards him; for if, as has
+been said, "thoughts are things," it is possible that hostile thoughts
+would be sufficient not only to enfeeble, but actually to check
+demonstrations of physical phenomena of all kinds in the presence of
+such specially organized, highly developed individuals as the sensitives
+through whom materializations can be produced.
+
+I shall refer to these men and women as the sitters. We generally select
+an equal number so far as sex is concerned; and, in addition, we
+endeavor to obtain an equal number of persons possessing either
+positive or negative temperaments. In this way we form the sitters into
+a powerful human battery, the combined force given off by them (if the
+battery is properly arranged, and the individual members of that battery
+are in good health) proving of enormous assistance during our
+experiments. If in ill-health, we find that a man or woman is useless to
+us, for we can no more expect to obtain the necessary power from such an
+individual than we can expect to produce an electric spark from a
+discharged accumulator, or pick up needles with a demagnetized piece of
+steel.
+
+We are told to remember always that "all manifestations of natural laws
+are the results of natural conditions."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Minor details too, we find, must be thought out most carefully if we are
+to provide what we may term ideal conditions.
+
+The chairs should be made of wood throughout, those known as Austrian
+bentwood chairs, having perforated seats, being proved to be the best
+for the purpose.
+
+The sitters should bathe and then change their clothing--the ladies into
+white dresses, and the men into dark suits--two hours before the time
+fixed for the experiment, and should then at once partake of a light
+meal--meat and alcohol being strictly forbidden--so that the strain upon
+their constitutions during the experiment may not interfere with their
+health.
+
+Trivial as such matters must appear to the man in the street, we are
+told they must all be carried out most carefully, in order that the
+finest conditions possible may be obtained, the one great object of the
+sitters being to give off all the power--and the best kind of
+power--that they are capable of producing, in order that sufficient
+suitable material may be gathered together from the sensitive and
+themselves, with which a temporary body may be formed for the use of any
+entity wishing to materialize in their presence.
+
+
+PRECAUTIONS AGAINST FRAUD
+
+We are now ready to see what happens at a typical experimental meeting
+for these materializations, at hundreds of which I have assisted, having
+the services of no less than six sensitives placed at my disposal for
+this purpose. I will endeavor to describe what I should consider to be
+an ideal one, held under ideal (test) conditions.
+
+Our imaginary test meeting is to be carried out--as it was on one
+occasion in London--in an entirely empty house, which none of us has
+ever entered before, a house which we will hire for this special event.
+By doing this we may feel sure that all possibility of fraud, so far as
+the use of secret trap-doors, large mirrors, and other undesirable
+things of that description are concerned, can be successfully thwarted.
+
+We are now ready to start our experiment; the general feeling of all
+those in the room being that every possible precaution against trickery
+has been taken, and that if any results of any kind whatever should
+follow they will undoubtedly be genuine.
+
+The sitters having been allotted their seats, so that a person of a
+positive and a person of a negative temperament are seated together, we
+now join hands, and form ourselves into what we are told is a powerful
+human battery; the two persons sitting at the two ends of the
+half-circle having of course each one hand free, and from the free hands
+of these two persons, it is said, the power developed and given off by
+this human battery passes into the sensitive at each of his sides.
+
+Sitting quietly in our chairs and talking gently amongst ourselves, we
+soon feel a cool breeze blowing across our hands. In another two minutes
+this will have so increased in volume that it may with truth be
+described as a strong wind.
+
+On looking at the sensitive now, we see that he is rapidly passing into
+a state of trance--his head is drooping on one side, his arms and hands
+hang downwards loosely, his body being in a limp _real trance_
+condition, and just in the right state for use by any entity desiring to
+work through him, we are told.
+
+I have only experimented with one sensitive who did not pass into
+trance, who, seated amongst the sitters, remained in a perfectly normal
+condition during the whole of the experiment; watching the materialized
+forms building up beside him, and talking to and with them during the
+process. I shall refer to him shortly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We now set our clairvoyants to work, and the statements made by one must
+be confirmed in every detail by the statements of the other as to what
+is occurring at the moment, or no notice is taken of their remarks.
+
+Both now report that they see a thin white mist or vapor[16] coming
+from the left side of the sensitive, if a man (or from the pelvis, if a
+woman), which passes into the sitter at the end of the half-circle
+nearest to the sensitive's left side. It then passes, they state, from
+Sitter No. 1 to Sitter No. 2, and so on, until it has gone through the
+whole of the sixteen sitters, passing finally from the last one--No.
+16--at the end of the half-circle nearest to the sensitive's right side,
+and disappears into his right side.
+
+[Footnote 16: Termed teleplasma.]
+
+We assume from this that the nerve force, magnetic power--call it what
+you will--necessary for the formation of one of these temporary bodies
+starts from the sensitive, passes through each sitter, drawing from each
+as much more force or power as he or she is capable of giving off at the
+moment, returning to the sensitive greatly increased in its amount and
+ready for use in the next process. This, then, we will term the first of
+the three stages in the evolution of an entity clad in a temporary body.
+
+
+THE VAPOR STAGE
+
+In a few moments our clairvoyants both report that the force or power is
+issuing from the side of the sensitive, if a man (or from the pelvis, if
+a woman), in the form of a white, soft, dough-like substance, which on
+one occasion I was permitted to touch. I could perceive no smell given
+off by it; it felt cold and clammy, and appeared to have the consistency
+of heavy dough at the moment that I touched it.
+
+This mass of dough-like substance is said to be the material used by the
+entities--one by one as a rule--who wish to build up a temporary body.
+It seems to rest on the floor, somewhere near the right side of the
+sensitive, until required for use: its bulk depending apparently upon
+the amount of power given off by the sitters from time to time during
+the experiment.
+
+This we will term the second of the three stages of the evolution of an
+entity clad in a temporary body.
+
+
+THE SOLID, BUT SHAPELESS STAGE
+
+We are told that the entity wishing to show himself to us passes into
+this shapeless mass of dough-like substance, which at once increases in
+bulk, and commences to pulsate and move up and down, swaying from side
+to side as it grows in height, the motive power being evidently
+underneath.
+
+The entity then quickly sets to work to mould the mass into something
+resembling a human body, commencing with the head. The rest of the upper
+portion of the body soon follows, and the heart and pulse can now be
+felt to be beating quite regularly and normally, differing in this
+respect from those of the sensitive, who, if tested at this time, will
+be found with both heart and pulse-beats considerably above the normal.
+The legs and feet come last, and then the entity is able to leave the
+near neighborhood of the sensitive and to walk amongst the sitters, the
+third and last stage of its evolution being now complete.
+
+Although occasionally the entity will appear clad in an exact copy of
+the clothing which he states that he wore when on earth--especially if
+it should happen to be something a little out of the common, such as a
+military or naval uniform--they are draped as a rule in flowing white
+garments of a wonderfully soft texture, and this, too, I have been
+permitted to handle.
+
+Our clairvoyants both affirm that at all times during the
+materialization a thin band of, presumably, the dough-like substance can
+be plainly seen issuing from the side of the sensitive, if a man, (or
+from the pelvis, if a woman), and joined onto the center of the body
+inhabited by the entity--just like the umbilical cord attached to a
+human infant at birth--and we are instructed that this band cannot be
+stretched beyond a certain radius, say ten to fifteen feet, without
+doing harm to the sensitive and to the entity; although cases are on
+record where materializations have been seen at a distance of nearly
+sixty feet from the sensitive, on occasions when the conditions were
+unusually favorable.
+
+On handling different portions of the materialized body now, the flesh
+is found to be both warm and firm. The bodies are well proportioned,
+those of the females--for they take on sex conditions during the
+process--having beautiful figures; the hands, arms, legs, and feet are
+quite perfect in their modelling, but in my opinion the body, head, and
+limbs of every materialization of either sex or any age which I have
+scrutinized at close quarters carefully, or have been permitted to
+handle, have appeared to be at least one-third smaller in size (except
+as regards actual height) than those possessed by beings on earth of the
+same sex and age.
+
+Not only have we witnessed materializations of aged entities of both
+sexes, showing all the characteristics of old age--for the purpose of
+identification by the sitters, as they tell us--but we have seen
+materialized infants also; and on one occasion two still-born children
+appeared in our midst simultaneously, one of them showing distinct
+traces on its little face of a hideous deformity which it possessed at
+the time of its premature birth--a deformity known only to the mother,
+who happened to be present that evening as one of the sitters.
+
+We are told that, for the purpose of identification, the entity will
+return to earth in an exact counterpart of the body which he alleges
+that he occupied at the time of his death, in order that he may be
+recognized by his relatives and friends who happen to be present. Thus,
+the one who left the earth as an infant will appear in his materialized
+body as an infant, although he may have been dead for twenty or thirty
+years. The aged man or woman will appear with bent body, wrinkled face,
+and snow-white hair, walking amongst us with difficulty, and just as
+they allege they did before their death, although that may have occurred
+twenty years before. The one who had lost a limb during his earth-life
+will return minus that limb; the one who was disfigured by accident or
+disease will return bearing distinct traces of that disfigurement, for
+the purpose of identification only.
+
+But as soon as the identification has been established successfully, all
+this changes instantly; the disfigurement disappears; the four limbs
+will be seen, and both the infant and the aged will from henceforth show
+themselves to us in the very prime of life--the young growing upwards
+and the aged downwards, as we say, and, as they one and all state
+emphatically, just as they really look and feel in the sphere in which
+they now exist.
+
+While inhabiting these temporary bodies, they state that they take on,
+not only sex conditions, but earth conditions temporarily too; for they
+appear to feel pain if their bodies are injured in any way; complain of
+the cold if the temperature of the room is allowed to fall much below
+sixty degrees, or of the heat if the temperature is allowed to rise
+above seventy degrees; seem to be depressed during a thunderstorm, when
+our atmosphere is overcharged with electricity; and appear bright and
+happy in a warm room when the world outside is in the grip of a hard
+frost, and also on bright, starry nights.
+
+And not only this, but they take on strongly marked characteristics of
+the numerous races on earth temporarily too; the materialized entities
+of the white races differing quite as markedly from those of the yellow
+or brown races, as do these from the black races; and in speaking to us
+each one will communicate in the particular language only which is
+characteristic of his race on earth.
+
+Five, six and even _seven_ totally different languages have been
+employed during a single experimental meeting through a sensitive who
+had never in his life been out of England, and who was proved
+conclusively to know no other language than English; the latter number,
+we were told, being in honor of a ship's doctor who was present on one
+occasion, and who--although the fact was quite unknown to any of us at
+the time--proved to be an expert linguist, for he conversed that evening
+with different entities in English, French, German, Russian, Chinese,
+Japanese, and in the language of one of the hill-tribes of India.
+
+On another occasion, when I was the only European present at an
+afternoon experimental meeting held in London by eight Parsees of both
+sexes from Bombay, during the whole of the time which the meeting
+lasted--two and a quarter hours--the entities and the Parsee sitters
+carried on their conversation in Hindustani; two entities and one of the
+Parsee men simultaneously engaging in a heated controversy, which lasted
+for nearly three minutes, over the disposal of the bodies of their dead,
+the entities insisting on cremation only, as opposed to allowing the
+bodies to be eaten by vultures--the noise which they made during this
+discussion being almost deafening. The sensitive, it was proved
+conclusively, knew no other language than English, and had only once
+been out of the British Islands, when he paid a short visit to France.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+     "_Sit down before a fact as a little child: be prepared to give
+     up every preconceived notion: follow humbly wherever and to
+     whatever abysses Nature leads, or you shall learn
+     nothing._"--THOMAS HUXLEY.
+
+
+TESTS
+
+The tests given to me and to my fellow-investigators through the six
+sensitives who so ably assisted us during our seven years of
+experimental work in this little-known field of research--the tests have
+been so numerous, and were of such a varied character, that I find it
+somewhat difficult to know which to select out of the hundreds which
+were recorded in our books officially and elsewhere, the ones which will
+prove of the greatest interest to inquirers; but I have made extracts
+from ten of these records, and these, with a few taken from Sir William
+Crookes's reports on the experiments conducted in his presence, will, in
+my opinion, be sufficient to prove that we who have witnessed these
+marvels are neither hallucinated, insane, nor liars when we solemnly
+affirm that we have both seen and handled the materialized bodies built
+up for temporary use by entities from another sphere; all the statements
+made here being true in every detail, to the best of my knowledge and
+belief.
+
+
+EXPERIMENT NO. 1
+
+Place--_Lyndhurst, New Forest, Hampshire. Sensitive A, male, aged about
+46._
+
+As an example of a simple but exceedingly severe test, I would first
+record one given to me and a fellow-investigator on the outskirts of the
+New Forest, one for which no special preparation of any kind whatever
+had been made.
+
+The sensitive, a nearly blind man, was taken by us on a dark night to a
+spot totally unknown to him, as he had only just arrived from London by
+train, and was led into a large travelling caravan, one which he had
+never been near before, as it had only recently left the builder's
+hands.
+
+During the day I had made a critical examination of the interior of the
+caravan, and had satisfied myself that no one was or could possibly be
+concealed in it. I then locked the door, and kept the key in my pocket
+until the moment when, on the arrival of the sensitive, I unlocked the
+door and we all passed into the caravan together. I then locked and
+bolted the door behind us.
+
+As I have already said, no preparation of any kind had been made for the
+experiment. It was merely the result of a desire to see if anything
+could be produced through this sensitive, under extremely difficult
+conditions--conditions which we considered as so utterly bad as to make
+failure a certainty.
+
+We did not even possess a chair of any kind for the sensitive or
+ourselves to sit upon, so we placed for his use a board on top of the
+iron cooking-range which was fixed in the kitchen-portion of the
+caravan, whilst we sat upon the two couches which were used as beds in
+the living-portion of the caravan. There was no music, no powerful
+"human battery" in the shape of a number of picked sitters; in fact, the
+conditions were just about as bad as they could possibly be, and yet,
+within ten minutes of my locking the door behind us, the figure of a
+tall man stood before us, a man so tall that he was compelled to bow his
+head as he passed under the six-foot high partition which separated the
+two sections of the caravan.
+
+He said, "I am Colonel -- who was 'killed,' as you say, at the battle of
+-- in Egypt. For many years during my earth-life I was deeply interested
+in materializations, and spent the last night of my life in England
+experimenting with this very sensitive; and it is a great pleasure to me
+to be able to return to you--strangers though you both are to
+me--through him. To prove to you that I am not the sensitive
+masquerading before you, will you please come here and stand close to
+me, and so settle the matter for yourself?"
+
+I at once rose and stood beside him, almost touching him. I then
+discovered that not only were his features and his coloring totally
+different from those of the sensitive, but that he towered above me,
+standing, as nearly as I could judge, six foot two or three inches, and
+was certainly four inches taller than either the sensitive or myself.
+
+Whilst thus standing beside him, and at a distance of about eight feet
+from the sensitive, we could both hear the unfortunate man moving
+uneasily on his hard seat on the kitchen-range, sighing and moaning as
+if in pain.
+
+The entity remained with us for about three minutes, and his place was
+then taken by a slightly built young man, standing about five feet nine
+inches, one claiming to be a recently deceased member of the royal
+family. He talked with us in a soft and pleasing voice, finally
+whispering a private message to my companion, asking him to deliver it
+to his mother, Queen --.
+
+
+EXPERIMENT NO. 2
+
+Place--_Peckham Rye, London, S. E. Sensitive A, male, aged about 46._
+
+An almost equally hopeless task was set this sensitive by the owner of
+the caravan and myself when we experimented with him at midday on a
+brilliant morning in July, with sunlight streaming into the room round
+the edges of the drawn down window-blinds, and round the top, sides, and
+bottom of the heavy window-curtains, which we had pinned together in a
+vain attempt to keep out the sunlight during the experiment.
+
+And yet once again, and in spite of the conditions which we regarded as
+utterly hopeless, the figure of a man appeared in less than ten minutes,
+materialized from head to foot, as he proved to us by showing us his
+lower limbs. He left the side of the sensitive, walked out into the room
+and stood between us, talking to us in a deep rich voice for nearly
+three minutes. As he stood beside us we could hear the sensitive, twelve
+feet away, moving uneasily on his chair and groaning slightly.
+
+Five minutes after he disappeared the same (alleged) recently deceased
+member of the royal family walked out to us and held a short private
+conversation with my companion, and sent another message to his mother,
+Queen --.
+
+
+EXPERIMENT NO. 3
+
+Place--_West Hampstead, London, N. W. Sensitive B, female, aged about
+49._
+
+Persons of middle age or older who happened to be in England a few years
+ago at the time that two lawsuits were brought against a celebrated
+conjurer by the clever young man who had succeeded in exposing one of
+his most mystifying tricks, will well remember the sensation caused by
+the giving of both verdicts against the conjurer; and the young man--to
+whom I shall refer as Mr. X--at once became famous as the man who had
+beaten one of the cleverest conjurers of the day.
+
+A friend of mine, who had been present on several occasions when Sir
+William Crookes's sensitive--Florrie Cook (Mrs. Corner), referred to
+above as Sensitive B--had produced materializations in gaslight at my
+house in London, asked her to visit his house at West Hampstead one
+evening to meet several friends of his, and to see if it were possible
+for any entity to materialize in my friend's own drawing-room.
+
+She at once accepted his invitation to sit there under strict test
+conditions; and, talking the matter over with some of his friends a day
+or two before the one chosen for the experiment, he told me that they
+had arranged to have the sensitive securely tied to her chair, to have
+strong iron rings fastened to the floor-boards, through which ropes
+would be passed, these ropes to be securely fastened to the sensitive's
+legs; all knots of every size and kind to be sealed, so as to prevent
+any attempt on her part to leave her chair and to masquerade as a
+materialized entity.
+
+One of his friends happened to know the celebrated Mr. X--, and, as he
+had so recently succeeded in beating so notable a conjurer, he was
+invited to be present and to take entire charge of the tying up, the
+binding and sealing arrangements, in order to render the escape of the
+sensitive from her chair an impossibility.
+
+When I joined the party in the drawing-room, Mr. X--, to whom I was
+introduced, was busily engaged in tying the sensitive up with his own
+ropes and tapes, sealing every knot with special sealing-wax and with a
+seal provided by our host. The room was a large one, and a portion at
+one end had been cleared of all furniture, and in the center of this
+space only the sensitive seated upon her chair, and Mr. X-- busily at
+work, were to be seen; and the latter, after another fifteen minutes of
+real hard labor, was asked by our host if he was thoroughly satisfied
+that the sensitive was fastened to her chair securely. He replied that
+so securely was she fastened, that if she could produce phenomena of any
+kind whatever under such conditions, he would at once admit their
+genuineness.
+
+The sensitive was all this time in a perfectly normal state, and not
+flurried in any way, her one anxiety being lest we should lower the
+lights, as she was so terrified at the thought of darkness.
+
+Mr. X--, after stepping backwards to have a final look at the result of
+his labors, then walked close to the spot where the sensitive was
+sitting in gaslight, and put one hand up towards the top of the curtain,
+and was in the act of drawing this round her to keep the direct rays of
+the gaslight from falling upon her, when a large brown arm and hand
+suddenly appeared, the hand being clapped heavily upon Mr. X--'s
+shoulder, whilst a gruff masculine voice asked him in loud tones, "Are
+you really satisfied?"
+
+I have witnessed some strange happenings in connection with my
+investigation of occult matters, but to my dying day I shall never
+forget the look of blank astonishment on Mr. X--'s face at that moment.
+
+Quickly recovering himself, however, he at once examined the
+sensitive--a little woman, far below the average height, having small
+hands and feet, as we could all see quite clearly--and declared that
+every seal and every knot was unbroken, and just as he had left them not
+sixty seconds before.
+
+Amongst other entities who materialized that evening was a young girl of
+about eighteen years of age who stated that when she left her
+earth-body she had been a dancer at a café in Algiers.
+
+She came from the spot where the sensitive was seated, laughing
+heartily, stating that the hand and arm belonged to an old English
+sailor, whom she spoke of as "the Captain." She said, further, that he
+had been standing with her watching the tying-up process from their
+sphere, and laughing at Mr. X--'s vain attempt to prevent the production
+of the phenomena. The Captain had very much wished to materialize fully,
+so as to surprise Mr. X-- as he stepped back from the sensitive; but,
+finding that he could only get sufficient "power" to produce a hand and
+arm, he was in a bad temper. And this was evidently the case, for during
+the ten minutes that the girl remained talking to us we could now and
+then hear the gruff voice of the Captain rolling out language which can
+only be described as "forcible and free."
+
+The experiment lasted for nearly an hour, and at its conclusion Mr. X--
+examined the sensitive, and once again reported that every seal and knot
+were just as he had left them at the commencement of the experiment.
+
+
+EXPERIMENT NO. 4
+
+Place--_My House in London. Sensitive D, male, aged about 34._
+
+On numerous occasions this sensitive has been seen by all present, in
+gaslight shaded by red paper, seated on his chair in a state of deep
+trance, and was heard to be breathing heavily, whilst two materialized
+entities stood beside him; or with one beside him, and the other
+standing five to eight feet away from him and close to the sitters.
+
+Again, two female entities were seen simultaneously when this male
+sensitive was experimenting with us, one of them inside the half-circle
+formed by the sixteen sitters, and talking to them in a low sweet voice,
+at a distance of about eight feet from the sensitive; whilst the other
+female entity passed through or over the sitters, and, walking about the
+room outside the half-circle formed by the sitters, came up behind two
+of them, and not only spoke audibly to them, but also held a short
+conversation with the entity inside the ring, both speaking almost
+instantaneously.
+
+
+
+
+THE PHANTOM ARMIES SEEN IN FRANCE[17]
+
+BY HEREWARD CARRINGTON
+
+[Footnote 17: By permission of the author.]
+
+
+History abounds in cases showing the apparent intrusion of spiritual
+help in time of trouble, and in the annals of military history these
+accounts are not lacking. On several occasions the Crusaders thought
+that they saw angelic hosts fighting for them--phantom horsemen charging
+the enemy, when their own utter destruction seemed imminent. In the wars
+between the English and the Scotch, several such cases were cited, and
+the Napoleonic wars also furnished examples. But the most striking
+evidence of this character--because the newest--and supported,
+apparently, by a good deal of first-hand and sincere testimony, is that
+afforded by the Phantom Armies seen in France during the retreat of the
+British army from Mons--the field of Agincourt. Cut off by overwhelming
+numbers, and all but annihilated, the British army fought desperately,
+but the 80,000 were opposed by 300,000 Germans, backed by a terrific
+fire of artillery, and were indeed in a critical position. They were
+only saved, as we know, by the heroism of a small force of men--a
+rear-guard--who were practically wiped out in consequence. At the most
+critical moment came what appeared to be angelic assistance. The tide of
+battle seemed to be stemmed by supernatural means. In a letter written
+by a soldier who actually witnessed these startling events, quoted by
+the Hon. Mrs. St. John Mildmay (_North American Review_, August, 1915),
+the following graphic account is given. Our soldier writes:
+
+"The men joked at the shells and found many funny names for them, and
+had bets about them, and greeted them with music-hall songs, as they
+screamed in this terrific cannonade. The climax seemed to have been
+reached, but 'a seven-times heated hell' of the enemy's onslaught fell
+upon them, rending brother from brother. At that very moment, they saw
+from their trenches a tremendous host moving against their lines. Five
+hundred of the thousand (who had been detailed to fight the rear-guard
+action) remained, and as far as they could see the German infantry was
+pressing on against them, column by column, a gray world of men--10,000
+of them, as it appeared afterwards. There was no hope at all. Some of
+them shook hands. One man improvised a new version of the battle song
+Tipperary, ending 'and we shan't get there!' And all went on firing
+steadily. The enemy dropped line after line, while the few machine guns
+did their best. Every one knew it was of no use. The dead gray bodies
+lay in companies and battalions, but others came on and on, swarming and
+advancing from beyond and beyond.
+
+"'World without end. Amen!' said one of the British soldiers, with some
+irreverence, as he took aim and fired. Then he remembered a vegetarian
+restaurant in London, where he had once or twice eaten queer dishes of
+cutlets made of lentils and nuts that pretended to be steaks. On all the
+plates in this restaurant a figure of St. George was painted in blue
+with the motto, _Adsit Anglis Sanctus Georgius_ (May St. George be a
+present help to England). The soldier happened to know 'Latin and other
+useless things,' so now, as he fired at the gray advancing mass, 300
+yards away, he uttered the pious vegetarian motto. He went on firing to
+the end, till at last Bill on his right had to clout him cheerfully on
+the head to make him stop, pointing out as he did so that the King's
+ammunition cost money and was not lightly to be wasted. For, as the
+Latin scholar uttered his invocation, he felt something between a
+shudder and an electric shock pass through his body. The roar of the
+battle died down in his ears to a gentle murmur, and instead of it, he
+says, he heard a great voice louder than a thunder peal, crying 'Array!
+Array!' His heart grew hot as a burning coal, then it grew cold as ice
+within him, for it seemed to him a tumult of voices answered to the
+summons. He heard or seemed to hear thousands shouting:
+
+     "'St. George! St. George!
+
+     "'Ha! Messire, Ha! Sweet Saint, grant us good deliverance!
+
+     "'St. George for Merrie England!
+
+     "'Harow! Harow! Monseigneur St. George, succour us, Ha! St.
+     George! A low bow, and a strong bow, Knight of Heaven, aid us!'
+
+"As the soldier heard these voices, he saw before him, beyond the
+trench, a long line of shapes with a shining about them. They were like
+men who drew the bow, and with another shout their cloud of arrows flew
+singing through the air toward the German host. The other men in the
+trenches were firing all the while. They had no hope, but they aimed
+just as if they had been shooting at Bisley.
+
+"Suddenly one of these lifted up his voice in plain English. 'Gawd help
+us!' he bellowed to the man next him, 'but we're bloomin' marvels! Look
+at those gray gentlemen! Look at them! They 're not going down in dozens
+or hundreds--it's _thousands_ it is! Look, look! There's a regiment gone
+while I'm talking to ye!'
+
+"'Shut it,' the other soldier bellowed, taking aim. 'What are ye talkin'
+about?' But he gulped with astonishment even as he spoke, for indeed the
+gray men were falling by the thousands. The English could hear the
+guttural scream of their revolvers as they shot, and line after line
+crashed to the earth. All the while the Latin-bred soldier heard the cry
+'Harow, Harow! Monseigneur! Dear Saint! Quick to our aid! St. George
+help us!'
+
+"The singing arrows darkened the air, the hordes melted before them.
+'More machine guns,' Bill yelled to Tom. 'Don't hear them,' Tom yelled
+back, 'but thank God, anyway, that they have got it in the neck!'
+
+"In fact, there were ten thousand dead German soldiers left before that
+salient of the English army, and consequently--_no Sedan_. In Germany
+the General Staff decided that the English must have employed turpenite
+shells, as no wounds were discernible on the bodies of the dead
+soldiers. But the man who knew what nuts tasted like when they called
+themselves steak, knew also that St. George had brought his Agincourt
+Bowmen to help the English."
+
+Such accounts have been confirmed by others. Thus, Miss Phyllis
+Campbell, writing in _The Occult Review_ (October, 1915), says:
+
+"I tremble, now that it is safely past, to look back on the terrible
+week that brought the Allies to Vitry-le-François. We had not had our
+clothes off for the whole of that week, because no sooner had we reached
+home, too weary to undress, or to eat, and fallen on our beds, than the
+'chug-chug' of the commandant's car would sound into the silence of the
+deserted street, and the horn would imperatively summon us back to
+duty--because, in addition to our duties as _ambulancier auxiliare_, we
+were interpreters to the post, now at this moment diminished to half a
+dozen.
+
+"Returning at 4:30 in the morning, we stood on the end of the platform,
+watching the train crawl through the blue-green mist of the forest into
+the clearing, and draw up with the first wounded from Vitry-le-François.
+It was packed with dead and dying and badly wounded. For a time we
+forgot our weariness in a race against time--removing the dead and
+dying, and attending to those in need. I was bandaging a man's shattered
+arm with the _majeur_ instructing me, while he stitched a horrible gap
+in his head, when Madame de A--, the heroic president of the post, came
+and replaced me. 'There is an English in the fifth wagon,' she said. 'He
+wants something--I think a holy picture!'
+
+"The idea of an English soldier wanting a holy picture struck me, even
+in that atmosphere of blood and misery, as something to smile at--but I
+hurried away. 'The English' was a Lancashire Fusilier. He was propped in
+a corner, his left arm tied-up in a peasant woman's handkerchief, and
+his head newly bandaged. He should have been in a state of collapse from
+loss of blood, for his tattered uniform was soaked and caked in blood,
+and his face paper-white under the dirt of conflict. He looked at me
+with bright, courageous eyes and asked for a picture or a medal (he
+didn't care which) of St. George. I asked him if he was a Catholic.
+'No,' he was Wesleyan Methodist, and he wanted a picture or a medal of
+St. George, _because he had seen him on a white horse_, leading the
+British at Vitry-le-François, when the Allies turned.
+
+"There was an F. R. A. man, wounded in the leg, sitting beside him on
+the floor; he saw my look of amazement, and hastened in: 'It's true,
+sister,' he said. 'We all saw it. First there was a sort of yellow
+mist-like, sort of risin' before the Germans as they came on the top of
+the hill--come on like a solid wall, they did--springing out of the
+earth just solid--no end to 'em! I just give up. No use fighting the
+whole German race, thinks I; it's all up with _us_. The next minute
+comes this funny cloud of light, and when it clears off, there's a tall
+man with yellow hair in golden armor, on a white horse, holding his
+sword up, and his mouth open as if he was saying: "Come on, boys! I'll
+put the kybosh on the devils!" Sort of "This is my picnic" expression.
+Then, before you could say "knife," the Germans had turned, and we were
+after them, fighting like ninety ..."
+
+"Where was this?" I asked. But neither of them could tell. They had
+marched, fighting a rear-guard action, from Mons, till St. George had
+appeared through the haze of light, and turned the enemy. They both
+_knew_ it was St. George. Hadn't they seen him with a sword on every
+'quid' they'd ever seen? The Frenchies had seen him too--ask them; but
+they said it was St. Michael...."
+
+Much additional testimony of a like nature might be given--and has been
+collected by students of psychical research. If the spiritual world ever
+intervenes in matters mundane, it assuredly did so on this occasion. And
+it could hardly have chosen a more opportune time. Could the aspiring
+thoughts of the dead and dying, and those still living and fighting for
+their country, have drawn "St. George" to earth, to aid in again
+redeeming his country from a foreign foe? Could a simple "hallucination"
+have been so widespread and so prevalent? Or might there not have been
+some spiritual energy behind the visions thus seen--stimulating them,
+and inspiring and encouraging the stricken soldiers? We cannot say. We
+only know what the soldiers themselves say; and we also know the
+undoubted effects upon the enemy. For on both occasions were the Germans
+repulsed with terrible slaughter. Perhaps the vision of St. George led
+our soldiers into closer touch and _rapport_ with the consciousness of
+some high intelligence--or the veil separating the two worlds was
+rent--as so often appears to be the case in apparitions and visions of
+this character.
+
+
+
+
+THE PORTAL OF THE UNKNOWN
+
+BY ANDREW JACKSON DAVIS, "THE SEER"
+
+
+When the hour of her death arrived, I was fortunately in a proper state
+of mind and body to produce the superior (clairvoyant) condition; but,
+previous to throwing my spirit into that condition, I sought the most
+convenient and favorable position, that I might be allowed to make the
+observations entirely unnoticed and undisturbed. Thus situated and
+conditioned, I proceeded to observe and investigate the mysterious
+processes of dying, and to learn what it is for an individual human
+spirit to undergo the changes consequent upon physical death or external
+dissolution. They were these:
+
+I saw that the physical organization could no longer subserve the
+diversified purposes or requirements of the spiritual principle. But the
+various internal organs of the body appeared to resist the withdrawal of
+the animating soul. The body and the soul, like two friends, strongly
+resisted the various circumstances which rendered their eternal
+separation imperative and absolute. These internal conflicts gave rise
+to manifestations of what seemed to be, to the material senses, the most
+thrilling and painful sensations; but I was unspeakably thankful and
+delighted when I perceived and realized the fact that those physical
+manifestations were indications, not of pain or unhappiness, but simply
+that the spirit was eternally dissolving its co-partnership with the
+material organism.
+
+Now the head of the body became suddenly enveloped in a fine, soft,
+mellow, luminous atmosphere; and, as instantly, I saw the cerebrum and
+the cerebellum expand their most interior portions; I saw them
+discontinue their appropriate galvanic functions; and then I saw that
+they became highly charged with the vital electricity and vital
+magnetism which permeate subordinate systems and structures. That is to
+say, the brain, as a whole, suddenly declared itself to be tenfold more
+positive, over the lesser proportions of the body, than it ever was
+during the period of health. This phenomenon invariably precedes
+physical dissolution.
+
+Now the process of dying, or the spirit's departure from the body, was
+fully commenced. The brain began to attract the elements of electricity,
+of magnetism, of motion, of life, and of sensation, into its various and
+numerous departments. The head became intensely brilliant; and I
+particularly remarked that just in the same proportion as the
+extremities of the organism grow dark and cold, the brain appears light
+and glowing.
+
+Now I saw, in the mellow, spiritual atmosphere which emanated from and
+encircled her head, the indistinct outlines of the formation of
+_another_ head. This new head unfolded more and more distinctly, and so
+indescribably compact and intensely brilliant did it become, that I
+could neither see through it, nor gaze upon it as steadily as I desired.
+While this spiritual head was being eliminated and organized from out
+of and above the material head, I saw that the surrounding aromal
+atmosphere which had emanated from the material head was in great
+commotion; but, as the new head became more distinct and perfect, this
+brilliant atmosphere gradually disappeared. This taught me that those
+aromal elements, which were, in the beginning of the metamorphosis,
+attracted from the system into the brain, and thence eliminated in the
+form of an atmosphere, were indissolubly united in accordance with the
+divine principle of affinity in the universe, which pervades and
+destinates every particle of matter, and developed the spiritual head
+which I beheld.
+
+In the identical manner in which the spiritual head was eliminated and
+unchangeably organized, I saw, unfolding in their natural progressive
+order, the harmonious development of the neck, the shoulders, the breast
+and the entire spiritual organization. It appeared from this, even to an
+unequivocal demonstration, that the innumerable particles of what might
+be termed unparticled matter which constitute the man's spiritual
+principle, are constitutionally endowed with certain elective
+affinities, analogous to an immortal friendship. The innate tendencies
+which the elements and essences of her soul manifested by uniting and
+organizing themselves, were the efficient and imminent causes which
+unfolded and perfected her spiritual organization. The defects and
+deformities of her physical body were, in the spiritual body which I saw
+thus developed, almost completely removed. In other words, it seemed
+that those hereditary obstructions and influences were now removed,
+which originally arrested the full and proper development of her
+physical constitution; and, therefore, that her spiritual constitution,
+being elevated above those obstructions, was enabled to unfold and
+perfect itself, in accordance with the universal tendencies of all
+created things.
+
+While this spiritual formation was going on, which was perfectly visible
+to my spiritual perceptions, the material body manifested, to the outer
+vision of observing individuals in the room, many symptoms of uneasiness
+and pain; but the indications were totally deceptive; they were wholly
+caused by the departure of the vital or spiritual forces from the
+extremities and viscera into the brain, and thence into the ascending
+organism.
+
+The spirit arose at right angles over the head or brain of the deserted
+body. But immediately previous to the final dissolution of the
+relationship which had for so many years subsisted between the two, the
+spiritual and material bodies, I saw--playing energetically between the
+feet of the elevated spiritual body and the head of the prostrate
+physical body--a bright stream or current of vital electricity. And here
+I perceived what I had never before obtained a knowledge of, that a
+small portion of this vital electrical element returned to the deserted
+body immediately subsequent to the separation of the umbilical thread;
+and that that portion of this element which passed back into the earthly
+organism instantly diffused itself through the entire structure, and
+thus prevented immediate decomposition.
+
+As soon as the spirit, whose departing hour I thus watched, was wholly
+disengaged from the tenacious physical body, I directed my attention to
+the movements and emotions of the former; and I saw her begin to
+breathe the most interior or spiritual portions of the surrounding
+terrestrial atmosphere. At first it seemed with difficulty that she
+could breathe the new medium; but in a few seconds she inhaled and
+exhaled the spiritual elements of nature with the greatest possible ease
+and delight. And now I saw that she was in possession of exterior and
+physical proportions, which were identical, in every possible
+particular--improved and beautified--with those proportions which
+characterized her earthly organization. Indeed, so much like her former
+self was she that, had her friends beheld her as I did, they certainly
+would have exclaimed--as we often do upon the sudden return of a
+long-absent friend, who leaves us and returns in health--'Why, how well
+you look! How improved you are!' Such was the nature--most beautifying
+in their extent--of the improvements that were wrought upon her.
+
+I saw her continue to conform and accustom herself to the new elements
+and elevating sensations which belong to the inner life. I did not
+particularly notice the workings and emotions of her newly-awakening and
+fast-unfolding spirit, except that I was careful to remark her
+philosophical tranquillity throughout the entire process, and her
+non-participation with the different members of her family in their
+unrestrained bewailing of her departure from the earth, to unfold in
+Love and Wisdom throughout eternal spheres. She understood at a glance
+that they could only gaze upon the cold and lifeless form, which she had
+but just deserted; and she readily comprehended the fact that it was
+owing to a want of true knowledge upon their parts that they thus
+vehemently regretted her merely physical death.
+
+The period required to accomplish the entire change which I saw was not
+far from two hours and a half; but this furnished no rule as to the time
+required for every spirit to elevate and reorganize itself above the
+head of the outer form. Without changing my position or spiritual
+perceptions I continued to observe the movements of her new-born spirit.
+As soon as she became accustomed to her new elements which surrounded
+her, she descended from her elevated position, which was immediately
+over the body, by an effort of the will-power, and directly passed out
+of the door of the bedroom in which she had lain, in the material form,
+prostrated with disease for several weeks. It being in a summer month,
+the doors were all open, and her egress from the house was attended with
+no obstruction. I saw her pass through the adjoining room, out of the
+door, and step from the house into the atmosphere! I was overwhelmed
+with delight and astonishment when, for the first time, I realized the
+universal truth that the spiritual organization can tread the
+atmosphere, which is impossible while in the coarser earthly form--so
+much more refined is man's spiritual constitution. She walked in the
+atmosphere as easily, and in the same manner, as we tread the earth and
+ascend an eminence. Immediately upon her emergement from the house, she
+was joined by two friendly spirits from the spiritual country, and after
+tenderly recognizing and communing with each other, the three, in the
+most graceful manner, began ascending obliquely through the ethereal
+envelopment of her globe. They walked so naturally and fraternally
+together that I could scarcely realize the fact that they trod the
+air--they seemed to be walking upon the side of a glorious but familiar
+mountain. I continued to gaze upon them until the distance shut them
+from my view,--whereupon I returned to my external and ordinary
+condition.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This account of the facts--of what actually happened at death--is
+confirmed by numerous other witnesses, who agree as to the main
+details.
+
+
+
+
+THE SUPERNORMAL: EXPERIENCES
+
+BY ST. JOHN B. SEYMOUR
+
+
+When Mrs. Seymour was a little girl she resided in Dublin; amongst the
+members of the family was her paternal grandmother. This old lady was
+not as kind as she might have been to her granddaughter, and
+consequently the latter was somewhat afraid of her. In process of time
+the grandmother died. Mrs. Seymour, who was then about eight years of
+age, had to pass the door of the room where the death occurred in order
+to reach her own bedroom, which was a flight higher up. Past this door
+the child used to fly in terror with all possible speed. On one
+occasion, however, as she was preparing to make the usual rush past, she
+distinctly felt a hand placed on her shoulder, and became conscious of a
+voice saying, "Don't be afraid, Mary!" From that day on the child never
+had the least feeling of fear, and always walked quietly past the door.
+
+The Rev. D. B. Knox sends a curious personal experience, which was
+shared by him with three other people. He writes as follows: "Not very
+long ago my wife and I were preparing to retire for the night. A niece,
+who was in the house, was in her bedroom and the door was open. The maid
+had just gone to her room. All four of us distinctly heard the heavy
+step of a man walking along the corridor, apparently in the direction of
+the bathroom. We searched the whole house immediately, but no one was
+discovered. Nothing untoward happened except the death of the maid's
+mother about a fortnight later. It was a detached house, so that the
+noise could not have been made by the neighbors."
+
+In the following tale the "double" or "wraith" of a living man was seen
+by three different people, one of whom, our correspondent, saw it
+through a telescope. She writes: "In May, 1883, the parish of A-- was
+vacant, so Mr. D--, the Diocesan Curate, used to come out to take
+service on Sundays. One day there were two funerals to be taken, the one
+at a graveyard some distance off, the other at A-- churchyard. My
+brother was at both, the far-off one being taken the first. The house we
+then lived in looked down towards A--churchyard, which was about a
+quarter of a mile away. From an upper window my sister and I saw _two_
+surpliced figures going out to meet the coffin, and said, 'Why, there
+are two clergy!' having supposed that there would be only Mr. D--. I,
+being short-sighted, used a telescope, and saw the two surplices showing
+between the people. But when my brother returned he said: 'A strange
+thing has happened. Mr. D-- and Mr. W-- (curate of a neighboring parish)
+took the far-off funeral. I saw them both again at A--, but when I went
+into the vestry I only saw Mr. W--. I asked where Mr. D-- was, and he
+replied that he had left immediately after the first funeral, as he had
+to go to Kilkenny, and that he (Mr. W--) had come on _alone_ to take the
+funeral at A--.'"
+
+Here is a curious tale from the city of Limerick of a lady's "double"
+being seen, with no consequent results. It is sent by Mr. Richard Hogan
+as the personal experience of his sister, Mrs. Mary Murnane. On
+Saturday, October 25, 1913, at half-past four o'clock in the afternoon,
+Mr. Hogan left the house in order to purchase some cigarettes. A quarter
+of an hour afterwards Mrs. Murnane went down the town to do some
+business. As she was walking down George Street she saw a group of four
+persons standing on the pavement engaged in conversation. They were her
+brother, a Mr. O'S--, and two ladies, a Miss P. O'D--, and her sister,
+Miss M. O'D--. She recognized the latter, as her face was partly turned
+towards her, and noted that she was dressed in a knitted coat, and light
+blue hat, while in her left hand she held a bag or purse; the other
+lady's back was turned towards her. As Mrs. Murnane was in a hurry to
+get her business done she determined to pass them by without being
+noticed, but a number of people coming in the opposite direction blocked
+the way, and compelled her to walk quite close to the group of four, but
+they were so intent on listening to what one lady was saying that they
+took no notice of her. The speaker appeared to be Miss M. O'D--, and
+though Mrs. Murnane did not actually hear her _speak_ as she passed her,
+yet from their attitudes the other three seemed to be listening to what
+she was saying, and she heard her _laugh_ when right behind her--not the
+laugh of her sister P--and the laugh was repeated after she had left the
+group a little behind.
+
+So far there is nothing out of the common. When Mrs. Murnane returned to
+her house about an hour later she found her brother Richard there
+before her. She casually mentioned to him how she had passed him and his
+three companions on the pavement. To which he replied that she was quite
+correct except in one point, namely that there were only _three_ in the
+group, as M. O'D-- _was not present_, as she had not come to Limerick at
+all that day. She then described to him the exact position each one of
+the four occupied, and the clothes worn by them, to all of which facts
+he assented, except as to the presence of Miss M. O'D--. Mrs. Murnane
+adds, "That is all I can say in the matter, but most certainly the
+fourth person was in the group, as I both saw and heard her. She wore
+the same clothes I had seen on her previously, with the exception of the
+hat; but the following Saturday she had on the same colored hat I had
+seen on her the previous Saturday. When I told her about it she was as
+much mystified as I was and am. My brother stated that there was no
+laugh from any of the three present."
+
+Mrs. G. Kelly sends an experience of a "wraith" which seems in some
+mysterious way to have been conjured up in her mind by the description
+she had heard, and then externalized. She writes: "About four years ago
+a musical friend of ours was staying in the house. He and my husband
+were playing and singing Dvorak's 'Spectre's Bride,' a work which he had
+studied with the composer himself. This music appealed very much to
+both, and they were excited and enthusiastic over it. Our friend was
+giving many personal reminiscences of Dvorak, and his method of
+explaining the way he wanted his work done. I was sitting by, an
+interested listener, for some time. On getting up at last, and going
+into the drawing-room, I was startled and somewhat frightened to find a
+man standing there in a shadowy part of the room. I saw him distinctly,
+and could describe his appearance accurately. I called out, and the two
+men ran in, but as the apparition only lasted for a second, they were
+too late. I described the man whom I had seen, whereupon our friend
+exclaimed, 'Why, that was Dvorak himself!' At that time I had never seen
+a picture of Dvorak, but when our friend returned to London he sent me
+one which I recognized as the likeness of the man whom I had seen in our
+drawing-room."
+
+A curious vision, a case of second sight, in which a quite unimportant
+event, previously unknown, was revealed, is sent by the percipient, who
+is a lady well known to both the compilers, and a life-long friend of
+one of them. She says: "Last summer I sent a cow to the fair of
+Limerick, a distance of about thirteen miles, and the men who took her
+there the day before the fair left her in a paddock for the night close
+to Limerick city. I awoke up very early next morning, and was fully
+awake when I saw (not with my ordinary eyesight, but apparently _inside_
+my head) a light, an intensely brilliant light, and in it I saw the back
+gate being opened by a red-haired woman and the cow I had supposed in
+the fair walking through the gate. I then knew that the cow must be
+home, and going to the yard later on I was met by the wife of the man
+who was in charge in a great state of excitement. 'Oh law! Miss,' she
+exclaimed, 'you'll be mad! Didn't Julia [a red-haired woman] find the
+cow outside the lodge gate as she was going out at 4 o'clock to the
+milking!' That's my tale--perfectly true, and I would give a good deal
+to be able to control that light, and see more if I could."
+
+Another curious vision was seen by a lady who is also a friend of both
+the compilers. One night she was kneeling at her bedside saying her
+prayers (hers was the only bed in the room), when suddenly she felt a
+distinct touch on her shoulder. She turned round in the direction of the
+touch and saw at the end of the room a bed, with a pale,
+indistinguishable figure laid therein, and what appeared to be a
+clergyman standing over it. About a week later she fell into a long and
+dangerous illness.
+
+An account of a dream which implied an extraordinary coincidence, if
+coincidence it be and nothing more, was sent as follows by a
+correspondent, who requested that no names be published. "That which I
+am about to relate has a peculiar interest for me, inasmuch as the
+central figure in it was my own grand-aunt, and moreover the principal
+witness (if I may use such a term) was my father. At the period during
+which this strange incident occurred my father was living with his aunt
+and some other relatives.
+
+"One morning at the breakfast-table, my grand-aunt announced that she
+had had a most peculiar dream during the previous night. My father, who
+was always very interested in that kind of thing, took down in his
+notebook all the particulars concerning it. They were as follows:
+
+"My grand-aunt dreamt that she was in a cemetery, which she recognized
+as Glasnevin, and as she gazed at the memorials of the dead which lay so
+thick around, one stood out most conspicuously, and caught her eye,
+for she saw clearly cut on the cold white stone _an inscription bearing
+her own name_:
+
+            CLARE·S·D--
+      Died 14th of March, 1873
+    Dearly loved and ever mourned
+              R.I.P.
+
+while, to add to the peculiarity of it, the date on the stone as given
+above was, from the day of her dream, exactly a year in advance.
+
+"My grand-aunt was not very nervous, and soon the dream faded from her
+mind. Months rolled by, and one morning at breakfast it was noticed that
+my grand-aunt had not appeared, but as she was a very religious woman it
+was thought that she had gone out to church. However, as she did not
+appear my father sent someone to her room to see if she were there, and
+as no answer was given to repeated knocking the door was opened, and my
+grand-aunt was found kneeling at her bedside, dead. The day of her death
+was March 14, 1873, corresponding exactly with the date seen in her
+dream a twelvemonth before. My grand-aunt was buried in Glasnevin, and
+on her tombstone (a white marble slab) was placed the inscription which
+she had read in her dream." Our correspondent sent us a photograph of
+the stone and its inscription.
+
+The present Archdeacon of Limerick, Ven. J. A. Haydn, LL.D., sends the
+following experience: "In the year 1870 I was rector of the little rural
+parish of Chapel Russell. One autumn day the rain fell with a quiet,
+steady, and hopeless persistence from morning to night. Wearied at
+length from the gloom, and tired of reading and writing, I determined
+to walk to the church about half a mile away, and pass a half-hour
+playing the harmonium, returning for the lamp-light and tea.
+
+"I wrapped up, put the key of the church in my pocket, and started.
+Arriving at the church, I walked up the straight avenue, bordered with
+graves and tombs on either side, while the soft, steady rain quietly
+pattered on the trees. When I reached the church door, before putting
+the key in the lock, moved by some indefinable impulse I stood on the
+doorstep, turned round, and looked back upon the path I had just
+trodden. My amazement may be imagined when I saw, seated on a low,
+tabular tombstone close to the avenue, a lady with her back towards me.
+She was wearing a black velvet jacket or short cape, with a narrow
+border of vivid white; her head and luxuriant jet-black hair were
+surmounted by a hat of the shape and make that I think used to be called
+at that time a 'turban'; it was also of black velvet, with a snow-white
+wing or feather at the right-hand side of it. It may be seen how
+deliberately and minutely I observed the appearance, when I can thus
+recall it after more than forty years.
+
+"Actuated by a desire to attract the attention of the lady, and induce
+her to look towards me, I noisily inserted the key in the door, and
+suddenly opened it with a rusty crack. Turning around to see the effect
+of my policy--the lady was gone!--vanished. Not yet daunted, I hurried
+to the place, which was not ten paces away, and closely searched the
+stone and the space all around it, but utterly in vain; there were
+absolutely no traces of the late presence of a human being! I may add
+that nothing particular or remarkable followed the singular apparition,
+and that I never heard anything calculated to throw any light on the
+mystery."
+
+Here is a story of a ghost who knew what it wanted--and got it! "In the
+part of County Wicklow from which my people come," writes a Miss D--,
+"there was a family who were not exactly related, but of course of the
+clan. Many years ago a young daughter, aged about twenty, died. Before
+her death she had directed her parents to bury her in a certain
+graveyard. But for some reason they did not do so, and from that hour
+she gave them no peace. She appeared to them at all hours, especially
+when they went to the well for water. So distracted were they, that at
+length they got permission to exhume the remains and have them
+reinterred in the desired graveyard. This they did by torchlight--a
+weird scene truly! I can vouch for the truth of this latter portion, at
+all events, as some of my own relatives were present."
+
+Mr. T. J. Westropp contributes a tale of a ghost of an unusual type,
+i.e. one which actually did communicate matters of importance to his
+family. "A lady who related many ghost stories to me, also told me how,
+after her father's death, the family could not find some papers or
+receipts of value. One night she awoke, and heard a sound which she at
+once recognized as the footsteps of her father, who was lame. The door
+creaked, and she prayed that she might be able to see him. Her prayer
+was granted: she saw him distinctly holding a yellow parchment book tied
+with tape. 'F--, child,' said he, 'this is the book your mother is
+looking for. It is in the third drawer of the cabinet near the
+cross-door; tell your mother to be more careful in future about
+business papers.' Incontinently he vanished, and she at once awoke her
+mother, in whose room she was sleeping, who was very angry and ridiculed
+the story, but the girl's earnestness at length impressed her. She got
+up, went to the old cabinet, and at once found the missing book in the
+third drawer."
+
+Here is another tale of an equally useful and obliging ghost. "A
+gentleman, a relative of my own," writes a lady, "often received
+warnings from his dead father of things that were about to happen.
+Besides the farm on which he lived, he had another some miles away which
+adjoined a large demesne. Once in a great storm a fir-tree was blown
+down in the demesne, and fell into his field. The woodranger came to him
+and told him he might as well cut up the tree, and take it away.
+Accordingly one day he set out for this purpose, taking with him two men
+and a cart. He got into the fields by a stile, while his men went on to
+a gate. As he approached a gap between two fields he saw his father
+standing in it, as plainly as he ever saw him in life, and beckoning him
+back warningly. Unable to understand this, he still advanced, whereupon
+his father looked very angry, and his gestures became imperious. This
+induced him to turn away, so he sent his men home, and left the tree
+uncut. He subsequently discovered that a plot had been laid by the
+woodranger, who coveted his farm, and who hoped to have him dispossessed
+by accusing him of stealing the tree."
+
+A clergyman in the diocese of Clogher gave a personal experience of
+table-turning to the present Dean of St. Patrick's, who kindly sent the
+same to the writer. He said: "When I was a young man, I met some
+friends one evening, and we decided to amuse ourselves with
+table-turning. The local dispensary was vacant at the time, so we said
+that if the table would work we should ask who would be appointed as
+medical officer. As we sat round it touching it with our hands it began
+to knock. We said:
+
+"'Who are you?'
+
+"The table spelt out the name of a bishop of the Church of Ireland. We
+asked, thinking that the answer was absurd, as we knew him to be alive
+and well:
+
+"'Are you dead?'
+
+"The table answered 'Yes.'
+
+"We laughed at this and asked:
+
+"'Who will be appointed to the dispensary!'
+
+"The table spelt out the name of a stranger, who was not one of the
+candidates, whereupon we left off, thinking that the whole thing was
+nonsense.
+
+"The next morning I saw in the papers that the bishop in question had
+died that afternoon about two hours before our meeting, and a few days
+afterwards I saw the name of the stranger as the new dispensary doctor.
+I got such a shock that I determined never to have anything to do with
+table-turning again."
+
+The following extraordinary personal experience is sent by a lady,
+well-known to the present writer, but who requests that all names be
+omitted. Whatever explanation we may give of it, the good faith of the
+tale is beyond doubt.
+
+"Two or three months after my father-in-law's death, my husband, myself,
+and three small sons lived in the west of Ireland. As my husband was a
+young barrister, he had to be absent from home a good deal. My three
+boys slept in my bedroom, the eldest being about four, the youngest some
+months. A fire was kept up every night, and with a young child to look
+after, I was naturally awake more than once during the night. For many
+nights I believed I distinctly saw my father-in-law sitting by the
+fireside. This happened, not once or twice, but many times. He was
+passionately fond of his eldest grandson, who lay sleeping calmly in his
+cot. Being so much alone probably made me restless and uneasy, though I
+never felt afraid. I mentioned this strange thing to a friend who had
+known and liked my father-in-law, and she advised me to 'have his soul
+laid,' as she termed it. Though I was a Protestant and she was a Roman
+Catholic (as had also been my father-in-law), yet I fell in with her
+suggestion. She told me to give a coin to the next beggar that came to
+the house, telling him (or her) to pray for the rest of Mr. So-and-so's
+soul. A few days later a beggar-woman and her children came to the door,
+to whom I gave a coin and stated my desire. To my great surprise I
+learned from her manner that such requests were not unusual. Well, she
+went down on her knees on the steps, and prayed with apparent
+earnestness and devotion that his soul might find repose. Once again he
+appeared, and seemed to say to me, 'Why did you do that, E----? To come
+and sit here was the only comfort I had.' Never again did he appear, and
+strange to say, after a lapse of more than thirty years I have felt
+regret at my selfishness in interfering.
+
+"After his death, as he lay in the house awaiting burial, and I was in a
+house some ten miles away, I thought that he came and told me that I
+would have a hard life, which turned out only too truly. I was then
+young, and full of life, with every hope of a prosperous future."
+
+Of all the strange beliefs to be found in Ireland that in the Black Dog
+is the most widespread. There is hardly a parish in the country but
+could contribute some tale relative to this specter, though the majority
+of these are short, and devoid of interest. There is said to be such a
+dog just outside the avenue gate of Donohill Rectory, but neither of the
+compilers have had the good luck to see it. It may be, as some hold,
+that this animal was originally a cloud or nature-myth; at all events,
+it has now descended to the level of an ordinary haunting. The most
+circumstantial story that we have met with relative to the Black Dog is
+that related as follows by a clergyman of the Church of Ireland, who
+requests us to refrain from publishing his name.
+
+"In my childhood I lived in the country. My father, in addition to his
+professional duties, sometimes did a little farming in an amateurish
+sort of way. He did not keep a regular staff of laborers, and
+consequently when anything extra had to be done, such as hay-cutting or
+harvesting, he used to employ day-laborers to help with the work. At
+such times I used to enjoy being in the fields with the men, listening
+to their conversation. On one occasion I heard a laborer remark that he
+had once seen the devil! Of course I was interested and asked him to
+give me his experience. He said he was walking along a certain road, and
+when he came to a point where there was an entrance to a private place
+(the spot was well known to me), he saw a black dog sitting on the
+roadside. At the time he paid no attention to it, thinking it was an
+ordinary retriever, but after he had passed on about two or three
+hundred yards he found the dog was beside him, and then he noticed that
+its eyes were blood-red. He stooped down, and picked up some stones in
+order to frighten it away, but though he threw the stones at it they did
+not injure it, nor indeed did they seem to have any effect. Suddenly,
+after a few moments, the dog vanished from his sight.
+
+"Such was the laborer's tale. After some years, during which time I had
+forgotten altogether about the man's story, some friends of my own
+bought the place at the entrance to which the apparition had been seen.
+When my friends went to reside there I was a constant visitor at their
+house. Soon after their arrival they began to be troubled by the
+appearance of a black dog. Though I never saw it myself, it appeared to
+many members of the family. The avenue leading to the house was a long
+one, and it was customary for the dog to appear and accompany people for
+the greater portion of the way. Such an effect had this on my friends
+that they soon gave up the house, and went to live elsewhere. This was a
+curious corroboration of the laborer's tale."
+
+A distinction must be drawn between the so-called _Headless_ Coach,
+which portends death, and the _Phantom_ Coach, which appears to be a
+harmless sort of vehicle. With regard to the latter we give two tales
+below, the first of which was sent by a lady whose father was a
+clergyman, and a gold medalist of Trinity College, Dublin.
+
+"Some years ago my family lived in County Down. Our house was some way
+out of a fair-sized manufacturing town, and had a short avenue which
+ended in a gravel sweep in front of the hall door. One winter's evening,
+when my father was returning from a sick call, a carriage going at a
+sharp pace passed him on the avenue. He hurried on, thinking it was some
+particular friends, but when he reached the door no carriage was to be
+seen, so he concluded it must have gone round to the stables. The
+servant who answered his ring said that no visitors had been there, and
+he, feeling certain that the girl had made some mistake, or that some
+one else had answered the door, came into the drawing-room to make
+further inquiries. No visitors had come, however, though those sitting
+in the drawing-room had also heard the carriage drive up.
+
+"My father was most positive as to what he had seen, viz. a closed
+carriage with lamps lit; and let me say at once that he was a clergyman
+who was known throughout the whole of the north of Ireland as a most
+level-headed man, and yet to the day of his death he would insist that
+he met that carriage on our avenue.
+
+"One day in July one of our servants was given leave to go home for the
+day, but was told she must return by a certain train. For some reason
+she did not come by it, but by a much later one, and rushed into the
+kitchen in a most penitent frame of mind. 'I am so sorry to be late,'
+she told the cook, 'especially as there were visitors. I suppose they
+stayed to supper, as they were so late going away, for I met the
+carriage on the avenue.' The cook thereupon told her that no one had
+been at the house, and hinted that she must have seen the
+ghost-carriage, a statement that alarmed her very much, as the story was
+well known in the town, and car-drivers used to whip up their horses as
+they passed our gate, while pedestrians refused to go at all except in
+numbers. We have often heard the carriage, but these are the only two
+occasions on which I can positively assert that it was seen."
+
+The following personal experience of the phantom coach was given to the
+present writer by Mr. Matthias Fitzgerald, coachman to Miss Cooke, of
+Cappagh House, County Limerick. He stated that one moonlight night he
+was driving along the road from Askeaton to Limerick when he heard
+coming up behind him the roll of wheels, the clatter of horses' hoofs,
+and the jingling of the bits. He drew over to his own side to let this
+carriage pass, but nothing passed. He then looked back, but could see
+nothing, the road was perfectly bare and empty, though the sounds were
+perfectly audible. This continued for about a quarter of an hour or so,
+until he came to a cross-road, down one arm of which he had to turn. As
+he turned off he heard the phantom carriage dash by rapidly along the
+straight road. He stated that other persons had had similar experiences
+on the same road.
+
+
+
+
+NATURE-SPIRITS OR ELEMENTALS[18]
+
+BY NIZIDA
+
+[Footnote 18: From Journal of Proceedings of Theosophical Society.]
+
+     "Life is one all-pervading principle, and even the thing that
+     seems to die and putrefy but engenders new life and changes to
+     new forms of matter. Reasoning, then, by analogy--if not a
+     leaf, if not a drop of water, but is, no less than yonder star,
+     a habitable and breathing world, common sense would suffice to
+     teach that the circumfluent Infinite, which you call space--the
+     boundless Impalpable which divides the earth from the moon and
+     stars--is filled also with its correspondent and appropriate
+     life."--ZANONI.
+
+
+Within the last fifty years the human mind has been awakening slowly to
+the fact that there is a world, invisible to ordinary powers of vision,
+existing in close juxtaposition to the world cognized by our material
+senses. This world, or condition of existence for more ethereal beings,
+has been variously called Spirit-world, Summer-land, Astral-world,
+Hades, Kama-loca, or Desire-world, etc. Slowly and with difficulty do
+ideas upon the nature and characteristics of this world dawn upon the
+modern mind. The imagination, swayed by pictures of sensuous life,
+revels in the fantastic imagery it attributes to this unknown and dimly
+conceived state of existence, more often picturing what is false than
+what is true. Generally speaking, the most crude conceptions are
+entertained; these embrace but two conditions of life, the embodied and
+disembodied, for which there are only the earth and heaven, or hell,
+with that intermediate state accepted by Roman Catholics, called
+purgatory. There is, therefore, for such minds, only two orders of
+beings, _i.e._, mankind, and angels or devils, categorically termed
+_spirits_; but what would be the mode of life of those spirits, is a
+subject upon which ordinary intellects can throw no light at all. Their
+ideas are walled in by an impenetrable darkness, and not a ray of light
+glimmers across the unfathomable gulf lying beyond the grave; that
+portal of death which, for them, opens upon unknown darkness, and closes
+upon the light, vivacity, and gaiety of the earth.
+
+The idea that the beings we would term _disembodied_ do actually inhabit
+bodies of an aerial substance, invisible to our grosser senses, in a
+world exactly suited to their needs, surpasses the comprehension of an
+ordinary understanding, which can conceive only of gross matter, visible
+and tangible. Yet science begins to talk of _mind-stuff_, or
+_soul-substance_, in reality that ethereal substance which ranks next to
+dense matter, and which it wears as an external, more hardened shell.
+For there is space within space. Once realizing the existence of an
+_inner world_, we shall find that all our ideas concerning space, time,
+and every particular of our existence, and the world we live in must
+become entirely revolutionized.
+
+The principal source of knowledge which has been opened in modern times
+concerning the next state of existence has revealed itself in a manner
+homogeneous to itself. It has come by an interior method--a revelation
+from within acting upon the without. The inner world, although always
+acting upon and through its external covering, in a hidden or veiled
+way, as from an inscrutable cause, has manifested itself in a manner
+more overt and cognizable by the bodily senses of man. At least that
+which has usually been termed, with more or less awe, the
+_supernatural_, the _ghostly_, has impinged upon the mental incrassation
+of sensual man as a thing to be reckoned with in daily life; no longer
+to be relegated to the region of vague darkness _d'outre tombe_. Hence
+the human mind is being awakened to study and dive into the depths of
+that life within life, wherein dwell the disembodied, the so-called
+_dead_, the angels, and, _per contra_, the devils. Those hidden aerial
+and ethereal regions, wherein the _souls_ of things, and beings, draw
+life from the bosom of nature; wherein they find their _active_ habitat;
+wherein nature keeps a store of objects more wonderful, and infinitely
+more varied, than serve for her regions of dense matter; wherein man can
+discern the occult causes and beginnings of all things, even of his own
+thoughts; and whereupon he learns, at length, that he possesses the
+power of projecting by thought-creation forms more or less endued with
+life and intelligence, which compose his mental world, and with which
+he, as it were, "peoples space." He finds the sphere of his
+responsibilities immensely enlarged by this new knowledge, of which he
+is taking the first honeyed sips, delighted with the self-importance
+which the heretofore unsuspected power of diving into the unseen seems
+to bestow. If hitherto he has had to hold himself responsible for the
+consequences of his external actions, that they should not militate
+against the order of society as regards the laws of morality and virtue,
+he has at least acted upon the impression that his _secret thoughts_
+were his own, and remained with him, affecting no one but himself; were
+incognizable in their veiled chambers, and of which it was not necessary
+to take any notice; the transitory, evanescent, spontaneous workings of
+mind, unknown and inscrutable, which begin and end like the flight of a
+bird, whence coming and where going it is impossible to know.
+
+By the first faint gleams of the light of hidden wisdom, which are
+beginning to dawn upon his mind, he now perceives that responsibility
+does not end upon the plane of earth, but extends into the aerial
+regions of that inner world where his thoughts are no longer secret, and
+where they affect the astral currents, acting for the good or detriment
+of others to almost infinite extent; that he may act upon the ambient
+atmospheres, not only of the outer but inner planes of life, like a
+plant of poisonous exhalations, if his thoughts be not pure and good;
+peopling _unseen_ space with the outcome of a debased mind, in the shape
+of hideous and maleficent creatures. He becomes responsible, therefore,
+for the consequences of his mental actions and thought-life, as well as
+those actions carefully prepared to pass unchallenged before this
+world's gaze.
+
+Diving into the unseen by the light of the new spiritual knowledge now
+radiating into all minds, we learn that there are three degrees of life
+in man, the material, the aerial, and the ethereal, corresponding to
+body, soul, and spirit; and that there are three corresponding planes of
+existence inhabited by beings suited to them.
+
+The subject of our paper will limit us at present to the aerial, or
+soul-plane--the next contiguous, or astral world. The beings that more
+especially live in this realm of the soul, have by common consent been
+termed _elementals_. Nature in illimitable space teems with life in
+forms ethereal, evanescent as thought itself, or more objectively
+condensed and solidified, according to the inherent attraction which
+holds them together; enduring according to the force, energy, or power
+which gave them birth; intelligent, or non-intelligent, from the same
+source, which is mental. These spirits of the soul-world are possessed
+of aerial bodies, and their world has its own firmament, its own
+atmosphere and conditions of existence, its own objects, scenes,
+habitations. Yet their world and the world of man intermingle,
+interpenetrate, and "throw their shadows upon each other," says
+Paracelsus. Again, he says: "As there are in our world water and fire,
+harmonies and contrasts, visible bodies and invisible essences, likewise
+these beings are varied in their constitution, and have their own
+peculiarities, for which human beings have no comprehension."
+
+Matter, as known to men in bodies, is seen and felt by means of the
+physical senses; but to beings not provided with such senses, the things
+of our world are as invisible and intangible as things of more ethereal
+substance are to our grosser senses. Elementals which find their habitat
+in the interior of the earth's shell, usually called _gnomes_, are not
+conscious of the density of the element of earth as we perceive it; but
+breathe in a free atmosphere, and behold objects of which we cannot form
+the remotest conception. In like manner exist the _undines_ in water,
+_sylphs_ in air, and _salamanders_ in fire. The elementals of the air,
+sylphs, are said to be friendly towards man; those of the water,
+undines, are malicious. The salamanders can, but rarely do, associate
+with man, "on account of the fiery nature of the element they inhabit."
+The pigmies (gnomes) are friendly; but as they are the guardians of
+treasure they usually oppose the approach of man, baffling by many
+mysterious arts the selfish greed of seekers for buried wealth. We,
+however, read of their alluring miners either by stroke of pick, or
+hammer, or by floating lights to the best mineral "leads." Paracelsus
+says of these subterranean elementals that they build houses, vaults,
+and strange-looking edifices of certain immaterial substances unknown to
+us. "They have some kind of alabaster, marble, cement, etc., but these
+substances are as different from ours as the web of a spider is
+different from our linen."
+
+These inhabitants of the elements, or "nature-spirits," may, or may not
+be, conscious of the existence of man; oftentimes feeling him merely as
+a force which propels, or arrests them; for by his will and by his
+thought, he acts upon the astral currents of the aerial world in which
+they live; and by the use of his hands he sways the material elements of
+earth, fire, and water wherein they are established. They perceive the
+soul-essence of man with its "currents and forms," and they also are
+capable of reading such thoughts as do not spiritually transcend their
+powers of discernment. They perceive the states of feeling and emotions
+of men by the "_colors_ and impressions produced in their auras," and
+may thus irresistibly be drawn into overt action upon man's plane of
+life. They are the invisible _stone-throwers_ we hear of so frequently,
+supposed to be _human_ spirits; the perpetrators of mischief, such as
+destruction of property in the habitations of men, noises, and
+mysterious nocturnal annoyances.
+
+Of all writers upon occult subjects to whose works we have as yet gained
+access, Paracelsus throws the greatest light upon these tricky sprites
+celebrated in the realm of poesy, and inhabiting that disputed land
+popularly termed fairydom. From open vision, and that wonderful insight
+of the master or adept into the secrets of nature, Paracelsus is able to
+give us the most positive information concerning their bodily formation,
+the nature of their existence, and other extraordinary particulars,
+which proves that he has actually seen and observed them, and doubtless
+also employed them as the obedient servants of his purified will; a
+power into which the spiritual man ascends by a species of right, when
+he has thrown off, or conquered, the thraldom of matter in his own body,
+and stands open-eyed at "the portals of his deep within."
+
+We will quote certain extracts from the pages of this wonderful
+interpreter of nature. "There are two kinds of flesh. One that comes
+from Adam, and another that does not come from Adam. The former is gross
+material, visible and tangible for us; the other one is not tangible and
+not made from earth. If a man who is a descendant from Adam wants to
+pass through a wall, he will have first to make a hole through it; but a
+being who is not descended from Adam needs no hole nor door, but may
+pass through matter that appears solid to us without causing any damage
+to it. The beings not descended from Adam, as well as those descended
+from him, are organized and have substantial bodies; but there is as
+much difference between the substance composing their bodies as there is
+between matter and spirit. Yet the elementals are not spirits, because
+they have flesh, blood, and bones; they live and propagate offspring;
+they eat and talk, act and sleep, etc., and consequently they cannot be
+properly called spirits. They are beings occupying a place between man
+and spirits, resembling men and women in their organization and form,
+and resembling spirits in the rapidity of their locomotion. They are
+intermediary beings or composita, formed out of two parts joined into
+one; just as two colors mixed together will appear as one color,
+resembling neither one nor the other of the two original ones. The
+elementals have no higher principles; they are therefore not immortal,
+and when they die they perish like animals. Neither water nor fire can
+injure them, and they cannot be locked up in our material prisons. They
+are, however, subject to diseases. Their costumes, actions, forms, ways
+of speaking, etc., are not very unlike those of human beings; but there
+are a great many varieties. They have only animal intellects, and are
+incapable of spiritual development."
+
+In saying the elementals have "no higher principles," and "When they die
+they perish like animals," Paracelsus does not stop to explain that the
+higher principles in them are absolutely latent, as in plants; and that
+animals in "perishing" are not destroyed, but the psychical or soul-part
+of the animal passes, by the processes of evolution, into higher forms.
+
+"Each species moves only in the element to which it belongs, and neither
+of them can go out of its appropriate element, which is to them as the
+air is to us, or the water to fishes; and none of them can live in the
+element belonging to another class. To each elemental being the element
+in which it lives is transparent, invisible, and respirable, as the
+atmosphere is to ourselves."
+
+"As far as the personalities of the elementals are concerned, it may be
+said that those belonging to the element of water resemble human beings
+of either sex; those of the air are greater and stronger; the
+salamanders are long, lean, and dry; the pigmies (gnomes) are the length
+of about two spans, but they may extend or elongate their forms until
+they appear like giants.
+
+"Nymphs (undines, or naiads) have their residences and palaces in the
+element of water; sylphs and salamanders have no fixed dwellings.
+Salamanders have been seen in the shape of fiery balls, or tongues of
+fire running over the fields or appearing in houses;" or at psychical
+séances as starry lights, darting and dancing about.
+
+"There are certain localities where large numbers of elementals live
+together, and it has occurred that a man has been admitted into their
+communities and lived with them for a while, and that they have become
+visible and tangible to him."
+
+Poets, in their moments of exaltation, have an unconscious soul-vision
+before which nature's invisible worlds lie like an open volume, and they
+translate her secrets into language of mystic meanings whose harmonies
+are re-interpreted by sympathetic minds. The poet Hogg, in his _Rapture
+of Kilmeny_, would seem to have had a vision of some such visit as that
+described above, into the fairyland of pure, peaceful _elementals_.
+
+"Bonny Kilmeny gaed up the glen"--and is represented as having fallen
+asleep. During this sleep she is transported to "a far countrye," whose
+gentle, lovely inhabitants receive her with delight. The following
+lines reveal the poet's power of inner vision, as will be seen by the
+words italicized. They are in wonderful accord with the descriptions
+given by Paracelsus from the actual observation of a _conscious seer_:
+
+    "They lifted Kilmeny, they led her away,
+    And she walk'd _in the light of a sunless day_;
+    The sky was _a dome of crystal bright_,
+    The _fountain of vision and fountain of light_;
+    The emerald fields _were of dazzling glow_,
+    And the _flowers of everlasting blow_."
+
+It needs but a brushing away of the films of flesh, which occurs in
+moments of rapt inspiration, for the soul, escaping from its
+prison-house, to revel in the innocent, peaceful scenes of its own inner
+world, and give a true description of what it beholds. The inner
+meanings of things, the symbolical correspondences are revealed in a
+flash of light, and the poet-soul becomes revelator and prophet all in
+one. He sets it down to imagination and fancy, when he returns into his
+normal state, and it is what we call "a flight of genius"--the power of
+the soul to enter its own appropriate world. Certainly _les ames de
+boue_ have no such power. It is, however, a _proof that world exists_,
+if we will but understand it aright.
+
+There has never existed a poet with a truer conception of "elemental"
+life than Shakespeare. What more exquisite creation of the poet's fancy,
+which _might be every word of it true_, for in no particular does it
+surpass the truth, than that of _Ariel_, whom the "foul witch Sycorax,"
+"by help of her more potent ministers, and in her most unmitigable
+rage," did confine "into a cloven pine;" for Ariel, the good elemental,
+was "a spirit too delicate to act her earthly and abhorred commands."
+When Prospero, the Adept and White Magician, arrived upon the scene, by
+his superior art he liberated the delicate Ariel, who afterwards becomes
+his ministering servant for _good_, not for evil.
+
+In the _Midsummer Night's Dream_, Titania transports a human child into
+her elemental world, where she keeps him with so jealous a love as to
+refuse to yield him even to her "fairy lord," as Puck calls him. Puck
+himself is almost as exquisite a realization of elemental life as Ariel.
+As Shakespeare unfolds the lovely, innocent tale of the occupations,
+sports and pranks of this aerial people, he introduces us to the
+elementals of his own beautiful thought world; and, although indulging
+in the "sports of fancy," there is so broad a foundation of truth, that,
+being enlightened by the revelations of Paracelsus, we no longer think
+we are merely entertained by the poetical inventions of a master of his
+art, but may well believe we have been witnesses of a charming reality
+beheld through the "rift in the veil" of the poet's unconscious inner
+sight. Indeed, one of the tenets of occult science is that there is
+nothing on earth, nor that the mind of man can conceive, which is not
+already existent in the unseen world.
+
+We reflect in the translucence, or _diaphane_ of our mental world those
+concrete images of things which we attract by the irresistible magnetism
+of _desire_ working through the thought. It is a spontaneous,
+unconscious mental process with us; but there is no reason why it should
+not become a perfectly conscious process regulated by a divine wisdom
+to functions of harmony with nature's laws, and to productions of beauty
+and beneficence for the good of the whole world. As the world is the
+concreted emanation of divine thought, so it is by thought that man, the
+microcosm, _creates_ upon his petty, finite plane. Given the
+desire--even if it be only as the lightest breath of a summer zephyr
+upon the sleeping bosom of the ocean, scarcely ruffling its surface--it
+becomes a center of attraction for suitable molecules of
+thought-substance floating in space, which immediately "agglomerate
+round the idea proceeding to reveal itself," _by means_ of clothing
+itself in substance. By these silent processes in the invisible world
+wherein our souls draw the breath of life, we form our mental world, our
+personal character, even our very physical bodies. The _perisprit_, or
+astral body, the vehicle for _formless spirit_, is essentially builded
+up from the mental life, and grows by the accretion of those atoms or
+molecules of thought-substance which are assimilable by the mind. Hence
+a good man, a man of lofty aspirations, forms, as the _nearest_ external
+clothing of his inner spirit, a beautiful soul-body, which irradiates
+through and beautifies the physical body. The man of low and groveling
+mind will, on the contrary, attract the depraved and poisoned substances
+of the lower astral world; the malarial emanations thrown off by other
+equally depraved beings, by which his mind becomes embruted, his soul
+diseased, whilst his physical form presents in a concrete image the
+ugliness of his inner nature. Such a man never ascends above the dense,
+mephitic vapors of the sin-laden world, nor takes into his soul the
+slightest breath of pure, vitalizing air. He is diseased by invisible
+astral _microbes_, being most effectually self-inoculated with them by
+the operation of desires which never transcend the earth. Did we lift
+the veil which shrouds from mortal sight the elemental world of such a
+moral pervert, we should behold a world teeming with hideous forms, and
+as actively working as the _bacteria_ of fermentation revealed by a
+powerful microscope, elementals of destruction, death, and decay, which
+must pass out into other forms for the purification of the spiritual
+atmosphere; creatures produced by the man's own thoughts, living upon
+and in him, and reflecting, like mirrors, his hideousness back again to
+himself. It is from the presence of innumerable foci of evil of this
+kind that the world is befouled, and the moral atmosphere of our planet
+tainted. They emit poisoned astral currents, from which none are safe
+but those who are in the _positive_ condition of perfect moral health.
+
+From the fountain of life we draw in the materials of life, and become,
+upon our lower plane, other living fountains, which from liberty of
+choice, and freedom of will, have the power of so muddying the pure
+stream, that in its turbidness and foulness it becomes death
+instead of life, and produces hell instead of heaven. When we, by
+self-purification, and that constant mental discipline which trains us
+upwards, clinging to our highest ideal by the tendrils of faith, and
+love, and continual aspiration, as the vine would cling to a rock--have
+eliminated all that is impure in our thought world, we become fountains
+of life, and make our own heavens, wherein are reflected only images of
+divine beauty. The whole elemental world on our immediate astral plane
+becomes gradually transformed during the progress of our evolution into
+the higher spiritual grades of being. And as humanity _en masse_
+advances, throwing off the moral and spiritual deformity of the selfish,
+ignorant ego, the astral atmospheres belonging to our planet world
+become filled with elementals of a peaceful, loving character, of
+beautiful forms, and of beneficent influences. The currents of evil
+force which now act with a continually jarring effect upon those
+striving to maintain the equilibrium of harmony with nature upon the
+side of _good_, would cease. That depression, agitation, and distress
+which now, from inscrutable causes, assail minds otherwise rejoicing in
+an innocent happiness, forewarning them of some impending calamity, or
+of some evil presence it seems impossible to shake off, would become
+unknown. The horrible demons of war, with which humanity, in its sinful
+state of _separateness_, is continually threatening itself--as if the
+members of one body were self-opposed, and revolting from that state of
+agreement that can alone ensure the well-being of the whole--would no
+longer be held, like ravenous bloodhounds chafing against their leashes,
+ready to spring, at a word, upon their hellish work; but they will have
+passed away, like other hideous deformities of evil; and the serene
+astral atmospheres would no longer reflect ideas of cruel wrongs to
+fellow-beings, revenge, lust of power, injustice, and ruthless hatred.
+We are taught that around an "idea" agglomerate the suitable molecules
+of soul-substance--"Monads," as Leibnitz terms them, until a concrete
+form stands created, the production of a mind, or minds. All the hideous
+man-created beings, powers or forces, which now act like ravaging
+pestilences and storms in the astral atmospheres of our planet will
+have disappeared like the monstrous phantoms of a frightful dream, when
+the whole of humanity has progressed into a state of higher spiritual
+evolution. It is well to reflect that _each individual_, however humble
+and apparently insignificant his position in the great human family, can
+aid by his life, by the silent emanation of his pure and wise thoughts,
+as well as by his active labors for humanity, in bringing nearer this
+halcyon period of peace, harmony, and purity--that millennium, in short,
+we are all looking forward to, as a dream we can never hope to see
+realized.
+
+In _Man: Fragments of Forgotten History_, we read: "Violence was the
+most baneful manifestation of man's spiritual decadence, and it
+rebounded upon him from the elemental beings, whom it was his duty to
+develop"--those _sub-mundanes_, towards whom man is now learning that he
+incurs _responsibilities_ of which he is at present utterly unconscious,
+but of which he will indubitably become more and more aware as he
+ascends the ladder of spiritual evolution.
+
+To continue our extract from _Fragments_. "When this duty was ignored,
+and the separation of interests was accentuated, the natural man
+forcibly realized an antagonism with the elemental spirits. As violence
+increased in man, these spirits waxed strong in their way, and, true to
+their natures, which had been outraged by the neglect of those who were
+in a sense their guardians, they automatically responded with
+resentment. No longer could man rely upon the power of love or harmony
+to guide others, because he himself had ceased to be impelled solely by
+its influence; distrust had marred the symmetry of his inner self, and
+beings who could not perceive but only _receive impressions projected
+towards them_, quickly adapted themselves to the altered conditions."
+(Elementals as _forces_, respond to forces, or are swayed by them; man,
+as a superior force, acts upon them, therefore, injuriously, or
+beneficially, and they in their turn, poisoned by his baleful influence,
+when he is depraved, become injurious forces to him by the laws of
+reaction.) "At once nature itself took on the changed expression; and
+where all before was gladness and freshness there were now indications
+of sorrow and decay. Atmospheric influences hitherto unrecognized began
+to be noted; there was felt a chill in the morning, a dearth of magnetic
+heat at noon-tide, and a universal deadness at the approach of night,
+which began to be looked upon with alarm. For a change in the object
+must accompany every change in the subject. Until this point was reached
+there was nothing to make man afraid of himself and his surroundings.
+
+"And as he plunged deeper and deeper into matter, he lost his
+consciousness of the subtler forms of existence, and attributed all the
+antagonism he experienced to unknown causes. The conflict continued to
+wax stronger, and, in consequence of his ignorance, man fell a readier
+victim. There were exceptions among the race then, as there are now,
+whose finer perceptive faculties outgrew, or kept ahead, of the
+advancing materialization; and they alone, in course of events, could
+feel and recognize the influences of these earliest progeny of the
+earth.
+
+"Time came when an occasional appearance was viewed with alarm, and was
+thought to be an omen of evil. Recognizing this fear on the part of man,
+the elementals ultimately came to realize for him the dangers he
+apprehended, and they banded together to terrify him." (They reflected
+back to him his own fears in a concrete form, sufficiently intelligent,
+perhaps, to take some malicious pleasure in it, for man in propelling
+into space a force of any kind is met by a reactionary force, which
+seems to give exactly what his mind foreshadowed. In the negative
+coldness of fear, he lays himself open to infesting molecules or atoms
+which paralyze life, and he falls a victim to his own lack of faith,
+cheerful courage and hope.) "They found strong allies in an order of
+existence which was generated when physical death made its appearance"
+(_i.e._, elementaries, or shells); "and their combined forces began to
+manifest themselves at night, for which man had a dread as being the
+enemy of his protector, the sun.[19]
+
+[Footnote 19: _Fragments of Forgotten History._]
+
+"The elementaries galvanized into activity by the elemental beings began
+to appear to man under as many varieties of shape as his hopes and fears
+allowed. And as his ignorance of things spiritual became denser, these
+agencies brought in an influx of error, which accelerated his spiritual
+degeneration. Thus, it will be seen that man's neglect of his duty to
+the nature-spirits is the cause which has launched him into a sea of
+troubles, that has shipwrecked so many generations of his descendants.
+Famines, plagues, wars, and other catastrophes are not so disconnected
+with the agency of nature-spirits as it might appear to the sceptical
+mind."[20]
+
+[Footnote 20: _Fragments of Forgotten History._]
+
+It is therefore evident that the world of man exercises a controlling
+power over this invisible world of elementals. Even in the most remote
+and inaccessible haunts of nature, where we may imagine halcyon days of
+an innocent bliss elapsing in poetic peace and beauty for the more
+harmless of these irresponsible, evanescent offspring of nature's
+teeming bosom, they must inevitably, sooner or later, yield up their
+peaceful sovereignty to the greater monarch, man, who usually comes with
+a harsh and discordant influence, like the burning sirocco of the
+desert, like the overwhelming avalanche from the silent peaks of snow,
+or the earthquake, convulsing and tearing to atoms the beauty of
+gardens, palaces, cities. It is said that elementals _die_; it is
+presumable that at such times they die by myriads, when the whole
+surface of the earth becomes changed from the unavoidable passing away
+of nature's wildernesses, the peaceful homes of bird and beast, as the
+improving, commercial, money-grasping man--that contradiction of God,
+that industrious destroyer, who lives at war with beauty, peace, and
+goodness--appears upon the scene. These may be called poetical
+rhapsodies; yet poetry is, in a mysterious way, closely allied to that
+hidden truth which has its birth on the soul-plane, and the imagination
+of man is, according to Eliphas Lévi, a clairvoyant and magical
+faculty--"the wand of the magician."
+
+To speak of elementals _dying_, is to use a word which expresses for us
+_change of condition_; the passing from one sphere of life to another,
+or from one plane of consciousness to another. This to the sensual man
+is "death." But there is _no_ death--it is merely a passing from one
+phase of existence to another. Hence the elementals lose the forms they
+once held, changing their plane of consciousness, and appearing in other
+forms.
+
+We have shown somewhat of the mysterious way in which man acts upon
+these invisible denizens of his soul-world, and by which he incurs a
+certain responsibility. By the dynamic power of thought and will it is
+done--as everything is done. The elementals pushed by man, as by a
+superior force, off that equilibrium of harmony with pure, innocent
+nature, which they originally maintained when our planet was young, have
+been transformed into powers of evil, which man brings upon himself as
+retribution--the reaction of that force he ignorantly sets in motion
+when he breaks the beneficent laws of nature. Originally dependent upon
+him, and capable of aiding him in a thousand ways when he is wise and
+good, they have become his enemies, who thwart him at every turn, and
+guard the secrets of their abodes with none the less implacable
+sternness because they are probably only semi-conscious of the functions
+they perform. It is nature acting through them--the great cosmic
+consciousness, which forbids that desecrating footsteps shall invade the
+holy precincts of her stupendous life-secrets. But to the spiritual
+man--the god--these secrets open of themselves, like a hand laden with
+gifts, readily unclosing to a favorite and deserving child.
+
+Giving forth a current of evil, and sinking therefrom into a state of
+bestial ignorance, man has enveloped himself in clouds of darkness which
+assume monstrous shapes threatening to overwhelm him. A wicked man is
+generally a coward because he lives in a state of perpetual dread of the
+reactionary effect of the evil forces he has set in motion. These are
+volumes of elemental forms banded together, and swaying like the
+thunder-clouds of a gathering storm.
+
+To disperse these, his own spiritual mind must ray forth the light
+reflected from the source of light--omniscience. In the astral
+atmospheres of the spiritual man, there are no clouds, and fear is
+unknown. In the mental world of the innocent and pure, those are only
+forms of gracious beauty, as lovely as the shapes of nature's innocent
+embryons, which reveal themselves in the forests, the running streams,
+the floating breeze, and in company with the birds and flowers, to the
+clairvoyant sight of those nature-lovers before whom she withdraws her
+veils, communing with their souls by an intuitional speech which fills
+them with rapturous admiration. It is not only the learned scientist who
+may read nature's marvelous revelations; for she whispers them with
+maternal tenderness into the open ears of babes, where they remain ever
+safe from desecration, and are cherished as the soul's innocent delights
+in hours of isolation from the busy, jarring world.
+
+The spiritual soul is ever looking beneath nature's material veils for
+_correspondences_. Every natural object _means_ something else to such
+penetrating vision--a vision which begins to be spontaneously exercised
+by the soul when it has fairly reached that stage of spiritual
+evolution; and to this silent exploration many a secret meaning reveals
+itself by object-pictures, which awaken reflection and inquiry as to the
+why and wherefore. Thus the spiritual man drinks, as it were, from
+nature's own hand the pure waters of an inexhaustible spring--that
+occult knowledge which feeds his soul, and aids in forming for him a
+beautiful and powerful astral body. And nature becomes invested to his
+penetrating sight with a beauty she never wore before, and which the
+clay-blinded eyes of animal man can never behold. Such a man would enter
+the isolated haunts of the purer nature-spirits with gentle footsteps,
+and loving thoughts. To him the breeze is wafted wooingly, the streams
+whisper music, and everything wears an aspect of loving joyousness, and
+inviting confidence. Beside the rigid material forms, he sees their
+_aromal counter-parts_; everything is life; the very stones live, and
+have a consciousness suited to their state; and he feels as if every
+atom of his own body vibrated in unison with the living things about
+him--as if _all were one flesh_. To injure a single thing would be
+impossible to him. Such is the soul-condition of the perfect man, to
+whom evil has become impossible.
+
+An adept has written--"Every thought of man upon being evolved passes
+into another world and becomes an active entity by associating
+itself--coalescing, we might term it--with an elemental; that is to say,
+with one of the semi-intelligent forces of the kingdoms. It survives as
+an active intelligence--a creature of the mind's begetting--for a longer
+or shorter period, proportionate with the original intensity of the
+cerebral action which generated it. Thus, a good thought is perpetuated
+as an active, beneficent power, an evil one as a maleficent demon. And
+so man is continually peopling his current in space with the offspring
+of his fancies, desires, impulses, and passions; a current which
+re-acts upon any sensitive or nervous organization which comes in
+contact with it, in proportion to its dynamic intensity. The adept
+evolves these shapes consciously, other men throw them off
+unconsciously."
+
+Therefore, man must be held responsible not only for his outward
+actions, but his secret thoughts, by which he puts into existence
+irresponsible entities of more or less maleficent power, if his thoughts
+be of an evil nature. These are revelations of a deep and abstruse
+character; but would they have come at all if man had not reached that
+stage of evolution when it is necessary he should step up into his
+spiritual kingdom, and rule as a master over his lower self, and as a
+beneficent god over every department of unintelligent nature?
+
+We note the closing words of the adept's letter: "The adept evolves
+these shapes consciously, other men throw them off unconsciously." In
+the adept's soul-world then--the man who has ascended, by self-conquest
+primarily, into his spiritual kingdom, and who has graduated through
+years of probation and study in spiritual or occult science--_i.e._, the
+White Magician, the Son of God, the inheritor by spiritual evolution, of
+divinity--there would reign peace, happiness, beauty, order, absolute
+harmony with nature on the side of good. No discordant note, no deformed
+astral production to embarrass or obstruct the current of divine
+magnetism he emanates into space--the delicious, soul-purifying,
+healing, and uplifting aura which radiates from him as from a center of
+beneficence to the lower world of struggling humanity. The
+semi-intelligent forces of nature, the innocent nature spirits would in
+such a soul-world, find an appropriate and harmonious habitat,
+clustering in waiting obedience upon the behests of a master whose every
+thought-breath would be as an uplifting life.
+
+To such a state and condition of complete harmony with God and nature
+must the truly perfect spiritual man ascend by evolution.
+
+
+THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ELEMENTALS AND ELEMENTARIES
+
+From the similarity of the terms used to designate two classes of astral
+beings who are able to communicate with man, a certain confusion has
+arisen in the public mind, which it would be as well, perhaps, to aid in
+removing.
+
+_Elementals_ is a term applied to the nature spirits, the living
+existences which belong peculiarly to the elements they inhabit; "beings
+of the _mysteria specialia_," according to Paracelsus, "soul-forms,
+which will return into their chaos, and who are not capable of
+manifesting any higher spiritual activity because they do not possess
+the necessary kind of constitution in which an activity of a spiritual
+character can manifest itself.... Matter is connected with spirit by an
+intermediate principle which it receives from this spirit. This
+intermediate link between matter and spirit belongs to all the three
+kingdoms of nature. In the mineral kingdom it is called Stannar, or
+Trughat; in the vegetable kingdom, Jaffas; and it forms in connection
+with the vital force of the vegetable kingdom, the Primum Ens, which
+possesses the highest medicinal properties.... In the animal kingdom,
+this semi-material body is called Evestrum, and in human beings it is
+called the Sidereal Man. Each living being is connected with the
+Macrocosmos and Microcosmos by means of this intermediate element of
+soul, belonging to the Mysterium Magnum from whence it has been
+received, and whose form and qualities are determined by the quality and
+quantity of the spiritual and material elements." From this we may infer
+that the _Elementals_, properly speaking, are the _Soul-forms_ of the
+elements they inhabit--the activities and energies of the _world-soul_
+differentiated into forms, endowed with more or less consciousness and
+capacities for feeling, and hours of enjoyment, or pain. But these,
+never or rarely, entering any more deeply into dense matter than enabled
+so to do by their aerial invisible bodies, do not appear upon our gross
+physical plane otherwise than as forces, energies, or influences. Their
+soul-forms are the intermediate link between matter and spirit,
+resembling the soul-forms of animals and men, which also form this
+intermediate link, the difference being that the souls of animals and
+men have enveloped themselves in a casing of dense matter for the
+purposes of existence upon the more external planes of life.
+Consequently, after the death of the external bodies of men and animals,
+there remain astral remnants which undergo gradual disintegration in the
+astral atmospheres. These have been termed _elementaries_; _i.e._, "the
+astral corpses of the dead; the ethereal counterpart of the once living
+person, which will sooner or later be decomposed into its astral
+elements, as the physical body is dissolved into the elements to which
+it belongs. The elementaries of good people have little cohesion and
+evaporate soon; those of wicked people may exist a long time; those of
+suicides, etc., have a life and consciousness of their own as long as a
+division of principles has not taken place. These are the most
+dangerous."
+
+In the introduction to _Isis Unveiled_, we find the following definition
+of elemental spirits:
+
+"The creatures evolved in the four kingdoms of earth, air, fire, and
+water, and called by the Kabalists gnomes, sylphs, salamanders, and
+undines. They may be termed the forces of nature, and will either
+operate effects as the servile agents of general law, or may be employed
+by the disembodied spirits--whether pure or impure--and by living adepts
+of magic and sorcery, to produce desired phenomenal results. _Such_
+beings never become men." (But there are classes of elemental spirits
+who do become men, as we shall see further on.)
+
+"Under the general designation of fairies and fays, these spirits of the
+elements appear in the myth, fable, tradition, and poetry of all
+nations, ancient and modern. Their names are legion--peris, devs, djins,
+sylvans, satyrs, fawns, elves, dwarfs, trolls, kobolds, brownies,
+stromkarls, undines, nixies, salamanders, goblins, banshees, kelpies,
+prixies, moss people, good people, good neighbors, wild women, men of
+peace, white ladies, and many more. They have been seen, feared,
+blessed, banned, and invoked in every quarter of the globe and in every
+age. These elementals are the principal agents of disembodied but never
+visible spirits at séances, and the producers of all the phenomena
+except the 'subjective.'"--(Preface xxix, vol. I.)
+
+"In the Jewish Kabala the nature spirits were known under the general
+name of _Shedim_, and divided into four classes. The Persians called
+them _devs_; the Greeks indistinctly designated them as _demons_; the
+Egyptians knew them as _afrites_. The ancient Mexicans, says Kaiser,
+believed in numerous spirit-abodes, into one of which the shades of
+innocent children were placed until final disposal; into another,
+situated in the sun, ascended the valiant souls of heroes; while the
+hideous specters of incorrigible sinners were sentenced to wander and
+despair in subterranean caves, held in the bonds of the
+earth-atmosphere, unwilling and unable to liberate themselves. They
+passed their time in communicating with mortals, and frightening those
+who could see them. Some of the African tribes know them as
+Yowahoos."--(P. 313, vol. I.)
+
+Of the ideas of Proclus on this subject it is said in _Isis Unveiled_:
+
+"He held that the four elements are all filled with demons, maintaining
+with Aristotle that the universe is full, and that there is no void in
+nature. The demons of earth, air, fire, and water, are of an elastic,
+ethereal, semi-corporeal essence. It is these classes which officiate as
+intermediate agents between the gods and men. Although lower in
+intelligence than the sixth order of the higher demons, these beings
+preside directly over the elements and organic life. They direct the
+growth, the inflorescence, the properties, and various changes of
+plants. They are the personified ideas or virtues shed from the heavenly
+_ule_ into the inorganic matter; and, as the vegetable kingdom is one
+remove higher than the mineral, these emanations from the celestial gods
+take form in the plant, and become _its soul_. It is that which
+Aristotle's doctrine terms the _form_ in the three principles of natural
+bodies, classified by him as _privation_, matter, and form. His
+philosophy teaches that besides the original matter, another principle
+is necessary to complete the triune nature of every particle, and this
+is _form_; an invisible, but still, in an ontological sense of the word,
+a substantial being, really distinct from matter proper. Thus, in an
+animal or a plant, besides the bones, the flesh, the nerves, the brains,
+and the blood in the former; and besides the pulpy matter, tissues,
+fibers, and juice in the latter, which blood and juice by circulating
+through the veins and fibers nourish all parts of both animal and plant;
+and besides the animal spirits which are the principles of motion, and
+the chemical energy which is transformed into vital force in the green
+leaf, there must be a substantial form, which Aristotle called in the
+horse, the _horse's soul_; and Proclus, the _demon_ of every mineral,
+plant, or animal, and the medieval philosophers, the _elementary
+spirits_ of the four kingdoms."--(P. 312, vol. I.)
+
+"According to the ancient doctrines, the soulless elemental spirits were
+evolved by the ceaseless motion inherent in the astral light. Light is
+force, and the latter is produced by _will_. As this will proceeds from
+an intelligence which cannot err, for it has nothing of the material
+organs of human thought in it, being the super-fine pure emanation of
+the highest divinity itself--(Plato's _Father_)--it proceeds from the
+beginning of time, according to immutable laws, to evolve the
+elementary fabric requisite for subsequent generations of what we term
+human races. All of the latter, whether belonging to this planet or to
+some other of the myriads in space, have their earthly bodies evolved in
+the matrix out of the bodies of a certain class of these elemental
+beings which have passed away in the invisible worlds." (P. 285, vol.
+I.)
+
+Speaking of Pythagoras, Iamblichus, and other Greek philosophers, _Isis_
+says:
+
+"The universal ether was not, in their eyes, simply a something
+stretching, tenantless, throughout the expanse of heaven; it was a
+boundless ocean peopled, like our familiar seas, with monstrous and
+minor creatures, and having in its every molecule the germs of life.
+Like the finny tribes which swarm in our oceans and smaller bodies of
+water, each kind having its 'habitat' in some spot to which it is
+curiously adapted; some friendly and some inimical to man; some pleasant
+and some frightful to behold; some seeking the refuge of quiet nooks and
+land-locked harbors, and some traversing great areas of water, the
+various races of the elemental spirits were believed by them to inhabit
+the different portions of the great ethereal ocean, and to be exactly
+adapted to their respective conditions." (P. 284, vol. I.)
+
+"Lowest in the scale of being are those invisible creatures called by
+the Kabalists the _elementary_. There are three distinct classes of
+these. The highest, in intelligence and cunning, are the so-called
+terrestrial spirits, the _larvæ_, or shadows of those who have lived on
+earth, have refused all spiritual light, remained and died deeply
+immersed in the mire of matter, and from whose sinful souls the
+immortal spirit has gradually separated. The second class is composed of
+invisible antitypes of men _to be_ born. No form can come into objective
+existence, from the highest to the lowest, before the abstract idea of
+this form, or as Aristotle would call it, the privation of this form is
+called forth.... These models, as yet devoid of immortal spirits, are
+elementals properly speaking, _psychic embryos_--which when their time
+arrives, die out of the invisible world, and are borne into this visible
+one as human infants, receiving _in transitu_ that divine breath called
+spirit which completes the perfect man. This class cannot communicate
+objectively with man.
+
+"The third class of elementals proper never evolve into human beings,
+but occupy, as it were, a specific step of the ladder of being, and, by
+comparison with the others, may properly be called nature-spirits, or
+cosmic agents of nature, each being confined to its own element, and
+never transgressing the bounds of others. These are what Tertullian
+called 'the princes of the powers of the air.'
+
+"This class is believed to possess but one of the three attributes of
+man. They have neither immortal souls nor tangible bodies; only astral
+forms, which partake, in a distinguishing degree, of the element to
+which they belong, and also of the ether. They are a combination of
+sublimated matter and a rudimental mind. Some are changeless, but still
+have no separate individuality, acting collectively so to say. Others,
+of certain elements and species, change form under a fixed law which
+Kabalists explain. The most solid of their bodies is ordinarily just
+immaterial enough to escape perception by our physical eyesight, but
+not so unsubstantial but that they can be perfectly recognized by the
+inner or clairvoyant vision. They not only exist, and can all live in
+ether, but can handle and direct it for the production of physical
+effects, as readily as we can compress air or water for the same purpose
+by pneumatic or hydraulic apparatus; in which occupation they are
+readily helped by the 'human elementary.' More than this; they can so
+condense it as to make to themselves tangible bodies, which by their
+protean powers they can cause to assume such likenesses as they choose,
+by taking as their models the portraits they find stamped in the memory
+of the persons present. It is not necessary that the sitter should be
+thinking at the moment of the one represented. His image may have faded
+away years before. The mind receives indelible impression even from
+chance acquaintance, or persons encountered but once." (Pp. 310, 311,
+vol. I.)
+
+"If spiritualists are anxious to keep strictly dogmatic in their notions
+of the spirit-world, they must not set _scientists_ to investigate their
+phenomena in the true experimental spirit. The attempt would most surely
+result in a partial re-discovery of the magic of old--that of Moses and
+Paracelsus. Under the deceptive beauty of some of their apparitions,
+they might find some day the sylphs and fair undines of the Rosicrucians
+playing in the currents of _psychic_ and _odic_ force.
+
+"Already Mr. Crookes, who fully credits the _being_, feels that under
+the fair skin of Katie, covering a simulacrum of heart borrowed
+partially from the medium and the circle, there is no soul! And the
+learned authors of the _Unseen Universe_, abandoning their
+"electro-biological" theory, begin to perceive in the universal ether
+the _possibility_ that it is a photographic album of _En-Soph_ the
+Boundless.--(P. 67, vol. I.)
+
+"We are far from believing that all the spirits that communicate at
+circles are of the classes called 'elemental' and 'elementary.'" Many,
+especially among those who control the medium subjectively to speak,
+write, and otherwise act in various ways, are human, disembodied
+spirits. Whether the majority of such spirits are good or _bad_, largely
+depends on the private morality of the medium, much on the circle
+present, and a great deal on the intensity and object of their
+purpose.... But in any case, human spirits can _never_ materialize
+themselves in _propriâ personâ_.[21]--(P. 67, vol. I.)
+
+[Footnote 21: By which it is doubtless meant that the _full_
+individuality is not present; the higher principles, the _true_ spirit,
+having ascended to its appropriate house, from which there is no
+attraction to earth. That which materializes would be an elemental, or
+elementals molding their fluidic forms in the likeness of the departed
+human being; or, on the other hand, considering and revivifying the
+atomic remnants of the sidereal encasement, or astral body, still left
+undissipated in the soul-world.]
+
+In _Art Magic_ we find the following pertinent remarks, p. 322. "There
+are some features of mediumship, especially amongst those persons known
+as _physical force mediums_, which long since should have awakened the
+attention of philosophical spiritualists to the fact that there were
+influences kindred only with animal natures at work somewhere, and
+unless the agency of certain classes of elemental spirits was admitted
+into the category of occasional control, humanity has at times assumed
+darker shades than we should be willing to assign to it. Unfortunately
+in discussing these subjects, there are many barriers to the attainment
+of truth on this subject. Courtesy and compassion alike protest against
+pointing to illustrations in our own time, whilst prejudice and
+ignorance intervene to stifle inquiry respecting phenomena, which a long
+lapse of time has left us free to investigate.
+
+"The judges whose ignorance and superstition disgraced the witchcraft
+trials of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, found a solvent for
+all occult, or even suspicious circumstances, in the control of 'Satan
+and his imps.' The modern spiritualists, with few exceptions, are
+equally stubborn in attributing everything that transpires in
+spiritualistic circles, even to the wilful _cunningly contrived
+preparations for deception_ on the part of pretended media, to the
+influence of disembodied human spirits--good, bad, or indifferent; but
+the author's own experience, confirmed by the assurances of
+wise-teaching spirits, impels him to assert that the tendencies to
+exhibit animal proclivities, whether mental, passional, or phenomenal,
+are most generally produced by elementals.
+
+"The rapport with this realm of beings is generally due to certain
+proclivities in the individual; or, when whole communities are affected,
+the cause proceeds from revolutionary movements in the realms of astral
+fluid; these continually affect the elementals, who, in combination with
+low undeveloped spirits of humanity (elementaries), avail themselves of
+magnetic epidemics to obsess susceptible individuals, and
+sympathetically affect communities."
+
+In the introduction to _Isis Unveiled_, we find the following definition
+of elementary spirits:
+
+"Properly, the disembodied _souls_ of the depraved; these souls, having
+at some time prior to death, separated from themselves their divine
+spirits, and so lost their chance of immortality. Eliphas Lévi and some
+other Kabalists make little distinction between elementary spirits, who
+have been men, and those beings which people the elements and are the
+blind forces of nature. Once divorced from their bodies, these souls
+(also called astral bodies) of purely materialistic persons, are
+irresistibly attracted to the earth, where they live a temporary and
+finite life amid elements congenial to their gross natures. From having
+never, during their natural lives, cultivated this spirituality, but
+subordinated it to the material and gross, they are now unfitted for the
+lofty career of the pure, disembodied being, for whom the atmosphere of
+earth is stifling and mephitic, and whose attractions are all away from
+it. After a more or less prolonged period of time these material souls
+will begin to disintegrate, and finally, like a column of mist, be
+dissolved, atom by atom, in the surrounding elements.--(Preface xxx.,
+vol. I.)
+
+"After the death of the depraved and the wicked, arrives the critical
+moment. If during life the ultimate and desperate effort of the
+inner-self to reunite itself with the faintly-glimmering ray of its
+divine parent is neglected; if this ray is allowed to be more and more
+shut out by the thickening crust of matter, the soul, once freed from
+the body, follows its earthly attractions, and is magnetically drawn
+into and held within the dense fogs of the material atmosphere. Then it
+begins to sink lower and lower, until it finds itself, when returned to
+consciousness, in what the ancients termed Hades. The annihilation of
+such a soul is never instantaneous; it may last centuries perhaps; for
+nature never proceeds by jumps and starts, and the astral soul, being
+formed of elements, the law of evolution must bide its time. Then begins
+the fearful law of compensation, the _Yin-Youan_ of the Buddhists. This
+class of spirits is called the terrestrial, or _earthly_ elementary, in
+contradistinction to the other classes." (They frequent séance rooms,
+&c.)--(P. 319, vol. I.)
+
+Of the danger of meddling in occult matters before understanding the
+elementals and elementaries, _Isis_ says, in the case of a rash
+intruder:
+
+"The spirit of harmony and union will depart from the elements,
+disturbed by the imprudent hand; and the currents of blind forces will
+become immediately infested by numberless creatures of matter and
+instinct--the bad demons of the theurgists, the devils of theology; the
+gnomes, salamanders, sylphs, and undines will assail the rash performer
+under multifarious aerial forms. Unable to invent anything, they will
+search your memory to its very depths; hence the nervous exhaustion and
+mental oppression of certain sensitive natures at spiritual circles. The
+elementals will bring to light long-forgotten remembrances of the past;
+forms, images, sweet mementos, and familiar sentences, long since faded
+from our own remembrance, but vividly preserved in the inscrutable
+depths of our memory and on the astral tablets of the imperishable 'Book
+of Life.'"--(P. 343, vol. I.)
+
+Paracelsus speaks of _Xeni Nephidei_: "Elemental spirits that give men
+occult powers over visible matter, and then feed on their brains, often
+causing thereby insanity.
+
+"Man rules potentially over all lower existences than himself," says the
+author of _Art Magic_ (p. 333), "but woe to him, who by seeking aid,
+counsel, or assistance, from lower grades of being, binds himself to
+them; henceforth he may rest assured they will become his parasites and
+associates, and as their instincts--like those of the animal
+kingdom--are strong in the particular direction of their nature, they
+are powerful to disturb, annoy, prompt to evil, and avail themselves of
+the contact induced by man's invitation to drag him down to their own
+level. The legendary idea of evil compacts between man and the
+'Adversary' is not wholly mythical. Every wrong-doer signs that compact
+with spirits who have sympathy with his evil actions.
+
+"Except for the purposes of scientific investigation, or with a view to
+strengthening ourselves against the silent and mysterious promptings to
+evil that beset us on every side, we warn mere curiosity-seekers, or
+persons ambitious to attach the legions of an unknown world to their
+service, against any attempts to seek communion with elemental spirits,
+or beings of any grade lower than man. _Beings below mortality can grant
+nothing that mortality ought to ask._ They can only serve man in some
+embryonic department of nature, and man must stoop to their state before
+they can thus reach him.... Knowledge is only good for us when we can
+apply it judiciously. Those who investigate for the sake of science, or
+with a view to enlarging the narrow boundaries of man's egotistical
+opinions, may venture much further into the realms of the unknown than
+curiosity-seekers, or persons who desire to apply the secrets of being
+to selfish purposes. It may be as well also for man to remember that he
+and his planet are not _the all_ of being, and that, besides the
+revelations included in the stupendous outpouring called 'Modern
+Spiritualism,' there are many problems yet to be solved in human life
+and planetary existences, which spiritualism does not cover, nor
+ignorance and prejudice dream of.... Besides these considerations, we
+would warn man of the many subtle, though invisible, enemies which
+surround him, and, rather by the instinct of their embryonic natures
+than through _malice prepense_, seek to lay siege to the garrison of the
+human heart. We would advise him, moreover, that into that sacred
+entrenchment no power can enter, save by invitation of the soul itself.
+Angels may solicit, or demons may tempt, but none can compel the spirit
+within to action, unless it first surrenders the _will_ to the investing
+power."--(_Art Magic_, p. 335.)
+
+From the _Theosophist_ of July 1886, we make the following extract,
+bearing upon the subject of the loss of immortality by soul-death, and
+the dangers of Black Magic:
+
+"It is necessary to say a few words as regards the real nature of
+soul-death, and the ultimate fate of a black magician. The soul, as we
+have explained above, is an isolated drop in the ocean of cosmic life.
+This current of cosmic life is but the light and the aura of the Logos.
+Besides the Logos, there are innumerable other existences, both
+spiritual and astral, partaking of this life and living in it. These
+beings have special affinities with particular emotions of the human
+soul, and particular characteristics of the human mind. They have, of
+course, a definite individual existence of their own, which lasts up to
+the end of the Manwantara. There are three ways in which a soul may
+cease to retain its special individuality. Separated from its Logos,
+which is, as it were, its source, it may not acquire a strong and
+abiding individuality of its own, and may in course of time be
+reabsorbed into the current of universal life. This is real soul-death.
+It may also place itself _en rapport_ with a spiritual or elemental
+existence by evoking it, and concentrating its attention and regard upon
+it for purposes of black magic and Tantric worship. In such a case it
+transfers its individuality to such existence and is sucked up into it,
+as it were. In such a case the black magician lives in such a being, and
+as such a being he continues until the end of Manwantara."
+
+A good deal of highly interesting information on the subject of
+elementals and elementaries is to be found in numbers of _The Path_. A
+few of the points contained in these articles may be mentioned here, but
+the reader is strongly recommended to study these articles, entitled
+_Conversations on Occultism_, for himself. According to the writer:
+
+An elemental is a center of force, without intelligence, as we
+understand the word, without moral character or tendencies similar to
+ours, but capable of being directed in its movements by human thoughts,
+which may, consciously or not, give it any form, and endow it to a
+certain extent with what we call intelligence. We give them form by a
+species of thought which the mind does not register--involuntary and
+unconscious thought--"as, one person might shape an elemental so as to
+seem like an insect, and not be able to tell whether he had thought of
+such a thing or not." The elemental world interpenetrates this one, and
+elementals are constantly being attracted to, or repelled from, human
+beings, taking the prevailing color of their thoughts. Time and space,
+as we understand them, do not exist for elementals. They can be seen
+clairvoyantly in the shapes they assume under different influences, and
+they do many of the phenomena of the séance room. Light and the
+concentrated attention of any one make a disturbance in the magnetism of
+a room, interfering with their work in that respect. At séances
+elementaries also are present; these are shells, or half-dead human
+beings. The elementaries are not all bad, however, but the worst are the
+strongest, because the most attracted to material life. They are all
+helped and galvanized into action by elementals.
+
+Contact with these beings has a deteriorating effect in all cases.
+Clairvoyants see in the astral light surrounding a person the images of
+people or events that have made an impression on that person's mind, and
+they frequently mistake these echoes and reflections for astral
+realities; only the trained seer can distinguish. The whole astral world
+is full of illusions.
+
+Elementals have not got _being_ such as mortals have. There are
+different classes for the different planes of nature. Each class is
+confined to its own plane, and many can never be recognized by men. The
+elemental world is a strong factor in Karma. Formerly, when men were
+less selfish and more spiritual, the elementals were friendly. They have
+become unfriendly by reason of man's indifference to, and want of
+sympathy with the rest of creation. Man has also colored the astral
+world with his own selfish and brutal thoughts, and produced an
+atmosphere of evil which he himself breathes. When men shall cultivate
+feelings of brotherly affection for each other, and of sympathy with
+nature, the elementals will change their present hostile attitude for
+one of helpfulness.
+
+Elementals aid in the performance of phenomena produced by adepts. They
+also enter the sphere of unprotected persons, and especially of those
+who study occultism, thus precipitating the results of past Karma.
+
+The adepts are reluctant to speak of elementals for two reasons. Because
+it is useless, as people could not understand the subject in their
+present state of intellectual and spiritual development; and because, if
+any knowledge of them were given, some persons might be able to come
+into contact with them to their own detriment and that of the world. In
+the present state of universal selfishness and self-seeking, the
+elementals would be employed to work evil, as they are in themselves
+colorless, taking their character from those who employ them. The
+adepts, therefore, keep back or hide the knowledge of these beings from
+men of science, and from the world in general. By-and-by, however,
+material science will rediscover black magic, and then will come a war
+between the good and evil powers, and the evil powers will be overcome,
+as always happens in such cases. Eventually all about the elementals
+will be known to men--when they have developed intellectually, morally,
+and spiritually sufficiently to have that knowledge without danger.
+
+Elementals guard hidden treasures; they obey the adepts, however, who
+could command the use of untold wealth if they cared to draw upon these
+hidden deposits.
+
+     N. B.--Nizida has quoted from _Man: Fragments of Forgotten
+     History_. The S. P. S. desires to say that while some of the
+     statements contained in that work are correct, there is also in
+     it a large admixture of error. Therefore, the S. P. S. does not
+     recommend this work to the attention of students who have not
+     yet learned enough to be able to separate the grain from the
+     husk. The same may be said of _Art-Magic_.
+
+
+
+
+A WITCH'S DEN
+
+BY MME. HELENA BLAVATSKY
+
+
+Our kind host Sham Rao was very gay during the remaining hours of our
+visit. He did his best to entertain us, and would not hear of our
+leaving the neighborhood without having seen its greatest celebrity, its
+most interesting sight. A _jadu wâlâ_--sorceress--well known in the
+district, was just at this time under the influence of seven
+sister-goddesses, who took possession of her by turns, and spoke their
+oracles through her lips. Sham Rao said we must not fail to see her, be
+it only in the interests of science.
+
+The evening closes in, and we once more get ready for an excursion. It
+is only five miles to the cavern of the Pythia of Hindostan; the road
+runs through a jungle, but it is level and smooth. Besides, the jungle
+and its ferocious inhabitants have ceased to frighten us. The timid
+elephants we had in the "dead city" are sent home, and we are to mount
+new behemoths belonging to a neighboring Râjâ. The pair that stand
+before the verandah like two dark hillocks are steady and trustworthy.
+Many a time these two have hunted the royal tiger, and no wild shrieking
+or thunderous roaring can frighten them. And so, let us start! The ruddy
+flames of the torches dazzle our eyes and increase the forest gloom.
+Our surroundings seem so dark, so mysterious. There is something
+indescribably fascinating, almost solemn, in these night-journeys in the
+out-of-the-way corners of India. Everything is silent and deserted
+around you, everything is dozing on the earth and overhead. Only the
+heavy, regular tread of the elephants breaks the stillness of the night,
+like the sound of falling hammers in the underground smithy of Vulcan.
+From time to time uncanny voices and murmurs are heard in the black
+forest.
+
+"The wind sings its strange song amongst the ruins," says one of us,
+"what a wonderful acoustic phenomenon!"
+
+"Bhûta, bhûta!" whisper the awestruck torch-bearers. They brandish their
+torches and swiftly spin on one leg, and snap their fingers to chase
+away the aggressive spirits.
+
+The plaintive murmur is lost in the distance. The forest is once more
+filled with the cadences of its invisible nocturnal life--the metallic
+whirr of the crickets, the feeble, monotonous croak of the tree-frog,
+the rustle of the leaves. From time to time all this suddenly stops
+short and then begins again, gradually increasing and increasing.
+
+Heavens! What teeming life, what stores of vital energy are hidden under
+the smallest leaf, the most imperceptible blades of grass, in this
+tropical forest! Myriads of stars shine in the dark blue of the sky, and
+myriads of fireflies twinkle at us from every bush, moving sparks, like
+a pale reflection of the far-away stars.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We left the thick forest behind us, and reached a deep glen, on three
+sides bordered with the thick forest, where even by day the shadows are
+as dark as by night. We were about two thousand feet above the foot of
+the Vindhya ridge, judging by the ruined wall of Mandu, straight above
+our heads.
+
+Suddenly a very chilly wind rose that nearly blew our torches out.
+Caught in the labyrinth of bushes and rocks, the wind angrily shook the
+branches of the blossoming syringas, then, shaking itself free, it
+turned back along the glen and flew down the valley, howling, whistling
+and shrieking, as if all the fiends of the forest together were joining
+in a funeral song.
+
+"Here we are," said Sham Rao, dismounting. "Here is the village; the
+elephants cannot go any further."
+
+"The village? Surely you are mistaken. I don't see anything but trees."
+
+"It is too dark to see the village. Besides, the huts are so small, and
+so hidden by the bushes, that even by daytime you could hardly find
+them. And there is no light in the houses, for fear of the spirits."
+
+"And where is your witch? Do you mean we are to watch her performance in
+complete darkness?"
+
+Sham Rao cast a furtive, timid look round him; and his voice, when he
+answered our questions, was somewhat tremulous.
+
+"I implore you not to call her a witch! She may hear you.... It is not
+far off, it is not more than half a mile. Do not allow this short
+distance to shake your decision. No elephant, and not even a horse,
+could make its way there. We must walk.... But we shall find plenty of
+light there...."
+
+This was unexpected, and far from agreeable. To walk in this gloomy
+Indian night; to scramble through thickets of cactuses; to venture in a
+dark forest, full of wild animals--this was too much for Miss X--. She
+declared that she would go no further. She would wait for us in the
+howdah on the elephant's back, and perhaps would go to sleep.
+
+Narayan was against this _parti de plaisir_ from the very beginning, and
+now, without explaining his reasons, he said she was the only sensible
+one among us.
+
+"You won't lose anything," he remarked, "by staying where you are. And I
+only wish every one would follow your example."
+
+"What ground have you for saying so, I wonder?" remonstrated Sham Rao,
+and a slight note of disappointment rang in his voice, when he saw that
+the excursion, proposed and organized by himself, threatened to come to
+nothing. "What harm could be done by it? I won't insist any more that
+the 'incarnation of gods' is a rare sight, and that the Europeans hardly
+ever have an opportunity of witnessing it; but, besides, the Kangalim in
+question is no ordinary woman. She leads a holy life; she is a
+prophetess, and her blessing could not prove harmful to any one. I
+insisted on this excursion out of pure patriotism."
+
+"Sahib, if your patriotism consists in displaying before foreigners the
+worst of our plagues, then why did you not order all the lepers of your
+district to assemble and parade before the eyes of our guests? You are a
+_patèl_, you have the power to do it."
+
+How bitterly Narayan's voice sounded to our unaccustomed ears. Usually
+he was so even-tempered, so indifferent to everything belonging to the
+exterior world.
+
+Fearing a quarrel between the Hindus, the colonel remarked, in a
+conciliatory tone, that it was too late for us to reconsider our
+expedition. Besides, without being a believer in the "incarnation of
+gods," he was personally firmly convinced that demoniacs existed even in
+the West. He was eager to study every psychological phenomenon, wherever
+he met with it, and whatever shape it might assume.
+
+It would have been a striking sight for our European and American
+friends if they had beheld our procession on that dark night. Our way
+lay along a narrow winding path up the mountain. Not more than two
+people could walk together--and we were thirty, including the
+torch-bearers. Surely some reminiscence of night sallies against the
+Confederate Southerners had revived in the colonel's breast, judging by
+the readiness with which he took upon himself the leadership of our
+small expedition. He ordered all the rifles and revolvers to be loaded,
+despatched three torch-bearers to march ahead of us, and arranged us in
+pairs. Under such a skilled chieftain we had nothing to fear from
+tigers; and so our procession started, and slowly crawled up the winding
+path.
+
+It cannot be said that the inquisitive travelers, who appeared later on,
+in the den of the prophetess of Mandu, shone through the freshness and
+elegance of their costumes. My gown, as well as the traveling suits of
+the colonel and of Mr. Y-- were nearly torn to pieces. The cactuses
+gathered from us whatever tribute they could, and the Babu's disheveled
+hair swarmed with a whole colony of grasshoppers and fireflies, which
+probably, were attracted thither by the smell of cocoanut oil. The stout
+Sham Rao panted like a steam engine. Narayan alone was like his usual
+self--that is to say, like a bronze Hercules, armed with a club. At the
+last abrupt turn of the path, after having surmounted the difficulty of
+climbing over huge, scattered stones, we suddenly found ourselves on a
+perfectly smooth place; our eyes, in spite of our many torches, were
+dazzled with light, and our ears were struck by a medley of unusual
+sounds.
+
+A new glen opened before us, the entrance of which, from the valley, was
+well masked by thick trees. We understood how easily we might have
+wandered round it, without ever suspecting its existence. At the bottom
+of the glen we discovered the abode of the celebrated Kangalim.
+
+The den, as it turned out, was situated in the ruin of an old Hindu
+temple in tolerably good preservation. In all probability it was built
+long before the "Dead City," because during the epoch of the latter, the
+heathen were not allowed to have their own places of worship; and the
+temple stood quite close to the wall of the town, in fact, right under
+it. The cupolas of the two smaller lateral pagodas had fallen long ago,
+and huge bushes grew out of their altars. This evening their branches
+were hidden under a mass of bright-colored rags, bits of ribbon, little
+pots, and various other talismans, because, even in them, popular
+superstition sees something sacred.
+
+"And are not these poor people right? Did not these bushes grow on
+sacred ground? Is not their sap impregnated with the incense of
+offerings, and the exhalations of holy anchorites, who once lived and
+breathed here?"
+
+The learned but superstitious Sham Rao would only answer our questions
+by new questions.
+
+But the central temple, built of red granite, stood unharmed by time,
+and, as we learned afterwards, a deep tunnel opened just behind its
+closely-shut door. What was beyond it no one knew. Sham Rao assured us
+that no man of the last three generations had ever stepped over the
+threshold of this thick iron door; no one had seen the subterranean
+passage for many years. Kangalim lived there in perfect isolation, and,
+according to the oldest people in the neighborhood, she had always lived
+there. Some people said she was three hundred years old; others alleged
+that a certain old man on his death-bed had revealed to his son that
+this old woman was no one else than _his own uncle_. This fabulous uncle
+had settled in the cave in the times when the "Dead City" still counted
+several hundreds of inhabitants. The hermit, busy paving his road to
+Moksha, had no intercourse with the rest of the world, and nobody knew
+how he lived and what he ate. But a good while ago, in the days when the
+Bellati (foreigners) had not yet taken possession of this mountain, the
+old hermit suddenly was transformed into a hermitess. She continues his
+pursuits and speaks with his voice, and often in his name; but she
+receives worshippers, which was not the practice of her predecessor.
+
+We had come too early, and the Pythia did not at first appear. But the
+square before the temple was full of people, and a wild though
+picturesque scene it was. An enormous bonfire blazed in the center, and
+round it crowded the naked savages like so many black gnomes, adding
+whole branches of trees sacred to the seven sister-goddesses. Slowly and
+evenly they all jumped from one leg to another to a tune of a single
+monotonous musical phrase, which they repeated in chorus, accompanied by
+several local drums and tambourines. The hushed trill of the latter
+mingled with the forest echoes and the hysterical moans of two little
+girls, who lay under a heap of leaves by the fire. The poor children
+were brought here by their mothers, in the hope that the goddesses would
+take pity upon them and banish the two evil spirits under whose
+obsession they were. Both mothers were quite young, and sat on their
+heels blankly and sadly staring at the flames. No one paid us the
+slightest attention when we appeared, and afterwards during all our stay
+these people acted as if we were invisible. Had we worn a cap of
+darkness they could not have behaved more strangely.
+
+"They feel the approach of the gods! The atmosphere is full of their
+sacred emanations!" mysteriously explained Sham Rao, contemplating with
+reverence the natives, whom his beloved Haeckel might have easily
+mistaken for his "missing link," the brood of his _Bathybius Haeckelii_.
+
+"They are simply under the influence of toddy and opium!" retorted the
+irreverent Babu.
+
+The lookers-on moved as in a dream, as if they all were only
+half-awakened somnambulists, but the actors were simply victims of St.
+Vitus's dance. One of them, a tall old man, a mere skeleton with a long
+white beard, left the ring and begun whirling vertiginously, with his
+arms spread like wings, and loudly grinding his long, wolf-like teeth.
+He was painful and disgusting to look at. He soon fell down, and was
+carelessly, almost mechanically pushed aside by the feet of the others
+still engaged in their demoniac performance.
+
+All this was frightful enough, but many more horrors were in store for
+us.
+
+Waiting for the appearance of the _prima donna_ of this forest opera
+company, we sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree, ready to ask
+innumerable questions of our condescending host. But I was hardly seated
+when a feeling of indescribable astonishment and horror made me shrink
+back.
+
+I beheld the skull of a monstrous animal, the like of which I could not
+find in my zoölogical reminiscences.
+
+This head was much larger than the head of an elephant skeleton. And
+still it could not be anything but an elephant, judging by the skilfully
+restored trunk, which wound down to my feet like a gigantic black leech.
+But an elephant has no horns, whereas this one had four of them! The
+front pair stuck from the flat forehead slightly bending forward and
+then spreading out; and the others had a wide base, like the root of a
+deer's horn, that gradually decreased almost up to the middle, and bore
+long branches enough to decorate a dozen ordinary elks. Pieces of the
+transparent amber-yellow rhinoceros skin were strained over the empty
+eye-holes of the skull, and small lamps burning behind them only added
+to the horror, the devilish appearance of this head.
+
+"What can this be?" was our unanimous question. None of us had ever met
+anything like it, and even the colonel looked aghast.
+
+"It is a Sivatherium," said Narayan. "Is it possible you never came
+across these fossils in European museums? Their remains are common
+enough in the Himalayas, though, of course, in fragments. They were
+called after Shiva."
+
+"If the collector of this district ever hears that this antediluvian
+relic adorns the den of your--ahem!--witch," remarked the Babu, "it
+won't adorn it many days longer."
+
+All around the skull and on the floor of the portico there were heaps of
+white flowers, which, though not quite antediluvian, were totally
+unknown to us. They were as large as a big rose, and their white petals
+were covered with a red powder, the inevitable concomitant of every
+Indian religious ceremony. Further on there were groups of cocoanuts,
+and large brass dishes filled with rice, each adorned with a red or
+green taper. In the center of the portico there stood a queer-shaped
+censer, surrounded with chandeliers. A little boy, dressed from head to
+foot in white, threw into it handfuls of aromatic powders.
+
+"These people, who assemble here to worship Kangalim," said Sham Rao,
+"do not actually belong either to her sect or to any other. They are
+devil-worshippers. They do not believe in Hindu gods; they live in small
+communities; they belong to one of the many Indian races which usually
+are called the hill-tribes. Unlike the Shanars of Southern Travancore,
+they do not use the blood of sacrificial animals; they do not build
+separate temples to their bhutas. But they are possessed by the strange
+fancy that the goddess Kâli, the wife of Shiva, from time immemorial has
+had a grudge against them, and sends her favorite evil spirits to
+torture them. Save this little difference, they have the same beliefs
+as the Shanars. God does not exist for them; and even Shiva is
+considered by them as an ordinary spirit. Their chief worship is offered
+to the souls of the dead. These souls, however righteous and kind they
+may be in their lifetime, become after death as wicked as can be; they
+are happy only when they are torturing living men and cattle. As the
+opportunities of doing so are the only reward for the virtues they
+possessed when incarnated, a very wicked man is punished by becoming
+after his death a very soft-hearted ghost; he loathes his loss of
+daring, and is altogether miserable. The results of this strange logic
+are not bad, nevertheless. These savages and devil-worshippers are the
+kindest and the most truth-loving of all the hill-tribes. They do
+whatever they can to be worthy of their ultimate reward; because, don't
+you see, they all long to become the wickedest of devils!"
+
+And put in good humor by his own wittiness, Sham Rao laughed till his
+hilarity became offensive, considering the sacredness of the place.
+
+"A year ago some business matters sent me to Tinevelli," continued he.
+"Staying with a friend of mine, who is a Shanar, I was allowed to be
+present at one of the ceremonies in the honor of devils. No European has
+as yet witnessed this worship, whatever the missionaries may say; but
+there are many converts amongst the Shanars, who willingly describe them
+to the _padres_. My friend is a wealthy man, which is probably the
+reason why the devils are especially vicious to him. They poison his
+cattle, spoil his crops and his coffee plants, and persecute his
+numerous relations, sending them sunstrokes, madness and epilepsy, over
+which illnesses they especially preside. These wicked demons have
+settled in every corner of his spacious landed property--in the woods,
+the ruins, and even in his stables. To avert all this, my friend covered
+his land with stucco pyramids, and prayed humbly, asking the demons to
+draw their portraits on each of them, so that he may recognize them and
+worship each of them separately, as the rightful owner of this, or that,
+particular pyramid. And what do you think?... Next morning all the
+pyramids were found covered with drawings. Each of them bore an
+incredibly good likeness of the dead of the neighborhood. My friend had
+known personally almost all of them. He found also a portrait of his own
+late father amongst the lot."
+
+"Well? And was he satisfied?"
+
+"Oh, he was very glad, very satisfied. It enabled him to choose the
+right thing to gratify the personal tastes of each demon, don't you see?
+He was not vexed at finding his father's portrait. His father was
+somewhat irascible; once he nearly broke both his son's legs,
+administering to him fatherly punishment with an iron bar, so that he
+could not possibly be very dangerous after his death. But another
+portrait, found on the best and the prettiest of the pyramids, amazed my
+friend a good deal, and put him in a blue funk. The whole district
+recognized an English officer, a certain Captain Pole, who in his
+lifetime was as kind a gentleman as ever lived."
+
+"Indeed? But do you mean to say that this strange people worshipped
+Captain Pole also?"
+
+"Of course they did! Captain Pole was such a worthy man, such an honest
+officer, that, after his death, he could not help being promoted to the
+highest rank of Shanar devils. The Pe-Kovil, demon's-house, sacred to
+his memory, stands side by side with the Pe-Kovil Bhadrakâlî, which was
+recently conferred on the wife of a certain German missionary, who also
+was a most charitable lady and so is very dangerous now."
+
+"But what are their ceremonies? Tell us something about their rites."
+
+"Their rites consist chiefly of dancing, singing, and killing
+sacrificial animals. The Shanars have no castes, and eat all kinds of
+meat. The crowd assembles about the Pe-Kovil, previously designated by
+the priest; there is a general beating of drums, and slaughtering of
+fowls, sheep and goats. When Captain Pole's turn came an ox was killed,
+as a thoughtful attention to the peculiar tastes of his nation. The
+priest appeared, covered with bangles, and holding a wand on which
+tinkled numberless little bells, and wearing garlands of red and white
+flowers round his neck, and a black mantle, on which were embroidered
+the ugliest fiends you can imagine. Horns were blown and drums rolled
+incessantly. And oh, I forgot to tell you there was also a kind of
+fiddle, the secret of which is known only to the Shanar priesthood. Its
+bow is ordinary enough, made of bamboo; but it is whispered that the
+strings are human veins.... When Captain Pole took possession of the
+priest's body, the priest leaped high in the air, and then rushed on the
+ox and killed him. He drank off the hot blood, and then began his dance.
+But what a fright he was when dancing! You know, I am not
+superstitious.... Am I?..."
+
+Sham Rao looked at us inquiringly, and I, for one, was glad at this
+moment that Miss X-- was half a mile off, asleep in the howdah.
+
+"He turned, and turned, as if possessed by all the demons of Nâraka. The
+enraged crowd hooted and howled when the priest begun to inflict deep
+wounds all over his body with the bloody sacrificial knife. To see him,
+with his hair waving in the wind and his mouth covered with foam; to see
+him bathing in the blood of the sacrificed animal, mixing it with his
+own, was more than I could bear. I felt as if hallucinated, I fancied I
+also was spinning round...."
+
+Sham Rao stopped abruptly, struck dumb. Kangalim stood before us!
+
+Her appearance was so unexpected that we all felt embarrassed. Carried
+away by Sham Rao's description, we had noticed neither how nor whence
+she came. Had she appeared from beneath the earth we could not have been
+more astonished. Narayan stared at her, opening wide his big jet-black
+eyes; the Babu clicked his tongue in utter confusion.
+
+Imagine a skeleton seven feet high, covered with brown leather, with a
+dead child's tiny head stuck on its bony shoulders; the eyes set so deep
+and at the same time flashing such fiendish flames all through your body
+that you begin to feel your brain stop working, your thoughts become
+entangled and your blood freeze in your veins.
+
+I describe my personal impressions, and no words of mine can do them
+justice. My description is too weak. Mr. Y-- and the colonel both grew
+pale under her stare and Mr. Y-- made a movement as if about to rise.
+
+Needless to say that such an impression could not last. As soon as the
+witch had turned her gleaming eyes to the kneeling crowd, it vanished as
+swiftly as it had come. But still all our attention was fixed on this
+remarkable creature.
+
+Three hundred years old! Who can tell? Judging by her appearance, we
+might as well conjecture her to be a thousand. We beheld a genuine
+living mummy, or rather a mummy endowed with motion. She seemed to have
+been withering since the creation. Neither time, nor the ills of life,
+nor the elements could ever affect this living statue of death. The
+all-destroying hand of time had touched her and stopped short. Time
+could do no more, and so had left her. And with all this, not a single
+gray hair. Her long black locks shone with a greenish sheen, and fell in
+heavy masses down to her knees.
+
+To my great shame, I must confess that a disgusting reminiscence flashed
+into my memory. I thought about the hair and the nails of corpses
+growing in the graves, and tried to examine the nails of the old woman.
+
+Meanwhile, she stood motionless as if suddenly transformed into an ugly
+idol. In one hand she held a dish with a piece of burning camphor, in
+the other a handful of rice, and she never removed her burning eyes from
+the crowd. The pale yellow flame of the camphor flickered in the wind,
+and lit up her death-like head, almost touching her chin; but she paid
+no heed to it. Her neck, as wrinkled as a mushroom, as thin as a stick,
+was surrounded by three rows of golden medallions. Her head was adorned
+with a golden snake. Her grotesque, hardly human body was covered by a
+piece of saffron-yellow muslin.
+
+The demoniac little girls raised their heads from beneath the leaves,
+and set up a prolonged animal-like howl. Their example was followed by
+the old man, who lay exhausted by his frantic dance.
+
+The witch tossed her head convulsively, and began her invocations,
+rising on tiptoe, as if moved by some external force.
+
+"The goddess, one of the seven sisters, begins to take possession of
+her," whispered Sham Rao, not even thinking of wiping away the big drops
+of sweat that streamed from his brow. "Look, look at her!"
+
+This advice was quite superfluous. We _were_ looking at her, and at
+nothing else.
+
+At first, the movements of the witch were slow, unequal, somewhat
+convulsive; then, gradually, they became less angular; at last, as if
+catching the cadence of the drums, leaning all her long body forward,
+and writhing like an eel, she rushed round and round the blazing
+bonfire. A dry leaf caught in a hurricane could not fly swifter. Her
+bare bony feet trod noiselessly on the rocky ground. The long locks of
+her hair flew round her like snakes, lashing the spectators, who knelt,
+stretching their trembling arms towards her, and writhing as if they
+were alive. Whoever was touched by one of this Fury's black curls, fell
+down on the ground, overcome with happiness, shouting thanks to the
+goddess, and considering himself blessed forever. It was not human hair
+that touched the happy elect, it was the goddess herself, one of the
+seven.
+
+Swifter and swifter fly her decrepit legs; the young, vigorous hands of
+the drummer can hardly follow her. But she does not think of catching
+the measure of his music; she rushes, she flies forward. Staring with
+her expressionless, motionless orbs at something before her, at
+something that is not visible to our mortal eyes, she hardly glances at
+her worshippers; then her look becomes full of fire, and whoever she
+looks at feels burned through to the marrow of his bones. At every
+glance she throws a few grains of rice. The small handful seems
+inexhaustible, as if the wrinkled palm contained the bottomless bag of
+Prince Fortunatus.
+
+Suddenly she stops as if thunderstruck.
+
+The mad race round the bonfire had lasted twelve minutes, but we looked
+in vain for a trace of fatigue on the death-like face of the witch. She
+stopped only for a moment, just the necessary time for the goddess to
+release her. As soon as she felt free, by a single effort she jumped
+over the fire and plunged into the deep tank by the portico. This time
+she plunged only once, and whilst she stayed under the water the second
+sister-goddess entered her body. The little boy in white produced
+another dish, with a new piece of burning camphor, just in time for the
+witch to take it up, and to rush again on her headlong way.
+
+The colonel sat with his watch in his hand. During the second obsession
+the witch ran, leaped, and raced for exactly fourteen minutes. After
+this, she plunged twice in the tank, in honor of the second sister; and
+with every new obsession the number of her plunges increased, till it
+became six.
+
+It was already an hour and a half since the race began. All this time
+the witch never rested, stopping only for a few seconds, to disappear
+under the water.
+
+"She is a fiend, she cannot be a woman!" exclaimed the colonel, seeing
+the head of the witch immersed for the sixth time in the water.
+
+"Hang me if I know!" grumbled Mr. Y--, nervously pulling his beard. "The
+only thing I know is that a grain of her cursed rice entered my throat,
+and I can't get it out!"
+
+"Hush, hush! Please, do be quiet!" implored Sham Rao. "By talking you
+will spoil the whole business!"
+
+I glanced at Narayan and lost myself in conjectures.
+
+His features, which usually were so calm and serene, were quite altered
+at this moment by a deep shadow of suffering. His lips trembled, and the
+pupils of his eyes were dilated, as if by a dose of belladonna. His eyes
+were lifted over the heads of the crowd, as if in his disgust he tried
+not to see what was before him, and at the same time could not see it,
+engaged in a deep reverie which carried him away from us and from the
+whole performance.
+
+"What is the matter with him?" was my thought, but I had no time to ask
+him, because the witch was again in full swing, chasing her own shadow.
+
+But with the seventh goddess the program was slightly changed. The
+running of the old woman changed to leaping. Sometimes bending down to
+the ground, like a black panther, she leaped up to some worshipper, and
+halting before him touched his forehead with her finger, while her long,
+thin body shook with inaudible laughter. Then, again, as if shrinking
+back playfully from her shadow, and chased by it, in some uncanny game,
+the witch appeared to us like a horrid caricature of Dinorah, dancing
+her mad dance. Suddenly she straightened herself to her full height,
+darted to the portico and crouched before the smoking censer, beating
+her forehead against the granite steps. Another jump, and she was quite
+close to us, before the head of the monstrous Sivatherium. She knelt
+down again and bowed her head to the ground several times, with the
+sound of an empty barrel knocked against something hard.
+
+We had hardly the time to spring to our feet and shrink back when she
+appeared on the top of the Sivatherium's head, standing there amongst
+the horns.
+
+Narayan alone did not stir, and fearlessly looked straight in the eyes
+of the frightful sorceress.
+
+But what was this? Who spoke in those deep manly tones? Her lips were
+moving, from her breast were issuing those quick, abrupt phrases, but
+the voice sounded hollow as if coming from beneath the ground.
+
+"Hush, hush!" whispered Sham Rao, his whole body trembling. "She is
+going to prophesy!..."
+
+"She?" incredulously inquired Mr. Y--. "This a woman's voice? I don't
+believe it for a moment. Someone's uncle must be stowed away somewhere
+about the place. Not the fabulous uncle she inherited from, but a real
+live one!..."
+
+Sham Rao winced under the irony of this supposition, and cast an
+imploring look at the speaker.
+
+"Woe to you! woe to you!" echoed the voice. "Woe to you, children of the
+impure Jaya and Vijaya! of the mocking, unbelieving lingerers round
+great Shiva's door! Ye, who are cursed by eighty thousand sages! Woe to
+you who believe not in the goddess Kâli, and you who deny us, her seven
+divine sisters! Flesh-eating, yellow-legged vultures! friends of the
+oppressors of our land! dogs who are not ashamed to eat from the same
+trough with the Bellati!" (foreigners).
+
+"It seems to me that your prophetess only foretells the past," said Mr.
+Y--, philosophically putting his hands in his pockets. "I should say
+that she is hinting at you, my dear Sham Rao."
+
+"Yes! and at us also," murmured the colonel, who was evidently beginning
+to feel uneasy.
+
+As to the unlucky Sham Rao, he broke out in a cold sweat, and tried to
+assure us that we were mistaken, that we did not fully understand her
+language.
+
+"It is not about you, it is not about you! It is of me she speaks,
+because I am in Government service. Oh, she is inexorable!"
+
+"Râkshasas! Asuras!" thundered the voice. "How dare you appear before
+us? how dare you to stand on this holy ground in boots made of a cow's
+sacred skin? Be cursed for etern----"
+
+But her curse was not destined to be finished. In an instant the
+Hercules-like Narayan had fallen on the Sivatherium, and upset the whole
+pile, the skull, the horns and the demoniac Pythia included. A second
+more, and we thought we saw the witch flying in the air towards the
+portico. A confused vision of a stout, shaven Brahman, suddenly emerging
+from under the Sivatherium and instantly disappearing in the hollow
+beneath it, flashed before my dilated eyes.
+
+But, alas! after the third second had passed, we all came to the
+embarrassing conclusion that, judging from the loud clang of the door
+of the cave, the representative of the Seven Sisters had ignominiously
+fled. The moment she had disappeared from our inquisitive eyes to her
+subterranean domain, we all realized that the unearthly hollow voice we
+had heard had nothing supernatural about it and belonged to the Brahman
+hidden under the Sivatherium--to some one's live uncle, as Mr. Y-- had
+rightly supposed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Oh, Narayan! how carelessly, how disorderly the worlds rotate around us.
+I begin to seriously doubt their reality. From this moment I shall
+earnestly believe that all things in the universe are nothing but
+illusion, a mere Mâyâ. I am becoming a Vedantin.... I doubt that in the
+whole universe there may be found anything more objective than a Hindu
+witch flying up the spout.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Miss X-- woke up, and asked what was the meaning of all this noise. The
+noise of many voices and the sounds of the many retreating footsteps,
+the general rush of the crowd, had frightened her. She listened to us
+with a condescending smile, and a few yawns, and went to sleep again.
+
+Next morning, at daybreak, we very reluctantly, it must be owned, bade
+good-by to the kind-hearted, good-natured Sham Rao. The confoundingly
+easy victory of Narayan hung heavily on his mind. His faith in the holy
+hermitess and the seven goddesses was a good deal shaken by the shameful
+capitulation of the sisters, who had surrendered at the first blow from
+a mere mortal. But during the dark hours of the night he had had time
+to think it over, and to shake off the uneasy feeling of having
+unwillingly misled and disappointed his European friends.
+
+Sham Rao still looked confused when he shook hands with us at parting,
+and expressed to us the best wishes of his family and himself.
+
+As to the heroes of this truthful narrative, they mounted their
+elephants once more, and directed their heavy steps towards the high
+road and Jubbulpore.
+
+
+
+
+REMARKABLE PSYCHIC EXPERIENCES OF FAMOUS PERSONS
+
+BY WALTER F. PRINCE, PH.D.,
+
+Official Investigator American Society for Psychical Research
+
+
+It does not necessarily give an occult incident more weight that it was
+experienced or related and credited by a person whose name is prominent
+for one reason or another. The great are nearly as likely to suffer
+illusions, pathological hallucinations, and aberrations as the humble
+remainder of mankind, or, according to Lombroso a good deal more so. Nor
+have famous persons a monopoly of veracity. Besides, a rare
+psychological incident is not more or less a problem, nor has it more or
+less significance in the experience of honest John Jones than in that of
+William Shakespeare.
+
+And yet it is natural and quite proper to look with somewhat enhanced
+interest upon the experiences or the testimonies of those whose names
+are in the cyclopedias and biographical dictionaries. It is legitimate
+to set these forth and to call attention to them. These persons at least
+we know something about. William Moggs of Waushegan, Wisconsin, may be a
+very excellent and trustworthy man but we don't know him, and it is
+tedious to be told that somebody else whom we may know as little knows
+and esteems him. How do we know that the avouching unknown could not
+have been sold a gold brick? But Henry M. Stanley, and General Frémont,
+and W. P. Frith, and Henry Clews are characters whom we do know
+something about, or at least whom we can easily look up for ourselves in
+biographical dictionaries and _Who's Whos_. They are names which have at
+the very outset a reputation which has impressed the world, which stand
+for assured ability, genius, achievement, forcefulness of one kind or
+another. Even though we have no particular data at hand regarding the
+veracity of a particular member of the shining circle, it is not easy to
+see why he, having an assured reputation, should dim it by telling
+spooky lies. It is easier to conceive of William Moggs, a quite obscure
+man, calling attention to himself by the device, though as a rule the
+William Moggs's do nothing of the kind. We spontaneously argue within
+ourselves, in some inchoate fashion, "That fellow made his mark in the
+world; he gained a big reputation by his superiority to the rank and
+file in some particular at least; it will be worth while to hear what he
+has to say."
+
+We present herewith a group of such testimonies either given out to the
+world by prominent persons as their own experiences or as the
+experiences of persons whom they knew and believed, or else as told by
+friends of the prominent persons whose experiences they were.
+
+It is not owing to any selective process that the material is mostly of
+the sort which favors supernormal hypotheses. We take what we can get.
+Whenever an experience is accompanied by a normal explanation, such will
+be included only a little more willingly than an experience which does
+not readily suggest a normal explanation. But, let it be noted, the
+groups which we propose will be composed of human _experiences_, and not
+opinions, except as the opinions accompany the experiences. And it
+cannot be expected that, after certain types of experiences as related
+by certain men have been given, we shall then proceed to name other men
+who haven't had any such experiences. True, against Paul du Chaillu's
+assertion that he had seen gorillas was once urged the fact that nobody
+else had ever seen gorillas. Nevertheless the sole assertion of the one
+man who had seen them proved to outweigh in value the lack of experience
+on the part of all other travelers up to that time.
+
+
+A PREMONITION OF SIR H. M. STANLEY
+
+This incident is related by the famous explorer, Sir Henry M. Stanley,
+in his autobiography edited by Dorothy Stanley (Houghton Mifflin Co.,
+1909), on pages 207-208.
+
+Stanley, then a private in the Confederate Army, was captured in the
+battle of Shiloh and sent to Camp Douglas near Chicago. It was while
+here that the incident in question occurred.
+
+"On the next day (April 16), after the morning duties had been
+performed, the rations divided, the cooks had departed contented, and
+the quarters swept, I proceeded to my nest and reclined alongside of my
+friend Wilkes in a posture that gave me a command of one half of the
+building. I made some remarks to him upon the card-playing groups
+opposite, when suddenly, I felt a gentle stroke on the back of my neck,
+and in an instant I was unconscious. The next moment I had a vivid view
+of the village of Tremeirchion and the grassy slopes of the hills of
+Hirradog, and I seemed to be hovering over the rook woods of Brynbella.
+I glided to the bed-chamber of my Aunt Mary. My aunt was in bed, and
+seemed sick unto death. I took a position by the side of the bed, and
+saw myself, with head bent down, listening to her parting words which
+sounded regretful, as though conscience smote her for not having been as
+kind as she might have been, or had wished to be. I heard the boy say,
+'I believe you, Aunt. It is neither your fault, nor mine. You were good
+and kind to me, and I knew you wished to be kinder; but things were so
+ordered that you had to be what you were. I also dearly wished to love
+you, but I was afraid to speak of it lest you would check me, or say
+something that would offend me. I feel our parting was in this spirit.
+There is no need of regrets. You have done your duty to me, and you had
+children of your own who required all your care. What has happened to me
+since, it was decreed should happen. Farewell.'
+
+"I put forth my hand and felt the clasp of the long thin hands of the
+sore-sick woman. I heard a murmur of farewell, and immediately I awoke.
+
+"It appeared to me that I had but closed my eyes. I was still in the
+same reclining attitude, the groups opposite me were still engaged in
+their card games, Wilkes was in the same position. Nothing had changed.
+
+"I asked, 'What has happened?'
+
+"'What could happen?' said he. 'What makes you ask? It is but a moment
+ago you were speaking to me.'
+
+"'Oh, I thought I had been asleep a long time.'
+
+"On the next day the 17th of April, 1862, my Aunt Mary died at Fynnon
+Beuno, in Wales!
+
+"I believe that the soul of every human being has its attendant
+spirit--a nimble, delicate essence, whose method of action is by a
+subtle suggestion which it contrives to insinuate into the mind, whether
+asleep or awake. We are too gross to be capable of understanding the
+signification of the dream, the vision, or the sudden presage, or of
+divining the source of the premonition or its import. We admit that we
+are liable to receive a fleeting picture of an act, or a figure at any
+moment, but, except being struck by certain strange coincidences which
+happen to most of us, we seldom make an effort to unravel the mystery.
+The swift, darting messenger stamps an image on the mind, and displays a
+vision to the sleeper; and if, as sometimes follows, among tricks and
+twists of the errant mind, by reflex acts of memory, it happens to be a
+true representation of what is to happen, we are left to grope
+hopelessly as to the manner and meaning of it, for there is nothing
+tangible to lay hold of.
+
+"There are many things relating to my existence which are inexplicable
+to me, and probably it is best so; this death-bed scene, projected on my
+mind's screen, across four thousand five hundred miles of space, is one
+of these mysteries."
+
+The precise meaning of the passage wherein Sir Henry speculates on the
+nature and meaning of such facts, is not entirely clear. Does he by the
+word _spirit_ mean what is usually meant by that term, or does he mean
+some part of the mind functioning upon the rest as its object, like
+Freud's _psychic censor_ though with a different purpose? And the
+affirmative employment of the terms "presage" and "premonition" do not
+seem to be consistent with the expression "it happens to be a true
+representation of what is to happen." It seems plain that the
+distinguished explorer did believe that the death-bed scene was
+"projected on" his "mind's screen, across four thousand five hundred
+miles of space." However, what Stanley thought about the facts is of
+much less importance than the facts themselves, as reported by one whose
+life was one long drill in observing, appraising and recording facts.
+
+
+COINCIDENT EXPERIENCES OF GENERAL FRÉMONT AND RELATIVES
+
+These are related on pages 69-72 of _Recollections of Elizabeth Benton
+Frémont, Daughter of the Pathfinder General John C. Frémont and Jessie
+Benton Frémont His Wife_.
+
+After describing a terrible experience of her father and his men in
+1853, while crossing the Wahsatch Mountains, and their rescue from
+starvation by reaching Parowan, Utah, Miss Benton goes on:
+
+"That night my father sat by his campfire until late in the night,
+dreaming of home and thinking of the great happiness of my mother. Could
+she but know that he was safe! Finally he returned to his quarters in
+the town only a few hundred yards away from the camp. The warm bright
+room, the white bed with all suggestion of shelter and relief from
+danger made the picture of home rise up like a real thing before him,
+and at half-past eleven at night he made an entry in his journal,
+putting there the thought that had possession of him and that my mother
+in far away Washington might know that all danger was past and that he
+was safe and comfortable.
+
+"All this is a prelude to a most uncommon experience which befell my
+mother in our Washington home on the night in question. We could not
+possibly hear from father at the earliest until midsummer. Though my
+mother went into society but little that year, there was no reason for
+gloomy forebodings. The younger members of the family kept her in close
+touch with the social side of life, while her father, whose confidant
+she always was, kept her informed as to the political events of the
+moment. Her life was busy and filled with her full share of its
+responsibilities. In midwinter, however, my mother became possessed with
+the conviction that my father was starving, and no amount of reasoning
+could calm her fears. The idea haunted her for two weeks or more, and
+finally began to leave its physical effects upon her. She could neither
+eat nor sleep; open-air exercise, plenty of company, the management of a
+household, all combined, could not wean her from the belief that father
+and his men were starving in the desert.
+
+"The weight of fear was lifted from her as suddenly as it came. Her
+young sister Susie and a party of relatives returned from a wedding at
+General Jessup's on the night of February 6, 1854, and came to mother to
+spend the night, in order not to awaken the older members of my
+grandmother's family. The girls doffed their party dresses, replaced
+them with comfortable woolen gowns, and, gathered before the open fire
+in mother's room, were gaily relating the experiences of the evening.
+The fire needed replenishing and mother went to an adjoining
+dressing-room to get more wood. The old-fashioned fire-place required
+long logs which were too large for her to handle, and as she half knelt,
+balancing the long sticks of wood on her left arm, she felt a hand rest
+lightly on her left shoulder, and she heard my father's laughing voice
+whisper her name, 'Jessie.'
+
+"There was no sound beyond the quick-whispered name, no presence, only
+the touch, but my mother knew as people know in dreams that my father
+was there, gay and happy, and intending to startle Susie, who when my
+mother was married was only a child of eight, and was always a pet
+playmate of my father's. Her shrill, prolonged scream was his delight,
+and he never lost an opportunity to startle her.
+
+"Mother came back to the girl's room, but before she could speak, Susie
+gave a great cry, fell in a heap upon the rug, and screamed again and
+again, until mother crushed her balldress over her head to keep the
+sound from the neighbors. Her cousin asked mother what she had seen, and
+she explained that she had seen nothing, but had heard my father tell
+her to keep still until he could scare Susie.
+
+"Peace came to my mother instantly, and on retiring she fell into a
+refreshing sleep from which she did not waken until ten the next
+morning; all fear for the safety of father had vanished from her mind;
+with sleep came strength, and she soon was her happy self again.
+
+"When my father returned home, we learned that it was at the time the
+party was starving that my mother had the premonition of evil having
+befallen them, and the entry in his journal showed that exactly the
+moment he had written it in Parowan, my mother had felt his presence,
+and in the wireless message from heart to heart knew that my father was
+safe and free from harm. The hour exactly tallied with the entry in his
+book, allowing for the difference in longitude."
+
+Further details would have been desirable, particularly just what was
+the immediate occasion of Susie's fright, for she screamed before Mrs.
+Frémont related what had befallen herself. The only escape from the
+conclusion that Susie had some separate peculiar experience is to
+suppose--which we may not unreasonably do--that the elder lady betrayed
+her own agitation before she spoke, perhaps by dropping the sticks,
+hurrying back, and looking strangely at Susie. We would have liked a
+sight of the General's journal, also, and to have been permitted to copy
+the entry exactly as it stands.
+
+Nevertheless, though we leave Susie and her screams quite out of
+account, we have a very pretty case remaining, however we explain it.
+Mrs. Frémont's depression might be explained by the very natural fears
+of a woman whose husband was engaged in a possibly dangerous expedition,
+though she picked out for her fears exactly the period of the expedition
+when there was an actual state of privation and danger. But why did the
+fear so afflicting to her health and spirits so suddenly leave her,
+while it was still winter in the mountains? And why did the hour and
+moment of the cessation of these fears coincide with the hour and moment
+when the explorer was occupied with thoughts of home and writing his
+wish that his wife might know that he was safe?
+
+Many a reader will be disposed to answer the question "why?" with the
+facile answer "telepathy," but that word is a key which does not turn in
+this lock with perfect ease. There are cases where one person thinks a
+particular thing under extraordinary circumstances, and precisely that
+thought, or a hallucination of precisely that nature, occurs to another
+person at a distance. But in this case General Frémont thinks a wish
+that his wife knew he was safe, and his wife seems to feel a hand upon
+her shoulder, seems to hear his voice pronounce her name, and somehow
+gets the impression that he proposes to play a trick on her sister
+Susie. If exact coincidence between the thought of the supposed "sender"
+and that of the supposed "recipient" is a support to the theory of
+telepathy as applied to one case, then wide discrepancy between the
+coincident thoughts of two persons in another case should be an argument
+against the theory of telepathy as applied to that. There should be some
+limit to the handicap which, by way of courtesy, the spiritistic
+hypothesis allows to the telepathic.
+
+If there are spirits, and if they have a certain access to human
+thoughts, and if the limitations of space are little felt by them, then
+the spiritistic theory would have an easier time than telepathy with the
+facts in this case. A friendly intermediary might convey the assurance
+that the Pathfinder wanted conveyed to his wife, and in doing so employ
+such devices as an intelligent personal agent could think up, and were
+within its grasp. The touch, the hallucination of a voice resembling
+that of the absent husband, the sense of gayety, and even the very
+characteristic trait of liking to startle Susie, might all be the result
+of the friendly messenger's attempts to implant in Mrs. Frémont's mind a
+fixed assurance that somebody was safe and happy, and that this somebody
+was in very truth her husband.
+
+
+INCIDENTS RELATED BY DEAN HOLE
+
+The Very Rev. Samuel Reynolds Hole, Dean of Rochester, England, was not
+only an effective preacher and popular lecturer, but likewise the author
+of fascinating books, composed of reminiscences and shrewd and witty
+comments upon men and affairs. He made two lecturing tours in America.
+
+His _The Memories of Dean Hole_ contains a remarkable dream of his own,
+and one of similar character told him by a trusted friend. They may be
+found on pages 200-201. After rehearsing the account of a dream and its
+tragic sequel told him many years before, he goes on:
+
+"Are these dreams coincidences only, imaginations, sudden recollections
+of events which had been long forgotten? They are marvelous, be this as
+it may. In a crisis of very severe anxiety, I required information which
+only one man could give me, and he was in his grave. I saw him
+distinctly in a vision of the night, and his answer to my question told
+me all I wanted to know; and when, having obtained the clearest proof
+that what I had heard was true, I communicated the incident and its
+results to my solicitor, he told me that he himself had experienced a
+similar manifestation. A claim was repeated after his father's death
+which had been resisted in his lifetime and retracted by the claimant,
+but the son was unable to find the letter in which the retraction was
+made. He dreamed that his father appeared and told him it was in the
+left hand drawer of a certain desk. Having business in London, he went
+up to the offices of his father, an eminent lawyer, but could not
+discover the desk, until one of the clerks suggested that it might be
+among some old lumber placed in a room upstairs. There he found the desk
+and the letter.
+
+"Then, as regards coincidence, are there not events in our lives which
+come to us with a strange mysterious significance, a prophetic
+intimation, sometimes of sorrow and sometimes of success? For example, I
+lived a hundred and fifty miles from Rochester. I went there for the
+first time to preach at the invitation of one who was then unknown to
+me, but is now a dear friend. After the sermon I was his guest in the
+Precincts. Dean Scott died in the night, almost at the time when he who
+was to succeed him arrived at the house which adjoins the Deanery. There
+was no expectation of his immediate decease, and no conjecture as to a
+future appointment, and yet when I heard the tolling of the cathedral
+bell, I had a presentiment that Dr. Scott was dead, and that I should be
+Dean of Rochester."
+
+Again, Dean Hole in his _Then and Now_, pp. 9-11, together with some
+opinions of his, sets down a seeming premonition and what he considers
+answers to prayer.
+
+"There is an immeasurable difference between ghosts and other
+apparitions--between that which witnesses declare they saw with their
+own eyes when they were wide awake--as Hamlet saw the ghost of his
+father, and Macbeth saw Banquo--and that which presents itself to us
+when we are asleep, or in that condition between waking and sleeping
+which makes the vision so like reality. I do not believe in the former,
+and I am fully persuaded in my own mind that the wonderful stories which
+we hear are to be accounted for either as exaggerations or as the result
+of natural causes which have been misstated or suppressed; but many of
+us have had experience of the latter--of those visions of the night
+which have seemed so real, and which in some instances have brought us
+information as to occurrences before unknown to us, but subsequently
+proved to be true.
+
+"George Benfield, a driver on the Midland Railway living at Derby, was
+standing on the footplate oiling his engine, the train being stationary,
+when he slipped and fell on the space between the lines. He heard the
+express coming on, and had only just time to lie full length on the
+'six-foot' when it rushed by, and he escaped unhurt. He returned to his
+home in the middle of the night, and as he was going up the stairs he
+heard one of his children, a girl about eight years old, crying and
+sobbing. 'Oh, Father!' she said, 'I thought somebody came and told me
+that you were going to be killed, and I got out of bed and prayed that
+God would not let you die.' Was it only a dream, a coincidence?"
+
+Dean Hole is the first person whom we remember to have held that a man's
+testimony respecting a given species of experience is more credible if
+he was asleep at the time that he claims to have had it, than if he was
+awake. He states that dreams "in some instances have brought us
+information as to occurrences before unknown to us, but subsequently
+proved to be true," but the same is asserted in respect to waking
+apparitional experiences on exactly as satisfactory evidence, in many
+cases. He accounts for the wonderful stories we hear in respect to
+waking apparitions, and discredits them on exactly the same grounds that
+others account for and discredit his dreams. The fact is that, with Dean
+Hole as with many others, the personal equation is operative. He
+believes in coincidental dreams because he himself has experienced them
+and knows that he is not guilty of exaggerations in recounting them, nor
+can he see how natural causes can explain them; he never has had a
+waking apparition, and therefore is inclined to conjure up guesses as to
+the inaccuracy and inveracity of those who have--guesses which he would
+resent if they were applied to himself.
+
+But the Dean's testimony is one matter, his opinions or prejudices
+another.
+
+
+INCIDENTS REPORTED BY SERJEANT BALLANTINE
+
+Serjeant William Ballantine (1812-1887) was one of the foremost lawyers
+in England, noted for his skill in cross-examination. He was counsel in
+the Tichborne claimant case, one of the most celebrated in the history
+of the English courts, and in the equally famed trial of the Gaekwar of
+Baroda. The incidents which impressed him are to be found in
+Ballantine's _Some Experiences of a Barrister's Life_, pp. 256-267.
+
+"I do not think it will be out of place whilst upon this subject to
+relate a story told of Sir Astley Cooper.[22] I am not certain that it
+has not been already in print, but I know that I have had frequent
+conversations about it with his nephew.
+
+[Footnote 22: Sir Astley Paston Cooper was perhaps the most famous and
+influential surgeon of his time in England.]
+
+"There had been a murder, and Sir Astley was upon the scene when a man
+suspected of it was apprehended. Sir Astley, being greatly interested,
+accompanied the officers with their prisoner to the gaol, and he and
+they and the accused were all in a cell, locked in together, when they
+noticed a little dog which kept biting at the skirt of the prisoner's
+coat. This led them to examine the garment, and they found upon it
+traces of blood which ultimately led to conviction of the man. When they
+looked around the dog had disappeared, although the door had never been
+opened. How it had got there or how it got away, of course nobody could
+tell. When Bransby Cooper spoke of this he always said that of course
+his uncle had made a mistake, and was convinced of this himself; Bransby
+used to add that no doubt if the matter had been investigated it would
+have been shown that there was a mode of accounting for it from natural
+causes. But I believe that neither Sir Astley nor his nephew in their
+hearts discarded entirely the supernatural."
+
+Mr. Ballantine added an incident which some may think is accounted for
+by a telepathic impression followed by auto-suggestion which lowered the
+mental alertness of the player.
+
+"There was a member of the club, a very harmless, inoffensive man of the
+name of Townend, for whom Lord Lytton [the novelist] entertained a
+mortal antipathy, and would never play whilst that gentleman was in the
+room. He firmly believed that he brought him bad luck. I was witness to
+what must be termed an odd coincidence. One afternoon, when Lord Lytton
+was playing and had enjoyed an uninterrupted run of luck, it suddenly
+turned, upon which he exclaimed, 'I am sure that Mr. Townend has come
+into the club.' Some three minutes after, just time enough to ascend the
+stairs, in walked that unlucky personage. Lord Lytton as soon as the
+rubber was over, left the table and did not renew the play."
+
+
+BEN JONSON'S PREMONITION BY APPARITION
+
+This eminent dramatist, contemporary of Shakespeare (1573?-1637),
+visited the Scottish poet, William Drummond, who took notes of his
+conversations which he afterwards published in the form of a book. One
+incident which Jonson related and Drummond recorded may be found in _The
+Library of the World's Best Literature_ under the title, _Ben Jonson_.
+
+"At that tyme the pest was in London; he being in the country--with old
+Cambden, he saw in a vision his eldest sone, then a child and at London,
+appear unto him with the mark of a bloodie crosse in his forehead, as if
+it had been cutted with a shord, at which amazed he prayed unto God,
+and in the morning he came to Mr. Cambden's chamber to tell him; who
+persuaded him it was but ane apprehension of his fantasie, at which he
+sould not be disjected; in the mean tyme comes then letters from his
+wife of the death of that boy in plague. He appeared to him (he said) of
+a manly shape, and of that grouth that he thinks he shall be at the
+resurrection."
+
+
+RUBINSTEIN'S DEATH COMPACT
+
+A pupil of Anton Rubinstein, the great pianist and composer (1829-1894),
+tells this story. It may be found in _Harper's Magazine_ for December,
+1912, under the title _A Girl's Recollections of Rubinstein_, by Lillian
+Nichia.
+
+"One wild, blustery night I found myself at dinner with Rubinstein, the
+weather being terrific even for St. Petersburg. The winds were howling
+round the house and Rubinstein, who liked to ask questions, inquired of
+me what they represented to my mind. I replied, 'The moaning of lost
+souls.' From this a theological discussion followed.
+
+"'There may be a future,' he said.
+
+"'There is a future,' I cried, 'a great and beautiful future. If I die
+first I shall come to you and prove this.'
+
+"He turned to me with great solemnity.
+
+"'Good, Liloscha, that is a bargain; and I will come to you.'
+
+"Six years later in Paris I woke one night with a cry of agony and
+despair ringing in my ears, such as I hope may never be duplicated in
+my lifetime. Rubinstein's face was close to mine, a countenance
+distorted by every phase of fear, despair, agony, remorse and anger. I
+started up, turned on all the lights, and stood for a moment shaking in
+every limb, till I put fear from me and decided it was merely a dream. I
+had for the moment completely forgotten our compact. News is always late
+in Paris, and it was in _Le Petit Journal_, published in the afternoon,
+that had the first account of his sudden death.
+
+"Four years later, Teresa Carreno, who had just come from Russia and was
+touring America--I had met her in St. Petersburg frequently at
+Rubinstein's dinner-table--told me that Rubinstein died with a cry of
+agony impossible of description. I knew then that even in death
+Rubinstein had kept, as he always did, his word."
+
+Here again, we are at liberty to accept the testimony regarding the
+remarkable and complex coincidence, and to disregard what is really an
+expression of opinion in the last sentence. Whether Rubinstein
+remembered his compact in his dying hour, or the impression produced
+upon his far-away pupil was automatically produced by some obscure
+telepathic process, the dying man having in his mind no conscious
+thought of his promise, or some intervening _tertium quid_ produced the
+impression, could never be determined by this incident alone.
+
+
+PREVISIONARY DREAM BY CHARLES DICKENS
+
+This incident in the experience of Charles Dickens (1812-1870) is to be
+found in the standard biography by Forster, III, pp. 484-5 (London,
+1874). On May 30, 1863, Dickens wrote:
+
+"Here is a curious case at first-hand. On Thursday night in last week,
+being at my office here, I dreamed that I saw a lady in a red shawl with
+her back toward me (whom I supposed to be E--). On her turning round I
+found that I didn't know her, and she said, 'I am Miss Napier.' All the
+time I was dressing next morning I thought 'What a preposterous thing to
+have so very distinct a dream about nothing!' and why Miss Napier?--for
+I never heard of any Miss Napier. That same Friday night I read. After
+the reading, came into my retiring-room, Mary Boyle and her brother, and
+the lady in the red shawl, whom they present as 'Miss Napier.' These are
+all the circumstances exactly told."
+
+I can imagine the late Professor Royce saying thirty years ago--for I
+much doubt if he would have said it twenty years later--"In certain
+people, under certain exciting circumstances, there occur what I shall
+henceforth call _Pseudo-presentiments_, _i.e._, more or less
+instantaneous hallucinations of memory, which make it seem to one that
+something which now excites or astonishes him has been prefigured in a
+recent dream, or in the form of some other warning, although this
+seeming is wholly unfounded, and although the supposed prophecy really
+succeeds its own fulfillment."
+
+Apply this curious theory (which has probably not been urged for many
+years) to the incident just cited, and see how loosely it fits. What was
+there about three persons, one a stranger coming to Dickens after he had
+finished a reading from his own works, to "excite" or "astonish" him,
+make his brain whirl and bring about a hallucination of memory, an
+illusion of having dreamed it all before? It was the most commonplace
+event to him. Besides, as in most such cases, he had the distinct
+recollection of his thoughts about the dream after waking, thoughts
+inextricably interwoven with the acts performed while dressing! Besides,
+a pseudo-presentiment should tally with the event as a reflection does
+with the object, but in the dream Miss Napier introduced herself, while
+in reality she was introduced by another.
+
+
+
+
+
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Best Psychic Stories, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Best Psychic Stories
+
+Author: Various
+
+Editor: Joseph Lewis French
+
+Release Date: July 12, 2011 [EBook #36712]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BEST PSYCHIC STORIES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Robert Cicconetti, Mary Meehan and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+<h1>The Best<br />
+Psychic Stories</h1>
+
+<h3><i>Edited with a Preface by</i></h3>
+
+<h2>Joseph Lewis French</h2>
+
+<h3><i>Editor "Great Ghost Stories," "Masterpieces of Mystery," etc.</i></h3>
+
+<h3><i>Introduction by</i><br />
+Dorothy Scarborough, Ph.D.</h3>
+
+<h3><i>Lecturer in English, Columbia University.<br />
+Author of "The Supernatural in English Literature," "From a Southern Porch," etc.</i></h3>
+
+<h3>BONI &amp; LIVERIGHT<br />
+NEW YORK</h3>
+
+<h3>Copyright, 1920, by<br />
+Boni &amp; Liveright, Inc.</h3>
+
+<h3>Printed in the Unites States of America</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE"></a>PREFACE</h2>
+
+
+<p>The case for the "psychic" element in literature rests on a very old
+foundation; it reaches back to the ancient masters,&mdash;the men who wrote
+the Greek tragedies. Remorse will ever seem commonplace alongside the
+furies. Ever and always the shadow of the supernatural invites, pursues
+us. As the art of literature has progressed it has grown along with it.
+To-day there is a whole new school of writers of Ghost-Stories, and the
+domain of the invisible is being invaded by explorers in many paths. We
+do not believe so much more, perhaps, that is, we do not so openly
+express a belief, but art has finally and frankly claimed the
+supernatural for its own. One discerning authority even goes so far as
+to assert that the borders of its domain will be greatly enlarged in the
+wonderful new field of the screen.</p>
+
+<p>There is no motive in a story, no image in poetry, that can give us
+quite the thrill of a supernatural idea. If we were formally charged
+with this we might resent the imputation, but the evidence has persisted
+from the beginning, lives on every hand, and multiplies daily. What we
+have been in the habit of calling the "machinery" of the old Greek
+drama&mdash;its supernatural effects&mdash;has come finally to be an art
+cultivated with care at the present hour, and has given us some
+wonderful new writers. In fact, few of the best masters for a generation
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span>now have been able to resist its persistent and abiding charm. Every
+writer of true imagination, almost without exception, including even
+certain realists, has given us at least one story, long or short, in
+which the central motive is purely psychical in the Greek sense of the
+word.</p>
+
+<p>The whole subject opens up a virgin field which has after all only begun
+to be tilled. Within the coming generation we may look for great artists
+to devote their whole powers to it, as Algernon Blackwood is doing
+to-day. A simple underlying reason is enough to account for it all&mdash;<i>the
+new field imposes simply no limit on the imagination</i>. In addition to
+all that science has taught us, there is illimitable store of myth and
+legend to aid, to draw from, to work in, to work over, as Lord Dunsany
+has shown us. It is the most significant movement in literature at the
+present hour, and whether it is supported by a special background of
+interest&mdash;as at present in spiritism&mdash;or not, the assertion is logical
+that it is creating a new body of fictional literature of permanent
+importance for the first time in the history of literature. The human
+comedy seems to have been exploited to its final limits; as the art of
+the novel, the art of the stage, but too sadly prove to-day. We have
+turned outward for new thrills to the supernatural and we are getting
+them.</p>
+
+<p>It only remains to be added that the present great interest in
+spiritualism and allied phenomena has made necessary the addition of
+certain material of a "literal" character which we believe will be found
+quite as interesting by the general reader as the purely literary
+portion of the book.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>JOSEPH LEWIS FRENCH</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<table width="75%">
+<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. -->
+<tr><td><a href="#PREFACE"><span class="smcap">Preface</span></a></td><td><i>Joseph Lewis French</i></td><td align="right">v</td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#INTRODUCTION"><span class="smcap">Introduction</span></a></td><td><i>Dorothy Scarborough</i></td><td align="right">ix</td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#WHEN_THE_WORLD_WAS_YOUNG1"><span class="smcap">When the World Was Young</span></a></td><td><i>Jack London</i></td><td align="right">1</td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#THE_RETURN2"><span class="smcap">The Return</span></a></td><td><i>Algernon Blackwood</i></td><td align="right">24</td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#THE_SECOND_GENERATION3"><span class="smcap">The Second Generation</span></a></td><td><i>Algernon Blackwood</i></td><td align="right">31</td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#JOSEPH_A_STORY"><span class="smcap">Joseph&mdash;A Story</span></a></td><td><i>Katherine Rickford</i></td><td align="right">41</td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#THE_CLAVECIN_BRUGES4"><span class="smcap">The Clavecin&mdash;Bruges</span></a></td><td><i>George Wharton Edwards</i></td><td align="right">54</td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#LIGEIA"><span class="smcap">Ligeia</span></a></td><td><i>Edgar Allan Poe</i></td><td align="right">61</td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#THE_SYLPH_AND_THE_FATHER5"><span class="smcap">The Sylph and the Father</span></a></td><td><i>Elsa Barker</i></td><td align="right">83</td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#A_GHOST6"><span class="smcap">A Ghost</span></a></td><td><i>Lafcadio Hearn</i></td><td align="right">88</td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#THE_EYES_OF_THE_PANTHER7"><span class="smcap">The Eyes of the Panther</span></a></td><td><i>Ambrose Bierce</i></td><td align="right">95</td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#PHOTOGRAPHING_INVISIBLE_BEINGS"><span class="smcap">Photographing Invisible Beings</span></a></td><td><i>William T. Stead</i></td><td align="right">109</td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#THE_SIN-EATER"><span class="smcap">The Sin-Eater</span></a></td><td><i>Fiona Macleod</i></td><td align="right">126</td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#GHOSTS_IN_SOLID_FORM"><span class="smcap">Ghosts in Solid Form</span></a></td><td><i>Gambier Bolton</i></td><td align="right">162</td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#THE_PHANTOM_ARMIES_SEEN_IN_FRANCE17"><span class="smcap">The Phantom Armies Seen in France</span></a></td><td><i>Hereward Carrington</i></td><td align="right">188</td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#THE_PORTAL_OF_THE_UNKNOWN"><span class="smcap">The Portal of the Unknown</span></a></td><td><i>Andrew Jackson Davis</i></td><td align="right">195</td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#THE_SUPERNORMAL_EXPERIENCES"><span class="smcap">The Supernormal: Experiences</span></a></td><td><i>St. John D. Seymour</i></td><td align="right">202</td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#NATURE-SPIRITS_OR_ELEMENTALS18"><span class="smcap">Nature-Spirits, or Elementals</span></a></td><td><i>Nizida</i></td><td align="right">218</td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#A_WITCHS_DEN"><span class="smcap">A Witch's Den</span></a></td><td><i>Helena Blavatsky</i></td><td align="right">258</td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#REMARKABLE_PSYCHIC_EXPERIENCES_OF_FAMOUS_PERSONS"><span class="smcap">Some Remarkable Experiences of Famous Persons</span></a></td><td><i>Dr. Walter F. Prince</i></td><td align="right">280</td></tr>
+<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. -->
+</table>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="INTRODUCTION" id="INTRODUCTION"></a>INTRODUCTION</h2>
+
+<h3>THE PSYCHIC IN LITERATURE</h3>
+
+<p>War, that relentless disturber of boundaries and of traditions in a
+spiritual as well as a material sense, has brought a tremendous revival
+of interest in the life after death and the possibility of communication
+between the living and the dead. As France became nearer to millions
+over here because our soldiers lived there for a few months, as French
+soil will forever be holy ground because our dead rest there, so the far
+country of the soul likewise seems nearer because of those young
+adventurers. The conflict which changed the map of Europe has in the
+minds of many effaced the boundaries between this world and the world
+beyond. Winifred Kirkland, in her book, <i>The New Death</i>, discusses the
+new concept of death, and the change in our standards that it is making.
+"We are used to speaking of this or that friend's philosophy of life;
+the time has now come when every one of us who is to live at peace with
+his own brain must possess also a philosophy of death." This New Death,
+she says, is so far mainly an immense yearning receptivity, an
+unprecedented humility of brain and of heart toward all implications of
+survival. She believes that it is an influence which is entering the
+lives of the people as a whole, not a movement of the intellectuals, nor
+the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[Pg x]</a></span> result of psychical research propaganda, but arising from the
+simple, elemental emotions of the soul, from human love and longing for
+reassurance of continued life.</p>
+
+<p>"If a man die, shall he live again?" has been propounded ever since
+Job's agonized inquiry. Now numbers are asking in addition, "Can we have
+communication with the dead?" Science, long derisive, is sympathetic to
+the questioning, and while many believe and many doubt, the subject is
+one that interests more people than ever before. Professor James Hyslop,
+Secretary of the American Society for Psychical Research, believes that
+the war has had great influence in arousing new interest in psychical
+subjects and that tremendous spiritual discoveries may come from it.</p>
+
+<p>Literature, always a little ahead of life, or at least in advance of
+general thinking, has in the more recent years been acutely conscious of
+this new influence. Poetry, the drama, the novel, the short story, have
+given affirmative answer to the question of the soul's survival after
+death. No other element has so largely entered into the tissue of recent
+literature as has the supernatural, which now we meet in all forms in
+the writings of all lands. And no aspect of the ghostly art is more
+impressive or more widely used than the introduction of the spirit of
+the dead seeking to manifest itself to the living. No thoughtful person
+can fail to be interested in a theme which has so affected literature as
+has the ghostly, even though he may disbelieve what the Psychical
+Researchers hold to be established.</p>
+
+<p>Man's love for the supernatural, which is one of the most natural things
+about him, was never more marked than now. Man's imagination, ever
+vaster than his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[Pg xi]</a></span> environment, overleaps the barriers of time and space
+and claims all worlds as eminent domain, so that literature, which he
+has the power to create, as he cannot create his material surroundings,
+possesses a dramatic intensity and an epic sweep unknown in actuality.
+Literature shows what humanity really is and longs to be. Man, feeling
+belittled by his petty round of uninspiring days, longs for a larger
+life. He yearns for traffic with immortal beings that can augment his
+wisdom, that can bring comfort to his soul dismayed and bewildered by
+life. He reaches out for a power beyond his puny strength. Aware how
+relentlessly time ticks away his little hour, he craves companionship
+with the eternal spirits. Ignorant of what lies before him in the life
+to which he speeds so fast, he would take counsel of those who know,
+would ask about the customs of the country where presently he will be a
+citizen. He feels so terribly alone that he cries out like a child in
+the dark for supermortal companionship.</p>
+
+<p>Literature, which is both a cause and an effect of man's interest in the
+supernatural as in anything else, reflects his longings and records his
+cries. And when we read the imaginings of the different generations, we
+find that the spirit of the dead is represented almost everywhere.
+Before poetry and fiction were recorded, there were singers and
+story-tellers by the fire to give to their listeners the thrill that
+comes from art. And what thrill is comparable to that which comes from
+contact with the supermortal? The earliest literature relates the
+appearance of the spirits of those who have died as coming back to
+comfort or to take vengeance on the living, but always as sentient,
+intelligent, and with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[Pg xii]</a></span> an interest in the earth they have left. All
+through the centuries the wraith has survived in literature, has flitted
+pallidly across the pages of poetry, story and play, with a sad
+wistfulness, a forlorn dignity.</p>
+
+<p>A double relation exists between the literature and the records of the
+Psychical Research Society. Lacy Collison-Morley, in his <i>Greek and
+Roman Ghost Stories</i>, speaks of the similarity between ancient tales of
+spirits and records of recent instances. "There are in the Fourth Book
+of <i>Gregory the Great's Dialogues</i> a number of stories of the passing of
+souls which are curiously like some of those collected by the Psychical
+Research Society," he says. Possibly human personality is much the same
+in all lands and all times.</p>
+
+<p>Conversely, some of the best examples of ghostly literature have had
+their inspiration in the records of the society, Henry James's <i>The Turn
+of the Screw</i> being a notable example. Algernon Blackwood, that
+extraordinary adapter of psychic material to fiction, makes frequent
+mention of the Psychical Research Society, and uses many aspects of the
+psychical in his fiction. Innumerable stories, novels, plays and poems
+have been written to show the nearness of the dead to the living, and
+the thinness of the veil that separates the two worlds. There is deep
+pathos in the concept of the longing felt by the dead and living alike
+to speak with each other, to rend the dividing veil, which adds a
+poignancy to literature, even for readers incredulous of the possibility
+of such communication. There are many who are unconvinced of the reality
+of the messages in <i>Raymond</i>, for instance,&mdash;yet who could fail to be
+touched by the delicate art with which Barrie suggests the dead<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">[Pg xiii]</a></span> son's
+return in his play, <i>The Well-Remembered Voice</i>? While one may be
+repelled by what he feels is fraud and trickery in some of the psychic
+records, it is impossible not to be moved by such an impressive piece of
+symbolism as Granville Barker's <i>Souls on Fifth</i>, where the lonely,
+futile spirits of the dead are represented as hovering near the place
+they knew the best, seeking piteously to win some recognition from the
+living. The repulsive aspects of spirit manifestations have been treated
+many times and with power, as in Joseph Hergesheimer's <i>The Meeker
+Ritual</i>, to give one very recent example. The subject has interested the
+minds of many writers who have dealt with it satirically or
+sympathetically, or with a curious mixture of scoffing and respect, as
+did Browning in <i>Sludge, the Medium</i>. Even such pronounced realists as
+William Dean Howells and Hamlin Garland have written novels dealing with
+attempts at spirit communication.</p>
+
+<p>Any subject that has won so incontestable a place in our literature as
+this has, possesses a right to our thought, whatever be our attitude of
+acceptance or rejection of its claims to actuality. No person wishes to
+be ignorant of what the world is thinking with reference to a matter so
+important as the spirit. Hence this volume, <i>The Best Psychic Stories</i>,
+in presenting these studies in the occult, will have interest for a wide
+range of readers, and Mr. French, the editor, has shown critical
+discrimination and extensive knowledge of the subject. Many who are
+already interested in psychic phenomena will be glad to be informed
+concerning recent and startling manifestations recounted by special
+investigators. The sincerity of a man like W. T. Stead,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv">[Pg xiv]</a></span> well known and
+respected on both sides of the Atlantic, cannot be doubted, so that his
+article on <i>Photographing Invisible Beings</i> will have unusual weight.
+Hereward Carrington, author of various books on psychic subjects, and
+considered an authority in his field, gives in <i>The Phantom Armies Seen
+in France</i> a report of occult phenomena widely believed in during the
+war.</p>
+
+<p>Helena Blavatsky, author of <i>A Witch's Den</i>, will be remembered as the
+sensational medium who mystified experimenters in various lands a few
+years ago. While most of us can be content not to touch a ghost, we may
+find subject for surprise and wonder in Gambier Bolton's <i>Ghosts in
+Solid Form</i>, describing spirits that can be weighed and put to material
+tests, while Dr. Walter H. Prince, well known as a psychic investigator,
+relates remarkable experiments of famous persons, that challenge
+explanation on purely physical bases. These accounts show that modern
+scientific investigation of spiritual manifestations can be made as
+enthralling as fiction or drama. Hamlin Garland remarks in a recent
+article, <i>The Spirit-World on Trial</i>, "When the medium consented to
+enter the laboratory of the physicist, a new era in the study of psychic
+phenomena began."</p>
+
+<p>Even those who refuse credence to spirit manifestations in fact, but who
+appreciate the art with which they are shown in literature, should read
+with interest the stories given here. The genius of Edgar Allan Poe was
+never more impressive than in his studies of the supernatural, and
+<i>Ligeia</i> has a dramatic art unsurpassed even by Poe. The tense economy
+with which Ambrose Bierce could evoke a dreadful spirit is evident<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xv" id="Page_xv">[Pg xv]</a></span> in
+<i>The Eyes of the Panther</i>, and the haunting symbolism of Fiona Macleod's
+<i>The Sin-Eater</i> is unforgetable. Lafcadio Hearn, author of <i>A Ghost</i>,
+held the belief that there was no great artist in any land, and
+certainly no Anglo-Saxon writer, who had not distinguished himself in
+his use of the supernatural. The subject of the soul's survival after
+death and its attempts to reveal itself to those still in the folding
+flesh is of interest to every rational person, whether as a matter of
+scientific concern or merely as an aspect of literary art. And the
+possibilities for further use of the psychic in literature are as
+alluring as they are illimitable.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Dorothy Scarborough</span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>New York City</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>March 29, 1920</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE BEST PSYCHIC STORIES</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="WHEN_THE_WORLD_WAS_YOUNG1" id="WHEN_THE_WORLD_WAS_YOUNG1"></a>WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">By Jack London</span></h3>
+
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p>He was a very quiet, self-possessed sort of man, sitting a moment on top
+of the wall to sound the damp darkness for warnings of the dangers it
+might conceal. But the plummet of his hearing brought nothing to him
+save the moaning of wind through invisible trees and the rustling of
+leaves on swaying branches. A heavy fog drifted and drove before the
+wind, and though he could not see this fog, the wet of it blew upon his
+face, and the wall on which he sat was wet.</p>
+
+<p>Without noise he had climbed to the top of the wall from the outside,
+and without noise he dropped to the ground on the inside. From his
+pocket he drew an electric night-stick, but he did not use it. Dark as
+the way was, he was not anxious for light. Carrying the night-stick in
+his hand, his finger on the button, he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> advanced through the darkness.
+The ground was velvety and springy to his feet, being carpeted with dead
+pine-needles and leaves and mold which evidently had been undisturbed
+for years. Leaves and branches brushed against his body, but so dark was
+it that he could not avoid them. Soon he walked with his hand stretched
+out gropingly before him, and more than once the hand fetched up against
+the solid trunks of massive trees. All about him he knew were these
+trees; he sensed the loom of them everywhere; and he experienced a
+strange feeling of microscopic smallness in the midst of great bulks
+leaning toward him to crush him. Beyond, he knew, was the house, and he
+expected to find some trail or winding path that would lead easily to
+it.</p>
+
+<p>Once, he found himself trapped. On every side he groped against trees
+and branches, or blundered into thickets of underbrush, until there
+seemed no way out. Then he turned on his light, circumspectly, directing
+its rays to the ground at his feet. Slowly and carefully he moved it
+about him, the white brightness showing in sharp detail all the
+obstacles to his progress. He saw an opening between huge-trunked trees,
+and advanced through it, putting out the light and treading on dry
+footing as yet protected from the drip of the fog by the dense foliage
+overhead. His sense of direction was good, and he knew he was going
+toward the house.</p>
+
+<p>And then the thing happened&mdash;the thing unthinkable and unexpected. His
+descending foot came down upon something that was soft and alive, and
+that arose with a snort under the weight of his body. He sprang clear,
+and crouched for another spring, anywhere, tense and expectant, keyed
+for the onslaught of the unknown. He<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> waited a moment, wondering what
+manner of animal it was that had arisen from under his foot and that now
+made no sound nor movement and that must be crouching and waiting just
+as tensely and expectantly as he. The strain became unbearable. Holding
+the night-stick before him, he pressed the button, saw, and screamed
+aloud in terror. He was prepared for anything, from a frightened calf or
+fawn to a belligerent lion, but he was not prepared for what he saw. In
+that instant his tiny searchlight, sharp and white, had shown him what a
+thousand years would not enable him to forget&mdash;a man, huge and blond,
+yellow-haired and yellow-bearded, naked except for soft-tanned moccasins
+and what seemed a goat-skin about his middle. Arms and legs were bare,
+as were his shoulders and most of his chest. The skin was smooth and
+hairless, but browned by sun and wind, while under it heavy muscles were
+knotted like fat snakes.</p>
+
+<p>Still, this alone, unexpected as it well was, was not what had made the
+man scream out. What had caused his terror was the unspeakable ferocity
+of the face, the wild-animal glare of the blue eyes scarcely dazzled by
+the light, the pine-needles matted and clinging in the beard and hair,
+and the whole formidable body crouched and in the act of springing at
+him. Practically in the instant he saw all this, and while his scream
+still rang, the thing leaped, he flung his night-stick full at it, and
+threw himself to the ground. He felt its feet and shins strike against
+his ribs, and he bounded up and away while the thing itself hurled
+onward in a heavy crashing fall into the underbrush.</p>
+
+<p>As the noise of the fall ceased, the man stopped and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> on hands and knees
+waited. He could hear the thing moving about, searching for him, and he
+was afraid to advertise his location by attempting further flight. He
+knew that inevitably he would crackle the underbrush and be pursued.
+Once he drew out his revolver, then changed his mind. He had recovered
+his composure and hoped to get away without noise. Several times he
+heard the thing beating up the thickets for him, and there were moments
+when it, too, remained still and listened. This gave an idea to the man.
+One of his hands was resting on a chunk of dead wood. Carefully, first
+feeling about him in the darkness to know that the full swing of his arm
+was clear, he raised the chunk of wood and threw it. It was not a large
+piece, and it went far, landing noisily in a bush. He heard the thing
+bound into the bush, and at the same time himself crawled steadily away.
+And on hands and knees, slowly and cautiously, he crawled on, till his
+knees were wet on the soggy mold. When he listened he heard naught but
+the moaning wind and the drip-drip of the fog from the branches. Never
+abating his caution, he stood erect and went on to the stone wall, over
+which he climbed and dropped down to the road outside.</p>
+
+<p>Feeling his way in a clump of bushes, he drew out a bicycle and prepared
+to mount. He was in the act of driving the gear around with his foot for
+the purpose of getting the opposite pedal in position, when he heard the
+thud of a heavy body that landed lightly and evidently on its feet. He
+did not wait for more, but ran, with hands on the handles of his
+bicycle, until he was able to vault astride the saddle, catch the
+pedals, and start a spurt. Behind he could hear the quick thud-thud<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> of
+feet on the dust of the road, but he drew away from it and lost it.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately, he had started away from the direction of town and was
+heading higher up into the hills. He knew that on this particular road
+there were no cross roads. The only way back was past that terror, and
+he could not steel himself to face it. At the end of half an hour,
+finding himself on an ever increasing grade, he dismounted. For still
+greater safety, leaving the wheel by the roadside, he climbed through a
+fence into what he decided was a hillside pasture, spread a newspaper on
+the ground, and sat down.</p>
+
+<p>"Gosh!" he said aloud, mopping the sweat and fog from his face.</p>
+
+<p>And "Gosh!" he said once again, while rolling a cigarette and as he
+pondered the problem of getting back.</p>
+
+<p>But he made no attempt to go back. He was resolved not to face that road
+in the dark, and with head bowed on knees, he dozed, waiting for
+daylight.</p>
+
+<p>How long afterward he did not know, he was awakened by the yapping bark
+of a young coyote. As he looked about and located it on the brow of the
+hill behind him, he noted the change that had come over the face of the
+night. The fog was gone; the stars and moon were out; even the wind had
+died down. It had transformed into a balmy California summer night. He
+tried to doze again, but the yap of the coyote disturbed him. Half
+asleep, he heard a wild and eery chant. Looking about him, he noticed
+that the coyote had ceased its noise and was running away along the
+crest of the hill, and behind it, in full pursuit, no longer chanting,
+ran the naked creature he had encountered in the garden.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> It was a young
+coyote, and it was being overtaken when the chase passed from view. The
+man trembled as with a chill as he started to his feet, clambered over
+the fence, and mounted his wheel. But it was his chance and he knew it.
+The terror was no longer between him and Mill Valley.</p>
+
+<p>He sped at a breakneck rate down the hill, but in the turn at the
+bottom, in the deep shadows, he encountered a chuck-hole and pitched
+headlong over the handle bar.</p>
+
+<p>"It's sure not my night," he muttered, as he examined the broken fork of
+the machine.</p>
+
+<p>Shouldering the useless wheel, he trudged on. In time he came to the
+stone wall, and, half disbelieving his experience, he sought in the road
+for tracks, and found them&mdash;moccasin tracks, large ones, deep-bitten
+into the dust at the toes. It was while bending over them, examining,
+that again he heard the eery chant. He had seen the thing pursue the
+coyote, and he knew he had no chance on a straight run. He did not
+attempt it, contenting himself with hiding in the shadows on the off
+side of the road.</p>
+
+<p>And again he saw the thing that was like a naked man, running swiftly
+and lightly and singing as it ran. Opposite him it paused, and his heart
+stood still. But instead of coming toward his hiding-place, it leaped
+into the air, caught the branch of a roadside tree, and swung swiftly
+upward, from limb to limb, like an ape. It swung across the wall, and a
+dozen feet above the top, into the branches of another tree, and dropped
+out of sight to the ground. The man waited a few wondering minutes, then
+started on.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>Dave Slotter leaned belligerently against the desk that barred the way
+to the private office of James Ward, senior partner of the firm of Ward,
+Knowles &amp; Co. Dave was angry. Every one in the outer office had looked
+him over suspiciously, and the man who faced him was excessively
+suspicious.</p>
+
+<p>"You just tell Mr. Ward it's important," he urged.</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you he is dictating and cannot be disturbed," was the answer.
+"Come to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow will be too late. You just trot along and tell Mr. Ward it's
+a matter of life and death."</p>
+
+<p>The secretary hesitated and Dave seized the advantage.</p>
+
+<p>"You just tell him I was across the bay in Mill Valley last night, and
+that I want to put him wise to something."</p>
+
+<p>"What name?" was the query.</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind the name. He don't know me."</p>
+
+<p>When Dave was shown into the private office, he was still in the
+belligerent frame of mind, but when he saw a large fair man whirl in a
+revolving chair from dictating to a stenographer to face him, Dave's
+demeanor abruptly changed. He did not know why it changed, and he was
+secretly angry with himself.</p>
+
+<p>"You are Mr. Ward?" Dave asked with a fatuousness that still further
+irritated him. He had never intended it at all.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," came the answer. "And who are you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Harry Bancroft," Dave lied. "You don't know me, and my name don't
+matter."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You sent in word that you were in Mill Valley last night?"</p>
+
+<p>"You live there, don't you?" Dave countered, looking suspiciously at the
+stenographer.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. What do you mean to see me about? I am very busy."</p>
+
+<p>"I'd like to see you alone, sir."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ward gave him a quick, penetrating look, hesitated, then made up his
+mind.</p>
+
+<p>"That will do for a few minutes, Miss Potter."</p>
+
+<p>The girl arose, gathered her notes together, and passed out. Dave looked
+at Mr. James Ward wonderingly, until that gentleman broke his train of
+inchoate thought.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was over in Mill Valley last night," Dave began confusedly.</p>
+
+<p>"I've heard that before. What do you want?"</p>
+
+<p>And Dave proceeded in the face of a growing conviction that was
+unbelievable.</p>
+
+<p>"I was at your house, or in the grounds, I mean."</p>
+
+<p>"What were you doing there?"</p>
+
+<p>"I came to break in," Dave answered in all frankness. "I heard you lived
+all alone with a Chinaman for cook, and it looked good to me. Only I
+didn't break in. Something happened that prevented. That's why I'm here.
+I come to warn you. I found a wild man loose in your grounds&mdash;a regular
+devil. He could pull a guy like me to pieces. He gave me the run of my
+life. He don't wear any clothes to speak of, he climbs trees like a
+monkey, and he runs like a deer. I saw him chasing a coyote, and the
+last I saw of it, by God, he was gaining on it."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Dave paused and looked for the effect that would follow his words. But
+no effect came. James Ward was quietly curious, and that was all.</p>
+
+<p>"Very remarkable, very remarkable," he murmured. "A wild man, you say.
+Why have you come to tell me?"</p>
+
+<p>"To warn you of your danger. I'm something of a hard proposition myself,
+but I don't believe in killing people ... that is, unnecessarily. I
+realized that you was in danger. I thought I'd warn you. Honest, that's
+the game. Of course, if you wanted to give me anything for my trouble,
+I'd take it. That was in my mind, too. But I don't care whether you give
+me anything or not. I've warned you anyway, and done my duty."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ward meditated and drummed on the surface of his desk. Dave noticed
+that his hands were large, powerful, withal well-cared for despite their
+dark sunburn. Also, he noted what had already caught his eye before&mdash;a
+tiny strip of flesh-colored courtplaster on the forehead over one eye.
+And still the thought that forced itself into his mind was unbelievable.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ward took a wallet from his inside coat pocket, drew out a
+greenback, and passed it to Dave, who noted as he pocketed it that it
+was for twenty dollars.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," said Mr. Ward, indicating that the interview was at an end.
+"I shall have the matter investigated. A wild man running loose <i>is</i>
+dangerous."</p>
+
+<p>But so quiet a man was Mr. Ward, that Dave's courage returned. Besides,
+a new theory had suggested itself. The wild man was evidently Mr. Ward's
+brother, a lunatic privately confined. Dave had heard of such things.
+Perhaps Mr. Ward wanted it kept quiet. That was why he had given him the
+twenty dollars.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Say," Dave began, "now I come to think of it that wild man looked a lot
+like you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>That was as far as Dave got, for at that moment he witnessed a
+transformation and found himself gazing into the same unspeakably
+ferocious blue eyes of the night before, at the same clutching
+talon-like hands, and at the same formidable bulk in the act of
+springing upon him. But this time Dave had no night-stick to throw, and
+he was caught by the biceps of both arms in a grip so terrific that it
+made him groan with pain. He saw the large white teeth exposed, for all
+the world as a dog's about to bite. Mr. Ward's beard brushed his face as
+the teeth went in for the grip of his throat. But the bite was not
+given. Instead, Dave felt the other's body stiffen as with an iron
+restraint, and then he was flung aside, without effort but with such
+force that only the wall stopped his momentum and dropped him gasping to
+the floor.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean by coming here and trying to blackmail me?" Mr. Ward
+was snarling at him. "Here, give me back that money."</p>
+
+<p>Dave passed the bill back without a word.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you came here with good intentions. I know you now. Let me
+see and hear no more of you, or I'll put you in prison where you belong.
+Do you understand?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir," Dave gasped.</p>
+
+<p>"Then go."</p>
+
+<p>And Dave went, without further word, both his biceps aching intolerably
+from the bruise of that tremendous grip. As his hand rested on the door
+knob, he was stopped.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You were lucky," Mr. Ward was saying, and Dave noted that his face and
+eyes were cruel and gloating and proud. "You were lucky. Had I wanted, I
+could have torn your muscles out of your arms and thrown them in the
+waste basket there."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir," said Dave; and absolute conviction vibrated in his voice.</p>
+
+<p>He opened the door and passed out. The secretary looked at him
+interrogatively.</p>
+
+<p>"Gosh!" was all Dave vouchsafed, and with this utterance passed out of
+the offices and the story.</p>
+
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>James G. Ward was forty years of age, a successful business man, and
+very unhappy. For forty years he had vainly tried to solve a problem
+that was really himself and that with increasing years became more and
+more a woeful affliction. In himself he was two men, and,
+chronologically speaking, these men were several thousand years or so
+apart. He had studied the question of dual personality probably more
+profoundly than any half dozen of the leading specialists in that
+intricate and mysterious psychological field. In himself he was a
+different case from any that had been recorded. Even the most fanciful
+flights of the fiction-writers had not quite hit upon him. He was not a
+Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, nor was he like the unfortunate young man in
+Kipling's <i>Greatest Story in the World</i>. His two personalities were so
+mixed that they were practically aware of themselves and of each other
+all the time.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>His one self was that of a man whose rearing and education were modern
+and who had lived through the latter part of the nineteenth century and
+well into the first decade of the twentieth. His other self he had
+located as a savage and a barbarian living under the primitive
+conditions of several thousand years before. But which self was he, and
+which was the other, he could never tell. For he was both selves, and
+both selves all the time. Very rarely indeed did it happen that one self
+did not know what the other was doing. Another thing was that he had no
+visions nor memories of the past in which that early self had lived.
+That early self lived in the present; but while it lived in the present,
+it was under the compulsion to live the way of life that must have been
+in that distant past.</p>
+
+<p>In his childhood he had been a problem to his father and mother, and to
+the family doctors, though never had they come within a thousand miles
+of hitting upon the clue to his erratic conduct. Thus, they could not
+understand his excessive somnolence in the forenoon, nor his excessive
+activity at night. When they found him wandering along the hallways at
+night, or climbing over giddy roofs, or running in the hills, they
+decided he was a somnambulist. In reality he was wide-eyed awake and
+merely under the night-roaming compulsion of his early life. Questioned
+by an obtuse medico, he once told the truth and suffered the ignominy of
+having the revelation contemptuously labeled and dismissed as "dreams."</p>
+
+<p>The point was, that as twilight and evening came on he became wakeful.
+The four walls of a room were an irk and a restraint. He heard a
+thousand voices<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> whispering to him through the darkness. The night
+called to him, for he was, for that period of the twenty-four hours,
+essentially a night-prowler. But nobody understood, and never again did
+he attempt to explain. They classified him as a sleep-walker and took
+precautions accordingly&mdash;precautions that very often were futile. As his
+childhood advanced, he grew more cunning, so that the major portion of
+all his nights were spent in the open at realizing his other self. As a
+result, he slept in the forenoons. Morning studies and schools were
+impossible, and it was discovered that only in the afternoons, under
+private teachers, could he be taught anything. Thus was his modern self
+educated and developed.</p>
+
+<p>But a problem, as a child, he ever remained. He was known as a little
+demon of insensate cruelty and viciousness. The family medicos privately
+adjudged him a mental monstrosity and a degenerate. Such few boy
+companions as he had, hailed him as a wonder, though they were all
+afraid of him. He could outclimb, outswim, outrun, outdevil any of them;
+while none dared fight with him. He was too terribly strong, too madly
+furious.</p>
+
+<p>When nine years of age he ran away to the hills, where he flourished,
+night-prowling, for seven weeks before he was discovered and brought
+home. The marvel was how he had managed to subsist and keep in condition
+during that time. They did not know, and he never told them, of the
+rabbits he had killed, of the quail, young and old, he had captured and
+devoured, of the farmers' chicken-roosts he had raided, nor of the
+cave-lair he had made and carpeted with dry leaves and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> grasses and in
+which he had slept in warmth and comfort, through the forenoons of many
+days.</p>
+
+<p>At college he was notorious for his sleepiness and stupidity during the
+morning lectures and for his brilliance in the afternoon. By collateral
+reading and by borrowing the notebook of his fellow students he managed
+to scrape through the detestable morning courses, while his afternoon
+courses were triumphs. In football he proved a giant and a terror, and,
+in almost every form of track athletics, save for strange Berserker
+rages that were sometimes displayed, he could be depended upon to win.
+But his fellows were afraid to box with him, and he signalized his last
+wrestling bout by sinking his teeth into the shoulder of his opponent.</p>
+
+<p>After college, his father, in despair, sent him among the cow-punchers
+of a Wyoming ranch. Three months later the doughty cowmen confessed he
+was too much for them and telegraphed his father to come and take the
+wild man away. Also, when the father arrived to take him away, the
+cowmen allowed that they would vastly prefer chumming with howling
+cannibals, gibbering lunatics, cavorting gorillas, grizzly bears, and
+man-eating tigers than with this particular young college product with
+hair parted in the middle.</p>
+
+<p>There was one exception to the lack of memory of the life of his early
+self, and that was language. By some quirk of atavism, a certain portion
+of that early self's language had come down to him as a racial memory.
+In moments of happiness, exaltation, or battle, he was prone to burst
+out in wild barbaric songs or chants. It was by this means that he
+located in time and space that strayed half of him who should have been
+dead and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> dust for thousands of years. He sang, once, and deliberately,
+several of the ancient chants in the presence of Professor Wertz, who
+gave courses in old Saxon and who was a philologist of repute and
+passion. At the first one, the professor pricked up his ears and
+demanded to know what mongrel tongue or hog-German it was. When the
+second chant was rendered, the professor was highly excited. James Ward
+then concluded the performance by giving a song that always irresistibly
+rushed to his lips when he was engaged in fierce struggling or fighting.
+Then it was that Professor Wertz proclaimed it no hog-German, but early
+German, or early Teuton, of a date that must far precede anything that
+had ever been discovered and handed down by the scholars. So early was
+it that it was beyond him; yet it was filled with haunting reminiscences
+of word-forms he knew and which his trained intuition told him were true
+and real. He demanded the source of the songs, and asked to borrow the
+previous book that contained them. Also, he demanded to know why young
+Ward had always posed as being profoundly ignorant of the German
+language. And Ward could neither explain his ignorance nor lend the
+book. Whereupon, after pleadings and entreaties that extended through
+weeks, Professor Wertz took a dislike to the young man, believed him a
+liar, and classified him as a man of monstrous selfishness for not
+giving him a glimpse of this wonderful screed that was older than the
+oldest any philologist had ever known or dreamed.</p>
+
+<p>But little good did it do this much-mixed young man to know that half of
+him was late American and the other half early Teuton. Nevertheless, the
+late American<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> in him was no weakling, and he (if he were a he and had a
+shred of existence outside of these two) compelled an adjustment or
+compromise between his one self that was a night-prowling savage that
+kept his other self sleepy of mornings, and that other self that was
+cultured and refined and that wanted to be normal and love and prosecute
+business like other people. The afternoons and early evenings he gave to
+the one, the nights to the other; the forenoons and parts of the nights
+were devoted to sleep for the twain. But in the mornings he slept in bed
+like a civilized man. In the night time he slept like a wild animal, as
+he had slept the night Dave Slotter stepped on him in the woods.</p>
+
+<p>Persuading his father to advance the capital, he went into business, and
+keen and successful business he made of it, devoting his afternoons
+whole-souled to it, while his partner devoted the mornings. The early
+evenings he spent socially, but, as the hour grew to nine or ten, an
+irresistible restlessness overcame him and he disappeared from the
+haunts of men until the next afternoon. Friends and acquaintances
+thought that he spent much of his time in sport. And they were right,
+though they never would have dreamed of the nature of the sport, even if
+they had seen him running coyotes in night-chases over the hills of Mill
+Valley. Neither were the schooner captains believed when they reported
+seeing, on cold winter mornings, a man swimming in the tide-rips of
+Raccoon Straits or in the swift currents between Goat Island and Angel
+Island miles from shore.</p>
+
+<p>In the bungalow at Mill Valley he lived alone, save for Lee Sing, the
+Chinese cook and factotum, who knew<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> much about the strangeness of his
+master, who was paid well for saying nothing, and who never did say
+anything. After the satisfaction of his nights, a morning's sleep, and a
+breakfast of Lee Sing's, James Ward crossed the bay to San Francisco on
+a midday ferryboat and went to the club and on to his office, as normal
+and conventional a man of business as could be found in the city. But as
+the evening lengthened, the night called to him. There came a quickening
+of all his perceptions and a restlessness. His hearing was suddenly
+acute; the myriad night-noises told him a luring and familiar story;
+and, if alone, he would begin to pace up and down the narrow room like
+any caged animal from the wild.</p>
+
+<p>Once, he ventured to fall in love. He never permitted himself that
+diversion again. He was afraid. And for many a day the young lady,
+scared at least out of a portion of her young ladyhood, bore on her arms
+and shoulders and wrists divers black-and-blue bruises&mdash;tokens of
+caresses which he had bestowed in all fond gentleness but too late at
+night. There was the mistake. Had he ventured love-making in the
+afternoon, all would have been well, for it would have been as the quiet
+gentleman that he would have made love&mdash;but at night it was the uncouth,
+wife-stealing savage of the dark German forests. Out of his wisdom, he
+decided that afternoon love-making could be prosecuted successfully; but
+out of the same wisdom he was convinced that marriage would prove a
+ghastly failure. He found it appalling to imagine being married and
+encountering his wife after dark.</p>
+
+<p>So he had eschewed all love-making, regulated his dual<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> life, cleaned up
+a million in business, fought shy of match-making mamas and bright- and
+eager-eyed young ladies of various ages, met Lilian Gersdale and made it
+a rigid observance never to see her later than eight o'clock in the
+evening, ran of nights after his coyotes, and slept in forest lairs&mdash;and
+through it all had kept his secret save for Lee Sing ... and now, Dave
+Slotter. It was the latter's discovery of both his selves that
+frightened him. In spite of the counter fright he had given the burglar,
+the latter might talk. And even if he did not, sooner or later he would
+be found out by some one else.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it was that James Ward made a fresh and heroic effort to control
+the Teutonic barbarian that was half of him. So well did he make it a
+point to see Lilian in the afternoons and early evenings, that the time
+came when she accepted him for better or worse, and when he prayed
+privily and fervently that it was not for worse. During this period no
+prize-fighter ever trained more harshly and faithfully for a contest
+than he trained to subdue the wild savage in him. Among other things, he
+strove to exhaust himself during the day, so that sleep would render him
+deaf to the call of the night. He took a vacation from the office and
+went on long hunting trips, following the deer through the most
+inaccessible and rugged country he could find&mdash;and always in the
+daytime. Night found him indoors and tired. At home he installed a score
+of exercise machines, and where other men might go through a particular
+movement ten times, he went hundreds. Also, as a compromise, he built a
+sleeping porch on the second story. Here he at least breathed the
+blessed night air.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> Double screens prevented him from escaping into the
+woods, and each night Lee Sing locked him in and each morning let him
+out.</p>
+
+<p>The time came, in the month of August, when he engaged additional
+servants to assist Lee Sing and dared a house party in his Mill Valley
+bungalow. Lilian, her mother and brother, and half a dozen mutual
+friends, were the guests. For two days and nights all went well. And on
+the third night, playing bridge till eleven o'clock, he had reason to be
+proud of himself. His restlessness he successfully hid, but as luck
+would have it, Lilian Gersdale was his opponent on his right. She was a
+frail delicate flower of a woman, and in his night-mood her very frailty
+incensed him. Not that he loved her less, but that he felt almost
+irresistibly impelled to reach out and paw and maul her. Especially was
+this true when she was engaged in playing a winning hand against him.</p>
+
+<p>He had one of the deer-hounds brought in, and, when it seemed he must
+fly to pieces with the tension, a caressing hand laid on the animal
+brought him relief. These contacts with the hairy coat gave him instant
+easement and enabled him to play out the evening. Nor did any one guess
+the terrible struggle their host was making, the while he laughed so
+carelessly and played so keenly and deliberately.</p>
+
+<p>When they separated for the night, he saw to it that he parted from
+Lilian in the presence of the others. Once on his sleeping porch, and
+safely locked in, he doubled and tripled and even quadrupled his
+exercises until, exhausted, he lay down on the couch to woo sleep and to
+ponder two problems that especially troubled<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> him. One was this matter
+of exercise. It was a paradox. The more he exercised in this excessive
+fashion, the stronger he became. While it was true that he thus quite
+tired out his night-running Teutonic self, it seemed that he was merely
+setting back the fatal day when his strength would be too much for him
+and overpower him, and then it would be a strength more terrible than he
+had yet known. The other problem was that of his marriage and of the
+stratagems he must employ in order to avoid his wife after dark. And
+thus fruitlessly pondering he fell asleep.</p>
+
+<p>Now, where the huge grizzly bear came from that night was long a
+mystery, while the people of the Springs Brothers' Circus, showing at
+Sausalito, searched long and vainly for "Big Ben, the Biggest Grizzly in
+Captivity." But Big Ben escaped, and, out of the mazes of half a
+thousand bungalows and country estates, selected the grounds of James J.
+Ward for visitation. The first Mr. Ward knew was when he found himself
+on his feet, quivering and tense, a surge of battle in his breast and on
+his lips the old war-chant. From without came a wild baying and
+bellowing of the hounds. And sharp as a knife-thrust through the
+pandemonium came the agony of a stricken dog&mdash;his dog, he knew.</p>
+
+<p>Not stopping for slippers, pajama-clad, he burst through the door Lee
+Sing had so carefully locked, and sped down the stairs and out into the
+night. As his naked feet struck the graveled driveway, he stopped
+abruptly, reached under the steps to a hiding-place he knew well, and
+pulled forth a huge knotty club&mdash;his old companion on many a mad night
+adventure on the hills. The frantic hullabaloo of the dogs was coming<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>
+nearer, and, swinging the club, he sprang straight into the thickets to
+meet it.</p>
+
+<p>The aroused household assembled on the wide veranda. Somebody turned on
+the electric lights, but they could see nothing but one another's
+frightened faces. Beyond the brightly illuminated driveway the trees
+formed a wall of impenetrable blackness. Yet somewhere in that blackness
+a terrible struggle was going on. There was an infernal outcry of
+animals, a great snarling and growling, the sound of blows being struck,
+and a smashing and crashing of underbrush by heavy bodies.</p>
+
+<p>The tide of battle swept out from among the trees and upon the driveway
+just beneath the onlookers. Then they saw. Mrs. Gersdale cried out and
+clung fainting to her son. Lilian, clutching the railing so
+spasmodically that a bruising hurt was left in her finger-ends for days,
+gazed horror-stricken at a yellow-haired, wild-eyed giant whom she
+recognized as the man who was to be her husband. He was swinging a great
+club, and fighting furiously and calmly with a shaggy monster that was
+bigger than any bear she had ever seen. One rip of the beast's claws had
+dragged away Ward's pajama-coat and streaked his flesh with blood.</p>
+
+<p>While most of Lilian Gersdale's fright was for the man beloved, there
+was a large portion of it due to the man himself. Never had she dreamed
+so formidable and magnificent a savage lurked under the starched shirt
+and conventional garb of her betrothed. And never had she had any
+conception of how a man battled. Such a battle was certainly not modern;
+nor was she there beholding a modern man, though she did not know it.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>
+For this was not Mr. James J. Ward, the San Francisco business man, but
+one unnamed and unknown, a crude, rude savage creature who, by some
+freak of chance, lived again after thrice a thousand years.</p>
+
+<p>The hounds, ever maintaining their mad uproar, circled about the fight,
+or dashed in and out, distracting the bear. When the animal turned to
+meet such flanking assaults, the man leaped in and the club came down.
+Angered afresh by every such blow, the bear would rush, and the man,
+leaping and skipping, avoiding the dogs, went backwards or circled to
+one side or the other. Whereupon the dogs, taking advantage of the
+opening, would again spring in and draw the animal's wrath to them.</p>
+
+<p>The end came suddenly. Whirling, the grizzly caught a hound with a wide
+sweeping cuff that sent the brute, its ribs caved in and its back
+broken, hurtling twenty feet. Then the human brute went mad. A foaming
+rage flecked the lips that parted with a wild inarticulate cry, as it
+sprang in, swung the club mightily in both hands, and brought it down
+full on the head of the uprearing grizzly. Not even the skull of a
+grizzly could withstand the crushing force of such a blow, and the
+animal went down to meet the worrying of the hounds. And through their
+scurrying leaped the man, squarely upon the body, where, in the white
+electric light, resting on his club, he chanted a triumph in an unknown
+tongue&mdash;a song so ancient that Professor Wertz would have given ten
+years of his life for it.</p>
+
+<p>His guests rushed to possess him and acclaim him, but James Ward,
+suddenly looking out of the eyes of the early Teuton, saw the fair frail
+Twentieth Century<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> girl he loved, and felt something snap in his brain.
+He staggered weakly toward her, dropped the club, and nearly fell.
+Something had gone wrong with him. Inside his brain was an intolerable
+agony. It seemed as if the soul of him were flying asunder. Following
+the excited gaze of the others, he glanced back and saw the carcass of
+the bear. The sight filled him with fear. He uttered a cry and would
+have fled, had they not restrained him and led him into the bungalow.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>James J. Ward is still at the head of the firm of Ward, Knowles &amp; Co.
+But he no longer lives in the country; nor does he run of nights after
+the coyotes under the moon. The early Teuton in him died the night of
+the Mill Valley fight with the bear. James J. Ward is now wholly James
+J. Ward, and he shares no part of his being with any vagabond
+anachronism from the younger world. And so wholly is James J. Ward
+modern, that he knows in all its bitter fullness the curse of civilized
+fear. He is now afraid of the dark, and night in the forest is to him a
+thing of abysmal terror. His city house is of the spick and span order,
+and he evinces a great interest in burglar-proof devices. His home is a
+tangle of electric wires, and after bed-time a guest can scarcely
+breathe without setting off an alarm. Also, he has invented a
+combination keyless door-lock that travelers may carry in their vest
+pockets and apply immediately and successfully under all circumstances.
+But his wife does not deem him a coward. She knows better. And, like any
+hero, he is content to rest on his laurels. His bravery is never
+questioned by those of his friends who are aware of the Mill Valley
+episode.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_RETURN2" id="THE_RETURN2"></a>THE RETURN<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">By Algernon Blackwood</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>It was curious&mdash;that sense of dull uneasiness that came over him so
+suddenly, so stealthily at first he scarcely noticed it, but with such
+marked increase after a time that he presently got up and left the
+theater. His seat was on the gangway of the dress circle, and he slipped
+out awkwardly in the middle of what seemed to be the best and jolliest
+song of the piece. The full house was shaking with laughter; so
+infectious was the gaiety that even strangers turned to one another as
+much as to say, "Now, isn't that funny?"</p>
+
+<p>It was curious, too, the way the feeling first got into him at all, and
+in the full swing of laughter, music, light-heartedness; for it came as
+a vague suggestion, "I've forgotten something&mdash;something I meant to
+do&mdash;something of importance. What in the world was it, now?" And he
+thought hard, searching vainly through his mind; then dismissed it as
+the dancing caught his attention. It came back a little later again,
+during a passage of long-winded talk that bored him and set his
+attention free once more, but came more strongly this time, insisting on
+an answer. What could it have been that he had overlooked, left undone,
+omitted to see to? It went on nibbling at the subconscious part of him.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>
+Several times this happened, this dismissal and return, till at last the
+thing declared itself more plainly&mdash;and he felt bothered, troubled,
+distinctly uneasy.</p>
+
+<p>He was wanted somewhere. There was somewhere else he ought to be. That
+describes it best, perhaps. Some engagement of moment had entirely
+slipped his memory&mdash;an engagement that involved another person, too. But
+where, what, with whom? And, at length, this vague uneasiness amounted
+to positive discomfort, so that he felt unable to enjoy the piece, and
+left abruptly. Like a man to whom comes suddenly the horrible idea that
+the match he lit his cigarette with and flung into the waste-paper
+basket on leaving was not really out&mdash;a sort of panic distress&mdash;he
+jumped into a taxicab and hurried to his flat to find everything in
+order, of course; no smoke, no fire, no smell of burning.</p>
+
+<p>But his evening was spoiled. He sat smoking in his armchair at home,
+this business man of forty, practical in mind, of character some called
+stolid, cursing himself for an imaginative fool. It was now too late to
+go back to the theater; the club bored him; he spent an hour with the
+evening papers, dipping into books, sipping a long cool drink, doing
+odds and ends about the flat. "I'll go to bed early for a change," he
+laughed, but really all the time fighting&mdash;yes, deliberately
+fighting&mdash;this strange attack of uneasiness that so insidiously grew
+upwards, outwards from the buried depths of him that sought so
+strenuously to deny it. It never occurred to him that he was ill. He was
+not ill. His health was thunderingly good. He was as robust as a
+coal-heaver.</p>
+
+<p>The flat was roomy, high up on the top floor, yet in a busy part of
+town, so that the roar of traffic mounted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> round it like a sea. Through
+the open windows came the fresh night air of June. He had never noticed
+before how sweet the London night air could be, and that not all the
+smoke and dust could smother a certain touch of wild fragrance that
+tinctured it with perfume&mdash;yes, almost perfume&mdash;as of the country. He
+swallowed a draught of it as he stood there, staring out across the
+tangled world of roofs and chimney-pots. He saw the procession of the
+clouds; he saw the stars; he saw the moonlight falling in a shower of
+silver spears upon the slates and wires and steeples. And something in
+him quickened&mdash;something that had never stirred before.</p>
+
+<p>He turned with a horrid start, for the uneasiness had of a sudden leaped
+within him like an animal. There was some one in the flat.</p>
+
+<p>Instantly, with action&mdash;even this slight action&mdash;the fancy vanished;
+but, all the same, he switched on the electric lights and made a search.
+For it seemed to him that some one had crept up close behind him while
+he stood there watching the night&mdash;some one, whose silent presence
+fingered with unerring touch both this new thing that had quickened in
+his heart and that sense of original deep uneasiness. He was amazed at
+himself&mdash;angry&mdash;indignant that he could be thus foolishly upset over
+nothing, yet at the same time profoundly distressed at this vehement
+growth of a new thing in his well-ordered personality. Growth? He
+dismissed the word the moment it occurred to him&mdash;but it had occurred to
+him. It stayed. While he searched the empty flat, the long passages, the
+gloomy bedroom at the end, the little hall where he kept his overcoats
+and golf sticks, it stayed. Growth! It was oddly disquieting.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> Growth
+to him involved, though he neither acknowledged nor recognized the truth
+perhaps, some kind of undesirable changeableness, instability,
+unbalance.</p>
+
+<p>Yet singular as it all was, he realized that the uneasiness and the
+sudden appreciation of beauty that was so new to him had both entered by
+the same door into his being. When he came back to the front room he
+noticed that he was perspiring. There were little drops of moisture on
+his forehead. And down his spine ran chills, little, faint quivers of
+cold. He was shivering.</p>
+
+<p>He lit his big meerschaum pipe, and left the lights all burning. The
+feeling that there was something he had overlooked, forgotten, left
+undone, had vanished. Whatever the original cause of this absurd
+uneasiness might be&mdash;he called it absurd on purpose because he now
+realized in the depths of him that it was really more vital than he
+cared about&mdash;it was much nearer to discovery than before. It dodged
+about just below the threshold of discovery. It was as close as that.
+Any moment he would know what it was; he would remember. Yes, he would
+<i>remember</i>. Meanwhile, he was in the right place. No desire to go
+elsewhere afflicted him, as in the theater. Here was the place, here in
+the flat.</p>
+
+<p>And then it was with a kind of sudden burst and rush&mdash;it seemed to him
+the only way to phrase it&mdash;memory gave up her dead.</p>
+
+<p>At first he only caught her peeping round the corner at him, drawing
+aside a corner of an enormous curtain, as it were; striving for more
+complete entrance as though the mass of it were difficult to move. But
+he understood, he knew, he recognized. It was enough for that. As an
+entrance into his being&mdash;heart, mind, soul&mdash;was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> being attempted and the
+entrance because of his stolid temperament was difficult of
+accomplishment, there was effort, strain. Something in him had first to
+be opened up, widened, made soft and ready as by an operation, before
+full entrance could be effected. This much he grasped though for the
+life of him he could not have put it into words. Also he knew who it was
+that sought an entrance. Deliberately from himself he withheld the name.
+But he knew as surely as though Straughan stood in the room and faced
+him with a knife saying, "Let me in, let me in. I wish you to know I'm
+here. I'm clearing a way! You recall our promise?"</p>
+
+<p>He rose from his chair and went to the open window again, the strange
+fear slowly passing. The cool air fanned his cheeks. Beauty till now had
+scarcely ever brushed the surface of his soul. He had never troubled his
+head about it. It passed him by indifferent; and he had ever loathed the
+mouthy prating of it on others' lips. He was practical; beauty was for
+dreamers, for women, for men who had means and leisure. He had not
+exactly scorned it; rather it had never touched his life, to sweeten, to
+cheer, to uplift. Artists for him were like monks&mdash;another sex
+almost&mdash;useless beings who never helped the world go round. He was for
+action always, work, activity, achievement as he saw them. He remembered
+Straughan vaguely&mdash;Straughan, the ever impecunious friend of his youth,
+always talking of color and sound&mdash;mysterious, ineffectual things. He
+even forgot what they had quarreled about, if they had quarreled at all
+even; or why they had gone apart all these years ago. And certainly he
+had forgotten any promise. Memory as yet only peeped at him round the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>
+corner of that huge curtain tentatively, suggestively, yet&mdash;he was
+obliged to admit it&mdash;somewhat winningly. He was conscious of this
+gentle, sweet seductiveness that now replaced his fear.</p>
+
+<p>And as he stood now at the open window peering over huge London, beauty
+came close and smote him between the eyes. She came blindingly, with her
+train of stars and clouds and perfumes. Night, mysterious, myriad-eyed,
+and flaming across her sea of haunted shadows invaded his heart and
+shook him with her immemorial wonder and delight. He found no words of
+course to clothe the new unwonted sensations. He only knew that all his
+former dread, uneasiness, distress, and with them this idea of growth
+that had seemed so repugnant to him were merged, swept up, and gathered
+magnificently home into a wave of beauty that enveloped him. "See it,
+and understand," ran a secret inner whisper across his mind. He saw. He
+understood....</p>
+
+<p>He went back and turned the lights out. Then he took his place again at
+that open window, drinking in the night. He saw a new world; a species
+of intoxication held him. He sighed, as his thoughts blundered for
+expression among words and sentences that knew him not. But the delight
+was there, the wonder, the mystery. He watched with heart alternately
+tightening and expanding the transfiguring play of moon and shadow over
+the sea of buildings. He saw the dance of the hurrying clouds, the open
+patches into outer space, the veiling and unveiling of that ancient
+silvery face; and he caught strange whispers of the hierophantic,
+sacerdotal power that has echoed down the world<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> since Time began and
+dropped strange magic phrases into every poet's heart, since first "God
+dawned on Chaos"&mdash;the Beauty of the Night.</p>
+
+<p>A long time passed&mdash;it may have been one hour, it may have been
+three&mdash;when at length he turned away and went slowly to his bedroom. A
+deep peace lay over him. Something quite new and blessed had crept into
+his life and thought. He could not quite understand it all. He only knew
+that it uplifted. There was no longer the least sign of affliction or
+distress. Even the inevitable reaction that set in could not destroy
+that.</p>
+
+<p>And then as he lay in bed nearing the borderland of sleep, suddenly and
+without any obvious suggestion to bring it, he remembered another thing.
+He remembered the promise. Memory got past the big curtain for an
+instant and showed her face. She looked into his eyes. It must have been
+a dozen years ago when Straughan and he had made that foolish solemn
+promise, that whoever died first should show himself if possible to the
+other.</p>
+
+<p>He had utterly forgotten it&mdash;till now. But Straughan had not forgotten
+it. The letter came three weeks later from India. That very evening
+Straughan had died&mdash;at nine o'clock. And he had come back&mdash;in the Beauty
+that he loved.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_SECOND_GENERATION3" id="THE_SECOND_GENERATION3"></a>THE SECOND GENERATION<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">By Algernon Blackwood</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>Sometimes, in a moment of sharp experience, comes that vivid flash of
+insight that makes a platitude suddenly seem a revelation&mdash;its full
+content is abruptly realized. "Ten years <i>is</i> a long time, yes," he
+thought, as he walked up the drive to the great Kensington house where
+she still lived.</p>
+
+<p>Ten years&mdash;long enough, at any rate, for her to have married and for her
+husband to have died. More than that he had not heard, in the outlandish
+places where life had cast him in the interval. He wondered whether
+there had been any children. All manner of thoughts and questions,
+confused a little, passed across his mind. He was well-to-do now, though
+probably his entire capital did not amount to her income for a single
+year. He glanced at the huge, forbidding mansion. Yet that pride was
+false which had made of poverty an insuperable obstacle. He saw it now.
+He had learned values in his long exile.</p>
+
+<p>But he was still ridiculously timid. This confusion of thought, of
+mental images rather, was due to a kind of fear, since worship ever is
+akin to awe. He was as nervous as a boy going up for a <i>viva voce</i>; and
+with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> the excitement was also that unconquerable sinking&mdash;that horrid
+shrinking sensation that excessive shyness brings. Why in the world had
+he come? Why had he telegraphed the very day after his arrival in
+England? Why had he not sent a tentative, tactful letter, feeling his
+way a little?</p>
+
+<p>Very slowly he walked up the drive, feeling that if a reasonable chance
+of escape presented itself he would almost take it. But all the windows
+stared so hard at him that retreat was really impossible now and though
+no faces were visible behind the curtains, all had seen him, possibly
+she herself&mdash;his heart beat absurdly at the extravagant suggestion. Yet
+it was odd&mdash;he felt so certain of being seen, and that someone watched
+him. He reached the wide stone steps that were clean as marble, and
+shrank from the mark his boots must make upon their spotlessness. In
+desperation, then, before he could change his mind, he touched the bell.
+But he did not hear it ring&mdash;mercifully; that irrevocable sound must
+have paralyzed him altogether. If no one came to answer, he might still
+leave a card in the letter-box and slip away. Oh, how utterly he
+despised himself for such a thought! A man of thirty with such a chicken
+heart was not fit to protect a child, much less a woman. And he recalled
+with a little stab of pain that the man she married had been noted for
+his courage, his determined action, his inflexible firmness in various
+public situations, head and shoulders above lesser men. What presumption
+on his own part ever to dream!... He remembered, too, with no apparent
+reason in particular, that this man had a grown-up son already, by a
+former marriage.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And still no one came to open that huge, contemptuous door with its so
+menacing, so hostile air. His back was to it, as he carelessly twirled
+his umbrella, but he felt its sneering expression behind him while it
+looked him up and down. It seemed to push him away. The entire mansion
+focused its message through that stern portal: Little timid men are not
+welcomed here.</p>
+
+<p>How well he remembered the house! How often in years gone by had he not
+stood and waited just like this, trembling with delight and
+anticipation, yet terrified lest the bell should be answered and the
+great door actually swung wide! Then, as now, he would have run, had he
+dared. He was still afraid&mdash;his worship was so deep. But in all these
+years of exile in wild places, farming, mining, working for the position
+he had at last attained, her face and the memory of her gracious
+presence had been his comfort and support, his only consolation, though
+never his actual joy. There was so little foundation for it all, yet her
+smile and the words she had spoken to him from time to time in friendly
+conversation had clung, inspired, kept him going&mdash;for he knew them all
+by heart. And more than once in foolish optimistic moods, he had
+imagined, greatly daring, that she possibly had meant more....</p>
+
+<p>He touched the bell a second time&mdash;with the point of his umbrella. He
+meant to go in, carelessly as it were, saying as lightly as might be,
+"Oh, I'm back in England again&mdash;if you haven't <i>quite</i> forgotten my
+existence&mdash;I could not forego the pleasure of saying 'How-do-you-do?'
+and hearing that you are well ...," and the rest; then presently bow
+himself easily out&mdash;into the old loneliness again. But he would at least
+have seen<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> her; he would have heard her voice, and looked into her
+gentle, amber eyes; he would have touched her hand. She might even ask
+him to come in another day and see her! He had rehearsed it all a
+hundred times, as certain feeble temperaments do rehearse such scenes.
+And he came rather well out of that rehearsal, though always with an
+aching heart, the old great yearnings unfulfilled. All the way across
+the Atlantic he had thought about it, though with lessening confidence
+as the time drew near. The very night of his arrival in London he wrote,
+then, tearing up the letter (after sleeping over it), he had telegraphed
+next morning, asking if she would be in. He signed his surname&mdash;such a
+very common name, alas! but surely she would know&mdash;and her reply,
+"Please call 4:30," struck him as rather oddly worded. Yet here he was.</p>
+
+<p>There was a rattle of the big door knob, that aggressive, hostile knob
+that thrust out at him insolently like a fist of bronze. He started,
+angry with himself for doing so. But the door did not open. He became
+suddenly conscious of the wilds he had lived in for so long; his clothes
+were hardly fashionable; his voice probably had a twang in it, and he
+used tricks of speech that must betray the rough life so recently left.
+What would she think of him, now? He looked much older, too. And how
+brusque it was to have telegraphed like that! He felt awkward, gauche,
+tongue-tied, hot and cold by turns. The sentences, so carefully
+rehearsed, fled beyond recovery.</p>
+
+<p>Good heavens&mdash;the door was open! It had been open for some minutes. It
+moved noiselessly on big hinges. He acted automatically; he heard
+himself asking if her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> ladyship was at home, though his voice was nearly
+inaudible. The next moment he was standing in the great, dim hall, so
+poignantly familiar, and the remembered perfume almost made him sway. He
+did not hear the door close, but he knew. He was caught. The butler
+betrayed an instant's surprise&mdash;or was it over-wrought imagination
+again?&mdash;when he gave his name. It seemed to him&mdash;though only later did
+he grasp the significance of that curious intuition&mdash;that the man had
+expected another caller instead. The man took his card respectfully and
+disappeared. These flunkeys were so marvellously trained. He was too
+long accustomed to straight question and straight answer, but here, in
+the Old Country, privacy was jealously guarded with such careful ritual.</p>
+
+<p>And almost immediately the butler returned, still expressionless, and
+showed him into the large drawing-room on the ground floor that he knew
+so well. Tea was on the table&mdash;tea for one. He felt puzzled. "If you
+will have tea first, sir, her ladyship will see you afterwards," was
+what he heard. And though his breath came thickly, he asked the question
+that forced itself out. Before he knew what he was saying he asked it,
+"Is she ill?" "Oh, no, her ladyship is quite well, thank you, sir. If
+you will have tea first, sir, her ladyship will see you afterwards." The
+horrid formula was repeated, word for word. He sank into an armchair and
+mechanically poured out his own tea. What he felt he did not exactly
+know. It seemed so unusual, so utterly unexpected, so unnecessary, too.
+Was it a special attention, or was it merely casual? That it could mean
+anything else did not occur to him. How<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> was she busy, occupied&mdash;not
+here to give him tea? He could not understand it. It seemed such a farce
+having tea alone like this&mdash;it was like waiting for an audience, it was
+like a doctor's or a dentist's room. He felt bewildered, ill at ease,
+cheap.... But after ten years in primitive lands perhaps London usages
+had changed in some extraordinary manner. He recalled his first
+amazement at the motor-omnibuses, taxicabs, and electric tubes. All were
+new. London was otherwise than when he left it. Piccadilly and the
+Marble Arch themselves had altered. And, with his reflection, a shade
+more confidence stole in. She knew that he was there and presently she
+would come in and speak with him, explaining everything by the mere fact
+of her delicious presence. He was ready for the ordeal, he would see
+her&mdash;and drop out again. It was worth all manner of pain, even of
+mortification. He was in her house, drinking her tea, sitting in a chair
+she used herself perhaps. Only he would never dare to say a word or make
+a sign that might betray his changeless secret. He still felt the boyish
+worshipper, worshipping in dumbness from a distance, one of a group of
+many others like himself. Their dreams had faded, his had continued,
+that was the difference. Memories tore and raced and poured upon him.
+How sweet and gentle she had always been to him! He used to wonder
+sometimes.... Once, he remembered, he had rehearsed a declaration, but
+while rehearsing the big man had come in and captured her, though he had
+only read the definite news long after by chance in an Arizona paper.</p>
+
+<p>He gulped his tea down. His heart alternately leaped and stood still. A
+sort of numbness held him most of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> that dreadful interval, and no clear
+thought came at all. Every ten seconds his head turned towards the door
+that rattled, seemed to move, yet never opened. But any moment now it
+<i>must</i> open, and he would be in her very presence, breathing the same
+air with her. He would see her, charge himself with her beauty once more
+to the brim, and then go out again into the wilderness&mdash;the wilderness
+of life&mdash;without her, and not for a mere ten years but for always. She
+was so utterly beyond his reach. He felt like a backwoodsman, he was a
+backwoodsman.</p>
+
+<p>For one thing only was he duly prepared, though he thought about it
+little enough&mdash;she would, of course, have changed. The photograph he
+owned, cut from an illustrated paper, was not true now. It might even be
+a little shock perhaps. He must remember that. Ten years cannot pass
+over a woman without&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Before he knew it the door was open, and she was advancing quietly
+towards him across the thick carpet that deadened sound. With both hands
+outstretched she came, and with the sweetest welcoming smile upon her
+parted lips he had seen in any human face. Her eyes were soft with joy.
+His whole heart leaped within him; for the instant he saw her it all
+flashed clear as sunlight&mdash;that she knew and understood. She had always
+known, had always understood. Speech came easily to him in a flood, had
+he needed it, but he did not need it. It was all so adorably easy,
+simple, natural, and true. He just took her hands&mdash;those welcoming,
+outstretched hands&mdash;in both of his own, and led her to the nearest sofa.
+He was not even surprised at himself. Inevitably, out of depths of
+truth, this meeting<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> came about. And he uttered a little foolish
+commonplace, because he feared the huge revulsion that his sudden glory
+brought, and loved to taste it slowly:</p>
+
+<p>"So you live here still?"</p>
+
+<p>"Here, and here," she answered softly, touching his heart, and then her
+own. "I am attached to this house, too, because <i>you</i> used to come and
+see me here, and because it was here I waited so long for you, and still
+wait. I shall never leave it&mdash;unless you change. You see, we live
+together here."</p>
+
+<p>He said nothing. He leaned forward to take and hold her. The abrupt
+knowledge of it all somehow did not seem abrupt&mdash;it was as though he had
+known it always; and the complete disclosure did not seem disclosure
+either&mdash;rather as though she told him something he had inexplicably left
+unrealized, yet not forgotten. He felt absolutely master of himself,
+yet, in a curious sense, outside of himself at the same time. His arms
+were already open&mdash;when she gently held her hands up to prevent. He
+heard a faint sound outside the door.</p>
+
+<p>"But you are free," he cried, his great passion breaking out and
+flooding him, yet most oddly well controlled, "and I&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She interrupted him in the softest, quietest whisper he had ever heard:</p>
+
+<p>"You are not free, as I am free&mdash;not yet."</p>
+
+<p>The sound outside came suddenly closer. It was a step. There was a faint
+click on the handle of the door. In a flash, then, came the dreadful
+shock that overwhelmed him&mdash;the abrupt realization of the truth that was
+somehow horrible&mdash;that Time, all these years, had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> left no mark upon her
+and that <i>she had not changed</i>. Her face was as young as when he saw her
+last.</p>
+
+<p>With it there came cold and darkness into the great room. He shivered
+with cold, but an alien, unaccountable cold. Some great shadow dropped
+upon the entire earth, and though but a second could have passed before
+the handle actually turned, and the other person entered, it seemed to
+him like several minutes. He heard her saying this amazing thing that
+was question, answer, and forgiveness all in one&mdash;this, at least, he
+divined before the ghastly interruption came&mdash;"But, George&mdash;if you had
+only spoken&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>With ice in his blood he heard the butler saying that her ladyship would
+be "pleased" to see him if he had finished his tea and would be "so good
+as to bring the papers and documents upstairs with him." He had just
+sufficient control of certain muscles to stand upright and murmur that
+he would come. He rose from a sofa that held no one but himself. All at
+once he staggered. He really did not know exactly what happened, or how
+he managed to stammer out the medley of excuses and semi-explanations
+that battered their way through his brain and issued somehow in definite
+words from his lips. Somehow or other he accomplished it. The sudden
+attack, the faintness, the collapse!... He vaguely remembered
+afterwards&mdash;with amazement too&mdash;the suavity of the butler as he
+suggested telephoning for a doctor, and that he just managed to forbid
+it, refusing the offered glass of brandy as well, remembered contriving
+to stumble into the taxicab and give his hotel address with a final
+explanation that he would call another day and "bring the papers." It<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>
+was quite clear that his telegram had been attributed to someone else,
+someone "with papers"&mdash;perhaps a solicitor or architect. His name was
+such an ordinary one, there were so many Smiths. It was also clear that
+she whom he had come to see and <i>had</i> seen, no longer lived here in the
+flesh....</p>
+
+<p>And just as he left the hall he had the vision&mdash;mere fleeting glimpse it
+was&mdash;of a tall, slim, girlish figure on the stairs asking if anything
+was wrong, and realized vaguely through his atrocious pain that she was,
+of course, the wife of the son who had inherited....<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="JOSEPH_A_STORY" id="JOSEPH_A_STORY"></a>JOSEPH: A STORY</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">By Katherine Rickford</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>They were sitting round the fire after dinner&mdash;not an ordinary fire&mdash;one
+of those fires that has a little room all to itself with seats at each
+side of it to hold a couple of people or three.</p>
+
+<p>The big dining room was paneled with oak. At the far end was a handsome
+dresser that dated back for generations. One's imagination ran riot when
+one pictured the people who must have laid those pewter plates on the
+long, narrow, solid table. Massive medieval chests stood against the
+walls. Arms and parts of armor hung against the panelling; but one
+noticed few of these things, for there was no light in the room save
+what the fire gave.</p>
+
+<p>It was Christmas Eve. Games had been played. The old had vied with the
+young at snatching raisins from the burning snapdragon. The children had
+long since gone to bed; it was time their elders followed them, but they
+lingered round the fire, taking turns at telling stories. Nothing very
+weird had been told; no one had felt any wish to peep over his shoulder
+or try to penetrate the darkness of the far end of the room; the
+omission caused a sensation of something wanting. From each one there
+this thought went out, and so a sudden<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> silence fell upon the party. It
+was a girl who broke it&mdash;a mere child; she wore her hair up that night
+for the first time, and that seemed to give her the right to sit up so
+late.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Grady is going to tell one," she said.</p>
+
+<p>All eyes were turned to a middle-aged man in a deep armchair placed
+straight in front of the fire. He was short, inclined to be fat, with a
+bald head and a pointed beard like the beards that sailors wear. It was
+plain that he was deeply conscious of the sudden turning of so much
+strained yet forceful thought upon himself. He was restless in his chair
+as people are in a room that is overheated. He blinked his eyes as he
+looked round the company. His lips twitched in a nervous manner. One
+side of him seemed to be endeavoring to restrain another side of him
+from a feverish desire to speak.</p>
+
+<p>"It was this room that made me think of him," he said thoughtfully.</p>
+
+<p>There was a long silence, but it occurred to no one to prompt him. Every
+one seemed to understand that he was going to speak, or rather that
+something inside him was going to speak, some force that craved
+expression and was using him as a medium.</p>
+
+<p>The little old man's pink face grew strangely calm, the animation that
+usually lit it was gone. One would have said that the girl who had
+started him already regretted the impulse, and now wanted to stop him.
+She was breathing heavily, and once or twice made as though she would
+speak to him, but no words came. She must have abandoned the idea, for
+she fell to studying the company. She examined them carefully, one by
+one. "This one," she told herself, "is so-and-so,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> and that one there
+just another so-and-so." She stared at them, knowing that she could not
+turn them to herself with her stare. They were just bodies kept working,
+so to speak, by some subtle sort of sentry left behind by the real
+selves that streamed out in pent-up thought to the little old man in the
+chair in front of the fire.</p>
+
+<p>"His name was Joseph; at least they called him Joseph. He dreamed, you
+understand&mdash;dreams. He was an extraordinary lad in many ways. His
+mother&mdash;I knew her very well&mdash;had three children in quick succession,
+soon after marriage; then ten years went by and Joseph was born. Quiet
+and reserved he always was, a self-contained child whose only friend was
+his mother. People said things about him, you know how people talk. Some
+said he was not Clara's child at all, but that she had adopted him;
+others, that her husband was not his father, and these put her change of
+manner down to a perpetual struggle to keep her husband comfortably in
+the dark. I always imagined that the boy was in some way aware of all
+this gossip, for I noticed that he took a dislike to the people who
+spread it most."</p>
+
+<p>The little man rested his elbows on the arms of his chair and let the
+tips of his fingers meet in front of him. A smile played about his
+mouth. He seemed to be searching among his reminiscences for the one
+that would give the clearest portrait of Joseph.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, anyway," he said at last, "the boy was odd, there is no
+gainsaying the fact. I suppose he was eleven when Clara came down here
+with her family for Christmas. The Coningtons owned the place then&mdash;Mrs.
+Conington was Clara's sister. It was Christmas Eve, as it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> is now, many
+years ago. We had spent a normal Christmas Eve; a little happier,
+perhaps, than usual by reason of the family re-union and because of the
+presence of so many children. We had eaten and drank, laughed and played
+and gone to bed.</p>
+
+<p>"I woke in the middle of the night from sheer restlessness. Clara,
+knowing my weakness, had given me a fire in my room. I lit a cigarette,
+played with a book, and then, purely from curiosity, opened the door and
+looked down the passage. From my door I could see the head of the
+staircase in the distance; the opposite wing of the house, or the
+passage rather beyond the stairs, was in darkness. The reason I saw the
+staircase at all was that the window you pass coming downstairs allowed
+the moon to throw an uncertain light upon it, a weird light because of
+the stained glass. I was arrested by the curious effect of this patch of
+light in so much darkness when suddenly someone came into it, turned,
+and went downstairs. It was just like a scene in a theater; something
+was about to happen that I was going to miss. I ran as I was,
+barefooted, to the head of the stairs and looked over the banister. I
+was excited, strung up, too strung up to feel the fright that I knew
+must be with me. I remember the sensation perfectly. I knew that I was
+afraid, yet I did not feel fright.</p>
+
+<p>"On the stairs nothing moved. The little hall down here was lost in
+darkness. Looking over the banister I was facing the stained glass
+window. You know how the stairs run around three sides of the hall;
+well, it occurred to me that if I went halfway down and stood under the
+window I should be able to keep the top of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> the stairs in sight and see
+anything that might happen in the hall. I crept down very cautiously and
+waited under the window. First of all, I saw the suit of empty armor
+just outside the door here. You know how a thing like that, if you stare
+at it in a poor light, appears to move; well, it moved sure enough, and
+the illusion was enhanced by clouds being blown across the moon. By the
+fire like this one can talk of these things rationally, but in the dead
+of night it is a different matter, so I went down a few steps to make
+sure of that armor, when suddenly something passed me on the stairs. I
+did not hear it, I did not see it, I sensed it in no way, I just knew
+that something had passed me on its way upstairs. I realized that my
+retreat was cut off, and with the knowledge fear came upon me.</p>
+
+<p>"I had seen someone come down the stairs; that, at any rate, was
+definite; now I wanted to see him again. Any ghost is bad enough, but a
+ghost that one can see is better than one that one can't. I managed to
+get past the suit of armor, but then I had to feel my way to these
+double doors here."</p>
+
+<p>He indicated the direction of the doors by a curious wave of his hand.
+He did not look toward them nor did any of the party. Both men and women
+were completely absorbed in his story; they seemed to be mesmerized by
+the earnestness of his manner. Only the girl was restless; she gave an
+impression of impatience with the slowness with which he came to his
+point. One would have said that she was apart from her fellows, an alien
+among strangers.</p>
+
+<p>"So dense was the darkness that I made sure of finding the first door
+closed, but it was not, it was wide<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> open, and, standing between them, I
+could feel that the other was open, too. I was standing literally in the
+wall of the house, and as I peered into the room, trying to make out
+some familiar object, thoughts ran through my mind of people who had
+been bricked up in walls and left there to die. For a moment I caught
+the spirit of the inside of a thick wall. Then suddenly I felt the
+sensation I have often read about but never experienced before: I knew
+there was some one in the room. You are surprised, yes, but wait! I knew
+more: I knew that some one was conscious of my presence. It occurred to
+me that whoever it was might want to get out of the door. I made room
+for him to pass. I waited for him, made sure of him, began to feel
+giddy, and then a man's voice, deep and clear:</p>
+
+<p>"'There is some one there; who is it?'</p>
+
+<p>"I answered mechanically, 'George Grady.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm Joseph.'</p>
+
+<p>"A match was drawn across a matchbox, and I saw the boy bending over a
+candle waiting for the wick to catch. For a moment I thought he must be
+walking in his sleep, but he turned to me quite naturally and said in
+his own boyish voice:</p>
+
+<p>"'Lost anything?'</p>
+
+<p>"I was amazed at the lad's complete calm. I wanted to share my fright
+with some one, instead I had to hide it from this boy. I was conscious
+of a curious sense of shame. I had watched him grow, taught him, praised
+him, scolded him, and yet here he was waiting for an explanation of my
+presence in the dining room at that odd hour of the night.</p>
+
+<p>"Soon he repeated the question, 'Lost anything?'<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"'No,' I said, and then I stammered, 'Have you?'</p>
+
+<p>"'No,' he said with a little laugh. 'It's that room, I can't sleep in
+it.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh,' I said. 'What's the matter with the room?'</p>
+
+<p>"'It's the room I was killed in,' he said quite simply.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I had heard about his dreams, but I had had no direct
+experience of them; when, therefore, he said that he had been killed in
+his room I took it for granted that he had been dreaming again. I was at
+a loss to know quite how to tackle him; whether to treat the whole thing
+as absurd and laugh it off as such, or whether to humor him and hear his
+story. I got him upstairs to my room, sat him in a big armchair, and
+poked the fire into a blaze.</p>
+
+<p>"'You've been dreaming again,' I said bluntly.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, no I haven't. Don't you run away with that idea.'</p>
+
+<p>"His whole manner was so grown up that it was quite unthinkable to treat
+him as the child he really was. In fact, it was a little uncanny, this
+man in a child's frame.</p>
+
+<p>"'I was killed there,' he said again.</p>
+
+<p>"'How do you mean, killed?' I asked him.</p>
+
+<p>"'Why, killed&mdash;murdered. Of course it was years and years ago, I can't
+say when; still I remember the room. I suppose it was the room that
+reminded me of the incident.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Incident?' I exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"'What else? Being killed is only an incident in the existence of any
+one. One makes a fuss about it at the time, of course, but really when
+you come to think of it....'<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"'Tell me about it,' I said, lighting a cigarette. He lit one too, that
+child, and began.</p>
+
+<p>"'You know my room is the only modern one in this old house. Nobody
+knows why it is modern. The reason is obvious. Of course it was made
+modern after I was killed there. The funny thing is that I should have
+been put there. I suppose it was done for a purpose, because I&mdash;I&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"He looked at me so fixedly I knew he would catch me if I lied.</p>
+
+<p>"'What?' I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"'Dream.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes,' I said, 'that is why you were put there.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I thought so, and yet of all the rooms&mdash;but then, of course, no one
+knew. Anyhow I did not recognize the room until after I was in bed. I
+had been asleep some time and then I woke suddenly. There is an old
+wheel-back chair there&mdash;the only old thing in the room. It is standing
+facing the fire as it must have stood the night I was killed. The fire
+was burning brightly, the pattern of the back of the chair was thrown in
+shadow across the ceiling. Now the night I was murdered the conditions
+were exactly the same, so directly I saw that pattern on the ceiling I
+remembered the whole thing. I was not dreaming, don't think it, I was
+not. What happened that night was this: I was lying in bed counting the
+parts of the back of that chair in shadow on the ceiling. I probably
+could not get to sleep, you know the sort of thing, count up to a
+thousand and remember in the morning where you got to. Well, I was
+counting those pieces when suddenly they were all obliterated, the whole
+back became a shadow, some one was sitting<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> in the chair. Now, surely,
+you understand that directly I saw the shadow of that chair on the
+ceiling to-night I realized that I had not a moment to lose. At any
+moment that same person might come back to that same chair and escape
+would be impossible. I slipped from my bed as quickly as I could and ran
+downstairs.'</p>
+
+<p>"'But were you not afraid,' I asked, 'downstairs?'</p>
+
+<p>"'That she might follow me? It was a woman, you know. No, I don't think
+I was. She does not belong downstairs. Anyhow she didn't.'</p>
+
+<p>"'No,' I said. 'No.'</p>
+
+<p>"My voice must have been out of control, for he caught me up at once.</p>
+
+<p>"'You don't mean to say you saw her?' he said vehemently.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, no.'</p>
+
+<p>"'You felt her?'</p>
+
+<p>"'She passed me as I came downstairs,' I said.</p>
+
+<p>"'What can I have done to her that she follows me so?' He buried his
+face in his hands as though searching for an answer to his thought.
+Suddenly he looked up and stared at me.</p>
+
+<p>"'Where had I got to? Oh yes, the murder. I can remember how startled I
+was to see that shadow in the chair&mdash;startled, you know, but not really
+frightened. I leaned up in bed and looked at the chair, and sure enough
+a woman was sitting in it&mdash;a young woman. I watched her with a profound
+interest until she began to turn in her chair, as I felt, to look at me;
+when she did that I shrank back in bed. I dared not meet her eyes. She
+might not have had eyes, she might not have had a face. You know the
+sort of pictures that one sees<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> when one glances back at all one's soul
+has ever thought.</p>
+
+<p>"'I got back in the bed as far as I could and peeped over the sheets at
+the shadow on the ceiling. I was tired; frightened to death; I grew
+weary of watching. I must have fallen asleep, for suddenly the fire was
+almost out, the pattern of the chair barely discernible, the shadow had
+gone. I raised myself with a sense of huge relief. Yes, the chair was
+empty, but, just think of it, the woman was on the floor, on her hands
+and knees, crawling toward the bed.</p>
+
+<p>"'I fell back stricken with terror.</p>
+
+<p>"'Very soon I felt a gentle pull at the counterpane. I thought I was in
+a nightmare but too lazy or too comfortable to try to wake myself from
+it. I waited in an agony of suspense, but nothing seemed to be
+happening, in fact I had just persuaded myself that the movement of the
+counterpane was fancy when a hand brushed softly over my knee. There was
+no mistaking it, I could feel the long, thin fingers. Now was the time
+to do something. I tried to rouse myself, but all my efforts were
+futile, I was stiff from head to foot.</p>
+
+<p>"'Although the hand was lost to me, outwardly, it now came within my
+range of knowledge, if you know what I mean. I knew that it was groping
+its way along the bed feeling for some other part of me. At any moment I
+could have said exactly where it had got to. When it was hovering just
+over my chest another hand knocked lightly against my shoulder. I
+fancied it lost, and wandering in search of its fellow.</p>
+
+<p>"'I was lying on my back staring at the ceiling when the hands met; the
+weight of their presence brought a feeling of oppression to my chest. I
+seemed to be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> completely cut off from my body; I had no sort of
+connection with any part of it, nothing about me would respond to my
+will to make it move.</p>
+
+<p>"'There was no sound at all anywhere.</p>
+
+<p>"'I fell into a state of indifference, a sort of patient indifference
+that can wait for an appointed time to come. How long I waited I cannot
+say, but when the time came it found me ready. I was not taken by
+surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"'There was a great upward rush of pent-up force released; it was like a
+mighty mass of men who have been lost in prayer rising to their feet. I
+can't remember clearly, but I think the woman must have got on to my
+bed. I could not follow her distinctly, my whole attention was
+concentrated on her hands. At the time I felt those fingers itching for
+my throat.</p>
+
+<p>"'At last they moved; slowly at first, then quicker; and then a
+long-drawn swish like the sound of an over-bold wave that has broken too
+far up the beach and is sweeping back to join the sea.'</p>
+
+<p>"The boy was silent for a moment, then he stretched out his hand for the
+cigarettes.</p>
+
+<p>"'You remember nothing else?' I asked him.</p>
+
+<p>"'No,' he said. 'The next thing I remember clearly is deliberately
+breaking the nursery window because it was raining and mother would not
+let me go out.'"</p>
+
+<p>There was a moment's tension, then the strain of listening passed and
+every one seemed to be speaking at once. The Rector was taking the story
+seriously.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me, Grady," he said. "How long do you suppose elapsed between the
+boy's murder and his breaking the nursery window?"</p>
+
+<p>But a young married woman in the first flush of her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> happiness broke in
+between them. She ridiculed the whole idea. Of course the boy was
+dreaming. She was drawing the majority to her way of thinking when, from
+the corner where the girl sat, a hollow-sounding voice:</p>
+
+<p>"And the boy? Where is he?"</p>
+
+<p>The tone of the girl's voice inspired horror, that fear that does not
+know what it is it fears; one could see it on every face; on every face,
+that is, but the face of the bald-headed little man; there was no horror
+on his face; he was smiling serenely as he looked the girl straight in
+the eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"He's a man now," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Alive?" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" said the little old man, rubbing his hands together.</p>
+
+<p>She tried to rise, but her frock had got caught between the chairs and
+pulled her to her seat again. The man next her put out his hand to
+steady her, but she dashed it away roughly. She looked round the party
+for an instant for all the world like an animal at bay, then she sprang
+to her feet and charged blindly. They crowded round her to prevent her
+falling; at the touch of their hands she stopped. She was out of breath
+as though she had been running.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," she said, pushing their hands from her. "All right. I'll
+come quietly. I did it."</p>
+
+<p>They caught her as she fell and laid her on the sofa watching the color
+fade from her face.</p>
+
+<p>The hostess, an old woman with white hair and a kind face, approached
+the little old man; for once in her life she was roused to anger.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I can't think how you could be so stupid," she said. "See what you have
+done."</p>
+
+<p>"I did it for a purpose," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"For a purpose?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have always thought that girl was the culprit. I have to thank you
+for the opportunity you have given me of making sure."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_CLAVECIN_BRUGES4" id="THE_CLAVECIN_BRUGES4"></a>THE CLAVECIN, BRUGES<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">By George Wharton Edwards</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>A silent, grass-grown market-place, upon the uneven stones of which the
+sabots of a passing peasant clatter loudly. A group of sleepy-looking
+soldiers in red trousers lolling about the wide portal of the Belfry,
+which rears aloft against the pearly sky</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">All the height it has<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of ancient stone.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>As the chime ceases there lingers for a space a faint musical hum in the
+air; the stones seem to carry and retain the melody; one is loath to
+move for fear of losing some part of the harmony.</p>
+
+<p>I feel an indescribable impulse to climb the four hundred odd steps;
+incomprehensible, for I detest steeple-climbing, and have no patience
+with steeple-climbers.</p>
+
+<p>Before I realize it, I am at the stairs. "Hold, sir!" from behind me.
+"It is forbidden." In wretched French a weazen-faced little soldier
+explains that repairs are about to be made in the tower, in consequence
+of which visitors are forbidden. A franc removes this military obstacle,
+and I press on.</p>
+
+<p>At the top of the stairs is an old Flemish woman shelling peas, while
+over her shoulder peeps a tame magpie. A savory odor of stewing
+vegetables fills the air.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What do you wish, sir?" Many shrugs, gesticulations, and sighs of
+objurgation, which are covered by a shining new five-franc piece, and
+she produces a bunch of keys. As the door closes upon me the magpie
+gives a hoarse, gleeful squawk.</p>
+
+<p>... A huge, dim room with a vaulted ceiling. Against the wall lean
+ancient stone statues, noseless and disfigured, crowned and sceptered
+effigies of forgotten lords and ladies of Flanders. High up on the wall
+two slitted Gothic windows, through which the violet light of day is
+streaming. I hear the gentle coo of pigeons. To the right a low door,
+some vanishing steps of stone, and a hanging hand-rope. Before I have
+taken a dozen steps upward I am lost in the darkness; the steps are worn
+hollow and sloping, the rope is slippery&mdash;seems to have been waxed, so
+smooth has it become by handling. Four hundred steps and over; I have
+lost track of the number, and stumble giddily upward round and round the
+slender stone shaft. I am conscious of low openings from time to
+time&mdash;openings to what? I do not know. A damp smell exhales from them,
+and the air is cold upon my face as I pass them. At last a dim light
+above. With the next turn a blinding glare of light, a moment's
+blankness, then a vast panorama gradually dawns upon me. Through the
+frame of stonework is a vast reach of grayish green bounded by the
+horizon, an immense shield embossed with silvery lines of waterways, and
+studded with clustering red-tiled roofs. A rim of pale yellow
+appears&mdash;the sand-dunes that line the coast&mdash;and dimly beyond a grayish
+film, evanescent, flashing&mdash;the North Sea.</p>
+
+<p>Something flies through the slit from which I am<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> gazing, and following
+its flight upward, I see a long beam crossing the gallery, whereon are
+perched an array of jackdaws gazing down upon me in wonder.</p>
+
+<p>I am conscious of a rhythmic movement about me that stirs the air, a
+mysterious, beating, throbbing sound, the machinery of the clock, which
+some one has described as a "heart of iron beating in a breast of
+stone."</p>
+
+<p>I lean idly in the narrow slit, gazing at the softened landscape, the
+exquisite harmony of the greens, grays, and browns, the lazily turning
+arms of far-off mills, reminders of Cuyp, Van der Velde, Teniers,
+shadowy, mysterious recollections. I am conscious of uttering aloud some
+commonplaces of delight. A slight and sudden movement behind me, a
+smothered cough. A little old man in a black velvet coat stands looking
+up at me, twisting and untwisting his hands. There are ruffles at his
+throat and wrists, and an amused smile spreads over his face, which is
+cleanly shaven, of the color of wax, with a tiny network of red lines
+over the cheek-bones, as if the blood had been forced there by some
+excess of passion and had remained. He has heard my sentimental
+ejaculation. I am conscious of the absurdity of the situation, and move
+aside for him to pass. He makes a courteous gesture with one ruffled
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>There comes a prodigious rattling and grinding noise from above&mdash;then a
+jangle of bells, some half-dozen notes in all. At the first stroke the
+old man closes his eyes, throws back his head, and follows the rhythm
+with his long white hands, as though playing a piano. The sound dies
+away; the place becomes painfully silent; still the regular motion of
+the old man's hands continues. A creepy, shivery feeling runs up and
+down my<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> spine; a fear of which I am ashamed seizes upon me.</p>
+
+<p>"Fine pells, sare," says the little old man, suddenly dropping his
+hands, and fixing his eyes upon me. "You sall not hear such pells in
+your countree. But stay not here; come wis me, and I will show you the
+clavecin. You sall not see the clavecin yet? No?"</p>
+
+<p>I had not, of course, and thanked him.</p>
+
+<p>"You sall see Melchior, Melchior t'e Groote, t'e magnif'."</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke we entered a room quite filled with curious machinery, a
+medley of levers, wires, and rope above; below, two large cylinders
+studded with shining brass points.</p>
+
+<p>He sprang among the wires with a spidery sort of agility, caught one,
+pulled and hung upon it with, all his weight. There came a r-r-r-r-r-r
+of fans and wheels, followed by a shower of dust; slowly one great
+cylinder began to revolve; wires and ropes reaching into the gloom above
+began to twitch convulsively; faintly came the jangle of far-off bells.
+Then came a pause, then a deafening <i>boom</i>, that well nigh stunned me.
+As the waves of sound came and went, the little old man twisted and
+untwisted his hands in delight, and ejaculated, "Melchior you haf
+heeard, Melchior t'e Groote&mdash;t'e bourdon."</p>
+
+<p>I wanted to examine the machinery, but he impatiently seized my arm and
+almost dragged me away saying, "I will skow you&mdash;I will skow you. Come
+wis me."</p>
+
+<p>From a pocket he produced a long brass key and unlocked a door covered
+with red leather, disclosing an up-leading flight of steps to which he
+pushed me. It gave<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> upon an octagon-shaped room with a curious floor of
+sheet-lead. Around the wall ran a seat under the diamond-paned Gothic
+windows. From their shape I knew them to be the highest in the tower. I
+had seen them from the square below many times, with the framework above
+upon which hung row upon row of bells.</p>
+
+<p>In the middle of the room was a rude sort of keyboard, with pedals
+below, like those of a large organ. Fronting this construction sat a
+long, high-backed bench. On the rack over the keyboard rested some
+sheets of music, which, upon examination, I found to be of parchment and
+written by hand. The notes were curious in shape, consisting of squares
+of black and diamonds of red upon the lines. Across the top of the page
+was written, in a straggling hand, "Van den Gheyn Nikolaas." I turned to
+the little old man with the ruffles. "Van den Gheyn!" I said in
+surprise, pointing to the parchment. "Why, that is the name of the most
+celebrated of <i>carillonneurs</i>, Van den Gheyn of Louvain." He untwisted
+his hands and bowed. "Eet ees ma name, mynheer&mdash;I am the
+<i>carillonneur</i>."</p>
+
+<p>I fancied that my face showed all too plainly the incredulity I felt,
+for his darkened, and he muttered, "You not belief, Engelsch? Ah, I show
+you; then you belief, parehap," and with astounding agility seated
+himself upon the bench before the clavecin, turned up the ruffles at his
+wrists, and literally threw himself upon the keys. A sound of thunder
+accompanied by a vivid flash of lightning filled the air, even as the
+first notes of the bells reached my ears. Involuntarily I glanced out of
+the diamond-leaded window&mdash;dark clouds were all about us, the housetops
+and surrounding country<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> were no longer to be seen. A blinding flash of
+lightning seemed to fill the room; the arms and legs of the little old
+man sought the keys and pedals with inconceivable rapidity; the music
+crashed about us with a deafening din, to the accompaniment of the
+thunder, which seemed to sound in unison with the boom of the bourdon.
+It was grandly terrible. The face of the little old man was turned upon
+me, but his eyes were closed. He seemed to find the pedals intuitively,
+and at every peal of thunder, which shook the tower to its foundations,
+he would open his mouth, a toothless cavern, and shout aloud. I could
+not hear the sounds for the crashing of the bells. Finally, with a last
+deafening crash of iron rods and thunderbolts, the noise of the bells
+gradually died away. Instinctively I had glanced above when the crash
+came, half expecting to see the roof torn off.</p>
+
+<p>"I think we had better go down," I said. "This tower has been struck by
+lightning several times, and I imagine that discretion&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>I don't know what more I said, for my eyes rested upon the empty bench,
+and the bare rack where the music had been. The clavecin was one mass of
+twisted iron rods, tangled wires, and decayed, worm-eaten woodwork; the
+little old man had disappeared. I rushed to the red leather-covered
+door; it was fast. I shook it in a veritable terror; it would not yield.
+With a bound I reached the ruined clavecin, seized one of the pedals,
+and tore it away from the machine. The end was armed with an iron point.
+This I inserted between the lock and the door. I twisted the lock from
+the worm-eaten wood with one turn of the wrist, the door opened, and I
+almost fell down the steep steps. The second door at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> the bottom was
+also closed. I threw my weight against it once, twice; it gave, and I
+half slipped, half ran down the winding steps in the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>Out at last into the fresh air of the lower passage! At the noise I made
+in closing the ponderous door came forth the old <i>custode</i>.</p>
+
+<p>In my excitement I seized her by the arm, saying, "Who was the little
+old man in the black velvet coat with the ruffles? Where is he?"</p>
+
+<p>She looked at me in a stupid manner. "Who is he," I repeated&mdash;"the
+little old man who played the clavecin?"</p>
+
+<p>"Little old man, sir? I don't know," said the crone. "There has been no
+one in the tower to-day but yourself."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LIGEIA" id="LIGEIA"></a>LIGEIA</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">By Edgar Allan Poe</span></h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>"And the will therein lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth the
+mysteries of the will, with its vigor? For God is but a great
+will prevading all things by nature of its intentness. Man doth
+not yield himself to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save
+only through the weakness of his feeble will."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Joseph
+Glanvill.</span></p></blockquote>
+
+
+<p>I cannot, for my soul, remember how, when, or even precisely where, I
+first became acquainted with the lady Ligeia. Long years have since
+elapsed, and my memory is feeble through much suffering. Or, perhaps, I
+cannot <i>now</i> bring these points to mind, because, in truth, the
+character of my beloved, her rare learning, her singular yet placid
+caste of beauty, and the thrilling and enthralling eloquence of her low
+musical language, made their way into my heart by paces so steadily and
+stealthily progressive, that they have been unnoticed and unknown. Yet I
+believe that I met her first and most frequently in some large, old,
+decaying city near the Rhine. Of her family I have surely heard her
+speak. That it is of a remotely ancient date cannot be doubted. Ligeia!
+Ligeia! Buried in studies of a nature more than all else adapted to
+deaden impressions of the outward world, it is by that sweet word
+alone&mdash;by Ligeia&mdash;that I bring before mine eyes in fancy the image of
+her who is no more. And now, while<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> I write, a recollection flashes upon
+me that I have <i>never known</i> the paternal name of her who was my friend
+and my betrothed, and who became the partner of my studies, and finally
+the wife of my bosom. Was it a playful charge on the part of my Ligeia?
+Or was it a test of my strength of affection, that I should institute no
+inquiries upon this point? Or was it rather a caprice of my own&mdash;a
+wildly romantic offering on the shrine of the most passionate devotion?
+I but indistinctly recall the fact itself&mdash;what wonder that I have
+utterly forgotten the circumstances which originated or attended it?
+And, indeed, if ever that spirit which is entitled Romance&mdash;if ever she,
+the wan and the misty-winged Ashtophet of idolatrous Egypt&mdash;presided, as
+they tell, over marriages ill-omened, then most surely she presided over
+mine.</p>
+
+<p>There is one dear topic, however, on which my memory fails me not. It is
+the <i>person</i> of Ligeia. In stature she was tall, somewhat slender, and,
+in her latter days, even emaciated. I would in vain attempt to portray
+the majesty, the quiet ease of her demeanor, or the incomprehensible
+lightness and elasticity of her footfall. She came and departed as a
+shadow. I was never made aware of her entrance into my closed study,
+save by the dear music of her low sweet voice, as she placed her marble
+hand upon my shoulder. In beauty of face no maiden ever equalled her. It
+was the radiance of an opium-dream&mdash;an airy and spirit-lifting vision
+more wildly divine than the fantasies which hovered about the slumbering
+souls of the daughters of Delos. Yet her features were not of that
+regular mould which we have been falsely taught to worship in the
+classical<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> labors of the heathen. "There is no exquisite beauty," says
+Bacon, Lord Verulam, speaking truly of all the forms and <i>genera</i>
+of beauty, "without some strangeness in the proportion." Yet,
+although I saw that the features of Ligeia were not of a classic
+regularity&mdash;although I perceived that her loveliness was indeed
+exquisite and felt that there was much of strangeness pervading it&mdash;yet
+I have tried in vain to detect the irregularity and to trace home my own
+perception of "the strange." I examined the contour of the lofty and
+pale forehead; it was faultless&mdash;how cold indeed that word when applied
+to a majesty so divine&mdash;the skin rivalling the purest ivory; the
+commanding extent and repose, the gentle prominence of the regions above
+the temples; and then the raven-black, the glossy, the luxuriant and
+naturally-curling tresses, setting forth the full force of the Homeric
+epithet, "hyacinthine"! I looked at the delicate outlines of the nose,
+and nowhere but in the graceful medallions of the Hebrews had I beheld a
+similar perfection. There were the same luxurious smoothness of surface,
+the same scarcely perceptible tendency to the aquiline, the same
+harmoniously curved nostrils speaking the free spirit. I regarded the
+sweet mouth. Here was indeed the triumph of all things heavenly&mdash;the
+magnificent turn of the short upper lip, the soft, voluptuous slumber of
+the under, the dimples which sported, and the color which spoke, the
+teeth glancing back, with a brilliancy almost startling, every ray of
+the holy light which fell upon them in her serene and placid, yet most
+exultingly radiant of all smiles. I scrutinized the formation of the
+chin, and here, too, I found the gentleness of breadth, the softness<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>
+and the majesty, the fulness and the spirituality of the Greek&mdash;the
+contour which the god Apollo revealed but in a dream, to Cleomenes, the
+son of the Athenian. And then I peered into the large eyes of Ligeia.</p>
+
+<p>For eyes we have no models in the remotely antique. It might have been,
+too, that in these eyes of my beloved lay the secret to which Lord
+Verulam alludes. They were, I must believe, far larger than the ordinary
+eyes of our own race. They were even fuller than the fullest of the
+gazelle eyes of the tribe of the valley of Nourjahad. Yet it was only at
+intervals&mdash;in moments of intense excitement&mdash;that this peculiarity
+became more than slightly noticeable in Ligeia. And at such moments was
+her beauty&mdash;in my heated fancy thus it appeared perhaps&mdash;the beauty of
+beings either above or apart from the earth&mdash;the beauty of the fabulous
+Houri of the Turk. The hue of the orbs was the most brilliant of black,
+and far over them hung jetty lashes of great length. The brows, slightly
+irregular in outline, had the same tint. The "strangeness," however,
+which I found in the eyes, was of a nature distinct from the formation,
+or the color, or the brilliancy of the features, and must, after all, be
+referred to the expression. Ah, word of no meaning, behind whose vast
+latitude of mere sound we intrench our ignorance of so much of the
+spiritual! The expression of the eyes of Ligeia! How for long hours have
+I pondered upon it! How have I, through the whole of a midsummer night,
+struggled to fathom it! What was it&mdash;that something more profound than
+the well of Democritus&mdash;which lay far within the pupils of my beloved?
+What <i>was</i> it? I was possessed with a passion to discover. Those eyes,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>
+those large, those shining, those divine orbs&mdash;they became to me twin
+stars of Leda, and I to them devoutest of astrologers.</p>
+
+<p>There is no point, among the many incomprehensible anomalies of the
+science of mind, more thrillingly exciting than the fact&mdash;never, I
+believe, noticed in the schools&mdash;that in our endeavors to recall to
+memory something long forgotten, we often find ourselves upon the very
+verge of remembrance, without being able, in the end, to remember. And
+thus how frequently, in my intense scrutiny of Ligeia's eyes, have I
+felt approaching the full knowledge of their expression&mdash;felt it
+approaching, yet not quite be mine&mdash;and so at length entirely depart!
+And (strange, oh strangest mystery of all!) I found in the commonest
+objects of the universe, a circle of analogies to that expression. I
+mean to say that, subsequently to the period when Ligeia's beauty passed
+into my spirit, there dwelling as in a shrine, I derived from many
+existences in the material world a sentiment such as I felt always
+around, within me, by her large and luminous orbs. Yet not the more
+could I define that sentiment, or analyze, or even steadily view it. I
+recognized it, let me repeat, sometimes in the survey of a
+rapidly-growing vine, in the contemplation of a moth, a butterfly, a
+chrysalis, a stream of running water. I have felt it in the ocean, in
+the falling of a meteor. I have felt it in the glances of unusually aged
+people. And there are one or two stars in heaven, (one especially, a
+star of the sixth magnitude, double and changeable, to be found near the
+large star in Lyra) in a telescopic scrutiny of which I have been made
+aware of the feeling. I have been filled with it by certain<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> sounds from
+stringed instruments, and not unfrequently by passages from books. Among
+innumerable other instances, I well remember something in a volume of
+Joseph Glanvill, which (perhaps merely from its quaintness&mdash;who shall
+say?) never failed to inspire me with the sentiment: "And the will
+therein lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth the mysteries of the will,
+with its vigor? For God is but a great will pervading all things by
+nature of its intentness. Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto
+death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will."</p>
+
+<p>Length of years and subsequent reflection have enabled me to trace,
+indeed, some remote connection between this passage in the English
+moralist and a portion of the character of Ligeia. An intensity in
+thought, action, or speech was possibly, in her, a result or at least an
+index of that gigantic volition which, during our long intercourse,
+failed to give other and more immediate evidence of its existence. Of
+all the women whom I have ever known, she&mdash;the outwardly calm, the
+ever-placid Ligeia&mdash;was the most violently a prey to the tumultuous
+vultures of stern passion. And of such passion I could form no estimate,
+save by the miraculous expansion of those eyes which at once so
+delighted and appalled me, by the almost magical melody, modulation,
+distinctness, and placidity of her very low voice, and by the fierce
+energy (rendered doubly effective by contrast with her manner of
+utterance) of the wild words which she habitually uttered.</p>
+
+<p>I have spoken of the learning of Ligeia; it was immense, such as I have
+never known in woman. In the classical tongues was she deeply
+proficient, and as far<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> as my own acquaintance extended in regard to the
+modern dialects of Europe, I have never known her at fault. Indeed upon
+any theme of the most admired, because simply the most abstruse of the
+boasted erudition of the academy, have I ever found Ligeia at fault? How
+singularly, how thrillingly, this one point in the nature of my wife has
+forced itself, at this late period only, upon my attention! I said her
+knowledge was such as I have never known in woman&mdash;but where breathes
+the man who has traversed, and successfully, all the wide areas of
+moral, physical, and mathematical science? I saw not then what I now
+clearly perceive, that the acquisitions of Ligeia were gigantic, were
+astounding; yet I was sufficiently aware of her infinite supremacy to
+resign myself, with a child-like confidence, to her guidance through the
+chaotic world of metaphysical investigation at which I was most busily
+occupied during the earlier years of our marriage. With how vast a
+triumph, with how vivid a delight, with how much of all that is ethereal
+in hope, did I feel, as she bent over me in studies but little
+sought&mdash;but less known&mdash;that delicious vista by slow degrees expanding
+before me, down whose long, gorgeous, and all untrodden path I might at
+length pass onward to the goal of a wisdom too divinely precious not to
+be forbidden!</p>
+
+<p>How poignant, then, must have been the grief with which, after some
+years, I beheld my well-grounded expectations take wings to themselves
+and fly away! Without Ligeia I was but as a child groping benighted. Her
+presence, her readings alone, rendered vividly luminous the many
+mysteries of the transcendentalism in which we were immersed. Wanting
+the radiant luster of her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> eyes, letters, lambent and golden, grew
+duller than Saturnian lead. And now those eyes shone less and less
+frequently upon the pages over which I pored. Ligeia grew ill. The wild
+eyes blazed with a too, too glorious effulgence; the pale fingers became
+of the transparent waxen hue of the grave; and the blue veins upon the
+lofty forehead swelled and sank impetuously with the tides of the most
+gentle emotion. I saw that she must die&mdash;and I struggled desperately in
+spirit with the grim Azrael. And the struggles of the passionate wife
+were, to my astonishment, even more energetic than my own. There had
+been much in her stern nature to impress me with the belief that, to
+her, death would have come without its terrors; but not so. Words are
+impotent to convey any just idea of the fierceness of resistance with
+which she wrestled with the Shadow. I groaned in anguish at the pitiable
+spectacle. I would have soothed, I would have reasoned, but, in the
+intensity of her wild desire for life&mdash;for life&mdash;<i>but</i> for life&mdash;solace
+and reason were alike the uttermost of folly. Yet not until the last
+instance, amid the most convulsive writhings of her fierce spirit, was
+shaken the external placidity of her demeanor. Her voice grew more
+gentle&mdash;grew more low&mdash;yet I would not wish to dwell upon the wild
+meaning of the quietly uttered words. My brain reeled as I hearkened,
+entranced, to a melody more than mortal, to assumptions and aspirations
+which mortality had never before known.</p>
+
+<p>That she loved me I should not have doubted, and I might have been
+easily aware that, in a bosom such as hers, love would have reigned no
+ordinary passion. But in death only was I fully impressed with the
+strength<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> of her affection. For long hours, detaining my hand, would she
+pour out before me the overflowing of a heart whose more than passionate
+devotion amounted to idolatry. How had I deserved to be so blessed by
+such confessions? How had I deserved to be so cursed with the removal of
+my beloved in the hour of her making them? But upon this subject I
+cannot bear to dilate. Let me say only, that in Ligeia's more than
+womanly abandonment to a love, alas! all unmerited, all unworthily
+bestowed, I at length recognized the principle of her longing, with so
+wildly earnest a desire, for the life which was now fleeing so rapidly
+away. It is this wild longing&mdash;it is this eager vehemence of desire for
+life&mdash;but for life&mdash;that I have no power to portray, no utterance
+capable of expressing.</p>
+
+<p>At high noon of the night in which she departed, beckoning me
+peremptorily to her side, she bade me repeat certain verses composed by
+herself not many days before. I obeyed her. They were these:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Lo! 'tis a gala night<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Within the lonesome latter years!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An angel throng, bewinged, bedight<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In veils, and drowned in tears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sit in a theater, to see<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A play of hopes and fears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While the orchestra breathes fitfully<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The music of the spheres.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Mimes, in the form of God on high,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Mutter and mumble low,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And hither and thither fly;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Mere puppets they, who come and go<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At bidding of vast formless things<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That shift the scenery to and fro,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Flapping from out their condor wings<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Invisible Woe!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">That motley drama!&mdash;oh, be sure<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">It shall not be forgot!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With its Phantom chased for evermore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">By a crowd that seize it not,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through a circle that ever returneth in<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To the self-same spot;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And much of Madness, and more of Sin<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And Horror, the soul of the plot!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But see, amid the mimic rout<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A crawling shape intrude!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A blood-red thing that writhes from out<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The scenic solitude!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It writhes!&mdash;it writhes!&mdash;with mortal<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The mimes become its food,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the seraphs sob at vermin fangs<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In human gore imbued.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Out&mdash;out are the lights&mdash;out all!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And over each quivering form,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The curtain, a funeral pall,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Comes down with the rush of a storm&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the angels, all pallid and wan,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Uprising, unveiling, affirm<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That the play is the tragedy, "Man,"<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And its hero, the Conqueror Worm.<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>"O God!" half-shrieked Ligeia, leaping to her feet and extending her
+arms aloft with a spasmodic movement, as I made an end of these lines,
+"O God! O Divine Father! Shall these things be undeviatingly so? Shall
+this conqueror be not once conquered? Are we not part and parcel in
+Thee? Who&mdash;who knoweth the mysteries of the will with its vigor? Man
+doth not yield him to the angels, <i>nor unto death utterly</i>, save only
+through the weakness of his feeble will."</p>
+
+<p>And now, as if exhausted with emotion, she suffered her white arms to
+fall, and returned solemnly to her bed of death. And as she breathed her
+last sighs, there came mingled with them a low murmur from her lips. I
+bent to them my ear, and distinguished again, the concluding words of
+the passage in Glanvill: "<i>Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor
+unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>She died, and I, crushed into the very dust with sorrow, could no longer
+endure the lonely desolation of my dwelling in the dim and decaying city
+by the Rhine. I had no lack of what the world calls wealth. Ligeia had
+brought me far more, very far more than ordinarily falls to the lot of
+mortals. After a few months, therefore, of weary and aimless wandering,
+I purchased and put in some repair an abbey which I shall not name in
+one of the wildest and least frequented portions of fair England. The
+gloomy and dreary grandeur of the building, the almost savage aspect of
+the domain, the many melancholy and time-honored memories connected with
+both, had much in unison with the feelings of utter abandonment which
+had driven me into that remote and unsocial region of the country. Yet,
+although the external abbey<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> with its verdant decay hanging about it
+suffered but little alteration, I gave way with a child-like perversity,
+and perchance with a faint hope of alleviating my sorrows, to a display
+of more than regal magnificence within. For such follies, even in
+childhood, I had imbibed a taste, and now they came back to me as if in
+the dotage of grief. Alas, I feel how much even of incipient madness
+might have been discovered in the gorgeous and fantastic draperies, in
+the solemn carvings of Egypt, in the wild cornices and furniture, in the
+Bedlam patterns of the carpets of tufted gold! I had become a bounden
+slave in the trammels of opium, and my labors and my orders had taken a
+coloring from my dreams. But these absurdities I must not pause to
+detail. Let me speak only of that one chamber, ever accursed, whither in
+a moment of mental alienation, I led from the altar as my bride&mdash;as the
+successor of the unforgotten Ligeia&mdash;the fair-haired and blue-eyed Lady
+Rowena Trevanion, of Tremaine.</p>
+
+<p>There is no individual portion of the architecture and decoration of
+that bridal chamber which is not now visibly before me. Where were the
+souls of the haughty family of the bride, when, through thirst of gold,
+they permitted to pass the threshold of an apartment <i>so</i> bedecked, a
+maiden and a daughter so beloved? I have said that I minutely remember
+the details of the chamber, yet I am sadly forgetful on topics of deep
+moment; and here there was no system, no keeping, in the fantastic
+display, to take hold upon the memory. The room lay in a high turret of
+the castellated abbey, was pentagonal in shape, and of capacious size.
+Occupying the whole southern face of the pentagon was the sole
+window&mdash;an immense<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> sheet of unbroken glass from Venice&mdash;a single pane,
+and tinted of a leaden hue, so that the rays of either the sun or moon
+passing through it fell with a ghastly luster on the objects within.
+Over the upper portion of this huge window extended the trellis-work of
+an aged vine which clambered up the massy walls of the turret. The
+ceiling, of gloomy-looking oak, was excessively lofty, vaulted, and
+elaborately fretted with the wildest and most grotesque specimens of a
+semi-Gothic, semi-Druidical device. From out the most central recess of
+this melancholy vaulting depended, by a single chain of gold with long
+links, a huge censer of the same metal, Saracenic in pattern, and with
+many perforations so contrived that there writhed in and out of them, as
+if endued with a serpent vitality, a continual succession of
+parti-colored fires.</p>
+
+<p>Some few ottomans and golden candelabra of Eastern figure were in
+various stations about; and there was the couch, too&mdash;the bridal
+couch&mdash;of an Indian model, and low, and sculptured of solid ebony, with
+a pall-like canopy above. In each of the angles of the chamber stood on
+end a gigantic sarcophagus of black granite, from the tombs of the kings
+over against Luxor, with their aged lids full of immemorial sculpture.
+But in the draping of the apartment lay, alas! the chief fantasy of all.
+The lofty walls, gigantic in height&mdash;even unproportionably so&mdash;were hung
+from summit to foot in vast folds with a heavy and massive-looking
+tapestry&mdash;tapestry of a material which was found alike as a carpet on
+the floor, as a covering for the ottomans and the ebony bed, as a canopy
+for the bed, and as the gorgeous volutes of the curtains which partially
+shaded the window. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> material was the richest cloth of gold. It was
+spotted all over, at irregular intervals, with arabesque figures, about
+a foot in diameter, and wrought upon the cloth in patterns of the most
+jetty black. But these figures partook of the true character of the
+arabesque only when regarded from a single point of view. By a
+contrivance now common, and indeed traceable to a very remote period of
+antiquity, they were made changeable in aspect. To one entering the room
+they bore the appearance of simple monstrosities, but upon a farther
+advance this appearance gradually departed; and, step by step as the
+visitor moved his station in the chamber he saw himself surrounded by an
+endless succession of the ghastly forms which belong to the superstition
+of the Norman, or arise in the guilty slumbers of the monk. The
+phantasmagoric effect was vastly heightened by the artificial
+introduction of a strong continual current of wind behind the
+draperies&mdash;giving a hideous and uneasy animation to the whole.</p>
+
+<p>In halls such as these&mdash;in a bridal chamber such as this&mdash;I passed, with
+the Lady of Tremaine, the unhallowed hours of the first month of our
+marriage&mdash;passed them with but little disquietude. That my wife dreaded
+the fierce moodiness of my temper, that she shunned me, and loved me but
+little, I could not help perceiving; but it gave me rather pleasure than
+otherwise. I loathed her with a hatred belonging more to demon than to
+man. My memory flew back&mdash;oh, with what intensity of regret!&mdash;to Ligeia,
+the beloved, the august, the beautiful, the entombed. I revelled in
+recollections of her purity, of her wisdom, of her lofty, her ethereal
+nature, of her passionate, her idolatrous love. Now, then, did my<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>
+spirit fully and freely burn with more than all the fires of her own. In
+the excitement of my opium dreams (for I was habitually fettered in the
+shackles of the drug) I would call aloud upon her name, during the
+silence of the night, or among the sheltered recesses of the glens by
+day, as if, through the wild eagerness, the solemn passion, the
+consuming ardor of my longing for the departed, I could restore her to
+the pathway she had abandoned&mdash;ah, could it be for ever?&mdash;upon the
+earth.</p>
+
+<p>About the commencement of the second month of the marriage the Lady
+Rowena was attacked with sudden illness, from which her recovery was
+slow. The fever which consumed her rendered her nights uneasy; and in
+her perturbed state of half-slumber she spoke of sounds and of motions
+in and about the chamber of the turret which I concluded had no
+origin save in the distemper of her fancy, or perhaps in the
+phantasmagoric influences of the chamber itself. She became at length
+convalescent&mdash;finally, well. Yet but a brief period elapsed ere a second
+more violent disorder again threw her upon a bed of suffering, and from
+this attack her frame, at all times feeble, never altogether recovered.
+Her illnesses were, after this epoch, of alarming character and of more
+alarming recurrence, defying alike the knowledge and the great exertions
+of her physicians. With the increase of the chronic disease, which had
+thus, apparently, taken too sure hold upon her constitution to be
+eradicated by human means, I could not fail to observe a similar
+increase in the nervous irritation of her temperament, and in her
+excitability by trivial causes of fear. She spoke again, and now more
+frequently and pertinaciously, of the sounds&mdash;of the slight sounds&mdash;and
+of the unusual<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> motions among the tapestries, to which she had formerly
+alluded.</p>
+
+<p>One night near the closing in of September she pressed this distressing
+subject with more than usual emphasis upon my attention. She had just
+awakened from an unquiet slumber, and I had been watching, with feelings
+half of anxiety, half of vague terror, the workings of her emaciated
+countenance. I sat by the side of her ebony bed, upon one of the
+ottomans of India. She partly arose, and spoke, in an earnest low
+whisper, of sounds which she then heard, but which I could not hear, of
+motions which she then saw, but which I could not perceive. The wind was
+rushing hurriedly behind the tapestries, and I wished to show her (what,
+let me confess it, I could not all believe) that those almost
+inarticulate breathings, and those very gentle variations of the figures
+upon the wall, were but the natural effects of that customary rushing of
+the wind. But a deadly pallor overspreading her face had proved to me
+that my exertions to reassure her would be fruitless. She appeared to be
+fainting, and no attendants were within call. I remembered where was
+deposited a decanter of light wine which had been ordered by her
+physicians, and hastened across the chamber to procure it. But as I
+stepped beneath the light of the censer, two circumstances of a
+startling nature attracted my attention. I had felt that some palpable
+although invisible object had passed lightly by my person; and I saw
+that there lay upon the golden carpet, in the very middle of the rich
+luster thrown from the censer, a shadow&mdash;a faint, indefinite shadow of
+angelic aspect, such as might be fancied for the shadow of a shade. But
+I was wild with the excitement of an immoderate dose of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> opium, and
+heeded these things but little, nor spoke of them to Rowena. Having
+found the wine, I recrossed the chamber and poured out a gobletful which
+I held to the lips of the fainting lady. She had now partially
+recovered, however, and took the vessel herself, while I sank upon an
+ottoman near me, with my eyes fastened upon her person. It was then that
+I became distinctly aware of a gentle footfall upon the carpet and near
+the couch; and in a second after as Rowena was in the act of raising the
+wine to her lips I saw, or may have dreamed that I saw, fall within the
+goblet, as if from some invisible spring in the atmosphere of the room,
+three or four large drops of a brilliant and ruby-colored fluid. If this
+I saw&mdash;not so Rowena. She swallowed the wine unhesitatingly, and I
+forbore to speak to her of a circumstance which must, after all, I
+considered, have been but the suggestion of a vivid imagination,
+rendered morbidly active by the terror of the lady, by the opium, and by
+the hour.</p>
+
+<p>Yet I cannot conceal it from my own perception that, immediately
+subsequent to the fall of the ruby-drops, a rapid change for the worse
+took place in the disorder of my wife, so that, on the third subsequent
+night the hands of her menials prepared her for the tomb, and on the
+fourth I sat alone with her shrouded body in that fantastic chamber
+which had received her as my bride. Wild visions, opium-engendered,
+fluttered, shadow-like, before me. I gazed with unquiet eye upon the
+sarcophagi in the angles of the room, upon the varying figures of the
+drapery, and upon the writhing of the parti-colored fires in the censer
+overhead. My eyes then fell, as I called to mind the circumstances of a
+former night,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> to the spot beneath the glare of the censer where I had
+seen the faint traces of the shadow. It was there, however, no longer;
+and breathing with greater freedom, I turned my glances to the pallid
+and rigid figure upon the bed. Then rushed upon me a thousand memories
+of Ligeia&mdash;and then came back upon my heart with the turbulent violence
+of a flood the whole of that unutterable woe with which I had regarded
+<i>her</i> thus enshrouded. The night waned; and still, with a bosom full of
+bitter thoughts of the one only and supremely beloved, I remained gazing
+upon the body of Rowena.</p>
+
+<p>It might have been midnight, or perhaps earlier, or later&mdash;for I had
+taken no note of time&mdash;when a sob, low, gentle, but very distinct,
+startled me from my revery. I <i>felt</i> that it came from the bed of
+ebony&mdash;the bed of death. I listened in an agony of superstitious
+terror&mdash;but there was no repetition of the sound. I strained my vision
+to detect any motion in the corpse&mdash;but there was not the slightest
+perceptible. Yet I could not have been deceived. I <i>had</i> heard the
+noise, however faint, and my soul was awakened within me. I resolutely
+and perseveringly kept my attention riveted upon the body. Many minutes
+elapsed before any circumstance occurred tending to throw light upon the
+mystery. At length it became evident that a slight, a very feeble and
+barely noticeable tinge of color had flushed up within the cheeks, and
+along the sunken small veins of the eyelids. Through a species of
+unutterable horror and awe, for which the language of mortality has no
+sufficiently energetic expression, I felt my heart cease to beat, my
+limbs grow rigid where I sat. Yet a sense of duty finally operated to
+restore my self-possession.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> I could no longer doubt that we had been
+precipitate in our preparations&mdash;that Rowena still lived. It was
+necessary that some immediate exertion be made, yet the turret was
+altogether apart from the portion of the abbey tenanted by the
+servants&mdash;there were none within call, and I had no means of summoning
+them to my aid without leaving the room for many minutes&mdash;and this I
+could not venture to do. I therefore struggled alone in my endeavors to
+call back the spirit still hovering. In a short period it was certain,
+however, that a relapse had taken place, the color disappeared from both
+eyelid and cheek, leaving a wanness even more than that of marble; the
+lips became doubly shrivelled and pinched up in the ghastly expression
+of death; a repulsive clamminess and coldness overspread rapidly the
+surface of the body; and all the usual rigorous stiffness immediately
+supervened. I fell back with a shudder upon the couch from which I had
+been so startlingly aroused, and again gave myself up to passionate
+waking visions of Ligeia.</p>
+
+<p>An hour thus elapsed, when&mdash;could it be possible?&mdash;I was a second time
+aware of some vague sound issuing from the region of the bed. I
+listened&mdash;in extremity of horror. The sound came again&mdash;it was a sigh.
+Rushing to the corpse, I saw&mdash;distinctly saw&mdash;a tremor upon the lips. In
+a minute afterward they relaxed, disclosing a bright line of the pearly
+teeth. Amazement now struggled in my bosom with the profound awe which
+had hitherto reigned there alone. I felt that my vision grew dim, that
+my reason wandered, and it was only by a violent effort that I at length
+succeeded in nerving myself to the task which duty thus once more had
+pointed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> out. There was now a partial glow upon the forehead and upon
+the cheek and throat, a perceptible warmth pervaded the whole frame,
+there was even a slight pulsation at the heart. The lady <i>lived</i>; and
+with redoubled ardor I betook myself to the task of restoration. I
+chafed and bathed the temples and the hands and used every exertion
+which experience and no little medical reading could suggest. But in
+vain. Suddenly, the color fled, the pulsation ceased, the lips resumed
+the expression of the dead, and, in an instant afterward, the whole body
+took upon itself the icy chilliness, the livid hue, the intense
+rigidity, the sunken outline, and all the loathsome peculiarities of
+that which has been, for many days, a tenant of the tomb.</p>
+
+<p>And again I sunk into visions of Ligeia&mdash;and again, (what marvel that I
+shudder while I write?) <i>again</i> there reached my ears a low sob from the
+region of the ebony bed. But why should I minutely detail the
+unspeakable horrors of that night? Why should I pause to relate how,
+time after time, until near the period of the gray dawn, this hideous
+drama of revivification was repeated; how each terrific relapse was only
+into a sterner and apparently more irredeemable death; how each agony
+wore the aspect of a struggle with some invisible foe; and how each
+struggle was succeeded by I know not what of wild change in the personal
+appearance of the corpse? Let me hurry to a conclusion.</p>
+
+<p>The greater part of the fearful night had worn away, and she who had
+been dead, once again stirred&mdash;and now more vigorously than hitherto,
+although arousing from a dissolution more appalling in its utter
+hopelessness than any. I had long ceased to struggle or to move,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> and
+remained sitting rigidly upon the ottoman, a helpless prey to a whirl of
+violent emotions, of which extreme awe was perhaps the least terrible,
+the least consuming. The corpse, I repeat, stirred, and now more
+vigorously than before. The hues of life flushed up with unwonted energy
+into the countenance, the limbs relaxed, and, save that the eyelids were
+yet pressed heavily together and that the bandages and draperies of the
+grave still imparted their charnel character to the figure, I might have
+dreamed that Rowena had indeed shaken off utterly the fetters of Death.
+But if this idea was not even then altogether adopted, I could at least
+doubt no longer, when arising from the bed, tottering, with feeble
+steps, with closed eyes, and with the manner of one bewildered in a
+dream, the thing that was enshrouded advanced boldly and palpably into
+the middle of the apartment.</p>
+
+<p>I trembled not&mdash;I stirred not&mdash;for a crowd of unutterable fancies
+connected with the air, the stature, the demeanor of the figure, rushing
+hurriedly through my brain, had paralyzed&mdash;had chilled me into stone. I
+stirred not&mdash;but gazed upon the apparition. There was a mad disorder in
+my thoughts&mdash;a tumult unappeasable. Could it, indeed, be the living
+Rowena who confronted me? Could it indeed be Rowena at all&mdash;the
+fair-haired, the blue-eyed Lady Rowena Trevanion of Tremaine? Why, <i>why</i>
+should I doubt it? The bandage lay heavily about the mouth&mdash;but then
+might it not be the mouth of the breathing Lady of Tremaine? And the
+cheeks&mdash;there were the roses as in her noon of life&mdash;yes, these might
+indeed be the fair cheeks of the living Lady of Tremaine. And the chin,
+with its<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> dimples, as in health, might it not be hers?&mdash;but <i>had she
+then grown taller since her malady</i>? What inexpressible madness seized
+me with that thought! One bound, and I had reached her feet. Shrinking
+from my touch she let fall from her head, unloosened, the ghastly
+cerements which had confined it, and there streamed forth into the
+rushing atmosphere of the chamber huge masses of long and dishevelled
+hair; <i>it was blacker than the raven wings of midnight</i>! And now slowly
+opened the eyes of the figure which stood before me. "Here then, at
+least," I shrieked aloud, "can I never&mdash;can I never be mistaken&mdash;these
+are the full and the black, and the wild eyes of my lost love&mdash;of the
+Lady&mdash;of the <span class="smcap">Lady Ligeia</span>."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_SYLPH_AND_THE_FATHER5" id="THE_SYLPH_AND_THE_FATHER5"></a>THE SYLPH AND THE FATHER<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a></h2>
+
+<h3>By <span class="smcap">Elsa Barker</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>Passing yesterday along the line where the great French army stands
+before its powerful opponent, and marking the spirit of courage and
+aspiration which makes it seem like a long line of living light, I saw a
+familiar face in the regions outside the physical.</p>
+
+<p>I paused, highly pleased at the encounter, and the sylph&mdash;for it was a
+sylph whom I met&mdash;paused also with a little smile of recognition.</p>
+
+<p>Do you recall in my former book the story of a sylph, Meriline, who was
+the companion and familiar of a student of magic who lived in the rue de
+Vaugirard in Paris?</p>
+
+<p>It was Meriline that I met above the line of light which shows to
+wanderers in the astral regions where the soldiers of <i>la belle France</i>
+fight and die for the same ideal which inspired Jeanne d'Arc&mdash;to drive
+the foreigner out of France.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is your friend and master?" I asked the sylph, and she pointed
+below to a trench which spoke loud its determination to conquer.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I am here, to be still with him," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"And can you speak to him here?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I can always speak with him," she answered. "I have been very useful to
+him&mdash;and to France."</p>
+
+<p>"To France?" I enquired, with growing interest.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes! When his commanding officer wants to know what is being
+plotted over there, he often asks my friend, and my friend asks me."</p>
+
+<p>"Truly," I thought, "the French are an inspired people, when the
+officers of armies ask guidance from the realm of the invisible! But had
+not Jeanne her visions?"</p>
+
+<p>"And how do you gain the information desired?" I asked, drawing nearer
+to Meriline, who seemed more serious than when we met some years before
+in Paris.</p>
+
+<p>"Why," she answered, "I go over there and look around me. I have learned
+what to look for, he has taught me, and when I bring him news he rewards
+me with more love."</p>
+
+<p>"And do you love him still, as of old?"</p>
+
+<p>"As of old?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, as you did back there in Paris."</p>
+
+<p>"Time must have passed slowly with you," said the sylph, "if you call a
+few years ago 'as of old'."</p>
+
+<p>"Are a few years, then, as nothing?"</p>
+
+<p>"A few years are as nothing to me," she replied. "I have lived a long
+time."</p>
+
+<p>"And do you know the future of your friend?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>A puzzled look came over the face of Meriline, and she said, slowly:</p>
+
+<p>"I used to know everything that would happen to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> him, because I could
+read his will, and whatever he willed came to pass; but since we have
+been out here he seems to have lost his will."</p>
+
+<p>"Lost his will!" I exclaimed, in surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, lost his will; for he prays continually to a great Being whom he
+loves far more than me, and he always prays one prayer, 'Thy will be
+done!' It used to be his will which was always done; but now, as I say,
+he seems to have lost his will."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps," I said, "it is true of the will as was once said of the life,
+and he that loses his will shall find it."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope he will find it soon," she answered, "for in the old days he was
+always giving me interesting things to do, to help him achieve the
+purposes of his will, and now he only sends me over there. I don't like
+<i>over there</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because my friend is menaced by something over there."</p>
+
+<p>"And what has his will to do with that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, even about that, he says all day to the great Being that he loves
+so much more than me, 'Thy will be done.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think you could learn to say it, too?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I say it after him sometimes; but I don't know what it means."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you never heard of God?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have heard of many gods, of Isis and Osiris and Set, and of Horus,
+the son of Osiris."</p>
+
+<p>"And is it to one of these that he says, 'Thy will be done'?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no! It is not to any of the gods that he used to call upon in his
+magical working. This is some new god that he has found."</p>
+
+<p>"Or the oldest of all gods that he has returned to," I suggested. "What
+does he call Him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Our Father who art in heaven."</p>
+
+<p>"If you also should learn to say 'Thy will be done' to our Father who is
+in heaven," I said, "it might help you toward the attainment of that
+soul you were wanting and waiting for, when last we met in Paris."</p>
+
+<p>"How could our Father help me?"</p>
+
+<p>"It was He who gave souls to men," I said.</p>
+
+<p>The eyes of the sylph were brilliant with something almost human.</p>
+
+<p>"And could He give a soul to me?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is said that He <i>can</i> do anything."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I will ask Him for a soul."</p>
+
+<p>"But to ask Him for a soul," I said, "is not to pray the prayer your
+friend prays."</p>
+
+<p>"He only says&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know. Suppose you say it after him."</p>
+
+<p>"I will, if you will tell me what it means. I like to do what my friend
+does."</p>
+
+<p>"'Thy will be done,'" I said, "when addressed to the Father in heaven,
+means that we give up all our desires, whether for pleasure or love or
+happiness, or anything else, and lay all those desires at His feet,
+sacrificing all we have or hope for to Him, because we love Him more
+than ourselves."</p>
+
+<p>"That is a strange way to get what one desires," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"It is not done to get what one desires," I answered.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But what is it done for?"</p>
+
+<p>"For love of the Father in heaven."</p>
+
+<p>"But I do not know the Father in heaven. What is He?"</p>
+
+<p>"He is the Source and the Goal of the being of your friend. He is the
+One that your friend will re-become some day, if he can forever say to
+Him, Thy will be done."</p>
+
+<p>"The One he will re-become?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, for when he blends his will with that of the Father in heaven, the
+Father in heaven dwells in his heart and the two become one."</p>
+
+<p>"Then is the Father in heaven really the Self of my friend?"</p>
+
+<p>"The greatest philosopher could not have expressed it more truly," I
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"Then indeed do I love the Father in heaven," breathed the sylph, "and I
+will say now every day and all day, 'Thy will be done' to Him."</p>
+
+<p>"Even if it separates you from your friend?"</p>
+
+<p>"How can it separate me from my friend, if the Father is the Self of
+him?"</p>
+
+<p>"I would that all angels were your equal in learning," I said.</p>
+
+<p>But Meriline had turned from me in utter forgetfulness, and was saying
+over and over, with joy in her uplifted face, "Thy will be done! Thy
+will be done!"</p>
+
+<p>"Truly," I said to myself, as I passed along the line, "he who worships
+the Father as the Self of the beloved has already acquired a soul."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="A_GHOST6" id="A_GHOST6"></a>A GHOST<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">By Lafcadio Hearn</span></h3>
+
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p>Perhaps the man who never wanders away from the place of his birth may
+pass all his life without knowing ghosts; but the nomad is more than
+likely to make their acquaintance. I refer to the civilized nomad, whose
+wanderings are not prompted by hope of gain, nor determined by pleasure,
+but simply compelled by certain necessities of his being&mdash;the man whose
+inner secret nature is totally at variance with the stable conditions of
+a society to which he belongs only by accident. However intellectually
+trained, he must always remain the slave of singular impulses which have
+no rational source, and which will often amaze him no less by their
+mastering power than by their continuous savage opposition to his every
+material interest. These may, perhaps, be traced back to some ancestral
+habit&mdash;be explained by self-evident hereditary tendencies. Or perhaps
+they may not,&mdash;in which event the victim can only surmise himself the
+<i>Imago</i> of some pre-existent larval aspiration&mdash;the full development of
+desires long dormant in a chain of more limited lives.</p>
+
+<p>Assuredly the nomadic impulses differ in every member of the class, take
+infinite variety from individual<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> sensitiveness to environment&mdash;the line
+of least resistance for one being that of greatest resistance for
+another; no two courses of true nomadism can ever be wholly the same.
+Diversified of necessity both impulse and direction, even as human
+nature is diversified! Never since consciousness of time began were two
+beings born who possessed exactly the same quality of voice, the same
+precise degree of nervous impressibility, or, in brief, the same
+combination of those viewless force-storing molecules which shape and
+poise themselves in sentient substance. Vain, therefore, all striving to
+particularize the curious psychology of such existences; at the very
+utmost it is possible only to describe such impulses and preceptions of
+nomadism as lie within the very small range of one's own observation.
+And whatever in these is strictly personal can have little interest or
+value except in so far as it holds something in common with the great
+general experience of restless lives. To such experience may belong, I
+think, one ultimate result of all those irrational partings,
+self-wrecking, sudden isolations, abrupt severances from all attachment,
+which form the history of the nomad&mdash;the knowledge that a strong silence
+is ever deepening and expanding about one's life, and that in that
+silence there are ghosts.</p>
+
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>Oh! the first vague charm, the first sunny illusion of some fair
+city, when vistas of unknown streets all seem leading to the
+realization of a hope you dare not even whisper; when even the shadows
+look beautiful, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> strange façades appear to smile good omen through
+light of gold! And those first winning relations with men, while you are
+still a stranger, and only the better and the brighter side of their
+nature is turned to you! All is yet a delightful, luminous
+indefiniteness&mdash;sensation of streets and of men&mdash;like some beautifully
+tinted photograph slightly out of focus.</p>
+
+<p>Then the slow solid sharpening of details all about you, thrusting
+through illusion and dispelling it, growing keener and harder day by day
+through long dull seasons; while your feet learn to remember all
+asperities of pavements, and your eyes all physiognomy of buildings and
+of persons&mdash;failures of masonry, furrowed lines of pain. Thereafter only
+the aching of monotony intolerable, and the hatred of sameness grown
+dismal, and dread of the merciless, inevitable, daily and hourly
+repetition of things; while those impulses of unrest, which are Nature's
+urgings through that ancestral experience which lives in each one of
+us&mdash;outcries of sea and peak and sky to man&mdash;ever make wilder appeal.
+Strong friendships may have been formed; but there finally comes a day
+when even these can give no consolation for the pain of monotony, and
+you feel that in order to live you must decide, regardless of result, to
+shake forever from your feet the familiar dust of that place.</p>
+
+<p>And, nevertheless, in the hour of departure you feel a pang. As train or
+steamer bears you away from the city and its myriad associations, the
+old illusive impression will quiver back about you for a moment&mdash;not as
+if to mock the expectation of the past, but softly, touchingly, as if
+pleading to you to stay; and such a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> sadness, such a tenderness may come
+to you, as one knows after reconciliation with a friend misapprehended
+and unjustly judged. But you will never more see those streets&mdash;except
+in dreams.</p>
+
+<p>Through sleep only they will open again before you, steeped in the
+illusive vagueness of the first long-past day, peopled only by friends
+outstretching to you. Soundlessly you will tread those shadowy pavements
+many times, to knock in thought, perhaps, at doors which the dead will
+open to you. But with the passing of years all becomes dim&mdash;so dim that
+even asleep you know 'tis only a ghost-city, with streets going to
+nowhere. And finally whatever is left of it becomes confused and blended
+with cloudy memories of other cities&mdash;one endless bewilderment of filmy
+architecture in which nothing is distinctly recognizable, though the
+whole gives the sensation of having been seen before, ever so long ago.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Meantime, in the course of wanderings more or less aimless, there has
+slowly grown upon you a suspicion of being haunted&mdash;so frequently does a
+certain hazy presence intrude itself upon the visual memory. This,
+however, appears to gain rather than to lose in definiteness; with each
+return its visibility seems to increase. And the suspicion that you may
+be haunted gradually develops into a certainty.</p>
+
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>You are haunted&mdash;whether your way lie through the brown gloom of London
+winter, or the azure splendor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> of an equatorial day&mdash;whether your steps
+be tracked in snows, or in the burning black sand of a tropic
+beach&mdash;whether you rest beneath the swart shade of Northern pines, or
+under spidery umbrages of palm&mdash;you are haunted ever and everywhere by a
+certain gentle presence. There is nothing fearsome in this haunting&mdash;the
+gentlest face, the kindliest voice&mdash;oddly familiar and distinct, though
+feeble as the hum of a bee.</p>
+
+<p>But it tantalizes&mdash;this haunting&mdash;like those sudden surprises of
+sensation <i>within</i> us, though seemingly not <i>of</i> us, which some dreamers
+have sought to interpret as inherited remembrances, recollections of
+preëxistence. Vainly you ask yourself, "Whose voice? Whose face?" It is
+neither young nor old, the Face; it has a vapory indefinableness that
+leaves it a riddle; its diaphaneity reveals no particular tint; perhaps
+you may not even be quite sure whether it has a beard. But its
+expression is always gracious, passionless, smiling&mdash;like the smiling of
+unknown friends in dreams, with infinite indulgence for any folly, even
+a dream-folly. Except in that you cannot permanently banish it, the
+presence offers no positive resistance to your will; it accepts each
+caprice with obedience; it meets your every whim with angelic patience.
+It is never critical, never makes plaint even by a look, never proves
+irksome; yet you cannot ignore it, because of a certain queer power it
+possesses to make something stir and quiver in your heart&mdash;like an old
+vague sweet regret&mdash;something buried alive which will not die. And so
+often does this happen that desire to solve the riddle becomes a pain;
+that you finally find yourself making supplication to the Presence;
+addressing to it questions which it will never answer<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> directly, but
+only by a smile or by words having no relation to the asking&mdash;words
+enigmatic, which make mysterious agitation in old forsaken fields of
+memory, even as a wind betimes, over wide wastes of marsh, sets all the
+grasses whispering about nothing. But you will question on, untiringly,
+through the nights and days of years:</p>
+
+<p>"Who are you? What are you? What is this weird relation that you bear to
+me? All you say to me I feel that I have heard before, but where? But
+when? By what name am I to call you, since you will answer to none that
+I remember? Surely you do not live; yet I know the sleeping-places of
+all my dead, and yours I do not know! Neither are you any dream&mdash;for
+dreams distort and change; and you, you are ever the same. Nor are you
+any hallucination; for all my senses are still vivid and strong. This
+only I know beyond doubt&mdash;that you are of the Past; you belong to
+memory&mdash;but to the memory of what dead suns?"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Then, some day or night, unexpectedly, there comes to you at least, with
+a soft swift tingling shock as of fingers invisible, the knowledge that
+the Face is not the memory of any one face; but a multiple image formed
+of the traits of many dear faces, superimposed by remembrance, and
+interblended by affection into one ghostly personality&mdash;infinitely
+sympathetic, phantasmally beautiful&mdash;a Composite of recollections! And
+the Voice is the echo of no one voice, but the echoing of many voices,
+molten into a single utterance, a single impossible tone, thin through
+remoteness of time, but inexpressibly caressing.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<p>Thou most gentle Composite!&mdash;thou nameless and exquisite Unreality,
+thrilled into semblance of being from out the sum of all lost
+sympathies!&mdash;thou Ghost of all dear vanished things, with thy vain
+appeal of eyes that looked for my coming, and vague faint pleading of
+voices against oblivion, and thin electric touch of buried hands&mdash;must
+thou pass away forever with my passing, even as the Shadow that I cast,
+O thou Shadowing of Souls?</p>
+
+<p>I am not sure. For there comes to me this dream&mdash;that if aught in human
+life hold power to pass, like a swerved sunray through interstellar
+spaces, into the infinite mystery, to send one sweet strong vibration
+through immemorial Time, might not some luminous future be peopled with
+such as thou? And in so far as that which makes for us the subtlest
+charm of being can lend one choral note to the Symphony of the
+Unknowable Purpose&mdash;in so much might there not endure also to greet
+thee, another Composite One&mdash;embodying, indeed, the comeliness of many
+lives, yet keeping likewise some visible memory of all that may have
+been gracious in this thy friend?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_EYES_OF_THE_PANTHER7" id="THE_EYES_OF_THE_PANTHER7"></a>THE EYES OF THE PANTHER<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a></h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">By Ambrose Bierce</span></h3>
+
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<h3>ONE DOES NOT ALWAYS MARRY WHEN INSANE</h3>
+
+<p>A man and a woman&mdash;nature had done the grouping&mdash;sat on a rustic seat,
+in the late afternoon. The man was middle-aged, slender, swarthy, with
+the expression of a poet and the complexion of a pirate&mdash;a man at whom
+one would look again. The woman was young, blonde, graceful, with
+something in her figure and movements suggesting the word "lithe." She
+was habited in a gray gown with odd brown markings in the texture. She
+may have been beautiful; one could not readily say, for her eyes denied
+attention to all else. They were gray-green, long and narrow, with an
+expression defying analysis. One could only know that they were
+disquieting. Cleopatra may have had such eyes.</p>
+
+<p>The man and the woman talked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said the woman, "I love you, God knows! But marry you, no. I
+cannot, will not."</p>
+
+<p>"Irene, you have said that many times, yet always have denied me a
+reason. I've a right to know, to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> understand, to feel and prove my
+fortitude if I have it. Give me a reason."</p>
+
+<p>"For loving you?"</p>
+
+<p>The woman was smiling through her tears and her pallor. That did not
+stir any sense of humor in the man.</p>
+
+<p>"No; there is no reason for that. A reason for not marrying me. I've a
+right to know. I must know. I will know!"</p>
+
+<p>He had risen and was standing before her with clenched hands, on his
+face a frown&mdash;it might have been called a scowl. He looked as if he
+might attempt to learn by strangling her. She smiled no more&mdash;merely sat
+looking up into his face with a fixed, set regard that was utterly
+without emotion or sentiment. Yet it had something in it that tamed his
+resentment and made him shiver.</p>
+
+<p>"You are determined to have my reason?" she asked in a tone that was
+entirely mechanical&mdash;a tone that might have been her look made audible.</p>
+
+<p>"If you please&mdash;if I'm not asking too much."</p>
+
+<p>Apparently this lord of creation was yielding some part of his dominion
+over his co-creature.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, you shall know: I am insane."</p>
+
+<p>The man started, then looked incredulous and was conscious that he ought
+to be amused. But, again, the sense of humor failed him in his need and
+despite his disbelief he was profoundly disturbed by that which he did
+not believe. Between our convictions and our feelings there is no good
+understanding.</p>
+
+<p>"That is what the physicians would say," the woman continued, "if they
+knew. I might myself prefer to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> call it a case of 'possession.' Sit down
+and hear what I have to say."</p>
+
+<p>The man silently resumed his seat beside her on the rustic bench by the
+wayside. Over against them on the eastern side of the valley the hills
+were already sunset-flushed and the stillness all about was of that
+peculiar quality that foretells the twilight. Something of its
+mysterious and significant solemnity had imparted itself to the man's
+mood. In the spiritual, as in the material world, are signs and presages
+of night. Rarely meeting her look, and whenever he did so conscious of
+the indefinable dread with which, despite their feline beauty, her eyes
+always affected him, Jenner Brading listened in silence to the story
+told by Irene Marlowe. In deference to the reader's possible prejudice
+against the artless method of an unpracticed historian the author
+ventures to substitute his own version for hers.</p>
+
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<h3>A ROOM MAY BE TOO NARROW FOR THREE, THOUGH ONE IS OUTSIDE</h3>
+
+<p>In a little log house containing a single room sparely and rudely
+furnished, crouching on the floor against one of the walls, was a woman,
+clasping to her breast a child. Outside, a dense unbroken forest
+extended for many miles in every direction. This was at night and the
+room was black dark; no human eye could have discerned the woman and the
+child. Yet they were observed, narrowly, vigilantly, with never even a
+momentary<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> slackening of attention; and that is the pivotal fact upon
+which this narrative turns.</p>
+
+<p>Charles Marlowe was of the class, now extinct in this country, of
+woodmen pioneers&mdash;men who found their most acceptable surroundings in
+sylvan solitudes that stretched along the eastern slope of the
+Mississippi Valley, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. For more
+than a hundred years these men pushed ever westward, generation after
+generation, with rifle and ax, reclaiming from Nature and her savage
+children here and there an isolated acreage for the plow, no sooner
+reclaimed than surrendered to their less venturesome but more thrifty
+successors. At last they burst through the edge of the forest into the
+open country and vanished as if they had fallen over a cliff. The
+woodman pioneer is no more; the pioneer of the plains&mdash;he whose easy
+task it was to subdue for occupancy two-thirds of the country in a
+single generation&mdash;is another and inferior creation. With Charles
+Marlowe in the wilderness, sharing the dangers, hardships and privations
+of that strange unprofitable life, were his wife and child, to whom, in
+the manner of his class in which the domestic virtues were a religion,
+he was passionately attached. The woman was still young enough to be
+comely, new enough to the awful isolation of her lot to be cheerful. By
+withholding the large capacity for happiness which the simple
+satisfactions of the forest life could not have filled, Heaven had dealt
+honorably with her. In her light household tasks, her child, her husband
+and her few foolish books, she found abundant provision for her needs.</p>
+
+<p>One morning in midsummer Marlowe took down his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> rifle from the wooden
+hooks on the wall and signified his intention of getting game.</p>
+
+<p>"We've meat enough," said the wife; "please don't go out to-day. I
+dreamed last night, O, such a dreadful thing! I cannot recollect it, but
+I'm almost sure that it will come to pass if you go out."</p>
+
+<p>It is painful to confess that Marlowe received this solemn statement
+with less of gravity than was due to the mysterious nature of the
+calamity foreshadowed. In truth, he laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Try to remember," he said. "Maybe you dreamed that Baby had lost the
+power of speech."</p>
+
+<p>The conjecture was obviously suggested by the fact that Baby, clinging
+to the fringe of his hunting-coat with all her ten pudgy thumbs, was at
+that moment uttering her sense of the situation in a series of exultant
+goo-goos inspired by sight of her father's raccoon-skin cap.</p>
+
+<p>The woman yielded: lacking the gift of humor she could not hold out
+against his kindly badinage. So, with a kiss for the mother and a kiss
+for the child, he left the house and closed the door upon his happiness
+forever.</p>
+
+<p>At nightfall he had not returned. The woman prepared supper and waited.
+Then she put Baby to bed and sang softly to her until she slept. By this
+time the fire on the hearth, at which she had cooked supper, had burned
+out and the room was lighted by a single candle. This she afterward
+placed in the open window as a sign and welcome to the hunter if he
+should approach from that side. She had thoughtfully closed and barred
+the door against such wild animals as might prefer it to an open
+window&mdash;of the habits of beasts of prey in entering<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> a house uninvited
+she was not advised, though with true female prevision she may have
+considered the possibility of their entrance by way of the chimney. As
+the night wore on she became not less anxious, but more drowsy, and at
+last rested her arms upon the bed by the child and her head upon the
+arms. The candle in the window burned down to the socket, sputtered and
+flared a moment and went out unobserved; for the woman slept and
+dreamed.</p>
+
+<p>In her dreams she sat beside the cradle of a second child. The first one
+was dead. The father was dead. The home in the forest was lost and the
+dwelling in which she lived was unfamiliar. There were heavy oaken
+doors, always closed, and outside the windows, fastened into the thick
+stone walls, were iron bars, obviously (so she thought) a provision
+against Indians. All this she noted with an infinite self-pity, but
+without surprise&mdash;an emotion unknown in dreams. The child in the cradle
+was invisible under its coverlet which something impelled her to remove.
+She did so, disclosing the face of a wild animal! In the shock of this
+dreadful revelation the dreamer awoke, trembling in the darkness of her
+cabin in the wood.</p>
+
+<p>As a sense of her actual surroundings came slowly back to her she felt
+for the child that was not a dream, and assured herself by its breathing
+that all was well with it; nor could she forbear to pass a hand lightly
+across its face. Then, moved by some impulse for which she probably
+could not have accounted, she rose and took the sleeping babe in her
+arms, holding it close against her breast. The head of the child's cot
+was against the wall to which the woman now turned her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> back as she
+stood. Lifting her eyes she saw two bright objects starring the darkness
+with a reddish-green glow. She took them to be two coals on the hearth,
+but with her returning sense of direction came the disquieting
+consciousness that they were not in that quarter of the room, moreover
+were too high, being nearly at the level of the eyes&mdash;of her own eyes.
+For these were the eyes of a panther.</p>
+
+<p>The beast was at the open window directly opposite and not five paces
+away. Nothing but those terrible eyes was visible, but in the dreadful
+tumult of her feelings as the situation disclosed itself to her
+understanding she somehow knew that the animal was standing on its
+hinder feet, supporting itself with its paws on the window-ledge. That
+signified a malign interest&mdash;not the mere gratification of an indolent
+curiosity. The consciousness of the attitude was an added horror,
+accentuating the menace of those awful eyes, in whose steadfast fire her
+strength and courage were alike consumed. Under their silent questioning
+she shuddered and turned sick. Her knees failed her, and by degrees,
+instinctively striving to avoid a sudden movement that might bring the
+beast upon her, she sank to the floor, crouched against the wall and
+tried to shield the babe with her trembling body without withdrawing her
+gaze from the luminous orbs that were killing her. No thought of her
+husband came to her in her agony&mdash;no hope nor suggestion of rescue or
+escape. Her capacity for thought and feeling had narrowed to the
+dimensions of a single emotion&mdash;fear of the animal's spring, of the
+impact of its body, the buffeting of its great arms, the feel of its
+teeth in her throat, the mangling of her babe.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> Motionless now and in
+absolute silence, she awaited her doom, the moments growing to hours, to
+years, to ages; and still those devilish eyes maintained their watch.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Returning to his cabin late at night with a deer on his shoulders
+Charles Marlowe tried the door. It did not yield. He knocked; there was
+no answer. He laid down his deer and went around to the window. As he
+turned the angle of the building he fancied he heard a sound as of
+stealthy footfalls and a rustling in the undergrowth of the forest, but
+they were too slight for certainty, even to his practiced ear.
+Approaching the window, and to his surprise finding it open, he threw
+his leg over the sill and entered. All was darkness and silence. He
+groped his way to the fire-place, struck a match and lit a candle. Then
+he looked about. Cowering on the floor against a wall was his wife,
+clasping his child. As he sprang toward her she rose and broke into
+laughter, long, loud, and mechanical, devoid of gladness and devoid of
+sense&mdash;the laughter that is not out of keeping with the clanking of a
+chain. Hardly knowing what he did he extended his arms. She laid the
+babe in them. It was dead&mdash;pressed to death in its mother's embrace.</p>
+
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<h3>THE THEORY OF THE DEFENSE</h3>
+
+<p>That is what occurred during a night in a forest, but not all of it did
+Irene Marlowe relate to Jenner Brading; not all of it was known to her.
+When she had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> concluded the sun was below the horizon and the long
+summer twilight had begun to deepen in the hollows of the land. For some
+moments Brading was silent, expecting the narrative to be carried
+forward to some definite connection with the conversation introducing
+it; but the narrator was as silent as he, her face averted, her hands
+clasping and unclasping themselves as they lay in her lap, with a
+singular suggestion of an activity independent of her will.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a sad, a terrible story," said Brading at last, "but I do not
+understand. You call Charles Marlowe father; that I know. That he is old
+before his time, broken by some great sorrow, I have seen, or thought I
+saw. But, pardon me, you said that you&mdash;that you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"That I am insane," said the girl, without a movement of head or body.</p>
+
+<p>"But, Irene, you say&mdash;please, dear, do not look away from me&mdash;you say
+that the child was dead, not demented."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that one&mdash;I am the second. I was born three months after that
+night, my mother being mercifully permitted to lay down her life in
+giving me mine."</p>
+
+<p>Brading was again silent; he was a trifle dazed and could not at once
+think of the right thing to say. Her face was still turned away. In his
+embarrassment he reached impulsively toward the hands that lay closing
+and unclosing in her lap, but something&mdash;he could not have said
+what&mdash;restrained him. He then remembered, vaguely, that he had never
+altogether cared to take her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it likely," she resumed, "that a person born under<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> such
+circumstances is like others&mdash;is what you call sane?"</p>
+
+<p>Brading did not reply; he was preoccupied with a new thought that was
+taking shape in his mind&mdash;what a scientist would have called an
+hypothesis; a detective, a theory. It might throw an added light, albeit
+a lurid one, upon such doubt of her sanity as her own assertion had not
+dispelled.</p>
+
+<p>The country was still new and, outside the villages, sparsely populated.
+The professional hunter was still a familiar figure, and among his
+trophies were heads and pelts of the larger kinds of game. Tales
+variously credible of nocturnal meetings with savage animals in lonely
+roads were sometimes current, passed through the customary stages of
+growth and decay, and were forgotten. A recent addition to these popular
+apocrypha, originating, apparently, by spontaneous generation in several
+households, was of a panther which had frightened some of their members
+by looking in at windows by night. The yarn had caused its little ripple
+of excitement&mdash;had even attained to the distinction of a place in the
+local newspaper; but Brading had given it no attention. Its likeness to
+the story to which he had just listened now impressed him as perhaps
+more than accidental. Was it not possible that the one story had
+suggested the other&mdash;that finding congenial conditions in a morbid mind
+and a fertile fancy, it had grown to the tragic tale that he had heard?</p>
+
+<p>Brading recalled certain circumstances of the girl's history and
+disposition of which, with love's incuriosity, he had hitherto been
+heedless&mdash;such as her solitary life with her father, at whose house no
+one apparently was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> an acceptable visitor, and her strange fear of the
+night by which those who knew her best accounted for her never being
+seen after dark. Surely in such a mind imagination once kindled might
+burn with a lawless flame, penetrating and enveloping the entire
+structure. That she was mad, though the conviction gave him the acutest
+pain, he could no longer doubt; she had only mistaken an effect of her
+mental disorder for its cause, bringing into imaginary relation with her
+own personality the vagaries of the local myth-makers. With some vague
+intention of testing his new "theory," and no very definite notion of
+how to set about it he said gravely, but with hesitation:</p>
+
+<p>"Irene, dear, tell me&mdash;I beg you will not take offense, but tell me&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I have told you," she interrupted, speaking with a passionate
+earnestness that he had not known her to show, "I have already told you
+that we cannot marry; is anything else worth saying?"</p>
+
+<p>Before he could stop her she had sprung from her seat and without
+another word or look was gliding away among the trees toward her
+father's house. Brading had risen to detain her; he stood watching her
+in silence until she had vanished in the gloom. Suddenly he started as
+if he had been shot, his face took on an expression of amazement and
+alarm: in one of the black shadows into which she had disappeared he had
+caught a quick, brief glimpse of shining eyes! For an instant he was
+dazed and irresolute; then he dashed into the wood after her, shouting,
+"Irene, Irene, look out! The panther! The panther!"</p>
+
+<p>In a moment he had passed through the fringe of forest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> into open ground
+and saw the girl's gray skirt vanishing into her father's door. No
+panther was visible.</p>
+
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<h3>AN APPEAL TO THE CONSCIENCE OF GOD</h3>
+
+<p>Jenner Brading, attorney-at-law, lived in a cottage at the edge of the
+town. Directly behind the dwelling was the forest. Being a bachelor, and
+therefore by the Draconian moral code of the time and place denied the
+services of the only species of domestic servant known thereabout, the
+"hired girl," he boarded at the village hotel where also was his office.
+The woodside cottage was merely a lodging maintained&mdash;at no great cost,
+to be sure&mdash;as an evidence of prosperity and respectability. It would
+hardly do for one to whom the local newspaper had pointed with pride as
+"the foremost jurist of his time" to be "homeless," albeit he may
+sometimes have suspected that the words "home" and "house" were not
+strictly synonymous. Indeed, his consciousness of the disparity and his
+will to harmonize it were matters of logical inference, for it was
+generally reported that soon after the cottage was built its owner had
+made a futile venture in the direction of marriage&mdash;had, in truth, gone
+so far as to be rejected by the beautiful but eccentric daughter of Old
+Man Marlowe, the recluse. This was publicly believed because he had told
+it himself and she had not&mdash;a reversal of the usual order of things
+which could hardly fail to carry conviction.</p>
+
+<p>Brading's bedroom was at the rear of the house, with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> a single window
+facing the forest. One night he was awakened by a noise at that
+window&mdash;he could hardly have said what it was like. With a little thrill
+of the nerves he sat up in bed and laid hold of the revolver which, with
+a forethought most commendable in one addicted to the habit of sleeping
+on the ground floor with an open window, he had put under his pillow.
+The room was in absolute darkness, but being unterrified he knew where
+to direct his eyes, and there he held them, awaiting in silence what
+further might occur. He could now dimly discern the aperture&mdash;a square
+of lighter black. Presently there appeared at its lower edge two
+gleaming eyes that burned with a malignant luster inexpressibly
+terrible! Brading's heart gave a great jump, then seemed to stand still.
+A chill passed along his spine and through his hair; he felt the blood
+forsake his cheeks. He could not have cried out&mdash;not to save his life;
+but being a man of courage he would not, to save his life, have done so
+if he had been able. Some trepidation his coward body might feel, but
+his spirit was of sterner stuff. Slowly the shining eyes rose with a
+steady motion that seemed an approach, and slowly rose Brading's right
+hand, holding the pistol. He fired!</p>
+
+<p>Blinded by the flash and stunned by the report, Brading nevertheless
+heard, or fancied that he heard, the wild high scream of the panther, so
+human in sound, so devilish in suggestion. Leaping from the bed he
+hastily clothed himself and pistol in hand, sprang from the door,
+meeting two or three men who came running up from the road. A brief
+explanation was followed by a cautious search of the house. The grass
+was wet with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> dew; beneath the window it had been trodden and partly
+leveled for a wide space, from which a devious trail, visible in the
+light of a lantern, led away into the bushes. One of the men stumbled
+and fell upon his hands, which as he rose and rubbed them together were
+slippery. On examination they were seen to be red with blood.</p>
+
+<p>An encounter, unarmed, with a wounded panther was not agreeable to their
+taste; all but Brading turned back. He, with lantern and pistol, pushed
+courageously forward into the wood. Passing through a difficult
+undergrowth he came into a small opening, and there his courage had its
+reward, for there he found the body of his victim. But it was no
+panther. What it was is told, even to this day, upon a weather-worn
+headstone in the village churchyard, and for many years was attested
+daily at the graveside by the bent figure and sorrow-seamed face of Old
+Man Marlowe, to whose soul, and to the soul of his strange, unhappy
+child, peace&mdash;peace and reparation.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PHOTOGRAPHING_INVISIBLE_BEINGS" id="PHOTOGRAPHING_INVISIBLE_BEINGS"></a>PHOTOGRAPHING INVISIBLE BEINGS</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">By Wm. T. Stead</span></h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Millions of Spiritual creatures walk the earth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&mdash;<span class="smcap">Milton</span><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>It was during the South African War that my father obtained one of his
+best authenticated spirit photographs, so I think that it is well to
+give here his own account of his experiments in that direction. He
+writes:</p>
+
+<p>"While recording the results at which I have arrived, I wish to
+repudiate any desire to dogmatize as to their significance or their
+origin. I merely record the facts, and although I may indicate
+conclusions and inferences which I have drawn from them, I attach no
+importance to anything but the facts themselves.</p>
+
+<p>"There is living in London at the present moment an old man of
+seventy-one years of age, a man of no education; he can write, but he
+cannot spell, and he has for many years earned his living as a
+photographer. He was always in a small way of business, a quiet,
+inoffensive man who brought up his family respectably, and lived in
+peace with his neighbors, attracting no particular remark....</p>
+
+<p>"When he started in business as a photographer it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> was in the days when
+the wet process was almost universal, and he was much annoyed by finding
+that when he exposed plates other forms than that of the sitter would
+appear in the background. So many plates were spoiled by these unwelcome
+intruders that his partner became very angry, and insisted that the
+plates had not been washed before they were used. He protested this was
+not so, and asked his partner to bring a packet of completely new plates
+with which he would take a photograph and see what was the result. His
+partner accepted the challenge, and produced a plate which had never
+previously been used; but when the portrait of the next sitter was
+taken, there appeared a shadow form in the background. Angry and
+frightened at this unwelcome appearance he flung the plate to the ground
+with an oath, and from that time for very many years he was never again
+troubled by an occurrence of similar phenomena.</p>
+
+<p>"About ten years ago he became interested in spiritualism, and to his
+surprise, and also to his regret, the shadow figures began to re-appear
+on the background of the photographs. He repeatedly had to destroy
+negatives and ask his customer to give him another sitting. It did his
+business harm, and in order to avoid this annoyance he left most of the
+photographing to his son.</p>
+
+<p>"I happened to hear of these curious experiences of his and sought him
+out. I found him very reluctant to speak about the matter. He said
+frankly he did not know how the figures came; it had been a great
+annoyance to him, and it gave his shop a bad name. He did not wish
+anything to be said about the matter. In deference, however, to repeated
+pressing on my part, he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> consented to make experiments with me, and I
+had at various times a considerable number of sittings.</p>
+
+<p>"At first I brought my own plates (half plate size). He allowed me to
+place them in his slide in the dark room, to put them in the camera,
+which I was allowed to turn inside-out, and after they were exposed I
+was permitted to go into the dark room and develop them in his presence.
+Under these conditions I repeatedly obtained pictures of persons who
+were certainly not visible to me in the studio. I was allowed to do
+almost anything that I pleased, to alter the background, to change the
+position of the camera, to sit at any angle that I chose&mdash;in short to
+act as if the studio and all belonging to it was my own. And I
+repeatedly obtained what the old photographer called 'shadow pictures,'
+but none of them bore any resemblance to any person whom I had known.</p>
+
+<p>"In all these earlier experiments the photographer, whom I will call Mr.
+B&mdash;&mdash;, made no charge, and the only request that he made was that I
+should not publish his name, or do anything to let his neighbors know of
+the curious shadow pictures which were obtainable in his studio.</p>
+
+<p>"After a time I was so thoroughly satisfied that the shadow photographs,
+or spirit forms, were not produced by any fraud on the part of the
+photographer, that I did not trouble to bring my own marked plates&mdash;I
+allowed him to use his own, and to do all the work of loading the slide
+and of developing the plate without my assistance or supervision. What I
+wanted was to see whether it would be possible for me to obtain a
+photograph of any person known to me in life who has<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> passed over to the
+other side. The production of one such picture, if the person was
+unknown to the photographer, and he had no means of obtaining the
+photograph of the original while on earth, seemed to me so much better a
+test of the genuineness of the phenomena than could be secured by any
+amount of personal supervision of the process of photography, that I
+left him to operate without interference. The results he obtained when
+left to himself were precisely the same as those when the slides passed
+only through my own hands. But, although I obtained a great variety of
+portraits of unknown persons, I got none whom I could recognize.</p>
+
+<p>"In a conversation with Mr. B&mdash; as to how these shadow pictures, as he
+called them, came on the plate, I found him almost as much at sea as
+myself. He said that he did not know how they came, but that he had
+noticed that they came more frequently and with greater distinctness at
+some times than at others. He could never say beforehand whether they
+would come or not. He frequently informed me when my sitting began that
+he could guarantee nothing. And often the set of plates would bear no
+trace of any portrait save mine.</p>
+
+<p>"He was very reluctant to continue the experiments, and used to complain
+that after exposing four plates with a view to obtaining such pictures
+he felt quite exhausted. And sometimes he complained that his 'innards
+seemed to be turned upside-down,' to use his own phrase. I usually sat
+with him between two and three in the afternoon, and on the days which I
+came he always abstained from the usual glass of beer which he took with
+his midday meal. If I came unexpectedly, and he had had a single glass
+of beer, which formed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> his usual beverage, he would always assure me
+that I need not expect any good results. I, however, never found any
+particular difference in the results.</p>
+
+<p>"We often discussed the matter together. And he was evidently working
+out a theory of his own, as any one might under such circumstances. He
+knew that when he was excited or irritated he got bad results. Hence he
+often used to keep a music-box going, for the music, in his opinion,
+tended to set up good and tranquil conditions. He said he thought
+something must come out of him&mdash;what, he did not know, but something was
+taken out of him, and with this something he thought the entities,
+whoever they were, built themselves up and acquired sufficient substance
+to reflect the rays of light so as to impress the sensitive plate in his
+camera. He also thought that his old camera had become what he called
+magnetized, and although it was an old-fashioned piece of furniture,
+which I not only examined myself, but have had examined by expert
+photographers, nothing could be discovered within or without it which
+would account for the results obtained. He also was of the opinion that
+even although he did not touch the photographic plate, it was necessary
+for him to touch or to hold his hand over the photographic slide, and
+also to hold his hand over the plate when it was in the developing bath.
+His theory was that in some way or other this process magnetized the
+plate and brought out a shadow portrait.</p>
+
+<p>"One peculiarity of almost all the shadow pictures obtained in all these
+series of experiments is that they have around them the same kind of
+white drapery which is so familiar to those who have taken part in a
+materializing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> séance. Sometimes this drapery is more voluminous than at
+others; often, when the conditions are good, the form which at first
+appears with its head encompassed with drapery will appear on the second
+plate without any drapery. On asking Mr. B&mdash; what explanation he could
+give for this, he said he did not know, but he believed that the bodily
+appearance assumed by the spirit was very sensitive and needed to be
+shielded from currents, which might harm it. But when harmony prevailed
+they could venture to remove the drapery, and be photographed without
+it. Whatever may be the value of Mr. B&mdash;'s theory, there is little doubt
+that something is given off from his body which can be photographed. The
+white mist that appears to emanate from him forms into cloudy folds out
+of which there protrudes a more or less clearly defined face with human
+features. Sometimes this white and misty cloud obscures the sitter, at
+other times it seems to be condensed as if it were in the process of
+being worked up into a definite form for the completion of which either
+time or some other conditions were lacking. It was also noticeable that
+the entity&mdash;whoever it may be&mdash;which builds up the form, who is giving
+off sufficient solidity to impress its image upon the plate in the
+camera, having once created a form, will use it repeatedly without any
+change of position or expression. This will no doubt seem a great
+stumbling-block to many. But the fact is as I have stated it, and our
+first business is to ascertain facts, whether they tell for or against
+any particular hypothesis. It may be that the disembodied spirit, in
+order to establish its identity, constructs, out of the 'aura' given off
+by the photographer or other<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> medium, a mask or cast bearing the
+unmistakable resemblance to the body which it wore in its sojourn on
+earth. Having once built it up for use in the studio, it may be easier
+to employ the same cast again and again instead of building up a new one
+at each fresh sitting. Upon this point, however, I shall have something
+to say further on.</p>
+
+<p>"I was very much interested in the results I obtained, although as none
+of the photographs were identified I did not deem the experiment
+completely successful. I was very anxious to induce Mr. B&mdash; to devote
+some months to an uninterrupted series of experiments, and asked him on
+what terms I could secure his services. But he absolutely refused; he
+said he did not like it, it made him unwell, made people speak ill of
+him, and it did not matter what terms were offered, he would not
+consent. He was an old man, he said, and he could not find out how these
+things came; and, in short, neither scientific curiosity nor financial
+consideration would induce him to consent to more than an occasional
+sitting. I therefore dropped the matter, and for some years I
+discontinued my experiments.</p>
+
+<p>"I had a friend who often accompanied me to Mr. B&mdash;'s studio, where she
+had been photographed both with and without shadow pictures appearing on
+the background. We often promised each other that if either of us passed
+over we would come back and be photographed by Mr. B&mdash; if possible, in
+order to prove the reality of spirit return. Shortly after this my
+friend died. But it was not until nearly four years after her death, at
+the request of a friend who was very anxious to know whether she could
+communicate with those on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> the other side, that I went back to Mr. B&mdash;'s
+studio.</p>
+
+<p>"He had always been slightly clairvoyant and clairaudient. He told me
+that a few days before I had written asking for the appointment, my
+deceased friend had appeared in the studio and told him that I was
+coming. This reminded me of her promise, and I said at once that I hoped
+he would be able to photograph her. He said he didn't know; he was
+rather frightened of her, for reasons into which I need not enter, but
+if she came he would see what he could do. My friend and I sat together.
+The first plate was exposed, nothing appeared in the background. When
+the second plate was placed in the camera Mr. B&mdash; nodded with a quick
+look of recognition. We saw nothing. After he had exposed the second
+plate and before he developed it he asked us to change seats. We did
+this, and as he was exposing the third plate he said, 'I am told to ask
+you to do this,' and then when he closed the shutter he said, 'it is
+Mrs. M&mdash;.' On the fourth plate there appeared a picture of a woman whom
+I had never seen before, and whom my friend had never seen, neither had
+Mr. B&mdash;. When the plates came to be developed I found the second and
+third plates contained unmistakable likenesses of my friend Mrs. M&mdash;.
+These portraits were immediately recognized by my friend as unmistakable
+likenesses of the deceased Mrs. M&mdash;. It will be objected that she had
+frequently been photographed by the same photographer, and that he had
+simply faked a photograph from one of his old negatives. I don't believe
+that this is possible, for these portraits, although recognized
+immediately by every one who knew her, including her nearest relative,
+are quite different from any photograph she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> ever had taken in life. She
+certainly never was photographed enveloped in white drapery, nor do I
+believe that Mr. B&mdash; had any negative of any of her portraits in his
+possession. But I fully admit that from the point of view of one who
+wishes to exclude every possibility of error, the fact that Mrs. M&mdash; had
+been frequently photographed in her lifetime by the same photographer
+renders it impossible to regard these photographs as conclusive
+testimony as to their authenticity as a photograph of a form assumed by
+a disembodied spirit. I have mentioned that on the fourth plate there
+appeared a portrait of an unknown female. On my return I was showing the
+print of this shadow picture to a friend when she startled me by
+declaring that the shrouded form which appeared behind me in the
+photograph was a portrait of her mother who had died some months before
+in Dublin. I had never seen her mother, my friend did not know of her
+existence, neither did the photographer, nor does he to this day. It was
+only many months afterwards that I was able to obtain a photograph of my
+friend's mother, but it was taken when she was a comparatively young
+woman and bore no manner of resemblance to the portrait of the lady who
+appeared behind me. Her daughter, however, had not the slightest
+hesitation in asserting that it was her mother, that she had recognized
+her instantly, and that it was a very good portrait of her as she
+appeared in the later years of her life. This startled me not a little,
+and convinced me that I had a good prospect of attaining some definite
+results as an outcome of my experiments.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. B&mdash;, encouraged by this success, was willing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> to continue his
+experiments, and this time I insisted upon paying him for his work.</p>
+
+<p>"From this time onward the occurrence of photographs that were
+recognizable on the background of the photographs taken by Mr. B&mdash;
+became frequent. Sometimes the plates were marked; but not invariably.
+For my part I attach comparatively no importance to the marking of
+plates and the close supervision of the operator. The test of the
+genuineness of a photograph that is obtained when the unknown relative
+of an unknown sitter appears in the background of the photograph, is
+immeasurably superior to precautions any expert conjurer or trick
+photographer might evade. Again and again I sent friends to Mr. B&mdash;,
+giving him no information as to who they were, nor telling him anything
+as to the identity of the persons' deceased friend or relative whose
+portrait they wished to secure; and time and again when the negative was
+developed the portrait would appear in the background, or sometimes in
+front of the sitter. This occurred so frequently that I am quite
+convinced of the impossibility of any fraud. One time it was a French
+editor, who finding the portrait of his deceased wife appear on the
+negative when developed, was so transported with delight that he
+insisted on kissing the photographer, Mr. B&mdash;, much to the old man's
+embarrassment. On another occasion it was a Lancashire engineer, himself
+a photographer, who took marked plates and all possible precautions. He
+obtained portraits of two of his relatives and another of an eminent
+personage with whom he had been in close relations. Or again, it was a
+near neighbor, who, going as a total<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> stranger to the studio, obtained
+the portrait of her deceased daughter.</p>
+
+<p>"I attach no importance whatever to the appearance of portraits of
+well-known personages, which might easily be copied from existing
+pictures, but I attach immense importance to the production of the
+spirit photographs of unknown relatives of sitters who are unknown to
+the photographer, who receives them solely as a lady or gentleman who is
+one of my friends.</p>
+
+<p>"Although, as I have said, I do not attach much importance to
+photographs appearing of well-known men, I confess that I was rather
+impressed by one of my most recent experiments. I received a message
+from a medium in Sheffield, who is unknown to me, saying that Cecil
+Rhodes, who had then been dead about nine months, had spoken to her
+clairaudiently, and had told her to ask me to go to the photographer's,
+and that he would come and be photographed. The medium was a stranger to
+me, and I confess that I received the message with considerable
+skepticism. However, when she came up to town I accompanied her to the
+studio. She declared that she saw Cecil Rhodes, and that he spoke to
+her, and that he was standing behind me when the plate was exposed. When
+the plate came to be developed, although there was one well-defined
+figure standing behind me and several other faces half visible in the
+background, there was no portrait of Cecil Rhodes. I was not surprised,
+and went away. A month afterwards I went to have another sitting with
+the photographer. I chatted with him for a short time, and then he left
+the room for a moment. When he came back he said to me: 'There is a
+round-faced well set-up man here<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> with a short moustache and a dimple in
+his chin. Do you know him?' 'No,' I said, 'I don't know any such man.'
+'Well, he seems to be very busy about you.' 'Well,' I said, 'if he comes
+upstairs, we shall see what we can get.' 'I don't know,' said he. When I
+was sitting, he said, 'There he is, and I see the letter R. Is it Robert
+or Richard, do you think?' 'I don't know any Robert or Richard,' I said.
+He took the picture. He then proceeded with the second plate, and said,
+'That man is still here, and I see behind him a country road. I wonder
+what that means.' He went into the dark room, and presently came out and
+said, 'I see "road or roads." Do you know any one of that name?' 'Of
+course,' I said, 'Cecil Rhodes.' 'Do you mean him as died in the
+Transvaal lately?' said he. I said 'Yes.' 'Well,' he said, 'was he a man
+like that?' 'Well, he had a moustache,' I said. And sure enough, when
+the plate was developed, there was Cecil Rhodes looking fifteen years
+younger than when he died.</p>
+
+<p>"Some other plates were exposed. One was entirely blank, on two others
+the mist was formed into a kind of clot of light, but no figure was
+visible, the fifth had a portrait of an unknown man, and on the sixth,
+when it came to be developed, there was the same portrait of Cecil
+Rhodes that had appeared on the first, but without the white drapery
+round the head.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course it may be said that it was well known that I was connected
+with Cecil Rhodes and that the photographer therefore would have no
+difficulty in faking a portrait. I admit all that, and therefore I would
+not have introduced this if it had stood alone, as any evidence showing
+that it was a <i>bona fide</i> photograph of an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> invisible being. But it does
+not stand alone, and I have almost every reason to believe in the almost
+stupid honesty, if I may use such a phrase, of the photographer. I am
+naturally much interested in these latest portraits of the African
+Colossus. They are, at any rate, entirely new, no such portraits, to the
+best of my knowledge&mdash;and I have made a collection of all I can lay my
+hands on&mdash;exactly resembling those portraits which I obtained at Mr.
+B&mdash;'s studio.</p>
+
+<p>"I will conclude the account of my experiments by telling how I secured
+a portrait under circumstances which preclude any possibility of fake or
+fraud. One day when I entered the studio, Mr. B&mdash; said to me, 'There is
+a man come with you who has been here before; he came here some days ago
+when I was by myself; he looked very wild, and he had a gun in his hand,
+and I did not like the look of him. I don't like guns, so I asked him to
+go away, for I was frightened of the gun, and he went. But now he has
+come with you, and he has not got his gun any more, so we will let him
+stop.' I was rather amused at the old man's story and said, 'Well, see
+if you can photograph him.' 'I don't know as I can,' he said, 'I never
+know what I can get,'&mdash;which is quite true, for often the photographs
+which he says he sees clairvoyantly do not come out on the plate. While
+he was photographing me, I said to him, 'If you can tell this man to go
+away, you can ask him his name.' 'Yes,' said he. 'Will you do so?' I
+said. 'Yes,' he said. After seeming to ask the question mentally, he
+said, 'He says his name is Piet Botha.' 'Piet Botha,' I said, 'I know no
+such name. There are Louis and Philip, and Chris Botha. I have never
+heard of Piet; still they are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> a numerous family and there are plenty of
+Bothas in South Africa, and it will be interesting to ask General Botha,
+when he arrives, whether he knows of any Piet Botha.' When the negative
+was developed, sure enough there appeared behind me a photograph of a
+stalwart bearded person, who might have been a Boer or a Russian moujik,
+but who was certainly unknown to me. I had never seen a portrait of any
+one which bore any resemblance to the photograph.</p>
+
+<p>"When General Botha arrived I did not get an opportunity of asking him
+about the photograph, but some time afterwards I asked Mr. Fischer, one
+of the delegation from the South African Republics, to look at the
+photograph, and if he got an opportunity to ask General Botha if he knew
+of such a man as Piet Botha. Mr. Fischer said he thought he had seen the
+face before, but he could not be certain. He departed with the
+photograph. Some days afterwards Mr. Wessels, a member of the delegation
+with Mr. Fischer, came down to my office. He said, 'I want to know about
+that photograph that you gave Mr. Fischer.' 'Yes,' I said, 'what about
+it?' 'I want to know where you got it.' I told him. He replied
+disdainfully, 'I don't believe in such things; it is superstition;
+besides, that man didn't know Mr. B&mdash;; he has never been in London; how
+could he come there?' 'What,' I said, 'do you know him?' 'Know him!'
+said Mr. Wessels. 'He is my brother-in-law.' 'Really!' I said. 'What did
+they call him?' 'Pietrus Johannes Botha, but we always called him Piet
+for short.' 'Is he dead, then?' I said. 'Yes,' said Mr. Wessels, 'he was
+the first Boer officer who was killed in the siege of Kimberley; but
+there is a mystery about<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> this; you didn't know him?' 'No,' I said. 'And
+never heard of him?' 'No,' I said. 'But,' he said, 'I have the man's
+portrait in my house in South Africa, how could you get it?' 'But,' I
+said, 'I never have had it.' 'I don't understand,' he said, moodily, and
+so departed. I afterwards showed the photograph to another Free-State
+Boer who knew Piet Botha very well, and he had not the slightest
+hesitation in declaring that it was an unmistakable likeness of his dead
+friend.<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a></p>
+
+<p>"This is a plain, straightforward narrative of my experiences; they are
+still going on. But if I continue them forever I don't see how I am
+going to obtain better results than those which I have already secured.
+At the same time I must admit that when I have taken my own kodak to the
+studio and taken a photograph immediately before Mr. B&mdash; had exposed his
+plate, I got no results. The same failure occurred with another
+photographer whom I took, who took his own camera and his own plates,
+and took a photograph immediately before and immediately after Mr. B&mdash;
+had exposed his plate, and secured no result. Mr. B&mdash;'s explanation of
+this is that he thinks he does in some way or other magnetize,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> as he
+terms it, the plate, and that there is some effluence from his hand
+which is as necessary for the development of the psychic figure as the
+developing liquid is for the development of an ordinary photograph. This
+explanation would no doubt be derided as, I presume, wiseacres would
+have derided the first photographers when they insisted upon the
+necessity of darkness whilst developing their plates. What I hold to be
+established is that in the presence of this particular individual, Mr.
+B&mdash;, who at present is the only person known to me who is able to
+produce these photographs, it is possible to obtain under test
+conditions photographs that are unmistakably portraits of deceased
+persons; the said deceased persons being entirely unknown to him, and in
+some cases equally unknown to the sitter. Neither was any portrait of
+such person accessible either to the sitter or the photographer; neither
+was either the sitter or the photographer conscious of the very
+existence of these persons, whose identity was subsequently recognized
+by their friends.<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a></p>
+
+<p>"I am willing to admit that no conceivable conditions in the way of
+marking plates and supervising the actions or the operations of the
+photographer are of the least use, in so much as an expert conjurer can
+easily deceive the eye of the unskilled observer. But what I do maintain
+is that it is impossible for the cleverest trick photographer and the
+ablest conjurer in the world to produce a photograph, at a moment's
+notice, of an unknown relative of an unknown sitter, this portrait to
+be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> unmistakably recognizable by all survivors who knew the original in
+life. This Mr. B&mdash; has done again and again. And it seems to me that a
+great step has been made towards establishing the possibility of
+verifying by photography the reality of the existence of other
+intelligences than our own."</p>
+
+<p>The photographer alluded to in this article is Mr. Boursnell. He died
+shortly after it was written, and although father experimented with
+others, he never obtained such convincing and satisfactory results.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_SIN-EATER" id="THE_SIN-EATER"></a>THE SIN-EATER</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">By Fiona Macleod</span></h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Sin.</span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>Taste this bread, this substance: tell me</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Is it bread or flesh?</i><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">[<i>The Senses approach.</i>]<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">The Smell.</span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>Its smell</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Is the smell of bread.</i><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Sin.</span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>Touch, come. Why tremble?</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Say what's this thou touchest?</i><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">The Touch.</span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>Bread.</i><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Sin.</span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>Sight, declare what thou discernest</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>In this object.</i><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">The Sight.</span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>Bread alone.</i><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&mdash;<span class="smcap">Calderon</span>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Los Encantos de la Culpa</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>A wet wind out of the south mazed and mooned through the sea-mist that
+hung over the Ross. In all the bays and creeks was a continuous weary
+lapping of water. There was no other sound anywhere.</p>
+
+<p>Thus was it at daybreak; it was thus at noon; thus was it now in the
+darkening of the day. A confused thrusting and falling of sounds through
+the silence betokened the hour of the setting. Curlews wailed in the
+mist; on the seething limpet-covered rocks the skuas and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> terns
+screamed, or uttered hoarse, rasping cries. Ever and again the prolonged
+note of the oyster-catcher shrilled against the air, as an echo flying
+blindly along a blank wall of cliff. Out of weedy places, wherein the
+tide sobbed with long, gurgling moans, came at intervals the barking of
+a seal.</p>
+
+<p>Inland, by the hamlet of Contullich, there is a reedy tarn called the
+Loch-a-chaoruinn.<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> By the shores of this mournful water a man moved.
+It was a slow, weary walk that of the man Neil Ross. He had come from
+Duninch, thirty miles to the eastward, and had not rested foot, nor
+eaten, nor had word of man or woman, since his going west an hour after
+dawn.</p>
+
+<p>At the bend of the loch nearest the clachan he came upon an old woman
+carrying peat. To his reiterated question as to where he was, and if the
+tarn were Feur-Lochan above Fionnaphort that is on the strait of Iona on
+the west side of the Ross of Mull, she did not at first make any answer.
+The rain trickled down her withered brown face, over which the thin gray
+locks hung limply. It was only in the deep-set eyes that the flame of
+life still glimmered, though that dimly.</p>
+
+<p>The man had used the English when first he spoke, but as though
+mechanically. Supposing that he had not been understood, he repeated his
+question in the Gaelic.</p>
+
+<p>After a minute's silence the old woman answered him in the native
+tongue, but only to put a question in return.</p>
+
+<p>"I am thinking it is a long time since you have been in Iona?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The man stirred uneasily.</p>
+
+<p>"And why is that, mother?" he asked, in a weak voice hoarse with damp
+and fatigue; "how is it you will be knowing that I have been in Iona at
+all?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I knew your kith and kin there, Neil Ross."</p>
+
+<p>"I have not been hearing that name, mother, for many a long year. And as
+for the old face o' you, it is unbeknown to me."</p>
+
+<p>"I was at the naming of you, for all that. Well do I remember the day
+that Silis Macallum gave you birth; and I was at the house on the croft
+of Ballyrona when Murtagh Ross&mdash;that was your father&mdash;laughed. It was an
+ill laughing that."</p>
+
+<p>"I am knowing it. The curse of God on him!"</p>
+
+<p>"'Tis not the first, nor the last, though the grass is on his head three
+years agone now."</p>
+
+<p>"You that know who I am will be knowing that I have no kith or kin now
+on Iona?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay; they are all under gray stone or running wave. Donald your brother,
+and Murtagh your next brother, and little Silis, and your mother Silis
+herself, and your two brothers of your father, Angus and Ian Macallum,
+and your father Murtagh Ross, and his lawful childless wife, Dionaid,
+and his sister Anna&mdash;one and all, they lie beneath the green wave or in
+the brown mould. It is said there is a curse upon all who live at
+Ballyrona. The owl builds now in the rafters, and it is the big sea-rat
+that runs across the fireless hearth."</p>
+
+<p>"It is there I am going."</p>
+
+<p>"The foolishness is on you, Neil Ross."</p>
+
+<p>"Now it is that I am knowing who you are. It is old Sheen Macarthur I am
+speaking to."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Tha mise ... it is I."</p>
+
+<p>"And you will be alone now, too, I am thinking, Sheen?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am alone. God took my three boys at the one fishing ten years ago;
+and before there was moonrise in the blackness of my heart my man went.
+It was after the drowning of Anndra that my croft was taken from me.
+Then I crossed the Sound, and shared with my widow sister Elsie McVurie
+till <i>she</i> went; and then the two cows had to go; and I had no rent, and
+was old."</p>
+
+<p>In the silence that followed, the rain dribbled from the sodden bracken
+and dripping loneroid. Big tears rolled slowly down the deep lines on
+the face of Sheen. Once there was a sob in her throat, but she put her
+shaking hand to it, and it was still.</p>
+
+<p>Neil Ross shifted from foot to foot. The ooze in that marshy place
+squelched with each restless movement he made. Beyond them a plover
+wheeled, a blurred splatch in the mist, crying its mournful cry over and
+over and over.</p>
+
+<p>It was a pitiful thing to hear&mdash;ah, bitter loneliness, bitter patience
+of poor old women. That he knew well. But he was too weary, and his
+heart was nigh full of its own burthen. The words could not come to his
+lips. But at last he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"Tha mo chridhe goirt," he said, with tears in his voice, as he put his
+hand on her bent shoulder; "my heart is sore."</p>
+
+<p>She put up her old face against his.</p>
+
+<p>"'S tha e ruidhinn mo chridhe," she whispered; "it is touching my heart
+you are."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>After that they walked on slowly through the dripping mist, each dumb
+and brooding deep.</p>
+
+<p>"Where will you be staying this night?" asked Sheen suddenly, when they
+had traversed a wide boggy stretch of land; adding, as by an
+afterthought&mdash;"Ah, it is asking you were if the tarn there were
+Feur-Lochan. No; it is Loch-a-chaoruinn, and the clachan that is near is
+Contullich."</p>
+
+<p>"Which way?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yonder, to the right."</p>
+
+<p>"And you are not going there?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. I am going to the steading of Andrew Blair. Maybe you are for
+knowing it? It is called the Baile-na-Chlais-nambuidheag."<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a></p>
+
+<p>"I do not remember. But it is remembering a Blair I am. He was Adam, the
+son of Adam, the son of Robert. He and my father did many an ill deed
+together."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, to the stones be it said. Sure, now, there was, even till this
+weary day, no man or woman who had a good word for Adam Blair."</p>
+
+<p>"And why that ... why till this day?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is not yet the third hour since he went into the silence."</p>
+
+<p>Neil Ross uttered a sound like a stifled curse. For a time he trudged
+wearily on.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I am too late," he said at last, but as though speaking to
+himself. "I had hoped to see him face to face again, and curse him
+between the eyes. It was he who made Murtagh Ross break his troth to my<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>
+mother, and marry that other woman, barren at that, God be praised! And
+they say ill of him, do they?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, it is evil that is upon him. This crime and that, God knows; and
+the shadow of murder on his brow and in his eyes. Well, well, 'tis ill
+to be speaking of a man in corpse, and that near by. 'Tis Himself only
+that knows, Neil Ross."</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe ay and maybe no. But where is it that I can be sleeping this
+night, Sheen Macarthur?"</p>
+
+<p>"They will not be taking a stranger at the farm this night of the
+nights, I am thinking. There is no place else for seven miles yet, when
+there is the clachan, before you will be coming to Fionnaphort. There is
+the warm byre, Neil, my man; or, if you can bide by my peats, you may
+rest, and welcome, though there is no bed for you, and no food either
+save some of the porridge that is over."</p>
+
+<p>"And that will do well enough for me, Sheen; and Himself bless you for
+it."</p>
+
+<p>And so it was.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>After old Sheen Macarthur had given the wayfarer food&mdash;poor food at
+that, but welcome to one nigh starved, and for the heartsome way it was
+given, and because of the thanks to God that was upon it before even
+spoon was lifted&mdash;she told him a lie. It was the good lie of tender
+love.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure now, after all, Neil, my man," she said, "it is sleeping at the
+farm I ought to be, for Maisie Macdonald, the wise woman, will be
+sitting by the corpse, and there will be none to keep her company. It is
+there I must be going; and if I am weary, there is a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> good bed for me
+just beyond the dead-board, which I am not minding at all. So, if it is
+tired you are sitting by the peats, lie down on my bed there, and have
+the sleep; and God be with you."</p>
+
+<p>With that she went, and soundlessly, for Neil Ross was already asleep,
+where he sat on an upturned claar, with his elbows on his knees, and his
+flame-lit face in his hands.</p>
+
+<p>The rain had ceased; but the mist still hung over the land, though in
+thin veils now, and these slowly drifting seaward. Sheen stepped wearily
+along the stony path that led from her bothy to the farm-house. She
+stood still once, the fear upon her, for she saw three or four blurred
+yellow gleams moving beyond her, eastward, along the dyke. She knew what
+they were&mdash;the corpse-lights that on the night of death go between the
+bier and the place of burial. More than once she had seen them before
+the last hour, and by that token had known the end to be near.</p>
+
+<p>Good Catholic that she was, she crossed herself, and took heart. Then
+muttering</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Crois nan naoi aingeal leam<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'O mhullach mo chinn<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gu craican mo bhonn."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">(The cross of the nine angels be about me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From the top of my head<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the soles of my feet),<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>she went on her way fearlessly.</p>
+
+<p>When she came to the White House, she entered by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> the milk-shed that was
+between the byre and the kitchen. At the end of it was a paved place,
+with washing-tubs. At one of these stood a girl that served in the
+house&mdash;an ignorant lass called Jessie McFall, out of Oban. She was
+ignorant, indeed, not to know that to wash clothes with a newly dead
+body near by was an ill thing to do. Was it not a matter for the knowing
+that the corpse could hear, and might rise up in the night and clothe
+itself in a clean white shroud?</p>
+
+<p>She was still speaking to the lassie when Maisie Macdonald, the
+deid-watcher, opened the door of the room behind the kitchen to see who
+it was that was come. The two old women nodded silently. It was not till
+Sheen was in the closed room, midway in which something covered with a
+sheet lay on a board, that any word was spoken.</p>
+
+<p>"Duit sìth mòr, Beann Macdonald."</p>
+
+<p>"And deep peace to you, too, Sheen; and to him that is there."</p>
+
+<p>"Och, ochone, mise 'n diugh; 'tis a dark hour this."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay; it is bad. Will you have been hearing or seeing anything?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, as for that, I am thinking I saw lights moving betwixt here and
+the green place over there."</p>
+
+<p>"The corpse-lights?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it is calling them that they are."</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>thought</i> they would be out. And I have been hearing the noise of the
+planks&mdash;the cracking of the boards, you know, that will be used for the
+coffin to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>A long silence followed. The old women had seated themselves by the
+corpse, their cloaks over their heads.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> The room was fireless, and was
+lit only by a tall wax death-candle, kept against the hour of the going.</p>
+
+<p>At last Sheen began swaying slowly to and fro, crooning low the while.
+"I would not be for doing that, Sheen Macarthur," said the deid-watcher
+in a low voice, but meaningly; adding, after a moment's pause, "<i>The
+mice have all left the house</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Sheen sat upright, a look half of terror, half of awe in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"God save the sinful soul that is hiding," she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>Well she knew what Maisie meant. If the soul of the dead be a lost soul
+it knows its doom. The house of death is the house of sanctuary; but
+before the dawn that follows the death-night the soul must go forth,
+whosoever or whatsoever wait for it in the homeless, shelterless plains
+of air around and beyond. If it be well with the soul, it need have no
+fear; if it be not ill with the soul, it may fare forth with surety; but
+if it be ill with the soul, ill will the going be. Thus is it that the
+spirit of an evil man cannot stay, and yet dare not go; and so it
+strives to hide itself in secret places anywhere, in dark channels and
+blind walls; and the wise creatures that live near man smell the terror,
+and flee. Maisie repeated the saying of Sheen, then, after a silence,
+added:</p>
+
+<p>"Adam Blair will not lie in his grave for a year and a day because of
+the sins that are upon him; and it is knowing that, they are here. He
+will be the Watcher of the Dead for a year and a day."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, sure, there will be dark prints in the dawn-dew over yonder."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Once more the old women relapsed into silence. Through the night there
+was a sighing sound. It was not the sea, which was too far off to be
+heard save in a day of storm. The wind it was, that was dragging itself
+across the sodden moors like a wounded thing, moaning and sighing.</p>
+
+<p>Out of sheer weariness, Sheen twice rocked forward from her stool, heavy
+with sleep. At last Maisie led her over to the niche-bed opposite, and
+laid her down there, and waited till the deep furrows in the face
+relaxed somewhat, and the thin breath labored slow across the fallen
+jaw.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor old woman," she muttered, heedless of her own gray hairs and
+grayer years; "a bitter, bad thing it is to be old, old and weary. 'Tis
+the sorrow, that. God keep the pain of it!"</p>
+
+<p>As for herself, she did not sleep at all that night, but sat between the
+living and the dead, with her plaid shrouding her. Once, when Sheen gave
+a low, terrified scream in her sleep, she rose, and in a loud voice
+cried, "<i>Sheeach-ad! Away with you!</i>" And with that she lifted the
+shroud from the dead man, and took the pennies off the eyelids, and
+lifted each lid; then, staring into these filmed wells, muttered an
+ancient incantation that would compel the soul of Adam Blair to leave
+the spirit of Sheen alone, and return to the cold corpse that was its
+coffin till the wood was ready.</p>
+
+<p>The dawn came at last. Sheen slept, and Adam Blair slept a deeper sleep,
+and Maisie stared out of her wan, weary eyes against the red and stormy
+flares of light that came into the sky.</p>
+
+<p>When, an hour after sunrise, Sheen Macarthur<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> reached her bothy, she
+found Neil Ross, heavy with slumber, upon her bed. The fire was not out,
+though no flame or spark was visible; but she stooped and blew at the
+heart of the peats till the redness came, and once it came it grew.
+Having done this, she kneeled and said a rune of the morning, and after
+that a prayer, and then a prayer for the poor man Neil. She could pray
+no more because of the tears. She rose and put the meal and water into
+the pot for the porridge to be ready against his awaking. One of the
+hens that was there came and pecked at her ragged skirt. "Poor beastie,"
+she said. "Sure, that will just be the way I am pulling at the white
+robe of the Mother o' God. 'Tis a bit meal for you, cluckie, and for me
+a healing hand upon my tears. O, och, ochone, the tears, the tears!"</p>
+
+<p>It was not till the third hour after sunrise of that bleak day in that
+winter of the winters, that Neil Ross stirred and arose. He ate in
+silence. Once he said that he smelt the snow coming out of the north.
+Sheen said no word at all.</p>
+
+<p>After the porridge, he took his pipe, but there was no tobacco. All that
+Sheen had was the pipeful she kept against the gloom of the Sabbath. It
+was her one solace in the long weary week. She gave him this, and held a
+burning peat to his mouth, and hungered over the thin, rank smoke that
+curled upward.</p>
+
+<p>It was within half-an-hour of noon that, after an absence, she returned.</p>
+
+<p>"Not between you and me, Neil Ross," she began abruptly, "but just for
+the asking, and what is beyond. Is it any money you are having upon
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Nothing?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"Then how will you be getting across to Iona? It is seven long miles to
+Fionnaphort, and bitter cold at that, and you will be needing food, and
+then the ferry, the ferry across the Sound, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, I know."</p>
+
+<p>"What would you do for a silver piece, Neil, my man?"</p>
+
+<p>"You have none to give me, Sheen Macarthur; and, if you had, it would
+not be taking it I would."</p>
+
+<p>"Would you kiss a dead man for a crown-piece&mdash;a crown-piece of five good
+shillings?"</p>
+
+<p>Neil Ross stared. Then he sprang to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"It is Adam Blair you are meaning, woman! God curse him in death now
+that he is no longer in life!"</p>
+
+<p>Then, shaking and trembling, he sat down again, and brooded against the
+dull red glow of the peats.</p>
+
+<p>But, when he rose, in the last quarter before noon, his face was white.</p>
+
+<p>"The dead are dead, Sheen Macarthur. They can know or do nothing. I will
+do it. It is willed. Yes, I am going up to the house there. And now I am
+going from here. God Himself has my thanks to you, and my blessing too.
+They will come back to you. It is not forgetting you I will be.
+Good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye, Neil, son of the woman that was my friend. A south wind to
+you! Go up by the farm. In the front of the house you will see what you
+will be seeing. Maisie Macdonald will be there. She will tell you what's
+for the telling. There is no harm in it,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> sure; sure, the dead are dead.
+It is praying for you I will be, Neil Ross. Peace to you!"</p>
+
+<p>"And to you, Sheen."</p>
+
+<p>And with that the man went.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>When Neil Ross reached the byres of the farm in the wide hollow, he saw
+two figures standing as though awaiting him, but separate, and unseen of
+the other. In front of the house was a man he knew to be Andrew Blair;
+behind the milk-shed was a woman he guessed to be Maisie Macdonald.</p>
+
+<p>It was the woman he came upon first.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you the friend of Sheen Macarthur?" she asked in a whisper, as she
+beckoned him to the doorway.</p>
+
+<p>"I am."</p>
+
+<p>"I am knowing no names or anything. And no one here will know you, I am
+thinking. So do the thing and begone."</p>
+
+<p>"There is no harm to it?"</p>
+
+<p>"None."</p>
+
+<p>"It will be a thing often done, is it not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, sure."</p>
+
+<p>"And the evil does not abide?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. The ... the ... person ... the person takes them away, and...."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Them?</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"For sure, man! Them ... the sins of the corpse. He takes them away; and
+are you for thinking God would let the innocent suffer for the guilty?
+No ... the person ... the Sin-Eater, you know ... takes them away on
+himself, and one by one the air of heaven<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> washes them away till he, the
+Sin-Eater, is clean and whole as before."</p>
+
+<p>"But if it is a man you hate ... if it is a corpse that is the corpse of
+one who has been a curse and a foe ... if...."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Sst!</i> Be still now with your foolishness. It is only an idle saying, I
+am thinking. Do it, and take the money and go. It will be hell enough
+for Adam Blair, miser as he was, if he is for knowing that five good
+shillings of his money are to go to a passing tramp because of an old,
+ancient silly tale."</p>
+
+<p>Neil Ross laughed low at that. It was for pleasure to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Hush wi' ye! Andrew Blair is waiting round there. Say that I have sent
+you round, as I have neither bite nor bit to give."</p>
+
+<p>Turning on his heel, Neil walked slowly round to the front of the house.
+A tall man was there, gaunt and brown, with hairless face and lank brown
+hair, but with eyes cold and gray as the sea.</p>
+
+<p>"Good day to you, an' good faring. Will you be passing this way to
+anywhere?"</p>
+
+<p>"Health to you. I am a stranger here. It is on my way to Iona I am. But
+I have the hunger upon me. There is not a brown bit in my pocket. I
+asked at the door there, near the byres. The woman told me she could
+give me nothing&mdash;not a penny even, worse luck&mdash;nor, for that, a drink of
+warm milk. 'Tis a sore land this."</p>
+
+<p>"You have the Gaelic of the Isles. Is it from Iona you are?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is from the Isles of the West I come."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"From Tiree ... from Coll?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"From the Long Island ... or from Uist ... or maybe from Benbecula?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh well, sure it is no matter to me. But may I be asking your name?"</p>
+
+<p>"Macallum."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know there is a death here, Macallum?"</p>
+
+<p>"If I didn't I would know it now, because of what lies yonder."</p>
+
+<p>Mechanically Andrew Blair looked round. As he knew, a rough bier was
+there, that was made of a dead-board laid upon three milking-stools.
+Beside it was a claar, a small tub to hold potatoes. On the bier was a
+corpse, covered with a canvas sheeting that looked like a sail.</p>
+
+<p>"He was a worthy man, my father," began the son of the dead man, slowly;
+"but he had his faults, like all of us. I might even be saying that he
+had his sins, to the Stones be it said. You will be knowing, Macallum,
+what is thought among the folk ... that a stranger, passing by, may take
+away the sins of the dead, and that, too, without any hurt whatever ...
+any hurt whatever."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, sure."</p>
+
+<p>"And you will be knowing what is done?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay."</p>
+
+<p>"With the bread ... and the water...?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay."</p>
+
+<p>"It is a small thing to do. It is a Christian thing.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> I would be doing
+it myself, and that gladly, but the ... the ... passer-by who...."</p>
+
+<p>"It is talking of the Sin-Eater you are?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes, for sure. The Sin-Eater as he is called&mdash;and a good Christian
+act it is, for all that the ministers and the priests make a frowning at
+it&mdash;the Sin-Eater must be a stranger. He must be a stranger, and should
+know nothing of the dead man&mdash;above all, bear him no grudge."</p>
+
+<p>At that Neil Ross's eyes lightened for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"And why that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who knows? I have heard this, and I have heard that. If the Sin-Eater
+was hating the dead man he could take the sins and fling them into the
+sea, and they would be changed into demons of the air that would harry
+the flying soul till Judgment-Day."</p>
+
+<p>"And how would that thing be done?"</p>
+
+<p>The man spoke with flashing eyes and parted lips, the breath coming
+swift. Andrew Blair looked at him suspiciously; and hesitated, before,
+in a cold voice, he spoke again.</p>
+
+<p>"That is all folly, I am thinking, Macallum. Maybe it is all folly, the
+whole of it. But, see here, I have no time to be talking with you. If
+you will take the bread and the water you shall have a good meal if you
+want it, and ... and ... yes, look you, my man, I will be giving you a
+shilling too, for luck."</p>
+
+<p>"I will have no meal in this house, Anndramhic-Adam; nor will I do this
+thing unless you will be giving me two silver half-crowns. That is the
+sum I must have, or no other."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Two half-crowns! Why, man, for one half-crown...."</p>
+
+<p>"Then be eating the sins o' your father yourself, Andrew Blair! It is
+going I am."</p>
+
+<p>"Stop, man! Stop, Macallum. See here&mdash;I will be giving you what you
+ask."</p>
+
+<p>"So be it. Is the.... Are you ready?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, come this way."</p>
+
+<p>With that the two men turned and moved slowly towards the bier.</p>
+
+<p>In the doorway of the house stood a man and two women; farther in, a
+woman; and at the window to the left, the serving-wench, Jessie McFall,
+and two men of the farm. Of those in the doorway, the man was Peter, the
+half-witted youngest brother of Andrew Blair; the taller and older woman
+was Catreen, the widow of Adam, the second brother; and the thin, slight
+woman, with staring eyes and drooping mouth, was Muireall, the wife of
+Andrew. The old woman behind these was Maisie Macdonald.</p>
+
+<p>Andrew Blair stooped and took a saucer out of the claar. This he put
+upon the covered breast of the corpse. He stooped again, and brought
+forth a thick square piece of new-made bread. That also he placed upon
+the breast of the corpse. Then he stooped again, and with that he
+emptied a spoonful of salt alongside the bread.</p>
+
+<p>"I must see the corpse," said Neil Ross simply.</p>
+
+<p>"It is not needful, Macallum."</p>
+
+<p>"I must be seeing the corpse, I tell you&mdash;and for that, too, the bread
+and the water should be on the naked breast."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No, no, man; it...."</p>
+
+<p>But here a voice, that of Maisie the wise woman, came upon them, saying
+that the man was right, and that the eating of the sins should be done
+in that way and no other.</p>
+
+<p>With an ill grace the son of the dead man drew back the sheeting.
+Beneath it, the corpse was in a clean white shirt, a death-gown long ago
+prepared, that covered him from his neck to his feet, and left only the
+dusky yellowish face exposed.</p>
+
+<p>While Andrew Blair unfastened the shirt and placed the saucer and the
+bread and the salt on the breast, the man beside him stood staring
+fixedly on the frozen features of the corpse. The new laird had to speak
+to him twice before he heard.</p>
+
+<p>"I am ready. And you, now? What is it you are muttering over against the
+lips of the dead?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is giving him a message I am. There is no harm in that, sure?"</p>
+
+<p>"Keep to your own folk, Macallum. You are from the West you say, and we
+are from the North. There can be no messages between you and a Blair of
+Strathmore, no messages for <i>you</i> to be giving."</p>
+
+<p>"He that lies here knows well the man to whom I am sending a
+message"&mdash;and at this response Andrew Blair scowled darkly. He would
+fain have sent the man about his business, but he feared he might get no
+other.</p>
+
+<p>"It is thinking I am that you are not a Macallum at all. I know all of
+that name in Mull, Iona, Skye, and the near isles. What will the name of
+your naming be, and of your father, and of his place?"</p>
+
+<p>Whether he really wanted an answer, or whether he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> sought only to divert
+the man from his procrastination, his question had a satisfactory
+result.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, now, it's ready I am, Anndra-mhic-Adam."</p>
+
+<p>With that, Andrew Blair stooped once more and from the claar brought a
+small jug of water. From this he filled the saucer.</p>
+
+<p>"You know what to say and what to do, Macallum."</p>
+
+<p>There was not one there who did not have a shortened breath because of
+the mystery that was now before them, and the fearfulness of it. Neil
+Ross drew himself up, erect, stiff, with white, drawn face. All who
+waited, save Andrew Blair, thought that the moving of his lips was
+because of the prayer that was slipping upon them, like the last lapsing
+of the ebb-tide. But Blair was watching him closely, and knew that it
+was no prayer which stole out against the blank air that was around the
+dead.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly Neil Ross extended his right arm. He took a pinch of the salt and
+put it in the saucer, then took another pinch and sprinkled it upon the
+bread. His hand shook for a moment as he touched the saucer. But there
+was no shaking as he raised it towards his lips, or when he held it
+before him when he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"With this water that has salt in it, and has lain on thy corpse, O Adam
+mhic Anndra mhic Adam Mòr, I drink away all the evil that is upon
+thee...."</p>
+
+<p>There was throbbing silence while he paused.</p>
+
+<p>"... And may it be upon me and not upon thee, if with this water it
+cannot flow away."</p>
+
+<p>Thereupon, he raised the saucer and passed it thrice round the head of
+the corpse sunways; and, having done this, lifted it to his lips and
+drank as much as his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> mouth would hold. Thereafter he poured the remnant
+over his left hand, and let it trickle to the ground. Then he took the
+piece of bread. Thrice, too, he passed it round the head of the corpse
+sunways.</p>
+
+<p>He turned and looked at the man by his side, then at the others, who
+watched him with beating hearts.</p>
+
+<p>With a loud clear voice he took the sins.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Thoir dhomh do ciontachd, O Adam mhic Anndra mhic Adam Mòr!</i> Give me
+thy sins to take away from thee! Lo, now, as I stand here, I break this
+bread that has lain on thee in corpse, and I am eating it, I am, and in
+that eating I take upon me the sins of thee, O man that was alive and is
+now white with the stillness!"</p>
+
+<p>Thereupon Neil Ross broke the bread and ate of it, and took upon himself
+the sins of Adam Blair that was dead. It was a bitter swallowing, that.
+The remainder of the bread he crumbled in his hand, and threw it on the
+ground, and trod upon it. Andrew Blair gave a sigh of relief. His cold
+eyes lightened with malice.</p>
+
+<p>"Be off with you, now, Macallum. We are wanting no tramps at the farm
+here, and perhaps you had better not be trying to get work this side
+Iona; for it is known as the Sin-Eater you will be, and that won't be
+for the helping, I am thinking! There&mdash;there are the two half-crowns for
+you ... and may they bring you no harm, you that are <i>Scapegoat</i> now!"</p>
+
+<p>The Sin-Eater turned at that, and stared like a hill-bull. <i>Scapegoat!</i>
+Ay, that's what he was. Sin-Eater, Scapegoat! Was he not, too, another
+Judas, to have sold for silver that which was not for the selling? No,
+no, for sure Maisie Macdonald could tell him the rune that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> would serve
+for the easing of this burden. He would soon be quit of it.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly he took the money, turned it over, and put it in his pocket.</p>
+
+<p>"I am going, Andrew Blair," he said quietly, "I am going now. I will not
+say to him that is there in the silence, A chuid do Pharas da!&mdash;nor will
+I say to you, Gu'n gleidheadh Dia thu,&mdash;nor will I say to this dwelling
+that is the home of thee and thine, Gu'n beannaic-headh Dia an
+tigh!"<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a></p>
+
+<p>Here there was a pause. All listened. Andrew Blair shifted uneasily, the
+furtive eyes of him going this way and that, like a ferret in the grass.</p>
+
+<p>"But, Andrew Blair, I will say this: when you fare abroad, <i>Droch caoidh
+ort!</i> and when you go upon the water, <i>Gaoth gun direadh ort</i>! Ay, ay,
+Anndra-mhic-Adam, <i>Dia ad aghaidh 's ad aodann ... agus bas dunach ort!
+Dhonas 's dholas ort, agus leat-sa!</i>"<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a></p>
+
+<p>The bitterness of these words was like snow in June upon all there. They
+stood amazed. None spoke. No one moved.</p>
+
+<p>Neil Ross turned upon his heel, and, with a bright light in his eyes,
+walked away from the dead and the living. He went by the byres, whence
+he had come. Andrew Blair remained where he was, now glooming<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> at the
+corpse, now biting his nails and staring at the damp sods at his feet.</p>
+
+<p>When Neil reached the end of the milk-shed he saw Maisie Macdonald
+there, waiting.</p>
+
+<p>"These were ill sayings of yours, Neil Ross," she said in a low voice,
+so that she might not be overheard from the house.</p>
+
+<p>"So, it is knowing me you are."</p>
+
+<p>"Sheen Macarthur told me."</p>
+
+<p>"I have good cause."</p>
+
+<p>"That is a true word. I know it."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me this thing. What is the rune that is said for the throwing into
+the sea of the sins of the dead? See here, Maisie Macdonald. There is no
+money of that man that I would carry a mile with me. Here it is. It is
+yours, if you will tell me that rune."</p>
+
+<p>Maisie took the money hesitatingly. Then, stooping, she said slowly the
+few lines of the old, old rune.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you be remembering that?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is not forgetting it I will be, Maisie."</p>
+
+<p>"Wait a moment. There is some warm milk here."</p>
+
+<p>With that she went, and then, from within, beckoned to him to enter.</p>
+
+<p>"There is no one here, Neil Ross. Drink the milk."</p>
+
+<p>He drank; and while he did so she drew a leather pouch from some hidden
+place in her dress.</p>
+
+<p>"And now I have this to give you."</p>
+
+<p>She counted out ten pennies and two farthings.</p>
+
+<p>"It is all the coppers I have. You are welcome to them. Take them,
+friend of my friend. They will give you the food you need, and the ferry
+across the Sound."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I will do that, Maisie Macdonald, and thanks to you. It is not
+forgetting it I will be, nor you, good woman. And now, tell me, is it
+safe that I am? He called me a 'scapegoat', he, Andrew Blair! Can evil
+touch me between this and the sea?"</p>
+
+<p>"You must go to the place where the evil was done to you and yours&mdash;and
+that, I know, is on the west side of Iona. Go, and God preserve you. But
+here, too, is a sian that will be for the safety."</p>
+
+<p>Thereupon, with swift mutterings she said this charm: an old, familiar
+Sian against Sudden Harm:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Sian a chuir Moire air Mac ort,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sian ro' marbhadh, sian ro' lot ort,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sian eadar a' chlioch 's a' ghlun,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sian nan Tri ann an aon ort,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O mhullach do chinn gu bonn do chois ort:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sian seachd eadar a h-aon ort,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sian seachd eadar a dha ort,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sian seachd eadar a tri ort,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sian seachd eadar a ceithir ort,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sian seachd eadar a coig ort,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sian seachd eadar a sia ort,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sian seachd paidir nan seach paidir dol deiseil ri diugh narach ort,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">ga do ghleidheadh bho bheud 's bho mhi-thapadh!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Scarcely had she finished before she heard heavy steps approaching.</p>
+
+<p>"Away with you," she whispered, repeating in a loud, angry tone, "Away
+with you! <i>Seachad! Seachad!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>And with that Neil Ross slipped from the milk-shed and crossed the yard,
+and was behind the byres before<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> Andrew Blair, with sullen mien and
+swift, wild eyes, strode from the house.</p>
+
+<p>It was with a grim smile on his face that Neil tramped down the wet
+heather till he reached the high road, and fared thence as through a
+marsh because of the rains there had been.</p>
+
+<p>For the first mile he thought of the angry mind of the dead man, bitter
+at paying of the silver. For the second mile he thought of the evil that
+had been wrought for him and his. For the third mile he pondered over
+all that he had heard and done and taken upon him that day.</p>
+
+<p>Then he sat down upon a broken granite heap by the way, and brooded deep
+till one hour went, and then another, and the third was upon him.</p>
+
+<p>A man driving two calves came towards him out of the west. He did not
+hear or see. The man stopped; spoke again. Neil gave no answer. The
+drover shrugged his shoulders, hesitated, and walked slowly on, often
+looking back.</p>
+
+<p>An hour later a shepherd came by the way he himself had tramped. He was
+a tall, gaunt man with a squint. The small, pale-blue eyes glittered out
+of a mass of red hair that almost covered his face. He stood still,
+opposite Neil, and leaned on his <i>cromak</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"Latha math leat," he said at last; "I wish you good day."</p>
+
+<p>Neil glanced at him, but did not speak.</p>
+
+<p>"What is your name, for I seem to know you?"</p>
+
+<p>But Neil had already forgotten him. The shepherd took out his
+snuff-mull, helped himself, and handed the mull to the lonely wayfarer.
+Neil mechanically helped himself.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Am bheil thu 'dol do Fhionphort?" tried the shepherd again: "Are you
+going to Fionnaphort?"</p>
+
+<p>"Tha mise 'dol a dh' I-challum-chille," Neil answered, in a low, weary
+voice, and as a man adream: "I am on my way to Iona."</p>
+
+<p>"I am thinking I know now who you are. You are the man Macallum."</p>
+
+<p>Neil looked, but did not speak. His eyes dreamed against what the other
+could not see or know. The shepherd called angrily to his dogs to keep
+the sheep from straying; then, with a resentful air, turned to his
+victim.</p>
+
+<p>"You are a silent man for sure, you are. I'm hoping it is not the curse
+upon you already."</p>
+
+<p>"What curse?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, <i>that</i> has brought the wind against the mist! I was thinking so!"</p>
+
+<p>"What curse?"</p>
+
+<p>"You are the man that was the Sin-Eater over there?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay."</p>
+
+<p>"The man Macallum?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay."</p>
+
+<p>"Strange it is, but three days ago I saw you in Tobermory, and heard you
+give your name as Neil Ross to an Iona man that was there."</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, sure, it is nothing to me. But they say the Sin-Eater should not be
+a man with a hidden lump in his pack."<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a></p>
+
+<p>"Why?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"For the dead know, and are content. There is no shaking off any sins,
+then&mdash;for that man."</p>
+
+<p>"It is a lie."</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe ay and maybe no."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, have you more to be saying to me? I am obliged to you for your
+company, but it is not needing it I am, though no offense."</p>
+
+<p>"Och, man, there's no offense between you and me. Sure, there's Iona in
+me, too; for the father of my father married a woman that was the
+granddaughter of Tomais Macdonald, who was a fisherman there. No, no; it
+is rather warning you I would be."</p>
+
+<p>"And for what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well, just because of that laugh I heard about."</p>
+
+<p>"What laugh?"</p>
+
+<p>"The laugh of Adam Blair that is dead."</p>
+
+<p>Neil Ross stared, his eyes large and wild. He leaned a little forward.
+No word came from him. The look that was on his face was the question.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it was this way. Sure, the telling of it is just as I heard it.
+After you ate the sins of Adam Blair, the people there brought out the
+coffin. When they were putting him into it, he was as stiff as a sheep
+dead in the snow&mdash;and just like that, too, with his eyes wide open.
+Well, someone saw you trampling the heather down the slope that is in
+front of the house, and said, 'It is the Sin-Eater!' With that, Andrew
+Blair sneered, and said&mdash;'Ay, 'tis the scapegoat he is!' Then, after a
+while, he went on, 'The Sin-Eater they call him; ay, just so; and a
+bitter good bargain it is, too, if all's true that's thought true!' And
+with that he laughed, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> then his wife that was behind him laughed,
+and then...."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, 'tis Himself that hears and knows if it is true! But this is the
+thing I was told: After that laughing there was a stillness and a dread.
+For all there saw that the corpse had turned its head and was looking
+after you as you went down the heather. Then, Neil Ross, if that be your
+true name, Adam Blair that was dead put up his white face against the
+sky, and laughed."</p>
+
+<p>At this, Ross sprang to his feet with a gasping sob.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a lie, that thing!" he cried, shaking his fist at the shepherd.
+"It is a lie."</p>
+
+<p>"It is no lie. And by the same token, Andrew Blair shrank back white and
+shaking, and his woman had the swoon upon her, and who knows but the
+corpse might have come to life again had it not been for Maisie
+Macdonald, the deid-watcher, who clapped a handful of salt on his eyes,
+and tilted the coffin so that the bottom of it slid forward, and so let
+the whole fall flat on the ground, with Adam Blair in it sideways, and
+as likely as not cursing and groaning, as his wont was, for the hurt
+both to his old bones and his old ancient dignity."</p>
+
+<p>Ross glared at the man as though the madness was upon him. Fear and
+horror and fierce rage swung him now this way and now that.</p>
+
+<p>"What will the name of you be, shepherd?" he stuttered huskily.</p>
+
+<p>"It is Eachainn Gilleasbuig I am to ourselves; and the English of that
+for those who have no Gaelic is Hector Gillespie; and I am Eachainn mac
+Ian mac Alasdair<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> of Strathsheean that is where Sutherland lies against
+Ross."</p>
+
+<p>"Then take this thing&mdash;and that is, the curse of the Sin-Eater! And a
+bitter bad thing may it be upon you and yours."</p>
+
+<p>And with that Neil the Sin-Eater flung his hand up into the air, and
+then leaped past the shepherd, and a minute later was running through
+the frightened sheep, with his head low, and a white foam on his lips,
+and his eyes red with blood as a seal's that has the death-wound on it.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>On the third day of the seventh month from that day, Aulay Macneill,
+coming into Balliemore of Iona from the west side of the island, said to
+old Ronald MacCormick, that was the father of his wife, that he had seen
+Neil Ross again, and that he was "absent"&mdash;for though he had spoken to
+him, Neil would not answer, but only gloomed at him from the wet weedy
+rock where he sat.</p>
+
+<p>The going back of the man had loosed every tongue that was in Iona.
+When, too, it was known that he was wrought in some terrible way, if not
+actually mad, the islanders whispered that it was because of the sins of
+Adam Blair. Seldom or never now did they speak of him by his name, but
+simply as "The Sin-Eater." The thing was not so rare as to cause this
+strangeness, nor did many (and perhaps none did) think that the sins of
+the dead ever might or could abide with the living who had merely done a
+good Christian charitable thing. But there was a reason.</p>
+
+<p>Not long after Neil Ross had come again to Iona, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> had settled down
+in the ruined roofless house on the croft of Ballyrona, just like a fox
+or a wild-cat, as the saying was, he was given fishing-work to do by
+Aulay Macneill, who lived at Ard-an-teine, at the rocky north end of the
+machar or plain that is on the west Atlantic coast of the island.</p>
+
+<p>One moonlit night, either the seventh or the ninth after the earthing of
+Adam Blair at his own place in the Ross, Aulay Macneill saw Neil Ross
+steal out of the shadow of Ballyrona and make for the sea. Macneill was
+there by the rocks, mending a lobster-creel. He had gone there because
+of the sadness. Well, when he saw the Sin-Eater, he watched.</p>
+
+<p>Neil crept from rock to rock till he reached the last fang that churns
+the sea into yeast when the tide sucks the land just opposite.</p>
+
+<p>Then he called out something that Aulay Macneill could not catch. With
+that he springs up, and throws his arms above him.</p>
+
+<p>"Then," says Aulay when he tells the tale, "it was like a ghost he was.
+The moonshine was on his face like the curl o' a wave. White! there is
+no whiteness like that of the human face. It was whiter than the foam
+about the skerry it was; whiter than the moon shining; whiter than ...
+well, as white as the painted letters on the black boards of the
+fishing-cobles. There he stood, for all that the sea was about him, the
+slip-slop waves leapin' wild, and the tide making, too, at that. He was
+shaking like a sail two points off the wind. It was then that, all of a
+sudden, he called in a womany, screamin' voice&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'I am throwing the sins of Adam Blair into the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> midst of ye, white dogs
+o' the sea! Drown them, tear them, drag them away out into the black
+deeps! Ay, ay, ay, ye dancin' wild waves, this is the third time I am
+doing it, and now there is none left; no, not a sin, not a sin!</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'O-hi O-ri, dark tide o' the sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am giving the sins of a dead man to thee!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By the Stones, by the Wind, by the Fire, by the Tree,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From the dead man's sins set me free, set me free!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Adam mhic Anndra mhic Adam and me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Set us free! Set us free!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"Ay, sure, the Sin-Eater sang that over and over; and after the third
+singing he swung his arms and screamed:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'And listen to me, black waters an' running tide,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That rune is the good rune told me by Maisie the wise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I am Neil the son of Silis Macallum<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By the black-hearted evil man Murtagh Ross,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That was the friend of Adam mac Anndra, God against him!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"And with that he scrambled and fell into the sea. But, as I am Aulay
+mac Luais and no other, he was up in a moment, an' swimmin' like a seal,
+and then over the rocks again, an' away back to that lonely roofless
+place once more, laughing wild at times, an' muttering an' whispering."</p>
+
+<p>It was this tale of Aulay Macneill's that stood between Neil Ross and
+the isle-folk. There was something behind all that, they whispered one
+to another.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>So it was always the Sin-Eater he was called at last. None sought him.
+The few children who came upon him now and again fled at his approach,
+or at the very sight of him. Only Aulay Macneill saw him at times, and
+had word of him.</p>
+
+<p>After a month had gone by, all knew that the Sin-Eater was wrought to
+madness because of this awful thing: the burden of Adam Blair's sins
+would not go from him! Night and day he could hear them laughing low, it
+was said.</p>
+
+<p>But it was the quiet madness. He went to and fro like a shadow in the
+grass, and almost as soundless as that, and as voiceless. More and more
+the name of him grew as a terror. There were few folk on that wild west
+coast of Iona, and these few avoided him when the word ran that he had
+knowledge of strange things, and converse, too, with the secrets of the
+sea.</p>
+
+<p>One day Aulay Macneill, in his boat, but dumb with amaze and terror for
+him, saw him at high tide swimming on a long rolling wave right into the
+hollow of the Spouting Cave. In the memory of man, no one had done this
+and escaped one of three things: a snatching away into oblivion, a
+strangled death, or madness. The islanders know that there swims into
+the cave, at full tide, a Mar-Tarbh, a dreadful creature of the sea that
+some call a kelpie; only it is not a kelpie, which is like a woman, but
+rather is a sea-bull, offspring of the cattle that are never seen. Ill
+indeed for any sheep or goat, ay, or even dog or child, if any happens
+to be leaning over the edge of the Spouting Cave when the Mar-tarv
+roars; for, of a surety, it will fall in and straightway be devoured.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>With awe and trembling Aulay listened for the screaming of the doomed
+man. It was full tide, and the sea-beast would be there.</p>
+
+<p>The minutes passed, and no sign. Only the hollow booming of the sea, as
+it moved like a baffled blind giant round the cavern-bases; only the
+rush and spray of the water flung up the narrow shaft high into the
+windy air above the cliff it penetrates.</p>
+
+<p>At last he saw what looked like a mass of seaweed swirled out on the
+surge. It was the Sin-Eater. With a leap, Aulay was at his oars. The
+boat swung through the sea. Just before Neil Ross was about to sink for
+the second time, he caught him and dragged him into the boat.</p>
+
+<p>But then, as ever after, nothing was to be got out of the Sin-Eater save
+a single saying: Tha e lamhan fuar! Tha e lamhan fuar!&mdash;"It has a cold,
+cold hand!"</p>
+
+<p>The telling of this and other tales left none free upon the island to
+look upon the "scapegoat" save as one accursed.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the third month that a new phase of his madness came upon Neil
+Ross.</p>
+
+<p>The horror of the sea and the passion for the sea came over him at the
+same happening. Oftentimes he would race along the shore, screaming wild
+names to it, now hot with hate and loathing, now as the pleading of a
+man with the woman of his love. And strange chants to it, too, were upon
+his lips. Old, old lines of forgotten runes were overheard by Aulay
+Macneill, and not Aulay only; lines wherein the ancient sea-name of the
+island, <i>Ioua</i>, that was given to it long before it was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> called Iona, or
+any other of the nine names that are said to belong to it, occurred
+again and again.</p>
+
+<p>The flowing tide it was that wrought him thus. At the ebb he would
+wander across the weedy slabs or among the rocks, silent, and more like
+a lost duinshee than a man.</p>
+
+<p>Then again after three months a change in his madness came. None knew
+what it was, though Aulay said that the man moaned and moaned because of
+the awful burden he bore. No drowning seas for the sins that could not
+be washed away, no grave for the live sins that would be quick till the
+day of the Judgment!</p>
+
+<p>For weeks thereafter he disappeared. As to where he was, it is not for
+the knowing.</p>
+
+<p>Then at last came that third day of the seventh month when, as I have
+said, Aulay Macneill told old Ronald MacCormick that he had seen the
+Sin-Eater again.</p>
+
+<p>It was only a half-truth that he told, though. For, after he had seen
+Neil Ross upon the rock, he had followed him when he rose, and wandered
+back to the roofless place which he haunted now as of yore. Less
+wretched a shelter now it was, because of the summer that was come,
+though a cold, wet summer at that.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that you, Neil Ross?" he had asked, as he peered into the shadows
+among the ruins of the house.</p>
+
+<p>"That's not my name," said the Sin-Eater; and he seemed as strange then
+and there, as though he were a castaway from a foreign ship.</p>
+
+<p>"And what will it be, then, you that are my friend, and sure knowing me
+as Aulay mac Luais&mdash;Aulay Macneill that never grudges you bit or sup?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"<i>I am Judas.</i>"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>"And at that word," says Aulay Macneill, when he tells the tale, "at
+that word the pulse in my heart was like a bat in a shut room. But after
+a bit I took up the talk.</p>
+
+<p>"'Indeed,' I said; 'and I was not for knowing that. May I be so bold as
+to ask whose son, and of what place?'</p>
+
+<p>"But all he said to me was, '<i>I am Judas</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I said, to comfort him, 'Sure, it's not such a bad name in
+itself, though I am knowing some which have a more home-like sound.' But
+no, it was no good.</p>
+
+<p>"'I am Judas. And because I sold the Son of God for five pieces of
+silver....'</p>
+
+<p>"But here I interrupted him and said, 'Sure, now, Neil&mdash;I mean,
+Judas&mdash;it was eight times five.' Yet the simpleness of his sorrow
+prevailed, and I listened with the wet in my eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"'I am Judas. And because I sold the Son of God for five silver
+shillings, He laid upon me all the nameless black sins of the world. And
+that is why I am bearing them till the Day of Days.'"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>And this was the end of the Sin-Eater; for I will not tell the long
+story of Aulay Macneill, that gets longer and longer every winter; but
+only the unchanging close of it.</p>
+
+<p>I will tell it in the words of Aulay.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>"A bitter, wild day it was, that day I saw him to see him no more. It
+was late. The sea was red with the flamin' light that burned up the air
+betwixt Iona and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> all that is west of West. I was on the shore, looking
+at the sea. The big green waves came in like the chariots in the Holy
+Book. Well, it was on the black shoulder of one of them, just short of
+the ton o' foam that swept above it, that I saw a spar surgin' by.</p>
+
+<p>"'What is that?' I said to myself. And the reason of my wondering was
+this: I saw that a smaller spar was swung across it. And while I was
+watching that thing another great billow came in with a roar, and hurled
+the double spar back, and not so far from me but I might have gripped
+it. But who would have gripped that thing if he were for seeing what I
+saw?</p>
+
+<p>"It is Himself knows that what I say is a true thing.</p>
+
+<p>"On that spar was Neil Ross, the Sin-Eater. Naked he was as the day he
+was born. And he was lashed, too&mdash;ay, sure, he was lashed to it by ropes
+round and round his legs and his waist and his left arm. It was the
+Cross he was on. I saw that thing with the fear upon me. Ah, poor
+drifting wreck that he was! <i>Judas on the Cross!</i> It was his <i>eric</i>!</p>
+
+<p>"But even as I watched, shaking in my limbs, I saw that there was life
+in him still. The lips were moving, and his right arm was ever for
+swinging this way and that. 'Twas like an oar, working him off a lee
+shore; ay, that was what I thought.</p>
+
+<p>"Then, all at once, he caught sight of me. Well he knew me, poor man,
+that has his share of heaven now, I am thinking!</p>
+
+<p>"He waved, and called, but the hearing could not be, because of a big
+surge o' water that came tumbling down upon him. In the stroke of an oar
+he was swept close by the rocks where I was standing. In that
+flounderin',<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> seethin' whirlpool I saw the white face of him for a
+moment, an' as he went out on the re-surge like a hauled net, I heard
+these words fallin' against my ears:</p>
+
+<p>"'An eirig m'anama.... In ransom for my soul!'</p>
+
+<p>"And with that I saw the double-spar turn over and slide down the
+back-sweep of a drowning big wave. Ay, sure, it went out to the deep sea
+swift enough then. It was in the big eddy that rushes between Skerry-Mòr
+and Skerry-Beag. I did not see it again&mdash;no, not for the quarter of an
+hour, I am thinking. Then I saw just the whirling top of it rising out
+of the flying yeast of a great, black-blustering wave, that was rushing
+northward before the current that is called the Black-Eddy.</p>
+
+<p>"With that you have the end of Neil Ross; ay, sure, him that was called
+the Sin-Eater. And that is a true thing; and may God save us the sorrow
+of sorrows.</p>
+
+<p>"And that is all."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="GHOSTS_IN_SOLID_FORM" id="GHOSTS_IN_SOLID_FORM"></a>GHOSTS IN SOLID FORM</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">By Gambier Bolton</span></h3>
+
+<h3>Ex-Pres. The Psychological Society, London, F.R.G.S., F.Z.S., etc.</h3>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>CHAPTER I</h3>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>"<i>A single grain of solid fact is worth ten tons of theory.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>The more I think of it, the more I find this conclusion impressed upon
+me, that the greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to
+SEE something and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people
+can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can
+see. To SEE clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion all in
+one.</i>"&mdash;<span class="smcap">John Ruskin.</span></p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Working Hypothesis</span></h3>
+
+<p>That under certain known and reasonable conditions of temperature,
+light, etc., entities, existing in a sphere outside our own, have been
+demonstrated again and again to manifest themselves on earth in
+temporary bodies materialized from an, at present, undiscovered source,
+through the agency of certain persons of both sexes, termed
+"sensitives," and can be so demonstrated to any person who will provide
+the conditions proved to be necessary for such a demonstration.</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Conditions</span></h3>
+
+<p>Looking back to the seven years of my life which I devoted to a careful
+and critical investigation of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> claim made, not only by both
+Occidental and Oriental mystics but by well-known men of science like
+Sir William Crookes, Professor Alfred Russel Wallace, and others&mdash;that
+it was possible under certain clearly defined conditions to produce,
+apparently out of nothing, fully formed bodies, inhabited by
+(presumably) human entities from another sphere&mdash;the wonder of it still
+enthralls me; the apparent impossibility of so great an upheaval of such
+laws of Nature as we are at present acquainted with being proved clearly
+to be possible, will remain to the end as "the wonder of wonders" in a
+by no means uneventful life.</p>
+
+<p>For, as compared with this, that greatest of Nature's mysteries&mdash;the
+procreation of a human infant by either the normal or mechanical
+impregnation of an ovum, its months of foetal growth and development in
+the uterus, and its birth into the world in a helpless and enfeebled
+condition, amazing as they are to all physiological students&mdash;sinks into
+comparative insignificance when compared with the nearly instantaneous
+production of a fully developed human body, with all its organs
+functioning properly; a body inhabited temporarily by a thinking,
+reasoning entity, who can see, hear, taste, smell and touch: a body
+which can be handled, weighed, measured, and photographed.</p>
+
+<p>When these claims were first brought to my notice I realized at once
+that I was face to face with a problem which would require the very
+closest investigation; and I then and there decided to give up work of
+all kinds and to devote years, if necessary, to a critical examination
+of these claims, to investigate the matter calmly and dispassionately,
+and, in Sir John Herschel's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> memorable words, "to stand or fall by the
+result of a direct appeal to facts in the first instance, <i>and of strict
+logical deduction from them afterwards</i>."</p>
+
+<p>And, as I have said, the result has been that the apparently impossible
+has been proved to be possible&mdash;<i>the facts have beaten me</i>, and I accept
+them whole-heartedly, admitting that our working hypothesis has been
+proved beyond any possibility of doubt, and that these materialized
+entities can manifest themselves to-day to any person who will provide
+the conditions necessary for such a demonstration.</p>
+
+<p>Who they are, what they are, whence they come, and whither they go, each
+investigator must determine for himself, but of their actual existence
+in a sphere just outside our own there can no longer be any room for
+doubt. As a busy man, theories have little or no attraction for me. What
+I demand, and what other busy men and women demand in an investigation
+of this kind is that there should be a reasonable possibility of getting
+hold of <i>facts</i>, good solid facts which can be demonstrated as such to
+any open-minded inquirer, otherwise it would be useless to commence such
+an investigation. And we have now got these facts, and can prove them on
+purely scientific lines.</p>
+
+<p>The meaning of the word materialization, so far at least as it concerns
+our investigation, I understand to be this: the taking on by an entity
+from a sphere outside our own, an entity representing a man, woman, or
+child (or even a beast or bird), of a temporary body built up from
+material drawn partially from the inhabitants of earth, consolidated
+through the agency of certain persons of both sexes, termed sensitives,
+and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> moulded by the entity into a semblance of the body which (it
+alleges) it inhabited during its existence on earth. In other words, a
+materialization is the appearance of an entity in bodily, tangible form,
+i.e., one which we can touch, thus differing from an astralization,
+etherealization, or apparition, which is, of course, one which cannot be
+touched, although it may be clearly visible to any one possessing only
+normal sight.</p>
+
+<p>Let me, then, endeavor to describe to the best of my ability, and in
+very simple language, how I believe these materializations to be
+produced, and the conditions which I have proved to be necessary in
+order that the finest results may be obtained.</p>
+
+<p>I will deal first with the question of <i>the conditions</i>, as without
+conditions of some kind no materialization can be produced, any more
+than a scientific experiment&mdash;such as mixing various chemicals together,
+in order to produce a certain result&mdash;can be carried out successfully
+without proper conditions being provided by the experimenter. What,
+then, do we mean by this word "conditions"?</p>
+
+<p>Take a homely example. The baker mixes exactly the right quantities of
+flour, salt, and yeast with water, and then places the dough which he
+has made in an oven heated to just the right temperature, and produces a
+loaf of bread. Why? Because the conditions were good ones. Had he
+omitted the flour, the yeast, or the water, or had he used an oven over
+or under-heated, he could not have produced an eatable loaf of bread,
+because the conditions made it impossible.</p>
+
+<p>This is what is meant by the terms "good conditions," "bad conditions,"
+"breaking conditions."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The conditions, then, under which I have been able to prove to many
+hundreds of inquirers that it is possible for materialized entities to
+appear on earth, in solid tangible form, are these:</p>
+
+<p>First, light, of suitable wave-length, i.e. suitable color, and let me
+say here, once and for all, that I have proved conclusively for myself
+that <i>darkness is not necessary</i>, provided that one is experimenting
+with a sensitive who has been trained to sit always in the light.</p>
+
+<p>On two occasions I have witnessed materializations in daylight; and
+neither of Sir William Crookes's sensitives&mdash;D. D. Home or Florrie Cook
+(Mrs. Corner)&mdash;would ever sit in darkness, the latter&mdash;with whom I
+carried out a long series of experiments&mdash;invariably stipulating that a
+good light should be used during the whole time that the experiment
+lasted, as she was terrified at the mere thought of darkness.</p>
+
+<p>I find that sunlight, electric light, gas, colza oil, and paraffine are
+all apt to check the production of the phenomena unless filtered through
+canary-yellow, orange, red linen or paper&mdash;just as they are filtered for
+photographic purposes&mdash;owing to the violent action of the actinic (blue)
+rays which they contain (the rays from the violet end of the spectrum),
+which are said to work at about six hundred billions of vibrations per
+second. But if the light is filtered in the way that I have described,
+the production of the phenomena will commence at once, the vibrations of
+the interfering rays being reduced, it is said, to about four hundred
+billions per second or less.</p>
+
+<p>In dealing with materializations we are apt to overlook the fact that we
+are investigating forces or modes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> of energy far more delicate than
+electricity, for instance. Heat, electricity, and light, as Sir William
+Crookes tells us, are all closely related; we know the awful power of
+heat and electricity, but are only too apt to forget&mdash;especially if it
+suits our purpose to do so&mdash;that light too has enormous dynamic potency;
+its vibrations being said to travel in space at the incredible speed of
+twelve million miles a minute;<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> and it is therefore only reasonable
+to assume that the power of these vibrations may be sufficient to
+interfere seriously with the more subtle forces, such as those which we
+are now investigating.</p>
+
+<p>Secondly, we require suitable heat vibrations, and I find that those
+given off in a room either warmed or chilled to sixty-three degrees are
+the very best possible; anything either much above this, or more
+especially, much below this, tending to weaken the results and to cheek
+the phenomena.</p>
+
+<p>Thirdly, we require suitable <i>musical</i> vibrations, and, after carrying
+out a long series of experiments with musical instruments of all kinds,
+I find that the vibrations given off by the reed organ&mdash;termed
+"harmonium" or "American organ"&mdash;or by the concertina, are the most
+suitable, the peculiar quality of the vibrations given off by the reeds
+in these instruments proving to be the most suitable ones for use during
+the production of the phenomena; although on one or two occasions I have
+obtained good results without musical vibrations of any kind, but this
+is rare.</p>
+
+<p>Fourthly, we require the presence of a specially organized man or woman,
+termed <i>the sensitive</i>, one from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> whom it is alleged a portion of the
+matter used by the entity in the building up of its temporary body can
+be drawn, with but little chance of injury to their health. This point
+is one of vital importance, we are told, for it has been proved by means
+of a self-registering weighing-machine on which he was seated, and to
+which he was securely fastened with an electrical apparatus secretly
+hidden beneath the seat, which would at once ring a bell in an anteroom
+if he endeavored to rise from his seat during the experiment, that the
+actual loss in weight to the sensitive, when a fully materialized entity
+was standing in our midst, was no less than sixty-five pounds!</p>
+
+<p>Before employing any person, then, as a sensitive for these delicate,
+not to say dangerous, experiments, he or she should be medically
+examined, in the interests of both the investigator and the sensitive,
+and should their health prove to be in any way below par, they should
+not be permitted to take part in the experiment until their health is
+fully restored.</p>
+
+<p>I have been permitted to examine the sensitive at the moment when an
+entity, clad in a fully-formed temporary body, was walking amongst the
+experimenters; and the distorted features, the shrivelled-up limbs and
+contorted trunk of the sensitive at that moment proclaimed the danger
+connected with the production of this special form of phenomena far
+louder than any words of mine could do.</p>
+
+<p>Needless to say, sensitives for materializations are extremely rare, not
+more than two or three being found to-day amidst the teeming millions
+who inhabit the British Islands; although a few are to be found on the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>
+European continent, and several in North America, where the climatic
+conditions are said to be more favorable for the development of such
+persons.</p>
+
+<p>Now, what constitutes a sensitive, and why are they necessary?</p>
+
+<p>Sensitives through whom physical phenomena (including materializations)
+can be produced have been described, firstly, as persons in whom certain
+forces are stored up, either far in excess of the amount possessed by
+the normal man or woman, or else differing in quality from the forces
+stored up by the normal man or woman; and secondly, as persons who are
+able to attract from those in close proximity to them&mdash;provided that the
+conditions are favorable&mdash;still more of the force, which thus becomes
+centered in them for the time being. In other words, a sensitive for
+physical phenomena is said to be a storage battery for the force which
+is used in the production of physical phenomena&mdash;including
+materializations&mdash;although it is by no means improbable that such highly
+developed sensitives as those required for this special purpose may be
+found to possess extra nerve-centers as compared with those possessed by
+normal human beings. But whether this hypothesis be eventually proved or
+not, there seems to be but very little doubt that "whatever the force
+may be which constitutes the difference between a sensitive and a
+non-sensitive, it is certainly of a mental or magnetic character, i.e.,
+a combination of the subtle elements of mind and magnetism, and
+therefore of a <i>psychological</i>, and not of a purely <i>physical</i>
+character."</p>
+
+<p>But why is a sensitive necessary? you ask. Think of a telephone for a
+moment. You wish to communicate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> with a person who is holding only the
+end of the wire in his hand, the result being that he cannot hear a
+single word. Why is this? Because he has forgotten to fit a receiver at
+his end of the wire, a receiver in which the vibrations set up by your
+voice may be centralized, focussed, a receiver which he can place to his
+ear, and in doing so will at once hear your voice distinctly&mdash;but
+without this your message to him is lost.</p>
+
+<p>And it is said that this is exactly the use of the sensitives during our
+experiments, for they act as "receivers" in which the forces employed in
+the production of the phenomena may be centralized, focussed, their
+varying degrees of sensitiveness enabling them to be used by the
+entities in other spheres for the successful production of such
+phenomena, we are told.</p>
+
+<p>And lastly, we require about twelve to sixteen earnest and really
+sympathetic men and women&mdash;persons trained on scientific lines for
+choice&mdash;all in the best of health; men and women who, whilst strictly on
+their guard against anything in the shape of fraud, are still so much in
+sympathy with the person who is acting as the sensitive that they are
+all the time sending out kindly thoughts towards him; for if, as has
+been said, "thoughts are things," it is possible that hostile thoughts
+would be sufficient not only to enfeeble, but actually to check
+demonstrations of physical phenomena of all kinds in the presence of
+such specially organized, highly developed individuals as the sensitives
+through whom materializations can be produced.</p>
+
+<p>I shall refer to these men and women as the sitters. We generally select
+an equal number so far as sex is concerned; and, in addition, we
+endeavor to obtain an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> equal number of persons possessing either
+positive or negative temperaments. In this way we form the sitters into
+a powerful human battery, the combined force given off by them (if the
+battery is properly arranged, and the individual members of that battery
+are in good health) proving of enormous assistance during our
+experiments. If in ill-health, we find that a man or woman is useless to
+us, for we can no more expect to obtain the necessary power from such an
+individual than we can expect to produce an electric spark from a
+discharged accumulator, or pick up needles with a demagnetized piece of
+steel.</p>
+
+<p>We are told to remember always that "all manifestations of natural laws
+are the results of natural conditions."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Minor details too, we find, must be thought out most carefully if we are
+to provide what we may term ideal conditions.</p>
+
+<p>The chairs should be made of wood throughout, those known as Austrian
+bentwood chairs, having perforated seats, being proved to be the best
+for the purpose.</p>
+
+<p>The sitters should bathe and then change their clothing&mdash;the ladies into
+white dresses, and the men into dark suits&mdash;two hours before the time
+fixed for the experiment, and should then at once partake of a light
+meal&mdash;meat and alcohol being strictly forbidden&mdash;so that the strain upon
+their constitutions during the experiment may not interfere with their
+health.</p>
+
+<p>Trivial as such matters must appear to the man in the street, we are
+told they must all be carried out most carefully, in order that the
+finest conditions possible<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> may be obtained, the one great object of the
+sitters being to give off all the power&mdash;and the best kind of
+power&mdash;that they are capable of producing, in order that sufficient
+suitable material may be gathered together from the sensitive and
+themselves, with which a temporary body may be formed for the use of any
+entity wishing to materialize in their presence.</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Precautions Against Fraud</span></h3>
+
+<p>We are now ready to see what happens at a typical experimental meeting
+for these materializations, at hundreds of which I have assisted, having
+the services of no less than six sensitives placed at my disposal for
+this purpose. I will endeavor to describe what I should consider to be
+an ideal one, held under ideal (test) conditions.</p>
+
+<p>Our imaginary test meeting is to be carried out&mdash;as it was on one
+occasion in London&mdash;in an entirely empty house, which none of us has
+ever entered before, a house which we will hire for this special event.
+By doing this we may feel sure that all possibility of fraud, so far as
+the use of secret trap-doors, large mirrors, and other undesirable
+things of that description are concerned, can be successfully thwarted.</p>
+
+<p>We are now ready to start our experiment; the general feeling of all
+those in the room being that every possible precaution against trickery
+has been taken, and that if any results of any kind whatever should
+follow they will undoubtedly be genuine.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The sitters having been allotted their seats, so that a person of a
+positive and a person of a negative temperament are seated together, we
+now join hands, and form ourselves into what we are told is a powerful
+human battery; the two persons sitting at the two ends of the
+half-circle having of course each one hand free, and from the free hands
+of these two persons, it is said, the power developed and given off by
+this human battery passes into the sensitive at each of his sides.</p>
+
+<p>Sitting quietly in our chairs and talking gently amongst ourselves, we
+soon feel a cool breeze blowing across our hands. In another two minutes
+this will have so increased in volume that it may with truth be
+described as a strong wind.</p>
+
+<p>On looking at the sensitive now, we see that he is rapidly passing into
+a state of trance&mdash;his head is drooping on one side, his arms and hands
+hang downwards loosely, his body being in a limp <i>real trance</i>
+condition, and just in the right state for use by any entity desiring to
+work through him, we are told.</p>
+
+<p>I have only experimented with one sensitive who did not pass into
+trance, who, seated amongst the sitters, remained in a perfectly normal
+condition during the whole of the experiment; watching the materialized
+forms building up beside him, and talking to and with them during the
+process. I shall refer to him shortly.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>We now set our clairvoyants to work, and the statements made by one must
+be confirmed in every detail by the statements of the other as to what
+is occurring at the moment, or no notice is taken of their remarks.</p>
+
+<p>Both now report that they see a thin white mist or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> vapor<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> coming
+from the left side of the sensitive, if a man (or from the pelvis, if a
+woman), which passes into the sitter at the end of the half-circle
+nearest to the sensitive's left side. It then passes, they state, from
+Sitter No. 1 to Sitter No. 2, and so on, until it has gone through the
+whole of the sixteen sitters, passing finally from the last one&mdash;No.
+16&mdash;at the end of the half-circle nearest to the sensitive's right side,
+and disappears into his right side.</p>
+
+<p>We assume from this that the nerve force, magnetic power&mdash;call it what
+you will&mdash;necessary for the formation of one of these temporary bodies
+starts from the sensitive, passes through each sitter, drawing from each
+as much more force or power as he or she is capable of giving off at the
+moment, returning to the sensitive greatly increased in its amount and
+ready for use in the next process. This, then, we will term the first of
+the three stages in the evolution of an entity clad in a temporary body.</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">The Vapor Stage</span></h3>
+
+<p>In a few moments our clairvoyants both report that the force or power is
+issuing from the side of the sensitive, if a man (or from the pelvis, if
+a woman), in the form of a white, soft, dough-like substance, which on
+one occasion I was permitted to touch. I could perceive no smell given
+off by it; it felt cold and clammy, and appeared to have the consistency
+of heavy dough at the moment that I touched it.</p>
+
+<p>This mass of dough-like substance is said to be the material used by the
+entities&mdash;one by one as a rule&mdash;who<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> wish to build up a temporary body.
+It seems to rest on the floor, somewhere near the right side of the
+sensitive, until required for use: its bulk depending apparently upon
+the amount of power given off by the sitters from time to time during
+the experiment.</p>
+
+<p>This we will term the second of the three stages of the evolution of an
+entity clad in a temporary body.</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">The Solid, but Shapeless Stage</span></h3>
+
+<p>We are told that the entity wishing to show himself to us passes into
+this shapeless mass of dough-like substance, which at once increases in
+bulk, and commences to pulsate and move up and down, swaying from side
+to side as it grows in height, the motive power being evidently
+underneath.</p>
+
+<p>The entity then quickly sets to work to mould the mass into something
+resembling a human body, commencing with the head. The rest of the upper
+portion of the body soon follows, and the heart and pulse can now be
+felt to be beating quite regularly and normally, differing in this
+respect from those of the sensitive, who, if tested at this time, will
+be found with both heart and pulse-beats considerably above the normal.
+The legs and feet come last, and then the entity is able to leave the
+near neighborhood of the sensitive and to walk amongst the sitters, the
+third and last stage of its evolution being now complete.</p>
+
+<p>Although occasionally the entity will appear clad in an exact copy of
+the clothing which he states that he wore when on earth&mdash;especially if
+it should happen to be something a little out of the common, such as a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>
+military or naval uniform&mdash;they are draped as a rule in flowing white
+garments of a wonderfully soft texture, and this, too, I have been
+permitted to handle.</p>
+
+<p>Our clairvoyants both affirm that at all times during the
+materialization a thin band of, presumably, the dough-like substance can
+be plainly seen issuing from the side of the sensitive, if a man, (or
+from the pelvis, if a woman), and joined onto the center of the body
+inhabited by the entity&mdash;just like the umbilical cord attached to a
+human infant at birth&mdash;and we are instructed that this band cannot be
+stretched beyond a certain radius, say ten to fifteen feet, without
+doing harm to the sensitive and to the entity; although cases are on
+record where materializations have been seen at a distance of nearly
+sixty feet from the sensitive, on occasions when the conditions were
+unusually favorable.</p>
+
+<p>On handling different portions of the materialized body now, the flesh
+is found to be both warm and firm. The bodies are well proportioned,
+those of the females&mdash;for they take on sex conditions during the
+process&mdash;having beautiful figures; the hands, arms, legs, and feet are
+quite perfect in their modelling, but in my opinion the body, head, and
+limbs of every materialization of either sex or any age which I have
+scrutinized at close quarters carefully, or have been permitted to
+handle, have appeared to be at least one-third smaller in size (except
+as regards actual height) than those possessed by beings on earth of the
+same sex and age.</p>
+
+<p>Not only have we witnessed materializations of aged entities of both
+sexes, showing all the characteristics of old age&mdash;for the purpose of
+identification by the sitters, as they tell us&mdash;but we have seen
+materialized infants<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> also; and on one occasion two still-born children
+appeared in our midst simultaneously, one of them showing distinct
+traces on its little face of a hideous deformity which it possessed at
+the time of its premature birth&mdash;a deformity known only to the mother,
+who happened to be present that evening as one of the sitters.</p>
+
+<p>We are told that, for the purpose of identification, the entity will
+return to earth in an exact counterpart of the body which he alleges
+that he occupied at the time of his death, in order that he may be
+recognized by his relatives and friends who happen to be present. Thus,
+the one who left the earth as an infant will appear in his materialized
+body as an infant, although he may have been dead for twenty or thirty
+years. The aged man or woman will appear with bent body, wrinkled face,
+and snow-white hair, walking amongst us with difficulty, and just as
+they allege they did before their death, although that may have occurred
+twenty years before. The one who had lost a limb during his earth-life
+will return minus that limb; the one who was disfigured by accident or
+disease will return bearing distinct traces of that disfigurement, for
+the purpose of identification only.</p>
+
+<p>But as soon as the identification has been established successfully, all
+this changes instantly; the disfigurement disappears; the four limbs
+will be seen, and both the infant and the aged will from henceforth show
+themselves to us in the very prime of life&mdash;the young growing upwards
+and the aged downwards, as we say, and, as they one and all state
+emphatically, just as they really look and feel in the sphere in which
+they now exist.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>While inhabiting these temporary bodies, they state that they take on,
+not only sex conditions, but earth conditions temporarily too; for they
+appear to feel pain if their bodies are injured in any way; complain of
+the cold if the temperature of the room is allowed to fall much below
+sixty degrees, or of the heat if the temperature is allowed to rise
+above seventy degrees; seem to be depressed during a thunderstorm, when
+our atmosphere is overcharged with electricity; and appear bright and
+happy in a warm room when the world outside is in the grip of a hard
+frost, and also on bright, starry nights.</p>
+
+<p>And not only this, but they take on strongly marked characteristics of
+the numerous races on earth temporarily too; the materialized entities
+of the white races differing quite as markedly from those of the yellow
+or brown races, as do these from the black races; and in speaking to us
+each one will communicate in the particular language only which is
+characteristic of his race on earth.</p>
+
+<p>Five, six and even <i>seven</i> totally different languages have been
+employed during a single experimental meeting through a sensitive who
+had never in his life been out of England, and who was proved
+conclusively to know no other language than English; the latter number,
+we were told, being in honor of a ship's doctor who was present on one
+occasion, and who&mdash;although the fact was quite unknown to any of us at
+the time&mdash;proved to be an expert linguist, for he conversed that evening
+with different entities in English, French, German, Russian, Chinese,
+Japanese, and in the language of one of the hill-tribes of India.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>On another occasion, when I was the only European present at an
+afternoon experimental meeting held in London by eight Parsees of both
+sexes from Bombay, during the whole of the time which the meeting
+lasted&mdash;two and a quarter hours&mdash;the entities and the Parsee sitters
+carried on their conversation in Hindustani; two entities and one of the
+Parsee men simultaneously engaging in a heated controversy, which lasted
+for nearly three minutes, over the disposal of the bodies of their dead,
+the entities insisting on cremation only, as opposed to allowing the
+bodies to be eaten by vultures&mdash;the noise which they made during this
+discussion being almost deafening. The sensitive, it was proved
+conclusively, knew no other language than English, and had only once
+been out of the British Islands, when he paid a short visit to France.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>CHAPTER II</h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>"<i>Sit down before a fact as a little child: be prepared to give
+up every preconceived notion: follow humbly wherever and to
+whatever abysses Nature leads, or you shall learn
+nothing.</i>"&mdash;<span class="smcap">Thomas Huxley.</span></p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Tests</span></h3>
+
+<p>The tests given to me and to my fellow-investigators through the six
+sensitives who so ably assisted us during our seven years of
+experimental work in this little-known field of research&mdash;the tests have
+been so numerous, and were of such a varied character, that I find it
+somewhat difficult to know which to select out of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> hundreds which
+were recorded in our books officially and elsewhere, the ones which will
+prove of the greatest interest to inquirers; but I have made extracts
+from ten of these records, and these, with a few taken from Sir William
+Crookes's reports on the experiments conducted in his presence, will, in
+my opinion, be sufficient to prove that we who have witnessed these
+marvels are neither hallucinated, insane, nor liars when we solemnly
+affirm that we have both seen and handled the materialized bodies built
+up for temporary use by entities from another sphere; all the statements
+made here being true in every detail, to the best of my knowledge and
+belief.</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Experiment No. 1</span></h3>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>Place&mdash;<i>Lyndhurst, New Forest, Hampshire. Sensitive A, male, aged about
+46.</i></p></blockquote>
+
+<p>As an example of a simple but exceedingly severe test, I would first
+record one given to me and a fellow-investigator on the outskirts of the
+New Forest, one for which no special preparation of any kind whatever
+had been made.</p>
+
+<p>The sensitive, a nearly blind man, was taken by us on a dark night to a
+spot totally unknown to him, as he had only just arrived from London by
+train, and was led into a large travelling caravan, one which he had
+never been near before, as it had only recently left the builder's
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>During the day I had made a critical examination of the interior of the
+caravan, and had satisfied myself that no one was or could possibly be
+concealed in it. I then<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> locked the door, and kept the key in my pocket
+until the moment when, on the arrival of the sensitive, I unlocked the
+door and we all passed into the caravan together. I then locked and
+bolted the door behind us.</p>
+
+<p>As I have already said, no preparation of any kind had been made for the
+experiment. It was merely the result of a desire to see if anything
+could be produced through this sensitive, under extremely difficult
+conditions&mdash;conditions which we considered as so utterly bad as to make
+failure a certainty.</p>
+
+<p>We did not even possess a chair of any kind for the sensitive or
+ourselves to sit upon, so we placed for his use a board on top of the
+iron cooking-range which was fixed in the kitchen-portion of the
+caravan, whilst we sat upon the two couches which were used as beds in
+the living-portion of the caravan. There was no music, no powerful
+"human battery" in the shape of a number of picked sitters; in fact, the
+conditions were just about as bad as they could possibly be, and yet,
+within ten minutes of my locking the door behind us, the figure of a
+tall man stood before us, a man so tall that he was compelled to bow his
+head as he passed under the six-foot high partition which separated the
+two sections of the caravan.</p>
+
+<p>He said, "I am Colonel &mdash; who was 'killed,' as you say, at the battle of
+&mdash; in Egypt. For many years during my earth-life I was deeply interested
+in materializations, and spent the last night of my life in England
+experimenting with this very sensitive; and it is a great pleasure to me
+to be able to return to you&mdash;strangers though you both are to
+me&mdash;through him. To prove to you that I am not the sensitive
+masquerading<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> before you, will you please come here and stand close to
+me, and so settle the matter for yourself?"</p>
+
+<p>I at once rose and stood beside him, almost touching him. I then
+discovered that not only were his features and his coloring totally
+different from those of the sensitive, but that he towered above me,
+standing, as nearly as I could judge, six foot two or three inches, and
+was certainly four inches taller than either the sensitive or myself.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst thus standing beside him, and at a distance of about eight feet
+from the sensitive, we could both hear the unfortunate man moving
+uneasily on his hard seat on the kitchen-range, sighing and moaning as
+if in pain.</p>
+
+<p>The entity remained with us for about three minutes, and his place was
+then taken by a slightly built young man, standing about five feet nine
+inches, one claiming to be a recently deceased member of the royal
+family. He talked with us in a soft and pleasing voice, finally
+whispering a private message to my companion, asking him to deliver it
+to his mother, Queen &mdash;.</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Experiment No. 2</span></h3>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>Place&mdash;<i>Peckham Rye, London, S. E. Sensitive A, male, aged about 46.</i></p></blockquote>
+
+<p>An almost equally hopeless task was set this sensitive by the owner of
+the caravan and myself when we experimented with him at midday on a
+brilliant morning in July, with sunlight streaming into the room round
+the edges of the drawn down window-blinds, and round the top, sides, and
+bottom of the heavy window-curtains,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> which we had pinned together in a
+vain attempt to keep out the sunlight during the experiment.</p>
+
+<p>And yet once again, and in spite of the conditions which we regarded as
+utterly hopeless, the figure of a man appeared in less than ten minutes,
+materialized from head to foot, as he proved to us by showing us his
+lower limbs. He left the side of the sensitive, walked out into the room
+and stood between us, talking to us in a deep rich voice for nearly
+three minutes. As he stood beside us we could hear the sensitive, twelve
+feet away, moving uneasily on his chair and groaning slightly.</p>
+
+<p>Five minutes after he disappeared the same (alleged) recently deceased
+member of the royal family walked out to us and held a short private
+conversation with my companion, and sent another message to his mother,
+Queen &mdash;.</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Experiment No. 3</span></h3>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>Place&mdash;<i>West Hampstead, London, N. W. Sensitive B, female, aged about
+49.</i></p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Persons of middle age or older who happened to be in England a few years
+ago at the time that two lawsuits were brought against a celebrated
+conjurer by the clever young man who had succeeded in exposing one of
+his most mystifying tricks, will well remember the sensation caused by
+the giving of both verdicts against the conjurer; and the young man&mdash;to
+whom I shall refer as Mr. X&mdash;at once became famous as the man who had
+beaten one of the cleverest conjurers of the day.</p>
+
+<p>A friend of mine, who had been present on several occasions when Sir
+William Crookes's sensitive&mdash;Florrie<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> Cook (Mrs. Corner), referred to
+above as Sensitive B&mdash;had produced materializations in gaslight at my
+house in London, asked her to visit his house at West Hampstead one
+evening to meet several friends of his, and to see if it were possible
+for any entity to materialize in my friend's own drawing-room.</p>
+
+<p>She at once accepted his invitation to sit there under strict test
+conditions; and, talking the matter over with some of his friends a day
+or two before the one chosen for the experiment, he told me that they
+had arranged to have the sensitive securely tied to her chair, to have
+strong iron rings fastened to the floor-boards, through which ropes
+would be passed, these ropes to be securely fastened to the sensitive's
+legs; all knots of every size and kind to be sealed, so as to prevent
+any attempt on her part to leave her chair and to masquerade as a
+materialized entity.</p>
+
+<p>One of his friends happened to know the celebrated Mr. X&mdash;, and, as he
+had so recently succeeded in beating so notable a conjurer, he was
+invited to be present and to take entire charge of the tying up, the
+binding and sealing arrangements, in order to render the escape of the
+sensitive from her chair an impossibility.</p>
+
+<p>When I joined the party in the drawing-room, Mr. X&mdash;, to whom I was
+introduced, was busily engaged in tying the sensitive up with his own
+ropes and tapes, sealing every knot with special sealing-wax and with a
+seal provided by our host. The room was a large one, and a portion at
+one end had been cleared of all furniture, and in the center of this
+space only the sensitive seated upon her chair, and Mr. X&mdash; busily at
+work, were to be seen; and the latter, after another fifteen<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> minutes of
+real hard labor, was asked by our host if he was thoroughly satisfied
+that the sensitive was fastened to her chair securely. He replied that
+so securely was she fastened, that if she could produce phenomena of any
+kind whatever under such conditions, he would at once admit their
+genuineness.</p>
+
+<p>The sensitive was all this time in a perfectly normal state, and not
+flurried in any way, her one anxiety being lest we should lower the
+lights, as she was so terrified at the thought of darkness.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. X&mdash;, after stepping backwards to have a final look at the result of
+his labors, then walked close to the spot where the sensitive was
+sitting in gaslight, and put one hand up towards the top of the curtain,
+and was in the act of drawing this round her to keep the direct rays of
+the gaslight from falling upon her, when a large brown arm and hand
+suddenly appeared, the hand being clapped heavily upon Mr. X&mdash;'s
+shoulder, whilst a gruff masculine voice asked him in loud tones, "Are
+you really satisfied?"</p>
+
+<p>I have witnessed some strange happenings in connection with my
+investigation of occult matters, but to my dying day I shall never
+forget the look of blank astonishment on Mr. X&mdash;'s face at that moment.</p>
+
+<p>Quickly recovering himself, however, he at once examined the
+sensitive&mdash;a little woman, far below the average height, having small
+hands and feet, as we could all see quite clearly&mdash;and declared that
+every seal and every knot was unbroken, and just as he had left them not
+sixty seconds before.</p>
+
+<p>Amongst other entities who materialized that evening was a young girl of
+about eighteen years of age who<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> stated that when she left her
+earth-body she had been a dancer at a café in Algiers.</p>
+
+<p>She came from the spot where the sensitive was seated, laughing
+heartily, stating that the hand and arm belonged to an old English
+sailor, whom she spoke of as "the Captain." She said, further, that he
+had been standing with her watching the tying-up process from their
+sphere, and laughing at Mr. X&mdash;'s vain attempt to prevent the production
+of the phenomena. The Captain had very much wished to materialize fully,
+so as to surprise Mr. X&mdash; as he stepped back from the sensitive; but,
+finding that he could only get sufficient "power" to produce a hand and
+arm, he was in a bad temper. And this was evidently the case, for during
+the ten minutes that the girl remained talking to us we could now and
+then hear the gruff voice of the Captain rolling out language which can
+only be described as "forcible and free."</p>
+
+<p>The experiment lasted for nearly an hour, and at its conclusion Mr. X&mdash;
+examined the sensitive, and once again reported that every seal and knot
+were just as he had left them at the commencement of the experiment.</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Experiment No. 4</span></h3>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>Place&mdash;<i>My House in London. Sensitive D, male, aged about 34.</i></p></blockquote>
+
+<p>On numerous occasions this sensitive has been seen by all present, in
+gaslight shaded by red paper, seated on his chair in a state of deep
+trance, and was heard to be breathing heavily, whilst two materialized
+entities<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> stood beside him; or with one beside him, and the other
+standing five to eight feet away from him and close to the sitters.</p>
+
+<p>Again, two female entities were seen simultaneously when this male
+sensitive was experimenting with us, one of them inside the half-circle
+formed by the sixteen sitters, and talking to them in a low sweet voice,
+at a distance of about eight feet from the sensitive; whilst the other
+female entity passed through or over the sitters, and, walking about the
+room outside the half-circle formed by the sitters, came up behind two
+of them, and not only spoke audibly to them, but also held a short
+conversation with the entity inside the ring, both speaking almost
+instantaneously.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_PHANTOM_ARMIES_SEEN_IN_FRANCE17" id="THE_PHANTOM_ARMIES_SEEN_IN_FRANCE17"></a>THE PHANTOM ARMIES SEEN IN FRANCE<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a></h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">By Hereward Carrington</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>History abounds in cases showing the apparent intrusion of spiritual
+help in time of trouble, and in the annals of military history these
+accounts are not lacking. On several occasions the Crusaders thought
+that they saw angelic hosts fighting for them&mdash;phantom horsemen charging
+the enemy, when their own utter destruction seemed imminent. In the wars
+between the English and the Scotch, several such cases were cited, and
+the Napoleonic wars also furnished examples. But the most striking
+evidence of this character&mdash;because the newest&mdash;and supported,
+apparently, by a good deal of first-hand and sincere testimony, is that
+afforded by the Phantom Armies seen in France during the retreat of the
+British army from Mons&mdash;the field of Agincourt. Cut off by overwhelming
+numbers, and all but annihilated, the British army fought desperately,
+but the 80,000 were opposed by 300,000 Germans, backed by a terrific
+fire of artillery, and were indeed in a critical position. They were
+only saved, as we know, by the heroism of a small force of men&mdash;a
+rear-guard&mdash;who were practically wiped out in consequence. At the most
+critical moment came what appeared to be angelic assistance. The tide of
+battle seemed to be stemmed by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> supernatural means. In a letter written
+by a soldier who actually witnessed these startling events, quoted by
+the Hon. Mrs. St. John Mildmay (<i>North American Review</i>, August, 1915),
+the following graphic account is given. Our soldier writes:</p>
+
+<p>"The men joked at the shells and found many funny names for them, and
+had bets about them, and greeted them with music-hall songs, as they
+screamed in this terrific cannonade. The climax seemed to have been
+reached, but 'a seven-times heated hell' of the enemy's onslaught fell
+upon them, rending brother from brother. At that very moment, they saw
+from their trenches a tremendous host moving against their lines. Five
+hundred of the thousand (who had been detailed to fight the rear-guard
+action) remained, and as far as they could see the German infantry was
+pressing on against them, column by column, a gray world of men&mdash;10,000
+of them, as it appeared afterwards. There was no hope at all. Some of
+them shook hands. One man improvised a new version of the battle song
+Tipperary, ending 'and we shan't get there!' And all went on firing
+steadily. The enemy dropped line after line, while the few machine guns
+did their best. Every one knew it was of no use. The dead gray bodies
+lay in companies and battalions, but others came on and on, swarming and
+advancing from beyond and beyond.</p>
+
+<p>"'World without end. Amen!' said one of the British soldiers, with some
+irreverence, as he took aim and fired. Then he remembered a vegetarian
+restaurant in London, where he had once or twice eaten queer dishes of
+cutlets made of lentils and nuts that pretended to be steaks. On all the
+plates in this restaurant a figure of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> St. George was painted in blue
+with the motto, <i>Adsit Anglis Sanctus Georgius</i> (May St. George be a
+present help to England). The soldier happened to know 'Latin and other
+useless things,' so now, as he fired at the gray advancing mass, 300
+yards away, he uttered the pious vegetarian motto. He went on firing to
+the end, till at last Bill on his right had to clout him cheerfully on
+the head to make him stop, pointing out as he did so that the King's
+ammunition cost money and was not lightly to be wasted. For, as the
+Latin scholar uttered his invocation, he felt something between a
+shudder and an electric shock pass through his body. The roar of the
+battle died down in his ears to a gentle murmur, and instead of it, he
+says, he heard a great voice louder than a thunder peal, crying 'Array!
+Array!' His heart grew hot as a burning coal, then it grew cold as ice
+within him, for it seemed to him a tumult of voices answered to the
+summons. He heard or seemed to hear thousands shouting:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"'St. George! St. George!</p>
+
+<p>"'Ha! Messire, Ha! Sweet Saint, grant us good deliverance!</p>
+
+<p>"'St. George for Merrie England!</p>
+
+<p>"'Harow! Harow! Monseigneur St. George, succour us, Ha! St.
+George! A low bow, and a strong bow, Knight of Heaven, aid us!'</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>"As the soldier heard these voices, he saw before him, beyond the
+trench, a long line of shapes with a shining about them. They were like
+men who drew the bow, and with another shout their cloud of arrows flew
+singing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> through the air toward the German host. The other men in the
+trenches were firing all the while. They had no hope, but they aimed
+just as if they had been shooting at Bisley.</p>
+
+<p>"Suddenly one of these lifted up his voice in plain English. 'Gawd help
+us!' he bellowed to the man next him, 'but we're bloomin' marvels! Look
+at those gray gentlemen! Look at them! They 're not going down in dozens
+or hundreds&mdash;it's <i>thousands</i> it is! Look, look! There's a regiment gone
+while I'm talking to ye!'</p>
+
+<p>"'Shut it,' the other soldier bellowed, taking aim. 'What are ye talkin'
+about?' But he gulped with astonishment even as he spoke, for indeed the
+gray men were falling by the thousands. The English could hear the
+guttural scream of their revolvers as they shot, and line after line
+crashed to the earth. All the while the Latin-bred soldier heard the cry
+'Harow, Harow! Monseigneur! Dear Saint! Quick to our aid! St. George
+help us!'</p>
+
+<p>"The singing arrows darkened the air, the hordes melted before them.
+'More machine guns,' Bill yelled to Tom. 'Don't hear them,' Tom yelled
+back, 'but thank God, anyway, that they have got it in the neck!'</p>
+
+<p>"In fact, there were ten thousand dead German soldiers left before that
+salient of the English army, and consequently&mdash;<i>no Sedan</i>. In Germany
+the General Staff decided that the English must have employed turpenite
+shells, as no wounds were discernible on the bodies of the dead
+soldiers. But the man who knew what nuts tasted like when they called
+themselves steak, knew also that St. George had brought his Agincourt
+Bowmen to help the English."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Such accounts have been confirmed by others. Thus, Miss Phyllis
+Campbell, writing in <i>The Occult Review</i> (October, 1915), says:</p>
+
+<p>"I tremble, now that it is safely past, to look back on the terrible
+week that brought the Allies to Vitry-le-François. We had not had our
+clothes off for the whole of that week, because no sooner had we reached
+home, too weary to undress, or to eat, and fallen on our beds, than the
+'chug-chug' of the commandant's car would sound into the silence of the
+deserted street, and the horn would imperatively summon us back to
+duty&mdash;because, in addition to our duties as <i>ambulancier auxiliare</i>, we
+were interpreters to the post, now at this moment diminished to half a
+dozen.</p>
+
+<p>"Returning at 4:30 in the morning, we stood on the end of the platform,
+watching the train crawl through the blue-green mist of the forest into
+the clearing, and draw up with the first wounded from Vitry-le-François.
+It was packed with dead and dying and badly wounded. For a time we
+forgot our weariness in a race against time&mdash;removing the dead and
+dying, and attending to those in need. I was bandaging a man's shattered
+arm with the <i>majeur</i> instructing me, while he stitched a horrible gap
+in his head, when Madame de A&mdash;, the heroic president of the post, came
+and replaced me. 'There is an English in the fifth wagon,' she said. 'He
+wants something&mdash;I think a holy picture!'</p>
+
+<p>"The idea of an English soldier wanting a holy picture struck me, even
+in that atmosphere of blood and misery, as something to smile at&mdash;but I
+hurried away. 'The English' was a Lancashire Fusilier. He was propped in
+a corner, his left arm tied-up in a peasant<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> woman's handkerchief, and
+his head newly bandaged. He should have been in a state of collapse from
+loss of blood, for his tattered uniform was soaked and caked in blood,
+and his face paper-white under the dirt of conflict. He looked at me
+with bright, courageous eyes and asked for a picture or a medal (he
+didn't care which) of St. George. I asked him if he was a Catholic.
+'No,' he was Wesleyan Methodist, and he wanted a picture or a medal of
+St. George, <i>because he had seen him on a white horse</i>, leading the
+British at Vitry-le-François, when the Allies turned.</p>
+
+<p>"There was an F. R. A. man, wounded in the leg, sitting beside him on
+the floor; he saw my look of amazement, and hastened in: 'It's true,
+sister,' he said. 'We all saw it. First there was a sort of yellow
+mist-like, sort of risin' before the Germans as they came on the top of
+the hill&mdash;come on like a solid wall, they did&mdash;springing out of the
+earth just solid&mdash;no end to 'em! I just give up. No use fighting the
+whole German race, thinks I; it's all up with <i>us</i>. The next minute
+comes this funny cloud of light, and when it clears off, there's a tall
+man with yellow hair in golden armor, on a white horse, holding his
+sword up, and his mouth open as if he was saying: "Come on, boys! I'll
+put the kybosh on the devils!" Sort of "This is my picnic" expression.
+Then, before you could say "knife," the Germans had turned, and we were
+after them, fighting like ninety ..."</p>
+
+<p>"Where was this?" I asked. But neither of them could tell. They had
+marched, fighting a rear-guard action, from Mons, till St. George had
+appeared through the haze of light, and turned the enemy. They both<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>
+<i>knew</i> it was St. George. Hadn't they seen him with a sword on every
+'quid' they'd ever seen? The Frenchies had seen him too&mdash;ask them; but
+they said it was St. Michael...."</p>
+
+<p>Much additional testimony of a like nature might be given&mdash;and has been
+collected by students of psychical research. If the spiritual world ever
+intervenes in matters mundane, it assuredly did so on this occasion. And
+it could hardly have chosen a more opportune time. Could the aspiring
+thoughts of the dead and dying, and those still living and fighting for
+their country, have drawn "St. George" to earth, to aid in again
+redeeming his country from a foreign foe? Could a simple "hallucination"
+have been so widespread and so prevalent? Or might there not have been
+some spiritual energy behind the visions thus seen&mdash;stimulating them,
+and inspiring and encouraging the stricken soldiers? We cannot say. We
+only know what the soldiers themselves say; and we also know the
+undoubted effects upon the enemy. For on both occasions were the Germans
+repulsed with terrible slaughter. Perhaps the vision of St. George led
+our soldiers into closer touch and <i>rapport</i> with the consciousness of
+some high intelligence&mdash;or the veil separating the two worlds was
+rent&mdash;as so often appears to be the case in apparitions and visions of
+this character.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_PORTAL_OF_THE_UNKNOWN" id="THE_PORTAL_OF_THE_UNKNOWN"></a>THE PORTAL OF THE UNKNOWN</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">By Andrew Jackson Davis, "The Seer"</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>When the hour of her death arrived, I was fortunately in a proper state
+of mind and body to produce the superior (clairvoyant) condition; but,
+previous to throwing my spirit into that condition, I sought the most
+convenient and favorable position, that I might be allowed to make the
+observations entirely unnoticed and undisturbed. Thus situated and
+conditioned, I proceeded to observe and investigate the mysterious
+processes of dying, and to learn what it is for an individual human
+spirit to undergo the changes consequent upon physical death or external
+dissolution. They were these:</p>
+
+<p>I saw that the physical organization could no longer subserve the
+diversified purposes or requirements of the spiritual principle. But the
+various internal organs of the body appeared to resist the withdrawal of
+the animating soul. The body and the soul, like two friends, strongly
+resisted the various circumstances which rendered their eternal
+separation imperative and absolute. These internal conflicts gave rise
+to manifestations of what seemed to be, to the material senses, the most
+thrilling and painful sensations; but I was unspeakably thankful and
+delighted when I perceived and realized the fact that those physical
+manifestations were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> indications, not of pain or unhappiness, but simply
+that the spirit was eternally dissolving its co-partnership with the
+material organism.</p>
+
+<p>Now the head of the body became suddenly enveloped in a fine, soft,
+mellow, luminous atmosphere; and, as instantly, I saw the cerebrum and
+the cerebellum expand their most interior portions; I saw them
+discontinue their appropriate galvanic functions; and then I saw that
+they became highly charged with the vital electricity and vital
+magnetism which permeate subordinate systems and structures. That is to
+say, the brain, as a whole, suddenly declared itself to be tenfold more
+positive, over the lesser proportions of the body, than it ever was
+during the period of health. This phenomenon invariably precedes
+physical dissolution.</p>
+
+<p>Now the process of dying, or the spirit's departure from the body, was
+fully commenced. The brain began to attract the elements of electricity,
+of magnetism, of motion, of life, and of sensation, into its various and
+numerous departments. The head became intensely brilliant; and I
+particularly remarked that just in the same proportion as the
+extremities of the organism grow dark and cold, the brain appears light
+and glowing.</p>
+
+<p>Now I saw, in the mellow, spiritual atmosphere which emanated from and
+encircled her head, the indistinct outlines of the formation of
+<i>another</i> head. This new head unfolded more and more distinctly, and so
+indescribably compact and intensely brilliant did it become, that I
+could neither see through it, nor gaze upon it as steadily as I desired.
+While this spiritual head was being eliminated and organized from out
+of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> and above the material head, I saw that the surrounding aromal
+atmosphere which had emanated from the material head was in great
+commotion; but, as the new head became more distinct and perfect, this
+brilliant atmosphere gradually disappeared. This taught me that those
+aromal elements, which were, in the beginning of the metamorphosis,
+attracted from the system into the brain, and thence eliminated in the
+form of an atmosphere, were indissolubly united in accordance with the
+divine principle of affinity in the universe, which pervades and
+destinates every particle of matter, and developed the spiritual head
+which I beheld.</p>
+
+<p>In the identical manner in which the spiritual head was eliminated and
+unchangeably organized, I saw, unfolding in their natural progressive
+order, the harmonious development of the neck, the shoulders, the breast
+and the entire spiritual organization. It appeared from this, even to an
+unequivocal demonstration, that the innumerable particles of what might
+be termed unparticled matter which constitute the man's spiritual
+principle, are constitutionally endowed with certain elective
+affinities, analogous to an immortal friendship. The innate tendencies
+which the elements and essences of her soul manifested by uniting and
+organizing themselves, were the efficient and imminent causes which
+unfolded and perfected her spiritual organization. The defects and
+deformities of her physical body were, in the spiritual body which I saw
+thus developed, almost completely removed. In other words, it seemed
+that those hereditary obstructions and influences were now removed,
+which originally arrested the full and proper<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> development of her
+physical constitution; and, therefore, that her spiritual constitution,
+being elevated above those obstructions, was enabled to unfold and
+perfect itself, in accordance with the universal tendencies of all
+created things.</p>
+
+<p>While this spiritual formation was going on, which was perfectly visible
+to my spiritual perceptions, the material body manifested, to the outer
+vision of observing individuals in the room, many symptoms of uneasiness
+and pain; but the indications were totally deceptive; they were wholly
+caused by the departure of the vital or spiritual forces from the
+extremities and viscera into the brain, and thence into the ascending
+organism.</p>
+
+<p>The spirit arose at right angles over the head or brain of the deserted
+body. But immediately previous to the final dissolution of the
+relationship which had for so many years subsisted between the two, the
+spiritual and material bodies, I saw&mdash;playing energetically between the
+feet of the elevated spiritual body and the head of the prostrate
+physical body&mdash;a bright stream or current of vital electricity. And here
+I perceived what I had never before obtained a knowledge of, that a
+small portion of this vital electrical element returned to the deserted
+body immediately subsequent to the separation of the umbilical thread;
+and that that portion of this element which passed back into the earthly
+organism instantly diffused itself through the entire structure, and
+thus prevented immediate decomposition.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as the spirit, whose departing hour I thus watched, was wholly
+disengaged from the tenacious physical body, I directed my attention to
+the movements<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> and emotions of the former; and I saw her begin to
+breathe the most interior or spiritual portions of the surrounding
+terrestrial atmosphere. At first it seemed with difficulty that she
+could breathe the new medium; but in a few seconds she inhaled and
+exhaled the spiritual elements of nature with the greatest possible ease
+and delight. And now I saw that she was in possession of exterior and
+physical proportions, which were identical, in every possible
+particular&mdash;improved and beautified&mdash;with those proportions which
+characterized her earthly organization. Indeed, so much like her former
+self was she that, had her friends beheld her as I did, they certainly
+would have exclaimed&mdash;as we often do upon the sudden return of a
+long-absent friend, who leaves us and returns in health&mdash;'Why, how well
+you look! How improved you are!' Such was the nature&mdash;most beautifying
+in their extent&mdash;of the improvements that were wrought upon her.</p>
+
+<p>I saw her continue to conform and accustom herself to the new elements
+and elevating sensations which belong to the inner life. I did not
+particularly notice the workings and emotions of her newly-awakening and
+fast-unfolding spirit, except that I was careful to remark her
+philosophical tranquillity throughout the entire process, and her
+non-participation with the different members of her family in their
+unrestrained bewailing of her departure from the earth, to unfold in
+Love and Wisdom throughout eternal spheres. She understood at a glance
+that they could only gaze upon the cold and lifeless form, which she had
+but just deserted; and she readily comprehended the fact that it was
+owing to a want of true knowledge upon their parts that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> they thus
+vehemently regretted her merely physical death.</p>
+
+<p>The period required to accomplish the entire change which I saw was not
+far from two hours and a half; but this furnished no rule as to the time
+required for every spirit to elevate and reorganize itself above the
+head of the outer form. Without changing my position or spiritual
+perceptions I continued to observe the movements of her new-born spirit.
+As soon as she became accustomed to her new elements which surrounded
+her, she descended from her elevated position, which was immediately
+over the body, by an effort of the will-power, and directly passed out
+of the door of the bedroom in which she had lain, in the material form,
+prostrated with disease for several weeks. It being in a summer month,
+the doors were all open, and her egress from the house was attended with
+no obstruction. I saw her pass through the adjoining room, out of the
+door, and step from the house into the atmosphere! I was overwhelmed
+with delight and astonishment when, for the first time, I realized the
+universal truth that the spiritual organization can tread the
+atmosphere, which is impossible while in the coarser earthly form&mdash;so
+much more refined is man's spiritual constitution. She walked in the
+atmosphere as easily, and in the same manner, as we tread the earth and
+ascend an eminence. Immediately upon her emergement from the house, she
+was joined by two friendly spirits from the spiritual country, and after
+tenderly recognizing and communing with each other, the three, in the
+most graceful manner, began ascending obliquely through the ethereal
+envelopment of her globe. They walked so naturally and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> fraternally
+together that I could scarcely realize the fact that they trod the
+air&mdash;they seemed to be walking upon the side of a glorious but familiar
+mountain. I continued to gaze upon them until the distance shut them
+from my view,&mdash;whereupon I returned to my external and ordinary
+condition.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>This account of the facts&mdash;of what actually happened at death&mdash;is
+confirmed by numerous other witnesses, who agree as to the main
+details.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_SUPERNORMAL_EXPERIENCES" id="THE_SUPERNORMAL_EXPERIENCES"></a>THE SUPERNORMAL: EXPERIENCES</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">By St. John B. Seymour</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>When Mrs. Seymour was a little girl she resided in Dublin; amongst the
+members of the family was her paternal grandmother. This old lady was
+not as kind as she might have been to her granddaughter, and
+consequently the latter was somewhat afraid of her. In process of time
+the grandmother died. Mrs. Seymour, who was then about eight years of
+age, had to pass the door of the room where the death occurred in order
+to reach her own bedroom, which was a flight higher up. Past this door
+the child used to fly in terror with all possible speed. On one
+occasion, however, as she was preparing to make the usual rush past, she
+distinctly felt a hand placed on her shoulder, and became conscious of a
+voice saying, "Don't be afraid, Mary!" From that day on the child never
+had the least feeling of fear, and always walked quietly past the door.</p>
+
+<p>The Rev. D. B. Knox sends a curious personal experience, which was
+shared by him with three other people. He writes as follows: "Not very
+long ago my wife and I were preparing to retire for the night. A niece,
+who was in the house, was in her bedroom and the door was open. The maid
+had just gone to her room. All four<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> of us distinctly heard the heavy
+step of a man walking along the corridor, apparently in the direction of
+the bathroom. We searched the whole house immediately, but no one was
+discovered. Nothing untoward happened except the death of the maid's
+mother about a fortnight later. It was a detached house, so that the
+noise could not have been made by the neighbors."</p>
+
+<p>In the following tale the "double" or "wraith" of a living man was seen
+by three different people, one of whom, our correspondent, saw it
+through a telescope. She writes: "In May, 1883, the parish of A&mdash; was
+vacant, so Mr. D&mdash;, the Diocesan Curate, used to come out to take
+service on Sundays. One day there were two funerals to be taken, the one
+at a graveyard some distance off, the other at A&mdash; churchyard. My
+brother was at both, the far-off one being taken the first. The house we
+then lived in looked down towards A&mdash;churchyard, which was about a
+quarter of a mile away. From an upper window my sister and I saw <i>two</i>
+surpliced figures going out to meet the coffin, and said, 'Why, there
+are two clergy!' having supposed that there would be only Mr. D&mdash;. I,
+being short-sighted, used a telescope, and saw the two surplices showing
+between the people. But when my brother returned he said: 'A strange
+thing has happened. Mr. D&mdash; and Mr. W&mdash; (curate of a neighboring parish)
+took the far-off funeral. I saw them both again at A&mdash;, but when I went
+into the vestry I only saw Mr. W&mdash;. I asked where Mr. D&mdash; was, and he
+replied that he had left immediately after the first funeral, as he had
+to go to Kilkenny, and that he (Mr. W&mdash;) had come on <i>alone</i> to take the
+funeral at A&mdash;.'"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Here is a curious tale from the city of Limerick of a lady's "double"
+being seen, with no consequent results. It is sent by Mr. Richard Hogan
+as the personal experience of his sister, Mrs. Mary Murnane. On
+Saturday, October 25, 1913, at half-past four o'clock in the afternoon,
+Mr. Hogan left the house in order to purchase some cigarettes. A quarter
+of an hour afterwards Mrs. Murnane went down the town to do some
+business. As she was walking down George Street she saw a group of four
+persons standing on the pavement engaged in conversation. They were her
+brother, a Mr. O'S&mdash;, and two ladies, a Miss P. O'D&mdash;, and her sister,
+Miss M. O'D&mdash;. She recognized the latter, as her face was partly turned
+towards her, and noted that she was dressed in a knitted coat, and light
+blue hat, while in her left hand she held a bag or purse; the other
+lady's back was turned towards her. As Mrs. Murnane was in a hurry to
+get her business done she determined to pass them by without being
+noticed, but a number of people coming in the opposite direction blocked
+the way, and compelled her to walk quite close to the group of four, but
+they were so intent on listening to what one lady was saying that they
+took no notice of her. The speaker appeared to be Miss M. O'D&mdash;, and
+though Mrs. Murnane did not actually hear her <i>speak</i> as she passed her,
+yet from their attitudes the other three seemed to be listening to what
+she was saying, and she heard her <i>laugh</i> when right behind her&mdash;not the
+laugh of her sister P&mdash;and the laugh was repeated after she had left the
+group a little behind.</p>
+
+<p>So far there is nothing out of the common. When Mrs. Murnane returned to
+her house about an hour later<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> she found her brother Richard there
+before her. She casually mentioned to him how she had passed him and his
+three companions on the pavement. To which he replied that she was quite
+correct except in one point, namely that there were only <i>three</i> in the
+group, as M. O'D&mdash; <i>was not present</i>, as she had not come to Limerick at
+all that day. She then described to him the exact position each one of
+the four occupied, and the clothes worn by them, to all of which facts
+he assented, except as to the presence of Miss M. O'D&mdash;. Mrs. Murnane
+adds, "That is all I can say in the matter, but most certainly the
+fourth person was in the group, as I both saw and heard her. She wore
+the same clothes I had seen on her previously, with the exception of the
+hat; but the following Saturday she had on the same colored hat I had
+seen on her the previous Saturday. When I told her about it she was as
+much mystified as I was and am. My brother stated that there was no
+laugh from any of the three present."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. G. Kelly sends an experience of a "wraith" which seems in some
+mysterious way to have been conjured up in her mind by the description
+she had heard, and then externalized. She writes: "About four years ago
+a musical friend of ours was staying in the house. He and my husband
+were playing and singing Dvorak's 'Spectre's Bride,' a work which he had
+studied with the composer himself. This music appealed very much to
+both, and they were excited and enthusiastic over it. Our friend was
+giving many personal reminiscences of Dvorak, and his method of
+explaining the way he wanted his work done. I was sitting by, an
+interested listener, for some time. On getting up at last, and going<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>
+into the drawing-room, I was startled and somewhat frightened to find a
+man standing there in a shadowy part of the room. I saw him distinctly,
+and could describe his appearance accurately. I called out, and the two
+men ran in, but as the apparition only lasted for a second, they were
+too late. I described the man whom I had seen, whereupon our friend
+exclaimed, 'Why, that was Dvorak himself!' At that time I had never seen
+a picture of Dvorak, but when our friend returned to London he sent me
+one which I recognized as the likeness of the man whom I had seen in our
+drawing-room."</p>
+
+<p>A curious vision, a case of second sight, in which a quite unimportant
+event, previously unknown, was revealed, is sent by the percipient, who
+is a lady well known to both the compilers, and a life-long friend of
+one of them. She says: "Last summer I sent a cow to the fair of
+Limerick, a distance of about thirteen miles, and the men who took her
+there the day before the fair left her in a paddock for the night close
+to Limerick city. I awoke up very early next morning, and was fully
+awake when I saw (not with my ordinary eyesight, but apparently <i>inside</i>
+my head) a light, an intensely brilliant light, and in it I saw the back
+gate being opened by a red-haired woman and the cow I had supposed in
+the fair walking through the gate. I then knew that the cow must be
+home, and going to the yard later on I was met by the wife of the man
+who was in charge in a great state of excitement. 'Oh law! Miss,' she
+exclaimed, 'you'll be mad! Didn't Julia [a red-haired woman] find the
+cow outside the lodge gate as she was going out at 4 o'clock to the
+milking!' That's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> my tale&mdash;perfectly true, and I would give a good deal
+to be able to control that light, and see more if I could."</p>
+
+<p>Another curious vision was seen by a lady who is also a friend of both
+the compilers. One night she was kneeling at her bedside saying her
+prayers (hers was the only bed in the room), when suddenly she felt a
+distinct touch on her shoulder. She turned round in the direction of the
+touch and saw at the end of the room a bed, with a pale,
+indistinguishable figure laid therein, and what appeared to be a
+clergyman standing over it. About a week later she fell into a long and
+dangerous illness.</p>
+
+<p>An account of a dream which implied an extraordinary coincidence, if
+coincidence it be and nothing more, was sent as follows by a
+correspondent, who requested that no names be published. "That which I
+am about to relate has a peculiar interest for me, inasmuch as the
+central figure in it was my own grand-aunt, and moreover the principal
+witness (if I may use such a term) was my father. At the period during
+which this strange incident occurred my father was living with his aunt
+and some other relatives.</p>
+
+<p>"One morning at the breakfast-table, my grand-aunt announced that she
+had had a most peculiar dream during the previous night. My father, who
+was always very interested in that kind of thing, took down in his
+notebook all the particulars concerning it. They were as follows:</p>
+
+<p>"My grand-aunt dreamt that she was in a cemetery, which she recognized
+as Glasnevin, and as she gazed at the memorials of the dead which lay so
+thick around, one stood out most conspicuously, and caught her eye,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>
+for she saw clearly cut on the cold white stone <i>an inscription bearing
+her own name</i>:</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+CLARE·S·D&mdash;<br />
+Died 14th of March, 1873<br />
+Dearly loved and ever mourned<br />
+R.I.P.</p>
+
+<p>while, to add to the peculiarity of it, the date on the stone as given
+above was, from the day of her dream, exactly a year in advance.</p>
+
+<p>"My grand-aunt was not very nervous, and soon the dream faded from her
+mind. Months rolled by, and one morning at breakfast it was noticed that
+my grand-aunt had not appeared, but as she was a very religious woman it
+was thought that she had gone out to church. However, as she did not
+appear my father sent someone to her room to see if she were there, and
+as no answer was given to repeated knocking the door was opened, and my
+grand-aunt was found kneeling at her bedside, dead. The day of her death
+was March 14, 1873, corresponding exactly with the date seen in her
+dream a twelvemonth before. My grand-aunt was buried in Glasnevin, and
+on her tombstone (a white marble slab) was placed the inscription which
+she had read in her dream." Our correspondent sent us a photograph of
+the stone and its inscription.</p>
+
+<p>The present Archdeacon of Limerick, Ven. J. A. Haydn, LL.D., sends the
+following experience: "In the year 1870 I was rector of the little rural
+parish of Chapel Russell. One autumn day the rain fell with a quiet,
+steady, and hopeless persistence from morning to night. Wearied at
+length from the gloom, and tired<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> of reading and writing, I determined
+to walk to the church about half a mile away, and pass a half-hour
+playing the harmonium, returning for the lamp-light and tea.</p>
+
+<p>"I wrapped up, put the key of the church in my pocket, and started.
+Arriving at the church, I walked up the straight avenue, bordered with
+graves and tombs on either side, while the soft, steady rain quietly
+pattered on the trees. When I reached the church door, before putting
+the key in the lock, moved by some indefinable impulse I stood on the
+doorstep, turned round, and looked back upon the path I had just
+trodden. My amazement may be imagined when I saw, seated on a low,
+tabular tombstone close to the avenue, a lady with her back towards me.
+She was wearing a black velvet jacket or short cape, with a narrow
+border of vivid white; her head and luxuriant jet-black hair were
+surmounted by a hat of the shape and make that I think used to be called
+at that time a 'turban'; it was also of black velvet, with a snow-white
+wing or feather at the right-hand side of it. It may be seen how
+deliberately and minutely I observed the appearance, when I can thus
+recall it after more than forty years.</p>
+
+<p>"Actuated by a desire to attract the attention of the lady, and induce
+her to look towards me, I noisily inserted the key in the door, and
+suddenly opened it with a rusty crack. Turning around to see the effect
+of my policy&mdash;the lady was gone!&mdash;vanished. Not yet daunted, I hurried
+to the place, which was not ten paces away, and closely searched the
+stone and the space all around it, but utterly in vain; there were
+absolutely no traces of the late presence of a human being! I may add
+that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> nothing particular or remarkable followed the singular apparition,
+and that I never heard anything calculated to throw any light on the
+mystery."</p>
+
+<p>Here is a story of a ghost who knew what it wanted&mdash;and got it! "In the
+part of County Wicklow from which my people come," writes a Miss D&mdash;,
+"there was a family who were not exactly related, but of course of the
+clan. Many years ago a young daughter, aged about twenty, died. Before
+her death she had directed her parents to bury her in a certain
+graveyard. But for some reason they did not do so, and from that hour
+she gave them no peace. She appeared to them at all hours, especially
+when they went to the well for water. So distracted were they, that at
+length they got permission to exhume the remains and have them
+reinterred in the desired graveyard. This they did by torchlight&mdash;a
+weird scene truly! I can vouch for the truth of this latter portion, at
+all events, as some of my own relatives were present."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. T. J. Westropp contributes a tale of a ghost of an unusual type,
+i.e. one which actually did communicate matters of importance to his
+family. "A lady who related many ghost stories to me, also told me how,
+after her father's death, the family could not find some papers or
+receipts of value. One night she awoke, and heard a sound which she at
+once recognized as the footsteps of her father, who was lame. The door
+creaked, and she prayed that she might be able to see him. Her prayer
+was granted: she saw him distinctly holding a yellow parchment book tied
+with tape. 'F&mdash;, child,' said he, 'this is the book your mother is
+looking for. It is in the third drawer of the cabinet near the
+cross-door;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> tell your mother to be more careful in future about
+business papers.' Incontinently he vanished, and she at once awoke her
+mother, in whose room she was sleeping, who was very angry and ridiculed
+the story, but the girl's earnestness at length impressed her. She got
+up, went to the old cabinet, and at once found the missing book in the
+third drawer."</p>
+
+<p>Here is another tale of an equally useful and obliging ghost. "A
+gentleman, a relative of my own," writes a lady, "often received
+warnings from his dead father of things that were about to happen.
+Besides the farm on which he lived, he had another some miles away which
+adjoined a large demesne. Once in a great storm a fir-tree was blown
+down in the demesne, and fell into his field. The woodranger came to him
+and told him he might as well cut up the tree, and take it away.
+Accordingly one day he set out for this purpose, taking with him two men
+and a cart. He got into the fields by a stile, while his men went on to
+a gate. As he approached a gap between two fields he saw his father
+standing in it, as plainly as he ever saw him in life, and beckoning him
+back warningly. Unable to understand this, he still advanced, whereupon
+his father looked very angry, and his gestures became imperious. This
+induced him to turn away, so he sent his men home, and left the tree
+uncut. He subsequently discovered that a plot had been laid by the
+woodranger, who coveted his farm, and who hoped to have him dispossessed
+by accusing him of stealing the tree."</p>
+
+<p>A clergyman in the diocese of Clogher gave a personal experience of
+table-turning to the present Dean of St. Patrick's, who kindly sent the
+same to the writer. He<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> said: "When I was a young man, I met some
+friends one evening, and we decided to amuse ourselves with
+table-turning. The local dispensary was vacant at the time, so we said
+that if the table would work we should ask who would be appointed as
+medical officer. As we sat round it touching it with our hands it began
+to knock. We said:</p>
+
+<p>"'Who are you?'</p>
+
+<p>"The table spelt out the name of a bishop of the Church of Ireland. We
+asked, thinking that the answer was absurd, as we knew him to be alive
+and well:</p>
+
+<p>"'Are you dead?'</p>
+
+<p>"The table answered 'Yes.'</p>
+
+<p>"We laughed at this and asked:</p>
+
+<p>"'Who will be appointed to the dispensary!'</p>
+
+<p>"The table spelt out the name of a stranger, who was not one of the
+candidates, whereupon we left off, thinking that the whole thing was
+nonsense.</p>
+
+<p>"The next morning I saw in the papers that the bishop in question had
+died that afternoon about two hours before our meeting, and a few days
+afterwards I saw the name of the stranger as the new dispensary doctor.
+I got such a shock that I determined never to have anything to do with
+table-turning again."</p>
+
+<p>The following extraordinary personal experience is sent by a lady,
+well-known to the present writer, but who requests that all names be
+omitted. Whatever explanation we may give of it, the good faith of the
+tale is beyond doubt.</p>
+
+<p>"Two or three months after my father-in-law's death, my husband, myself,
+and three small sons lived in the west of Ireland. As my husband was a
+young<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> barrister, he had to be absent from home a good deal. My three
+boys slept in my bedroom, the eldest being about four, the youngest some
+months. A fire was kept up every night, and with a young child to look
+after, I was naturally awake more than once during the night. For many
+nights I believed I distinctly saw my father-in-law sitting by the
+fireside. This happened, not once or twice, but many times. He was
+passionately fond of his eldest grandson, who lay sleeping calmly in his
+cot. Being so much alone probably made me restless and uneasy, though I
+never felt afraid. I mentioned this strange thing to a friend who had
+known and liked my father-in-law, and she advised me to 'have his soul
+laid,' as she termed it. Though I was a Protestant and she was a Roman
+Catholic (as had also been my father-in-law), yet I fell in with her
+suggestion. She told me to give a coin to the next beggar that came to
+the house, telling him (or her) to pray for the rest of Mr. So-and-so's
+soul. A few days later a beggar-woman and her children came to the door,
+to whom I gave a coin and stated my desire. To my great surprise I
+learned from her manner that such requests were not unusual. Well, she
+went down on her knees on the steps, and prayed with apparent
+earnestness and devotion that his soul might find repose. Once again he
+appeared, and seemed to say to me, 'Why did you do that, E&mdash;&mdash;? To come
+and sit here was the only comfort I had.' Never again did he appear, and
+strange to say, after a lapse of more than thirty years I have felt
+regret at my selfishness in interfering.</p>
+
+<p>"After his death, as he lay in the house awaiting burial, and I was in a
+house some ten miles away, I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> thought that he came and told me that I
+would have a hard life, which turned out only too truly. I was then
+young, and full of life, with every hope of a prosperous future."</p>
+
+<p>Of all the strange beliefs to be found in Ireland that in the Black Dog
+is the most widespread. There is hardly a parish in the country but
+could contribute some tale relative to this specter, though the majority
+of these are short, and devoid of interest. There is said to be such a
+dog just outside the avenue gate of Donohill Rectory, but neither of the
+compilers have had the good luck to see it. It may be, as some hold,
+that this animal was originally a cloud or nature-myth; at all events,
+it has now descended to the level of an ordinary haunting. The most
+circumstantial story that we have met with relative to the Black Dog is
+that related as follows by a clergyman of the Church of Ireland, who
+requests us to refrain from publishing his name.</p>
+
+<p>"In my childhood I lived in the country. My father, in addition to his
+professional duties, sometimes did a little farming in an amateurish
+sort of way. He did not keep a regular staff of laborers, and
+consequently when anything extra had to be done, such as hay-cutting or
+harvesting, he used to employ day-laborers to help with the work. At
+such times I used to enjoy being in the fields with the men, listening
+to their conversation. On one occasion I heard a laborer remark that he
+had once seen the devil! Of course I was interested and asked him to
+give me his experience. He said he was walking along a certain road, and
+when he came to a point where there was an entrance to a private place
+(the spot was well known to me), he saw a black<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> dog sitting on the
+roadside. At the time he paid no attention to it, thinking it was an
+ordinary retriever, but after he had passed on about two or three
+hundred yards he found the dog was beside him, and then he noticed that
+its eyes were blood-red. He stooped down, and picked up some stones in
+order to frighten it away, but though he threw the stones at it they did
+not injure it, nor indeed did they seem to have any effect. Suddenly,
+after a few moments, the dog vanished from his sight.</p>
+
+<p>"Such was the laborer's tale. After some years, during which time I had
+forgotten altogether about the man's story, some friends of my own
+bought the place at the entrance to which the apparition had been seen.
+When my friends went to reside there I was a constant visitor at their
+house. Soon after their arrival they began to be troubled by the
+appearance of a black dog. Though I never saw it myself, it appeared to
+many members of the family. The avenue leading to the house was a long
+one, and it was customary for the dog to appear and accompany people for
+the greater portion of the way. Such an effect had this on my friends
+that they soon gave up the house, and went to live elsewhere. This was a
+curious corroboration of the laborer's tale."</p>
+
+<p>A distinction must be drawn between the so-called <i>Headless</i> Coach,
+which portends death, and the <i>Phantom</i> Coach, which appears to be a
+harmless sort of vehicle. With regard to the latter we give two tales
+below, the first of which was sent by a lady whose father was a
+clergyman, and a gold medalist of Trinity College, Dublin.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Some years ago my family lived in County Down. Our house was some way
+out of a fair-sized manufacturing town, and had a short avenue which
+ended in a gravel sweep in front of the hall door. One winter's evening,
+when my father was returning from a sick call, a carriage going at a
+sharp pace passed him on the avenue. He hurried on, thinking it was some
+particular friends, but when he reached the door no carriage was to be
+seen, so he concluded it must have gone round to the stables. The
+servant who answered his ring said that no visitors had been there, and
+he, feeling certain that the girl had made some mistake, or that some
+one else had answered the door, came into the drawing-room to make
+further inquiries. No visitors had come, however, though those sitting
+in the drawing-room had also heard the carriage drive up.</p>
+
+<p>"My father was most positive as to what he had seen, viz. a closed
+carriage with lamps lit; and let me say at once that he was a clergyman
+who was known throughout the whole of the north of Ireland as a most
+level-headed man, and yet to the day of his death he would insist that
+he met that carriage on our avenue.</p>
+
+<p>"One day in July one of our servants was given leave to go home for the
+day, but was told she must return by a certain train. For some reason
+she did not come by it, but by a much later one, and rushed into the
+kitchen in a most penitent frame of mind. 'I am so sorry to be late,'
+she told the cook, 'especially as there were visitors. I suppose they
+stayed to supper, as they were so late going away, for I met the
+carriage on the avenue.' The cook thereupon told her that no one had
+been at the house, and hinted that she must have seen the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>
+ghost-carriage, a statement that alarmed her very much, as the story was
+well known in the town, and car-drivers used to whip up their horses as
+they passed our gate, while pedestrians refused to go at all except in
+numbers. We have often heard the carriage, but these are the only two
+occasions on which I can positively assert that it was seen."</p>
+
+<p>The following personal experience of the phantom coach was given to the
+present writer by Mr. Matthias Fitzgerald, coachman to Miss Cooke, of
+Cappagh House, County Limerick. He stated that one moonlight night he
+was driving along the road from Askeaton to Limerick when he heard
+coming up behind him the roll of wheels, the clatter of horses' hoofs,
+and the jingling of the bits. He drew over to his own side to let this
+carriage pass, but nothing passed. He then looked back, but could see
+nothing, the road was perfectly bare and empty, though the sounds were
+perfectly audible. This continued for about a quarter of an hour or so,
+until he came to a cross-road, down one arm of which he had to turn. As
+he turned off he heard the phantom carriage dash by rapidly along the
+straight road. He stated that other persons had had similar experiences
+on the same road.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="NATURE-SPIRITS_OR_ELEMENTALS18" id="NATURE-SPIRITS_OR_ELEMENTALS18"></a>NATURE-SPIRITS OR ELEMENTALS<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a></h2>
+
+<h3>BY NIZIDA</h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>"Life is one all-pervading principle, and even the thing that
+seems to die and putrefy but engenders new life and changes to
+new forms of matter. Reasoning, then, by analogy&mdash;if not a
+leaf, if not a drop of water, but is, no less than yonder star,
+a habitable and breathing world, common sense would suffice to
+teach that the circumfluent Infinite, which you call space&mdash;the
+boundless Impalpable which divides the earth from the moon and
+stars&mdash;is filled also with its correspondent and appropriate
+life."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Zanoni.</span></p></blockquote>
+
+
+<p>Within the last fifty years the human mind has been awakening slowly to
+the fact that there is a world, invisible to ordinary powers of vision,
+existing in close juxtaposition to the world cognized by our material
+senses. This world, or condition of existence for more ethereal beings,
+has been variously called Spirit-world, Summer-land, Astral-world,
+Hades, Kama-loca, or Desire-world, etc. Slowly and with difficulty do
+ideas upon the nature and characteristics of this world dawn upon the
+modern mind. The imagination, swayed by pictures of sensuous life,
+revels in the fantastic imagery it attributes to this unknown and dimly
+conceived state of existence, more often picturing what is false than
+what is true. Generally speaking, the most crude conceptions are
+entertained; these embrace but two conditions of life, the embodied and
+disembodied,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> for which there are only the earth and heaven, or hell,
+with that intermediate state accepted by Roman Catholics, called
+purgatory. There is, therefore, for such minds, only two orders of
+beings, <i>i.e.</i>, mankind, and angels or devils, categorically termed
+<i>spirits</i>; but what would be the mode of life of those spirits, is a
+subject upon which ordinary intellects can throw no light at all. Their
+ideas are walled in by an impenetrable darkness, and not a ray of light
+glimmers across the unfathomable gulf lying beyond the grave; that
+portal of death which, for them, opens upon unknown darkness, and closes
+upon the light, vivacity, and gaiety of the earth.</p>
+
+<p>The idea that the beings we would term <i>disembodied</i> do actually inhabit
+bodies of an aerial substance, invisible to our grosser senses, in a
+world exactly suited to their needs, surpasses the comprehension of an
+ordinary understanding, which can conceive only of gross matter, visible
+and tangible. Yet science begins to talk of <i>mind-stuff</i>, or
+<i>soul-substance</i>, in reality that ethereal substance which ranks next to
+dense matter, and which it wears as an external, more hardened shell.
+For there is space within space. Once realizing the existence of an
+<i>inner world</i>, we shall find that all our ideas concerning space, time,
+and every particular of our existence, and the world we live in must
+become entirely revolutionized.</p>
+
+<p>The principal source of knowledge which has been opened in modern times
+concerning the next state of existence has revealed itself in a manner
+homogeneous to itself. It has come by an interior method&mdash;a revelation
+from within acting upon the without. The inner world, although always
+acting upon and through its<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> external covering, in a hidden or veiled
+way, as from an inscrutable cause, has manifested itself in a manner
+more overt and cognizable by the bodily senses of man. At least that
+which has usually been termed, with more or less awe, the
+<i>supernatural</i>, the <i>ghostly</i>, has impinged upon the mental incrassation
+of sensual man as a thing to be reckoned with in daily life; no longer
+to be relegated to the region of vague darkness <i>d'outre tombe</i>. Hence
+the human mind is being awakened to study and dive into the depths of
+that life within life, wherein dwell the disembodied, the so-called
+<i>dead</i>, the angels, and, <i>per contra</i>, the devils. Those hidden aerial
+and ethereal regions, wherein the <i>souls</i> of things, and beings, draw
+life from the bosom of nature; wherein they find their <i>active</i> habitat;
+wherein nature keeps a store of objects more wonderful, and infinitely
+more varied, than serve for her regions of dense matter; wherein man can
+discern the occult causes and beginnings of all things, even of his own
+thoughts; and whereupon he learns, at length, that he possesses the
+power of projecting by thought-creation forms more or less endued with
+life and intelligence, which compose his mental world, and with which
+he, as it were, "peoples space." He finds the sphere of his
+responsibilities immensely enlarged by this new knowledge, of which he
+is taking the first honeyed sips, delighted with the self-importance
+which the heretofore unsuspected power of diving into the unseen seems
+to bestow. If hitherto he has had to hold himself responsible for the
+consequences of his external actions, that they should not militate
+against the order of society as regards the laws of morality and virtue,
+he has at least acted upon the impression that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> his <i>secret thoughts</i>
+were his own, and remained with him, affecting no one but himself; were
+incognizable in their veiled chambers, and of which it was not necessary
+to take any notice; the transitory, evanescent, spontaneous workings of
+mind, unknown and inscrutable, which begin and end like the flight of a
+bird, whence coming and where going it is impossible to know.</p>
+
+<p>By the first faint gleams of the light of hidden wisdom, which are
+beginning to dawn upon his mind, he now perceives that responsibility
+does not end upon the plane of earth, but extends into the aerial
+regions of that inner world where his thoughts are no longer secret, and
+where they affect the astral currents, acting for the good or detriment
+of others to almost infinite extent; that he may act upon the ambient
+atmospheres, not only of the outer but inner planes of life, like a
+plant of poisonous exhalations, if his thoughts be not pure and good;
+peopling <i>unseen</i> space with the outcome of a debased mind, in the shape
+of hideous and maleficent creatures. He becomes responsible, therefore,
+for the consequences of his mental actions and thought-life, as well as
+those actions carefully prepared to pass unchallenged before this
+world's gaze.</p>
+
+<p>Diving into the unseen by the light of the new spiritual knowledge now
+radiating into all minds, we learn that there are three degrees of life
+in man, the material, the aerial, and the ethereal, corresponding to
+body, soul, and spirit; and that there are three corresponding planes of
+existence inhabited by beings suited to them.</p>
+
+<p>The subject of our paper will limit us at present to the aerial, or
+soul-plane&mdash;the next contiguous, or astral world. The beings that more
+especially live in this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> realm of the soul, have by common consent been
+termed <i>elementals</i>. Nature in illimitable space teems with life in
+forms ethereal, evanescent as thought itself, or more objectively
+condensed and solidified, according to the inherent attraction which
+holds them together; enduring according to the force, energy, or power
+which gave them birth; intelligent, or non-intelligent, from the same
+source, which is mental. These spirits of the soul-world are possessed
+of aerial bodies, and their world has its own firmament, its own
+atmosphere and conditions of existence, its own objects, scenes,
+habitations. Yet their world and the world of man intermingle,
+interpenetrate, and "throw their shadows upon each other," says
+Paracelsus. Again, he says: "As there are in our world water and fire,
+harmonies and contrasts, visible bodies and invisible essences, likewise
+these beings are varied in their constitution, and have their own
+peculiarities, for which human beings have no comprehension."</p>
+
+<p>Matter, as known to men in bodies, is seen and felt by means of the
+physical senses; but to beings not provided with such senses, the things
+of our world are as invisible and intangible as things of more ethereal
+substance are to our grosser senses. Elementals which find their habitat
+in the interior of the earth's shell, usually called <i>gnomes</i>, are not
+conscious of the density of the element of earth as we perceive it; but
+breathe in a free atmosphere, and behold objects of which we cannot form
+the remotest conception. In like manner exist the <i>undines</i> in water,
+<i>sylphs</i> in air, and <i>salamanders</i> in fire. The elementals of the air,
+sylphs, are said to be friendly towards man; those of the water,
+undines, are malicious. The salamanders can, but rarely do, associate
+with man,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> "on account of the fiery nature of the element they inhabit."
+The pigmies (gnomes) are friendly; but as they are the guardians of
+treasure they usually oppose the approach of man, baffling by many
+mysterious arts the selfish greed of seekers for buried wealth. We,
+however, read of their alluring miners either by stroke of pick, or
+hammer, or by floating lights to the best mineral "leads." Paracelsus
+says of these subterranean elementals that they build houses, vaults,
+and strange-looking edifices of certain immaterial substances unknown to
+us. "They have some kind of alabaster, marble, cement, etc., but these
+substances are as different from ours as the web of a spider is
+different from our linen."</p>
+
+<p>These inhabitants of the elements, or "nature-spirits," may, or may not
+be, conscious of the existence of man; oftentimes feeling him merely as
+a force which propels, or arrests them; for by his will and by his
+thought, he acts upon the astral currents of the aerial world in which
+they live; and by the use of his hands he sways the material elements of
+earth, fire, and water wherein they are established. They perceive the
+soul-essence of man with its "currents and forms," and they also are
+capable of reading such thoughts as do not spiritually transcend their
+powers of discernment. They perceive the states of feeling and emotions
+of men by the "<i>colors</i> and impressions produced in their auras," and
+may thus irresistibly be drawn into overt action upon man's plane of
+life. They are the invisible <i>stone-throwers</i> we hear of so frequently,
+supposed to be <i>human</i> spirits; the perpetrators of mischief, such as
+destruction of property in the habitations of men, noises, and
+mysterious nocturnal annoyances.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Of all writers upon occult subjects to whose works we have as yet gained
+access, Paracelsus throws the greatest light upon these tricky sprites
+celebrated in the realm of poesy, and inhabiting that disputed land
+popularly termed fairydom. From open vision, and that wonderful insight
+of the master or adept into the secrets of nature, Paracelsus is able to
+give us the most positive information concerning their bodily formation,
+the nature of their existence, and other extraordinary particulars,
+which proves that he has actually seen and observed them, and doubtless
+also employed them as the obedient servants of his purified will; a
+power into which the spiritual man ascends by a species of right, when
+he has thrown off, or conquered, the thraldom of matter in his own body,
+and stands open-eyed at "the portals of his deep within."</p>
+
+<p>We will quote certain extracts from the pages of this wonderful
+interpreter of nature. "There are two kinds of flesh. One that comes
+from Adam, and another that does not come from Adam. The former is gross
+material, visible and tangible for us; the other one is not tangible and
+not made from earth. If a man who is a descendant from Adam wants to
+pass through a wall, he will have first to make a hole through it; but a
+being who is not descended from Adam needs no hole nor door, but may
+pass through matter that appears solid to us without causing any damage
+to it. The beings not descended from Adam, as well as those descended
+from him, are organized and have substantial bodies; but there is as
+much difference between the substance composing their bodies as there is
+between matter and spirit. Yet the elementals are not spirits, because
+they have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> flesh, blood, and bones; they live and propagate offspring;
+they eat and talk, act and sleep, etc., and consequently they cannot be
+properly called spirits. They are beings occupying a place between man
+and spirits, resembling men and women in their organization and form,
+and resembling spirits in the rapidity of their locomotion. They are
+intermediary beings or composita, formed out of two parts joined into
+one; just as two colors mixed together will appear as one color,
+resembling neither one nor the other of the two original ones. The
+elementals have no higher principles; they are therefore not immortal,
+and when they die they perish like animals. Neither water nor fire can
+injure them, and they cannot be locked up in our material prisons. They
+are, however, subject to diseases. Their costumes, actions, forms, ways
+of speaking, etc., are not very unlike those of human beings; but there
+are a great many varieties. They have only animal intellects, and are
+incapable of spiritual development."</p>
+
+<p>In saying the elementals have "no higher principles," and "When they die
+they perish like animals," Paracelsus does not stop to explain that the
+higher principles in them are absolutely latent, as in plants; and that
+animals in "perishing" are not destroyed, but the psychical or soul-part
+of the animal passes, by the processes of evolution, into higher forms.</p>
+
+<p>"Each species moves only in the element to which it belongs, and neither
+of them can go out of its appropriate element, which is to them as the
+air is to us, or the water to fishes; and none of them can live in the
+element belonging to another class. To each elemental being the element
+in which it lives is transparent, invisible,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> and respirable, as the
+atmosphere is to ourselves."</p>
+
+<p>"As far as the personalities of the elementals are concerned, it may be
+said that those belonging to the element of water resemble human beings
+of either sex; those of the air are greater and stronger; the
+salamanders are long, lean, and dry; the pigmies (gnomes) are the length
+of about two spans, but they may extend or elongate their forms until
+they appear like giants.</p>
+
+<p>"Nymphs (undines, or naiads) have their residences and palaces in the
+element of water; sylphs and salamanders have no fixed dwellings.
+Salamanders have been seen in the shape of fiery balls, or tongues of
+fire running over the fields or appearing in houses;" or at psychical
+séances as starry lights, darting and dancing about.</p>
+
+<p>"There are certain localities where large numbers of elementals live
+together, and it has occurred that a man has been admitted into their
+communities and lived with them for a while, and that they have become
+visible and tangible to him."</p>
+
+<p>Poets, in their moments of exaltation, have an unconscious soul-vision
+before which nature's invisible worlds lie like an open volume, and they
+translate her secrets into language of mystic meanings whose harmonies
+are re-interpreted by sympathetic minds. The poet Hogg, in his <i>Rapture
+of Kilmeny</i>, would seem to have had a vision of some such visit as that
+described above, into the fairyland of pure, peaceful <i>elementals</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"Bonny Kilmeny gaed up the glen"&mdash;and is represented as having fallen
+asleep. During this sleep she is transported to "a far countrye," whose
+gentle, lovely inhabitants receive her with delight. The following<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>
+lines reveal the poet's power of inner vision, as will be seen by the
+words italicized. They are in wonderful accord with the descriptions
+given by Paracelsus from the actual observation of a <i>conscious seer</i>:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"They lifted Kilmeny, they led her away,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And she walk'd <i>in the light of a sunless day</i>;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sky was <i>a dome of crystal bright</i>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The <i>fountain of vision and fountain of light</i>;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The emerald fields <i>were of dazzling glow</i>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the <i>flowers of everlasting blow</i>."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It needs but a brushing away of the films of flesh, which occurs in
+moments of rapt inspiration, for the soul, escaping from its
+prison-house, to revel in the innocent, peaceful scenes of its own inner
+world, and give a true description of what it beholds. The inner
+meanings of things, the symbolical correspondences are revealed in a
+flash of light, and the poet-soul becomes revelator and prophet all in
+one. He sets it down to imagination and fancy, when he returns into his
+normal state, and it is what we call "a flight of genius"&mdash;the power of
+the soul to enter its own appropriate world. Certainly <i>les ames de
+boue</i> have no such power. It is, however, a <i>proof that world exists</i>,
+if we will but understand it aright.</p>
+
+<p>There has never existed a poet with a truer conception of "elemental"
+life than Shakespeare. What more exquisite creation of the poet's fancy,
+which <i>might be every word of it true</i>, for in no particular does it
+surpass the truth, than that of <i>Ariel</i>, whom the "foul witch Sycorax,"
+"by help of her more potent ministers, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> in her most unmitigable
+rage," did confine "into a cloven pine;" for Ariel, the good elemental,
+was "a spirit too delicate to act her earthly and abhorred commands."
+When Prospero, the Adept and White Magician, arrived upon the scene, by
+his superior art he liberated the delicate Ariel, who afterwards becomes
+his ministering servant for <i>good</i>, not for evil.</p>
+
+<p>In the <i>Midsummer Night's Dream</i>, Titania transports a human child into
+her elemental world, where she keeps him with so jealous a love as to
+refuse to yield him even to her "fairy lord," as Puck calls him. Puck
+himself is almost as exquisite a realization of elemental life as Ariel.
+As Shakespeare unfolds the lovely, innocent tale of the occupations,
+sports and pranks of this aerial people, he introduces us to the
+elementals of his own beautiful thought world; and, although indulging
+in the "sports of fancy," there is so broad a foundation of truth, that,
+being enlightened by the revelations of Paracelsus, we no longer think
+we are merely entertained by the poetical inventions of a master of his
+art, but may well believe we have been witnesses of a charming reality
+beheld through the "rift in the veil" of the poet's unconscious inner
+sight. Indeed, one of the tenets of occult science is that there is
+nothing on earth, nor that the mind of man can conceive, which is not
+already existent in the unseen world.</p>
+
+<p>We reflect in the translucence, or <i>diaphane</i> of our mental world those
+concrete images of things which we attract by the irresistible magnetism
+of <i>desire</i> working through the thought. It is a spontaneous,
+unconscious mental process with us; but there is no reason why it should
+not become a perfectly conscious process<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> regulated by a divine wisdom
+to functions of harmony with nature's laws, and to productions of beauty
+and beneficence for the good of the whole world. As the world is the
+concreted emanation of divine thought, so it is by thought that man, the
+microcosm, <i>creates</i> upon his petty, finite plane. Given the
+desire&mdash;even if it be only as the lightest breath of a summer zephyr
+upon the sleeping bosom of the ocean, scarcely ruffling its surface&mdash;it
+becomes a center of attraction for suitable molecules of
+thought-substance floating in space, which immediately "agglomerate
+round the idea proceeding to reveal itself," <i>by means</i> of clothing
+itself in substance. By these silent processes in the invisible world
+wherein our souls draw the breath of life, we form our mental world, our
+personal character, even our very physical bodies. The <i>perisprit</i>, or
+astral body, the vehicle for <i>formless spirit</i>, is essentially builded
+up from the mental life, and grows by the accretion of those atoms or
+molecules of thought-substance which are assimilable by the mind. Hence
+a good man, a man of lofty aspirations, forms, as the <i>nearest</i> external
+clothing of his inner spirit, a beautiful soul-body, which irradiates
+through and beautifies the physical body. The man of low and groveling
+mind will, on the contrary, attract the depraved and poisoned substances
+of the lower astral world; the malarial emanations thrown off by other
+equally depraved beings, by which his mind becomes embruted, his soul
+diseased, whilst his physical form presents in a concrete image the
+ugliness of his inner nature. Such a man never ascends above the dense,
+mephitic vapors of the sin-laden world, nor takes into his soul the
+slightest breath of pure, vitalizing air. He is diseased by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> invisible
+astral <i>microbes</i>, being most effectually self-inoculated with them by
+the operation of desires which never transcend the earth. Did we lift
+the veil which shrouds from mortal sight the elemental world of such a
+moral pervert, we should behold a world teeming with hideous forms, and
+as actively working as the <i>bacteria</i> of fermentation revealed by a
+powerful microscope, elementals of destruction, death, and decay, which
+must pass out into other forms for the purification of the spiritual
+atmosphere; creatures produced by the man's own thoughts, living upon
+and in him, and reflecting, like mirrors, his hideousness back again to
+himself. It is from the presence of innumerable foci of evil of this
+kind that the world is befouled, and the moral atmosphere of our planet
+tainted. They emit poisoned astral currents, from which none are safe
+but those who are in the <i>positive</i> condition of perfect moral health.</p>
+
+<p>From the fountain of life we draw in the materials of life, and become,
+upon our lower plane, other living fountains, which from liberty of
+choice, and freedom of will, have the power of so muddying the pure
+stream, that in its turbidness and foulness it becomes death
+instead of life, and produces hell instead of heaven. When we, by
+self-purification, and that constant mental discipline which trains us
+upwards, clinging to our highest ideal by the tendrils of faith, and
+love, and continual aspiration, as the vine would cling to a rock&mdash;have
+eliminated all that is impure in our thought world, we become fountains
+of life, and make our own heavens, wherein are reflected only images of
+divine beauty. The whole elemental world on our immediate astral plane
+becomes gradually transformed during the progress<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> of our evolution into
+the higher spiritual grades of being. And as humanity <i>en masse</i>
+advances, throwing off the moral and spiritual deformity of the selfish,
+ignorant ego, the astral atmospheres belonging to our planet world
+become filled with elementals of a peaceful, loving character, of
+beautiful forms, and of beneficent influences. The currents of evil
+force which now act with a continually jarring effect upon those
+striving to maintain the equilibrium of harmony with nature upon the
+side of <i>good</i>, would cease. That depression, agitation, and distress
+which now, from inscrutable causes, assail minds otherwise rejoicing in
+an innocent happiness, forewarning them of some impending calamity, or
+of some evil presence it seems impossible to shake off, would become
+unknown. The horrible demons of war, with which humanity, in its sinful
+state of <i>separateness</i>, is continually threatening itself&mdash;as if the
+members of one body were self-opposed, and revolting from that state of
+agreement that can alone ensure the well-being of the whole&mdash;would no
+longer be held, like ravenous bloodhounds chafing against their leashes,
+ready to spring, at a word, upon their hellish work; but they will have
+passed away, like other hideous deformities of evil; and the serene
+astral atmospheres would no longer reflect ideas of cruel wrongs to
+fellow-beings, revenge, lust of power, injustice, and ruthless hatred.
+We are taught that around an "idea" agglomerate the suitable molecules
+of soul-substance&mdash;"Monads," as Leibnitz terms them, until a concrete
+form stands created, the production of a mind, or minds. All the hideous
+man-created beings, powers or forces, which now act like ravaging
+pestilences and storms in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> the astral atmospheres of our planet will
+have disappeared like the monstrous phantoms of a frightful dream, when
+the whole of humanity has progressed into a state of higher spiritual
+evolution. It is well to reflect that <i>each individual</i>, however humble
+and apparently insignificant his position in the great human family, can
+aid by his life, by the silent emanation of his pure and wise thoughts,
+as well as by his active labors for humanity, in bringing nearer this
+halcyon period of peace, harmony, and purity&mdash;that millennium, in short,
+we are all looking forward to, as a dream we can never hope to see
+realized.</p>
+
+<p>In <i>Man: Fragments of Forgotten History</i>, we read: "Violence was the
+most baneful manifestation of man's spiritual decadence, and it
+rebounded upon him from the elemental beings, whom it was his duty to
+develop"&mdash;those <i>sub-mundanes</i>, towards whom man is now learning that he
+incurs <i>responsibilities</i> of which he is at present utterly unconscious,
+but of which he will indubitably become more and more aware as he
+ascends the ladder of spiritual evolution.</p>
+
+<p>To continue our extract from <i>Fragments</i>. "When this duty was ignored,
+and the separation of interests was accentuated, the natural man
+forcibly realized an antagonism with the elemental spirits. As violence
+increased in man, these spirits waxed strong in their way, and, true to
+their natures, which had been outraged by the neglect of those who were
+in a sense their guardians, they automatically responded with
+resentment. No longer could man rely upon the power of love or harmony
+to guide others, because he himself had ceased to be impelled solely by
+its influence; distrust<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> had marred the symmetry of his inner self, and
+beings who could not perceive but only <i>receive impressions projected
+towards them</i>, quickly adapted themselves to the altered conditions."
+(Elementals as <i>forces</i>, respond to forces, or are swayed by them; man,
+as a superior force, acts upon them, therefore, injuriously, or
+beneficially, and they in their turn, poisoned by his baleful influence,
+when he is depraved, become injurious forces to him by the laws of
+reaction.) "At once nature itself took on the changed expression; and
+where all before was gladness and freshness there were now indications
+of sorrow and decay. Atmospheric influences hitherto unrecognized began
+to be noted; there was felt a chill in the morning, a dearth of magnetic
+heat at noon-tide, and a universal deadness at the approach of night,
+which began to be looked upon with alarm. For a change in the object
+must accompany every change in the subject. Until this point was reached
+there was nothing to make man afraid of himself and his surroundings.</p>
+
+<p>"And as he plunged deeper and deeper into matter, he lost his
+consciousness of the subtler forms of existence, and attributed all the
+antagonism he experienced to unknown causes. The conflict continued to
+wax stronger, and, in consequence of his ignorance, man fell a readier
+victim. There were exceptions among the race then, as there are now,
+whose finer perceptive faculties outgrew, or kept ahead, of the
+advancing materialization; and they alone, in course of events, could
+feel and recognize the influences of these earliest progeny of the
+earth.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Time came when an occasional appearance was viewed with alarm, and was
+thought to be an omen of evil. Recognizing this fear on the part of man,
+the elementals ultimately came to realize for him the dangers he
+apprehended, and they banded together to terrify him." (They reflected
+back to him his own fears in a concrete form, sufficiently intelligent,
+perhaps, to take some malicious pleasure in it, for man in propelling
+into space a force of any kind is met by a reactionary force, which
+seems to give exactly what his mind foreshadowed. In the negative
+coldness of fear, he lays himself open to infesting molecules or atoms
+which paralyze life, and he falls a victim to his own lack of faith,
+cheerful courage and hope.) "They found strong allies in an order of
+existence which was generated when physical death made its appearance"
+(<i>i.e.</i>, elementaries, or shells); "and their combined forces began to
+manifest themselves at night, for which man had a dread as being the
+enemy of his protector, the sun.<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a></p>
+
+<p>"The elementaries galvanized into activity by the elemental beings began
+to appear to man under as many varieties of shape as his hopes and fears
+allowed. And as his ignorance of things spiritual became denser, these
+agencies brought in an influx of error, which accelerated his spiritual
+degeneration. Thus, it will be seen that man's neglect of his duty to
+the nature-spirits is the cause which has launched him into a sea of
+troubles, that has shipwrecked so many generations of his descendants.
+Famines, plagues, wars, and other catastrophes are not so disconnected
+with the agency of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> nature-spirits as it might appear to the sceptical
+mind."<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is therefore evident that the world of man exercises a controlling
+power over this invisible world of elementals. Even in the most remote
+and inaccessible haunts of nature, where we may imagine halcyon days of
+an innocent bliss elapsing in poetic peace and beauty for the more
+harmless of these irresponsible, evanescent offspring of nature's
+teeming bosom, they must inevitably, sooner or later, yield up their
+peaceful sovereignty to the greater monarch, man, who usually comes with
+a harsh and discordant influence, like the burning sirocco of the
+desert, like the overwhelming avalanche from the silent peaks of snow,
+or the earthquake, convulsing and tearing to atoms the beauty of
+gardens, palaces, cities. It is said that elementals <i>die</i>; it is
+presumable that at such times they die by myriads, when the whole
+surface of the earth becomes changed from the unavoidable passing away
+of nature's wildernesses, the peaceful homes of bird and beast, as the
+improving, commercial, money-grasping man&mdash;that contradiction of God,
+that industrious destroyer, who lives at war with beauty, peace, and
+goodness&mdash;appears upon the scene. These may be called poetical
+rhapsodies; yet poetry is, in a mysterious way, closely allied to that
+hidden truth which has its birth on the soul-plane, and the imagination
+of man is, according to Eliphas Lévi, a clairvoyant and magical
+faculty&mdash;"the wand of the magician."</p>
+
+<p>To speak of elementals <i>dying</i>, is to use a word which expresses for us
+<i>change of condition</i>; the passing from one sphere of life to another,
+or from one plane of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> consciousness to another. This to the sensual man
+is "death." But there is <i>no</i> death&mdash;it is merely a passing from one
+phase of existence to another. Hence the elementals lose the forms they
+once held, changing their plane of consciousness, and appearing in other
+forms.</p>
+
+<p>We have shown somewhat of the mysterious way in which man acts upon
+these invisible denizens of his soul-world, and by which he incurs a
+certain responsibility. By the dynamic power of thought and will it is
+done&mdash;as everything is done. The elementals pushed by man, as by a
+superior force, off that equilibrium of harmony with pure, innocent
+nature, which they originally maintained when our planet was young, have
+been transformed into powers of evil, which man brings upon himself as
+retribution&mdash;the reaction of that force he ignorantly sets in motion
+when he breaks the beneficent laws of nature. Originally dependent upon
+him, and capable of aiding him in a thousand ways when he is wise and
+good, they have become his enemies, who thwart him at every turn, and
+guard the secrets of their abodes with none the less implacable
+sternness because they are probably only semi-conscious of the functions
+they perform. It is nature acting through them&mdash;the great cosmic
+consciousness, which forbids that desecrating footsteps shall invade the
+holy precincts of her stupendous life-secrets. But to the spiritual
+man&mdash;the god&mdash;these secrets open of themselves, like a hand laden with
+gifts, readily unclosing to a favorite and deserving child.</p>
+
+<p>Giving forth a current of evil, and sinking therefrom into a state of
+bestial ignorance, man has enveloped himself in clouds of darkness which
+assume monstrous<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> shapes threatening to overwhelm him. A wicked man is
+generally a coward because he lives in a state of perpetual dread of the
+reactionary effect of the evil forces he has set in motion. These are
+volumes of elemental forms banded together, and swaying like the
+thunder-clouds of a gathering storm.</p>
+
+<p>To disperse these, his own spiritual mind must ray forth the light
+reflected from the source of light&mdash;omniscience. In the astral
+atmospheres of the spiritual man, there are no clouds, and fear is
+unknown. In the mental world of the innocent and pure, those are only
+forms of gracious beauty, as lovely as the shapes of nature's innocent
+embryons, which reveal themselves in the forests, the running streams,
+the floating breeze, and in company with the birds and flowers, to the
+clairvoyant sight of those nature-lovers before whom she withdraws her
+veils, communing with their souls by an intuitional speech which fills
+them with rapturous admiration. It is not only the learned scientist who
+may read nature's marvelous revelations; for she whispers them with
+maternal tenderness into the open ears of babes, where they remain ever
+safe from desecration, and are cherished as the soul's innocent delights
+in hours of isolation from the busy, jarring world.</p>
+
+<p>The spiritual soul is ever looking beneath nature's material veils for
+<i>correspondences</i>. Every natural object <i>means</i> something else to such
+penetrating vision&mdash;a vision which begins to be spontaneously exercised
+by the soul when it has fairly reached that stage of spiritual
+evolution; and to this silent exploration many a secret meaning reveals
+itself by object-pictures, which awaken reflection and inquiry as to the
+why and wherefore.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> Thus the spiritual man drinks, as it were, from
+nature's own hand the pure waters of an inexhaustible spring&mdash;that
+occult knowledge which feeds his soul, and aids in forming for him a
+beautiful and powerful astral body. And nature becomes invested to his
+penetrating sight with a beauty she never wore before, and which the
+clay-blinded eyes of animal man can never behold. Such a man would enter
+the isolated haunts of the purer nature-spirits with gentle footsteps,
+and loving thoughts. To him the breeze is wafted wooingly, the streams
+whisper music, and everything wears an aspect of loving joyousness, and
+inviting confidence. Beside the rigid material forms, he sees their
+<i>aromal counter-parts</i>; everything is life; the very stones live, and
+have a consciousness suited to their state; and he feels as if every
+atom of his own body vibrated in unison with the living things about
+him&mdash;as if <i>all were one flesh</i>. To injure a single thing would be
+impossible to him. Such is the soul-condition of the perfect man, to
+whom evil has become impossible.</p>
+
+<p>An adept has written&mdash;"Every thought of man upon being evolved passes
+into another world and becomes an active entity by associating
+itself&mdash;coalescing, we might term it&mdash;with an elemental; that is to say,
+with one of the semi-intelligent forces of the kingdoms. It survives as
+an active intelligence&mdash;a creature of the mind's begetting&mdash;for a longer
+or shorter period, proportionate with the original intensity of the
+cerebral action which generated it. Thus, a good thought is perpetuated
+as an active, beneficent power, an evil one as a maleficent demon. And
+so man is continually peopling his current in space with the offspring
+of his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> fancies, desires, impulses, and passions; a current which
+re-acts upon any sensitive or nervous organization which comes in
+contact with it, in proportion to its dynamic intensity. The adept
+evolves these shapes consciously, other men throw them off
+unconsciously."</p>
+
+<p>Therefore, man must be held responsible not only for his outward
+actions, but his secret thoughts, by which he puts into existence
+irresponsible entities of more or less maleficent power, if his thoughts
+be of an evil nature. These are revelations of a deep and abstruse
+character; but would they have come at all if man had not reached that
+stage of evolution when it is necessary he should step up into his
+spiritual kingdom, and rule as a master over his lower self, and as a
+beneficent god over every department of unintelligent nature?</p>
+
+<p>We note the closing words of the adept's letter: "The adept evolves
+these shapes consciously, other men throw them off unconsciously." In
+the adept's soul-world then&mdash;the man who has ascended, by self-conquest
+primarily, into his spiritual kingdom, and who has graduated through
+years of probation and study in spiritual or occult science&mdash;<i>i.e.</i>, the
+White Magician, the Son of God, the inheritor by spiritual evolution, of
+divinity&mdash;there would reign peace, happiness, beauty, order, absolute
+harmony with nature on the side of good. No discordant note, no deformed
+astral production to embarrass or obstruct the current of divine
+magnetism he emanates into space&mdash;the delicious, soul-purifying,
+healing, and uplifting aura which radiates from him as from a center of
+beneficence to the lower world of struggling humanity. The
+semi-intelligent forces of nature, the innocent nature spirits would in
+such a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> soul-world, find an appropriate and harmonious habitat,
+clustering in waiting obedience upon the behests of a master whose every
+thought-breath would be as an uplifting life.</p>
+
+<p>To such a state and condition of complete harmony with God and nature
+must the truly perfect spiritual man ascend by evolution.</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">The Difference Between Elementals and Elementaries</span></h3>
+
+<p>From the similarity of the terms used to designate two classes of astral
+beings who are able to communicate with man, a certain confusion has
+arisen in the public mind, which it would be as well, perhaps, to aid in
+removing.</p>
+
+<p><i>Elementals</i> is a term applied to the nature spirits, the living
+existences which belong peculiarly to the elements they inhabit; "beings
+of the <i>mysteria specialia</i>," according to Paracelsus, "soul-forms,
+which will return into their chaos, and who are not capable of
+manifesting any higher spiritual activity because they do not possess
+the necessary kind of constitution in which an activity of a spiritual
+character can manifest itself.... Matter is connected with spirit by an
+intermediate principle which it receives from this spirit. This
+intermediate link between matter and spirit belongs to all the three
+kingdoms of nature. In the mineral kingdom it is called Stannar, or
+Trughat; in the vegetable kingdom,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> Jaffas; and it forms in connection
+with the vital force of the vegetable kingdom, the Primum Ens, which
+possesses the highest medicinal properties.... In the animal kingdom,
+this semi-material body is called Evestrum, and in human beings it is
+called the Sidereal Man. Each living being is connected with the
+Macrocosmos and Microcosmos by means of this intermediate element of
+soul, belonging to the Mysterium Magnum from whence it has been
+received, and whose form and qualities are determined by the quality and
+quantity of the spiritual and material elements." From this we may infer
+that the <i>Elementals</i>, properly speaking, are the <i>Soul-forms</i> of the
+elements they inhabit&mdash;the activities and energies of the <i>world-soul</i>
+differentiated into forms, endowed with more or less consciousness and
+capacities for feeling, and hours of enjoyment, or pain. But these,
+never or rarely, entering any more deeply into dense matter than enabled
+so to do by their aerial invisible bodies, do not appear upon our gross
+physical plane otherwise than as forces, energies, or influences. Their
+soul-forms are the intermediate link between matter and spirit,
+resembling the soul-forms of animals and men, which also form this
+intermediate link, the difference being that the souls of animals and
+men have enveloped themselves in a casing of dense matter for the
+purposes of existence upon the more external planes of life.
+Consequently, after the death of the external bodies of men and animals,
+there remain astral remnants which undergo gradual disintegration in the
+astral atmospheres. These have been termed <i>elementaries</i>; <i>i.e.</i>, "the
+astral corpses of the dead; the ethereal counterpart of the once living
+person, which will sooner or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> later be decomposed into its astral
+elements, as the physical body is dissolved into the elements to which
+it belongs. The elementaries of good people have little cohesion and
+evaporate soon; those of wicked people may exist a long time; those of
+suicides, etc., have a life and consciousness of their own as long as a
+division of principles has not taken place. These are the most
+dangerous."</p>
+
+<p>In the introduction to <i>Isis Unveiled</i>, we find the following definition
+of elemental spirits:</p>
+
+<p>"The creatures evolved in the four kingdoms of earth, air, fire, and
+water, and called by the Kabalists gnomes, sylphs, salamanders, and
+undines. They may be termed the forces of nature, and will either
+operate effects as the servile agents of general law, or may be employed
+by the disembodied spirits&mdash;whether pure or impure&mdash;and by living adepts
+of magic and sorcery, to produce desired phenomenal results. <i>Such</i>
+beings never become men." (But there are classes of elemental spirits
+who do become men, as we shall see further on.)</p>
+
+<p>"Under the general designation of fairies and fays, these spirits of the
+elements appear in the myth, fable, tradition, and poetry of all
+nations, ancient and modern. Their names are legion&mdash;peris, devs, djins,
+sylvans, satyrs, fawns, elves, dwarfs, trolls, kobolds, brownies,
+stromkarls, undines, nixies, salamanders, goblins, banshees, kelpies,
+prixies, moss people, good people, good neighbors, wild women, men of
+peace, white ladies, and many more. They have been seen, feared,
+blessed, banned, and invoked in every quarter of the globe and in every
+age. These elementals are the principal agents of disembodied but never
+visible spirits at séances, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> the producers of all the phenomena
+except the 'subjective.'"&mdash;(Preface xxix, vol. I.)</p>
+
+<p>"In the Jewish Kabala the nature spirits were known under the general
+name of <i>Shedim</i>, and divided into four classes. The Persians called
+them <i>devs</i>; the Greeks indistinctly designated them as <i>demons</i>; the
+Egyptians knew them as <i>afrites</i>. The ancient Mexicans, says Kaiser,
+believed in numerous spirit-abodes, into one of which the shades of
+innocent children were placed until final disposal; into another,
+situated in the sun, ascended the valiant souls of heroes; while the
+hideous specters of incorrigible sinners were sentenced to wander and
+despair in subterranean caves, held in the bonds of the
+earth-atmosphere, unwilling and unable to liberate themselves. They
+passed their time in communicating with mortals, and frightening those
+who could see them. Some of the African tribes know them as
+Yowahoos."&mdash;(P. 313, vol. I.)</p>
+
+<p>Of the ideas of Proclus on this subject it is said in <i>Isis Unveiled</i>:</p>
+
+<p>"He held that the four elements are all filled with demons, maintaining
+with Aristotle that the universe is full, and that there is no void in
+nature. The demons of earth, air, fire, and water, are of an elastic,
+ethereal, semi-corporeal essence. It is these classes which officiate as
+intermediate agents between the gods and men. Although lower in
+intelligence than the sixth order of the higher demons, these beings
+preside directly over the elements and organic life. They direct the
+growth, the inflorescence, the properties, and various changes of
+plants. They are the personified ideas or virtues shed from the heavenly
+<i>ule</i> into the inorganic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> matter; and, as the vegetable kingdom is one
+remove higher than the mineral, these emanations from the celestial gods
+take form in the plant, and become <i>its soul</i>. It is that which
+Aristotle's doctrine terms the <i>form</i> in the three principles of natural
+bodies, classified by him as <i>privation</i>, matter, and form. His
+philosophy teaches that besides the original matter, another principle
+is necessary to complete the triune nature of every particle, and this
+is <i>form</i>; an invisible, but still, in an ontological sense of the word,
+a substantial being, really distinct from matter proper. Thus, in an
+animal or a plant, besides the bones, the flesh, the nerves, the brains,
+and the blood in the former; and besides the pulpy matter, tissues,
+fibers, and juice in the latter, which blood and juice by circulating
+through the veins and fibers nourish all parts of both animal and plant;
+and besides the animal spirits which are the principles of motion, and
+the chemical energy which is transformed into vital force in the green
+leaf, there must be a substantial form, which Aristotle called in the
+horse, the <i>horse's soul</i>; and Proclus, the <i>demon</i> of every mineral,
+plant, or animal, and the medieval philosophers, the <i>elementary
+spirits</i> of the four kingdoms."&mdash;(P. 312, vol. I.)</p>
+
+<p>"According to the ancient doctrines, the soulless elemental spirits were
+evolved by the ceaseless motion inherent in the astral light. Light is
+force, and the latter is produced by <i>will</i>. As this will proceeds from
+an intelligence which cannot err, for it has nothing of the material
+organs of human thought in it, being the super-fine pure emanation of
+the highest divinity itself&mdash;(Plato's <i>Father</i>)&mdash;it proceeds from the
+beginning of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> time, according to immutable laws, to evolve the
+elementary fabric requisite for subsequent generations of what we term
+human races. All of the latter, whether belonging to this planet or to
+some other of the myriads in space, have their earthly bodies evolved in
+the matrix out of the bodies of a certain class of these elemental
+beings which have passed away in the invisible worlds." (P. 285, vol.
+I.)</p>
+
+<p>Speaking of Pythagoras, Iamblichus, and other Greek philosophers, <i>Isis</i>
+says:</p>
+
+<p>"The universal ether was not, in their eyes, simply a something
+stretching, tenantless, throughout the expanse of heaven; it was a
+boundless ocean peopled, like our familiar seas, with monstrous and
+minor creatures, and having in its every molecule the germs of life.
+Like the finny tribes which swarm in our oceans and smaller bodies of
+water, each kind having its 'habitat' in some spot to which it is
+curiously adapted; some friendly and some inimical to man; some pleasant
+and some frightful to behold; some seeking the refuge of quiet nooks and
+land-locked harbors, and some traversing great areas of water, the
+various races of the elemental spirits were believed by them to inhabit
+the different portions of the great ethereal ocean, and to be exactly
+adapted to their respective conditions." (P. 284, vol. I.)</p>
+
+<p>"Lowest in the scale of being are those invisible creatures called by
+the Kabalists the <i>elementary</i>. There are three distinct classes of
+these. The highest, in intelligence and cunning, are the so-called
+terrestrial spirits, the <i>larvæ</i>, or shadows of those who have lived on
+earth, have refused all spiritual light, remained and died deeply
+immersed in the mire of matter, and from whose<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> sinful souls the
+immortal spirit has gradually separated. The second class is composed of
+invisible antitypes of men <i>to be</i> born. No form can come into objective
+existence, from the highest to the lowest, before the abstract idea of
+this form, or as Aristotle would call it, the privation of this form is
+called forth.... These models, as yet devoid of immortal spirits, are
+elementals properly speaking, <i>psychic embryos</i>&mdash;which when their time
+arrives, die out of the invisible world, and are borne into this visible
+one as human infants, receiving <i>in transitu</i> that divine breath called
+spirit which completes the perfect man. This class cannot communicate
+objectively with man.</p>
+
+<p>"The third class of elementals proper never evolve into human beings,
+but occupy, as it were, a specific step of the ladder of being, and, by
+comparison with the others, may properly be called nature-spirits, or
+cosmic agents of nature, each being confined to its own element, and
+never transgressing the bounds of others. These are what Tertullian
+called 'the princes of the powers of the air.'</p>
+
+<p>"This class is believed to possess but one of the three attributes of
+man. They have neither immortal souls nor tangible bodies; only astral
+forms, which partake, in a distinguishing degree, of the element to
+which they belong, and also of the ether. They are a combination of
+sublimated matter and a rudimental mind. Some are changeless, but still
+have no separate individuality, acting collectively so to say. Others,
+of certain elements and species, change form under a fixed law which
+Kabalists explain. The most solid of their bodies is ordinarily just
+immaterial enough to escape perception by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> our physical eyesight, but
+not so unsubstantial but that they can be perfectly recognized by the
+inner or clairvoyant vision. They not only exist, and can all live in
+ether, but can handle and direct it for the production of physical
+effects, as readily as we can compress air or water for the same purpose
+by pneumatic or hydraulic apparatus; in which occupation they are
+readily helped by the 'human elementary.' More than this; they can so
+condense it as to make to themselves tangible bodies, which by their
+protean powers they can cause to assume such likenesses as they choose,
+by taking as their models the portraits they find stamped in the memory
+of the persons present. It is not necessary that the sitter should be
+thinking at the moment of the one represented. His image may have faded
+away years before. The mind receives indelible impression even from
+chance acquaintance, or persons encountered but once." (Pp. 310, 311,
+vol. I.)</p>
+
+<p>"If spiritualists are anxious to keep strictly dogmatic in their notions
+of the spirit-world, they must not set <i>scientists</i> to investigate their
+phenomena in the true experimental spirit. The attempt would most surely
+result in a partial re-discovery of the magic of old&mdash;that of Moses and
+Paracelsus. Under the deceptive beauty of some of their apparitions,
+they might find some day the sylphs and fair undines of the Rosicrucians
+playing in the currents of <i>psychic</i> and <i>odic</i> force.</p>
+
+<p>"Already Mr. Crookes, who fully credits the <i>being</i>, feels that under
+the fair skin of Katie, covering a simulacrum of heart borrowed
+partially from the medium and the circle, there is no soul! And the
+learned authors of the <i>Unseen Universe</i>, abandoning their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span>
+"electro-biological" theory, begin to perceive in the universal ether
+the <i>possibility</i> that it is a photographic album of <i>En-Soph</i> the
+Boundless.&mdash;(P. 67, vol. I.)</p>
+
+<p>"We are far from believing that all the spirits that communicate at
+circles are of the classes called 'elemental' and 'elementary.'" Many,
+especially among those who control the medium subjectively to speak,
+write, and otherwise act in various ways, are human, disembodied
+spirits. Whether the majority of such spirits are good or <i>bad</i>, largely
+depends on the private morality of the medium, much on the circle
+present, and a great deal on the intensity and object of their
+purpose.... But in any case, human spirits can <i>never</i> materialize
+themselves in <i>propriâ personâ</i>.<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a>&mdash;(P. 67, vol. I.)</p>
+
+<p>In <i>Art Magic</i> we find the following pertinent remarks, p. 322. "There
+are some features of mediumship, especially amongst those persons known
+as <i>physical force mediums</i>, which long since should have awakened the
+attention of philosophical spiritualists to the fact that there were
+influences kindred only with animal natures at work somewhere, and
+unless the agency of certain classes of elemental spirits was admitted
+into the category of occasional control, humanity has at times assumed
+darker shades than we should be willing to assign to it. Unfortunately
+in discussing these<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> subjects, there are many barriers to the attainment
+of truth on this subject. Courtesy and compassion alike protest against
+pointing to illustrations in our own time, whilst prejudice and
+ignorance intervene to stifle inquiry respecting phenomena, which a long
+lapse of time has left us free to investigate.</p>
+
+<p>"The judges whose ignorance and superstition disgraced the witchcraft
+trials of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, found a solvent for
+all occult, or even suspicious circumstances, in the control of 'Satan
+and his imps.' The modern spiritualists, with few exceptions, are
+equally stubborn in attributing everything that transpires in
+spiritualistic circles, even to the wilful <i>cunningly contrived
+preparations for deception</i> on the part of pretended media, to the
+influence of disembodied human spirits&mdash;good, bad, or indifferent; but
+the author's own experience, confirmed by the assurances of
+wise-teaching spirits, impels him to assert that the tendencies to
+exhibit animal proclivities, whether mental, passional, or phenomenal,
+are most generally produced by elementals.</p>
+
+<p>"The rapport with this realm of beings is generally due to certain
+proclivities in the individual; or, when whole communities are affected,
+the cause proceeds from revolutionary movements in the realms of astral
+fluid; these continually affect the elementals, who, in combination with
+low undeveloped spirits of humanity (elementaries), avail themselves of
+magnetic epidemics to obsess susceptible individuals, and
+sympathetically affect communities."</p>
+
+<p>In the introduction to <i>Isis Unveiled</i>, we find the following definition
+of elementary spirits:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Properly, the disembodied <i>souls</i> of the depraved; these souls, having
+at some time prior to death, separated from themselves their divine
+spirits, and so lost their chance of immortality. Eliphas Lévi and some
+other Kabalists make little distinction between elementary spirits, who
+have been men, and those beings which people the elements and are the
+blind forces of nature. Once divorced from their bodies, these souls
+(also called astral bodies) of purely materialistic persons, are
+irresistibly attracted to the earth, where they live a temporary and
+finite life amid elements congenial to their gross natures. From having
+never, during their natural lives, cultivated this spirituality, but
+subordinated it to the material and gross, they are now unfitted for the
+lofty career of the pure, disembodied being, for whom the atmosphere of
+earth is stifling and mephitic, and whose attractions are all away from
+it. After a more or less prolonged period of time these material souls
+will begin to disintegrate, and finally, like a column of mist, be
+dissolved, atom by atom, in the surrounding elements.&mdash;(Preface xxx.,
+vol. I.)</p>
+
+<p>"After the death of the depraved and the wicked, arrives the critical
+moment. If during life the ultimate and desperate effort of the
+inner-self to reunite itself with the faintly-glimmering ray of its
+divine parent is neglected; if this ray is allowed to be more and more
+shut out by the thickening crust of matter, the soul, once freed from
+the body, follows its earthly attractions, and is magnetically drawn
+into and held within the dense fogs of the material atmosphere. Then it
+begins to sink lower and lower, until it finds itself, when returned to
+consciousness, in what the ancients termed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> Hades. The annihilation of
+such a soul is never instantaneous; it may last centuries perhaps; for
+nature never proceeds by jumps and starts, and the astral soul, being
+formed of elements, the law of evolution must bide its time. Then begins
+the fearful law of compensation, the <i>Yin-Youan</i> of the Buddhists. This
+class of spirits is called the terrestrial, or <i>earthly</i> elementary, in
+contradistinction to the other classes." (They frequent séance rooms,
+&amp;c.)&mdash;(P. 319, vol. I.)</p>
+
+<p>Of the danger of meddling in occult matters before understanding the
+elementals and elementaries, <i>Isis</i> says, in the case of a rash
+intruder:</p>
+
+<p>"The spirit of harmony and union will depart from the elements,
+disturbed by the imprudent hand; and the currents of blind forces will
+become immediately infested by numberless creatures of matter and
+instinct&mdash;the bad demons of the theurgists, the devils of theology; the
+gnomes, salamanders, sylphs, and undines will assail the rash performer
+under multifarious aerial forms. Unable to invent anything, they will
+search your memory to its very depths; hence the nervous exhaustion and
+mental oppression of certain sensitive natures at spiritual circles. The
+elementals will bring to light long-forgotten remembrances of the past;
+forms, images, sweet mementos, and familiar sentences, long since faded
+from our own remembrance, but vividly preserved in the inscrutable
+depths of our memory and on the astral tablets of the imperishable 'Book
+of Life.'"&mdash;(P. 343, vol. I.)</p>
+
+<p>Paracelsus speaks of <i>Xeni Nephidei</i>: "Elemental spirits that give men
+occult powers over visible matter,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> and then feed on their brains, often
+causing thereby insanity.</p>
+
+<p>"Man rules potentially over all lower existences than himself," says the
+author of <i>Art Magic</i> (p. 333), "but woe to him, who by seeking aid,
+counsel, or assistance, from lower grades of being, binds himself to
+them; henceforth he may rest assured they will become his parasites and
+associates, and as their instincts&mdash;like those of the animal
+kingdom&mdash;are strong in the particular direction of their nature, they
+are powerful to disturb, annoy, prompt to evil, and avail themselves of
+the contact induced by man's invitation to drag him down to their own
+level. The legendary idea of evil compacts between man and the
+'Adversary' is not wholly mythical. Every wrong-doer signs that compact
+with spirits who have sympathy with his evil actions.</p>
+
+<p>"Except for the purposes of scientific investigation, or with a view to
+strengthening ourselves against the silent and mysterious promptings to
+evil that beset us on every side, we warn mere curiosity-seekers, or
+persons ambitious to attach the legions of an unknown world to their
+service, against any attempts to seek communion with elemental spirits,
+or beings of any grade lower than man. <i>Beings below mortality can grant
+nothing that mortality ought to ask.</i> They can only serve man in some
+embryonic department of nature, and man must stoop to their state before
+they can thus reach him.... Knowledge is only good for us when we can
+apply it judiciously. Those who investigate for the sake of science, or
+with a view to enlarging the narrow boundaries of man's egotistical
+opinions,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> may venture much further into the realms of the unknown than
+curiosity-seekers, or persons who desire to apply the secrets of being
+to selfish purposes. It may be as well also for man to remember that he
+and his planet are not <i>the all</i> of being, and that, besides the
+revelations included in the stupendous outpouring called 'Modern
+Spiritualism,' there are many problems yet to be solved in human life
+and planetary existences, which spiritualism does not cover, nor
+ignorance and prejudice dream of.... Besides these considerations, we
+would warn man of the many subtle, though invisible, enemies which
+surround him, and, rather by the instinct of their embryonic natures
+than through <i>malice prepense</i>, seek to lay siege to the garrison of the
+human heart. We would advise him, moreover, that into that sacred
+entrenchment no power can enter, save by invitation of the soul itself.
+Angels may solicit, or demons may tempt, but none can compel the spirit
+within to action, unless it first surrenders the <i>will</i> to the investing
+power."&mdash;(<i>Art Magic</i>, p. 335.)</p>
+
+<p>From the <i>Theosophist</i> of July 1886, we make the following extract,
+bearing upon the subject of the loss of immortality by soul-death, and
+the dangers of Black Magic:</p>
+
+<p>"It is necessary to say a few words as regards the real nature of
+soul-death, and the ultimate fate of a black magician. The soul, as we
+have explained above, is an isolated drop in the ocean of cosmic life.
+This current of cosmic life is but the light and the aura of the Logos.
+Besides the Logos, there are innumerable other existences, both
+spiritual and astral, partaking of this life and living in it. These
+beings have special<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> affinities with particular emotions of the human
+soul, and particular characteristics of the human mind. They have, of
+course, a definite individual existence of their own, which lasts up to
+the end of the Manwantara. There are three ways in which a soul may
+cease to retain its special individuality. Separated from its Logos,
+which is, as it were, its source, it may not acquire a strong and
+abiding individuality of its own, and may in course of time be
+reabsorbed into the current of universal life. This is real soul-death.
+It may also place itself <i>en rapport</i> with a spiritual or elemental
+existence by evoking it, and concentrating its attention and regard upon
+it for purposes of black magic and Tantric worship. In such a case it
+transfers its individuality to such existence and is sucked up into it,
+as it were. In such a case the black magician lives in such a being, and
+as such a being he continues until the end of Manwantara."</p>
+
+<p>A good deal of highly interesting information on the subject of
+elementals and elementaries is to be found in numbers of <i>The Path</i>. A
+few of the points contained in these articles may be mentioned here, but
+the reader is strongly recommended to study these articles, entitled
+<i>Conversations on Occultism</i>, for himself. According to the writer:</p>
+
+<p>An elemental is a center of force, without intelligence, as we
+understand the word, without moral character or tendencies similar to
+ours, but capable of being directed in its movements by human thoughts,
+which may, consciously or not, give it any form, and endow it to a
+certain extent with what we call intelligence. We give<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> them form by a
+species of thought which the mind does not register&mdash;involuntary and
+unconscious thought&mdash;"as, one person might shape an elemental so as to
+seem like an insect, and not be able to tell whether he had thought of
+such a thing or not." The elemental world interpenetrates this one, and
+elementals are constantly being attracted to, or repelled from, human
+beings, taking the prevailing color of their thoughts. Time and space,
+as we understand them, do not exist for elementals. They can be seen
+clairvoyantly in the shapes they assume under different influences, and
+they do many of the phenomena of the séance room. Light and the
+concentrated attention of any one make a disturbance in the magnetism of
+a room, interfering with their work in that respect. At séances
+elementaries also are present; these are shells, or half-dead human
+beings. The elementaries are not all bad, however, but the worst are the
+strongest, because the most attracted to material life. They are all
+helped and galvanized into action by elementals.</p>
+
+<p>Contact with these beings has a deteriorating effect in all cases.
+Clairvoyants see in the astral light surrounding a person the images of
+people or events that have made an impression on that person's mind, and
+they frequently mistake these echoes and reflections for astral
+realities; only the trained seer can distinguish. The whole astral world
+is full of illusions.</p>
+
+<p>Elementals have not got <i>being</i> such as mortals have. There are
+different classes for the different planes of nature. Each class is
+confined to its own plane, and many can never be recognized by men. The
+elemental world is a strong factor in Karma. Formerly, when men<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> were
+less selfish and more spiritual, the elementals were friendly. They have
+become unfriendly by reason of man's indifference to, and want of
+sympathy with the rest of creation. Man has also colored the astral
+world with his own selfish and brutal thoughts, and produced an
+atmosphere of evil which he himself breathes. When men shall cultivate
+feelings of brotherly affection for each other, and of sympathy with
+nature, the elementals will change their present hostile attitude for
+one of helpfulness.</p>
+
+<p>Elementals aid in the performance of phenomena produced by adepts. They
+also enter the sphere of unprotected persons, and especially of those
+who study occultism, thus precipitating the results of past Karma.</p>
+
+<p>The adepts are reluctant to speak of elementals for two reasons. Because
+it is useless, as people could not understand the subject in their
+present state of intellectual and spiritual development; and because, if
+any knowledge of them were given, some persons might be able to come
+into contact with them to their own detriment and that of the world. In
+the present state of universal selfishness and self-seeking, the
+elementals would be employed to work evil, as they are in themselves
+colorless, taking their character from those who employ them. The
+adepts, therefore, keep back or hide the knowledge of these beings from
+men of science, and from the world in general. By-and-by, however,
+material science will rediscover black magic, and then will come a war
+between the good and evil powers, and the evil powers will be overcome,
+as always happens in such cases. Eventually all about the elementals
+will be known to men&mdash;when they have developed intellectually,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> morally,
+and spiritually sufficiently to have that knowledge without danger.</p>
+
+<p>Elementals guard hidden treasures; they obey the adepts, however, who
+could command the use of untold wealth if they cared to draw upon these
+hidden deposits.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>N. B.&mdash;Nizida has quoted from <i>Man: Fragments of Forgotten
+History</i>. The S. P. S. desires to say that while some of the
+statements contained in that work are correct, there is also in
+it a large admixture of error. Therefore, the S. P. S. does not
+recommend this work to the attention of students who have not
+yet learned enough to be able to separate the grain from the
+husk. The same may be said of <i>Art-Magic</i>.</p></blockquote><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="A_WITCHS_DEN" id="A_WITCHS_DEN"></a>A WITCH'S DEN</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">By Mme. Helena Blavatsky</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>Our kind host Sham Rao was very gay during the remaining hours of our
+visit. He did his best to entertain us, and would not hear of our
+leaving the neighborhood without having seen its greatest celebrity, its
+most interesting sight. A <i>jadu wâlâ</i>&mdash;sorceress&mdash;well known in the
+district, was just at this time under the influence of seven
+sister-goddesses, who took possession of her by turns, and spoke their
+oracles through her lips. Sham Rao said we must not fail to see her, be
+it only in the interests of science.</p>
+
+<p>The evening closes in, and we once more get ready for an excursion. It
+is only five miles to the cavern of the Pythia of Hindostan; the road
+runs through a jungle, but it is level and smooth. Besides, the jungle
+and its ferocious inhabitants have ceased to frighten us. The timid
+elephants we had in the "dead city" are sent home, and we are to mount
+new behemoths belonging to a neighboring Râjâ. The pair that stand
+before the verandah like two dark hillocks are steady and trustworthy.
+Many a time these two have hunted the royal tiger, and no wild shrieking
+or thunderous roaring can frighten them. And so, let us start! The ruddy
+flames of the torches dazzle our eyes and increase the forest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> gloom.
+Our surroundings seem so dark, so mysterious. There is something
+indescribably fascinating, almost solemn, in these night-journeys in the
+out-of-the-way corners of India. Everything is silent and deserted
+around you, everything is dozing on the earth and overhead. Only the
+heavy, regular tread of the elephants breaks the stillness of the night,
+like the sound of falling hammers in the underground smithy of Vulcan.
+From time to time uncanny voices and murmurs are heard in the black
+forest.</p>
+
+<p>"The wind sings its strange song amongst the ruins," says one of us,
+"what a wonderful acoustic phenomenon!"</p>
+
+<p>"Bhûta, bhûta!" whisper the awestruck torch-bearers. They brandish their
+torches and swiftly spin on one leg, and snap their fingers to chase
+away the aggressive spirits.</p>
+
+<p>The plaintive murmur is lost in the distance. The forest is once more
+filled with the cadences of its invisible nocturnal life&mdash;the metallic
+whirr of the crickets, the feeble, monotonous croak of the tree-frog,
+the rustle of the leaves. From time to time all this suddenly stops
+short and then begins again, gradually increasing and increasing.</p>
+
+<p>Heavens! What teeming life, what stores of vital energy are hidden under
+the smallest leaf, the most imperceptible blades of grass, in this
+tropical forest! Myriads of stars shine in the dark blue of the sky, and
+myriads of fireflies twinkle at us from every bush, moving sparks, like
+a pale reflection of the far-away stars.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span></p><hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>We left the thick forest behind us, and reached a deep glen, on three
+sides bordered with the thick forest, where even by day the shadows are
+as dark as by night. We were about two thousand feet above the foot of
+the Vindhya ridge, judging by the ruined wall of Mandu, straight above
+our heads.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly a very chilly wind rose that nearly blew our torches out.
+Caught in the labyrinth of bushes and rocks, the wind angrily shook the
+branches of the blossoming syringas, then, shaking itself free, it
+turned back along the glen and flew down the valley, howling, whistling
+and shrieking, as if all the fiends of the forest together were joining
+in a funeral song.</p>
+
+<p>"Here we are," said Sham Rao, dismounting. "Here is the village; the
+elephants cannot go any further."</p>
+
+<p>"The village? Surely you are mistaken. I don't see anything but trees."</p>
+
+<p>"It is too dark to see the village. Besides, the huts are so small, and
+so hidden by the bushes, that even by daytime you could hardly find
+them. And there is no light in the houses, for fear of the spirits."</p>
+
+<p>"And where is your witch? Do you mean we are to watch her performance in
+complete darkness?"</p>
+
+<p>Sham Rao cast a furtive, timid look round him; and his voice, when he
+answered our questions, was somewhat tremulous.</p>
+
+<p>"I implore you not to call her a witch! She may hear you.... It is not
+far off, it is not more than half a mile. Do not allow this short
+distance to shake your decision. No elephant, and not even a horse,
+could make its way there. We must walk.... But we shall find plenty of
+light there...."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This was unexpected, and far from agreeable. To walk in this gloomy
+Indian night; to scramble through thickets of cactuses; to venture in a
+dark forest, full of wild animals&mdash;this was too much for Miss X&mdash;. She
+declared that she would go no further. She would wait for us in the
+howdah on the elephant's back, and perhaps would go to sleep.</p>
+
+<p>Narayan was against this <i>parti de plaisir</i> from the very beginning, and
+now, without explaining his reasons, he said she was the only sensible
+one among us.</p>
+
+<p>"You won't lose anything," he remarked, "by staying where you are. And I
+only wish every one would follow your example."</p>
+
+<p>"What ground have you for saying so, I wonder?" remonstrated Sham Rao,
+and a slight note of disappointment rang in his voice, when he saw that
+the excursion, proposed and organized by himself, threatened to come to
+nothing. "What harm could be done by it? I won't insist any more that
+the 'incarnation of gods' is a rare sight, and that the Europeans hardly
+ever have an opportunity of witnessing it; but, besides, the Kangalim in
+question is no ordinary woman. She leads a holy life; she is a
+prophetess, and her blessing could not prove harmful to any one. I
+insisted on this excursion out of pure patriotism."</p>
+
+<p>"Sahib, if your patriotism consists in displaying before foreigners the
+worst of our plagues, then why did you not order all the lepers of your
+district to assemble and parade before the eyes of our guests? You are a
+<i>patèl</i>, you have the power to do it."</p>
+
+<p>How bitterly Narayan's voice sounded to our unaccustomed ears. Usually
+he was so even-tempered, so<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> indifferent to everything belonging to the
+exterior world.</p>
+
+<p>Fearing a quarrel between the Hindus, the colonel remarked, in a
+conciliatory tone, that it was too late for us to reconsider our
+expedition. Besides, without being a believer in the "incarnation of
+gods," he was personally firmly convinced that demoniacs existed even in
+the West. He was eager to study every psychological phenomenon, wherever
+he met with it, and whatever shape it might assume.</p>
+
+<p>It would have been a striking sight for our European and American
+friends if they had beheld our procession on that dark night. Our way
+lay along a narrow winding path up the mountain. Not more than two
+people could walk together&mdash;and we were thirty, including the
+torch-bearers. Surely some reminiscence of night sallies against the
+Confederate Southerners had revived in the colonel's breast, judging by
+the readiness with which he took upon himself the leadership of our
+small expedition. He ordered all the rifles and revolvers to be loaded,
+despatched three torch-bearers to march ahead of us, and arranged us in
+pairs. Under such a skilled chieftain we had nothing to fear from
+tigers; and so our procession started, and slowly crawled up the winding
+path.</p>
+
+<p>It cannot be said that the inquisitive travelers, who appeared later on,
+in the den of the prophetess of Mandu, shone through the freshness and
+elegance of their costumes. My gown, as well as the traveling suits of
+the colonel and of Mr. Y&mdash; were nearly torn to pieces. The cactuses
+gathered from us whatever tribute they could, and the Babu's disheveled
+hair swarmed with a whole colony of grasshoppers and fireflies, which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span>
+probably, were attracted thither by the smell of cocoanut oil. The stout
+Sham Rao panted like a steam engine. Narayan alone was like his usual
+self&mdash;that is to say, like a bronze Hercules, armed with a club. At the
+last abrupt turn of the path, after having surmounted the difficulty of
+climbing over huge, scattered stones, we suddenly found ourselves on a
+perfectly smooth place; our eyes, in spite of our many torches, were
+dazzled with light, and our ears were struck by a medley of unusual
+sounds.</p>
+
+<p>A new glen opened before us, the entrance of which, from the valley, was
+well masked by thick trees. We understood how easily we might have
+wandered round it, without ever suspecting its existence. At the bottom
+of the glen we discovered the abode of the celebrated Kangalim.</p>
+
+<p>The den, as it turned out, was situated in the ruin of an old Hindu
+temple in tolerably good preservation. In all probability it was built
+long before the "Dead City," because during the epoch of the latter, the
+heathen were not allowed to have their own places of worship; and the
+temple stood quite close to the wall of the town, in fact, right under
+it. The cupolas of the two smaller lateral pagodas had fallen long ago,
+and huge bushes grew out of their altars. This evening their branches
+were hidden under a mass of bright-colored rags, bits of ribbon, little
+pots, and various other talismans, because, even in them, popular
+superstition sees something sacred.</p>
+
+<p>"And are not these poor people right? Did not these bushes grow on
+sacred ground? Is not their sap impregnated with the incense of
+offerings, and the exhalations<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> of holy anchorites, who once lived and
+breathed here?"</p>
+
+<p>The learned but superstitious Sham Rao would only answer our questions
+by new questions.</p>
+
+<p>But the central temple, built of red granite, stood unharmed by time,
+and, as we learned afterwards, a deep tunnel opened just behind its
+closely-shut door. What was beyond it no one knew. Sham Rao assured us
+that no man of the last three generations had ever stepped over the
+threshold of this thick iron door; no one had seen the subterranean
+passage for many years. Kangalim lived there in perfect isolation, and,
+according to the oldest people in the neighborhood, she had always lived
+there. Some people said she was three hundred years old; others alleged
+that a certain old man on his death-bed had revealed to his son that
+this old woman was no one else than <i>his own uncle</i>. This fabulous uncle
+had settled in the cave in the times when the "Dead City" still counted
+several hundreds of inhabitants. The hermit, busy paving his road to
+Moksha, had no intercourse with the rest of the world, and nobody knew
+how he lived and what he ate. But a good while ago, in the days when the
+Bellati (foreigners) had not yet taken possession of this mountain, the
+old hermit suddenly was transformed into a hermitess. She continues his
+pursuits and speaks with his voice, and often in his name; but she
+receives worshippers, which was not the practice of her predecessor.</p>
+
+<p>We had come too early, and the Pythia did not at first appear. But the
+square before the temple was full of people, and a wild though
+picturesque scene it was. An enormous bonfire blazed in the center, and
+round it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> crowded the naked savages like so many black gnomes, adding
+whole branches of trees sacred to the seven sister-goddesses. Slowly and
+evenly they all jumped from one leg to another to a tune of a single
+monotonous musical phrase, which they repeated in chorus, accompanied by
+several local drums and tambourines. The hushed trill of the latter
+mingled with the forest echoes and the hysterical moans of two little
+girls, who lay under a heap of leaves by the fire. The poor children
+were brought here by their mothers, in the hope that the goddesses would
+take pity upon them and banish the two evil spirits under whose
+obsession they were. Both mothers were quite young, and sat on their
+heels blankly and sadly staring at the flames. No one paid us the
+slightest attention when we appeared, and afterwards during all our stay
+these people acted as if we were invisible. Had we worn a cap of
+darkness they could not have behaved more strangely.</p>
+
+<p>"They feel the approach of the gods! The atmosphere is full of their
+sacred emanations!" mysteriously explained Sham Rao, contemplating with
+reverence the natives, whom his beloved Haeckel might have easily
+mistaken for his "missing link," the brood of his <i>Bathybius Haeckelii</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"They are simply under the influence of toddy and opium!" retorted the
+irreverent Babu.</p>
+
+<p>The lookers-on moved as in a dream, as if they all were only
+half-awakened somnambulists, but the actors were simply victims of St.
+Vitus's dance. One of them, a tall old man, a mere skeleton with a long
+white beard, left the ring and begun whirling vertiginously, with his
+arms spread like wings, and loudly grinding his long,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> wolf-like teeth.
+He was painful and disgusting to look at. He soon fell down, and was
+carelessly, almost mechanically pushed aside by the feet of the others
+still engaged in their demoniac performance.</p>
+
+<p>All this was frightful enough, but many more horrors were in store for
+us.</p>
+
+<p>Waiting for the appearance of the <i>prima donna</i> of this forest opera
+company, we sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree, ready to ask
+innumerable questions of our condescending host. But I was hardly seated
+when a feeling of indescribable astonishment and horror made me shrink
+back.</p>
+
+<p>I beheld the skull of a monstrous animal, the like of which I could not
+find in my zoölogical reminiscences.</p>
+
+<p>This head was much larger than the head of an elephant skeleton. And
+still it could not be anything but an elephant, judging by the skilfully
+restored trunk, which wound down to my feet like a gigantic black leech.
+But an elephant has no horns, whereas this one had four of them! The
+front pair stuck from the flat forehead slightly bending forward and
+then spreading out; and the others had a wide base, like the root of a
+deer's horn, that gradually decreased almost up to the middle, and bore
+long branches enough to decorate a dozen ordinary elks. Pieces of the
+transparent amber-yellow rhinoceros skin were strained over the empty
+eye-holes of the skull, and small lamps burning behind them only added
+to the horror, the devilish appearance of this head.</p>
+
+<p>"What can this be?" was our unanimous question. None of us had ever met
+anything like it, and even the colonel looked aghast.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a Sivatherium," said Narayan. "Is it possible<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> you never came
+across these fossils in European museums? Their remains are common
+enough in the Himalayas, though, of course, in fragments. They were
+called after Shiva."</p>
+
+<p>"If the collector of this district ever hears that this antediluvian
+relic adorns the den of your&mdash;ahem!&mdash;witch," remarked the Babu, "it
+won't adorn it many days longer."</p>
+
+<p>All around the skull and on the floor of the portico there were heaps of
+white flowers, which, though not quite antediluvian, were totally
+unknown to us. They were as large as a big rose, and their white petals
+were covered with a red powder, the inevitable concomitant of every
+Indian religious ceremony. Further on there were groups of cocoanuts,
+and large brass dishes filled with rice, each adorned with a red or
+green taper. In the center of the portico there stood a queer-shaped
+censer, surrounded with chandeliers. A little boy, dressed from head to
+foot in white, threw into it handfuls of aromatic powders.</p>
+
+<p>"These people, who assemble here to worship Kangalim," said Sham Rao,
+"do not actually belong either to her sect or to any other. They are
+devil-worshippers. They do not believe in Hindu gods; they live in small
+communities; they belong to one of the many Indian races which usually
+are called the hill-tribes. Unlike the Shanars of Southern Travancore,
+they do not use the blood of sacrificial animals; they do not build
+separate temples to their bhutas. But they are possessed by the strange
+fancy that the goddess Kâli, the wife of Shiva, from time immemorial has
+had a grudge against them, and sends her favorite evil spirits to
+torture<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> them. Save this little difference, they have the same beliefs
+as the Shanars. God does not exist for them; and even Shiva is
+considered by them as an ordinary spirit. Their chief worship is offered
+to the souls of the dead. These souls, however righteous and kind they
+may be in their lifetime, become after death as wicked as can be; they
+are happy only when they are torturing living men and cattle. As the
+opportunities of doing so are the only reward for the virtues they
+possessed when incarnated, a very wicked man is punished by becoming
+after his death a very soft-hearted ghost; he loathes his loss of
+daring, and is altogether miserable. The results of this strange logic
+are not bad, nevertheless. These savages and devil-worshippers are the
+kindest and the most truth-loving of all the hill-tribes. They do
+whatever they can to be worthy of their ultimate reward; because, don't
+you see, they all long to become the wickedest of devils!"</p>
+
+<p>And put in good humor by his own wittiness, Sham Rao laughed till his
+hilarity became offensive, considering the sacredness of the place.</p>
+
+<p>"A year ago some business matters sent me to Tinevelli," continued he.
+"Staying with a friend of mine, who is a Shanar, I was allowed to be
+present at one of the ceremonies in the honor of devils. No European has
+as yet witnessed this worship, whatever the missionaries may say; but
+there are many converts amongst the Shanars, who willingly describe them
+to the <i>padres</i>. My friend is a wealthy man, which is probably the
+reason why the devils are especially vicious to him. They poison his
+cattle, spoil his crops and his coffee plants, and persecute his
+numerous relations, sending<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> them sunstrokes, madness and epilepsy, over
+which illnesses they especially preside. These wicked demons have
+settled in every corner of his spacious landed property&mdash;in the woods,
+the ruins, and even in his stables. To avert all this, my friend covered
+his land with stucco pyramids, and prayed humbly, asking the demons to
+draw their portraits on each of them, so that he may recognize them and
+worship each of them separately, as the rightful owner of this, or that,
+particular pyramid. And what do you think?... Next morning all the
+pyramids were found covered with drawings. Each of them bore an
+incredibly good likeness of the dead of the neighborhood. My friend had
+known personally almost all of them. He found also a portrait of his own
+late father amongst the lot."</p>
+
+<p>"Well? And was he satisfied?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he was very glad, very satisfied. It enabled him to choose the
+right thing to gratify the personal tastes of each demon, don't you see?
+He was not vexed at finding his father's portrait. His father was
+somewhat irascible; once he nearly broke both his son's legs,
+administering to him fatherly punishment with an iron bar, so that he
+could not possibly be very dangerous after his death. But another
+portrait, found on the best and the prettiest of the pyramids, amazed my
+friend a good deal, and put him in a blue funk. The whole district
+recognized an English officer, a certain Captain Pole, who in his
+lifetime was as kind a gentleman as ever lived."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed? But do you mean to say that this strange people worshipped
+Captain Pole also?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course they did! Captain Pole was such a worthy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> man, such an honest
+officer, that, after his death, he could not help being promoted to the
+highest rank of Shanar devils. The Pe-Kovil, demon's-house, sacred to
+his memory, stands side by side with the Pe-Kovil Bhadrakâlî, which was
+recently conferred on the wife of a certain German missionary, who also
+was a most charitable lady and so is very dangerous now."</p>
+
+<p>"But what are their ceremonies? Tell us something about their rites."</p>
+
+<p>"Their rites consist chiefly of dancing, singing, and killing
+sacrificial animals. The Shanars have no castes, and eat all kinds of
+meat. The crowd assembles about the Pe-Kovil, previously designated by
+the priest; there is a general beating of drums, and slaughtering of
+fowls, sheep and goats. When Captain Pole's turn came an ox was killed,
+as a thoughtful attention to the peculiar tastes of his nation. The
+priest appeared, covered with bangles, and holding a wand on which
+tinkled numberless little bells, and wearing garlands of red and white
+flowers round his neck, and a black mantle, on which were embroidered
+the ugliest fiends you can imagine. Horns were blown and drums rolled
+incessantly. And oh, I forgot to tell you there was also a kind of
+fiddle, the secret of which is known only to the Shanar priesthood. Its
+bow is ordinary enough, made of bamboo; but it is whispered that the
+strings are human veins.... When Captain Pole took possession of the
+priest's body, the priest leaped high in the air, and then rushed on the
+ox and killed him. He drank off the hot blood, and then began his dance.
+But what a fright he was when dancing! You know, I am not
+superstitious.... Am I?..."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Sham Rao looked at us inquiringly, and I, for one, was glad at this
+moment that Miss X&mdash; was half a mile off, asleep in the howdah.</p>
+
+<p>"He turned, and turned, as if possessed by all the demons of Nâraka. The
+enraged crowd hooted and howled when the priest begun to inflict deep
+wounds all over his body with the bloody sacrificial knife. To see him,
+with his hair waving in the wind and his mouth covered with foam; to see
+him bathing in the blood of the sacrificed animal, mixing it with his
+own, was more than I could bear. I felt as if hallucinated, I fancied I
+also was spinning round...."</p>
+
+<p>Sham Rao stopped abruptly, struck dumb. Kangalim stood before us!</p>
+
+<p>Her appearance was so unexpected that we all felt embarrassed. Carried
+away by Sham Rao's description, we had noticed neither how nor whence
+she came. Had she appeared from beneath the earth we could not have been
+more astonished. Narayan stared at her, opening wide his big jet-black
+eyes; the Babu clicked his tongue in utter confusion.</p>
+
+<p>Imagine a skeleton seven feet high, covered with brown leather, with a
+dead child's tiny head stuck on its bony shoulders; the eyes set so deep
+and at the same time flashing such fiendish flames all through your body
+that you begin to feel your brain stop working, your thoughts become
+entangled and your blood freeze in your veins.</p>
+
+<p>I describe my personal impressions, and no words of mine can do them
+justice. My description is too weak. Mr. Y&mdash; and the colonel both grew
+pale under her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> stare and Mr. Y&mdash; made a movement as if about to rise.</p>
+
+<p>Needless to say that such an impression could not last. As soon as the
+witch had turned her gleaming eyes to the kneeling crowd, it vanished as
+swiftly as it had come. But still all our attention was fixed on this
+remarkable creature.</p>
+
+<p>Three hundred years old! Who can tell? Judging by her appearance, we
+might as well conjecture her to be a thousand. We beheld a genuine
+living mummy, or rather a mummy endowed with motion. She seemed to have
+been withering since the creation. Neither time, nor the ills of life,
+nor the elements could ever affect this living statue of death. The
+all-destroying hand of time had touched her and stopped short. Time
+could do no more, and so had left her. And with all this, not a single
+gray hair. Her long black locks shone with a greenish sheen, and fell in
+heavy masses down to her knees.</p>
+
+<p>To my great shame, I must confess that a disgusting reminiscence flashed
+into my memory. I thought about the hair and the nails of corpses
+growing in the graves, and tried to examine the nails of the old woman.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, she stood motionless as if suddenly transformed into an ugly
+idol. In one hand she held a dish with a piece of burning camphor, in
+the other a handful of rice, and she never removed her burning eyes from
+the crowd. The pale yellow flame of the camphor flickered in the wind,
+and lit up her death-like head, almost touching her chin; but she paid
+no heed to it. Her neck, as wrinkled as a mushroom, as thin as a stick,
+was surrounded by three rows of golden medallions.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> Her head was adorned
+with a golden snake. Her grotesque, hardly human body was covered by a
+piece of saffron-yellow muslin.</p>
+
+<p>The demoniac little girls raised their heads from beneath the leaves,
+and set up a prolonged animal-like howl. Their example was followed by
+the old man, who lay exhausted by his frantic dance.</p>
+
+<p>The witch tossed her head convulsively, and began her invocations,
+rising on tiptoe, as if moved by some external force.</p>
+
+<p>"The goddess, one of the seven sisters, begins to take possession of
+her," whispered Sham Rao, not even thinking of wiping away the big drops
+of sweat that streamed from his brow. "Look, look at her!"</p>
+
+<p>This advice was quite superfluous. We <i>were</i> looking at her, and at
+nothing else.</p>
+
+<p>At first, the movements of the witch were slow, unequal, somewhat
+convulsive; then, gradually, they became less angular; at last, as if
+catching the cadence of the drums, leaning all her long body forward,
+and writhing like an eel, she rushed round and round the blazing
+bonfire. A dry leaf caught in a hurricane could not fly swifter. Her
+bare bony feet trod noiselessly on the rocky ground. The long locks of
+her hair flew round her like snakes, lashing the spectators, who knelt,
+stretching their trembling arms towards her, and writhing as if they
+were alive. Whoever was touched by one of this Fury's black curls, fell
+down on the ground, overcome with happiness, shouting thanks to the
+goddess, and considering himself blessed forever. It was not human hair
+that touched the happy elect, it was the goddess herself, one of the
+seven.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Swifter and swifter fly her decrepit legs; the young, vigorous hands of
+the drummer can hardly follow her. But she does not think of catching
+the measure of his music; she rushes, she flies forward. Staring with
+her expressionless, motionless orbs at something before her, at
+something that is not visible to our mortal eyes, she hardly glances at
+her worshippers; then her look becomes full of fire, and whoever she
+looks at feels burned through to the marrow of his bones. At every
+glance she throws a few grains of rice. The small handful seems
+inexhaustible, as if the wrinkled palm contained the bottomless bag of
+Prince Fortunatus.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she stops as if thunderstruck.</p>
+
+<p>The mad race round the bonfire had lasted twelve minutes, but we looked
+in vain for a trace of fatigue on the death-like face of the witch. She
+stopped only for a moment, just the necessary time for the goddess to
+release her. As soon as she felt free, by a single effort she jumped
+over the fire and plunged into the deep tank by the portico. This time
+she plunged only once, and whilst she stayed under the water the second
+sister-goddess entered her body. The little boy in white produced
+another dish, with a new piece of burning camphor, just in time for the
+witch to take it up, and to rush again on her headlong way.</p>
+
+<p>The colonel sat with his watch in his hand. During the second obsession
+the witch ran, leaped, and raced for exactly fourteen minutes. After
+this, she plunged twice in the tank, in honor of the second sister; and
+with every new obsession the number of her plunges increased, till it
+became six.</p>
+
+<p>It was already an hour and a half since the race<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> began. All this time
+the witch never rested, stopping only for a few seconds, to disappear
+under the water.</p>
+
+<p>"She is a fiend, she cannot be a woman!" exclaimed the colonel, seeing
+the head of the witch immersed for the sixth time in the water.</p>
+
+<p>"Hang me if I know!" grumbled Mr. Y&mdash;, nervously pulling his beard. "The
+only thing I know is that a grain of her cursed rice entered my throat,
+and I can't get it out!"</p>
+
+<p>"Hush, hush! Please, do be quiet!" implored Sham Rao. "By talking you
+will spoil the whole business!"</p>
+
+<p>I glanced at Narayan and lost myself in conjectures.</p>
+
+<p>His features, which usually were so calm and serene, were quite altered
+at this moment by a deep shadow of suffering. His lips trembled, and the
+pupils of his eyes were dilated, as if by a dose of belladonna. His eyes
+were lifted over the heads of the crowd, as if in his disgust he tried
+not to see what was before him, and at the same time could not see it,
+engaged in a deep reverie which carried him away from us and from the
+whole performance.</p>
+
+<p>"What is the matter with him?" was my thought, but I had no time to ask
+him, because the witch was again in full swing, chasing her own shadow.</p>
+
+<p>But with the seventh goddess the program was slightly changed. The
+running of the old woman changed to leaping. Sometimes bending down to
+the ground, like a black panther, she leaped up to some worshipper, and
+halting before him touched his forehead with her finger, while her long,
+thin body shook with inaudible laughter. Then, again, as if shrinking
+back playfully from her shadow, and chased by it, in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> some uncanny game,
+the witch appeared to us like a horrid caricature of Dinorah, dancing
+her mad dance. Suddenly she straightened herself to her full height,
+darted to the portico and crouched before the smoking censer, beating
+her forehead against the granite steps. Another jump, and she was quite
+close to us, before the head of the monstrous Sivatherium. She knelt
+down again and bowed her head to the ground several times, with the
+sound of an empty barrel knocked against something hard.</p>
+
+<p>We had hardly the time to spring to our feet and shrink back when she
+appeared on the top of the Sivatherium's head, standing there amongst
+the horns.</p>
+
+<p>Narayan alone did not stir, and fearlessly looked straight in the eyes
+of the frightful sorceress.</p>
+
+<p>But what was this? Who spoke in those deep manly tones? Her lips were
+moving, from her breast were issuing those quick, abrupt phrases, but
+the voice sounded hollow as if coming from beneath the ground.</p>
+
+<p>"Hush, hush!" whispered Sham Rao, his whole body trembling. "She is
+going to prophesy!..."</p>
+
+<p>"She?" incredulously inquired Mr. Y&mdash;. "This a woman's voice? I don't
+believe it for a moment. Someone's uncle must be stowed away somewhere
+about the place. Not the fabulous uncle she inherited from, but a real
+live one!..."</p>
+
+<p>Sham Rao winced under the irony of this supposition, and cast an
+imploring look at the speaker.</p>
+
+<p>"Woe to you! woe to you!" echoed the voice. "Woe to you, children of the
+impure Jaya and Vijaya! of the mocking, unbelieving lingerers round
+great Shiva's door! Ye, who are cursed by eighty thousand sages!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> Woe to
+you who believe not in the goddess Kâli, and you who deny us, her seven
+divine sisters! Flesh-eating, yellow-legged vultures! friends of the
+oppressors of our land! dogs who are not ashamed to eat from the same
+trough with the Bellati!" (foreigners).</p>
+
+<p>"It seems to me that your prophetess only foretells the past," said Mr.
+Y&mdash;, philosophically putting his hands in his pockets. "I should say
+that she is hinting at you, my dear Sham Rao."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes! and at us also," murmured the colonel, who was evidently beginning
+to feel uneasy.</p>
+
+<p>As to the unlucky Sham Rao, he broke out in a cold sweat, and tried to
+assure us that we were mistaken, that we did not fully understand her
+language.</p>
+
+<p>"It is not about you, it is not about you! It is of me she speaks,
+because I am in Government service. Oh, she is inexorable!"</p>
+
+<p>"Râkshasas! Asuras!" thundered the voice. "How dare you appear before
+us? how dare you to stand on this holy ground in boots made of a cow's
+sacred skin? Be cursed for etern&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But her curse was not destined to be finished. In an instant the
+Hercules-like Narayan had fallen on the Sivatherium, and upset the whole
+pile, the skull, the horns and the demoniac Pythia included. A second
+more, and we thought we saw the witch flying in the air towards the
+portico. A confused vision of a stout, shaven Brahman, suddenly emerging
+from under the Sivatherium and instantly disappearing in the hollow
+beneath it, flashed before my dilated eyes.</p>
+
+<p>But, alas! after the third second had passed, we all came to the
+embarrassing conclusion that, judging from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> the loud clang of the door
+of the cave, the representative of the Seven Sisters had ignominiously
+fled. The moment she had disappeared from our inquisitive eyes to her
+subterranean domain, we all realized that the unearthly hollow voice we
+had heard had nothing supernatural about it and belonged to the Brahman
+hidden under the Sivatherium&mdash;to some one's live uncle, as Mr. Y&mdash; had
+rightly supposed.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Oh, Narayan! how carelessly, how disorderly the worlds rotate around us.
+I begin to seriously doubt their reality. From this moment I shall
+earnestly believe that all things in the universe are nothing but
+illusion, a mere Mâyâ. I am becoming a Vedantin.... I doubt that in the
+whole universe there may be found anything more objective than a Hindu
+witch flying up the spout.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Miss X&mdash; woke up, and asked what was the meaning of all this noise. The
+noise of many voices and the sounds of the many retreating footsteps,
+the general rush of the crowd, had frightened her. She listened to us
+with a condescending smile, and a few yawns, and went to sleep again.</p>
+
+<p>Next morning, at daybreak, we very reluctantly, it must be owned, bade
+good-by to the kind-hearted, good-natured Sham Rao. The confoundingly
+easy victory of Narayan hung heavily on his mind. His faith in the holy
+hermitess and the seven goddesses was a good deal shaken by the shameful
+capitulation of the sisters, who had surrendered at the first blow from
+a mere mortal. But during the dark hours of the night he had had time<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span>
+to think it over, and to shake off the uneasy feeling of having
+unwillingly misled and disappointed his European friends.</p>
+
+<p>Sham Rao still looked confused when he shook hands with us at parting,
+and expressed to us the best wishes of his family and himself.</p>
+
+<p>As to the heroes of this truthful narrative, they mounted their
+elephants once more, and directed their heavy steps towards the high
+road and Jubbulpore.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="REMARKABLE_PSYCHIC_EXPERIENCES_OF_FAMOUS_PERSONS" id="REMARKABLE_PSYCHIC_EXPERIENCES_OF_FAMOUS_PERSONS"></a>REMARKABLE PSYCHIC EXPERIENCES OF FAMOUS PERSONS</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">By Walter F. Prince, Ph.D.</span>,</h3>
+
+<h3>Official Investigator American Society for Psychical Research</h3>
+
+
+<p>It does not necessarily give an occult incident more weight that it was
+experienced or related and credited by a person whose name is prominent
+for one reason or another. The great are nearly as likely to suffer
+illusions, pathological hallucinations, and aberrations as the humble
+remainder of mankind, or, according to Lombroso a good deal more so. Nor
+have famous persons a monopoly of veracity. Besides, a rare
+psychological incident is not more or less a problem, nor has it more or
+less significance in the experience of honest John Jones than in that of
+William Shakespeare.</p>
+
+<p>And yet it is natural and quite proper to look with somewhat enhanced
+interest upon the experiences or the testimonies of those whose names
+are in the cyclopedias and biographical dictionaries. It is legitimate
+to set these forth and to call attention to them. These persons at least
+we know something about. William Moggs of Waushegan, Wisconsin, may be a
+very excellent and trustworthy man but we don't know him, and it is
+tedious to be told that somebody else whom we may<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> know as little knows
+and esteems him. How do we know that the avouching unknown could not
+have been sold a gold brick? But Henry M. Stanley, and General Frémont,
+and W. P. Frith, and Henry Clews are characters whom we do know
+something about, or at least whom we can easily look up for ourselves in
+biographical dictionaries and <i>Who's Whos</i>. They are names which have at
+the very outset a reputation which has impressed the world, which stand
+for assured ability, genius, achievement, forcefulness of one kind or
+another. Even though we have no particular data at hand regarding the
+veracity of a particular member of the shining circle, it is not easy to
+see why he, having an assured reputation, should dim it by telling
+spooky lies. It is easier to conceive of William Moggs, a quite obscure
+man, calling attention to himself by the device, though as a rule the
+William Moggs's do nothing of the kind. We spontaneously argue within
+ourselves, in some inchoate fashion, "That fellow made his mark in the
+world; he gained a big reputation by his superiority to the rank and
+file in some particular at least; it will be worth while to hear what he
+has to say."</p>
+
+<p>We present herewith a group of such testimonies either given out to the
+world by prominent persons as their own experiences or as the
+experiences of persons whom they knew and believed, or else as told by
+friends of the prominent persons whose experiences they were.</p>
+
+<p>It is not owing to any selective process that the material is mostly of
+the sort which favors supernormal hypotheses. We take what we can get.
+Whenever an experience is accompanied by a normal explanation, such will
+be included only a little more willingly than<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> an experience which does
+not readily suggest a normal explanation. But, let it be noted, the
+groups which we propose will be composed of human <i>experiences</i>, and not
+opinions, except as the opinions accompany the experiences. And it
+cannot be expected that, after certain types of experiences as related
+by certain men have been given, we shall then proceed to name other men
+who haven't had any such experiences. True, against Paul du Chaillu's
+assertion that he had seen gorillas was once urged the fact that nobody
+else had ever seen gorillas. Nevertheless the sole assertion of the one
+man who had seen them proved to outweigh in value the lack of experience
+on the part of all other travelers up to that time.</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">A Premonition of Sir H. M. Stanley</span></h3>
+
+<p>This incident is related by the famous explorer, Sir Henry M. Stanley,
+in his autobiography edited by Dorothy Stanley (Houghton Mifflin Co.,
+1909), on pages 207-208.</p>
+
+<p>Stanley, then a private in the Confederate Army, was captured in the
+battle of Shiloh and sent to Camp Douglas near Chicago. It was while
+here that the incident in question occurred.</p>
+
+<p>"On the next day (April 16), after the morning duties had been
+performed, the rations divided, the cooks had departed contented, and
+the quarters swept, I proceeded to my nest and reclined alongside of my
+friend Wilkes in a posture that gave me a command of one half of the
+building. I made some remarks to him upon the card-playing groups
+opposite, when<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> suddenly, I felt a gentle stroke on the back of my neck,
+and in an instant I was unconscious. The next moment I had a vivid view
+of the village of Tremeirchion and the grassy slopes of the hills of
+Hirradog, and I seemed to be hovering over the rook woods of Brynbella.
+I glided to the bed-chamber of my Aunt Mary. My aunt was in bed, and
+seemed sick unto death. I took a position by the side of the bed, and
+saw myself, with head bent down, listening to her parting words which
+sounded regretful, as though conscience smote her for not having been as
+kind as she might have been, or had wished to be. I heard the boy say,
+'I believe you, Aunt. It is neither your fault, nor mine. You were good
+and kind to me, and I knew you wished to be kinder; but things were so
+ordered that you had to be what you were. I also dearly wished to love
+you, but I was afraid to speak of it lest you would check me, or say
+something that would offend me. I feel our parting was in this spirit.
+There is no need of regrets. You have done your duty to me, and you had
+children of your own who required all your care. What has happened to me
+since, it was decreed should happen. Farewell.'</p>
+
+<p>"I put forth my hand and felt the clasp of the long thin hands of the
+sore-sick woman. I heard a murmur of farewell, and immediately I awoke.</p>
+
+<p>"It appeared to me that I had but closed my eyes. I was still in the
+same reclining attitude, the groups opposite me were still engaged in
+their card games, Wilkes was in the same position. Nothing had changed.</p>
+
+<p>"I asked, 'What has happened?'</p>
+
+<p>"'What could happen?' said he. 'What makes you<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> ask? It is but a moment
+ago you were speaking to me.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, I thought I had been asleep a long time.'</p>
+
+<p>"On the next day the 17th of April, 1862, my Aunt Mary died at Fynnon
+Beuno, in Wales!</p>
+
+<p>"I believe that the soul of every human being has its attendant
+spirit&mdash;a nimble, delicate essence, whose method of action is by a
+subtle suggestion which it contrives to insinuate into the mind, whether
+asleep or awake. We are too gross to be capable of understanding the
+signification of the dream, the vision, or the sudden presage, or of
+divining the source of the premonition or its import. We admit that we
+are liable to receive a fleeting picture of an act, or a figure at any
+moment, but, except being struck by certain strange coincidences which
+happen to most of us, we seldom make an effort to unravel the mystery.
+The swift, darting messenger stamps an image on the mind, and displays a
+vision to the sleeper; and if, as sometimes follows, among tricks and
+twists of the errant mind, by reflex acts of memory, it happens to be a
+true representation of what is to happen, we are left to grope
+hopelessly as to the manner and meaning of it, for there is nothing
+tangible to lay hold of.</p>
+
+<p>"There are many things relating to my existence which are inexplicable
+to me, and probably it is best so; this death-bed scene, projected on my
+mind's screen, across four thousand five hundred miles of space, is one
+of these mysteries."</p>
+
+<p>The precise meaning of the passage wherein Sir Henry speculates on the
+nature and meaning of such facts, is not entirely clear. Does he by the
+word <i>spirit</i> mean what is usually meant by that term, or does he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> mean
+some part of the mind functioning upon the rest as its object, like
+Freud's <i>psychic censor</i> though with a different purpose? And the
+affirmative employment of the terms "presage" and "premonition" do not
+seem to be consistent with the expression "it happens to be a true
+representation of what is to happen." It seems plain that the
+distinguished explorer did believe that the death-bed scene was
+"projected on" his "mind's screen, across four thousand five hundred
+miles of space." However, what Stanley thought about the facts is of
+much less importance than the facts themselves, as reported by one whose
+life was one long drill in observing, appraising and recording facts.</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Coincident Experiences of General Frémont and Relatives</span></h3>
+
+<p>These are related on pages 69-72 of <i>Recollections of Elizabeth Benton
+Frémont, Daughter of the Pathfinder General John C. Frémont and Jessie
+Benton Frémont His Wife</i>.</p>
+
+<p>After describing a terrible experience of her father and his men in
+1853, while crossing the Wahsatch Mountains, and their rescue from
+starvation by reaching Parowan, Utah, Miss Benton goes on:</p>
+
+<p>"That night my father sat by his campfire until late in the night,
+dreaming of home and thinking of the great happiness of my mother. Could
+she but know that he was safe! Finally he returned to his quarters in
+the town only a few hundred yards away from the camp. The warm bright
+room, the white bed with all suggestion of shelter and relief from
+danger made the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> picture of home rise up like a real thing before him,
+and at half-past eleven at night he made an entry in his journal,
+putting there the thought that had possession of him and that my mother
+in far away Washington might know that all danger was past and that he
+was safe and comfortable.</p>
+
+<p>"All this is a prelude to a most uncommon experience which befell my
+mother in our Washington home on the night in question. We could not
+possibly hear from father at the earliest until midsummer. Though my
+mother went into society but little that year, there was no reason for
+gloomy forebodings. The younger members of the family kept her in close
+touch with the social side of life, while her father, whose confidant
+she always was, kept her informed as to the political events of the
+moment. Her life was busy and filled with her full share of its
+responsibilities. In midwinter, however, my mother became possessed with
+the conviction that my father was starving, and no amount of reasoning
+could calm her fears. The idea haunted her for two weeks or more, and
+finally began to leave its physical effects upon her. She could neither
+eat nor sleep; open-air exercise, plenty of company, the management of a
+household, all combined, could not wean her from the belief that father
+and his men were starving in the desert.</p>
+
+<p>"The weight of fear was lifted from her as suddenly as it came. Her
+young sister Susie and a party of relatives returned from a wedding at
+General Jessup's on the night of February 6, 1854, and came to mother to
+spend the night, in order not to awaken the older members of my
+grandmother's family. The girls doffed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> their party dresses, replaced
+them with comfortable woolen gowns, and, gathered before the open fire
+in mother's room, were gaily relating the experiences of the evening.
+The fire needed replenishing and mother went to an adjoining
+dressing-room to get more wood. The old-fashioned fire-place required
+long logs which were too large for her to handle, and as she half knelt,
+balancing the long sticks of wood on her left arm, she felt a hand rest
+lightly on her left shoulder, and she heard my father's laughing voice
+whisper her name, 'Jessie.'</p>
+
+<p>"There was no sound beyond the quick-whispered name, no presence, only
+the touch, but my mother knew as people know in dreams that my father
+was there, gay and happy, and intending to startle Susie, who when my
+mother was married was only a child of eight, and was always a pet
+playmate of my father's. Her shrill, prolonged scream was his delight,
+and he never lost an opportunity to startle her.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother came back to the girl's room, but before she could speak, Susie
+gave a great cry, fell in a heap upon the rug, and screamed again and
+again, until mother crushed her balldress over her head to keep the
+sound from the neighbors. Her cousin asked mother what she had seen, and
+she explained that she had seen nothing, but had heard my father tell
+her to keep still until he could scare Susie.</p>
+
+<p>"Peace came to my mother instantly, and on retiring she fell into a
+refreshing sleep from which she did not waken until ten the next
+morning; all fear for the safety of father had vanished from her mind;
+with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> sleep came strength, and she soon was her happy self again.</p>
+
+<p>"When my father returned home, we learned that it was at the time the
+party was starving that my mother had the premonition of evil having
+befallen them, and the entry in his journal showed that exactly the
+moment he had written it in Parowan, my mother had felt his presence,
+and in the wireless message from heart to heart knew that my father was
+safe and free from harm. The hour exactly tallied with the entry in his
+book, allowing for the difference in longitude."</p>
+
+<p>Further details would have been desirable, particularly just what was
+the immediate occasion of Susie's fright, for she screamed before Mrs.
+Frémont related what had befallen herself. The only escape from the
+conclusion that Susie had some separate peculiar experience is to
+suppose&mdash;which we may not unreasonably do&mdash;that the elder lady betrayed
+her own agitation before she spoke, perhaps by dropping the sticks,
+hurrying back, and looking strangely at Susie. We would have liked a
+sight of the General's journal, also, and to have been permitted to copy
+the entry exactly as it stands.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, though we leave Susie and her screams quite out of
+account, we have a very pretty case remaining, however we explain it.
+Mrs. Frémont's depression might be explained by the very natural fears
+of a woman whose husband was engaged in a possibly dangerous expedition,
+though she picked out for her fears exactly the period of the expedition
+when there was an actual state of privation and danger. But why did the
+fear so afflicting to her health and spirits so<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> suddenly leave her,
+while it was still winter in the mountains? And why did the hour and
+moment of the cessation of these fears coincide with the hour and moment
+when the explorer was occupied with thoughts of home and writing his
+wish that his wife might know that he was safe?</p>
+
+<p>Many a reader will be disposed to answer the question "why?" with the
+facile answer "telepathy," but that word is a key which does not turn in
+this lock with perfect ease. There are cases where one person thinks a
+particular thing under extraordinary circumstances, and precisely that
+thought, or a hallucination of precisely that nature, occurs to another
+person at a distance. But in this case General Frémont thinks a wish
+that his wife knew he was safe, and his wife seems to feel a hand upon
+her shoulder, seems to hear his voice pronounce her name, and somehow
+gets the impression that he proposes to play a trick on her sister
+Susie. If exact coincidence between the thought of the supposed "sender"
+and that of the supposed "recipient" is a support to the theory of
+telepathy as applied to one case, then wide discrepancy between the
+coincident thoughts of two persons in another case should be an argument
+against the theory of telepathy as applied to that. There should be some
+limit to the handicap which, by way of courtesy, the spiritistic
+hypothesis allows to the telepathic.</p>
+
+<p>If there are spirits, and if they have a certain access to human
+thoughts, and if the limitations of space are little felt by them, then
+the spiritistic theory would have an easier time than telepathy with the
+facts in this case. A friendly intermediary might convey the assurance<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span>
+that the Pathfinder wanted conveyed to his wife, and in doing so employ
+such devices as an intelligent personal agent could think up, and were
+within its grasp. The touch, the hallucination of a voice resembling
+that of the absent husband, the sense of gayety, and even the very
+characteristic trait of liking to startle Susie, might all be the result
+of the friendly messenger's attempts to implant in Mrs. Frémont's mind a
+fixed assurance that somebody was safe and happy, and that this somebody
+was in very truth her husband.</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Incidents Related by Dean Hole</span></h3>
+
+<p>The Very Rev. Samuel Reynolds Hole, Dean of Rochester, England, was not
+only an effective preacher and popular lecturer, but likewise the author
+of fascinating books, composed of reminiscences and shrewd and witty
+comments upon men and affairs. He made two lecturing tours in America.</p>
+
+<p>His <i>The Memories of Dean Hole</i> contains a remarkable dream of his own,
+and one of similar character told him by a trusted friend. They may be
+found on pages 200-201. After rehearsing the account of a dream and its
+tragic sequel told him many years before, he goes on:</p>
+
+<p>"Are these dreams coincidences only, imaginations, sudden recollections
+of events which had been long forgotten? They are marvelous, be this as
+it may. In a crisis of very severe anxiety, I required information which
+only one man could give me, and he was in his grave. I saw him
+distinctly in a vision of the night, and his answer to my question told
+me all I wanted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> to know; and when, having obtained the clearest proof
+that what I had heard was true, I communicated the incident and its
+results to my solicitor, he told me that he himself had experienced a
+similar manifestation. A claim was repeated after his father's death
+which had been resisted in his lifetime and retracted by the claimant,
+but the son was unable to find the letter in which the retraction was
+made. He dreamed that his father appeared and told him it was in the
+left hand drawer of a certain desk. Having business in London, he went
+up to the offices of his father, an eminent lawyer, but could not
+discover the desk, until one of the clerks suggested that it might be
+among some old lumber placed in a room upstairs. There he found the desk
+and the letter.</p>
+
+<p>"Then, as regards coincidence, are there not events in our lives which
+come to us with a strange mysterious significance, a prophetic
+intimation, sometimes of sorrow and sometimes of success? For example, I
+lived a hundred and fifty miles from Rochester. I went there for the
+first time to preach at the invitation of one who was then unknown to
+me, but is now a dear friend. After the sermon I was his guest in the
+Precincts. Dean Scott died in the night, almost at the time when he who
+was to succeed him arrived at the house which adjoins the Deanery. There
+was no expectation of his immediate decease, and no conjecture as to a
+future appointment, and yet when I heard the tolling of the cathedral
+bell, I had a presentiment that Dr. Scott was dead, and that I should be
+Dean of Rochester."</p>
+
+<p>Again, Dean Hole in his <i>Then and Now</i>, pp. 9-11, together with some
+opinions of his, sets down a seeming<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> premonition and what he considers
+answers to prayer.</p>
+
+<p>"There is an immeasurable difference between ghosts and other
+apparitions&mdash;between that which witnesses declare they saw with their
+own eyes when they were wide awake&mdash;as Hamlet saw the ghost of his
+father, and Macbeth saw Banquo&mdash;and that which presents itself to us
+when we are asleep, or in that condition between waking and sleeping
+which makes the vision so like reality. I do not believe in the former,
+and I am fully persuaded in my own mind that the wonderful stories which
+we hear are to be accounted for either as exaggerations or as the result
+of natural causes which have been misstated or suppressed; but many of
+us have had experience of the latter&mdash;of those visions of the night
+which have seemed so real, and which in some instances have brought us
+information as to occurrences before unknown to us, but subsequently
+proved to be true.</p>
+
+<p>"George Benfield, a driver on the Midland Railway living at Derby, was
+standing on the footplate oiling his engine, the train being stationary,
+when he slipped and fell on the space between the lines. He heard the
+express coming on, and had only just time to lie full length on the
+'six-foot' when it rushed by, and he escaped unhurt. He returned to his
+home in the middle of the night, and as he was going up the stairs he
+heard one of his children, a girl about eight years old, crying and
+sobbing. 'Oh, Father!' she said, 'I thought somebody came and told me
+that you were going to be killed, and I got out of bed and prayed that
+God would not let you die.' Was it only a dream, a coincidence?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Dean Hole is the first person whom we remember to have held that a man's
+testimony respecting a given species of experience is more credible if
+he was asleep at the time that he claims to have had it, than if he was
+awake. He states that dreams "in some instances have brought us
+information as to occurrences before unknown to us, but subsequently
+proved to be true," but the same is asserted in respect to waking
+apparitional experiences on exactly as satisfactory evidence, in many
+cases. He accounts for the wonderful stories we hear in respect to
+waking apparitions, and discredits them on exactly the same grounds that
+others account for and discredit his dreams. The fact is that, with Dean
+Hole as with many others, the personal equation is operative. He
+believes in coincidental dreams because he himself has experienced them
+and knows that he is not guilty of exaggerations in recounting them, nor
+can he see how natural causes can explain them; he never has had a
+waking apparition, and therefore is inclined to conjure up guesses as to
+the inaccuracy and inveracity of those who have&mdash;guesses which he would
+resent if they were applied to himself.</p>
+
+<p>But the Dean's testimony is one matter, his opinions or prejudices
+another.</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Incidents Reported by Serjeant Ballantine</span></h3>
+
+<p>Serjeant William Ballantine (1812-1887) was one of the foremost lawyers
+in England, noted for his skill in cross-examination. He was counsel in
+the Tichborne claimant case, one of the most celebrated in the history
+of the English courts, and in the equally famed trial<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> of the Gaekwar of
+Baroda. The incidents which impressed him are to be found in
+Ballantine's <i>Some Experiences of a Barrister's Life</i>, pp. 256-267.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not think it will be out of place whilst upon this subject to
+relate a story told of Sir Astley Cooper.<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> I am not certain that it
+has not been already in print, but I know that I have had frequent
+conversations about it with his nephew.</p>
+
+<p>"There had been a murder, and Sir Astley was upon the scene when a man
+suspected of it was apprehended. Sir Astley, being greatly interested,
+accompanied the officers with their prisoner to the gaol, and he and
+they and the accused were all in a cell, locked in together, when they
+noticed a little dog which kept biting at the skirt of the prisoner's
+coat. This led them to examine the garment, and they found upon it
+traces of blood which ultimately led to conviction of the man. When they
+looked around the dog had disappeared, although the door had never been
+opened. How it had got there or how it got away, of course nobody could
+tell. When Bransby Cooper spoke of this he always said that of course
+his uncle had made a mistake, and was convinced of this himself; Bransby
+used to add that no doubt if the matter had been investigated it would
+have been shown that there was a mode of accounting for it from natural
+causes. But I believe that neither Sir Astley nor his nephew in their
+hearts discarded entirely the supernatural."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ballantine added an incident which some may<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> think is accounted for
+by a telepathic impression followed by auto-suggestion which lowered the
+mental alertness of the player.</p>
+
+<p>"There was a member of the club, a very harmless, inoffensive man of the
+name of Townend, for whom Lord Lytton [the novelist] entertained a
+mortal antipathy, and would never play whilst that gentleman was in the
+room. He firmly believed that he brought him bad luck. I was witness to
+what must be termed an odd coincidence. One afternoon, when Lord Lytton
+was playing and had enjoyed an uninterrupted run of luck, it suddenly
+turned, upon which he exclaimed, 'I am sure that Mr. Townend has come
+into the club.' Some three minutes after, just time enough to ascend the
+stairs, in walked that unlucky personage. Lord Lytton as soon as the
+rubber was over, left the table and did not renew the play."</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Ben Jonson's Premonition by Apparition</span></h3>
+
+<p>This eminent dramatist, contemporary of Shakespeare (1573?-1637),
+visited the Scottish poet, William Drummond, who took notes of his
+conversations which he afterwards published in the form of a book. One
+incident which Jonson related and Drummond recorded may be found in <i>The
+Library of the World's Best Literature</i> under the title, <i>Ben Jonson</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"At that tyme the pest was in London; he being in the country&mdash;with old
+Cambden, he saw in a vision his eldest sone, then a child and at London,
+appear unto him with the mark of a bloodie crosse in his forehead, as if
+it had been cutted with a shord, at which amazed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> he prayed unto God,
+and in the morning he came to Mr. Cambden's chamber to tell him; who
+persuaded him it was but ane apprehension of his fantasie, at which he
+sould not be disjected; in the mean tyme comes then letters from his
+wife of the death of that boy in plague. He appeared to him (he said) of
+a manly shape, and of that grouth that he thinks he shall be at the
+resurrection."</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Rubinstein's Death Compact</span></h3>
+
+<p>A pupil of Anton Rubinstein, the great pianist and composer (1829-1894),
+tells this story. It may be found in <i>Harper's Magazine</i> for December,
+1912, under the title <i>A Girl's Recollections of Rubinstein</i>, by Lillian
+Nichia.</p>
+
+<p>"One wild, blustery night I found myself at dinner with Rubinstein, the
+weather being terrific even for St. Petersburg. The winds were howling
+round the house and Rubinstein, who liked to ask questions, inquired of
+me what they represented to my mind. I replied, 'The moaning of lost
+souls.' From this a theological discussion followed.</p>
+
+<p>"'There may be a future,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>"'There is a future,' I cried, 'a great and beautiful future. If I die
+first I shall come to you and prove this.'</p>
+
+<p>"He turned to me with great solemnity.</p>
+
+<p>"'Good, Liloscha, that is a bargain; and I will come to you.'</p>
+
+<p>"Six years later in Paris I woke one night with a cry of agony and
+despair ringing in my ears, such as I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> hope may never be duplicated in
+my lifetime. Rubinstein's face was close to mine, a countenance
+distorted by every phase of fear, despair, agony, remorse and anger. I
+started up, turned on all the lights, and stood for a moment shaking in
+every limb, till I put fear from me and decided it was merely a dream. I
+had for the moment completely forgotten our compact. News is always late
+in Paris, and it was in <i>Le Petit Journal</i>, published in the afternoon,
+that had the first account of his sudden death.</p>
+
+<p>"Four years later, Teresa Carreno, who had just come from Russia and was
+touring America&mdash;I had met her in St. Petersburg frequently at
+Rubinstein's dinner-table&mdash;told me that Rubinstein died with a cry of
+agony impossible of description. I knew then that even in death
+Rubinstein had kept, as he always did, his word."</p>
+
+<p>Here again, we are at liberty to accept the testimony regarding the
+remarkable and complex coincidence, and to disregard what is really an
+expression of opinion in the last sentence. Whether Rubinstein
+remembered his compact in his dying hour, or the impression produced
+upon his far-away pupil was automatically produced by some obscure
+telepathic process, the dying man having in his mind no conscious
+thought of his promise, or some intervening <i>tertium quid</i> produced the
+impression, could never be determined by this incident alone.</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Previsionary Dream by Charles Dickens</span></h3>
+
+<p>This incident in the experience of Charles Dickens (1812-1870) is to be
+found in the standard biography<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> by Forster, III, pp. 484-5 (London,
+1874). On May 30, 1863, Dickens wrote:</p>
+
+<p>"Here is a curious case at first-hand. On Thursday night in last week,
+being at my office here, I dreamed that I saw a lady in a red shawl with
+her back toward me (whom I supposed to be E&mdash;). On her turning round I
+found that I didn't know her, and she said, 'I am Miss Napier.' All the
+time I was dressing next morning I thought 'What a preposterous thing to
+have so very distinct a dream about nothing!' and why Miss Napier?&mdash;for
+I never heard of any Miss Napier. That same Friday night I read. After
+the reading, came into my retiring-room, Mary Boyle and her brother, and
+the lady in the red shawl, whom they present as 'Miss Napier.' These are
+all the circumstances exactly told."</p>
+
+<p>I can imagine the late Professor Royce saying thirty years ago&mdash;for I
+much doubt if he would have said it twenty years later&mdash;"In certain
+people, under certain exciting circumstances, there occur what I shall
+henceforth call <i>Pseudo-presentiments</i>, <i>i.e.</i>, more or less
+instantaneous hallucinations of memory, which make it seem to one that
+something which now excites or astonishes him has been prefigured in a
+recent dream, or in the form of some other warning, although this
+seeming is wholly unfounded, and although the supposed prophecy really
+succeeds its own fulfillment."</p>
+
+<p>Apply this curious theory (which has probably not been urged for many
+years) to the incident just cited, and see how loosely it fits. What was
+there about three persons, one a stranger coming to Dickens after he had
+finished a reading from his own works, to "excite" or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> "astonish" him,
+make his brain whirl and bring about a hallucination of memory, an
+illusion of having dreamed it all before? It was the most commonplace
+event to him. Besides, as in most such cases, he had the distinct
+recollection of his thoughts about the dream after waking, thoughts
+inextricably interwoven with the acts performed while dressing! Besides,
+a pseudo-presentiment should tally with the event as a reflection does
+with the object, but in the dream Miss Napier introduced herself, while
+in reality she was introduced by another.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> By permission of The Century Co.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> From <i>Pan's Garden</i>, by Algernon Blackwood&mdash;Permission of
+the Macmillan Company.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> <i>From Ten-Minute Stories</i>, published by E. P. Dutton &amp; Co.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> By permission of The Century Co.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> By permission of the author of <i>War Letters of the Living
+Dead Man</i> and Mitchell Kennerley.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> From <i>Karma</i> (Boni &amp; Liveright).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> From "<i>In the Midst of Life</i>" (Boni &amp; Liveright).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> Referring to this photo elsewhere, he wrote:&mdash;"This at
+least is not a case which telepathy can explain. Nor can the hypothesis
+of fraud hold water. It was by the merest accident that I asked the
+photographer to see if the spirit would give his name. No one in
+England, so far as I have been able to ascertain, knew that any Piet
+Botha ever existed.
+</p><p>
+"As if to render all explanation of fraud or contrivance still more
+incredible, it may be mentioned that the <i>Daily Graphic</i> of October,
+1889, which announced that a Commandant Botha had been killed in the
+siege of Kimberley, published a portrait alleged to be that of the dead
+commandant, which not only does not bear the remotest resemblance to the
+Piet Botha of my photograph, but which was described as Commandant Hans
+Botha!"</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> Miss Katharine Bates was present when the Piet Botha
+photograph was taken under the exact conditions specified by my father.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> Contullich: i.e. Ceann-nan-tulaich, "the end of the
+hillocks." Loch a chaoruinn means the loch of the rowan-trees.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> "The farm in the hollow of the yellow flowers."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> A chuid do Pharas da! "His share of heaven be his." Gu'n
+gleidheadh Dia thu, "May God preserve you." Gu'n beannaic-headh Dia an
+tigh! "God's blessing on this house."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> Droch caoidh ort! "May a fatal accident happen to you"
+(<i>lit.</i> "bad moan on you"). Gaoth gun direadh ort! "May you drift to
+your drowning" (<i>lit.</i> "wind without direction on you"). Dia ad aghaidh,
+etc., "God against thee and in thy face ... and may a death of woe be
+yours.... Evil and sorrow to thee and thine!"</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> i.e. With a criminal secret, or an undiscovered crime.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> 186,900 miles a second (J. Wallace Stewart, B.Sc.).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> Termed teleplasma.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> By permission of the author.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> From Journal of Proceedings of Theosophical Society.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> <i>Fragments of Forgotten History.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> <i>Fragments of Forgotten History.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> By which it is doubtless meant that the <i>full</i>
+individuality is not present; the higher principles, the <i>true</i> spirit,
+having ascended to its appropriate house, from which there is no
+attraction to earth. That which materializes would be an elemental, or
+elementals molding their fluidic forms in the likeness of the departed
+human being; or, on the other hand, considering and revivifying the
+atomic remnants of the sidereal encasement, or astral body, still left
+undissipated in the soul-world.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> Sir Astley Paston Cooper was perhaps the most famous and
+influential surgeon of his time in England.</p></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
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diff --git a/36712.txt b/36712.txt
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Best Psychic Stories, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Best Psychic Stories
+
+Author: Various
+
+Editor: Joseph Lewis French
+
+Release Date: July 12, 2011 [EBook #36712]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BEST PSYCHIC STORIES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Robert Cicconetti, Mary Meehan and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                             The Best Psychic Stories
+
+                            _Edited with a Preface by_
+
+                               Joseph Lewis French
+
+         _Editor "Great Ghost Stories," "Masterpieces of Mystery," etc._
+
+
+    _Introduction by_
+    Dorothy Scarborough, Ph.D.
+
+    _Lecturer in English, Columbia University
+    Author of "The Supernatural in English Literature,"
+    "From a Southern Porch," etc._
+
+
+    BONI & LIVERIGHT
+    NEW YORK
+
+    Copyright, 1920, by
+    Boni & Liveright, Inc.
+
+    Printed in the Unites States of America
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+The case for the "psychic" element in literature rests on a very old
+foundation; it reaches back to the ancient masters,--the men who wrote
+the Greek tragedies. Remorse will ever seem commonplace alongside the
+furies. Ever and always the shadow of the supernatural invites, pursues
+us. As the art of literature has progressed it has grown along with it.
+To-day there is a whole new school of writers of Ghost-Stories, and the
+domain of the invisible is being invaded by explorers in many paths. We
+do not believe so much more, perhaps, that is, we do not so openly
+express a belief, but art has finally and frankly claimed the
+supernatural for its own. One discerning authority even goes so far as
+to assert that the borders of its domain will be greatly enlarged in the
+wonderful new field of the screen.
+
+There is no motive in a story, no image in poetry, that can give us
+quite the thrill of a supernatural idea. If we were formally charged
+with this we might resent the imputation, but the evidence has persisted
+from the beginning, lives on every hand, and multiplies daily. What we
+have been in the habit of calling the "machinery" of the old Greek
+drama--its supernatural effects--has come finally to be an art
+cultivated with care at the present hour, and has given us some
+wonderful new writers. In fact, few of the best masters for a generation
+now have been able to resist its persistent and abiding charm. Every
+writer of true imagination, almost without exception, including even
+certain realists, has given us at least one story, long or short, in
+which the central motive is purely psychical in the Greek sense of the
+word.
+
+The whole subject opens up a virgin field which has after all only begun
+to be tilled. Within the coming generation we may look for great artists
+to devote their whole powers to it, as Algernon Blackwood is doing
+to-day. A simple underlying reason is enough to account for it all--_the
+new field imposes simply no limit on the imagination_. In addition to
+all that science has taught us, there is illimitable store of myth and
+legend to aid, to draw from, to work in, to work over, as Lord Dunsany
+has shown us. It is the most significant movement in literature at the
+present hour, and whether it is supported by a special background of
+interest--as at present in spiritism--or not, the assertion is logical
+that it is creating a new body of fictional literature of permanent
+importance for the first time in the history of literature. The human
+comedy seems to have been exploited to its final limits; as the art of
+the novel, the art of the stage, but too sadly prove to-day. We have
+turned outward for new thrills to the supernatural and we are getting
+them.
+
+It only remains to be added that the present great interest in
+spiritualism and allied phenomena has made necessary the addition of
+certain material of a "literal" character which we believe will be found
+quite as interesting by the general reader as the purely literary
+portion of the book.
+
+JOSEPH LEWIS FRENCH
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+PREFACE _Joseph Lewis French_
+
+INTRODUCTION _Dorothy Scarborough_
+
+WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG _Jack London_
+
+THE RETURN _Algernon Blackwood_
+
+THE SECOND GENERATION _Algernon Blackwood_
+
+JOSEPH--A STORY _Katherine Rickford_
+
+THE CLAVECIN--BRUGES _George Wharton Edwards_
+
+LIGEIA _Edgar Allan Poe_
+
+THE SYLPH AND THE FATHER _Elsa Barker_
+
+A GHOST _Lafcadio Hearn_
+
+THE EYES OF THE PANTHER _Ambrose Bierce_
+
+PHOTOGRAPHING INVISIBLE BEINGS _William T. Stead_
+
+THE SIN-EATER _Fiona Macleod_
+
+GHOSTS IN SOLID FORM _Gambier Bolton_
+
+THE PHANTOM ARMIES SEEN IN FRANCE _Hereward Carrington_
+
+THE PORTAL OF THE UNKNOWN _Andrew Jackson Davis_
+
+THE SUPERNORMAL: EXPERIENCES _St. John D. Seymour_
+
+NATURE-SPIRITS, OR ELEMENTALS _Nizida_
+
+A WITCH'S DEN _Helena Blavatsky_
+
+SOME REMARKABLE EXPERIENCES OF FAMOUS PERSONS _Dr. Walter F. Prince_
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+THE PSYCHIC IN LITERATURE
+
+
+War, that relentless disturber of boundaries and of traditions in a
+spiritual as well as a material sense, has brought a tremendous revival
+of interest in the life after death and the possibility of communication
+between the living and the dead. As France became nearer to millions
+over here because our soldiers lived there for a few months, as French
+soil will forever be holy ground because our dead rest there, so the far
+country of the soul likewise seems nearer because of those young
+adventurers. The conflict which changed the map of Europe has in the
+minds of many effaced the boundaries between this world and the world
+beyond. Winifred Kirkland, in her book, _The New Death_, discusses the
+new concept of death, and the change in our standards that it is making.
+"We are used to speaking of this or that friend's philosophy of life;
+the time has now come when every one of us who is to live at peace with
+his own brain must possess also a philosophy of death." This New Death,
+she says, is so far mainly an immense yearning receptivity, an
+unprecedented humility of brain and of heart toward all implications of
+survival. She believes that it is an influence which is entering the
+lives of the people as a whole, not a movement of the intellectuals, nor
+the result of psychical research propaganda, but arising from the
+simple, elemental emotions of the soul, from human love and longing for
+reassurance of continued life.
+
+"If a man die, shall he live again?" has been propounded ever since
+Job's agonized inquiry. Now numbers are asking in addition, "Can we have
+communication with the dead?" Science, long derisive, is sympathetic to
+the questioning, and while many believe and many doubt, the subject is
+one that interests more people than ever before. Professor James Hyslop,
+Secretary of the American Society for Psychical Research, believes that
+the war has had great influence in arousing new interest in psychical
+subjects and that tremendous spiritual discoveries may come from it.
+
+Literature, always a little ahead of life, or at least in advance of
+general thinking, has in the more recent years been acutely conscious of
+this new influence. Poetry, the drama, the novel, the short story, have
+given affirmative answer to the question of the soul's survival after
+death. No other element has so largely entered into the tissue of recent
+literature as has the supernatural, which now we meet in all forms in
+the writings of all lands. And no aspect of the ghostly art is more
+impressive or more widely used than the introduction of the spirit of
+the dead seeking to manifest itself to the living. No thoughtful person
+can fail to be interested in a theme which has so affected literature as
+has the ghostly, even though he may disbelieve what the Psychical
+Researchers hold to be established.
+
+Man's love for the supernatural, which is one of the most natural things
+about him, was never more marked than now. Man's imagination, ever
+vaster than his environment, overleaps the barriers of time and space
+and claims all worlds as eminent domain, so that literature, which he
+has the power to create, as he cannot create his material surroundings,
+possesses a dramatic intensity and an epic sweep unknown in actuality.
+Literature shows what humanity really is and longs to be. Man, feeling
+belittled by his petty round of uninspiring days, longs for a larger
+life. He yearns for traffic with immortal beings that can augment his
+wisdom, that can bring comfort to his soul dismayed and bewildered by
+life. He reaches out for a power beyond his puny strength. Aware how
+relentlessly time ticks away his little hour, he craves companionship
+with the eternal spirits. Ignorant of what lies before him in the life
+to which he speeds so fast, he would take counsel of those who know,
+would ask about the customs of the country where presently he will be a
+citizen. He feels so terribly alone that he cries out like a child in
+the dark for supermortal companionship.
+
+Literature, which is both a cause and an effect of man's interest in the
+supernatural as in anything else, reflects his longings and records his
+cries. And when we read the imaginings of the different generations, we
+find that the spirit of the dead is represented almost everywhere.
+Before poetry and fiction were recorded, there were singers and
+story-tellers by the fire to give to their listeners the thrill that
+comes from art. And what thrill is comparable to that which comes from
+contact with the supermortal? The earliest literature relates the
+appearance of the spirits of those who have died as coming back to
+comfort or to take vengeance on the living, but always as sentient,
+intelligent, and with an interest in the earth they have left. All
+through the centuries the wraith has survived in literature, has flitted
+pallidly across the pages of poetry, story and play, with a sad
+wistfulness, a forlorn dignity.
+
+A double relation exists between the literature and the records of the
+Psychical Research Society. Lacy Collison-Morley, in his _Greek and
+Roman Ghost Stories_, speaks of the similarity between ancient tales of
+spirits and records of recent instances. "There are in the Fourth Book
+of _Gregory the Great's Dialogues_ a number of stories of the passing of
+souls which are curiously like some of those collected by the Psychical
+Research Society," he says. Possibly human personality is much the same
+in all lands and all times.
+
+Conversely, some of the best examples of ghostly literature have had
+their inspiration in the records of the society, Henry James's _The Turn
+of the Screw_ being a notable example. Algernon Blackwood, that
+extraordinary adapter of psychic material to fiction, makes frequent
+mention of the Psychical Research Society, and uses many aspects of the
+psychical in his fiction. Innumerable stories, novels, plays and poems
+have been written to show the nearness of the dead to the living, and
+the thinness of the veil that separates the two worlds. There is deep
+pathos in the concept of the longing felt by the dead and living alike
+to speak with each other, to rend the dividing veil, which adds a
+poignancy to literature, even for readers incredulous of the possibility
+of such communication. There are many who are unconvinced of the reality
+of the messages in _Raymond_, for instance,--yet who could fail to be
+touched by the delicate art with which Barrie suggests the dead son's
+return in his play, _The Well-Remembered Voice_? While one may be
+repelled by what he feels is fraud and trickery in some of the psychic
+records, it is impossible not to be moved by such an impressive piece of
+symbolism as Granville Barker's _Souls on Fifth_, where the lonely,
+futile spirits of the dead are represented as hovering near the place
+they knew the best, seeking piteously to win some recognition from the
+living. The repulsive aspects of spirit manifestations have been treated
+many times and with power, as in Joseph Hergesheimer's _The Meeker
+Ritual_, to give one very recent example. The subject has interested the
+minds of many writers who have dealt with it satirically or
+sympathetically, or with a curious mixture of scoffing and respect, as
+did Browning in _Sludge, the Medium_. Even such pronounced realists as
+William Dean Howells and Hamlin Garland have written novels dealing with
+attempts at spirit communication.
+
+Any subject that has won so incontestable a place in our literature as
+this has, possesses a right to our thought, whatever be our attitude of
+acceptance or rejection of its claims to actuality. No person wishes to
+be ignorant of what the world is thinking with reference to a matter so
+important as the spirit. Hence this volume, _The Best Psychic Stories_,
+in presenting these studies in the occult, will have interest for a wide
+range of readers, and Mr. French, the editor, has shown critical
+discrimination and extensive knowledge of the subject. Many who are
+already interested in psychic phenomena will be glad to be informed
+concerning recent and startling manifestations recounted by special
+investigators. The sincerity of a man like W. T. Stead, well known and
+respected on both sides of the Atlantic, cannot be doubted, so that his
+article on _Photographing Invisible Beings_ will have unusual weight.
+Hereward Carrington, author of various books on psychic subjects, and
+considered an authority in his field, gives in _The Phantom Armies Seen
+in France_ a report of occult phenomena widely believed in during the
+war.
+
+Helena Blavatsky, author of _A Witch's Den_, will be remembered as the
+sensational medium who mystified experimenters in various lands a few
+years ago. While most of us can be content not to touch a ghost, we may
+find subject for surprise and wonder in Gambier Bolton's _Ghosts in
+Solid Form_, describing spirits that can be weighed and put to material
+tests, while Dr. Walter H. Prince, well known as a psychic investigator,
+relates remarkable experiments of famous persons, that challenge
+explanation on purely physical bases. These accounts show that modern
+scientific investigation of spiritual manifestations can be made as
+enthralling as fiction or drama. Hamlin Garland remarks in a recent
+article, _The Spirit-World on Trial_, "When the medium consented to
+enter the laboratory of the physicist, a new era in the study of psychic
+phenomena began."
+
+Even those who refuse credence to spirit manifestations in fact, but who
+appreciate the art with which they are shown in literature, should read
+with interest the stories given here. The genius of Edgar Allan Poe was
+never more impressive than in his studies of the supernatural, and
+_Ligeia_ has a dramatic art unsurpassed even by Poe. The tense economy
+with which Ambrose Bierce could evoke a dreadful spirit is evident in
+_The Eyes of the Panther_, and the haunting symbolism of Fiona Macleod's
+_The Sin-Eater_ is unforgetable. Lafcadio Hearn, author of _A Ghost_,
+held the belief that there was no great artist in any land, and
+certainly no Anglo-Saxon writer, who had not distinguished himself in
+his use of the supernatural. The subject of the soul's survival after
+death and its attempts to reveal itself to those still in the folding
+flesh is of interest to every rational person, whether as a matter of
+scientific concern or merely as an aspect of literary art. And the
+possibilities for further use of the psychic in literature are as
+alluring as they are illimitable.
+
+    DOROTHY SCARBOROUGH
+
+    _New York City
+    March 29, 1920_
+
+
+
+
+THE BEST PSYCHIC STORIES
+
+
+
+
+WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG[1]
+
+BY JACK LONDON
+
+[Footnote 1: By permission of The Century Co.]
+
+
+I
+
+He was a very quiet, self-possessed sort of man, sitting a moment on top
+of the wall to sound the damp darkness for warnings of the dangers it
+might conceal. But the plummet of his hearing brought nothing to him
+save the moaning of wind through invisible trees and the rustling of
+leaves on swaying branches. A heavy fog drifted and drove before the
+wind, and though he could not see this fog, the wet of it blew upon his
+face, and the wall on which he sat was wet.
+
+Without noise he had climbed to the top of the wall from the outside,
+and without noise he dropped to the ground on the inside. From his
+pocket he drew an electric night-stick, but he did not use it. Dark as
+the way was, he was not anxious for light. Carrying the night-stick in
+his hand, his finger on the button, he advanced through the darkness.
+The ground was velvety and springy to his feet, being carpeted with dead
+pine-needles and leaves and mold which evidently had been undisturbed
+for years. Leaves and branches brushed against his body, but so dark was
+it that he could not avoid them. Soon he walked with his hand stretched
+out gropingly before him, and more than once the hand fetched up against
+the solid trunks of massive trees. All about him he knew were these
+trees; he sensed the loom of them everywhere; and he experienced a
+strange feeling of microscopic smallness in the midst of great bulks
+leaning toward him to crush him. Beyond, he knew, was the house, and he
+expected to find some trail or winding path that would lead easily to
+it.
+
+Once, he found himself trapped. On every side he groped against trees
+and branches, or blundered into thickets of underbrush, until there
+seemed no way out. Then he turned on his light, circumspectly, directing
+its rays to the ground at his feet. Slowly and carefully he moved it
+about him, the white brightness showing in sharp detail all the
+obstacles to his progress. He saw an opening between huge-trunked trees,
+and advanced through it, putting out the light and treading on dry
+footing as yet protected from the drip of the fog by the dense foliage
+overhead. His sense of direction was good, and he knew he was going
+toward the house.
+
+And then the thing happened--the thing unthinkable and unexpected. His
+descending foot came down upon something that was soft and alive, and
+that arose with a snort under the weight of his body. He sprang clear,
+and crouched for another spring, anywhere, tense and expectant, keyed
+for the onslaught of the unknown. He waited a moment, wondering what
+manner of animal it was that had arisen from under his foot and that now
+made no sound nor movement and that must be crouching and waiting just
+as tensely and expectantly as he. The strain became unbearable. Holding
+the night-stick before him, he pressed the button, saw, and screamed
+aloud in terror. He was prepared for anything, from a frightened calf or
+fawn to a belligerent lion, but he was not prepared for what he saw. In
+that instant his tiny searchlight, sharp and white, had shown him what a
+thousand years would not enable him to forget--a man, huge and blond,
+yellow-haired and yellow-bearded, naked except for soft-tanned moccasins
+and what seemed a goat-skin about his middle. Arms and legs were bare,
+as were his shoulders and most of his chest. The skin was smooth and
+hairless, but browned by sun and wind, while under it heavy muscles were
+knotted like fat snakes.
+
+Still, this alone, unexpected as it well was, was not what had made the
+man scream out. What had caused his terror was the unspeakable ferocity
+of the face, the wild-animal glare of the blue eyes scarcely dazzled by
+the light, the pine-needles matted and clinging in the beard and hair,
+and the whole formidable body crouched and in the act of springing at
+him. Practically in the instant he saw all this, and while his scream
+still rang, the thing leaped, he flung his night-stick full at it, and
+threw himself to the ground. He felt its feet and shins strike against
+his ribs, and he bounded up and away while the thing itself hurled
+onward in a heavy crashing fall into the underbrush.
+
+As the noise of the fall ceased, the man stopped and on hands and knees
+waited. He could hear the thing moving about, searching for him, and he
+was afraid to advertise his location by attempting further flight. He
+knew that inevitably he would crackle the underbrush and be pursued.
+Once he drew out his revolver, then changed his mind. He had recovered
+his composure and hoped to get away without noise. Several times he
+heard the thing beating up the thickets for him, and there were moments
+when it, too, remained still and listened. This gave an idea to the man.
+One of his hands was resting on a chunk of dead wood. Carefully, first
+feeling about him in the darkness to know that the full swing of his arm
+was clear, he raised the chunk of wood and threw it. It was not a large
+piece, and it went far, landing noisily in a bush. He heard the thing
+bound into the bush, and at the same time himself crawled steadily away.
+And on hands and knees, slowly and cautiously, he crawled on, till his
+knees were wet on the soggy mold. When he listened he heard naught but
+the moaning wind and the drip-drip of the fog from the branches. Never
+abating his caution, he stood erect and went on to the stone wall, over
+which he climbed and dropped down to the road outside.
+
+Feeling his way in a clump of bushes, he drew out a bicycle and prepared
+to mount. He was in the act of driving the gear around with his foot for
+the purpose of getting the opposite pedal in position, when he heard the
+thud of a heavy body that landed lightly and evidently on its feet. He
+did not wait for more, but ran, with hands on the handles of his
+bicycle, until he was able to vault astride the saddle, catch the
+pedals, and start a spurt. Behind he could hear the quick thud-thud of
+feet on the dust of the road, but he drew away from it and lost it.
+
+Unfortunately, he had started away from the direction of town and was
+heading higher up into the hills. He knew that on this particular road
+there were no cross roads. The only way back was past that terror, and
+he could not steel himself to face it. At the end of half an hour,
+finding himself on an ever increasing grade, he dismounted. For still
+greater safety, leaving the wheel by the roadside, he climbed through a
+fence into what he decided was a hillside pasture, spread a newspaper on
+the ground, and sat down.
+
+"Gosh!" he said aloud, mopping the sweat and fog from his face.
+
+And "Gosh!" he said once again, while rolling a cigarette and as he
+pondered the problem of getting back.
+
+But he made no attempt to go back. He was resolved not to face that road
+in the dark, and with head bowed on knees, he dozed, waiting for
+daylight.
+
+How long afterward he did not know, he was awakened by the yapping bark
+of a young coyote. As he looked about and located it on the brow of the
+hill behind him, he noted the change that had come over the face of the
+night. The fog was gone; the stars and moon were out; even the wind had
+died down. It had transformed into a balmy California summer night. He
+tried to doze again, but the yap of the coyote disturbed him. Half
+asleep, he heard a wild and eery chant. Looking about him, he noticed
+that the coyote had ceased its noise and was running away along the
+crest of the hill, and behind it, in full pursuit, no longer chanting,
+ran the naked creature he had encountered in the garden. It was a young
+coyote, and it was being overtaken when the chase passed from view. The
+man trembled as with a chill as he started to his feet, clambered over
+the fence, and mounted his wheel. But it was his chance and he knew it.
+The terror was no longer between him and Mill Valley.
+
+He sped at a breakneck rate down the hill, but in the turn at the
+bottom, in the deep shadows, he encountered a chuck-hole and pitched
+headlong over the handle bar.
+
+"It's sure not my night," he muttered, as he examined the broken fork of
+the machine.
+
+Shouldering the useless wheel, he trudged on. In time he came to the
+stone wall, and, half disbelieving his experience, he sought in the road
+for tracks, and found them--moccasin tracks, large ones, deep-bitten
+into the dust at the toes. It was while bending over them, examining,
+that again he heard the eery chant. He had seen the thing pursue the
+coyote, and he knew he had no chance on a straight run. He did not
+attempt it, contenting himself with hiding in the shadows on the off
+side of the road.
+
+And again he saw the thing that was like a naked man, running swiftly
+and lightly and singing as it ran. Opposite him it paused, and his heart
+stood still. But instead of coming toward his hiding-place, it leaped
+into the air, caught the branch of a roadside tree, and swung swiftly
+upward, from limb to limb, like an ape. It swung across the wall, and a
+dozen feet above the top, into the branches of another tree, and dropped
+out of sight to the ground. The man waited a few wondering minutes, then
+started on.
+
+
+II
+
+Dave Slotter leaned belligerently against the desk that barred the way
+to the private office of James Ward, senior partner of the firm of Ward,
+Knowles & Co. Dave was angry. Every one in the outer office had looked
+him over suspiciously, and the man who faced him was excessively
+suspicious.
+
+"You just tell Mr. Ward it's important," he urged.
+
+"I tell you he is dictating and cannot be disturbed," was the answer.
+"Come to-morrow."
+
+"To-morrow will be too late. You just trot along and tell Mr. Ward it's
+a matter of life and death."
+
+The secretary hesitated and Dave seized the advantage.
+
+"You just tell him I was across the bay in Mill Valley last night, and
+that I want to put him wise to something."
+
+"What name?" was the query.
+
+"Never mind the name. He don't know me."
+
+When Dave was shown into the private office, he was still in the
+belligerent frame of mind, but when he saw a large fair man whirl in a
+revolving chair from dictating to a stenographer to face him, Dave's
+demeanor abruptly changed. He did not know why it changed, and he was
+secretly angry with himself.
+
+"You are Mr. Ward?" Dave asked with a fatuousness that still further
+irritated him. He had never intended it at all.
+
+"Yes," came the answer. "And who are you?"
+
+"Harry Bancroft," Dave lied. "You don't know me, and my name don't
+matter."
+
+"You sent in word that you were in Mill Valley last night?"
+
+"You live there, don't you?" Dave countered, looking suspiciously at the
+stenographer.
+
+"Yes. What do you mean to see me about? I am very busy."
+
+"I'd like to see you alone, sir."
+
+Mr. Ward gave him a quick, penetrating look, hesitated, then made up his
+mind.
+
+"That will do for a few minutes, Miss Potter."
+
+The girl arose, gathered her notes together, and passed out. Dave looked
+at Mr. James Ward wonderingly, until that gentleman broke his train of
+inchoate thought.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I was over in Mill Valley last night," Dave began confusedly.
+
+"I've heard that before. What do you want?"
+
+And Dave proceeded in the face of a growing conviction that was
+unbelievable.
+
+"I was at your house, or in the grounds, I mean."
+
+"What were you doing there?"
+
+"I came to break in," Dave answered in all frankness. "I heard you lived
+all alone with a Chinaman for cook, and it looked good to me. Only I
+didn't break in. Something happened that prevented. That's why I'm here.
+I come to warn you. I found a wild man loose in your grounds--a regular
+devil. He could pull a guy like me to pieces. He gave me the run of my
+life. He don't wear any clothes to speak of, he climbs trees like a
+monkey, and he runs like a deer. I saw him chasing a coyote, and the
+last I saw of it, by God, he was gaining on it."
+
+Dave paused and looked for the effect that would follow his words. But
+no effect came. James Ward was quietly curious, and that was all.
+
+"Very remarkable, very remarkable," he murmured. "A wild man, you say.
+Why have you come to tell me?"
+
+"To warn you of your danger. I'm something of a hard proposition myself,
+but I don't believe in killing people ... that is, unnecessarily. I
+realized that you was in danger. I thought I'd warn you. Honest, that's
+the game. Of course, if you wanted to give me anything for my trouble,
+I'd take it. That was in my mind, too. But I don't care whether you give
+me anything or not. I've warned you anyway, and done my duty."
+
+Mr. Ward meditated and drummed on the surface of his desk. Dave noticed
+that his hands were large, powerful, withal well-cared for despite their
+dark sunburn. Also, he noted what had already caught his eye before--a
+tiny strip of flesh-colored courtplaster on the forehead over one eye.
+And still the thought that forced itself into his mind was unbelievable.
+
+Mr. Ward took a wallet from his inside coat pocket, drew out a
+greenback, and passed it to Dave, who noted as he pocketed it that it
+was for twenty dollars.
+
+"Thank you," said Mr. Ward, indicating that the interview was at an end.
+"I shall have the matter investigated. A wild man running loose _is_
+dangerous."
+
+But so quiet a man was Mr. Ward, that Dave's courage returned. Besides,
+a new theory had suggested itself. The wild man was evidently Mr. Ward's
+brother, a lunatic privately confined. Dave had heard of such things.
+Perhaps Mr. Ward wanted it kept quiet. That was why he had given him the
+twenty dollars.
+
+"Say," Dave began, "now I come to think of it that wild man looked a lot
+like you--"
+
+That was as far as Dave got, for at that moment he witnessed a
+transformation and found himself gazing into the same unspeakably
+ferocious blue eyes of the night before, at the same clutching
+talon-like hands, and at the same formidable bulk in the act of
+springing upon him. But this time Dave had no night-stick to throw, and
+he was caught by the biceps of both arms in a grip so terrific that it
+made him groan with pain. He saw the large white teeth exposed, for all
+the world as a dog's about to bite. Mr. Ward's beard brushed his face as
+the teeth went in for the grip of his throat. But the bite was not
+given. Instead, Dave felt the other's body stiffen as with an iron
+restraint, and then he was flung aside, without effort but with such
+force that only the wall stopped his momentum and dropped him gasping to
+the floor.
+
+"What do you mean by coming here and trying to blackmail me?" Mr. Ward
+was snarling at him. "Here, give me back that money."
+
+Dave passed the bill back without a word.
+
+"I thought you came here with good intentions. I know you now. Let me
+see and hear no more of you, or I'll put you in prison where you belong.
+Do you understand?"
+
+"Yes, sir," Dave gasped.
+
+"Then go."
+
+And Dave went, without further word, both his biceps aching intolerably
+from the bruise of that tremendous grip. As his hand rested on the door
+knob, he was stopped.
+
+"You were lucky," Mr. Ward was saying, and Dave noted that his face and
+eyes were cruel and gloating and proud. "You were lucky. Had I wanted, I
+could have torn your muscles out of your arms and thrown them in the
+waste basket there."
+
+"Yes, sir," said Dave; and absolute conviction vibrated in his voice.
+
+He opened the door and passed out. The secretary looked at him
+interrogatively.
+
+"Gosh!" was all Dave vouchsafed, and with this utterance passed out of
+the offices and the story.
+
+
+III
+
+James G. Ward was forty years of age, a successful business man, and
+very unhappy. For forty years he had vainly tried to solve a problem
+that was really himself and that with increasing years became more and
+more a woeful affliction. In himself he was two men, and,
+chronologically speaking, these men were several thousand years or so
+apart. He had studied the question of dual personality probably more
+profoundly than any half dozen of the leading specialists in that
+intricate and mysterious psychological field. In himself he was a
+different case from any that had been recorded. Even the most fanciful
+flights of the fiction-writers had not quite hit upon him. He was not a
+Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, nor was he like the unfortunate young man in
+Kipling's _Greatest Story in the World_. His two personalities were so
+mixed that they were practically aware of themselves and of each other
+all the time.
+
+His one self was that of a man whose rearing and education were modern
+and who had lived through the latter part of the nineteenth century and
+well into the first decade of the twentieth. His other self he had
+located as a savage and a barbarian living under the primitive
+conditions of several thousand years before. But which self was he, and
+which was the other, he could never tell. For he was both selves, and
+both selves all the time. Very rarely indeed did it happen that one self
+did not know what the other was doing. Another thing was that he had no
+visions nor memories of the past in which that early self had lived.
+That early self lived in the present; but while it lived in the present,
+it was under the compulsion to live the way of life that must have been
+in that distant past.
+
+In his childhood he had been a problem to his father and mother, and to
+the family doctors, though never had they come within a thousand miles
+of hitting upon the clue to his erratic conduct. Thus, they could not
+understand his excessive somnolence in the forenoon, nor his excessive
+activity at night. When they found him wandering along the hallways at
+night, or climbing over giddy roofs, or running in the hills, they
+decided he was a somnambulist. In reality he was wide-eyed awake and
+merely under the night-roaming compulsion of his early life. Questioned
+by an obtuse medico, he once told the truth and suffered the ignominy of
+having the revelation contemptuously labeled and dismissed as "dreams."
+
+The point was, that as twilight and evening came on he became wakeful.
+The four walls of a room were an irk and a restraint. He heard a
+thousand voices whispering to him through the darkness. The night
+called to him, for he was, for that period of the twenty-four hours,
+essentially a night-prowler. But nobody understood, and never again did
+he attempt to explain. They classified him as a sleep-walker and took
+precautions accordingly--precautions that very often were futile. As his
+childhood advanced, he grew more cunning, so that the major portion of
+all his nights were spent in the open at realizing his other self. As a
+result, he slept in the forenoons. Morning studies and schools were
+impossible, and it was discovered that only in the afternoons, under
+private teachers, could he be taught anything. Thus was his modern self
+educated and developed.
+
+But a problem, as a child, he ever remained. He was known as a little
+demon of insensate cruelty and viciousness. The family medicos privately
+adjudged him a mental monstrosity and a degenerate. Such few boy
+companions as he had, hailed him as a wonder, though they were all
+afraid of him. He could outclimb, outswim, outrun, outdevil any of them;
+while none dared fight with him. He was too terribly strong, too madly
+furious.
+
+When nine years of age he ran away to the hills, where he flourished,
+night-prowling, for seven weeks before he was discovered and brought
+home. The marvel was how he had managed to subsist and keep in condition
+during that time. They did not know, and he never told them, of the
+rabbits he had killed, of the quail, young and old, he had captured and
+devoured, of the farmers' chicken-roosts he had raided, nor of the
+cave-lair he had made and carpeted with dry leaves and grasses and in
+which he had slept in warmth and comfort, through the forenoons of many
+days.
+
+At college he was notorious for his sleepiness and stupidity during the
+morning lectures and for his brilliance in the afternoon. By collateral
+reading and by borrowing the notebook of his fellow students he managed
+to scrape through the detestable morning courses, while his afternoon
+courses were triumphs. In football he proved a giant and a terror, and,
+in almost every form of track athletics, save for strange Berserker
+rages that were sometimes displayed, he could be depended upon to win.
+But his fellows were afraid to box with him, and he signalized his last
+wrestling bout by sinking his teeth into the shoulder of his opponent.
+
+After college, his father, in despair, sent him among the cow-punchers
+of a Wyoming ranch. Three months later the doughty cowmen confessed he
+was too much for them and telegraphed his father to come and take the
+wild man away. Also, when the father arrived to take him away, the
+cowmen allowed that they would vastly prefer chumming with howling
+cannibals, gibbering lunatics, cavorting gorillas, grizzly bears, and
+man-eating tigers than with this particular young college product with
+hair parted in the middle.
+
+There was one exception to the lack of memory of the life of his early
+self, and that was language. By some quirk of atavism, a certain portion
+of that early self's language had come down to him as a racial memory.
+In moments of happiness, exaltation, or battle, he was prone to burst
+out in wild barbaric songs or chants. It was by this means that he
+located in time and space that strayed half of him who should have been
+dead and dust for thousands of years. He sang, once, and deliberately,
+several of the ancient chants in the presence of Professor Wertz, who
+gave courses in old Saxon and who was a philologist of repute and
+passion. At the first one, the professor pricked up his ears and
+demanded to know what mongrel tongue or hog-German it was. When the
+second chant was rendered, the professor was highly excited. James Ward
+then concluded the performance by giving a song that always irresistibly
+rushed to his lips when he was engaged in fierce struggling or fighting.
+Then it was that Professor Wertz proclaimed it no hog-German, but early
+German, or early Teuton, of a date that must far precede anything that
+had ever been discovered and handed down by the scholars. So early was
+it that it was beyond him; yet it was filled with haunting reminiscences
+of word-forms he knew and which his trained intuition told him were true
+and real. He demanded the source of the songs, and asked to borrow the
+previous book that contained them. Also, he demanded to know why young
+Ward had always posed as being profoundly ignorant of the German
+language. And Ward could neither explain his ignorance nor lend the
+book. Whereupon, after pleadings and entreaties that extended through
+weeks, Professor Wertz took a dislike to the young man, believed him a
+liar, and classified him as a man of monstrous selfishness for not
+giving him a glimpse of this wonderful screed that was older than the
+oldest any philologist had ever known or dreamed.
+
+But little good did it do this much-mixed young man to know that half of
+him was late American and the other half early Teuton. Nevertheless, the
+late American in him was no weakling, and he (if he were a he and had a
+shred of existence outside of these two) compelled an adjustment or
+compromise between his one self that was a night-prowling savage that
+kept his other self sleepy of mornings, and that other self that was
+cultured and refined and that wanted to be normal and love and prosecute
+business like other people. The afternoons and early evenings he gave to
+the one, the nights to the other; the forenoons and parts of the nights
+were devoted to sleep for the twain. But in the mornings he slept in bed
+like a civilized man. In the night time he slept like a wild animal, as
+he had slept the night Dave Slotter stepped on him in the woods.
+
+Persuading his father to advance the capital, he went into business, and
+keen and successful business he made of it, devoting his afternoons
+whole-souled to it, while his partner devoted the mornings. The early
+evenings he spent socially, but, as the hour grew to nine or ten, an
+irresistible restlessness overcame him and he disappeared from the
+haunts of men until the next afternoon. Friends and acquaintances
+thought that he spent much of his time in sport. And they were right,
+though they never would have dreamed of the nature of the sport, even if
+they had seen him running coyotes in night-chases over the hills of Mill
+Valley. Neither were the schooner captains believed when they reported
+seeing, on cold winter mornings, a man swimming in the tide-rips of
+Raccoon Straits or in the swift currents between Goat Island and Angel
+Island miles from shore.
+
+In the bungalow at Mill Valley he lived alone, save for Lee Sing, the
+Chinese cook and factotum, who knew much about the strangeness of his
+master, who was paid well for saying nothing, and who never did say
+anything. After the satisfaction of his nights, a morning's sleep, and a
+breakfast of Lee Sing's, James Ward crossed the bay to San Francisco on
+a midday ferryboat and went to the club and on to his office, as normal
+and conventional a man of business as could be found in the city. But as
+the evening lengthened, the night called to him. There came a quickening
+of all his perceptions and a restlessness. His hearing was suddenly
+acute; the myriad night-noises told him a luring and familiar story;
+and, if alone, he would begin to pace up and down the narrow room like
+any caged animal from the wild.
+
+Once, he ventured to fall in love. He never permitted himself that
+diversion again. He was afraid. And for many a day the young lady,
+scared at least out of a portion of her young ladyhood, bore on her arms
+and shoulders and wrists divers black-and-blue bruises--tokens of
+caresses which he had bestowed in all fond gentleness but too late at
+night. There was the mistake. Had he ventured love-making in the
+afternoon, all would have been well, for it would have been as the quiet
+gentleman that he would have made love--but at night it was the uncouth,
+wife-stealing savage of the dark German forests. Out of his wisdom, he
+decided that afternoon love-making could be prosecuted successfully; but
+out of the same wisdom he was convinced that marriage would prove a
+ghastly failure. He found it appalling to imagine being married and
+encountering his wife after dark.
+
+So he had eschewed all love-making, regulated his dual life, cleaned up
+a million in business, fought shy of match-making mamas and bright- and
+eager-eyed young ladies of various ages, met Lilian Gersdale and made it
+a rigid observance never to see her later than eight o'clock in the
+evening, ran of nights after his coyotes, and slept in forest lairs--and
+through it all had kept his secret save for Lee Sing ... and now, Dave
+Slotter. It was the latter's discovery of both his selves that
+frightened him. In spite of the counter fright he had given the burglar,
+the latter might talk. And even if he did not, sooner or later he would
+be found out by some one else.
+
+Thus it was that James Ward made a fresh and heroic effort to control
+the Teutonic barbarian that was half of him. So well did he make it a
+point to see Lilian in the afternoons and early evenings, that the time
+came when she accepted him for better or worse, and when he prayed
+privily and fervently that it was not for worse. During this period no
+prize-fighter ever trained more harshly and faithfully for a contest
+than he trained to subdue the wild savage in him. Among other things, he
+strove to exhaust himself during the day, so that sleep would render him
+deaf to the call of the night. He took a vacation from the office and
+went on long hunting trips, following the deer through the most
+inaccessible and rugged country he could find--and always in the
+daytime. Night found him indoors and tired. At home he installed a score
+of exercise machines, and where other men might go through a particular
+movement ten times, he went hundreds. Also, as a compromise, he built a
+sleeping porch on the second story. Here he at least breathed the
+blessed night air. Double screens prevented him from escaping into the
+woods, and each night Lee Sing locked him in and each morning let him
+out.
+
+The time came, in the month of August, when he engaged additional
+servants to assist Lee Sing and dared a house party in his Mill Valley
+bungalow. Lilian, her mother and brother, and half a dozen mutual
+friends, were the guests. For two days and nights all went well. And on
+the third night, playing bridge till eleven o'clock, he had reason to be
+proud of himself. His restlessness he successfully hid, but as luck
+would have it, Lilian Gersdale was his opponent on his right. She was a
+frail delicate flower of a woman, and in his night-mood her very frailty
+incensed him. Not that he loved her less, but that he felt almost
+irresistibly impelled to reach out and paw and maul her. Especially was
+this true when she was engaged in playing a winning hand against him.
+
+He had one of the deer-hounds brought in, and, when it seemed he must
+fly to pieces with the tension, a caressing hand laid on the animal
+brought him relief. These contacts with the hairy coat gave him instant
+easement and enabled him to play out the evening. Nor did any one guess
+the terrible struggle their host was making, the while he laughed so
+carelessly and played so keenly and deliberately.
+
+When they separated for the night, he saw to it that he parted from
+Lilian in the presence of the others. Once on his sleeping porch, and
+safely locked in, he doubled and tripled and even quadrupled his
+exercises until, exhausted, he lay down on the couch to woo sleep and to
+ponder two problems that especially troubled him. One was this matter
+of exercise. It was a paradox. The more he exercised in this excessive
+fashion, the stronger he became. While it was true that he thus quite
+tired out his night-running Teutonic self, it seemed that he was merely
+setting back the fatal day when his strength would be too much for him
+and overpower him, and then it would be a strength more terrible than he
+had yet known. The other problem was that of his marriage and of the
+stratagems he must employ in order to avoid his wife after dark. And
+thus fruitlessly pondering he fell asleep.
+
+Now, where the huge grizzly bear came from that night was long a
+mystery, while the people of the Springs Brothers' Circus, showing at
+Sausalito, searched long and vainly for "Big Ben, the Biggest Grizzly in
+Captivity." But Big Ben escaped, and, out of the mazes of half a
+thousand bungalows and country estates, selected the grounds of James J.
+Ward for visitation. The first Mr. Ward knew was when he found himself
+on his feet, quivering and tense, a surge of battle in his breast and on
+his lips the old war-chant. From without came a wild baying and
+bellowing of the hounds. And sharp as a knife-thrust through the
+pandemonium came the agony of a stricken dog--his dog, he knew.
+
+Not stopping for slippers, pajama-clad, he burst through the door Lee
+Sing had so carefully locked, and sped down the stairs and out into the
+night. As his naked feet struck the graveled driveway, he stopped
+abruptly, reached under the steps to a hiding-place he knew well, and
+pulled forth a huge knotty club--his old companion on many a mad night
+adventure on the hills. The frantic hullabaloo of the dogs was coming
+nearer, and, swinging the club, he sprang straight into the thickets to
+meet it.
+
+The aroused household assembled on the wide veranda. Somebody turned on
+the electric lights, but they could see nothing but one another's
+frightened faces. Beyond the brightly illuminated driveway the trees
+formed a wall of impenetrable blackness. Yet somewhere in that blackness
+a terrible struggle was going on. There was an infernal outcry of
+animals, a great snarling and growling, the sound of blows being struck,
+and a smashing and crashing of underbrush by heavy bodies.
+
+The tide of battle swept out from among the trees and upon the driveway
+just beneath the onlookers. Then they saw. Mrs. Gersdale cried out and
+clung fainting to her son. Lilian, clutching the railing so
+spasmodically that a bruising hurt was left in her finger-ends for days,
+gazed horror-stricken at a yellow-haired, wild-eyed giant whom she
+recognized as the man who was to be her husband. He was swinging a great
+club, and fighting furiously and calmly with a shaggy monster that was
+bigger than any bear she had ever seen. One rip of the beast's claws had
+dragged away Ward's pajama-coat and streaked his flesh with blood.
+
+While most of Lilian Gersdale's fright was for the man beloved, there
+was a large portion of it due to the man himself. Never had she dreamed
+so formidable and magnificent a savage lurked under the starched shirt
+and conventional garb of her betrothed. And never had she had any
+conception of how a man battled. Such a battle was certainly not modern;
+nor was she there beholding a modern man, though she did not know it.
+For this was not Mr. James J. Ward, the San Francisco business man, but
+one unnamed and unknown, a crude, rude savage creature who, by some
+freak of chance, lived again after thrice a thousand years.
+
+The hounds, ever maintaining their mad uproar, circled about the fight,
+or dashed in and out, distracting the bear. When the animal turned to
+meet such flanking assaults, the man leaped in and the club came down.
+Angered afresh by every such blow, the bear would rush, and the man,
+leaping and skipping, avoiding the dogs, went backwards or circled to
+one side or the other. Whereupon the dogs, taking advantage of the
+opening, would again spring in and draw the animal's wrath to them.
+
+The end came suddenly. Whirling, the grizzly caught a hound with a wide
+sweeping cuff that sent the brute, its ribs caved in and its back
+broken, hurtling twenty feet. Then the human brute went mad. A foaming
+rage flecked the lips that parted with a wild inarticulate cry, as it
+sprang in, swung the club mightily in both hands, and brought it down
+full on the head of the uprearing grizzly. Not even the skull of a
+grizzly could withstand the crushing force of such a blow, and the
+animal went down to meet the worrying of the hounds. And through their
+scurrying leaped the man, squarely upon the body, where, in the white
+electric light, resting on his club, he chanted a triumph in an unknown
+tongue--a song so ancient that Professor Wertz would have given ten
+years of his life for it.
+
+His guests rushed to possess him and acclaim him, but James Ward,
+suddenly looking out of the eyes of the early Teuton, saw the fair frail
+Twentieth Century girl he loved, and felt something snap in his brain.
+He staggered weakly toward her, dropped the club, and nearly fell.
+Something had gone wrong with him. Inside his brain was an intolerable
+agony. It seemed as if the soul of him were flying asunder. Following
+the excited gaze of the others, he glanced back and saw the carcass of
+the bear. The sight filled him with fear. He uttered a cry and would
+have fled, had they not restrained him and led him into the bungalow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+James J. Ward is still at the head of the firm of Ward, Knowles & Co.
+But he no longer lives in the country; nor does he run of nights after
+the coyotes under the moon. The early Teuton in him died the night of
+the Mill Valley fight with the bear. James J. Ward is now wholly James
+J. Ward, and he shares no part of his being with any vagabond
+anachronism from the younger world. And so wholly is James J. Ward
+modern, that he knows in all its bitter fullness the curse of civilized
+fear. He is now afraid of the dark, and night in the forest is to him a
+thing of abysmal terror. His city house is of the spick and span order,
+and he evinces a great interest in burglar-proof devices. His home is a
+tangle of electric wires, and after bed-time a guest can scarcely
+breathe without setting off an alarm. Also, he has invented a
+combination keyless door-lock that travelers may carry in their vest
+pockets and apply immediately and successfully under all circumstances.
+But his wife does not deem him a coward. She knows better. And, like any
+hero, he is content to rest on his laurels. His bravery is never
+questioned by those of his friends who are aware of the Mill Valley
+episode.
+
+
+
+
+THE RETURN[2]
+
+BY ALGERNON BLACKWOOD
+
+[Footnote 2: From _Pan's Garden_, by Algernon Blackwood--Permission of
+the Macmillan Company.]
+
+
+It was curious--that sense of dull uneasiness that came over him so
+suddenly, so stealthily at first he scarcely noticed it, but with such
+marked increase after a time that he presently got up and left the
+theater. His seat was on the gangway of the dress circle, and he slipped
+out awkwardly in the middle of what seemed to be the best and jolliest
+song of the piece. The full house was shaking with laughter; so
+infectious was the gaiety that even strangers turned to one another as
+much as to say, "Now, isn't that funny?"
+
+It was curious, too, the way the feeling first got into him at all, and
+in the full swing of laughter, music, light-heartedness; for it came as
+a vague suggestion, "I've forgotten something--something I meant to
+do--something of importance. What in the world was it, now?" And he
+thought hard, searching vainly through his mind; then dismissed it as
+the dancing caught his attention. It came back a little later again,
+during a passage of long-winded talk that bored him and set his
+attention free once more, but came more strongly this time, insisting on
+an answer. What could it have been that he had overlooked, left undone,
+omitted to see to? It went on nibbling at the subconscious part of him.
+Several times this happened, this dismissal and return, till at last the
+thing declared itself more plainly--and he felt bothered, troubled,
+distinctly uneasy.
+
+He was wanted somewhere. There was somewhere else he ought to be. That
+describes it best, perhaps. Some engagement of moment had entirely
+slipped his memory--an engagement that involved another person, too. But
+where, what, with whom? And, at length, this vague uneasiness amounted
+to positive discomfort, so that he felt unable to enjoy the piece, and
+left abruptly. Like a man to whom comes suddenly the horrible idea that
+the match he lit his cigarette with and flung into the waste-paper
+basket on leaving was not really out--a sort of panic distress--he
+jumped into a taxicab and hurried to his flat to find everything in
+order, of course; no smoke, no fire, no smell of burning.
+
+But his evening was spoiled. He sat smoking in his armchair at home,
+this business man of forty, practical in mind, of character some called
+stolid, cursing himself for an imaginative fool. It was now too late to
+go back to the theater; the club bored him; he spent an hour with the
+evening papers, dipping into books, sipping a long cool drink, doing
+odds and ends about the flat. "I'll go to bed early for a change," he
+laughed, but really all the time fighting--yes, deliberately
+fighting--this strange attack of uneasiness that so insidiously grew
+upwards, outwards from the buried depths of him that sought so
+strenuously to deny it. It never occurred to him that he was ill. He was
+not ill. His health was thunderingly good. He was as robust as a
+coal-heaver.
+
+The flat was roomy, high up on the top floor, yet in a busy part of
+town, so that the roar of traffic mounted round it like a sea. Through
+the open windows came the fresh night air of June. He had never noticed
+before how sweet the London night air could be, and that not all the
+smoke and dust could smother a certain touch of wild fragrance that
+tinctured it with perfume--yes, almost perfume--as of the country. He
+swallowed a draught of it as he stood there, staring out across the
+tangled world of roofs and chimney-pots. He saw the procession of the
+clouds; he saw the stars; he saw the moonlight falling in a shower of
+silver spears upon the slates and wires and steeples. And something in
+him quickened--something that had never stirred before.
+
+He turned with a horrid start, for the uneasiness had of a sudden leaped
+within him like an animal. There was some one in the flat.
+
+Instantly, with action--even this slight action--the fancy vanished;
+but, all the same, he switched on the electric lights and made a search.
+For it seemed to him that some one had crept up close behind him while
+he stood there watching the night--some one, whose silent presence
+fingered with unerring touch both this new thing that had quickened in
+his heart and that sense of original deep uneasiness. He was amazed at
+himself--angry--indignant that he could be thus foolishly upset over
+nothing, yet at the same time profoundly distressed at this vehement
+growth of a new thing in his well-ordered personality. Growth? He
+dismissed the word the moment it occurred to him--but it had occurred to
+him. It stayed. While he searched the empty flat, the long passages, the
+gloomy bedroom at the end, the little hall where he kept his overcoats
+and golf sticks, it stayed. Growth! It was oddly disquieting. Growth
+to him involved, though he neither acknowledged nor recognized the truth
+perhaps, some kind of undesirable changeableness, instability,
+unbalance.
+
+Yet singular as it all was, he realized that the uneasiness and the
+sudden appreciation of beauty that was so new to him had both entered by
+the same door into his being. When he came back to the front room he
+noticed that he was perspiring. There were little drops of moisture on
+his forehead. And down his spine ran chills, little, faint quivers of
+cold. He was shivering.
+
+He lit his big meerschaum pipe, and left the lights all burning. The
+feeling that there was something he had overlooked, forgotten, left
+undone, had vanished. Whatever the original cause of this absurd
+uneasiness might be--he called it absurd on purpose because he now
+realized in the depths of him that it was really more vital than he
+cared about--it was much nearer to discovery than before. It dodged
+about just below the threshold of discovery. It was as close as that.
+Any moment he would know what it was; he would remember. Yes, he would
+_remember_. Meanwhile, he was in the right place. No desire to go
+elsewhere afflicted him, as in the theater. Here was the place, here in
+the flat.
+
+And then it was with a kind of sudden burst and rush--it seemed to him
+the only way to phrase it--memory gave up her dead.
+
+At first he only caught her peeping round the corner at him, drawing
+aside a corner of an enormous curtain, as it were; striving for more
+complete entrance as though the mass of it were difficult to move. But
+he understood, he knew, he recognized. It was enough for that. As an
+entrance into his being--heart, mind, soul--was being attempted and the
+entrance because of his stolid temperament was difficult of
+accomplishment, there was effort, strain. Something in him had first to
+be opened up, widened, made soft and ready as by an operation, before
+full entrance could be effected. This much he grasped though for the
+life of him he could not have put it into words. Also he knew who it was
+that sought an entrance. Deliberately from himself he withheld the name.
+But he knew as surely as though Straughan stood in the room and faced
+him with a knife saying, "Let me in, let me in. I wish you to know I'm
+here. I'm clearing a way! You recall our promise?"
+
+He rose from his chair and went to the open window again, the strange
+fear slowly passing. The cool air fanned his cheeks. Beauty till now had
+scarcely ever brushed the surface of his soul. He had never troubled his
+head about it. It passed him by indifferent; and he had ever loathed the
+mouthy prating of it on others' lips. He was practical; beauty was for
+dreamers, for women, for men who had means and leisure. He had not
+exactly scorned it; rather it had never touched his life, to sweeten, to
+cheer, to uplift. Artists for him were like monks--another sex
+almost--useless beings who never helped the world go round. He was for
+action always, work, activity, achievement as he saw them. He remembered
+Straughan vaguely--Straughan, the ever impecunious friend of his youth,
+always talking of color and sound--mysterious, ineffectual things. He
+even forgot what they had quarreled about, if they had quarreled at all
+even; or why they had gone apart all these years ago. And certainly he
+had forgotten any promise. Memory as yet only peeped at him round the
+corner of that huge curtain tentatively, suggestively, yet--he was
+obliged to admit it--somewhat winningly. He was conscious of this
+gentle, sweet seductiveness that now replaced his fear.
+
+And as he stood now at the open window peering over huge London, beauty
+came close and smote him between the eyes. She came blindingly, with her
+train of stars and clouds and perfumes. Night, mysterious, myriad-eyed,
+and flaming across her sea of haunted shadows invaded his heart and
+shook him with her immemorial wonder and delight. He found no words of
+course to clothe the new unwonted sensations. He only knew that all his
+former dread, uneasiness, distress, and with them this idea of growth
+that had seemed so repugnant to him were merged, swept up, and gathered
+magnificently home into a wave of beauty that enveloped him. "See it,
+and understand," ran a secret inner whisper across his mind. He saw. He
+understood....
+
+He went back and turned the lights out. Then he took his place again at
+that open window, drinking in the night. He saw a new world; a species
+of intoxication held him. He sighed, as his thoughts blundered for
+expression among words and sentences that knew him not. But the delight
+was there, the wonder, the mystery. He watched with heart alternately
+tightening and expanding the transfiguring play of moon and shadow over
+the sea of buildings. He saw the dance of the hurrying clouds, the open
+patches into outer space, the veiling and unveiling of that ancient
+silvery face; and he caught strange whispers of the hierophantic,
+sacerdotal power that has echoed down the world since Time began and
+dropped strange magic phrases into every poet's heart, since first "God
+dawned on Chaos"--the Beauty of the Night.
+
+A long time passed--it may have been one hour, it may have been
+three--when at length he turned away and went slowly to his bedroom. A
+deep peace lay over him. Something quite new and blessed had crept into
+his life and thought. He could not quite understand it all. He only knew
+that it uplifted. There was no longer the least sign of affliction or
+distress. Even the inevitable reaction that set in could not destroy
+that.
+
+And then as he lay in bed nearing the borderland of sleep, suddenly and
+without any obvious suggestion to bring it, he remembered another thing.
+He remembered the promise. Memory got past the big curtain for an
+instant and showed her face. She looked into his eyes. It must have been
+a dozen years ago when Straughan and he had made that foolish solemn
+promise, that whoever died first should show himself if possible to the
+other.
+
+He had utterly forgotten it--till now. But Straughan had not forgotten
+it. The letter came three weeks later from India. That very evening
+Straughan had died--at nine o'clock. And he had come back--in the Beauty
+that he loved.
+
+
+
+
+THE SECOND GENERATION[3]
+
+BY ALGERNON BLACKWOOD
+
+[Footnote 3: _From Ten-Minute Stories_, published by E. P. Dutton & Co.]
+
+
+Sometimes, in a moment of sharp experience, comes that vivid flash of
+insight that makes a platitude suddenly seem a revelation--its full
+content is abruptly realized. "Ten years _is_ a long time, yes," he
+thought, as he walked up the drive to the great Kensington house where
+she still lived.
+
+Ten years--long enough, at any rate, for her to have married and for her
+husband to have died. More than that he had not heard, in the outlandish
+places where life had cast him in the interval. He wondered whether
+there had been any children. All manner of thoughts and questions,
+confused a little, passed across his mind. He was well-to-do now, though
+probably his entire capital did not amount to her income for a single
+year. He glanced at the huge, forbidding mansion. Yet that pride was
+false which had made of poverty an insuperable obstacle. He saw it now.
+He had learned values in his long exile.
+
+But he was still ridiculously timid. This confusion of thought, of
+mental images rather, was due to a kind of fear, since worship ever is
+akin to awe. He was as nervous as a boy going up for a _viva voce_; and
+with the excitement was also that unconquerable sinking--that horrid
+shrinking sensation that excessive shyness brings. Why in the world had
+he come? Why had he telegraphed the very day after his arrival in
+England? Why had he not sent a tentative, tactful letter, feeling his
+way a little?
+
+Very slowly he walked up the drive, feeling that if a reasonable chance
+of escape presented itself he would almost take it. But all the windows
+stared so hard at him that retreat was really impossible now and though
+no faces were visible behind the curtains, all had seen him, possibly
+she herself--his heart beat absurdly at the extravagant suggestion. Yet
+it was odd--he felt so certain of being seen, and that someone watched
+him. He reached the wide stone steps that were clean as marble, and
+shrank from the mark his boots must make upon their spotlessness. In
+desperation, then, before he could change his mind, he touched the bell.
+But he did not hear it ring--mercifully; that irrevocable sound must
+have paralyzed him altogether. If no one came to answer, he might still
+leave a card in the letter-box and slip away. Oh, how utterly he
+despised himself for such a thought! A man of thirty with such a chicken
+heart was not fit to protect a child, much less a woman. And he recalled
+with a little stab of pain that the man she married had been noted for
+his courage, his determined action, his inflexible firmness in various
+public situations, head and shoulders above lesser men. What presumption
+on his own part ever to dream!... He remembered, too, with no apparent
+reason in particular, that this man had a grown-up son already, by a
+former marriage.
+
+And still no one came to open that huge, contemptuous door with its so
+menacing, so hostile air. His back was to it, as he carelessly twirled
+his umbrella, but he felt its sneering expression behind him while it
+looked him up and down. It seemed to push him away. The entire mansion
+focused its message through that stern portal: Little timid men are not
+welcomed here.
+
+How well he remembered the house! How often in years gone by had he not
+stood and waited just like this, trembling with delight and
+anticipation, yet terrified lest the bell should be answered and the
+great door actually swung wide! Then, as now, he would have run, had he
+dared. He was still afraid--his worship was so deep. But in all these
+years of exile in wild places, farming, mining, working for the position
+he had at last attained, her face and the memory of her gracious
+presence had been his comfort and support, his only consolation, though
+never his actual joy. There was so little foundation for it all, yet her
+smile and the words she had spoken to him from time to time in friendly
+conversation had clung, inspired, kept him going--for he knew them all
+by heart. And more than once in foolish optimistic moods, he had
+imagined, greatly daring, that she possibly had meant more....
+
+He touched the bell a second time--with the point of his umbrella. He
+meant to go in, carelessly as it were, saying as lightly as might be,
+"Oh, I'm back in England again--if you haven't _quite_ forgotten my
+existence--I could not forego the pleasure of saying 'How-do-you-do?'
+and hearing that you are well ...," and the rest; then presently bow
+himself easily out--into the old loneliness again. But he would at least
+have seen her; he would have heard her voice, and looked into her
+gentle, amber eyes; he would have touched her hand. She might even ask
+him to come in another day and see her! He had rehearsed it all a
+hundred times, as certain feeble temperaments do rehearse such scenes.
+And he came rather well out of that rehearsal, though always with an
+aching heart, the old great yearnings unfulfilled. All the way across
+the Atlantic he had thought about it, though with lessening confidence
+as the time drew near. The very night of his arrival in London he wrote,
+then, tearing up the letter (after sleeping over it), he had telegraphed
+next morning, asking if she would be in. He signed his surname--such a
+very common name, alas! but surely she would know--and her reply,
+"Please call 4:30," struck him as rather oddly worded. Yet here he was.
+
+There was a rattle of the big door knob, that aggressive, hostile knob
+that thrust out at him insolently like a fist of bronze. He started,
+angry with himself for doing so. But the door did not open. He became
+suddenly conscious of the wilds he had lived in for so long; his clothes
+were hardly fashionable; his voice probably had a twang in it, and he
+used tricks of speech that must betray the rough life so recently left.
+What would she think of him, now? He looked much older, too. And how
+brusque it was to have telegraphed like that! He felt awkward, gauche,
+tongue-tied, hot and cold by turns. The sentences, so carefully
+rehearsed, fled beyond recovery.
+
+Good heavens--the door was open! It had been open for some minutes. It
+moved noiselessly on big hinges. He acted automatically; he heard
+himself asking if her ladyship was at home, though his voice was nearly
+inaudible. The next moment he was standing in the great, dim hall, so
+poignantly familiar, and the remembered perfume almost made him sway. He
+did not hear the door close, but he knew. He was caught. The butler
+betrayed an instant's surprise--or was it over-wrought imagination
+again?--when he gave his name. It seemed to him--though only later did
+he grasp the significance of that curious intuition--that the man had
+expected another caller instead. The man took his card respectfully and
+disappeared. These flunkeys were so marvellously trained. He was too
+long accustomed to straight question and straight answer, but here, in
+the Old Country, privacy was jealously guarded with such careful ritual.
+
+And almost immediately the butler returned, still expressionless, and
+showed him into the large drawing-room on the ground floor that he knew
+so well. Tea was on the table--tea for one. He felt puzzled. "If you
+will have tea first, sir, her ladyship will see you afterwards," was
+what he heard. And though his breath came thickly, he asked the question
+that forced itself out. Before he knew what he was saying he asked it,
+"Is she ill?" "Oh, no, her ladyship is quite well, thank you, sir. If
+you will have tea first, sir, her ladyship will see you afterwards." The
+horrid formula was repeated, word for word. He sank into an armchair and
+mechanically poured out his own tea. What he felt he did not exactly
+know. It seemed so unusual, so utterly unexpected, so unnecessary, too.
+Was it a special attention, or was it merely casual? That it could mean
+anything else did not occur to him. How was she busy, occupied--not
+here to give him tea? He could not understand it. It seemed such a farce
+having tea alone like this--it was like waiting for an audience, it was
+like a doctor's or a dentist's room. He felt bewildered, ill at ease,
+cheap.... But after ten years in primitive lands perhaps London usages
+had changed in some extraordinary manner. He recalled his first
+amazement at the motor-omnibuses, taxicabs, and electric tubes. All were
+new. London was otherwise than when he left it. Piccadilly and the
+Marble Arch themselves had altered. And, with his reflection, a shade
+more confidence stole in. She knew that he was there and presently she
+would come in and speak with him, explaining everything by the mere fact
+of her delicious presence. He was ready for the ordeal, he would see
+her--and drop out again. It was worth all manner of pain, even of
+mortification. He was in her house, drinking her tea, sitting in a chair
+she used herself perhaps. Only he would never dare to say a word or make
+a sign that might betray his changeless secret. He still felt the boyish
+worshipper, worshipping in dumbness from a distance, one of a group of
+many others like himself. Their dreams had faded, his had continued,
+that was the difference. Memories tore and raced and poured upon him.
+How sweet and gentle she had always been to him! He used to wonder
+sometimes.... Once, he remembered, he had rehearsed a declaration, but
+while rehearsing the big man had come in and captured her, though he had
+only read the definite news long after by chance in an Arizona paper.
+
+He gulped his tea down. His heart alternately leaped and stood still. A
+sort of numbness held him most of that dreadful interval, and no clear
+thought came at all. Every ten seconds his head turned towards the door
+that rattled, seemed to move, yet never opened. But any moment now it
+_must_ open, and he would be in her very presence, breathing the same
+air with her. He would see her, charge himself with her beauty once more
+to the brim, and then go out again into the wilderness--the wilderness
+of life--without her, and not for a mere ten years but for always. She
+was so utterly beyond his reach. He felt like a backwoodsman, he was a
+backwoodsman.
+
+For one thing only was he duly prepared, though he thought about it
+little enough--she would, of course, have changed. The photograph he
+owned, cut from an illustrated paper, was not true now. It might even be
+a little shock perhaps. He must remember that. Ten years cannot pass
+over a woman without--
+
+Before he knew it the door was open, and she was advancing quietly
+towards him across the thick carpet that deadened sound. With both hands
+outstretched she came, and with the sweetest welcoming smile upon her
+parted lips he had seen in any human face. Her eyes were soft with joy.
+His whole heart leaped within him; for the instant he saw her it all
+flashed clear as sunlight--that she knew and understood. She had always
+known, had always understood. Speech came easily to him in a flood, had
+he needed it, but he did not need it. It was all so adorably easy,
+simple, natural, and true. He just took her hands--those welcoming,
+outstretched hands--in both of his own, and led her to the nearest sofa.
+He was not even surprised at himself. Inevitably, out of depths of
+truth, this meeting came about. And he uttered a little foolish
+commonplace, because he feared the huge revulsion that his sudden glory
+brought, and loved to taste it slowly:
+
+"So you live here still?"
+
+"Here, and here," she answered softly, touching his heart, and then her
+own. "I am attached to this house, too, because _you_ used to come and
+see me here, and because it was here I waited so long for you, and still
+wait. I shall never leave it--unless you change. You see, we live
+together here."
+
+He said nothing. He leaned forward to take and hold her. The abrupt
+knowledge of it all somehow did not seem abrupt--it was as though he had
+known it always; and the complete disclosure did not seem disclosure
+either--rather as though she told him something he had inexplicably left
+unrealized, yet not forgotten. He felt absolutely master of himself,
+yet, in a curious sense, outside of himself at the same time. His arms
+were already open--when she gently held her hands up to prevent. He
+heard a faint sound outside the door.
+
+"But you are free," he cried, his great passion breaking out and
+flooding him, yet most oddly well controlled, "and I--"
+
+She interrupted him in the softest, quietest whisper he had ever heard:
+
+"You are not free, as I am free--not yet."
+
+The sound outside came suddenly closer. It was a step. There was a faint
+click on the handle of the door. In a flash, then, came the dreadful
+shock that overwhelmed him--the abrupt realization of the truth that was
+somehow horrible--that Time, all these years, had left no mark upon her
+and that _she had not changed_. Her face was as young as when he saw her
+last.
+
+With it there came cold and darkness into the great room. He shivered
+with cold, but an alien, unaccountable cold. Some great shadow dropped
+upon the entire earth, and though but a second could have passed before
+the handle actually turned, and the other person entered, it seemed to
+him like several minutes. He heard her saying this amazing thing that
+was question, answer, and forgiveness all in one--this, at least, he
+divined before the ghastly interruption came--"But, George--if you had
+only spoken--!"
+
+With ice in his blood he heard the butler saying that her ladyship would
+be "pleased" to see him if he had finished his tea and would be "so good
+as to bring the papers and documents upstairs with him." He had just
+sufficient control of certain muscles to stand upright and murmur that
+he would come. He rose from a sofa that held no one but himself. All at
+once he staggered. He really did not know exactly what happened, or how
+he managed to stammer out the medley of excuses and semi-explanations
+that battered their way through his brain and issued somehow in definite
+words from his lips. Somehow or other he accomplished it. The sudden
+attack, the faintness, the collapse!... He vaguely remembered
+afterwards--with amazement too--the suavity of the butler as he
+suggested telephoning for a doctor, and that he just managed to forbid
+it, refusing the offered glass of brandy as well, remembered contriving
+to stumble into the taxicab and give his hotel address with a final
+explanation that he would call another day and "bring the papers." It
+was quite clear that his telegram had been attributed to someone else,
+someone "with papers"--perhaps a solicitor or architect. His name was
+such an ordinary one, there were so many Smiths. It was also clear that
+she whom he had come to see and _had_ seen, no longer lived here in the
+flesh....
+
+And just as he left the hall he had the vision--mere fleeting glimpse it
+was--of a tall, slim, girlish figure on the stairs asking if anything
+was wrong, and realized vaguely through his atrocious pain that she was,
+of course, the wife of the son who had inherited....
+
+
+
+
+JOSEPH: A STORY
+
+BY KATHERINE RICKFORD
+
+
+They were sitting round the fire after dinner--not an ordinary fire--one
+of those fires that has a little room all to itself with seats at each
+side of it to hold a couple of people or three.
+
+The big dining room was paneled with oak. At the far end was a handsome
+dresser that dated back for generations. One's imagination ran riot when
+one pictured the people who must have laid those pewter plates on the
+long, narrow, solid table. Massive medieval chests stood against the
+walls. Arms and parts of armor hung against the panelling; but one
+noticed few of these things, for there was no light in the room save
+what the fire gave.
+
+It was Christmas Eve. Games had been played. The old had vied with the
+young at snatching raisins from the burning snapdragon. The children had
+long since gone to bed; it was time their elders followed them, but they
+lingered round the fire, taking turns at telling stories. Nothing very
+weird had been told; no one had felt any wish to peep over his shoulder
+or try to penetrate the darkness of the far end of the room; the
+omission caused a sensation of something wanting. From each one there
+this thought went out, and so a sudden silence fell upon the party. It
+was a girl who broke it--a mere child; she wore her hair up that night
+for the first time, and that seemed to give her the right to sit up so
+late.
+
+"Mr. Grady is going to tell one," she said.
+
+All eyes were turned to a middle-aged man in a deep armchair placed
+straight in front of the fire. He was short, inclined to be fat, with a
+bald head and a pointed beard like the beards that sailors wear. It was
+plain that he was deeply conscious of the sudden turning of so much
+strained yet forceful thought upon himself. He was restless in his chair
+as people are in a room that is overheated. He blinked his eyes as he
+looked round the company. His lips twitched in a nervous manner. One
+side of him seemed to be endeavoring to restrain another side of him
+from a feverish desire to speak.
+
+"It was this room that made me think of him," he said thoughtfully.
+
+There was a long silence, but it occurred to no one to prompt him. Every
+one seemed to understand that he was going to speak, or rather that
+something inside him was going to speak, some force that craved
+expression and was using him as a medium.
+
+The little old man's pink face grew strangely calm, the animation that
+usually lit it was gone. One would have said that the girl who had
+started him already regretted the impulse, and now wanted to stop him.
+She was breathing heavily, and once or twice made as though she would
+speak to him, but no words came. She must have abandoned the idea, for
+she fell to studying the company. She examined them carefully, one by
+one. "This one," she told herself, "is so-and-so, and that one there
+just another so-and-so." She stared at them, knowing that she could not
+turn them to herself with her stare. They were just bodies kept working,
+so to speak, by some subtle sort of sentry left behind by the real
+selves that streamed out in pent-up thought to the little old man in the
+chair in front of the fire.
+
+"His name was Joseph; at least they called him Joseph. He dreamed, you
+understand--dreams. He was an extraordinary lad in many ways. His
+mother--I knew her very well--had three children in quick succession,
+soon after marriage; then ten years went by and Joseph was born. Quiet
+and reserved he always was, a self-contained child whose only friend was
+his mother. People said things about him, you know how people talk. Some
+said he was not Clara's child at all, but that she had adopted him;
+others, that her husband was not his father, and these put her change of
+manner down to a perpetual struggle to keep her husband comfortably in
+the dark. I always imagined that the boy was in some way aware of all
+this gossip, for I noticed that he took a dislike to the people who
+spread it most."
+
+The little man rested his elbows on the arms of his chair and let the
+tips of his fingers meet in front of him. A smile played about his
+mouth. He seemed to be searching among his reminiscences for the one
+that would give the clearest portrait of Joseph.
+
+"Well, anyway," he said at last, "the boy was odd, there is no
+gainsaying the fact. I suppose he was eleven when Clara came down here
+with her family for Christmas. The Coningtons owned the place then--Mrs.
+Conington was Clara's sister. It was Christmas Eve, as it is now, many
+years ago. We had spent a normal Christmas Eve; a little happier,
+perhaps, than usual by reason of the family re-union and because of the
+presence of so many children. We had eaten and drank, laughed and played
+and gone to bed.
+
+"I woke in the middle of the night from sheer restlessness. Clara,
+knowing my weakness, had given me a fire in my room. I lit a cigarette,
+played with a book, and then, purely from curiosity, opened the door and
+looked down the passage. From my door I could see the head of the
+staircase in the distance; the opposite wing of the house, or the
+passage rather beyond the stairs, was in darkness. The reason I saw the
+staircase at all was that the window you pass coming downstairs allowed
+the moon to throw an uncertain light upon it, a weird light because of
+the stained glass. I was arrested by the curious effect of this patch of
+light in so much darkness when suddenly someone came into it, turned,
+and went downstairs. It was just like a scene in a theater; something
+was about to happen that I was going to miss. I ran as I was,
+barefooted, to the head of the stairs and looked over the banister. I
+was excited, strung up, too strung up to feel the fright that I knew
+must be with me. I remember the sensation perfectly. I knew that I was
+afraid, yet I did not feel fright.
+
+"On the stairs nothing moved. The little hall down here was lost in
+darkness. Looking over the banister I was facing the stained glass
+window. You know how the stairs run around three sides of the hall;
+well, it occurred to me that if I went halfway down and stood under the
+window I should be able to keep the top of the stairs in sight and see
+anything that might happen in the hall. I crept down very cautiously and
+waited under the window. First of all, I saw the suit of empty armor
+just outside the door here. You know how a thing like that, if you stare
+at it in a poor light, appears to move; well, it moved sure enough, and
+the illusion was enhanced by clouds being blown across the moon. By the
+fire like this one can talk of these things rationally, but in the dead
+of night it is a different matter, so I went down a few steps to make
+sure of that armor, when suddenly something passed me on the stairs. I
+did not hear it, I did not see it, I sensed it in no way, I just knew
+that something had passed me on its way upstairs. I realized that my
+retreat was cut off, and with the knowledge fear came upon me.
+
+"I had seen someone come down the stairs; that, at any rate, was
+definite; now I wanted to see him again. Any ghost is bad enough, but a
+ghost that one can see is better than one that one can't. I managed to
+get past the suit of armor, but then I had to feel my way to these
+double doors here."
+
+He indicated the direction of the doors by a curious wave of his hand.
+He did not look toward them nor did any of the party. Both men and women
+were completely absorbed in his story; they seemed to be mesmerized by
+the earnestness of his manner. Only the girl was restless; she gave an
+impression of impatience with the slowness with which he came to his
+point. One would have said that she was apart from her fellows, an alien
+among strangers.
+
+"So dense was the darkness that I made sure of finding the first door
+closed, but it was not, it was wide open, and, standing between them, I
+could feel that the other was open, too. I was standing literally in the
+wall of the house, and as I peered into the room, trying to make out
+some familiar object, thoughts ran through my mind of people who had
+been bricked up in walls and left there to die. For a moment I caught
+the spirit of the inside of a thick wall. Then suddenly I felt the
+sensation I have often read about but never experienced before: I knew
+there was some one in the room. You are surprised, yes, but wait! I knew
+more: I knew that some one was conscious of my presence. It occurred to
+me that whoever it was might want to get out of the door. I made room
+for him to pass. I waited for him, made sure of him, began to feel
+giddy, and then a man's voice, deep and clear:
+
+"'There is some one there; who is it?'
+
+"I answered mechanically, 'George Grady.'
+
+"'I'm Joseph.'
+
+"A match was drawn across a matchbox, and I saw the boy bending over a
+candle waiting for the wick to catch. For a moment I thought he must be
+walking in his sleep, but he turned to me quite naturally and said in
+his own boyish voice:
+
+"'Lost anything?'
+
+"I was amazed at the lad's complete calm. I wanted to share my fright
+with some one, instead I had to hide it from this boy. I was conscious
+of a curious sense of shame. I had watched him grow, taught him, praised
+him, scolded him, and yet here he was waiting for an explanation of my
+presence in the dining room at that odd hour of the night.
+
+"Soon he repeated the question, 'Lost anything?'
+
+"'No,' I said, and then I stammered, 'Have you?'
+
+"'No,' he said with a little laugh. 'It's that room, I can't sleep in
+it.'
+
+"'Oh,' I said. 'What's the matter with the room?'
+
+"'It's the room I was killed in,' he said quite simply.
+
+"Of course I had heard about his dreams, but I had had no direct
+experience of them; when, therefore, he said that he had been killed in
+his room I took it for granted that he had been dreaming again. I was at
+a loss to know quite how to tackle him; whether to treat the whole thing
+as absurd and laugh it off as such, or whether to humor him and hear his
+story. I got him upstairs to my room, sat him in a big armchair, and
+poked the fire into a blaze.
+
+"'You've been dreaming again,' I said bluntly.
+
+"'Oh, no I haven't. Don't you run away with that idea.'
+
+"His whole manner was so grown up that it was quite unthinkable to treat
+him as the child he really was. In fact, it was a little uncanny, this
+man in a child's frame.
+
+"'I was killed there,' he said again.
+
+"'How do you mean, killed?' I asked him.
+
+"'Why, killed--murdered. Of course it was years and years ago, I can't
+say when; still I remember the room. I suppose it was the room that
+reminded me of the incident.'
+
+"'Incident?' I exclaimed.
+
+"'What else? Being killed is only an incident in the existence of any
+one. One makes a fuss about it at the time, of course, but really when
+you come to think of it....'
+
+"'Tell me about it,' I said, lighting a cigarette. He lit one too, that
+child, and began.
+
+"'You know my room is the only modern one in this old house. Nobody
+knows why it is modern. The reason is obvious. Of course it was made
+modern after I was killed there. The funny thing is that I should have
+been put there. I suppose it was done for a purpose, because I--I----'
+
+"He looked at me so fixedly I knew he would catch me if I lied.
+
+"'What?' I asked.
+
+"'Dream.'
+
+"'Yes,' I said, 'that is why you were put there.'
+
+"'I thought so, and yet of all the rooms--but then, of course, no one
+knew. Anyhow I did not recognize the room until after I was in bed. I
+had been asleep some time and then I woke suddenly. There is an old
+wheel-back chair there--the only old thing in the room. It is standing
+facing the fire as it must have stood the night I was killed. The fire
+was burning brightly, the pattern of the back of the chair was thrown in
+shadow across the ceiling. Now the night I was murdered the conditions
+were exactly the same, so directly I saw that pattern on the ceiling I
+remembered the whole thing. I was not dreaming, don't think it, I was
+not. What happened that night was this: I was lying in bed counting the
+parts of the back of that chair in shadow on the ceiling. I probably
+could not get to sleep, you know the sort of thing, count up to a
+thousand and remember in the morning where you got to. Well, I was
+counting those pieces when suddenly they were all obliterated, the whole
+back became a shadow, some one was sitting in the chair. Now, surely,
+you understand that directly I saw the shadow of that chair on the
+ceiling to-night I realized that I had not a moment to lose. At any
+moment that same person might come back to that same chair and escape
+would be impossible. I slipped from my bed as quickly as I could and ran
+downstairs.'
+
+"'But were you not afraid,' I asked, 'downstairs?'
+
+"'That she might follow me? It was a woman, you know. No, I don't think
+I was. She does not belong downstairs. Anyhow she didn't.'
+
+"'No,' I said. 'No.'
+
+"My voice must have been out of control, for he caught me up at once.
+
+"'You don't mean to say you saw her?' he said vehemently.
+
+"'Oh, no.'
+
+"'You felt her?'
+
+"'She passed me as I came downstairs,' I said.
+
+"'What can I have done to her that she follows me so?' He buried his
+face in his hands as though searching for an answer to his thought.
+Suddenly he looked up and stared at me.
+
+"'Where had I got to? Oh yes, the murder. I can remember how startled I
+was to see that shadow in the chair--startled, you know, but not really
+frightened. I leaned up in bed and looked at the chair, and sure enough
+a woman was sitting in it--a young woman. I watched her with a profound
+interest until she began to turn in her chair, as I felt, to look at me;
+when she did that I shrank back in bed. I dared not meet her eyes. She
+might not have had eyes, she might not have had a face. You know the
+sort of pictures that one sees when one glances back at all one's soul
+has ever thought.
+
+"'I got back in the bed as far as I could and peeped over the sheets at
+the shadow on the ceiling. I was tired; frightened to death; I grew
+weary of watching. I must have fallen asleep, for suddenly the fire was
+almost out, the pattern of the chair barely discernible, the shadow had
+gone. I raised myself with a sense of huge relief. Yes, the chair was
+empty, but, just think of it, the woman was on the floor, on her hands
+and knees, crawling toward the bed.
+
+"'I fell back stricken with terror.
+
+"'Very soon I felt a gentle pull at the counterpane. I thought I was in
+a nightmare but too lazy or too comfortable to try to wake myself from
+it. I waited in an agony of suspense, but nothing seemed to be
+happening, in fact I had just persuaded myself that the movement of the
+counterpane was fancy when a hand brushed softly over my knee. There was
+no mistaking it, I could feel the long, thin fingers. Now was the time
+to do something. I tried to rouse myself, but all my efforts were
+futile, I was stiff from head to foot.
+
+"'Although the hand was lost to me, outwardly, it now came within my
+range of knowledge, if you know what I mean. I knew that it was groping
+its way along the bed feeling for some other part of me. At any moment I
+could have said exactly where it had got to. When it was hovering just
+over my chest another hand knocked lightly against my shoulder. I
+fancied it lost, and wandering in search of its fellow.
+
+"'I was lying on my back staring at the ceiling when the hands met; the
+weight of their presence brought a feeling of oppression to my chest. I
+seemed to be completely cut off from my body; I had no sort of
+connection with any part of it, nothing about me would respond to my
+will to make it move.
+
+"'There was no sound at all anywhere.
+
+"'I fell into a state of indifference, a sort of patient indifference
+that can wait for an appointed time to come. How long I waited I cannot
+say, but when the time came it found me ready. I was not taken by
+surprise.
+
+"'There was a great upward rush of pent-up force released; it was like a
+mighty mass of men who have been lost in prayer rising to their feet. I
+can't remember clearly, but I think the woman must have got on to my
+bed. I could not follow her distinctly, my whole attention was
+concentrated on her hands. At the time I felt those fingers itching for
+my throat.
+
+"'At last they moved; slowly at first, then quicker; and then a
+long-drawn swish like the sound of an over-bold wave that has broken too
+far up the beach and is sweeping back to join the sea.'
+
+"The boy was silent for a moment, then he stretched out his hand for the
+cigarettes.
+
+"'You remember nothing else?' I asked him.
+
+"'No,' he said. 'The next thing I remember clearly is deliberately
+breaking the nursery window because it was raining and mother would not
+let me go out.'"
+
+There was a moment's tension, then the strain of listening passed and
+every one seemed to be speaking at once. The Rector was taking the story
+seriously.
+
+"Tell me, Grady," he said. "How long do you suppose elapsed between the
+boy's murder and his breaking the nursery window?"
+
+But a young married woman in the first flush of her happiness broke in
+between them. She ridiculed the whole idea. Of course the boy was
+dreaming. She was drawing the majority to her way of thinking when, from
+the corner where the girl sat, a hollow-sounding voice:
+
+"And the boy? Where is he?"
+
+The tone of the girl's voice inspired horror, that fear that does not
+know what it is it fears; one could see it on every face; on every face,
+that is, but the face of the bald-headed little man; there was no horror
+on his face; he was smiling serenely as he looked the girl straight in
+the eyes.
+
+"He's a man now," he said.
+
+"Alive?" she cried.
+
+"Why not?" said the little old man, rubbing his hands together.
+
+She tried to rise, but her frock had got caught between the chairs and
+pulled her to her seat again. The man next her put out his hand to
+steady her, but she dashed it away roughly. She looked round the party
+for an instant for all the world like an animal at bay, then she sprang
+to her feet and charged blindly. They crowded round her to prevent her
+falling; at the touch of their hands she stopped. She was out of breath
+as though she had been running.
+
+"All right," she said, pushing their hands from her. "All right. I'll
+come quietly. I did it."
+
+They caught her as she fell and laid her on the sofa watching the color
+fade from her face.
+
+The hostess, an old woman with white hair and a kind face, approached
+the little old man; for once in her life she was roused to anger.
+
+"I can't think how you could be so stupid," she said. "See what you have
+done."
+
+"I did it for a purpose," he said.
+
+"For a purpose?"
+
+"I have always thought that girl was the culprit. I have to thank you
+for the opportunity you have given me of making sure."
+
+
+
+
+THE CLAVECIN, BRUGES[4]
+
+BY GEORGE WHARTON EDWARDS
+
+[Footnote 4: By permission of The Century Co.]
+
+
+A silent, grass-grown market-place, upon the uneven stones of which the
+sabots of a passing peasant clatter loudly. A group of sleepy-looking
+soldiers in red trousers lolling about the wide portal of the Belfry,
+which rears aloft against the pearly sky
+
+    All the height it has
+    Of ancient stone.
+
+As the chime ceases there lingers for a space a faint musical hum in the
+air; the stones seem to carry and retain the melody; one is loath to
+move for fear of losing some part of the harmony.
+
+I feel an indescribable impulse to climb the four hundred odd steps;
+incomprehensible, for I detest steeple-climbing, and have no patience
+with steeple-climbers.
+
+Before I realize it, I am at the stairs. "Hold, sir!" from behind me.
+"It is forbidden." In wretched French a weazen-faced little soldier
+explains that repairs are about to be made in the tower, in consequence
+of which visitors are forbidden. A franc removes this military obstacle,
+and I press on.
+
+At the top of the stairs is an old Flemish woman shelling peas, while
+over her shoulder peeps a tame magpie. A savory odor of stewing
+vegetables fills the air.
+
+"What do you wish, sir?" Many shrugs, gesticulations, and sighs of
+objurgation, which are covered by a shining new five-franc piece, and
+she produces a bunch of keys. As the door closes upon me the magpie
+gives a hoarse, gleeful squawk.
+
+... A huge, dim room with a vaulted ceiling. Against the wall lean
+ancient stone statues, noseless and disfigured, crowned and sceptered
+effigies of forgotten lords and ladies of Flanders. High up on the wall
+two slitted Gothic windows, through which the violet light of day is
+streaming. I hear the gentle coo of pigeons. To the right a low door,
+some vanishing steps of stone, and a hanging hand-rope. Before I have
+taken a dozen steps upward I am lost in the darkness; the steps are worn
+hollow and sloping, the rope is slippery--seems to have been waxed, so
+smooth has it become by handling. Four hundred steps and over; I have
+lost track of the number, and stumble giddily upward round and round the
+slender stone shaft. I am conscious of low openings from time to
+time--openings to what? I do not know. A damp smell exhales from them,
+and the air is cold upon my face as I pass them. At last a dim light
+above. With the next turn a blinding glare of light, a moment's
+blankness, then a vast panorama gradually dawns upon me. Through the
+frame of stonework is a vast reach of grayish green bounded by the
+horizon, an immense shield embossed with silvery lines of waterways, and
+studded with clustering red-tiled roofs. A rim of pale yellow
+appears--the sand-dunes that line the coast--and dimly beyond a grayish
+film, evanescent, flashing--the North Sea.
+
+Something flies through the slit from which I am gazing, and following
+its flight upward, I see a long beam crossing the gallery, whereon are
+perched an array of jackdaws gazing down upon me in wonder.
+
+I am conscious of a rhythmic movement about me that stirs the air, a
+mysterious, beating, throbbing sound, the machinery of the clock, which
+some one has described as a "heart of iron beating in a breast of
+stone."
+
+I lean idly in the narrow slit, gazing at the softened landscape, the
+exquisite harmony of the greens, grays, and browns, the lazily turning
+arms of far-off mills, reminders of Cuyp, Van der Velde, Teniers,
+shadowy, mysterious recollections. I am conscious of uttering aloud some
+commonplaces of delight. A slight and sudden movement behind me, a
+smothered cough. A little old man in a black velvet coat stands looking
+up at me, twisting and untwisting his hands. There are ruffles at his
+throat and wrists, and an amused smile spreads over his face, which is
+cleanly shaven, of the color of wax, with a tiny network of red lines
+over the cheek-bones, as if the blood had been forced there by some
+excess of passion and had remained. He has heard my sentimental
+ejaculation. I am conscious of the absurdity of the situation, and move
+aside for him to pass. He makes a courteous gesture with one ruffled
+hand.
+
+There comes a prodigious rattling and grinding noise from above--then a
+jangle of bells, some half-dozen notes in all. At the first stroke the
+old man closes his eyes, throws back his head, and follows the rhythm
+with his long white hands, as though playing a piano. The sound dies
+away; the place becomes painfully silent; still the regular motion of
+the old man's hands continues. A creepy, shivery feeling runs up and
+down my spine; a fear of which I am ashamed seizes upon me.
+
+"Fine pells, sare," says the little old man, suddenly dropping his
+hands, and fixing his eyes upon me. "You sall not hear such pells in
+your countree. But stay not here; come wis me, and I will show you the
+clavecin. You sall not see the clavecin yet? No?"
+
+I had not, of course, and thanked him.
+
+"You sall see Melchior, Melchior t'e Groote, t'e magnif'."
+
+As he spoke we entered a room quite filled with curious machinery, a
+medley of levers, wires, and rope above; below, two large cylinders
+studded with shining brass points.
+
+He sprang among the wires with a spidery sort of agility, caught one,
+pulled and hung upon it with, all his weight. There came a r-r-r-r-r-r
+of fans and wheels, followed by a shower of dust; slowly one great
+cylinder began to revolve; wires and ropes reaching into the gloom above
+began to twitch convulsively; faintly came the jangle of far-off bells.
+Then came a pause, then a deafening _boom_, that well nigh stunned me.
+As the waves of sound came and went, the little old man twisted and
+untwisted his hands in delight, and ejaculated, "Melchior you haf
+heeard, Melchior t'e Groote--t'e bourdon."
+
+I wanted to examine the machinery, but he impatiently seized my arm and
+almost dragged me away saying, "I will skow you--I will skow you. Come
+wis me."
+
+From a pocket he produced a long brass key and unlocked a door covered
+with red leather, disclosing an up-leading flight of steps to which he
+pushed me. It gave upon an octagon-shaped room with a curious floor of
+sheet-lead. Around the wall ran a seat under the diamond-paned Gothic
+windows. From their shape I knew them to be the highest in the tower. I
+had seen them from the square below many times, with the framework above
+upon which hung row upon row of bells.
+
+In the middle of the room was a rude sort of keyboard, with pedals
+below, like those of a large organ. Fronting this construction sat a
+long, high-backed bench. On the rack over the keyboard rested some
+sheets of music, which, upon examination, I found to be of parchment and
+written by hand. The notes were curious in shape, consisting of squares
+of black and diamonds of red upon the lines. Across the top of the page
+was written, in a straggling hand, "Van den Gheyn Nikolaas." I turned to
+the little old man with the ruffles. "Van den Gheyn!" I said in
+surprise, pointing to the parchment. "Why, that is the name of the most
+celebrated of _carillonneurs_, Van den Gheyn of Louvain." He untwisted
+his hands and bowed. "Eet ees ma name, mynheer--I am the
+_carillonneur_."
+
+I fancied that my face showed all too plainly the incredulity I felt,
+for his darkened, and he muttered, "You not belief, Engelsch? Ah, I show
+you; then you belief, parehap," and with astounding agility seated
+himself upon the bench before the clavecin, turned up the ruffles at his
+wrists, and literally threw himself upon the keys. A sound of thunder
+accompanied by a vivid flash of lightning filled the air, even as the
+first notes of the bells reached my ears. Involuntarily I glanced out of
+the diamond-leaded window--dark clouds were all about us, the housetops
+and surrounding country were no longer to be seen. A blinding flash of
+lightning seemed to fill the room; the arms and legs of the little old
+man sought the keys and pedals with inconceivable rapidity; the music
+crashed about us with a deafening din, to the accompaniment of the
+thunder, which seemed to sound in unison with the boom of the bourdon.
+It was grandly terrible. The face of the little old man was turned upon
+me, but his eyes were closed. He seemed to find the pedals intuitively,
+and at every peal of thunder, which shook the tower to its foundations,
+he would open his mouth, a toothless cavern, and shout aloud. I could
+not hear the sounds for the crashing of the bells. Finally, with a last
+deafening crash of iron rods and thunderbolts, the noise of the bells
+gradually died away. Instinctively I had glanced above when the crash
+came, half expecting to see the roof torn off.
+
+"I think we had better go down," I said. "This tower has been struck by
+lightning several times, and I imagine that discretion--"
+
+I don't know what more I said, for my eyes rested upon the empty bench,
+and the bare rack where the music had been. The clavecin was one mass of
+twisted iron rods, tangled wires, and decayed, worm-eaten woodwork; the
+little old man had disappeared. I rushed to the red leather-covered
+door; it was fast. I shook it in a veritable terror; it would not yield.
+With a bound I reached the ruined clavecin, seized one of the pedals,
+and tore it away from the machine. The end was armed with an iron point.
+This I inserted between the lock and the door. I twisted the lock from
+the worm-eaten wood with one turn of the wrist, the door opened, and I
+almost fell down the steep steps. The second door at the bottom was
+also closed. I threw my weight against it once, twice; it gave, and I
+half slipped, half ran down the winding steps in the darkness.
+
+Out at last into the fresh air of the lower passage! At the noise I made
+in closing the ponderous door came forth the old _custode_.
+
+In my excitement I seized her by the arm, saying, "Who was the little
+old man in the black velvet coat with the ruffles? Where is he?"
+
+She looked at me in a stupid manner. "Who is he," I repeated--"the
+little old man who played the clavecin?"
+
+"Little old man, sir? I don't know," said the crone. "There has been no
+one in the tower to-day but yourself."
+
+
+
+
+LIGEIA
+
+BY EDGAR ALLAN POE
+
+     "And the will therein lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth the
+     mysteries of the will, with its vigor? For God is but a great
+     will prevading all things by nature of its intentness. Man doth
+     not yield himself to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save
+     only through the weakness of his feeble will."--JOSEPH
+     GLANVILL.
+
+
+I cannot, for my soul, remember how, when, or even precisely where, I
+first became acquainted with the lady Ligeia. Long years have since
+elapsed, and my memory is feeble through much suffering. Or, perhaps, I
+cannot _now_ bring these points to mind, because, in truth, the
+character of my beloved, her rare learning, her singular yet placid
+caste of beauty, and the thrilling and enthralling eloquence of her low
+musical language, made their way into my heart by paces so steadily and
+stealthily progressive, that they have been unnoticed and unknown. Yet I
+believe that I met her first and most frequently in some large, old,
+decaying city near the Rhine. Of her family I have surely heard her
+speak. That it is of a remotely ancient date cannot be doubted. Ligeia!
+Ligeia! Buried in studies of a nature more than all else adapted to
+deaden impressions of the outward world, it is by that sweet word
+alone--by Ligeia--that I bring before mine eyes in fancy the image of
+her who is no more. And now, while I write, a recollection flashes upon
+me that I have _never known_ the paternal name of her who was my friend
+and my betrothed, and who became the partner of my studies, and finally
+the wife of my bosom. Was it a playful charge on the part of my Ligeia?
+Or was it a test of my strength of affection, that I should institute no
+inquiries upon this point? Or was it rather a caprice of my own--a
+wildly romantic offering on the shrine of the most passionate devotion?
+I but indistinctly recall the fact itself--what wonder that I have
+utterly forgotten the circumstances which originated or attended it?
+And, indeed, if ever that spirit which is entitled Romance--if ever she,
+the wan and the misty-winged Ashtophet of idolatrous Egypt--presided, as
+they tell, over marriages ill-omened, then most surely she presided over
+mine.
+
+There is one dear topic, however, on which my memory fails me not. It is
+the _person_ of Ligeia. In stature she was tall, somewhat slender, and,
+in her latter days, even emaciated. I would in vain attempt to portray
+the majesty, the quiet ease of her demeanor, or the incomprehensible
+lightness and elasticity of her footfall. She came and departed as a
+shadow. I was never made aware of her entrance into my closed study,
+save by the dear music of her low sweet voice, as she placed her marble
+hand upon my shoulder. In beauty of face no maiden ever equalled her. It
+was the radiance of an opium-dream--an airy and spirit-lifting vision
+more wildly divine than the fantasies which hovered about the slumbering
+souls of the daughters of Delos. Yet her features were not of that
+regular mould which we have been falsely taught to worship in the
+classical labors of the heathen. "There is no exquisite beauty," says
+Bacon, Lord Verulam, speaking truly of all the forms and _genera_
+of beauty, "without some strangeness in the proportion." Yet,
+although I saw that the features of Ligeia were not of a classic
+regularity--although I perceived that her loveliness was indeed
+exquisite and felt that there was much of strangeness pervading it--yet
+I have tried in vain to detect the irregularity and to trace home my own
+perception of "the strange." I examined the contour of the lofty and
+pale forehead; it was faultless--how cold indeed that word when applied
+to a majesty so divine--the skin rivalling the purest ivory; the
+commanding extent and repose, the gentle prominence of the regions above
+the temples; and then the raven-black, the glossy, the luxuriant and
+naturally-curling tresses, setting forth the full force of the Homeric
+epithet, "hyacinthine"! I looked at the delicate outlines of the nose,
+and nowhere but in the graceful medallions of the Hebrews had I beheld a
+similar perfection. There were the same luxurious smoothness of surface,
+the same scarcely perceptible tendency to the aquiline, the same
+harmoniously curved nostrils speaking the free spirit. I regarded the
+sweet mouth. Here was indeed the triumph of all things heavenly--the
+magnificent turn of the short upper lip, the soft, voluptuous slumber of
+the under, the dimples which sported, and the color which spoke, the
+teeth glancing back, with a brilliancy almost startling, every ray of
+the holy light which fell upon them in her serene and placid, yet most
+exultingly radiant of all smiles. I scrutinized the formation of the
+chin, and here, too, I found the gentleness of breadth, the softness
+and the majesty, the fulness and the spirituality of the Greek--the
+contour which the god Apollo revealed but in a dream, to Cleomenes, the
+son of the Athenian. And then I peered into the large eyes of Ligeia.
+
+For eyes we have no models in the remotely antique. It might have been,
+too, that in these eyes of my beloved lay the secret to which Lord
+Verulam alludes. They were, I must believe, far larger than the ordinary
+eyes of our own race. They were even fuller than the fullest of the
+gazelle eyes of the tribe of the valley of Nourjahad. Yet it was only at
+intervals--in moments of intense excitement--that this peculiarity
+became more than slightly noticeable in Ligeia. And at such moments was
+her beauty--in my heated fancy thus it appeared perhaps--the beauty of
+beings either above or apart from the earth--the beauty of the fabulous
+Houri of the Turk. The hue of the orbs was the most brilliant of black,
+and far over them hung jetty lashes of great length. The brows, slightly
+irregular in outline, had the same tint. The "strangeness," however,
+which I found in the eyes, was of a nature distinct from the formation,
+or the color, or the brilliancy of the features, and must, after all, be
+referred to the expression. Ah, word of no meaning, behind whose vast
+latitude of mere sound we intrench our ignorance of so much of the
+spiritual! The expression of the eyes of Ligeia! How for long hours have
+I pondered upon it! How have I, through the whole of a midsummer night,
+struggled to fathom it! What was it--that something more profound than
+the well of Democritus--which lay far within the pupils of my beloved?
+What _was_ it? I was possessed with a passion to discover. Those eyes,
+those large, those shining, those divine orbs--they became to me twin
+stars of Leda, and I to them devoutest of astrologers.
+
+There is no point, among the many incomprehensible anomalies of the
+science of mind, more thrillingly exciting than the fact--never, I
+believe, noticed in the schools--that in our endeavors to recall to
+memory something long forgotten, we often find ourselves upon the very
+verge of remembrance, without being able, in the end, to remember. And
+thus how frequently, in my intense scrutiny of Ligeia's eyes, have I
+felt approaching the full knowledge of their expression--felt it
+approaching, yet not quite be mine--and so at length entirely depart!
+And (strange, oh strangest mystery of all!) I found in the commonest
+objects of the universe, a circle of analogies to that expression. I
+mean to say that, subsequently to the period when Ligeia's beauty passed
+into my spirit, there dwelling as in a shrine, I derived from many
+existences in the material world a sentiment such as I felt always
+around, within me, by her large and luminous orbs. Yet not the more
+could I define that sentiment, or analyze, or even steadily view it. I
+recognized it, let me repeat, sometimes in the survey of a
+rapidly-growing vine, in the contemplation of a moth, a butterfly, a
+chrysalis, a stream of running water. I have felt it in the ocean, in
+the falling of a meteor. I have felt it in the glances of unusually aged
+people. And there are one or two stars in heaven, (one especially, a
+star of the sixth magnitude, double and changeable, to be found near the
+large star in Lyra) in a telescopic scrutiny of which I have been made
+aware of the feeling. I have been filled with it by certain sounds from
+stringed instruments, and not unfrequently by passages from books. Among
+innumerable other instances, I well remember something in a volume of
+Joseph Glanvill, which (perhaps merely from its quaintness--who shall
+say?) never failed to inspire me with the sentiment: "And the will
+therein lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth the mysteries of the will,
+with its vigor? For God is but a great will pervading all things by
+nature of its intentness. Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto
+death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will."
+
+Length of years and subsequent reflection have enabled me to trace,
+indeed, some remote connection between this passage in the English
+moralist and a portion of the character of Ligeia. An intensity in
+thought, action, or speech was possibly, in her, a result or at least an
+index of that gigantic volition which, during our long intercourse,
+failed to give other and more immediate evidence of its existence. Of
+all the women whom I have ever known, she--the outwardly calm, the
+ever-placid Ligeia--was the most violently a prey to the tumultuous
+vultures of stern passion. And of such passion I could form no estimate,
+save by the miraculous expansion of those eyes which at once so
+delighted and appalled me, by the almost magical melody, modulation,
+distinctness, and placidity of her very low voice, and by the fierce
+energy (rendered doubly effective by contrast with her manner of
+utterance) of the wild words which she habitually uttered.
+
+I have spoken of the learning of Ligeia; it was immense, such as I have
+never known in woman. In the classical tongues was she deeply
+proficient, and as far as my own acquaintance extended in regard to the
+modern dialects of Europe, I have never known her at fault. Indeed upon
+any theme of the most admired, because simply the most abstruse of the
+boasted erudition of the academy, have I ever found Ligeia at fault? How
+singularly, how thrillingly, this one point in the nature of my wife has
+forced itself, at this late period only, upon my attention! I said her
+knowledge was such as I have never known in woman--but where breathes
+the man who has traversed, and successfully, all the wide areas of
+moral, physical, and mathematical science? I saw not then what I now
+clearly perceive, that the acquisitions of Ligeia were gigantic, were
+astounding; yet I was sufficiently aware of her infinite supremacy to
+resign myself, with a child-like confidence, to her guidance through the
+chaotic world of metaphysical investigation at which I was most busily
+occupied during the earlier years of our marriage. With how vast a
+triumph, with how vivid a delight, with how much of all that is ethereal
+in hope, did I feel, as she bent over me in studies but little
+sought--but less known--that delicious vista by slow degrees expanding
+before me, down whose long, gorgeous, and all untrodden path I might at
+length pass onward to the goal of a wisdom too divinely precious not to
+be forbidden!
+
+How poignant, then, must have been the grief with which, after some
+years, I beheld my well-grounded expectations take wings to themselves
+and fly away! Without Ligeia I was but as a child groping benighted. Her
+presence, her readings alone, rendered vividly luminous the many
+mysteries of the transcendentalism in which we were immersed. Wanting
+the radiant luster of her eyes, letters, lambent and golden, grew
+duller than Saturnian lead. And now those eyes shone less and less
+frequently upon the pages over which I pored. Ligeia grew ill. The wild
+eyes blazed with a too, too glorious effulgence; the pale fingers became
+of the transparent waxen hue of the grave; and the blue veins upon the
+lofty forehead swelled and sank impetuously with the tides of the most
+gentle emotion. I saw that she must die--and I struggled desperately in
+spirit with the grim Azrael. And the struggles of the passionate wife
+were, to my astonishment, even more energetic than my own. There had
+been much in her stern nature to impress me with the belief that, to
+her, death would have come without its terrors; but not so. Words are
+impotent to convey any just idea of the fierceness of resistance with
+which she wrestled with the Shadow. I groaned in anguish at the pitiable
+spectacle. I would have soothed, I would have reasoned, but, in the
+intensity of her wild desire for life--for life--_but_ for life--solace
+and reason were alike the uttermost of folly. Yet not until the last
+instance, amid the most convulsive writhings of her fierce spirit, was
+shaken the external placidity of her demeanor. Her voice grew more
+gentle--grew more low--yet I would not wish to dwell upon the wild
+meaning of the quietly uttered words. My brain reeled as I hearkened,
+entranced, to a melody more than mortal, to assumptions and aspirations
+which mortality had never before known.
+
+That she loved me I should not have doubted, and I might have been
+easily aware that, in a bosom such as hers, love would have reigned no
+ordinary passion. But in death only was I fully impressed with the
+strength of her affection. For long hours, detaining my hand, would she
+pour out before me the overflowing of a heart whose more than passionate
+devotion amounted to idolatry. How had I deserved to be so blessed by
+such confessions? How had I deserved to be so cursed with the removal of
+my beloved in the hour of her making them? But upon this subject I
+cannot bear to dilate. Let me say only, that in Ligeia's more than
+womanly abandonment to a love, alas! all unmerited, all unworthily
+bestowed, I at length recognized the principle of her longing, with so
+wildly earnest a desire, for the life which was now fleeing so rapidly
+away. It is this wild longing--it is this eager vehemence of desire for
+life--but for life--that I have no power to portray, no utterance
+capable of expressing.
+
+At high noon of the night in which she departed, beckoning me
+peremptorily to her side, she bade me repeat certain verses composed by
+herself not many days before. I obeyed her. They were these:
+
+    Lo! 'tis a gala night
+      Within the lonesome latter years!
+    An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
+      In veils, and drowned in tears,
+    Sit in a theater, to see
+      A play of hopes and fears,
+    While the orchestra breathes fitfully
+      The music of the spheres.
+
+    Mimes, in the form of God on high,
+      Mutter and mumble low,
+    And hither and thither fly;
+      Mere puppets they, who come and go
+    At bidding of vast formless things
+      That shift the scenery to and fro,
+    Flapping from out their condor wings
+      Invisible Woe!
+
+    That motley drama!--oh, be sure
+      It shall not be forgot!
+    With its Phantom chased for evermore,
+      By a crowd that seize it not,
+    Through a circle that ever returneth in
+      To the self-same spot;
+    And much of Madness, and more of Sin
+      And Horror, the soul of the plot!
+
+    But see, amid the mimic rout
+      A crawling shape intrude!
+    A blood-red thing that writhes from out
+      The scenic solitude!
+    It writhes!--it writhes!--with mortal
+      The mimes become its food,
+    And the seraphs sob at vermin fangs
+      In human gore imbued.
+
+    Out--out are the lights--out all!
+      And over each quivering form,
+    The curtain, a funeral pall,
+      Comes down with the rush of a storm--
+    And the angels, all pallid and wan,
+      Uprising, unveiling, affirm
+    That the play is the tragedy, "Man,"
+      And its hero, the Conqueror Worm.
+
+"O God!" half-shrieked Ligeia, leaping to her feet and extending her
+arms aloft with a spasmodic movement, as I made an end of these lines,
+"O God! O Divine Father! Shall these things be undeviatingly so? Shall
+this conqueror be not once conquered? Are we not part and parcel in
+Thee? Who--who knoweth the mysteries of the will with its vigor? Man
+doth not yield him to the angels, _nor unto death utterly_, save only
+through the weakness of his feeble will."
+
+And now, as if exhausted with emotion, she suffered her white arms to
+fall, and returned solemnly to her bed of death. And as she breathed her
+last sighs, there came mingled with them a low murmur from her lips. I
+bent to them my ear, and distinguished again, the concluding words of
+the passage in Glanvill: "_Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor
+unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will._"
+
+She died, and I, crushed into the very dust with sorrow, could no longer
+endure the lonely desolation of my dwelling in the dim and decaying city
+by the Rhine. I had no lack of what the world calls wealth. Ligeia had
+brought me far more, very far more than ordinarily falls to the lot of
+mortals. After a few months, therefore, of weary and aimless wandering,
+I purchased and put in some repair an abbey which I shall not name in
+one of the wildest and least frequented portions of fair England. The
+gloomy and dreary grandeur of the building, the almost savage aspect of
+the domain, the many melancholy and time-honored memories connected with
+both, had much in unison with the feelings of utter abandonment which
+had driven me into that remote and unsocial region of the country. Yet,
+although the external abbey with its verdant decay hanging about it
+suffered but little alteration, I gave way with a child-like perversity,
+and perchance with a faint hope of alleviating my sorrows, to a display
+of more than regal magnificence within. For such follies, even in
+childhood, I had imbibed a taste, and now they came back to me as if in
+the dotage of grief. Alas, I feel how much even of incipient madness
+might have been discovered in the gorgeous and fantastic draperies, in
+the solemn carvings of Egypt, in the wild cornices and furniture, in the
+Bedlam patterns of the carpets of tufted gold! I had become a bounden
+slave in the trammels of opium, and my labors and my orders had taken a
+coloring from my dreams. But these absurdities I must not pause to
+detail. Let me speak only of that one chamber, ever accursed, whither in
+a moment of mental alienation, I led from the altar as my bride--as the
+successor of the unforgotten Ligeia--the fair-haired and blue-eyed Lady
+Rowena Trevanion, of Tremaine.
+
+There is no individual portion of the architecture and decoration of
+that bridal chamber which is not now visibly before me. Where were the
+souls of the haughty family of the bride, when, through thirst of gold,
+they permitted to pass the threshold of an apartment _so_ bedecked, a
+maiden and a daughter so beloved? I have said that I minutely remember
+the details of the chamber, yet I am sadly forgetful on topics of deep
+moment; and here there was no system, no keeping, in the fantastic
+display, to take hold upon the memory. The room lay in a high turret of
+the castellated abbey, was pentagonal in shape, and of capacious size.
+Occupying the whole southern face of the pentagon was the sole
+window--an immense sheet of unbroken glass from Venice--a single pane,
+and tinted of a leaden hue, so that the rays of either the sun or moon
+passing through it fell with a ghastly luster on the objects within.
+Over the upper portion of this huge window extended the trellis-work of
+an aged vine which clambered up the massy walls of the turret. The
+ceiling, of gloomy-looking oak, was excessively lofty, vaulted, and
+elaborately fretted with the wildest and most grotesque specimens of a
+semi-Gothic, semi-Druidical device. From out the most central recess of
+this melancholy vaulting depended, by a single chain of gold with long
+links, a huge censer of the same metal, Saracenic in pattern, and with
+many perforations so contrived that there writhed in and out of them, as
+if endued with a serpent vitality, a continual succession of
+parti-colored fires.
+
+Some few ottomans and golden candelabra of Eastern figure were in
+various stations about; and there was the couch, too--the bridal
+couch--of an Indian model, and low, and sculptured of solid ebony, with
+a pall-like canopy above. In each of the angles of the chamber stood on
+end a gigantic sarcophagus of black granite, from the tombs of the kings
+over against Luxor, with their aged lids full of immemorial sculpture.
+But in the draping of the apartment lay, alas! the chief fantasy of all.
+The lofty walls, gigantic in height--even unproportionably so--were hung
+from summit to foot in vast folds with a heavy and massive-looking
+tapestry--tapestry of a material which was found alike as a carpet on
+the floor, as a covering for the ottomans and the ebony bed, as a canopy
+for the bed, and as the gorgeous volutes of the curtains which partially
+shaded the window. The material was the richest cloth of gold. It was
+spotted all over, at irregular intervals, with arabesque figures, about
+a foot in diameter, and wrought upon the cloth in patterns of the most
+jetty black. But these figures partook of the true character of the
+arabesque only when regarded from a single point of view. By a
+contrivance now common, and indeed traceable to a very remote period of
+antiquity, they were made changeable in aspect. To one entering the room
+they bore the appearance of simple monstrosities, but upon a farther
+advance this appearance gradually departed; and, step by step as the
+visitor moved his station in the chamber he saw himself surrounded by an
+endless succession of the ghastly forms which belong to the superstition
+of the Norman, or arise in the guilty slumbers of the monk. The
+phantasmagoric effect was vastly heightened by the artificial
+introduction of a strong continual current of wind behind the
+draperies--giving a hideous and uneasy animation to the whole.
+
+In halls such as these--in a bridal chamber such as this--I passed, with
+the Lady of Tremaine, the unhallowed hours of the first month of our
+marriage--passed them with but little disquietude. That my wife dreaded
+the fierce moodiness of my temper, that she shunned me, and loved me but
+little, I could not help perceiving; but it gave me rather pleasure than
+otherwise. I loathed her with a hatred belonging more to demon than to
+man. My memory flew back--oh, with what intensity of regret!--to Ligeia,
+the beloved, the august, the beautiful, the entombed. I revelled in
+recollections of her purity, of her wisdom, of her lofty, her ethereal
+nature, of her passionate, her idolatrous love. Now, then, did my
+spirit fully and freely burn with more than all the fires of her own. In
+the excitement of my opium dreams (for I was habitually fettered in the
+shackles of the drug) I would call aloud upon her name, during the
+silence of the night, or among the sheltered recesses of the glens by
+day, as if, through the wild eagerness, the solemn passion, the
+consuming ardor of my longing for the departed, I could restore her to
+the pathway she had abandoned--ah, could it be for ever?--upon the
+earth.
+
+About the commencement of the second month of the marriage the Lady
+Rowena was attacked with sudden illness, from which her recovery was
+slow. The fever which consumed her rendered her nights uneasy; and in
+her perturbed state of half-slumber she spoke of sounds and of motions
+in and about the chamber of the turret which I concluded had no
+origin save in the distemper of her fancy, or perhaps in the
+phantasmagoric influences of the chamber itself. She became at length
+convalescent--finally, well. Yet but a brief period elapsed ere a second
+more violent disorder again threw her upon a bed of suffering, and from
+this attack her frame, at all times feeble, never altogether recovered.
+Her illnesses were, after this epoch, of alarming character and of more
+alarming recurrence, defying alike the knowledge and the great exertions
+of her physicians. With the increase of the chronic disease, which had
+thus, apparently, taken too sure hold upon her constitution to be
+eradicated by human means, I could not fail to observe a similar
+increase in the nervous irritation of her temperament, and in her
+excitability by trivial causes of fear. She spoke again, and now more
+frequently and pertinaciously, of the sounds--of the slight sounds--and
+of the unusual motions among the tapestries, to which she had formerly
+alluded.
+
+One night near the closing in of September she pressed this distressing
+subject with more than usual emphasis upon my attention. She had just
+awakened from an unquiet slumber, and I had been watching, with feelings
+half of anxiety, half of vague terror, the workings of her emaciated
+countenance. I sat by the side of her ebony bed, upon one of the
+ottomans of India. She partly arose, and spoke, in an earnest low
+whisper, of sounds which she then heard, but which I could not hear, of
+motions which she then saw, but which I could not perceive. The wind was
+rushing hurriedly behind the tapestries, and I wished to show her (what,
+let me confess it, I could not all believe) that those almost
+inarticulate breathings, and those very gentle variations of the figures
+upon the wall, were but the natural effects of that customary rushing of
+the wind. But a deadly pallor overspreading her face had proved to me
+that my exertions to reassure her would be fruitless. She appeared to be
+fainting, and no attendants were within call. I remembered where was
+deposited a decanter of light wine which had been ordered by her
+physicians, and hastened across the chamber to procure it. But as I
+stepped beneath the light of the censer, two circumstances of a
+startling nature attracted my attention. I had felt that some palpable
+although invisible object had passed lightly by my person; and I saw
+that there lay upon the golden carpet, in the very middle of the rich
+luster thrown from the censer, a shadow--a faint, indefinite shadow of
+angelic aspect, such as might be fancied for the shadow of a shade. But
+I was wild with the excitement of an immoderate dose of opium, and
+heeded these things but little, nor spoke of them to Rowena. Having
+found the wine, I recrossed the chamber and poured out a gobletful which
+I held to the lips of the fainting lady. She had now partially
+recovered, however, and took the vessel herself, while I sank upon an
+ottoman near me, with my eyes fastened upon her person. It was then that
+I became distinctly aware of a gentle footfall upon the carpet and near
+the couch; and in a second after as Rowena was in the act of raising the
+wine to her lips I saw, or may have dreamed that I saw, fall within the
+goblet, as if from some invisible spring in the atmosphere of the room,
+three or four large drops of a brilliant and ruby-colored fluid. If this
+I saw--not so Rowena. She swallowed the wine unhesitatingly, and I
+forbore to speak to her of a circumstance which must, after all, I
+considered, have been but the suggestion of a vivid imagination,
+rendered morbidly active by the terror of the lady, by the opium, and by
+the hour.
+
+Yet I cannot conceal it from my own perception that, immediately
+subsequent to the fall of the ruby-drops, a rapid change for the worse
+took place in the disorder of my wife, so that, on the third subsequent
+night the hands of her menials prepared her for the tomb, and on the
+fourth I sat alone with her shrouded body in that fantastic chamber
+which had received her as my bride. Wild visions, opium-engendered,
+fluttered, shadow-like, before me. I gazed with unquiet eye upon the
+sarcophagi in the angles of the room, upon the varying figures of the
+drapery, and upon the writhing of the parti-colored fires in the censer
+overhead. My eyes then fell, as I called to mind the circumstances of a
+former night, to the spot beneath the glare of the censer where I had
+seen the faint traces of the shadow. It was there, however, no longer;
+and breathing with greater freedom, I turned my glances to the pallid
+and rigid figure upon the bed. Then rushed upon me a thousand memories
+of Ligeia--and then came back upon my heart with the turbulent violence
+of a flood the whole of that unutterable woe with which I had regarded
+_her_ thus enshrouded. The night waned; and still, with a bosom full of
+bitter thoughts of the one only and supremely beloved, I remained gazing
+upon the body of Rowena.
+
+It might have been midnight, or perhaps earlier, or later--for I had
+taken no note of time--when a sob, low, gentle, but very distinct,
+startled me from my revery. I _felt_ that it came from the bed of
+ebony--the bed of death. I listened in an agony of superstitious
+terror--but there was no repetition of the sound. I strained my vision
+to detect any motion in the corpse--but there was not the slightest
+perceptible. Yet I could not have been deceived. I _had_ heard the
+noise, however faint, and my soul was awakened within me. I resolutely
+and perseveringly kept my attention riveted upon the body. Many minutes
+elapsed before any circumstance occurred tending to throw light upon the
+mystery. At length it became evident that a slight, a very feeble and
+barely noticeable tinge of color had flushed up within the cheeks, and
+along the sunken small veins of the eyelids. Through a species of
+unutterable horror and awe, for which the language of mortality has no
+sufficiently energetic expression, I felt my heart cease to beat, my
+limbs grow rigid where I sat. Yet a sense of duty finally operated to
+restore my self-possession. I could no longer doubt that we had been
+precipitate in our preparations--that Rowena still lived. It was
+necessary that some immediate exertion be made, yet the turret was
+altogether apart from the portion of the abbey tenanted by the
+servants--there were none within call, and I had no means of summoning
+them to my aid without leaving the room for many minutes--and this I
+could not venture to do. I therefore struggled alone in my endeavors to
+call back the spirit still hovering. In a short period it was certain,
+however, that a relapse had taken place, the color disappeared from both
+eyelid and cheek, leaving a wanness even more than that of marble; the
+lips became doubly shrivelled and pinched up in the ghastly expression
+of death; a repulsive clamminess and coldness overspread rapidly the
+surface of the body; and all the usual rigorous stiffness immediately
+supervened. I fell back with a shudder upon the couch from which I had
+been so startlingly aroused, and again gave myself up to passionate
+waking visions of Ligeia.
+
+An hour thus elapsed, when--could it be possible?--I was a second time
+aware of some vague sound issuing from the region of the bed. I
+listened--in extremity of horror. The sound came again--it was a sigh.
+Rushing to the corpse, I saw--distinctly saw--a tremor upon the lips. In
+a minute afterward they relaxed, disclosing a bright line of the pearly
+teeth. Amazement now struggled in my bosom with the profound awe which
+had hitherto reigned there alone. I felt that my vision grew dim, that
+my reason wandered, and it was only by a violent effort that I at length
+succeeded in nerving myself to the task which duty thus once more had
+pointed out. There was now a partial glow upon the forehead and upon
+the cheek and throat, a perceptible warmth pervaded the whole frame,
+there was even a slight pulsation at the heart. The lady _lived_; and
+with redoubled ardor I betook myself to the task of restoration. I
+chafed and bathed the temples and the hands and used every exertion
+which experience and no little medical reading could suggest. But in
+vain. Suddenly, the color fled, the pulsation ceased, the lips resumed
+the expression of the dead, and, in an instant afterward, the whole body
+took upon itself the icy chilliness, the livid hue, the intense
+rigidity, the sunken outline, and all the loathsome peculiarities of
+that which has been, for many days, a tenant of the tomb.
+
+And again I sunk into visions of Ligeia--and again, (what marvel that I
+shudder while I write?) _again_ there reached my ears a low sob from the
+region of the ebony bed. But why should I minutely detail the
+unspeakable horrors of that night? Why should I pause to relate how,
+time after time, until near the period of the gray dawn, this hideous
+drama of revivification was repeated; how each terrific relapse was only
+into a sterner and apparently more irredeemable death; how each agony
+wore the aspect of a struggle with some invisible foe; and how each
+struggle was succeeded by I know not what of wild change in the personal
+appearance of the corpse? Let me hurry to a conclusion.
+
+The greater part of the fearful night had worn away, and she who had
+been dead, once again stirred--and now more vigorously than hitherto,
+although arousing from a dissolution more appalling in its utter
+hopelessness than any. I had long ceased to struggle or to move, and
+remained sitting rigidly upon the ottoman, a helpless prey to a whirl of
+violent emotions, of which extreme awe was perhaps the least terrible,
+the least consuming. The corpse, I repeat, stirred, and now more
+vigorously than before. The hues of life flushed up with unwonted energy
+into the countenance, the limbs relaxed, and, save that the eyelids were
+yet pressed heavily together and that the bandages and draperies of the
+grave still imparted their charnel character to the figure, I might have
+dreamed that Rowena had indeed shaken off utterly the fetters of Death.
+But if this idea was not even then altogether adopted, I could at least
+doubt no longer, when arising from the bed, tottering, with feeble
+steps, with closed eyes, and with the manner of one bewildered in a
+dream, the thing that was enshrouded advanced boldly and palpably into
+the middle of the apartment.
+
+I trembled not--I stirred not--for a crowd of unutterable fancies
+connected with the air, the stature, the demeanor of the figure, rushing
+hurriedly through my brain, had paralyzed--had chilled me into stone. I
+stirred not--but gazed upon the apparition. There was a mad disorder in
+my thoughts--a tumult unappeasable. Could it, indeed, be the living
+Rowena who confronted me? Could it indeed be Rowena at all--the
+fair-haired, the blue-eyed Lady Rowena Trevanion of Tremaine? Why, _why_
+should I doubt it? The bandage lay heavily about the mouth--but then
+might it not be the mouth of the breathing Lady of Tremaine? And the
+cheeks--there were the roses as in her noon of life--yes, these might
+indeed be the fair cheeks of the living Lady of Tremaine. And the chin,
+with its dimples, as in health, might it not be hers?--but _had she
+then grown taller since her malady_? What inexpressible madness seized
+me with that thought! One bound, and I had reached her feet. Shrinking
+from my touch she let fall from her head, unloosened, the ghastly
+cerements which had confined it, and there streamed forth into the
+rushing atmosphere of the chamber huge masses of long and dishevelled
+hair; _it was blacker than the raven wings of midnight_! And now slowly
+opened the eyes of the figure which stood before me. "Here then, at
+least," I shrieked aloud, "can I never--can I never be mistaken--these
+are the full and the black, and the wild eyes of my lost love--of the
+Lady--of the LADY LIGEIA."
+
+
+
+
+THE SYLPH AND THE FATHER[5]
+
+By ELSA BARKER
+
+[Footnote 5: By permission of the author of _War Letters of the Living
+Dead Man_ and Mitchell Kennerley.]
+
+
+Passing yesterday along the line where the great French army stands
+before its powerful opponent, and marking the spirit of courage and
+aspiration which makes it seem like a long line of living light, I saw a
+familiar face in the regions outside the physical.
+
+I paused, highly pleased at the encounter, and the sylph--for it was a
+sylph whom I met--paused also with a little smile of recognition.
+
+Do you recall in my former book the story of a sylph, Meriline, who was
+the companion and familiar of a student of magic who lived in the rue de
+Vaugirard in Paris?
+
+It was Meriline that I met above the line of light which shows to
+wanderers in the astral regions where the soldiers of _la belle France_
+fight and die for the same ideal which inspired Jeanne d'Arc--to drive
+the foreigner out of France.
+
+"Where is your friend and master?" I asked the sylph, and she pointed
+below to a trench which spoke loud its determination to conquer.
+
+"I am here, to be still with him," she said.
+
+"And can you speak to him here?" I asked.
+
+"I can always speak with him," she answered. "I have been very useful to
+him--and to France."
+
+"To France?" I enquired, with growing interest.
+
+"Oh, yes! When his commanding officer wants to know what is being
+plotted over there, he often asks my friend, and my friend asks me."
+
+"Truly," I thought, "the French are an inspired people, when the
+officers of armies ask guidance from the realm of the invisible! But had
+not Jeanne her visions?"
+
+"And how do you gain the information desired?" I asked, drawing nearer
+to Meriline, who seemed more serious than when we met some years before
+in Paris.
+
+"Why," she answered, "I go over there and look around me. I have learned
+what to look for, he has taught me, and when I bring him news he rewards
+me with more love."
+
+"And do you love him still, as of old?"
+
+"As of old?"
+
+"Yes, as you did back there in Paris."
+
+"Time must have passed slowly with you," said the sylph, "if you call a
+few years ago 'as of old'."
+
+"Are a few years, then, as nothing?"
+
+"A few years are as nothing to me," she replied. "I have lived a long
+time."
+
+"And do you know the future of your friend?" I asked.
+
+A puzzled look came over the face of Meriline, and she said, slowly:
+
+"I used to know everything that would happen to him, because I could
+read his will, and whatever he willed came to pass; but since we have
+been out here he seems to have lost his will."
+
+"Lost his will!" I exclaimed, in surprise.
+
+"Yes, lost his will; for he prays continually to a great Being whom he
+loves far more than me, and he always prays one prayer, 'Thy will be
+done!' It used to be his will which was always done; but now, as I say,
+he seems to have lost his will."
+
+"Perhaps," I said, "it is true of the will as was once said of the life,
+and he that loses his will shall find it."
+
+"I hope he will find it soon," she answered, "for in the old days he was
+always giving me interesting things to do, to help him achieve the
+purposes of his will, and now he only sends me over there. I don't like
+_over there_!"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because my friend is menaced by something over there."
+
+"And what has his will to do with that?"
+
+"Why, even about that, he says all day to the great Being that he loves
+so much more than me, 'Thy will be done.'"
+
+"Do you think you could learn to say it, too?" I asked.
+
+"I say it after him sometimes; but I don't know what it means."
+
+"Have you never heard of God?"
+
+"I have heard of many gods, of Isis and Osiris and Set, and of Horus,
+the son of Osiris."
+
+"And is it to one of these that he says, 'Thy will be done'?"
+
+"Oh, no! It is not to any of the gods that he used to call upon in his
+magical working. This is some new god that he has found."
+
+"Or the oldest of all gods that he has returned to," I suggested. "What
+does he call Him?"
+
+"Our Father who art in heaven."
+
+"If you also should learn to say 'Thy will be done' to our Father who is
+in heaven," I said, "it might help you toward the attainment of that
+soul you were wanting and waiting for, when last we met in Paris."
+
+"How could our Father help me?"
+
+"It was He who gave souls to men," I said.
+
+The eyes of the sylph were brilliant with something almost human.
+
+"And could He give a soul to me?"
+
+"It is said that He _can_ do anything."
+
+"Then I will ask Him for a soul."
+
+"But to ask Him for a soul," I said, "is not to pray the prayer your
+friend prays."
+
+"He only says----"
+
+"Yes, I know. Suppose you say it after him."
+
+"I will, if you will tell me what it means. I like to do what my friend
+does."
+
+"'Thy will be done,'" I said, "when addressed to the Father in heaven,
+means that we give up all our desires, whether for pleasure or love or
+happiness, or anything else, and lay all those desires at His feet,
+sacrificing all we have or hope for to Him, because we love Him more
+than ourselves."
+
+"That is a strange way to get what one desires," she said.
+
+"It is not done to get what one desires," I answered.
+
+"But what is it done for?"
+
+"For love of the Father in heaven."
+
+"But I do not know the Father in heaven. What is He?"
+
+"He is the Source and the Goal of the being of your friend. He is the
+One that your friend will re-become some day, if he can forever say to
+Him, Thy will be done."
+
+"The One he will re-become?"
+
+"Yes, for when he blends his will with that of the Father in heaven, the
+Father in heaven dwells in his heart and the two become one."
+
+"Then is the Father in heaven really the Self of my friend?"
+
+"The greatest philosopher could not have expressed it more truly," I
+said.
+
+"Then indeed do I love the Father in heaven," breathed the sylph, "and I
+will say now every day and all day, 'Thy will be done' to Him."
+
+"Even if it separates you from your friend?"
+
+"How can it separate me from my friend, if the Father is the Self of
+him?"
+
+"I would that all angels were your equal in learning," I said.
+
+But Meriline had turned from me in utter forgetfulness, and was saying
+over and over, with joy in her uplifted face, "Thy will be done! Thy
+will be done!"
+
+"Truly," I said to myself, as I passed along the line, "he who worships
+the Father as the Self of the beloved has already acquired a soul."
+
+
+
+
+A GHOST[6]
+
+BY LAFCADIO HEARN
+
+[Footnote 6: From _Karma_ (Boni & Liveright).]
+
+
+I
+
+Perhaps the man who never wanders away from the place of his birth may
+pass all his life without knowing ghosts; but the nomad is more than
+likely to make their acquaintance. I refer to the civilized nomad, whose
+wanderings are not prompted by hope of gain, nor determined by pleasure,
+but simply compelled by certain necessities of his being--the man whose
+inner secret nature is totally at variance with the stable conditions of
+a society to which he belongs only by accident. However intellectually
+trained, he must always remain the slave of singular impulses which have
+no rational source, and which will often amaze him no less by their
+mastering power than by their continuous savage opposition to his every
+material interest. These may, perhaps, be traced back to some ancestral
+habit--be explained by self-evident hereditary tendencies. Or perhaps
+they may not,--in which event the victim can only surmise himself the
+_Imago_ of some pre-existent larval aspiration--the full development of
+desires long dormant in a chain of more limited lives.
+
+Assuredly the nomadic impulses differ in every member of the class, take
+infinite variety from individual sensitiveness to environment--the line
+of least resistance for one being that of greatest resistance for
+another; no two courses of true nomadism can ever be wholly the same.
+Diversified of necessity both impulse and direction, even as human
+nature is diversified! Never since consciousness of time began were two
+beings born who possessed exactly the same quality of voice, the same
+precise degree of nervous impressibility, or, in brief, the same
+combination of those viewless force-storing molecules which shape and
+poise themselves in sentient substance. Vain, therefore, all striving to
+particularize the curious psychology of such existences; at the very
+utmost it is possible only to describe such impulses and preceptions of
+nomadism as lie within the very small range of one's own observation.
+And whatever in these is strictly personal can have little interest or
+value except in so far as it holds something in common with the great
+general experience of restless lives. To such experience may belong, I
+think, one ultimate result of all those irrational partings,
+self-wrecking, sudden isolations, abrupt severances from all attachment,
+which form the history of the nomad--the knowledge that a strong silence
+is ever deepening and expanding about one's life, and that in that
+silence there are ghosts.
+
+
+II
+
+Oh! the first vague charm, the first sunny illusion of some fair
+city, when vistas of unknown streets all seem leading to the
+realization of a hope you dare not even whisper; when even the shadows
+look beautiful, and strange facades appear to smile good omen through
+light of gold! And those first winning relations with men, while you are
+still a stranger, and only the better and the brighter side of their
+nature is turned to you! All is yet a delightful, luminous
+indefiniteness--sensation of streets and of men--like some beautifully
+tinted photograph slightly out of focus.
+
+Then the slow solid sharpening of details all about you, thrusting
+through illusion and dispelling it, growing keener and harder day by day
+through long dull seasons; while your feet learn to remember all
+asperities of pavements, and your eyes all physiognomy of buildings and
+of persons--failures of masonry, furrowed lines of pain. Thereafter only
+the aching of monotony intolerable, and the hatred of sameness grown
+dismal, and dread of the merciless, inevitable, daily and hourly
+repetition of things; while those impulses of unrest, which are Nature's
+urgings through that ancestral experience which lives in each one of
+us--outcries of sea and peak and sky to man--ever make wilder appeal.
+Strong friendships may have been formed; but there finally comes a day
+when even these can give no consolation for the pain of monotony, and
+you feel that in order to live you must decide, regardless of result, to
+shake forever from your feet the familiar dust of that place.
+
+And, nevertheless, in the hour of departure you feel a pang. As train or
+steamer bears you away from the city and its myriad associations, the
+old illusive impression will quiver back about you for a moment--not as
+if to mock the expectation of the past, but softly, touchingly, as if
+pleading to you to stay; and such a sadness, such a tenderness may come
+to you, as one knows after reconciliation with a friend misapprehended
+and unjustly judged. But you will never more see those streets--except
+in dreams.
+
+Through sleep only they will open again before you, steeped in the
+illusive vagueness of the first long-past day, peopled only by friends
+outstretching to you. Soundlessly you will tread those shadowy pavements
+many times, to knock in thought, perhaps, at doors which the dead will
+open to you. But with the passing of years all becomes dim--so dim that
+even asleep you know 'tis only a ghost-city, with streets going to
+nowhere. And finally whatever is left of it becomes confused and blended
+with cloudy memories of other cities--one endless bewilderment of filmy
+architecture in which nothing is distinctly recognizable, though the
+whole gives the sensation of having been seen before, ever so long ago.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meantime, in the course of wanderings more or less aimless, there has
+slowly grown upon you a suspicion of being haunted--so frequently does a
+certain hazy presence intrude itself upon the visual memory. This,
+however, appears to gain rather than to lose in definiteness; with each
+return its visibility seems to increase. And the suspicion that you may
+be haunted gradually develops into a certainty.
+
+
+III
+
+You are haunted--whether your way lie through the brown gloom of London
+winter, or the azure splendor of an equatorial day--whether your steps
+be tracked in snows, or in the burning black sand of a tropic
+beach--whether you rest beneath the swart shade of Northern pines, or
+under spidery umbrages of palm--you are haunted ever and everywhere by a
+certain gentle presence. There is nothing fearsome in this haunting--the
+gentlest face, the kindliest voice--oddly familiar and distinct, though
+feeble as the hum of a bee.
+
+But it tantalizes--this haunting--like those sudden surprises of
+sensation _within_ us, though seemingly not _of_ us, which some dreamers
+have sought to interpret as inherited remembrances, recollections of
+preexistence. Vainly you ask yourself, "Whose voice? Whose face?" It is
+neither young nor old, the Face; it has a vapory indefinableness that
+leaves it a riddle; its diaphaneity reveals no particular tint; perhaps
+you may not even be quite sure whether it has a beard. But its
+expression is always gracious, passionless, smiling--like the smiling of
+unknown friends in dreams, with infinite indulgence for any folly, even
+a dream-folly. Except in that you cannot permanently banish it, the
+presence offers no positive resistance to your will; it accepts each
+caprice with obedience; it meets your every whim with angelic patience.
+It is never critical, never makes plaint even by a look, never proves
+irksome; yet you cannot ignore it, because of a certain queer power it
+possesses to make something stir and quiver in your heart--like an old
+vague sweet regret--something buried alive which will not die. And so
+often does this happen that desire to solve the riddle becomes a pain;
+that you finally find yourself making supplication to the Presence;
+addressing to it questions which it will never answer directly, but
+only by a smile or by words having no relation to the asking--words
+enigmatic, which make mysterious agitation in old forsaken fields of
+memory, even as a wind betimes, over wide wastes of marsh, sets all the
+grasses whispering about nothing. But you will question on, untiringly,
+through the nights and days of years:
+
+"Who are you? What are you? What is this weird relation that you bear to
+me? All you say to me I feel that I have heard before, but where? But
+when? By what name am I to call you, since you will answer to none that
+I remember? Surely you do not live; yet I know the sleeping-places of
+all my dead, and yours I do not know! Neither are you any dream--for
+dreams distort and change; and you, you are ever the same. Nor are you
+any hallucination; for all my senses are still vivid and strong. This
+only I know beyond doubt--that you are of the Past; you belong to
+memory--but to the memory of what dead suns?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then, some day or night, unexpectedly, there comes to you at least, with
+a soft swift tingling shock as of fingers invisible, the knowledge that
+the Face is not the memory of any one face; but a multiple image formed
+of the traits of many dear faces, superimposed by remembrance, and
+interblended by affection into one ghostly personality--infinitely
+sympathetic, phantasmally beautiful--a Composite of recollections! And
+the Voice is the echo of no one voice, but the echoing of many voices,
+molten into a single utterance, a single impossible tone, thin through
+remoteness of time, but inexpressibly caressing.
+
+
+IV
+
+Thou most gentle Composite!--thou nameless and exquisite Unreality,
+thrilled into semblance of being from out the sum of all lost
+sympathies!--thou Ghost of all dear vanished things, with thy vain
+appeal of eyes that looked for my coming, and vague faint pleading of
+voices against oblivion, and thin electric touch of buried hands--must
+thou pass away forever with my passing, even as the Shadow that I cast,
+O thou Shadowing of Souls?
+
+I am not sure. For there comes to me this dream--that if aught in human
+life hold power to pass, like a swerved sunray through interstellar
+spaces, into the infinite mystery, to send one sweet strong vibration
+through immemorial Time, might not some luminous future be peopled with
+such as thou? And in so far as that which makes for us the subtlest
+charm of being can lend one choral note to the Symphony of the
+Unknowable Purpose--in so much might there not endure also to greet
+thee, another Composite One--embodying, indeed, the comeliness of many
+lives, yet keeping likewise some visible memory of all that may have
+been gracious in this thy friend?
+
+
+
+
+THE EYES OF THE PANTHER[7]
+
+BY AMBROSE BIERCE
+
+[Footnote 7: From "_In the Midst of Life_" (Boni & Liveright).]
+
+
+I
+
+ONE DOES NOT ALWAYS MARRY WHEN INSANE
+
+A man and a woman--nature had done the grouping--sat on a rustic seat,
+in the late afternoon. The man was middle-aged, slender, swarthy, with
+the expression of a poet and the complexion of a pirate--a man at whom
+one would look again. The woman was young, blonde, graceful, with
+something in her figure and movements suggesting the word "lithe." She
+was habited in a gray gown with odd brown markings in the texture. She
+may have been beautiful; one could not readily say, for her eyes denied
+attention to all else. They were gray-green, long and narrow, with an
+expression defying analysis. One could only know that they were
+disquieting. Cleopatra may have had such eyes.
+
+The man and the woman talked.
+
+"Yes," said the woman, "I love you, God knows! But marry you, no. I
+cannot, will not."
+
+"Irene, you have said that many times, yet always have denied me a
+reason. I've a right to know, to understand, to feel and prove my
+fortitude if I have it. Give me a reason."
+
+"For loving you?"
+
+The woman was smiling through her tears and her pallor. That did not
+stir any sense of humor in the man.
+
+"No; there is no reason for that. A reason for not marrying me. I've a
+right to know. I must know. I will know!"
+
+He had risen and was standing before her with clenched hands, on his
+face a frown--it might have been called a scowl. He looked as if he
+might attempt to learn by strangling her. She smiled no more--merely sat
+looking up into his face with a fixed, set regard that was utterly
+without emotion or sentiment. Yet it had something in it that tamed his
+resentment and made him shiver.
+
+"You are determined to have my reason?" she asked in a tone that was
+entirely mechanical--a tone that might have been her look made audible.
+
+"If you please--if I'm not asking too much."
+
+Apparently this lord of creation was yielding some part of his dominion
+over his co-creature.
+
+"Very well, you shall know: I am insane."
+
+The man started, then looked incredulous and was conscious that he ought
+to be amused. But, again, the sense of humor failed him in his need and
+despite his disbelief he was profoundly disturbed by that which he did
+not believe. Between our convictions and our feelings there is no good
+understanding.
+
+"That is what the physicians would say," the woman continued, "if they
+knew. I might myself prefer to call it a case of 'possession.' Sit down
+and hear what I have to say."
+
+The man silently resumed his seat beside her on the rustic bench by the
+wayside. Over against them on the eastern side of the valley the hills
+were already sunset-flushed and the stillness all about was of that
+peculiar quality that foretells the twilight. Something of its
+mysterious and significant solemnity had imparted itself to the man's
+mood. In the spiritual, as in the material world, are signs and presages
+of night. Rarely meeting her look, and whenever he did so conscious of
+the indefinable dread with which, despite their feline beauty, her eyes
+always affected him, Jenner Brading listened in silence to the story
+told by Irene Marlowe. In deference to the reader's possible prejudice
+against the artless method of an unpracticed historian the author
+ventures to substitute his own version for hers.
+
+
+II
+
+A ROOM MAY BE TOO NARROW FOR THREE, THOUGH ONE IS OUTSIDE
+
+In a little log house containing a single room sparely and rudely
+furnished, crouching on the floor against one of the walls, was a woman,
+clasping to her breast a child. Outside, a dense unbroken forest
+extended for many miles in every direction. This was at night and the
+room was black dark; no human eye could have discerned the woman and the
+child. Yet they were observed, narrowly, vigilantly, with never even a
+momentary slackening of attention; and that is the pivotal fact upon
+which this narrative turns.
+
+Charles Marlowe was of the class, now extinct in this country, of
+woodmen pioneers--men who found their most acceptable surroundings in
+sylvan solitudes that stretched along the eastern slope of the
+Mississippi Valley, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. For more
+than a hundred years these men pushed ever westward, generation after
+generation, with rifle and ax, reclaiming from Nature and her savage
+children here and there an isolated acreage for the plow, no sooner
+reclaimed than surrendered to their less venturesome but more thrifty
+successors. At last they burst through the edge of the forest into the
+open country and vanished as if they had fallen over a cliff. The
+woodman pioneer is no more; the pioneer of the plains--he whose easy
+task it was to subdue for occupancy two-thirds of the country in a
+single generation--is another and inferior creation. With Charles
+Marlowe in the wilderness, sharing the dangers, hardships and privations
+of that strange unprofitable life, were his wife and child, to whom, in
+the manner of his class in which the domestic virtues were a religion,
+he was passionately attached. The woman was still young enough to be
+comely, new enough to the awful isolation of her lot to be cheerful. By
+withholding the large capacity for happiness which the simple
+satisfactions of the forest life could not have filled, Heaven had dealt
+honorably with her. In her light household tasks, her child, her husband
+and her few foolish books, she found abundant provision for her needs.
+
+One morning in midsummer Marlowe took down his rifle from the wooden
+hooks on the wall and signified his intention of getting game.
+
+"We've meat enough," said the wife; "please don't go out to-day. I
+dreamed last night, O, such a dreadful thing! I cannot recollect it, but
+I'm almost sure that it will come to pass if you go out."
+
+It is painful to confess that Marlowe received this solemn statement
+with less of gravity than was due to the mysterious nature of the
+calamity foreshadowed. In truth, he laughed.
+
+"Try to remember," he said. "Maybe you dreamed that Baby had lost the
+power of speech."
+
+The conjecture was obviously suggested by the fact that Baby, clinging
+to the fringe of his hunting-coat with all her ten pudgy thumbs, was at
+that moment uttering her sense of the situation in a series of exultant
+goo-goos inspired by sight of her father's raccoon-skin cap.
+
+The woman yielded: lacking the gift of humor she could not hold out
+against his kindly badinage. So, with a kiss for the mother and a kiss
+for the child, he left the house and closed the door upon his happiness
+forever.
+
+At nightfall he had not returned. The woman prepared supper and waited.
+Then she put Baby to bed and sang softly to her until she slept. By this
+time the fire on the hearth, at which she had cooked supper, had burned
+out and the room was lighted by a single candle. This she afterward
+placed in the open window as a sign and welcome to the hunter if he
+should approach from that side. She had thoughtfully closed and barred
+the door against such wild animals as might prefer it to an open
+window--of the habits of beasts of prey in entering a house uninvited
+she was not advised, though with true female prevision she may have
+considered the possibility of their entrance by way of the chimney. As
+the night wore on she became not less anxious, but more drowsy, and at
+last rested her arms upon the bed by the child and her head upon the
+arms. The candle in the window burned down to the socket, sputtered and
+flared a moment and went out unobserved; for the woman slept and
+dreamed.
+
+In her dreams she sat beside the cradle of a second child. The first one
+was dead. The father was dead. The home in the forest was lost and the
+dwelling in which she lived was unfamiliar. There were heavy oaken
+doors, always closed, and outside the windows, fastened into the thick
+stone walls, were iron bars, obviously (so she thought) a provision
+against Indians. All this she noted with an infinite self-pity, but
+without surprise--an emotion unknown in dreams. The child in the cradle
+was invisible under its coverlet which something impelled her to remove.
+She did so, disclosing the face of a wild animal! In the shock of this
+dreadful revelation the dreamer awoke, trembling in the darkness of her
+cabin in the wood.
+
+As a sense of her actual surroundings came slowly back to her she felt
+for the child that was not a dream, and assured herself by its breathing
+that all was well with it; nor could she forbear to pass a hand lightly
+across its face. Then, moved by some impulse for which she probably
+could not have accounted, she rose and took the sleeping babe in her
+arms, holding it close against her breast. The head of the child's cot
+was against the wall to which the woman now turned her back as she
+stood. Lifting her eyes she saw two bright objects starring the darkness
+with a reddish-green glow. She took them to be two coals on the hearth,
+but with her returning sense of direction came the disquieting
+consciousness that they were not in that quarter of the room, moreover
+were too high, being nearly at the level of the eyes--of her own eyes.
+For these were the eyes of a panther.
+
+The beast was at the open window directly opposite and not five paces
+away. Nothing but those terrible eyes was visible, but in the dreadful
+tumult of her feelings as the situation disclosed itself to her
+understanding she somehow knew that the animal was standing on its
+hinder feet, supporting itself with its paws on the window-ledge. That
+signified a malign interest--not the mere gratification of an indolent
+curiosity. The consciousness of the attitude was an added horror,
+accentuating the menace of those awful eyes, in whose steadfast fire her
+strength and courage were alike consumed. Under their silent questioning
+she shuddered and turned sick. Her knees failed her, and by degrees,
+instinctively striving to avoid a sudden movement that might bring the
+beast upon her, she sank to the floor, crouched against the wall and
+tried to shield the babe with her trembling body without withdrawing her
+gaze from the luminous orbs that were killing her. No thought of her
+husband came to her in her agony--no hope nor suggestion of rescue or
+escape. Her capacity for thought and feeling had narrowed to the
+dimensions of a single emotion--fear of the animal's spring, of the
+impact of its body, the buffeting of its great arms, the feel of its
+teeth in her throat, the mangling of her babe. Motionless now and in
+absolute silence, she awaited her doom, the moments growing to hours, to
+years, to ages; and still those devilish eyes maintained their watch.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Returning to his cabin late at night with a deer on his shoulders
+Charles Marlowe tried the door. It did not yield. He knocked; there was
+no answer. He laid down his deer and went around to the window. As he
+turned the angle of the building he fancied he heard a sound as of
+stealthy footfalls and a rustling in the undergrowth of the forest, but
+they were too slight for certainty, even to his practiced ear.
+Approaching the window, and to his surprise finding it open, he threw
+his leg over the sill and entered. All was darkness and silence. He
+groped his way to the fire-place, struck a match and lit a candle. Then
+he looked about. Cowering on the floor against a wall was his wife,
+clasping his child. As he sprang toward her she rose and broke into
+laughter, long, loud, and mechanical, devoid of gladness and devoid of
+sense--the laughter that is not out of keeping with the clanking of a
+chain. Hardly knowing what he did he extended his arms. She laid the
+babe in them. It was dead--pressed to death in its mother's embrace.
+
+
+III
+
+THE THEORY OF THE DEFENSE
+
+That is what occurred during a night in a forest, but not all of it did
+Irene Marlowe relate to Jenner Brading; not all of it was known to her.
+When she had concluded the sun was below the horizon and the long
+summer twilight had begun to deepen in the hollows of the land. For some
+moments Brading was silent, expecting the narrative to be carried
+forward to some definite connection with the conversation introducing
+it; but the narrator was as silent as he, her face averted, her hands
+clasping and unclasping themselves as they lay in her lap, with a
+singular suggestion of an activity independent of her will.
+
+"It is a sad, a terrible story," said Brading at last, "but I do not
+understand. You call Charles Marlowe father; that I know. That he is old
+before his time, broken by some great sorrow, I have seen, or thought I
+saw. But, pardon me, you said that you--that you--"
+
+"That I am insane," said the girl, without a movement of head or body.
+
+"But, Irene, you say--please, dear, do not look away from me--you say
+that the child was dead, not demented."
+
+"Yes, that one--I am the second. I was born three months after that
+night, my mother being mercifully permitted to lay down her life in
+giving me mine."
+
+Brading was again silent; he was a trifle dazed and could not at once
+think of the right thing to say. Her face was still turned away. In his
+embarrassment he reached impulsively toward the hands that lay closing
+and unclosing in her lap, but something--he could not have said
+what--restrained him. He then remembered, vaguely, that he had never
+altogether cared to take her hand.
+
+"Is it likely," she resumed, "that a person born under such
+circumstances is like others--is what you call sane?"
+
+Brading did not reply; he was preoccupied with a new thought that was
+taking shape in his mind--what a scientist would have called an
+hypothesis; a detective, a theory. It might throw an added light, albeit
+a lurid one, upon such doubt of her sanity as her own assertion had not
+dispelled.
+
+The country was still new and, outside the villages, sparsely populated.
+The professional hunter was still a familiar figure, and among his
+trophies were heads and pelts of the larger kinds of game. Tales
+variously credible of nocturnal meetings with savage animals in lonely
+roads were sometimes current, passed through the customary stages of
+growth and decay, and were forgotten. A recent addition to these popular
+apocrypha, originating, apparently, by spontaneous generation in several
+households, was of a panther which had frightened some of their members
+by looking in at windows by night. The yarn had caused its little ripple
+of excitement--had even attained to the distinction of a place in the
+local newspaper; but Brading had given it no attention. Its likeness to
+the story to which he had just listened now impressed him as perhaps
+more than accidental. Was it not possible that the one story had
+suggested the other--that finding congenial conditions in a morbid mind
+and a fertile fancy, it had grown to the tragic tale that he had heard?
+
+Brading recalled certain circumstances of the girl's history and
+disposition of which, with love's incuriosity, he had hitherto been
+heedless--such as her solitary life with her father, at whose house no
+one apparently was an acceptable visitor, and her strange fear of the
+night by which those who knew her best accounted for her never being
+seen after dark. Surely in such a mind imagination once kindled might
+burn with a lawless flame, penetrating and enveloping the entire
+structure. That she was mad, though the conviction gave him the acutest
+pain, he could no longer doubt; she had only mistaken an effect of her
+mental disorder for its cause, bringing into imaginary relation with her
+own personality the vagaries of the local myth-makers. With some vague
+intention of testing his new "theory," and no very definite notion of
+how to set about it he said gravely, but with hesitation:
+
+"Irene, dear, tell me--I beg you will not take offense, but tell me--"
+
+"I have told you," she interrupted, speaking with a passionate
+earnestness that he had not known her to show, "I have already told you
+that we cannot marry; is anything else worth saying?"
+
+Before he could stop her she had sprung from her seat and without
+another word or look was gliding away among the trees toward her
+father's house. Brading had risen to detain her; he stood watching her
+in silence until she had vanished in the gloom. Suddenly he started as
+if he had been shot, his face took on an expression of amazement and
+alarm: in one of the black shadows into which she had disappeared he had
+caught a quick, brief glimpse of shining eyes! For an instant he was
+dazed and irresolute; then he dashed into the wood after her, shouting,
+"Irene, Irene, look out! The panther! The panther!"
+
+In a moment he had passed through the fringe of forest into open ground
+and saw the girl's gray skirt vanishing into her father's door. No
+panther was visible.
+
+
+IV
+
+AN APPEAL TO THE CONSCIENCE OF GOD
+
+Jenner Brading, attorney-at-law, lived in a cottage at the edge of the
+town. Directly behind the dwelling was the forest. Being a bachelor, and
+therefore by the Draconian moral code of the time and place denied the
+services of the only species of domestic servant known thereabout, the
+"hired girl," he boarded at the village hotel where also was his office.
+The woodside cottage was merely a lodging maintained--at no great cost,
+to be sure--as an evidence of prosperity and respectability. It would
+hardly do for one to whom the local newspaper had pointed with pride as
+"the foremost jurist of his time" to be "homeless," albeit he may
+sometimes have suspected that the words "home" and "house" were not
+strictly synonymous. Indeed, his consciousness of the disparity and his
+will to harmonize it were matters of logical inference, for it was
+generally reported that soon after the cottage was built its owner had
+made a futile venture in the direction of marriage--had, in truth, gone
+so far as to be rejected by the beautiful but eccentric daughter of Old
+Man Marlowe, the recluse. This was publicly believed because he had told
+it himself and she had not--a reversal of the usual order of things
+which could hardly fail to carry conviction.
+
+Brading's bedroom was at the rear of the house, with a single window
+facing the forest. One night he was awakened by a noise at that
+window--he could hardly have said what it was like. With a little thrill
+of the nerves he sat up in bed and laid hold of the revolver which, with
+a forethought most commendable in one addicted to the habit of sleeping
+on the ground floor with an open window, he had put under his pillow.
+The room was in absolute darkness, but being unterrified he knew where
+to direct his eyes, and there he held them, awaiting in silence what
+further might occur. He could now dimly discern the aperture--a square
+of lighter black. Presently there appeared at its lower edge two
+gleaming eyes that burned with a malignant luster inexpressibly
+terrible! Brading's heart gave a great jump, then seemed to stand still.
+A chill passed along his spine and through his hair; he felt the blood
+forsake his cheeks. He could not have cried out--not to save his life;
+but being a man of courage he would not, to save his life, have done so
+if he had been able. Some trepidation his coward body might feel, but
+his spirit was of sterner stuff. Slowly the shining eyes rose with a
+steady motion that seemed an approach, and slowly rose Brading's right
+hand, holding the pistol. He fired!
+
+Blinded by the flash and stunned by the report, Brading nevertheless
+heard, or fancied that he heard, the wild high scream of the panther, so
+human in sound, so devilish in suggestion. Leaping from the bed he
+hastily clothed himself and pistol in hand, sprang from the door,
+meeting two or three men who came running up from the road. A brief
+explanation was followed by a cautious search of the house. The grass
+was wet with dew; beneath the window it had been trodden and partly
+leveled for a wide space, from which a devious trail, visible in the
+light of a lantern, led away into the bushes. One of the men stumbled
+and fell upon his hands, which as he rose and rubbed them together were
+slippery. On examination they were seen to be red with blood.
+
+An encounter, unarmed, with a wounded panther was not agreeable to their
+taste; all but Brading turned back. He, with lantern and pistol, pushed
+courageously forward into the wood. Passing through a difficult
+undergrowth he came into a small opening, and there his courage had its
+reward, for there he found the body of his victim. But it was no
+panther. What it was is told, even to this day, upon a weather-worn
+headstone in the village churchyard, and for many years was attested
+daily at the graveside by the bent figure and sorrow-seamed face of Old
+Man Marlowe, to whose soul, and to the soul of his strange, unhappy
+child, peace--peace and reparation.
+
+
+
+
+PHOTOGRAPHING INVISIBLE BEINGS
+
+BY WM. T. STEAD
+
+    "Millions of Spiritual creatures walk the earth
+    Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep."
+
+    --MILTON
+
+
+It was during the South African War that my father obtained one of his
+best authenticated spirit photographs, so I think that it is well to
+give here his own account of his experiments in that direction. He
+writes:
+
+"While recording the results at which I have arrived, I wish to
+repudiate any desire to dogmatize as to their significance or their
+origin. I merely record the facts, and although I may indicate
+conclusions and inferences which I have drawn from them, I attach no
+importance to anything but the facts themselves.
+
+"There is living in London at the present moment an old man of
+seventy-one years of age, a man of no education; he can write, but he
+cannot spell, and he has for many years earned his living as a
+photographer. He was always in a small way of business, a quiet,
+inoffensive man who brought up his family respectably, and lived in
+peace with his neighbors, attracting no particular remark....
+
+"When he started in business as a photographer it was in the days when
+the wet process was almost universal, and he was much annoyed by finding
+that when he exposed plates other forms than that of the sitter would
+appear in the background. So many plates were spoiled by these unwelcome
+intruders that his partner became very angry, and insisted that the
+plates had not been washed before they were used. He protested this was
+not so, and asked his partner to bring a packet of completely new plates
+with which he would take a photograph and see what was the result. His
+partner accepted the challenge, and produced a plate which had never
+previously been used; but when the portrait of the next sitter was
+taken, there appeared a shadow form in the background. Angry and
+frightened at this unwelcome appearance he flung the plate to the ground
+with an oath, and from that time for very many years he was never again
+troubled by an occurrence of similar phenomena.
+
+"About ten years ago he became interested in spiritualism, and to his
+surprise, and also to his regret, the shadow figures began to re-appear
+on the background of the photographs. He repeatedly had to destroy
+negatives and ask his customer to give him another sitting. It did his
+business harm, and in order to avoid this annoyance he left most of the
+photographing to his son.
+
+"I happened to hear of these curious experiences of his and sought him
+out. I found him very reluctant to speak about the matter. He said
+frankly he did not know how the figures came; it had been a great
+annoyance to him, and it gave his shop a bad name. He did not wish
+anything to be said about the matter. In deference, however, to repeated
+pressing on my part, he consented to make experiments with me, and I
+had at various times a considerable number of sittings.
+
+"At first I brought my own plates (half plate size). He allowed me to
+place them in his slide in the dark room, to put them in the camera,
+which I was allowed to turn inside-out, and after they were exposed I
+was permitted to go into the dark room and develop them in his presence.
+Under these conditions I repeatedly obtained pictures of persons who
+were certainly not visible to me in the studio. I was allowed to do
+almost anything that I pleased, to alter the background, to change the
+position of the camera, to sit at any angle that I chose--in short to
+act as if the studio and all belonging to it was my own. And I
+repeatedly obtained what the old photographer called 'shadow pictures,'
+but none of them bore any resemblance to any person whom I had known.
+
+"In all these earlier experiments the photographer, whom I will call Mr.
+B----, made no charge, and the only request that he made was that I
+should not publish his name, or do anything to let his neighbors know of
+the curious shadow pictures which were obtainable in his studio.
+
+"After a time I was so thoroughly satisfied that the shadow photographs,
+or spirit forms, were not produced by any fraud on the part of the
+photographer, that I did not trouble to bring my own marked plates--I
+allowed him to use his own, and to do all the work of loading the slide
+and of developing the plate without my assistance or supervision. What I
+wanted was to see whether it would be possible for me to obtain a
+photograph of any person known to me in life who has passed over to the
+other side. The production of one such picture, if the person was
+unknown to the photographer, and he had no means of obtaining the
+photograph of the original while on earth, seemed to me so much better a
+test of the genuineness of the phenomena than could be secured by any
+amount of personal supervision of the process of photography, that I
+left him to operate without interference. The results he obtained when
+left to himself were precisely the same as those when the slides passed
+only through my own hands. But, although I obtained a great variety of
+portraits of unknown persons, I got none whom I could recognize.
+
+"In a conversation with Mr. B-- as to how these shadow pictures, as he
+called them, came on the plate, I found him almost as much at sea as
+myself. He said that he did not know how they came, but that he had
+noticed that they came more frequently and with greater distinctness at
+some times than at others. He could never say beforehand whether they
+would come or not. He frequently informed me when my sitting began that
+he could guarantee nothing. And often the set of plates would bear no
+trace of any portrait save mine.
+
+"He was very reluctant to continue the experiments, and used to complain
+that after exposing four plates with a view to obtaining such pictures
+he felt quite exhausted. And sometimes he complained that his 'innards
+seemed to be turned upside-down,' to use his own phrase. I usually sat
+with him between two and three in the afternoon, and on the days which I
+came he always abstained from the usual glass of beer which he took with
+his midday meal. If I came unexpectedly, and he had had a single glass
+of beer, which formed his usual beverage, he would always assure me
+that I need not expect any good results. I, however, never found any
+particular difference in the results.
+
+"We often discussed the matter together. And he was evidently working
+out a theory of his own, as any one might under such circumstances. He
+knew that when he was excited or irritated he got bad results. Hence he
+often used to keep a music-box going, for the music, in his opinion,
+tended to set up good and tranquil conditions. He said he thought
+something must come out of him--what, he did not know, but something was
+taken out of him, and with this something he thought the entities,
+whoever they were, built themselves up and acquired sufficient substance
+to reflect the rays of light so as to impress the sensitive plate in his
+camera. He also thought that his old camera had become what he called
+magnetized, and although it was an old-fashioned piece of furniture,
+which I not only examined myself, but have had examined by expert
+photographers, nothing could be discovered within or without it which
+would account for the results obtained. He also was of the opinion that
+even although he did not touch the photographic plate, it was necessary
+for him to touch or to hold his hand over the photographic slide, and
+also to hold his hand over the plate when it was in the developing bath.
+His theory was that in some way or other this process magnetized the
+plate and brought out a shadow portrait.
+
+"One peculiarity of almost all the shadow pictures obtained in all these
+series of experiments is that they have around them the same kind of
+white drapery which is so familiar to those who have taken part in a
+materializing seance. Sometimes this drapery is more voluminous than at
+others; often, when the conditions are good, the form which at first
+appears with its head encompassed with drapery will appear on the second
+plate without any drapery. On asking Mr. B-- what explanation he could
+give for this, he said he did not know, but he believed that the bodily
+appearance assumed by the spirit was very sensitive and needed to be
+shielded from currents, which might harm it. But when harmony prevailed
+they could venture to remove the drapery, and be photographed without
+it. Whatever may be the value of Mr. B--'s theory, there is little doubt
+that something is given off from his body which can be photographed. The
+white mist that appears to emanate from him forms into cloudy folds out
+of which there protrudes a more or less clearly defined face with human
+features. Sometimes this white and misty cloud obscures the sitter, at
+other times it seems to be condensed as if it were in the process of
+being worked up into a definite form for the completion of which either
+time or some other conditions were lacking. It was also noticeable that
+the entity--whoever it may be--which builds up the form, who is giving
+off sufficient solidity to impress its image upon the plate in the
+camera, having once created a form, will use it repeatedly without any
+change of position or expression. This will no doubt seem a great
+stumbling-block to many. But the fact is as I have stated it, and our
+first business is to ascertain facts, whether they tell for or against
+any particular hypothesis. It may be that the disembodied spirit, in
+order to establish its identity, constructs, out of the 'aura' given off
+by the photographer or other medium, a mask or cast bearing the
+unmistakable resemblance to the body which it wore in its sojourn on
+earth. Having once built it up for use in the studio, it may be easier
+to employ the same cast again and again instead of building up a new one
+at each fresh sitting. Upon this point, however, I shall have something
+to say further on.
+
+"I was very much interested in the results I obtained, although as none
+of the photographs were identified I did not deem the experiment
+completely successful. I was very anxious to induce Mr. B-- to devote
+some months to an uninterrupted series of experiments, and asked him on
+what terms I could secure his services. But he absolutely refused; he
+said he did not like it, it made him unwell, made people speak ill of
+him, and it did not matter what terms were offered, he would not
+consent. He was an old man, he said, and he could not find out how these
+things came; and, in short, neither scientific curiosity nor financial
+consideration would induce him to consent to more than an occasional
+sitting. I therefore dropped the matter, and for some years I
+discontinued my experiments.
+
+"I had a friend who often accompanied me to Mr. B--'s studio, where she
+had been photographed both with and without shadow pictures appearing on
+the background. We often promised each other that if either of us passed
+over we would come back and be photographed by Mr. B-- if possible, in
+order to prove the reality of spirit return. Shortly after this my
+friend died. But it was not until nearly four years after her death, at
+the request of a friend who was very anxious to know whether she could
+communicate with those on the other side, that I went back to Mr. B--'s
+studio.
+
+"He had always been slightly clairvoyant and clairaudient. He told me
+that a few days before I had written asking for the appointment, my
+deceased friend had appeared in the studio and told him that I was
+coming. This reminded me of her promise, and I said at once that I hoped
+he would be able to photograph her. He said he didn't know; he was
+rather frightened of her, for reasons into which I need not enter, but
+if she came he would see what he could do. My friend and I sat together.
+The first plate was exposed, nothing appeared in the background. When
+the second plate was placed in the camera Mr. B-- nodded with a quick
+look of recognition. We saw nothing. After he had exposed the second
+plate and before he developed it he asked us to change seats. We did
+this, and as he was exposing the third plate he said, 'I am told to ask
+you to do this,' and then when he closed the shutter he said, 'it is
+Mrs. M--.' On the fourth plate there appeared a picture of a woman whom
+I had never seen before, and whom my friend had never seen, neither had
+Mr. B--. When the plates came to be developed I found the second and
+third plates contained unmistakable likenesses of my friend Mrs. M--.
+These portraits were immediately recognized by my friend as unmistakable
+likenesses of the deceased Mrs. M--. It will be objected that she had
+frequently been photographed by the same photographer, and that he had
+simply faked a photograph from one of his old negatives. I don't believe
+that this is possible, for these portraits, although recognized
+immediately by every one who knew her, including her nearest relative,
+are quite different from any photograph she ever had taken in life. She
+certainly never was photographed enveloped in white drapery, nor do I
+believe that Mr. B-- had any negative of any of her portraits in his
+possession. But I fully admit that from the point of view of one who
+wishes to exclude every possibility of error, the fact that Mrs. M-- had
+been frequently photographed in her lifetime by the same photographer
+renders it impossible to regard these photographs as conclusive
+testimony as to their authenticity as a photograph of a form assumed by
+a disembodied spirit. I have mentioned that on the fourth plate there
+appeared a portrait of an unknown female. On my return I was showing the
+print of this shadow picture to a friend when she startled me by
+declaring that the shrouded form which appeared behind me in the
+photograph was a portrait of her mother who had died some months before
+in Dublin. I had never seen her mother, my friend did not know of her
+existence, neither did the photographer, nor does he to this day. It was
+only many months afterwards that I was able to obtain a photograph of my
+friend's mother, but it was taken when she was a comparatively young
+woman and bore no manner of resemblance to the portrait of the lady who
+appeared behind me. Her daughter, however, had not the slightest
+hesitation in asserting that it was her mother, that she had recognized
+her instantly, and that it was a very good portrait of her as she
+appeared in the later years of her life. This startled me not a little,
+and convinced me that I had a good prospect of attaining some definite
+results as an outcome of my experiments.
+
+"Mr. B--, encouraged by this success, was willing to continue his
+experiments, and this time I insisted upon paying him for his work.
+
+"From this time onward the occurrence of photographs that were
+recognizable on the background of the photographs taken by Mr. B--
+became frequent. Sometimes the plates were marked; but not invariably.
+For my part I attach comparatively no importance to the marking of
+plates and the close supervision of the operator. The test of the
+genuineness of a photograph that is obtained when the unknown relative
+of an unknown sitter appears in the background of the photograph, is
+immeasurably superior to precautions any expert conjurer or trick
+photographer might evade. Again and again I sent friends to Mr. B--,
+giving him no information as to who they were, nor telling him anything
+as to the identity of the persons' deceased friend or relative whose
+portrait they wished to secure; and time and again when the negative was
+developed the portrait would appear in the background, or sometimes in
+front of the sitter. This occurred so frequently that I am quite
+convinced of the impossibility of any fraud. One time it was a French
+editor, who finding the portrait of his deceased wife appear on the
+negative when developed, was so transported with delight that he
+insisted on kissing the photographer, Mr. B--, much to the old man's
+embarrassment. On another occasion it was a Lancashire engineer, himself
+a photographer, who took marked plates and all possible precautions. He
+obtained portraits of two of his relatives and another of an eminent
+personage with whom he had been in close relations. Or again, it was a
+near neighbor, who, going as a total stranger to the studio, obtained
+the portrait of her deceased daughter.
+
+"I attach no importance whatever to the appearance of portraits of
+well-known personages, which might easily be copied from existing
+pictures, but I attach immense importance to the production of the
+spirit photographs of unknown relatives of sitters who are unknown to
+the photographer, who receives them solely as a lady or gentleman who is
+one of my friends.
+
+"Although, as I have said, I do not attach much importance to
+photographs appearing of well-known men, I confess that I was rather
+impressed by one of my most recent experiments. I received a message
+from a medium in Sheffield, who is unknown to me, saying that Cecil
+Rhodes, who had then been dead about nine months, had spoken to her
+clairaudiently, and had told her to ask me to go to the photographer's,
+and that he would come and be photographed. The medium was a stranger to
+me, and I confess that I received the message with considerable
+skepticism. However, when she came up to town I accompanied her to the
+studio. She declared that she saw Cecil Rhodes, and that he spoke to
+her, and that he was standing behind me when the plate was exposed. When
+the plate came to be developed, although there was one well-defined
+figure standing behind me and several other faces half visible in the
+background, there was no portrait of Cecil Rhodes. I was not surprised,
+and went away. A month afterwards I went to have another sitting with
+the photographer. I chatted with him for a short time, and then he left
+the room for a moment. When he came back he said to me: 'There is a
+round-faced well set-up man here with a short moustache and a dimple in
+his chin. Do you know him?' 'No,' I said, 'I don't know any such man.'
+'Well, he seems to be very busy about you.' 'Well,' I said, 'if he comes
+upstairs, we shall see what we can get.' 'I don't know,' said he. When I
+was sitting, he said, 'There he is, and I see the letter R. Is it Robert
+or Richard, do you think?' 'I don't know any Robert or Richard,' I said.
+He took the picture. He then proceeded with the second plate, and said,
+'That man is still here, and I see behind him a country road. I wonder
+what that means.' He went into the dark room, and presently came out and
+said, 'I see "road or roads." Do you know any one of that name?' 'Of
+course,' I said, 'Cecil Rhodes.' 'Do you mean him as died in the
+Transvaal lately?' said he. I said 'Yes.' 'Well,' he said, 'was he a man
+like that?' 'Well, he had a moustache,' I said. And sure enough, when
+the plate was developed, there was Cecil Rhodes looking fifteen years
+younger than when he died.
+
+"Some other plates were exposed. One was entirely blank, on two others
+the mist was formed into a kind of clot of light, but no figure was
+visible, the fifth had a portrait of an unknown man, and on the sixth,
+when it came to be developed, there was the same portrait of Cecil
+Rhodes that had appeared on the first, but without the white drapery
+round the head.
+
+"Of course it may be said that it was well known that I was connected
+with Cecil Rhodes and that the photographer therefore would have no
+difficulty in faking a portrait. I admit all that, and therefore I would
+not have introduced this if it had stood alone, as any evidence showing
+that it was a _bona fide_ photograph of an invisible being. But it does
+not stand alone, and I have almost every reason to believe in the almost
+stupid honesty, if I may use such a phrase, of the photographer. I am
+naturally much interested in these latest portraits of the African
+Colossus. They are, at any rate, entirely new, no such portraits, to the
+best of my knowledge--and I have made a collection of all I can lay my
+hands on--exactly resembling those portraits which I obtained at Mr.
+B--'s studio.
+
+"I will conclude the account of my experiments by telling how I secured
+a portrait under circumstances which preclude any possibility of fake or
+fraud. One day when I entered the studio, Mr. B-- said to me, 'There is
+a man come with you who has been here before; he came here some days ago
+when I was by myself; he looked very wild, and he had a gun in his hand,
+and I did not like the look of him. I don't like guns, so I asked him to
+go away, for I was frightened of the gun, and he went. But now he has
+come with you, and he has not got his gun any more, so we will let him
+stop.' I was rather amused at the old man's story and said, 'Well, see
+if you can photograph him.' 'I don't know as I can,' he said, 'I never
+know what I can get,'--which is quite true, for often the photographs
+which he says he sees clairvoyantly do not come out on the plate. While
+he was photographing me, I said to him, 'If you can tell this man to go
+away, you can ask him his name.' 'Yes,' said he. 'Will you do so?' I
+said. 'Yes,' he said. After seeming to ask the question mentally, he
+said, 'He says his name is Piet Botha.' 'Piet Botha,' I said, 'I know no
+such name. There are Louis and Philip, and Chris Botha. I have never
+heard of Piet; still they are a numerous family and there are plenty of
+Bothas in South Africa, and it will be interesting to ask General Botha,
+when he arrives, whether he knows of any Piet Botha.' When the negative
+was developed, sure enough there appeared behind me a photograph of a
+stalwart bearded person, who might have been a Boer or a Russian moujik,
+but who was certainly unknown to me. I had never seen a portrait of any
+one which bore any resemblance to the photograph.
+
+"When General Botha arrived I did not get an opportunity of asking him
+about the photograph, but some time afterwards I asked Mr. Fischer, one
+of the delegation from the South African Republics, to look at the
+photograph, and if he got an opportunity to ask General Botha if he knew
+of such a man as Piet Botha. Mr. Fischer said he thought he had seen the
+face before, but he could not be certain. He departed with the
+photograph. Some days afterwards Mr. Wessels, a member of the delegation
+with Mr. Fischer, came down to my office. He said, 'I want to know about
+that photograph that you gave Mr. Fischer.' 'Yes,' I said, 'what about
+it?' 'I want to know where you got it.' I told him. He replied
+disdainfully, 'I don't believe in such things; it is superstition;
+besides, that man didn't know Mr. B--; he has never been in London; how
+could he come there?' 'What,' I said, 'do you know him?' 'Know him!'
+said Mr. Wessels. 'He is my brother-in-law.' 'Really!' I said. 'What did
+they call him?' 'Pietrus Johannes Botha, but we always called him Piet
+for short.' 'Is he dead, then?' I said. 'Yes,' said Mr. Wessels, 'he was
+the first Boer officer who was killed in the siege of Kimberley; but
+there is a mystery about this; you didn't know him?' 'No,' I said. 'And
+never heard of him?' 'No,' I said. 'But,' he said, 'I have the man's
+portrait in my house in South Africa, how could you get it?' 'But,' I
+said, 'I never have had it.' 'I don't understand,' he said, moodily, and
+so departed. I afterwards showed the photograph to another Free-State
+Boer who knew Piet Botha very well, and he had not the slightest
+hesitation in declaring that it was an unmistakable likeness of his dead
+friend.[8]
+
+[Footnote 8: Referring to this photo elsewhere, he wrote:--"This at
+least is not a case which telepathy can explain. Nor can the hypothesis
+of fraud hold water. It was by the merest accident that I asked the
+photographer to see if the spirit would give his name. No one in
+England, so far as I have been able to ascertain, knew that any Piet
+Botha ever existed.
+
+"As if to render all explanation of fraud or contrivance still more
+incredible, it may be mentioned that the _Daily Graphic_ of October,
+1889, which announced that a Commandant Botha had been killed in the
+siege of Kimberley, published a portrait alleged to be that of the dead
+commandant, which not only does not bear the remotest resemblance to the
+Piet Botha of my photograph, but which was described as Commandant Hans
+Botha!"]
+
+"This is a plain, straightforward narrative of my experiences; they are
+still going on. But if I continue them forever I don't see how I am
+going to obtain better results than those which I have already secured.
+At the same time I must admit that when I have taken my own kodak to the
+studio and taken a photograph immediately before Mr. B-- had exposed his
+plate, I got no results. The same failure occurred with another
+photographer whom I took, who took his own camera and his own plates,
+and took a photograph immediately before and immediately after Mr. B--
+had exposed his plate, and secured no result. Mr. B--'s explanation of
+this is that he thinks he does in some way or other magnetize, as he
+terms it, the plate, and that there is some effluence from his hand
+which is as necessary for the development of the psychic figure as the
+developing liquid is for the development of an ordinary photograph. This
+explanation would no doubt be derided as, I presume, wiseacres would
+have derided the first photographers when they insisted upon the
+necessity of darkness whilst developing their plates. What I hold to be
+established is that in the presence of this particular individual, Mr.
+B--, who at present is the only person known to me who is able to
+produce these photographs, it is possible to obtain under test
+conditions photographs that are unmistakably portraits of deceased
+persons; the said deceased persons being entirely unknown to him, and in
+some cases equally unknown to the sitter. Neither was any portrait of
+such person accessible either to the sitter or the photographer; neither
+was either the sitter or the photographer conscious of the very
+existence of these persons, whose identity was subsequently recognized
+by their friends.[9]
+
+[Footnote 9: Miss Katharine Bates was present when the Piet Botha
+photograph was taken under the exact conditions specified by my father.]
+
+"I am willing to admit that no conceivable conditions in the way of
+marking plates and supervising the actions or the operations of the
+photographer are of the least use, in so much as an expert conjurer can
+easily deceive the eye of the unskilled observer. But what I do maintain
+is that it is impossible for the cleverest trick photographer and the
+ablest conjurer in the world to produce a photograph, at a moment's
+notice, of an unknown relative of an unknown sitter, this portrait to
+be unmistakably recognizable by all survivors who knew the original in
+life. This Mr. B-- has done again and again. And it seems to me that a
+great step has been made towards establishing the possibility of
+verifying by photography the reality of the existence of other
+intelligences than our own."
+
+The photographer alluded to in this article is Mr. Boursnell. He died
+shortly after it was written, and although father experimented with
+others, he never obtained such convincing and satisfactory results.
+
+
+
+
+THE SIN-EATER
+
+By Fiona Macleod
+
+    SIN.
+
+    _Taste this bread, this substance: tell me
+    Is it bread or flesh?_
+
+    [_The Senses approach._]
+
+    THE SMELL.
+
+    _Its smell
+    Is the smell of bread._
+
+    SIN.
+
+    _Touch, come. Why tremble?
+    Say what's this thou touchest?_
+
+    THE TOUCH.
+
+    _Bread._
+
+    SIN.
+
+    _Sight, declare what thou discernest
+    In this object._
+
+    THE SIGHT.
+
+    _Bread alone._
+
+    --CALDERON,
+    _Los Encantos de la Culpa_
+
+
+A wet wind out of the south mazed and mooned through the sea-mist that
+hung over the Ross. In all the bays and creeks was a continuous weary
+lapping of water. There was no other sound anywhere.
+
+Thus was it at daybreak; it was thus at noon; thus was it now in the
+darkening of the day. A confused thrusting and falling of sounds through
+the silence betokened the hour of the setting. Curlews wailed in the
+mist; on the seething limpet-covered rocks the skuas and terns
+screamed, or uttered hoarse, rasping cries. Ever and again the prolonged
+note of the oyster-catcher shrilled against the air, as an echo flying
+blindly along a blank wall of cliff. Out of weedy places, wherein the
+tide sobbed with long, gurgling moans, came at intervals the barking of
+a seal.
+
+Inland, by the hamlet of Contullich, there is a reedy tarn called the
+Loch-a-chaoruinn.[10] By the shores of this mournful water a man moved.
+It was a slow, weary walk that of the man Neil Ross. He had come from
+Duninch, thirty miles to the eastward, and had not rested foot, nor
+eaten, nor had word of man or woman, since his going west an hour after
+dawn.
+
+[Footnote 10: Contullich: i.e. Ceann-nan-tulaich, "the end of the
+hillocks." Loch a chaoruinn means the loch of the rowan-trees.]
+
+At the bend of the loch nearest the clachan he came upon an old woman
+carrying peat. To his reiterated question as to where he was, and if the
+tarn were Feur-Lochan above Fionnaphort that is on the strait of Iona on
+the west side of the Ross of Mull, she did not at first make any answer.
+The rain trickled down her withered brown face, over which the thin gray
+locks hung limply. It was only in the deep-set eyes that the flame of
+life still glimmered, though that dimly.
+
+The man had used the English when first he spoke, but as though
+mechanically. Supposing that he had not been understood, he repeated his
+question in the Gaelic.
+
+After a minute's silence the old woman answered him in the native
+tongue, but only to put a question in return.
+
+"I am thinking it is a long time since you have been in Iona?"
+
+The man stirred uneasily.
+
+"And why is that, mother?" he asked, in a weak voice hoarse with damp
+and fatigue; "how is it you will be knowing that I have been in Iona at
+all?"
+
+"Because I knew your kith and kin there, Neil Ross."
+
+"I have not been hearing that name, mother, for many a long year. And as
+for the old face o' you, it is unbeknown to me."
+
+"I was at the naming of you, for all that. Well do I remember the day
+that Silis Macallum gave you birth; and I was at the house on the croft
+of Ballyrona when Murtagh Ross--that was your father--laughed. It was an
+ill laughing that."
+
+"I am knowing it. The curse of God on him!"
+
+"'Tis not the first, nor the last, though the grass is on his head three
+years agone now."
+
+"You that know who I am will be knowing that I have no kith or kin now
+on Iona?"
+
+"Ay; they are all under gray stone or running wave. Donald your brother,
+and Murtagh your next brother, and little Silis, and your mother Silis
+herself, and your two brothers of your father, Angus and Ian Macallum,
+and your father Murtagh Ross, and his lawful childless wife, Dionaid,
+and his sister Anna--one and all, they lie beneath the green wave or in
+the brown mould. It is said there is a curse upon all who live at
+Ballyrona. The owl builds now in the rafters, and it is the big sea-rat
+that runs across the fireless hearth."
+
+"It is there I am going."
+
+"The foolishness is on you, Neil Ross."
+
+"Now it is that I am knowing who you are. It is old Sheen Macarthur I am
+speaking to."
+
+"Tha mise ... it is I."
+
+"And you will be alone now, too, I am thinking, Sheen?"
+
+"I am alone. God took my three boys at the one fishing ten years ago;
+and before there was moonrise in the blackness of my heart my man went.
+It was after the drowning of Anndra that my croft was taken from me.
+Then I crossed the Sound, and shared with my widow sister Elsie McVurie
+till _she_ went; and then the two cows had to go; and I had no rent, and
+was old."
+
+In the silence that followed, the rain dribbled from the sodden bracken
+and dripping loneroid. Big tears rolled slowly down the deep lines on
+the face of Sheen. Once there was a sob in her throat, but she put her
+shaking hand to it, and it was still.
+
+Neil Ross shifted from foot to foot. The ooze in that marshy place
+squelched with each restless movement he made. Beyond them a plover
+wheeled, a blurred splatch in the mist, crying its mournful cry over and
+over and over.
+
+It was a pitiful thing to hear--ah, bitter loneliness, bitter patience
+of poor old women. That he knew well. But he was too weary, and his
+heart was nigh full of its own burthen. The words could not come to his
+lips. But at last he spoke.
+
+"Tha mo chridhe goirt," he said, with tears in his voice, as he put his
+hand on her bent shoulder; "my heart is sore."
+
+She put up her old face against his.
+
+"'S tha e ruidhinn mo chridhe," she whispered; "it is touching my heart
+you are."
+
+After that they walked on slowly through the dripping mist, each dumb
+and brooding deep.
+
+"Where will you be staying this night?" asked Sheen suddenly, when they
+had traversed a wide boggy stretch of land; adding, as by an
+afterthought--"Ah, it is asking you were if the tarn there were
+Feur-Lochan. No; it is Loch-a-chaoruinn, and the clachan that is near is
+Contullich."
+
+"Which way?"
+
+"Yonder, to the right."
+
+"And you are not going there?"
+
+"No. I am going to the steading of Andrew Blair. Maybe you are for
+knowing it? It is called the Baile-na-Chlais-nambuidheag."[11]
+
+[Footnote 11: "The farm in the hollow of the yellow flowers."]
+
+"I do not remember. But it is remembering a Blair I am. He was Adam, the
+son of Adam, the son of Robert. He and my father did many an ill deed
+together."
+
+"Ay, to the stones be it said. Sure, now, there was, even till this
+weary day, no man or woman who had a good word for Adam Blair."
+
+"And why that ... why till this day?"
+
+"It is not yet the third hour since he went into the silence."
+
+Neil Ross uttered a sound like a stifled curse. For a time he trudged
+wearily on.
+
+"Then I am too late," he said at last, but as though speaking to
+himself. "I had hoped to see him face to face again, and curse him
+between the eyes. It was he who made Murtagh Ross break his troth to my
+mother, and marry that other woman, barren at that, God be praised! And
+they say ill of him, do they?"
+
+"Ay, it is evil that is upon him. This crime and that, God knows; and
+the shadow of murder on his brow and in his eyes. Well, well, 'tis ill
+to be speaking of a man in corpse, and that near by. 'Tis Himself only
+that knows, Neil Ross."
+
+"Maybe ay and maybe no. But where is it that I can be sleeping this
+night, Sheen Macarthur?"
+
+"They will not be taking a stranger at the farm this night of the
+nights, I am thinking. There is no place else for seven miles yet, when
+there is the clachan, before you will be coming to Fionnaphort. There is
+the warm byre, Neil, my man; or, if you can bide by my peats, you may
+rest, and welcome, though there is no bed for you, and no food either
+save some of the porridge that is over."
+
+"And that will do well enough for me, Sheen; and Himself bless you for
+it."
+
+And so it was.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After old Sheen Macarthur had given the wayfarer food--poor food at
+that, but welcome to one nigh starved, and for the heartsome way it was
+given, and because of the thanks to God that was upon it before even
+spoon was lifted--she told him a lie. It was the good lie of tender
+love.
+
+"Sure now, after all, Neil, my man," she said, "it is sleeping at the
+farm I ought to be, for Maisie Macdonald, the wise woman, will be
+sitting by the corpse, and there will be none to keep her company. It is
+there I must be going; and if I am weary, there is a good bed for me
+just beyond the dead-board, which I am not minding at all. So, if it is
+tired you are sitting by the peats, lie down on my bed there, and have
+the sleep; and God be with you."
+
+With that she went, and soundlessly, for Neil Ross was already asleep,
+where he sat on an upturned claar, with his elbows on his knees, and his
+flame-lit face in his hands.
+
+The rain had ceased; but the mist still hung over the land, though in
+thin veils now, and these slowly drifting seaward. Sheen stepped wearily
+along the stony path that led from her bothy to the farm-house. She
+stood still once, the fear upon her, for she saw three or four blurred
+yellow gleams moving beyond her, eastward, along the dyke. She knew what
+they were--the corpse-lights that on the night of death go between the
+bier and the place of burial. More than once she had seen them before
+the last hour, and by that token had known the end to be near.
+
+Good Catholic that she was, she crossed herself, and took heart. Then
+muttering
+
+    "Crois nan naoi aingeal leam
+    'O mhullach mo chinn
+    Gu craican mo bhonn."
+
+    (The cross of the nine angels be about me,
+    From the top of my head
+    To the soles of my feet),
+
+she went on her way fearlessly.
+
+When she came to the White House, she entered by the milk-shed that was
+between the byre and the kitchen. At the end of it was a paved place,
+with washing-tubs. At one of these stood a girl that served in the
+house--an ignorant lass called Jessie McFall, out of Oban. She was
+ignorant, indeed, not to know that to wash clothes with a newly dead
+body near by was an ill thing to do. Was it not a matter for the knowing
+that the corpse could hear, and might rise up in the night and clothe
+itself in a clean white shroud?
+
+She was still speaking to the lassie when Maisie Macdonald, the
+deid-watcher, opened the door of the room behind the kitchen to see who
+it was that was come. The two old women nodded silently. It was not till
+Sheen was in the closed room, midway in which something covered with a
+sheet lay on a board, that any word was spoken.
+
+"Duit sith mor, Beann Macdonald."
+
+"And deep peace to you, too, Sheen; and to him that is there."
+
+"Och, ochone, mise 'n diugh; 'tis a dark hour this."
+
+"Ay; it is bad. Will you have been hearing or seeing anything?"
+
+"Well, as for that, I am thinking I saw lights moving betwixt here and
+the green place over there."
+
+"The corpse-lights?"
+
+"Well, it is calling them that they are."
+
+"I _thought_ they would be out. And I have been hearing the noise of the
+planks--the cracking of the boards, you know, that will be used for the
+coffin to-morrow."
+
+A long silence followed. The old women had seated themselves by the
+corpse, their cloaks over their heads. The room was fireless, and was
+lit only by a tall wax death-candle, kept against the hour of the going.
+
+At last Sheen began swaying slowly to and fro, crooning low the while.
+"I would not be for doing that, Sheen Macarthur," said the deid-watcher
+in a low voice, but meaningly; adding, after a moment's pause, "_The
+mice have all left the house_."
+
+Sheen sat upright, a look half of terror, half of awe in her eyes.
+
+"God save the sinful soul that is hiding," she whispered.
+
+Well she knew what Maisie meant. If the soul of the dead be a lost soul
+it knows its doom. The house of death is the house of sanctuary; but
+before the dawn that follows the death-night the soul must go forth,
+whosoever or whatsoever wait for it in the homeless, shelterless plains
+of air around and beyond. If it be well with the soul, it need have no
+fear; if it be not ill with the soul, it may fare forth with surety; but
+if it be ill with the soul, ill will the going be. Thus is it that the
+spirit of an evil man cannot stay, and yet dare not go; and so it
+strives to hide itself in secret places anywhere, in dark channels and
+blind walls; and the wise creatures that live near man smell the terror,
+and flee. Maisie repeated the saying of Sheen, then, after a silence,
+added:
+
+"Adam Blair will not lie in his grave for a year and a day because of
+the sins that are upon him; and it is knowing that, they are here. He
+will be the Watcher of the Dead for a year and a day."
+
+"Ay, sure, there will be dark prints in the dawn-dew over yonder."
+
+Once more the old women relapsed into silence. Through the night there
+was a sighing sound. It was not the sea, which was too far off to be
+heard save in a day of storm. The wind it was, that was dragging itself
+across the sodden moors like a wounded thing, moaning and sighing.
+
+Out of sheer weariness, Sheen twice rocked forward from her stool, heavy
+with sleep. At last Maisie led her over to the niche-bed opposite, and
+laid her down there, and waited till the deep furrows in the face
+relaxed somewhat, and the thin breath labored slow across the fallen
+jaw.
+
+"Poor old woman," she muttered, heedless of her own gray hairs and
+grayer years; "a bitter, bad thing it is to be old, old and weary. 'Tis
+the sorrow, that. God keep the pain of it!"
+
+As for herself, she did not sleep at all that night, but sat between the
+living and the dead, with her plaid shrouding her. Once, when Sheen gave
+a low, terrified scream in her sleep, she rose, and in a loud voice
+cried, "_Sheeach-ad! Away with you!_" And with that she lifted the
+shroud from the dead man, and took the pennies off the eyelids, and
+lifted each lid; then, staring into these filmed wells, muttered an
+ancient incantation that would compel the soul of Adam Blair to leave
+the spirit of Sheen alone, and return to the cold corpse that was its
+coffin till the wood was ready.
+
+The dawn came at last. Sheen slept, and Adam Blair slept a deeper sleep,
+and Maisie stared out of her wan, weary eyes against the red and stormy
+flares of light that came into the sky.
+
+When, an hour after sunrise, Sheen Macarthur reached her bothy, she
+found Neil Ross, heavy with slumber, upon her bed. The fire was not out,
+though no flame or spark was visible; but she stooped and blew at the
+heart of the peats till the redness came, and once it came it grew.
+Having done this, she kneeled and said a rune of the morning, and after
+that a prayer, and then a prayer for the poor man Neil. She could pray
+no more because of the tears. She rose and put the meal and water into
+the pot for the porridge to be ready against his awaking. One of the
+hens that was there came and pecked at her ragged skirt. "Poor beastie,"
+she said. "Sure, that will just be the way I am pulling at the white
+robe of the Mother o' God. 'Tis a bit meal for you, cluckie, and for me
+a healing hand upon my tears. O, och, ochone, the tears, the tears!"
+
+It was not till the third hour after sunrise of that bleak day in that
+winter of the winters, that Neil Ross stirred and arose. He ate in
+silence. Once he said that he smelt the snow coming out of the north.
+Sheen said no word at all.
+
+After the porridge, he took his pipe, but there was no tobacco. All that
+Sheen had was the pipeful she kept against the gloom of the Sabbath. It
+was her one solace in the long weary week. She gave him this, and held a
+burning peat to his mouth, and hungered over the thin, rank smoke that
+curled upward.
+
+It was within half-an-hour of noon that, after an absence, she returned.
+
+"Not between you and me, Neil Ross," she began abruptly, "but just for
+the asking, and what is beyond. Is it any money you are having upon
+you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Nothing?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Then how will you be getting across to Iona? It is seven long miles to
+Fionnaphort, and bitter cold at that, and you will be needing food, and
+then the ferry, the ferry across the Sound, you know."
+
+"Ay, I know."
+
+"What would you do for a silver piece, Neil, my man?"
+
+"You have none to give me, Sheen Macarthur; and, if you had, it would
+not be taking it I would."
+
+"Would you kiss a dead man for a crown-piece--a crown-piece of five good
+shillings?"
+
+Neil Ross stared. Then he sprang to his feet.
+
+"It is Adam Blair you are meaning, woman! God curse him in death now
+that he is no longer in life!"
+
+Then, shaking and trembling, he sat down again, and brooded against the
+dull red glow of the peats.
+
+But, when he rose, in the last quarter before noon, his face was white.
+
+"The dead are dead, Sheen Macarthur. They can know or do nothing. I will
+do it. It is willed. Yes, I am going up to the house there. And now I am
+going from here. God Himself has my thanks to you, and my blessing too.
+They will come back to you. It is not forgetting you I will be.
+Good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye, Neil, son of the woman that was my friend. A south wind to
+you! Go up by the farm. In the front of the house you will see what you
+will be seeing. Maisie Macdonald will be there. She will tell you what's
+for the telling. There is no harm in it, sure; sure, the dead are dead.
+It is praying for you I will be, Neil Ross. Peace to you!"
+
+"And to you, Sheen."
+
+And with that the man went.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Neil Ross reached the byres of the farm in the wide hollow, he saw
+two figures standing as though awaiting him, but separate, and unseen of
+the other. In front of the house was a man he knew to be Andrew Blair;
+behind the milk-shed was a woman he guessed to be Maisie Macdonald.
+
+It was the woman he came upon first.
+
+"Are you the friend of Sheen Macarthur?" she asked in a whisper, as she
+beckoned him to the doorway.
+
+"I am."
+
+"I am knowing no names or anything. And no one here will know you, I am
+thinking. So do the thing and begone."
+
+"There is no harm to it?"
+
+"None."
+
+"It will be a thing often done, is it not?"
+
+"Ay, sure."
+
+"And the evil does not abide?"
+
+"No. The ... the ... person ... the person takes them away, and...."
+
+"_Them?_"
+
+"For sure, man! Them ... the sins of the corpse. He takes them away; and
+are you for thinking God would let the innocent suffer for the guilty?
+No ... the person ... the Sin-Eater, you know ... takes them away on
+himself, and one by one the air of heaven washes them away till he, the
+Sin-Eater, is clean and whole as before."
+
+"But if it is a man you hate ... if it is a corpse that is the corpse of
+one who has been a curse and a foe ... if...."
+
+"_Sst!_ Be still now with your foolishness. It is only an idle saying, I
+am thinking. Do it, and take the money and go. It will be hell enough
+for Adam Blair, miser as he was, if he is for knowing that five good
+shillings of his money are to go to a passing tramp because of an old,
+ancient silly tale."
+
+Neil Ross laughed low at that. It was for pleasure to him.
+
+"Hush wi' ye! Andrew Blair is waiting round there. Say that I have sent
+you round, as I have neither bite nor bit to give."
+
+Turning on his heel, Neil walked slowly round to the front of the house.
+A tall man was there, gaunt and brown, with hairless face and lank brown
+hair, but with eyes cold and gray as the sea.
+
+"Good day to you, an' good faring. Will you be passing this way to
+anywhere?"
+
+"Health to you. I am a stranger here. It is on my way to Iona I am. But
+I have the hunger upon me. There is not a brown bit in my pocket. I
+asked at the door there, near the byres. The woman told me she could
+give me nothing--not a penny even, worse luck--nor, for that, a drink of
+warm milk. 'Tis a sore land this."
+
+"You have the Gaelic of the Isles. Is it from Iona you are?"
+
+"It is from the Isles of the West I come."
+
+"From Tiree ... from Coll?"
+
+"No."
+
+"From the Long Island ... or from Uist ... or maybe from Benbecula?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Oh well, sure it is no matter to me. But may I be asking your name?"
+
+"Macallum."
+
+"Do you know there is a death here, Macallum?"
+
+"If I didn't I would know it now, because of what lies yonder."
+
+Mechanically Andrew Blair looked round. As he knew, a rough bier was
+there, that was made of a dead-board laid upon three milking-stools.
+Beside it was a claar, a small tub to hold potatoes. On the bier was a
+corpse, covered with a canvas sheeting that looked like a sail.
+
+"He was a worthy man, my father," began the son of the dead man, slowly;
+"but he had his faults, like all of us. I might even be saying that he
+had his sins, to the Stones be it said. You will be knowing, Macallum,
+what is thought among the folk ... that a stranger, passing by, may take
+away the sins of the dead, and that, too, without any hurt whatever ...
+any hurt whatever."
+
+"Ay, sure."
+
+"And you will be knowing what is done?"
+
+"Ay."
+
+"With the bread ... and the water...?"
+
+"Ay."
+
+"It is a small thing to do. It is a Christian thing. I would be doing
+it myself, and that gladly, but the ... the ... passer-by who...."
+
+"It is talking of the Sin-Eater you are?"
+
+"Yes, yes, for sure. The Sin-Eater as he is called--and a good Christian
+act it is, for all that the ministers and the priests make a frowning at
+it--the Sin-Eater must be a stranger. He must be a stranger, and should
+know nothing of the dead man--above all, bear him no grudge."
+
+At that Neil Ross's eyes lightened for a moment.
+
+"And why that?"
+
+"Who knows? I have heard this, and I have heard that. If the Sin-Eater
+was hating the dead man he could take the sins and fling them into the
+sea, and they would be changed into demons of the air that would harry
+the flying soul till Judgment-Day."
+
+"And how would that thing be done?"
+
+The man spoke with flashing eyes and parted lips, the breath coming
+swift. Andrew Blair looked at him suspiciously; and hesitated, before,
+in a cold voice, he spoke again.
+
+"That is all folly, I am thinking, Macallum. Maybe it is all folly, the
+whole of it. But, see here, I have no time to be talking with you. If
+you will take the bread and the water you shall have a good meal if you
+want it, and ... and ... yes, look you, my man, I will be giving you a
+shilling too, for luck."
+
+"I will have no meal in this house, Anndramhic-Adam; nor will I do this
+thing unless you will be giving me two silver half-crowns. That is the
+sum I must have, or no other."
+
+"Two half-crowns! Why, man, for one half-crown...."
+
+"Then be eating the sins o' your father yourself, Andrew Blair! It is
+going I am."
+
+"Stop, man! Stop, Macallum. See here--I will be giving you what you
+ask."
+
+"So be it. Is the.... Are you ready?"
+
+"Ay, come this way."
+
+With that the two men turned and moved slowly towards the bier.
+
+In the doorway of the house stood a man and two women; farther in, a
+woman; and at the window to the left, the serving-wench, Jessie McFall,
+and two men of the farm. Of those in the doorway, the man was Peter, the
+half-witted youngest brother of Andrew Blair; the taller and older woman
+was Catreen, the widow of Adam, the second brother; and the thin, slight
+woman, with staring eyes and drooping mouth, was Muireall, the wife of
+Andrew. The old woman behind these was Maisie Macdonald.
+
+Andrew Blair stooped and took a saucer out of the claar. This he put
+upon the covered breast of the corpse. He stooped again, and brought
+forth a thick square piece of new-made bread. That also he placed upon
+the breast of the corpse. Then he stooped again, and with that he
+emptied a spoonful of salt alongside the bread.
+
+"I must see the corpse," said Neil Ross simply.
+
+"It is not needful, Macallum."
+
+"I must be seeing the corpse, I tell you--and for that, too, the bread
+and the water should be on the naked breast."
+
+"No, no, man; it...."
+
+But here a voice, that of Maisie the wise woman, came upon them, saying
+that the man was right, and that the eating of the sins should be done
+in that way and no other.
+
+With an ill grace the son of the dead man drew back the sheeting.
+Beneath it, the corpse was in a clean white shirt, a death-gown long ago
+prepared, that covered him from his neck to his feet, and left only the
+dusky yellowish face exposed.
+
+While Andrew Blair unfastened the shirt and placed the saucer and the
+bread and the salt on the breast, the man beside him stood staring
+fixedly on the frozen features of the corpse. The new laird had to speak
+to him twice before he heard.
+
+"I am ready. And you, now? What is it you are muttering over against the
+lips of the dead?"
+
+"It is giving him a message I am. There is no harm in that, sure?"
+
+"Keep to your own folk, Macallum. You are from the West you say, and we
+are from the North. There can be no messages between you and a Blair of
+Strathmore, no messages for _you_ to be giving."
+
+"He that lies here knows well the man to whom I am sending a
+message"--and at this response Andrew Blair scowled darkly. He would
+fain have sent the man about his business, but he feared he might get no
+other.
+
+"It is thinking I am that you are not a Macallum at all. I know all of
+that name in Mull, Iona, Skye, and the near isles. What will the name of
+your naming be, and of your father, and of his place?"
+
+Whether he really wanted an answer, or whether he sought only to divert
+the man from his procrastination, his question had a satisfactory
+result.
+
+"Well, now, it's ready I am, Anndra-mhic-Adam."
+
+With that, Andrew Blair stooped once more and from the claar brought a
+small jug of water. From this he filled the saucer.
+
+"You know what to say and what to do, Macallum."
+
+There was not one there who did not have a shortened breath because of
+the mystery that was now before them, and the fearfulness of it. Neil
+Ross drew himself up, erect, stiff, with white, drawn face. All who
+waited, save Andrew Blair, thought that the moving of his lips was
+because of the prayer that was slipping upon them, like the last lapsing
+of the ebb-tide. But Blair was watching him closely, and knew that it
+was no prayer which stole out against the blank air that was around the
+dead.
+
+Slowly Neil Ross extended his right arm. He took a pinch of the salt and
+put it in the saucer, then took another pinch and sprinkled it upon the
+bread. His hand shook for a moment as he touched the saucer. But there
+was no shaking as he raised it towards his lips, or when he held it
+before him when he spoke.
+
+"With this water that has salt in it, and has lain on thy corpse, O Adam
+mhic Anndra mhic Adam Mor, I drink away all the evil that is upon
+thee...."
+
+There was throbbing silence while he paused.
+
+"... And may it be upon me and not upon thee, if with this water it
+cannot flow away."
+
+Thereupon, he raised the saucer and passed it thrice round the head of
+the corpse sunways; and, having done this, lifted it to his lips and
+drank as much as his mouth would hold. Thereafter he poured the remnant
+over his left hand, and let it trickle to the ground. Then he took the
+piece of bread. Thrice, too, he passed it round the head of the corpse
+sunways.
+
+He turned and looked at the man by his side, then at the others, who
+watched him with beating hearts.
+
+With a loud clear voice he took the sins.
+
+"_Thoir dhomh do ciontachd, O Adam mhic Anndra mhic Adam Mor!_ Give me
+thy sins to take away from thee! Lo, now, as I stand here, I break this
+bread that has lain on thee in corpse, and I am eating it, I am, and in
+that eating I take upon me the sins of thee, O man that was alive and is
+now white with the stillness!"
+
+Thereupon Neil Ross broke the bread and ate of it, and took upon himself
+the sins of Adam Blair that was dead. It was a bitter swallowing, that.
+The remainder of the bread he crumbled in his hand, and threw it on the
+ground, and trod upon it. Andrew Blair gave a sigh of relief. His cold
+eyes lightened with malice.
+
+"Be off with you, now, Macallum. We are wanting no tramps at the farm
+here, and perhaps you had better not be trying to get work this side
+Iona; for it is known as the Sin-Eater you will be, and that won't be
+for the helping, I am thinking! There--there are the two half-crowns for
+you ... and may they bring you no harm, you that are _Scapegoat_ now!"
+
+The Sin-Eater turned at that, and stared like a hill-bull. _Scapegoat!_
+Ay, that's what he was. Sin-Eater, Scapegoat! Was he not, too, another
+Judas, to have sold for silver that which was not for the selling? No,
+no, for sure Maisie Macdonald could tell him the rune that would serve
+for the easing of this burden. He would soon be quit of it.
+
+Slowly he took the money, turned it over, and put it in his pocket.
+
+"I am going, Andrew Blair," he said quietly, "I am going now. I will not
+say to him that is there in the silence, A chuid do Pharas da!--nor will
+I say to you, Gu'n gleidheadh Dia thu,--nor will I say to this dwelling
+that is the home of thee and thine, Gu'n beannaic-headh Dia an
+tigh!"[12]
+
+[Footnote 12: A chuid do Pharas da! "His share of heaven be his." Gu'n
+gleidheadh Dia thu, "May God preserve you." Gu'n beannaic-headh Dia an
+tigh! "God's blessing on this house."]
+
+Here there was a pause. All listened. Andrew Blair shifted uneasily, the
+furtive eyes of him going this way and that, like a ferret in the grass.
+
+"But, Andrew Blair, I will say this: when you fare abroad, _Droch caoidh
+ort!_ and when you go upon the water, _Gaoth gun direadh ort_! Ay, ay,
+Anndra-mhic-Adam, _Dia ad aghaidh 's ad aodann ... agus bas dunach ort!
+Dhonas 's dholas ort, agus leat-sa!_"[13]
+
+[Footnote 13: Droch caoidh ort! "May a fatal accident happen to you"
+(_lit._ "bad moan on you"). Gaoth gun direadh ort! "May you drift to
+your drowning" (_lit._ "wind without direction on you"). Dia ad aghaidh,
+etc., "God against thee and in thy face ... and may a death of woe be
+yours.... Evil and sorrow to thee and thine!"]
+
+The bitterness of these words was like snow in June upon all there. They
+stood amazed. None spoke. No one moved.
+
+Neil Ross turned upon his heel, and, with a bright light in his eyes,
+walked away from the dead and the living. He went by the byres, whence
+he had come. Andrew Blair remained where he was, now glooming at the
+corpse, now biting his nails and staring at the damp sods at his feet.
+
+When Neil reached the end of the milk-shed he saw Maisie Macdonald
+there, waiting.
+
+"These were ill sayings of yours, Neil Ross," she said in a low voice,
+so that she might not be overheard from the house.
+
+"So, it is knowing me you are."
+
+"Sheen Macarthur told me."
+
+"I have good cause."
+
+"That is a true word. I know it."
+
+"Tell me this thing. What is the rune that is said for the throwing into
+the sea of the sins of the dead? See here, Maisie Macdonald. There is no
+money of that man that I would carry a mile with me. Here it is. It is
+yours, if you will tell me that rune."
+
+Maisie took the money hesitatingly. Then, stooping, she said slowly the
+few lines of the old, old rune.
+
+"Will you be remembering that?"
+
+"It is not forgetting it I will be, Maisie."
+
+"Wait a moment. There is some warm milk here."
+
+With that she went, and then, from within, beckoned to him to enter.
+
+"There is no one here, Neil Ross. Drink the milk."
+
+He drank; and while he did so she drew a leather pouch from some hidden
+place in her dress.
+
+"And now I have this to give you."
+
+She counted out ten pennies and two farthings.
+
+"It is all the coppers I have. You are welcome to them. Take them,
+friend of my friend. They will give you the food you need, and the ferry
+across the Sound."
+
+"I will do that, Maisie Macdonald, and thanks to you. It is not
+forgetting it I will be, nor you, good woman. And now, tell me, is it
+safe that I am? He called me a 'scapegoat', he, Andrew Blair! Can evil
+touch me between this and the sea?"
+
+"You must go to the place where the evil was done to you and yours--and
+that, I know, is on the west side of Iona. Go, and God preserve you. But
+here, too, is a sian that will be for the safety."
+
+Thereupon, with swift mutterings she said this charm: an old, familiar
+Sian against Sudden Harm:
+
+    "Sian a chuir Moire air Mac ort,
+    Sian ro' marbhadh, sian ro' lot ort,
+    Sian eadar a' chlioch 's a' ghlun,
+    Sian nan Tri ann an aon ort,
+    O mhullach do chinn gu bonn do chois ort:
+    Sian seachd eadar a h-aon ort,
+    Sian seachd eadar a dha ort,
+    Sian seachd eadar a tri ort,
+    Sian seachd eadar a ceithir ort,
+    Sian seachd eadar a coig ort,
+    Sian seachd eadar a sia ort,
+    Sian seachd paidir nan seach paidir dol deiseil ri diugh narach ort,
+      ga do ghleidheadh bho bheud 's bho mhi-thapadh!"
+
+Scarcely had she finished before she heard heavy steps approaching.
+
+"Away with you," she whispered, repeating in a loud, angry tone, "Away
+with you! _Seachad! Seachad!_"
+
+And with that Neil Ross slipped from the milk-shed and crossed the yard,
+and was behind the byres before Andrew Blair, with sullen mien and
+swift, wild eyes, strode from the house.
+
+It was with a grim smile on his face that Neil tramped down the wet
+heather till he reached the high road, and fared thence as through a
+marsh because of the rains there had been.
+
+For the first mile he thought of the angry mind of the dead man, bitter
+at paying of the silver. For the second mile he thought of the evil that
+had been wrought for him and his. For the third mile he pondered over
+all that he had heard and done and taken upon him that day.
+
+Then he sat down upon a broken granite heap by the way, and brooded deep
+till one hour went, and then another, and the third was upon him.
+
+A man driving two calves came towards him out of the west. He did not
+hear or see. The man stopped; spoke again. Neil gave no answer. The
+drover shrugged his shoulders, hesitated, and walked slowly on, often
+looking back.
+
+An hour later a shepherd came by the way he himself had tramped. He was
+a tall, gaunt man with a squint. The small, pale-blue eyes glittered out
+of a mass of red hair that almost covered his face. He stood still,
+opposite Neil, and leaned on his _cromak_.
+
+"Latha math leat," he said at last; "I wish you good day."
+
+Neil glanced at him, but did not speak.
+
+"What is your name, for I seem to know you?"
+
+But Neil had already forgotten him. The shepherd took out his
+snuff-mull, helped himself, and handed the mull to the lonely wayfarer.
+Neil mechanically helped himself.
+
+"Am bheil thu 'dol do Fhionphort?" tried the shepherd again: "Are you
+going to Fionnaphort?"
+
+"Tha mise 'dol a dh' I-challum-chille," Neil answered, in a low, weary
+voice, and as a man adream: "I am on my way to Iona."
+
+"I am thinking I know now who you are. You are the man Macallum."
+
+Neil looked, but did not speak. His eyes dreamed against what the other
+could not see or know. The shepherd called angrily to his dogs to keep
+the sheep from straying; then, with a resentful air, turned to his
+victim.
+
+"You are a silent man for sure, you are. I'm hoping it is not the curse
+upon you already."
+
+"What curse?"
+
+"Ah, _that_ has brought the wind against the mist! I was thinking so!"
+
+"What curse?"
+
+"You are the man that was the Sin-Eater over there?"
+
+"Ay."
+
+"The man Macallum?"
+
+"Ay."
+
+"Strange it is, but three days ago I saw you in Tobermory, and heard you
+give your name as Neil Ross to an Iona man that was there."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Oh, sure, it is nothing to me. But they say the Sin-Eater should not be
+a man with a hidden lump in his pack."[14]
+
+[Footnote 14: i.e. With a criminal secret, or an undiscovered crime.]
+
+"Why?"
+
+"For the dead know, and are content. There is no shaking off any sins,
+then--for that man."
+
+"It is a lie."
+
+"Maybe ay and maybe no."
+
+"Well, have you more to be saying to me? I am obliged to you for your
+company, but it is not needing it I am, though no offense."
+
+"Och, man, there's no offense between you and me. Sure, there's Iona in
+me, too; for the father of my father married a woman that was the
+granddaughter of Tomais Macdonald, who was a fisherman there. No, no; it
+is rather warning you I would be."
+
+"And for what?"
+
+"Well, well, just because of that laugh I heard about."
+
+"What laugh?"
+
+"The laugh of Adam Blair that is dead."
+
+Neil Ross stared, his eyes large and wild. He leaned a little forward.
+No word came from him. The look that was on his face was the question.
+
+"Yes, it was this way. Sure, the telling of it is just as I heard it.
+After you ate the sins of Adam Blair, the people there brought out the
+coffin. When they were putting him into it, he was as stiff as a sheep
+dead in the snow--and just like that, too, with his eyes wide open.
+Well, someone saw you trampling the heather down the slope that is in
+front of the house, and said, 'It is the Sin-Eater!' With that, Andrew
+Blair sneered, and said--'Ay, 'tis the scapegoat he is!' Then, after a
+while, he went on, 'The Sin-Eater they call him; ay, just so; and a
+bitter good bargain it is, too, if all's true that's thought true!' And
+with that he laughed, and then his wife that was behind him laughed,
+and then...."
+
+"Well, what then?"
+
+"Well, 'tis Himself that hears and knows if it is true! But this is the
+thing I was told: After that laughing there was a stillness and a dread.
+For all there saw that the corpse had turned its head and was looking
+after you as you went down the heather. Then, Neil Ross, if that be your
+true name, Adam Blair that was dead put up his white face against the
+sky, and laughed."
+
+At this, Ross sprang to his feet with a gasping sob.
+
+"It is a lie, that thing!" he cried, shaking his fist at the shepherd.
+"It is a lie."
+
+"It is no lie. And by the same token, Andrew Blair shrank back white and
+shaking, and his woman had the swoon upon her, and who knows but the
+corpse might have come to life again had it not been for Maisie
+Macdonald, the deid-watcher, who clapped a handful of salt on his eyes,
+and tilted the coffin so that the bottom of it slid forward, and so let
+the whole fall flat on the ground, with Adam Blair in it sideways, and
+as likely as not cursing and groaning, as his wont was, for the hurt
+both to his old bones and his old ancient dignity."
+
+Ross glared at the man as though the madness was upon him. Fear and
+horror and fierce rage swung him now this way and now that.
+
+"What will the name of you be, shepherd?" he stuttered huskily.
+
+"It is Eachainn Gilleasbuig I am to ourselves; and the English of that
+for those who have no Gaelic is Hector Gillespie; and I am Eachainn mac
+Ian mac Alasdair of Strathsheean that is where Sutherland lies against
+Ross."
+
+"Then take this thing--and that is, the curse of the Sin-Eater! And a
+bitter bad thing may it be upon you and yours."
+
+And with that Neil the Sin-Eater flung his hand up into the air, and
+then leaped past the shepherd, and a minute later was running through
+the frightened sheep, with his head low, and a white foam on his lips,
+and his eyes red with blood as a seal's that has the death-wound on it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the third day of the seventh month from that day, Aulay Macneill,
+coming into Balliemore of Iona from the west side of the island, said to
+old Ronald MacCormick, that was the father of his wife, that he had seen
+Neil Ross again, and that he was "absent"--for though he had spoken to
+him, Neil would not answer, but only gloomed at him from the wet weedy
+rock where he sat.
+
+The going back of the man had loosed every tongue that was in Iona.
+When, too, it was known that he was wrought in some terrible way, if not
+actually mad, the islanders whispered that it was because of the sins of
+Adam Blair. Seldom or never now did they speak of him by his name, but
+simply as "The Sin-Eater." The thing was not so rare as to cause this
+strangeness, nor did many (and perhaps none did) think that the sins of
+the dead ever might or could abide with the living who had merely done a
+good Christian charitable thing. But there was a reason.
+
+Not long after Neil Ross had come again to Iona, and had settled down
+in the ruined roofless house on the croft of Ballyrona, just like a fox
+or a wild-cat, as the saying was, he was given fishing-work to do by
+Aulay Macneill, who lived at Ard-an-teine, at the rocky north end of the
+machar or plain that is on the west Atlantic coast of the island.
+
+One moonlit night, either the seventh or the ninth after the earthing of
+Adam Blair at his own place in the Ross, Aulay Macneill saw Neil Ross
+steal out of the shadow of Ballyrona and make for the sea. Macneill was
+there by the rocks, mending a lobster-creel. He had gone there because
+of the sadness. Well, when he saw the Sin-Eater, he watched.
+
+Neil crept from rock to rock till he reached the last fang that churns
+the sea into yeast when the tide sucks the land just opposite.
+
+Then he called out something that Aulay Macneill could not catch. With
+that he springs up, and throws his arms above him.
+
+"Then," says Aulay when he tells the tale, "it was like a ghost he was.
+The moonshine was on his face like the curl o' a wave. White! there is
+no whiteness like that of the human face. It was whiter than the foam
+about the skerry it was; whiter than the moon shining; whiter than ...
+well, as white as the painted letters on the black boards of the
+fishing-cobles. There he stood, for all that the sea was about him, the
+slip-slop waves leapin' wild, and the tide making, too, at that. He was
+shaking like a sail two points off the wind. It was then that, all of a
+sudden, he called in a womany, screamin' voice--
+
+"'I am throwing the sins of Adam Blair into the midst of ye, white dogs
+o' the sea! Drown them, tear them, drag them away out into the black
+deeps! Ay, ay, ay, ye dancin' wild waves, this is the third time I am
+doing it, and now there is none left; no, not a sin, not a sin!
+
+    "'O-hi O-ri, dark tide o' the sea,
+    I am giving the sins of a dead man to thee!
+    By the Stones, by the Wind, by the Fire, by the Tree,
+    From the dead man's sins set me free, set me free!
+    Adam mhic Anndra mhic Adam and me,
+    Set us free! Set us free!'
+
+"Ay, sure, the Sin-Eater sang that over and over; and after the third
+singing he swung his arms and screamed:
+
+    "'And listen to me, black waters an' running tide,
+    That rune is the good rune told me by Maisie the wise,
+    And I am Neil the son of Silis Macallum
+    By the black-hearted evil man Murtagh Ross,
+    That was the friend of Adam mac Anndra, God against him!'
+
+"And with that he scrambled and fell into the sea. But, as I am Aulay
+mac Luais and no other, he was up in a moment, an' swimmin' like a seal,
+and then over the rocks again, an' away back to that lonely roofless
+place once more, laughing wild at times, an' muttering an' whispering."
+
+It was this tale of Aulay Macneill's that stood between Neil Ross and
+the isle-folk. There was something behind all that, they whispered one
+to another.
+
+So it was always the Sin-Eater he was called at last. None sought him.
+The few children who came upon him now and again fled at his approach,
+or at the very sight of him. Only Aulay Macneill saw him at times, and
+had word of him.
+
+After a month had gone by, all knew that the Sin-Eater was wrought to
+madness because of this awful thing: the burden of Adam Blair's sins
+would not go from him! Night and day he could hear them laughing low, it
+was said.
+
+But it was the quiet madness. He went to and fro like a shadow in the
+grass, and almost as soundless as that, and as voiceless. More and more
+the name of him grew as a terror. There were few folk on that wild west
+coast of Iona, and these few avoided him when the word ran that he had
+knowledge of strange things, and converse, too, with the secrets of the
+sea.
+
+One day Aulay Macneill, in his boat, but dumb with amaze and terror for
+him, saw him at high tide swimming on a long rolling wave right into the
+hollow of the Spouting Cave. In the memory of man, no one had done this
+and escaped one of three things: a snatching away into oblivion, a
+strangled death, or madness. The islanders know that there swims into
+the cave, at full tide, a Mar-Tarbh, a dreadful creature of the sea that
+some call a kelpie; only it is not a kelpie, which is like a woman, but
+rather is a sea-bull, offspring of the cattle that are never seen. Ill
+indeed for any sheep or goat, ay, or even dog or child, if any happens
+to be leaning over the edge of the Spouting Cave when the Mar-tarv
+roars; for, of a surety, it will fall in and straightway be devoured.
+
+With awe and trembling Aulay listened for the screaming of the doomed
+man. It was full tide, and the sea-beast would be there.
+
+The minutes passed, and no sign. Only the hollow booming of the sea, as
+it moved like a baffled blind giant round the cavern-bases; only the
+rush and spray of the water flung up the narrow shaft high into the
+windy air above the cliff it penetrates.
+
+At last he saw what looked like a mass of seaweed swirled out on the
+surge. It was the Sin-Eater. With a leap, Aulay was at his oars. The
+boat swung through the sea. Just before Neil Ross was about to sink for
+the second time, he caught him and dragged him into the boat.
+
+But then, as ever after, nothing was to be got out of the Sin-Eater save
+a single saying: Tha e lamhan fuar! Tha e lamhan fuar!--"It has a cold,
+cold hand!"
+
+The telling of this and other tales left none free upon the island to
+look upon the "scapegoat" save as one accursed.
+
+It was in the third month that a new phase of his madness came upon Neil
+Ross.
+
+The horror of the sea and the passion for the sea came over him at the
+same happening. Oftentimes he would race along the shore, screaming wild
+names to it, now hot with hate and loathing, now as the pleading of a
+man with the woman of his love. And strange chants to it, too, were upon
+his lips. Old, old lines of forgotten runes were overheard by Aulay
+Macneill, and not Aulay only; lines wherein the ancient sea-name of the
+island, _Ioua_, that was given to it long before it was called Iona, or
+any other of the nine names that are said to belong to it, occurred
+again and again.
+
+The flowing tide it was that wrought him thus. At the ebb he would
+wander across the weedy slabs or among the rocks, silent, and more like
+a lost duinshee than a man.
+
+Then again after three months a change in his madness came. None knew
+what it was, though Aulay said that the man moaned and moaned because of
+the awful burden he bore. No drowning seas for the sins that could not
+be washed away, no grave for the live sins that would be quick till the
+day of the Judgment!
+
+For weeks thereafter he disappeared. As to where he was, it is not for
+the knowing.
+
+Then at last came that third day of the seventh month when, as I have
+said, Aulay Macneill told old Ronald MacCormick that he had seen the
+Sin-Eater again.
+
+It was only a half-truth that he told, though. For, after he had seen
+Neil Ross upon the rock, he had followed him when he rose, and wandered
+back to the roofless place which he haunted now as of yore. Less
+wretched a shelter now it was, because of the summer that was come,
+though a cold, wet summer at that.
+
+"Is that you, Neil Ross?" he had asked, as he peered into the shadows
+among the ruins of the house.
+
+"That's not my name," said the Sin-Eater; and he seemed as strange then
+and there, as though he were a castaway from a foreign ship.
+
+"And what will it be, then, you that are my friend, and sure knowing me
+as Aulay mac Luais--Aulay Macneill that never grudges you bit or sup?"
+
+"_I am Judas._"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"And at that word," says Aulay Macneill, when he tells the tale, "at
+that word the pulse in my heart was like a bat in a shut room. But after
+a bit I took up the talk.
+
+"'Indeed,' I said; 'and I was not for knowing that. May I be so bold as
+to ask whose son, and of what place?'
+
+"But all he said to me was, '_I am Judas_.'
+
+"Well, I said, to comfort him, 'Sure, it's not such a bad name in
+itself, though I am knowing some which have a more home-like sound.' But
+no, it was no good.
+
+"'I am Judas. And because I sold the Son of God for five pieces of
+silver....'
+
+"But here I interrupted him and said, 'Sure, now, Neil--I mean,
+Judas--it was eight times five.' Yet the simpleness of his sorrow
+prevailed, and I listened with the wet in my eyes.
+
+"'I am Judas. And because I sold the Son of God for five silver
+shillings, He laid upon me all the nameless black sins of the world. And
+that is why I am bearing them till the Day of Days.'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And this was the end of the Sin-Eater; for I will not tell the long
+story of Aulay Macneill, that gets longer and longer every winter; but
+only the unchanging close of it.
+
+I will tell it in the words of Aulay.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"A bitter, wild day it was, that day I saw him to see him no more. It
+was late. The sea was red with the flamin' light that burned up the air
+betwixt Iona and all that is west of West. I was on the shore, looking
+at the sea. The big green waves came in like the chariots in the Holy
+Book. Well, it was on the black shoulder of one of them, just short of
+the ton o' foam that swept above it, that I saw a spar surgin' by.
+
+"'What is that?' I said to myself. And the reason of my wondering was
+this: I saw that a smaller spar was swung across it. And while I was
+watching that thing another great billow came in with a roar, and hurled
+the double spar back, and not so far from me but I might have gripped
+it. But who would have gripped that thing if he were for seeing what I
+saw?
+
+"It is Himself knows that what I say is a true thing.
+
+"On that spar was Neil Ross, the Sin-Eater. Naked he was as the day he
+was born. And he was lashed, too--ay, sure, he was lashed to it by ropes
+round and round his legs and his waist and his left arm. It was the
+Cross he was on. I saw that thing with the fear upon me. Ah, poor
+drifting wreck that he was! _Judas on the Cross!_ It was his _eric_!
+
+"But even as I watched, shaking in my limbs, I saw that there was life
+in him still. The lips were moving, and his right arm was ever for
+swinging this way and that. 'Twas like an oar, working him off a lee
+shore; ay, that was what I thought.
+
+"Then, all at once, he caught sight of me. Well he knew me, poor man,
+that has his share of heaven now, I am thinking!
+
+"He waved, and called, but the hearing could not be, because of a big
+surge o' water that came tumbling down upon him. In the stroke of an oar
+he was swept close by the rocks where I was standing. In that
+flounderin', seethin' whirlpool I saw the white face of him for a
+moment, an' as he went out on the re-surge like a hauled net, I heard
+these words fallin' against my ears:
+
+"'An eirig m'anama.... In ransom for my soul!'
+
+"And with that I saw the double-spar turn over and slide down the
+back-sweep of a drowning big wave. Ay, sure, it went out to the deep sea
+swift enough then. It was in the big eddy that rushes between Skerry-Mor
+and Skerry-Beag. I did not see it again--no, not for the quarter of an
+hour, I am thinking. Then I saw just the whirling top of it rising out
+of the flying yeast of a great, black-blustering wave, that was rushing
+northward before the current that is called the Black-Eddy.
+
+"With that you have the end of Neil Ross; ay, sure, him that was called
+the Sin-Eater. And that is a true thing; and may God save us the sorrow
+of sorrows.
+
+"And that is all."
+
+
+
+
+GHOSTS IN SOLID FORM
+
+BY GAMBIER BOLTON
+
+Ex-Pres. The Psychological Society, London, F.R.G.S., F.Z.S., etc.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+"_A single grain of solid fact is worth ten tons of theory._"
+
+"_The more I think of it, the more I find this conclusion impressed upon
+me, that the greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to
+SEE something and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people
+can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can
+see. To SEE clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion all in
+one._"--JOHN RUSKIN.
+
+
+WORKING HYPOTHESIS
+
+That under certain known and reasonable conditions of temperature,
+light, etc., entities, existing in a sphere outside our own, have been
+demonstrated again and again to manifest themselves on earth in
+temporary bodies materialized from an, at present, undiscovered source,
+through the agency of certain persons of both sexes, termed
+"sensitives," and can be so demonstrated to any person who will provide
+the conditions proved to be necessary for such a demonstration.
+
+
+CONDITIONS
+
+Looking back to the seven years of my life which I devoted to a careful
+and critical investigation of the claim made, not only by both
+Occidental and Oriental mystics but by well-known men of science like
+Sir William Crookes, Professor Alfred Russel Wallace, and others--that
+it was possible under certain clearly defined conditions to produce,
+apparently out of nothing, fully formed bodies, inhabited by
+(presumably) human entities from another sphere--the wonder of it still
+enthralls me; the apparent impossibility of so great an upheaval of such
+laws of Nature as we are at present acquainted with being proved clearly
+to be possible, will remain to the end as "the wonder of wonders" in a
+by no means uneventful life.
+
+For, as compared with this, that greatest of Nature's mysteries--the
+procreation of a human infant by either the normal or mechanical
+impregnation of an ovum, its months of foetal growth and development in
+the uterus, and its birth into the world in a helpless and enfeebled
+condition, amazing as they are to all physiological students--sinks into
+comparative insignificance when compared with the nearly instantaneous
+production of a fully developed human body, with all its organs
+functioning properly; a body inhabited temporarily by a thinking,
+reasoning entity, who can see, hear, taste, smell and touch: a body
+which can be handled, weighed, measured, and photographed.
+
+When these claims were first brought to my notice I realized at once
+that I was face to face with a problem which would require the very
+closest investigation; and I then and there decided to give up work of
+all kinds and to devote years, if necessary, to a critical examination
+of these claims, to investigate the matter calmly and dispassionately,
+and, in Sir John Herschel's memorable words, "to stand or fall by the
+result of a direct appeal to facts in the first instance, _and of strict
+logical deduction from them afterwards_."
+
+And, as I have said, the result has been that the apparently impossible
+has been proved to be possible--_the facts have beaten me_, and I accept
+them whole-heartedly, admitting that our working hypothesis has been
+proved beyond any possibility of doubt, and that these materialized
+entities can manifest themselves to-day to any person who will provide
+the conditions necessary for such a demonstration.
+
+Who they are, what they are, whence they come, and whither they go, each
+investigator must determine for himself, but of their actual existence
+in a sphere just outside our own there can no longer be any room for
+doubt. As a busy man, theories have little or no attraction for me. What
+I demand, and what other busy men and women demand in an investigation
+of this kind is that there should be a reasonable possibility of getting
+hold of _facts_, good solid facts which can be demonstrated as such to
+any open-minded inquirer, otherwise it would be useless to commence such
+an investigation. And we have now got these facts, and can prove them on
+purely scientific lines.
+
+The meaning of the word materialization, so far at least as it concerns
+our investigation, I understand to be this: the taking on by an entity
+from a sphere outside our own, an entity representing a man, woman, or
+child (or even a beast or bird), of a temporary body built up from
+material drawn partially from the inhabitants of earth, consolidated
+through the agency of certain persons of both sexes, termed sensitives,
+and moulded by the entity into a semblance of the body which (it
+alleges) it inhabited during its existence on earth. In other words, a
+materialization is the appearance of an entity in bodily, tangible form,
+i.e., one which we can touch, thus differing from an astralization,
+etherealization, or apparition, which is, of course, one which cannot be
+touched, although it may be clearly visible to any one possessing only
+normal sight.
+
+Let me, then, endeavor to describe to the best of my ability, and in
+very simple language, how I believe these materializations to be
+produced, and the conditions which I have proved to be necessary in
+order that the finest results may be obtained.
+
+I will deal first with the question of _the conditions_, as without
+conditions of some kind no materialization can be produced, any more
+than a scientific experiment--such as mixing various chemicals together,
+in order to produce a certain result--can be carried out successfully
+without proper conditions being provided by the experimenter. What,
+then, do we mean by this word "conditions"?
+
+Take a homely example. The baker mixes exactly the right quantities of
+flour, salt, and yeast with water, and then places the dough which he
+has made in an oven heated to just the right temperature, and produces a
+loaf of bread. Why? Because the conditions were good ones. Had he
+omitted the flour, the yeast, or the water, or had he used an oven over
+or under-heated, he could not have produced an eatable loaf of bread,
+because the conditions made it impossible.
+
+This is what is meant by the terms "good conditions," "bad conditions,"
+"breaking conditions."
+
+The conditions, then, under which I have been able to prove to many
+hundreds of inquirers that it is possible for materialized entities to
+appear on earth, in solid tangible form, are these:
+
+First, light, of suitable wave-length, i.e. suitable color, and let me
+say here, once and for all, that I have proved conclusively for myself
+that _darkness is not necessary_, provided that one is experimenting
+with a sensitive who has been trained to sit always in the light.
+
+On two occasions I have witnessed materializations in daylight; and
+neither of Sir William Crookes's sensitives--D. D. Home or Florrie Cook
+(Mrs. Corner)--would ever sit in darkness, the latter--with whom I
+carried out a long series of experiments--invariably stipulating that a
+good light should be used during the whole time that the experiment
+lasted, as she was terrified at the mere thought of darkness.
+
+I find that sunlight, electric light, gas, colza oil, and paraffine are
+all apt to check the production of the phenomena unless filtered through
+canary-yellow, orange, red linen or paper--just as they are filtered for
+photographic purposes--owing to the violent action of the actinic (blue)
+rays which they contain (the rays from the violet end of the spectrum),
+which are said to work at about six hundred billions of vibrations per
+second. But if the light is filtered in the way that I have described,
+the production of the phenomena will commence at once, the vibrations of
+the interfering rays being reduced, it is said, to about four hundred
+billions per second or less.
+
+In dealing with materializations we are apt to overlook the fact that we
+are investigating forces or modes of energy far more delicate than
+electricity, for instance. Heat, electricity, and light, as Sir William
+Crookes tells us, are all closely related; we know the awful power of
+heat and electricity, but are only too apt to forget--especially if it
+suits our purpose to do so--that light too has enormous dynamic potency;
+its vibrations being said to travel in space at the incredible speed of
+twelve million miles a minute;[15] and it is therefore only reasonable
+to assume that the power of these vibrations may be sufficient to
+interfere seriously with the more subtle forces, such as those which we
+are now investigating.
+
+[Footnote 15: 186,900 miles a second (J. Wallace Stewart, B.Sc.).]
+
+Secondly, we require suitable heat vibrations, and I find that those
+given off in a room either warmed or chilled to sixty-three degrees are
+the very best possible; anything either much above this, or more
+especially, much below this, tending to weaken the results and to cheek
+the phenomena.
+
+Thirdly, we require suitable _musical_ vibrations, and, after carrying
+out a long series of experiments with musical instruments of all kinds,
+I find that the vibrations given off by the reed organ--termed
+"harmonium" or "American organ"--or by the concertina, are the most
+suitable, the peculiar quality of the vibrations given off by the reeds
+in these instruments proving to be the most suitable ones for use during
+the production of the phenomena; although on one or two occasions I have
+obtained good results without musical vibrations of any kind, but this
+is rare.
+
+Fourthly, we require the presence of a specially organized man or woman,
+termed _the sensitive_, one from whom it is alleged a portion of the
+matter used by the entity in the building up of its temporary body can
+be drawn, with but little chance of injury to their health. This point
+is one of vital importance, we are told, for it has been proved by means
+of a self-registering weighing-machine on which he was seated, and to
+which he was securely fastened with an electrical apparatus secretly
+hidden beneath the seat, which would at once ring a bell in an anteroom
+if he endeavored to rise from his seat during the experiment, that the
+actual loss in weight to the sensitive, when a fully materialized entity
+was standing in our midst, was no less than sixty-five pounds!
+
+Before employing any person, then, as a sensitive for these delicate,
+not to say dangerous, experiments, he or she should be medically
+examined, in the interests of both the investigator and the sensitive,
+and should their health prove to be in any way below par, they should
+not be permitted to take part in the experiment until their health is
+fully restored.
+
+I have been permitted to examine the sensitive at the moment when an
+entity, clad in a fully-formed temporary body, was walking amongst the
+experimenters; and the distorted features, the shrivelled-up limbs and
+contorted trunk of the sensitive at that moment proclaimed the danger
+connected with the production of this special form of phenomena far
+louder than any words of mine could do.
+
+Needless to say, sensitives for materializations are extremely rare, not
+more than two or three being found to-day amidst the teeming millions
+who inhabit the British Islands; although a few are to be found on the
+European continent, and several in North America, where the climatic
+conditions are said to be more favorable for the development of such
+persons.
+
+Now, what constitutes a sensitive, and why are they necessary?
+
+Sensitives through whom physical phenomena (including materializations)
+can be produced have been described, firstly, as persons in whom certain
+forces are stored up, either far in excess of the amount possessed by
+the normal man or woman, or else differing in quality from the forces
+stored up by the normal man or woman; and secondly, as persons who are
+able to attract from those in close proximity to them--provided that the
+conditions are favorable--still more of the force, which thus becomes
+centered in them for the time being. In other words, a sensitive for
+physical phenomena is said to be a storage battery for the force which
+is used in the production of physical phenomena--including
+materializations--although it is by no means improbable that such highly
+developed sensitives as those required for this special purpose may be
+found to possess extra nerve-centers as compared with those possessed by
+normal human beings. But whether this hypothesis be eventually proved or
+not, there seems to be but very little doubt that "whatever the force
+may be which constitutes the difference between a sensitive and a
+non-sensitive, it is certainly of a mental or magnetic character, i.e.,
+a combination of the subtle elements of mind and magnetism, and
+therefore of a _psychological_, and not of a purely _physical_
+character."
+
+But why is a sensitive necessary? you ask. Think of a telephone for a
+moment. You wish to communicate with a person who is holding only the
+end of the wire in his hand, the result being that he cannot hear a
+single word. Why is this? Because he has forgotten to fit a receiver at
+his end of the wire, a receiver in which the vibrations set up by your
+voice may be centralized, focussed, a receiver which he can place to his
+ear, and in doing so will at once hear your voice distinctly--but
+without this your message to him is lost.
+
+And it is said that this is exactly the use of the sensitives during our
+experiments, for they act as "receivers" in which the forces employed in
+the production of the phenomena may be centralized, focussed, their
+varying degrees of sensitiveness enabling them to be used by the
+entities in other spheres for the successful production of such
+phenomena, we are told.
+
+And lastly, we require about twelve to sixteen earnest and really
+sympathetic men and women--persons trained on scientific lines for
+choice--all in the best of health; men and women who, whilst strictly on
+their guard against anything in the shape of fraud, are still so much in
+sympathy with the person who is acting as the sensitive that they are
+all the time sending out kindly thoughts towards him; for if, as has
+been said, "thoughts are things," it is possible that hostile thoughts
+would be sufficient not only to enfeeble, but actually to check
+demonstrations of physical phenomena of all kinds in the presence of
+such specially organized, highly developed individuals as the sensitives
+through whom materializations can be produced.
+
+I shall refer to these men and women as the sitters. We generally select
+an equal number so far as sex is concerned; and, in addition, we
+endeavor to obtain an equal number of persons possessing either
+positive or negative temperaments. In this way we form the sitters into
+a powerful human battery, the combined force given off by them (if the
+battery is properly arranged, and the individual members of that battery
+are in good health) proving of enormous assistance during our
+experiments. If in ill-health, we find that a man or woman is useless to
+us, for we can no more expect to obtain the necessary power from such an
+individual than we can expect to produce an electric spark from a
+discharged accumulator, or pick up needles with a demagnetized piece of
+steel.
+
+We are told to remember always that "all manifestations of natural laws
+are the results of natural conditions."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Minor details too, we find, must be thought out most carefully if we are
+to provide what we may term ideal conditions.
+
+The chairs should be made of wood throughout, those known as Austrian
+bentwood chairs, having perforated seats, being proved to be the best
+for the purpose.
+
+The sitters should bathe and then change their clothing--the ladies into
+white dresses, and the men into dark suits--two hours before the time
+fixed for the experiment, and should then at once partake of a light
+meal--meat and alcohol being strictly forbidden--so that the strain upon
+their constitutions during the experiment may not interfere with their
+health.
+
+Trivial as such matters must appear to the man in the street, we are
+told they must all be carried out most carefully, in order that the
+finest conditions possible may be obtained, the one great object of the
+sitters being to give off all the power--and the best kind of
+power--that they are capable of producing, in order that sufficient
+suitable material may be gathered together from the sensitive and
+themselves, with which a temporary body may be formed for the use of any
+entity wishing to materialize in their presence.
+
+
+PRECAUTIONS AGAINST FRAUD
+
+We are now ready to see what happens at a typical experimental meeting
+for these materializations, at hundreds of which I have assisted, having
+the services of no less than six sensitives placed at my disposal for
+this purpose. I will endeavor to describe what I should consider to be
+an ideal one, held under ideal (test) conditions.
+
+Our imaginary test meeting is to be carried out--as it was on one
+occasion in London--in an entirely empty house, which none of us has
+ever entered before, a house which we will hire for this special event.
+By doing this we may feel sure that all possibility of fraud, so far as
+the use of secret trap-doors, large mirrors, and other undesirable
+things of that description are concerned, can be successfully thwarted.
+
+We are now ready to start our experiment; the general feeling of all
+those in the room being that every possible precaution against trickery
+has been taken, and that if any results of any kind whatever should
+follow they will undoubtedly be genuine.
+
+The sitters having been allotted their seats, so that a person of a
+positive and a person of a negative temperament are seated together, we
+now join hands, and form ourselves into what we are told is a powerful
+human battery; the two persons sitting at the two ends of the
+half-circle having of course each one hand free, and from the free hands
+of these two persons, it is said, the power developed and given off by
+this human battery passes into the sensitive at each of his sides.
+
+Sitting quietly in our chairs and talking gently amongst ourselves, we
+soon feel a cool breeze blowing across our hands. In another two minutes
+this will have so increased in volume that it may with truth be
+described as a strong wind.
+
+On looking at the sensitive now, we see that he is rapidly passing into
+a state of trance--his head is drooping on one side, his arms and hands
+hang downwards loosely, his body being in a limp _real trance_
+condition, and just in the right state for use by any entity desiring to
+work through him, we are told.
+
+I have only experimented with one sensitive who did not pass into
+trance, who, seated amongst the sitters, remained in a perfectly normal
+condition during the whole of the experiment; watching the materialized
+forms building up beside him, and talking to and with them during the
+process. I shall refer to him shortly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We now set our clairvoyants to work, and the statements made by one must
+be confirmed in every detail by the statements of the other as to what
+is occurring at the moment, or no notice is taken of their remarks.
+
+Both now report that they see a thin white mist or vapor[16] coming
+from the left side of the sensitive, if a man (or from the pelvis, if a
+woman), which passes into the sitter at the end of the half-circle
+nearest to the sensitive's left side. It then passes, they state, from
+Sitter No. 1 to Sitter No. 2, and so on, until it has gone through the
+whole of the sixteen sitters, passing finally from the last one--No.
+16--at the end of the half-circle nearest to the sensitive's right side,
+and disappears into his right side.
+
+[Footnote 16: Termed teleplasma.]
+
+We assume from this that the nerve force, magnetic power--call it what
+you will--necessary for the formation of one of these temporary bodies
+starts from the sensitive, passes through each sitter, drawing from each
+as much more force or power as he or she is capable of giving off at the
+moment, returning to the sensitive greatly increased in its amount and
+ready for use in the next process. This, then, we will term the first of
+the three stages in the evolution of an entity clad in a temporary body.
+
+
+THE VAPOR STAGE
+
+In a few moments our clairvoyants both report that the force or power is
+issuing from the side of the sensitive, if a man (or from the pelvis, if
+a woman), in the form of a white, soft, dough-like substance, which on
+one occasion I was permitted to touch. I could perceive no smell given
+off by it; it felt cold and clammy, and appeared to have the consistency
+of heavy dough at the moment that I touched it.
+
+This mass of dough-like substance is said to be the material used by the
+entities--one by one as a rule--who wish to build up a temporary body.
+It seems to rest on the floor, somewhere near the right side of the
+sensitive, until required for use: its bulk depending apparently upon
+the amount of power given off by the sitters from time to time during
+the experiment.
+
+This we will term the second of the three stages of the evolution of an
+entity clad in a temporary body.
+
+
+THE SOLID, BUT SHAPELESS STAGE
+
+We are told that the entity wishing to show himself to us passes into
+this shapeless mass of dough-like substance, which at once increases in
+bulk, and commences to pulsate and move up and down, swaying from side
+to side as it grows in height, the motive power being evidently
+underneath.
+
+The entity then quickly sets to work to mould the mass into something
+resembling a human body, commencing with the head. The rest of the upper
+portion of the body soon follows, and the heart and pulse can now be
+felt to be beating quite regularly and normally, differing in this
+respect from those of the sensitive, who, if tested at this time, will
+be found with both heart and pulse-beats considerably above the normal.
+The legs and feet come last, and then the entity is able to leave the
+near neighborhood of the sensitive and to walk amongst the sitters, the
+third and last stage of its evolution being now complete.
+
+Although occasionally the entity will appear clad in an exact copy of
+the clothing which he states that he wore when on earth--especially if
+it should happen to be something a little out of the common, such as a
+military or naval uniform--they are draped as a rule in flowing white
+garments of a wonderfully soft texture, and this, too, I have been
+permitted to handle.
+
+Our clairvoyants both affirm that at all times during the
+materialization a thin band of, presumably, the dough-like substance can
+be plainly seen issuing from the side of the sensitive, if a man, (or
+from the pelvis, if a woman), and joined onto the center of the body
+inhabited by the entity--just like the umbilical cord attached to a
+human infant at birth--and we are instructed that this band cannot be
+stretched beyond a certain radius, say ten to fifteen feet, without
+doing harm to the sensitive and to the entity; although cases are on
+record where materializations have been seen at a distance of nearly
+sixty feet from the sensitive, on occasions when the conditions were
+unusually favorable.
+
+On handling different portions of the materialized body now, the flesh
+is found to be both warm and firm. The bodies are well proportioned,
+those of the females--for they take on sex conditions during the
+process--having beautiful figures; the hands, arms, legs, and feet are
+quite perfect in their modelling, but in my opinion the body, head, and
+limbs of every materialization of either sex or any age which I have
+scrutinized at close quarters carefully, or have been permitted to
+handle, have appeared to be at least one-third smaller in size (except
+as regards actual height) than those possessed by beings on earth of the
+same sex and age.
+
+Not only have we witnessed materializations of aged entities of both
+sexes, showing all the characteristics of old age--for the purpose of
+identification by the sitters, as they tell us--but we have seen
+materialized infants also; and on one occasion two still-born children
+appeared in our midst simultaneously, one of them showing distinct
+traces on its little face of a hideous deformity which it possessed at
+the time of its premature birth--a deformity known only to the mother,
+who happened to be present that evening as one of the sitters.
+
+We are told that, for the purpose of identification, the entity will
+return to earth in an exact counterpart of the body which he alleges
+that he occupied at the time of his death, in order that he may be
+recognized by his relatives and friends who happen to be present. Thus,
+the one who left the earth as an infant will appear in his materialized
+body as an infant, although he may have been dead for twenty or thirty
+years. The aged man or woman will appear with bent body, wrinkled face,
+and snow-white hair, walking amongst us with difficulty, and just as
+they allege they did before their death, although that may have occurred
+twenty years before. The one who had lost a limb during his earth-life
+will return minus that limb; the one who was disfigured by accident or
+disease will return bearing distinct traces of that disfigurement, for
+the purpose of identification only.
+
+But as soon as the identification has been established successfully, all
+this changes instantly; the disfigurement disappears; the four limbs
+will be seen, and both the infant and the aged will from henceforth show
+themselves to us in the very prime of life--the young growing upwards
+and the aged downwards, as we say, and, as they one and all state
+emphatically, just as they really look and feel in the sphere in which
+they now exist.
+
+While inhabiting these temporary bodies, they state that they take on,
+not only sex conditions, but earth conditions temporarily too; for they
+appear to feel pain if their bodies are injured in any way; complain of
+the cold if the temperature of the room is allowed to fall much below
+sixty degrees, or of the heat if the temperature is allowed to rise
+above seventy degrees; seem to be depressed during a thunderstorm, when
+our atmosphere is overcharged with electricity; and appear bright and
+happy in a warm room when the world outside is in the grip of a hard
+frost, and also on bright, starry nights.
+
+And not only this, but they take on strongly marked characteristics of
+the numerous races on earth temporarily too; the materialized entities
+of the white races differing quite as markedly from those of the yellow
+or brown races, as do these from the black races; and in speaking to us
+each one will communicate in the particular language only which is
+characteristic of his race on earth.
+
+Five, six and even _seven_ totally different languages have been
+employed during a single experimental meeting through a sensitive who
+had never in his life been out of England, and who was proved
+conclusively to know no other language than English; the latter number,
+we were told, being in honor of a ship's doctor who was present on one
+occasion, and who--although the fact was quite unknown to any of us at
+the time--proved to be an expert linguist, for he conversed that evening
+with different entities in English, French, German, Russian, Chinese,
+Japanese, and in the language of one of the hill-tribes of India.
+
+On another occasion, when I was the only European present at an
+afternoon experimental meeting held in London by eight Parsees of both
+sexes from Bombay, during the whole of the time which the meeting
+lasted--two and a quarter hours--the entities and the Parsee sitters
+carried on their conversation in Hindustani; two entities and one of the
+Parsee men simultaneously engaging in a heated controversy, which lasted
+for nearly three minutes, over the disposal of the bodies of their dead,
+the entities insisting on cremation only, as opposed to allowing the
+bodies to be eaten by vultures--the noise which they made during this
+discussion being almost deafening. The sensitive, it was proved
+conclusively, knew no other language than English, and had only once
+been out of the British Islands, when he paid a short visit to France.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+     "_Sit down before a fact as a little child: be prepared to give
+     up every preconceived notion: follow humbly wherever and to
+     whatever abysses Nature leads, or you shall learn
+     nothing._"--THOMAS HUXLEY.
+
+
+TESTS
+
+The tests given to me and to my fellow-investigators through the six
+sensitives who so ably assisted us during our seven years of
+experimental work in this little-known field of research--the tests have
+been so numerous, and were of such a varied character, that I find it
+somewhat difficult to know which to select out of the hundreds which
+were recorded in our books officially and elsewhere, the ones which will
+prove of the greatest interest to inquirers; but I have made extracts
+from ten of these records, and these, with a few taken from Sir William
+Crookes's reports on the experiments conducted in his presence, will, in
+my opinion, be sufficient to prove that we who have witnessed these
+marvels are neither hallucinated, insane, nor liars when we solemnly
+affirm that we have both seen and handled the materialized bodies built
+up for temporary use by entities from another sphere; all the statements
+made here being true in every detail, to the best of my knowledge and
+belief.
+
+
+EXPERIMENT NO. 1
+
+Place--_Lyndhurst, New Forest, Hampshire. Sensitive A, male, aged about
+46._
+
+As an example of a simple but exceedingly severe test, I would first
+record one given to me and a fellow-investigator on the outskirts of the
+New Forest, one for which no special preparation of any kind whatever
+had been made.
+
+The sensitive, a nearly blind man, was taken by us on a dark night to a
+spot totally unknown to him, as he had only just arrived from London by
+train, and was led into a large travelling caravan, one which he had
+never been near before, as it had only recently left the builder's
+hands.
+
+During the day I had made a critical examination of the interior of the
+caravan, and had satisfied myself that no one was or could possibly be
+concealed in it. I then locked the door, and kept the key in my pocket
+until the moment when, on the arrival of the sensitive, I unlocked the
+door and we all passed into the caravan together. I then locked and
+bolted the door behind us.
+
+As I have already said, no preparation of any kind had been made for the
+experiment. It was merely the result of a desire to see if anything
+could be produced through this sensitive, under extremely difficult
+conditions--conditions which we considered as so utterly bad as to make
+failure a certainty.
+
+We did not even possess a chair of any kind for the sensitive or
+ourselves to sit upon, so we placed for his use a board on top of the
+iron cooking-range which was fixed in the kitchen-portion of the
+caravan, whilst we sat upon the two couches which were used as beds in
+the living-portion of the caravan. There was no music, no powerful
+"human battery" in the shape of a number of picked sitters; in fact, the
+conditions were just about as bad as they could possibly be, and yet,
+within ten minutes of my locking the door behind us, the figure of a
+tall man stood before us, a man so tall that he was compelled to bow his
+head as he passed under the six-foot high partition which separated the
+two sections of the caravan.
+
+He said, "I am Colonel -- who was 'killed,' as you say, at the battle of
+-- in Egypt. For many years during my earth-life I was deeply interested
+in materializations, and spent the last night of my life in England
+experimenting with this very sensitive; and it is a great pleasure to me
+to be able to return to you--strangers though you both are to
+me--through him. To prove to you that I am not the sensitive
+masquerading before you, will you please come here and stand close to
+me, and so settle the matter for yourself?"
+
+I at once rose and stood beside him, almost touching him. I then
+discovered that not only were his features and his coloring totally
+different from those of the sensitive, but that he towered above me,
+standing, as nearly as I could judge, six foot two or three inches, and
+was certainly four inches taller than either the sensitive or myself.
+
+Whilst thus standing beside him, and at a distance of about eight feet
+from the sensitive, we could both hear the unfortunate man moving
+uneasily on his hard seat on the kitchen-range, sighing and moaning as
+if in pain.
+
+The entity remained with us for about three minutes, and his place was
+then taken by a slightly built young man, standing about five feet nine
+inches, one claiming to be a recently deceased member of the royal
+family. He talked with us in a soft and pleasing voice, finally
+whispering a private message to my companion, asking him to deliver it
+to his mother, Queen --.
+
+
+EXPERIMENT NO. 2
+
+Place--_Peckham Rye, London, S. E. Sensitive A, male, aged about 46._
+
+An almost equally hopeless task was set this sensitive by the owner of
+the caravan and myself when we experimented with him at midday on a
+brilliant morning in July, with sunlight streaming into the room round
+the edges of the drawn down window-blinds, and round the top, sides, and
+bottom of the heavy window-curtains, which we had pinned together in a
+vain attempt to keep out the sunlight during the experiment.
+
+And yet once again, and in spite of the conditions which we regarded as
+utterly hopeless, the figure of a man appeared in less than ten minutes,
+materialized from head to foot, as he proved to us by showing us his
+lower limbs. He left the side of the sensitive, walked out into the room
+and stood between us, talking to us in a deep rich voice for nearly
+three minutes. As he stood beside us we could hear the sensitive, twelve
+feet away, moving uneasily on his chair and groaning slightly.
+
+Five minutes after he disappeared the same (alleged) recently deceased
+member of the royal family walked out to us and held a short private
+conversation with my companion, and sent another message to his mother,
+Queen --.
+
+
+EXPERIMENT NO. 3
+
+Place--_West Hampstead, London, N. W. Sensitive B, female, aged about
+49._
+
+Persons of middle age or older who happened to be in England a few years
+ago at the time that two lawsuits were brought against a celebrated
+conjurer by the clever young man who had succeeded in exposing one of
+his most mystifying tricks, will well remember the sensation caused by
+the giving of both verdicts against the conjurer; and the young man--to
+whom I shall refer as Mr. X--at once became famous as the man who had
+beaten one of the cleverest conjurers of the day.
+
+A friend of mine, who had been present on several occasions when Sir
+William Crookes's sensitive--Florrie Cook (Mrs. Corner), referred to
+above as Sensitive B--had produced materializations in gaslight at my
+house in London, asked her to visit his house at West Hampstead one
+evening to meet several friends of his, and to see if it were possible
+for any entity to materialize in my friend's own drawing-room.
+
+She at once accepted his invitation to sit there under strict test
+conditions; and, talking the matter over with some of his friends a day
+or two before the one chosen for the experiment, he told me that they
+had arranged to have the sensitive securely tied to her chair, to have
+strong iron rings fastened to the floor-boards, through which ropes
+would be passed, these ropes to be securely fastened to the sensitive's
+legs; all knots of every size and kind to be sealed, so as to prevent
+any attempt on her part to leave her chair and to masquerade as a
+materialized entity.
+
+One of his friends happened to know the celebrated Mr. X--, and, as he
+had so recently succeeded in beating so notable a conjurer, he was
+invited to be present and to take entire charge of the tying up, the
+binding and sealing arrangements, in order to render the escape of the
+sensitive from her chair an impossibility.
+
+When I joined the party in the drawing-room, Mr. X--, to whom I was
+introduced, was busily engaged in tying the sensitive up with his own
+ropes and tapes, sealing every knot with special sealing-wax and with a
+seal provided by our host. The room was a large one, and a portion at
+one end had been cleared of all furniture, and in the center of this
+space only the sensitive seated upon her chair, and Mr. X-- busily at
+work, were to be seen; and the latter, after another fifteen minutes of
+real hard labor, was asked by our host if he was thoroughly satisfied
+that the sensitive was fastened to her chair securely. He replied that
+so securely was she fastened, that if she could produce phenomena of any
+kind whatever under such conditions, he would at once admit their
+genuineness.
+
+The sensitive was all this time in a perfectly normal state, and not
+flurried in any way, her one anxiety being lest we should lower the
+lights, as she was so terrified at the thought of darkness.
+
+Mr. X--, after stepping backwards to have a final look at the result of
+his labors, then walked close to the spot where the sensitive was
+sitting in gaslight, and put one hand up towards the top of the curtain,
+and was in the act of drawing this round her to keep the direct rays of
+the gaslight from falling upon her, when a large brown arm and hand
+suddenly appeared, the hand being clapped heavily upon Mr. X--'s
+shoulder, whilst a gruff masculine voice asked him in loud tones, "Are
+you really satisfied?"
+
+I have witnessed some strange happenings in connection with my
+investigation of occult matters, but to my dying day I shall never
+forget the look of blank astonishment on Mr. X--'s face at that moment.
+
+Quickly recovering himself, however, he at once examined the
+sensitive--a little woman, far below the average height, having small
+hands and feet, as we could all see quite clearly--and declared that
+every seal and every knot was unbroken, and just as he had left them not
+sixty seconds before.
+
+Amongst other entities who materialized that evening was a young girl of
+about eighteen years of age who stated that when she left her
+earth-body she had been a dancer at a cafe in Algiers.
+
+She came from the spot where the sensitive was seated, laughing
+heartily, stating that the hand and arm belonged to an old English
+sailor, whom she spoke of as "the Captain." She said, further, that he
+had been standing with her watching the tying-up process from their
+sphere, and laughing at Mr. X--'s vain attempt to prevent the production
+of the phenomena. The Captain had very much wished to materialize fully,
+so as to surprise Mr. X-- as he stepped back from the sensitive; but,
+finding that he could only get sufficient "power" to produce a hand and
+arm, he was in a bad temper. And this was evidently the case, for during
+the ten minutes that the girl remained talking to us we could now and
+then hear the gruff voice of the Captain rolling out language which can
+only be described as "forcible and free."
+
+The experiment lasted for nearly an hour, and at its conclusion Mr. X--
+examined the sensitive, and once again reported that every seal and knot
+were just as he had left them at the commencement of the experiment.
+
+
+EXPERIMENT NO. 4
+
+Place--_My House in London. Sensitive D, male, aged about 34._
+
+On numerous occasions this sensitive has been seen by all present, in
+gaslight shaded by red paper, seated on his chair in a state of deep
+trance, and was heard to be breathing heavily, whilst two materialized
+entities stood beside him; or with one beside him, and the other
+standing five to eight feet away from him and close to the sitters.
+
+Again, two female entities were seen simultaneously when this male
+sensitive was experimenting with us, one of them inside the half-circle
+formed by the sixteen sitters, and talking to them in a low sweet voice,
+at a distance of about eight feet from the sensitive; whilst the other
+female entity passed through or over the sitters, and, walking about the
+room outside the half-circle formed by the sitters, came up behind two
+of them, and not only spoke audibly to them, but also held a short
+conversation with the entity inside the ring, both speaking almost
+instantaneously.
+
+
+
+
+THE PHANTOM ARMIES SEEN IN FRANCE[17]
+
+BY HEREWARD CARRINGTON
+
+[Footnote 17: By permission of the author.]
+
+
+History abounds in cases showing the apparent intrusion of spiritual
+help in time of trouble, and in the annals of military history these
+accounts are not lacking. On several occasions the Crusaders thought
+that they saw angelic hosts fighting for them--phantom horsemen charging
+the enemy, when their own utter destruction seemed imminent. In the wars
+between the English and the Scotch, several such cases were cited, and
+the Napoleonic wars also furnished examples. But the most striking
+evidence of this character--because the newest--and supported,
+apparently, by a good deal of first-hand and sincere testimony, is that
+afforded by the Phantom Armies seen in France during the retreat of the
+British army from Mons--the field of Agincourt. Cut off by overwhelming
+numbers, and all but annihilated, the British army fought desperately,
+but the 80,000 were opposed by 300,000 Germans, backed by a terrific
+fire of artillery, and were indeed in a critical position. They were
+only saved, as we know, by the heroism of a small force of men--a
+rear-guard--who were practically wiped out in consequence. At the most
+critical moment came what appeared to be angelic assistance. The tide of
+battle seemed to be stemmed by supernatural means. In a letter written
+by a soldier who actually witnessed these startling events, quoted by
+the Hon. Mrs. St. John Mildmay (_North American Review_, August, 1915),
+the following graphic account is given. Our soldier writes:
+
+"The men joked at the shells and found many funny names for them, and
+had bets about them, and greeted them with music-hall songs, as they
+screamed in this terrific cannonade. The climax seemed to have been
+reached, but 'a seven-times heated hell' of the enemy's onslaught fell
+upon them, rending brother from brother. At that very moment, they saw
+from their trenches a tremendous host moving against their lines. Five
+hundred of the thousand (who had been detailed to fight the rear-guard
+action) remained, and as far as they could see the German infantry was
+pressing on against them, column by column, a gray world of men--10,000
+of them, as it appeared afterwards. There was no hope at all. Some of
+them shook hands. One man improvised a new version of the battle song
+Tipperary, ending 'and we shan't get there!' And all went on firing
+steadily. The enemy dropped line after line, while the few machine guns
+did their best. Every one knew it was of no use. The dead gray bodies
+lay in companies and battalions, but others came on and on, swarming and
+advancing from beyond and beyond.
+
+"'World without end. Amen!' said one of the British soldiers, with some
+irreverence, as he took aim and fired. Then he remembered a vegetarian
+restaurant in London, where he had once or twice eaten queer dishes of
+cutlets made of lentils and nuts that pretended to be steaks. On all the
+plates in this restaurant a figure of St. George was painted in blue
+with the motto, _Adsit Anglis Sanctus Georgius_ (May St. George be a
+present help to England). The soldier happened to know 'Latin and other
+useless things,' so now, as he fired at the gray advancing mass, 300
+yards away, he uttered the pious vegetarian motto. He went on firing to
+the end, till at last Bill on his right had to clout him cheerfully on
+the head to make him stop, pointing out as he did so that the King's
+ammunition cost money and was not lightly to be wasted. For, as the
+Latin scholar uttered his invocation, he felt something between a
+shudder and an electric shock pass through his body. The roar of the
+battle died down in his ears to a gentle murmur, and instead of it, he
+says, he heard a great voice louder than a thunder peal, crying 'Array!
+Array!' His heart grew hot as a burning coal, then it grew cold as ice
+within him, for it seemed to him a tumult of voices answered to the
+summons. He heard or seemed to hear thousands shouting:
+
+     "'St. George! St. George!
+
+     "'Ha! Messire, Ha! Sweet Saint, grant us good deliverance!
+
+     "'St. George for Merrie England!
+
+     "'Harow! Harow! Monseigneur St. George, succour us, Ha! St.
+     George! A low bow, and a strong bow, Knight of Heaven, aid us!'
+
+"As the soldier heard these voices, he saw before him, beyond the
+trench, a long line of shapes with a shining about them. They were like
+men who drew the bow, and with another shout their cloud of arrows flew
+singing through the air toward the German host. The other men in the
+trenches were firing all the while. They had no hope, but they aimed
+just as if they had been shooting at Bisley.
+
+"Suddenly one of these lifted up his voice in plain English. 'Gawd help
+us!' he bellowed to the man next him, 'but we're bloomin' marvels! Look
+at those gray gentlemen! Look at them! They 're not going down in dozens
+or hundreds--it's _thousands_ it is! Look, look! There's a regiment gone
+while I'm talking to ye!'
+
+"'Shut it,' the other soldier bellowed, taking aim. 'What are ye talkin'
+about?' But he gulped with astonishment even as he spoke, for indeed the
+gray men were falling by the thousands. The English could hear the
+guttural scream of their revolvers as they shot, and line after line
+crashed to the earth. All the while the Latin-bred soldier heard the cry
+'Harow, Harow! Monseigneur! Dear Saint! Quick to our aid! St. George
+help us!'
+
+"The singing arrows darkened the air, the hordes melted before them.
+'More machine guns,' Bill yelled to Tom. 'Don't hear them,' Tom yelled
+back, 'but thank God, anyway, that they have got it in the neck!'
+
+"In fact, there were ten thousand dead German soldiers left before that
+salient of the English army, and consequently--_no Sedan_. In Germany
+the General Staff decided that the English must have employed turpenite
+shells, as no wounds were discernible on the bodies of the dead
+soldiers. But the man who knew what nuts tasted like when they called
+themselves steak, knew also that St. George had brought his Agincourt
+Bowmen to help the English."
+
+Such accounts have been confirmed by others. Thus, Miss Phyllis
+Campbell, writing in _The Occult Review_ (October, 1915), says:
+
+"I tremble, now that it is safely past, to look back on the terrible
+week that brought the Allies to Vitry-le-Francois. We had not had our
+clothes off for the whole of that week, because no sooner had we reached
+home, too weary to undress, or to eat, and fallen on our beds, than the
+'chug-chug' of the commandant's car would sound into the silence of the
+deserted street, and the horn would imperatively summon us back to
+duty--because, in addition to our duties as _ambulancier auxiliare_, we
+were interpreters to the post, now at this moment diminished to half a
+dozen.
+
+"Returning at 4:30 in the morning, we stood on the end of the platform,
+watching the train crawl through the blue-green mist of the forest into
+the clearing, and draw up with the first wounded from Vitry-le-Francois.
+It was packed with dead and dying and badly wounded. For a time we
+forgot our weariness in a race against time--removing the dead and
+dying, and attending to those in need. I was bandaging a man's shattered
+arm with the _majeur_ instructing me, while he stitched a horrible gap
+in his head, when Madame de A--, the heroic president of the post, came
+and replaced me. 'There is an English in the fifth wagon,' she said. 'He
+wants something--I think a holy picture!'
+
+"The idea of an English soldier wanting a holy picture struck me, even
+in that atmosphere of blood and misery, as something to smile at--but I
+hurried away. 'The English' was a Lancashire Fusilier. He was propped in
+a corner, his left arm tied-up in a peasant woman's handkerchief, and
+his head newly bandaged. He should have been in a state of collapse from
+loss of blood, for his tattered uniform was soaked and caked in blood,
+and his face paper-white under the dirt of conflict. He looked at me
+with bright, courageous eyes and asked for a picture or a medal (he
+didn't care which) of St. George. I asked him if he was a Catholic.
+'No,' he was Wesleyan Methodist, and he wanted a picture or a medal of
+St. George, _because he had seen him on a white horse_, leading the
+British at Vitry-le-Francois, when the Allies turned.
+
+"There was an F. R. A. man, wounded in the leg, sitting beside him on
+the floor; he saw my look of amazement, and hastened in: 'It's true,
+sister,' he said. 'We all saw it. First there was a sort of yellow
+mist-like, sort of risin' before the Germans as they came on the top of
+the hill--come on like a solid wall, they did--springing out of the
+earth just solid--no end to 'em! I just give up. No use fighting the
+whole German race, thinks I; it's all up with _us_. The next minute
+comes this funny cloud of light, and when it clears off, there's a tall
+man with yellow hair in golden armor, on a white horse, holding his
+sword up, and his mouth open as if he was saying: "Come on, boys! I'll
+put the kybosh on the devils!" Sort of "This is my picnic" expression.
+Then, before you could say "knife," the Germans had turned, and we were
+after them, fighting like ninety ..."
+
+"Where was this?" I asked. But neither of them could tell. They had
+marched, fighting a rear-guard action, from Mons, till St. George had
+appeared through the haze of light, and turned the enemy. They both
+_knew_ it was St. George. Hadn't they seen him with a sword on every
+'quid' they'd ever seen? The Frenchies had seen him too--ask them; but
+they said it was St. Michael...."
+
+Much additional testimony of a like nature might be given--and has been
+collected by students of psychical research. If the spiritual world ever
+intervenes in matters mundane, it assuredly did so on this occasion. And
+it could hardly have chosen a more opportune time. Could the aspiring
+thoughts of the dead and dying, and those still living and fighting for
+their country, have drawn "St. George" to earth, to aid in again
+redeeming his country from a foreign foe? Could a simple "hallucination"
+have been so widespread and so prevalent? Or might there not have been
+some spiritual energy behind the visions thus seen--stimulating them,
+and inspiring and encouraging the stricken soldiers? We cannot say. We
+only know what the soldiers themselves say; and we also know the
+undoubted effects upon the enemy. For on both occasions were the Germans
+repulsed with terrible slaughter. Perhaps the vision of St. George led
+our soldiers into closer touch and _rapport_ with the consciousness of
+some high intelligence--or the veil separating the two worlds was
+rent--as so often appears to be the case in apparitions and visions of
+this character.
+
+
+
+
+THE PORTAL OF THE UNKNOWN
+
+BY ANDREW JACKSON DAVIS, "THE SEER"
+
+
+When the hour of her death arrived, I was fortunately in a proper state
+of mind and body to produce the superior (clairvoyant) condition; but,
+previous to throwing my spirit into that condition, I sought the most
+convenient and favorable position, that I might be allowed to make the
+observations entirely unnoticed and undisturbed. Thus situated and
+conditioned, I proceeded to observe and investigate the mysterious
+processes of dying, and to learn what it is for an individual human
+spirit to undergo the changes consequent upon physical death or external
+dissolution. They were these:
+
+I saw that the physical organization could no longer subserve the
+diversified purposes or requirements of the spiritual principle. But the
+various internal organs of the body appeared to resist the withdrawal of
+the animating soul. The body and the soul, like two friends, strongly
+resisted the various circumstances which rendered their eternal
+separation imperative and absolute. These internal conflicts gave rise
+to manifestations of what seemed to be, to the material senses, the most
+thrilling and painful sensations; but I was unspeakably thankful and
+delighted when I perceived and realized the fact that those physical
+manifestations were indications, not of pain or unhappiness, but simply
+that the spirit was eternally dissolving its co-partnership with the
+material organism.
+
+Now the head of the body became suddenly enveloped in a fine, soft,
+mellow, luminous atmosphere; and, as instantly, I saw the cerebrum and
+the cerebellum expand their most interior portions; I saw them
+discontinue their appropriate galvanic functions; and then I saw that
+they became highly charged with the vital electricity and vital
+magnetism which permeate subordinate systems and structures. That is to
+say, the brain, as a whole, suddenly declared itself to be tenfold more
+positive, over the lesser proportions of the body, than it ever was
+during the period of health. This phenomenon invariably precedes
+physical dissolution.
+
+Now the process of dying, or the spirit's departure from the body, was
+fully commenced. The brain began to attract the elements of electricity,
+of magnetism, of motion, of life, and of sensation, into its various and
+numerous departments. The head became intensely brilliant; and I
+particularly remarked that just in the same proportion as the
+extremities of the organism grow dark and cold, the brain appears light
+and glowing.
+
+Now I saw, in the mellow, spiritual atmosphere which emanated from and
+encircled her head, the indistinct outlines of the formation of
+_another_ head. This new head unfolded more and more distinctly, and so
+indescribably compact and intensely brilliant did it become, that I
+could neither see through it, nor gaze upon it as steadily as I desired.
+While this spiritual head was being eliminated and organized from out
+of and above the material head, I saw that the surrounding aromal
+atmosphere which had emanated from the material head was in great
+commotion; but, as the new head became more distinct and perfect, this
+brilliant atmosphere gradually disappeared. This taught me that those
+aromal elements, which were, in the beginning of the metamorphosis,
+attracted from the system into the brain, and thence eliminated in the
+form of an atmosphere, were indissolubly united in accordance with the
+divine principle of affinity in the universe, which pervades and
+destinates every particle of matter, and developed the spiritual head
+which I beheld.
+
+In the identical manner in which the spiritual head was eliminated and
+unchangeably organized, I saw, unfolding in their natural progressive
+order, the harmonious development of the neck, the shoulders, the breast
+and the entire spiritual organization. It appeared from this, even to an
+unequivocal demonstration, that the innumerable particles of what might
+be termed unparticled matter which constitute the man's spiritual
+principle, are constitutionally endowed with certain elective
+affinities, analogous to an immortal friendship. The innate tendencies
+which the elements and essences of her soul manifested by uniting and
+organizing themselves, were the efficient and imminent causes which
+unfolded and perfected her spiritual organization. The defects and
+deformities of her physical body were, in the spiritual body which I saw
+thus developed, almost completely removed. In other words, it seemed
+that those hereditary obstructions and influences were now removed,
+which originally arrested the full and proper development of her
+physical constitution; and, therefore, that her spiritual constitution,
+being elevated above those obstructions, was enabled to unfold and
+perfect itself, in accordance with the universal tendencies of all
+created things.
+
+While this spiritual formation was going on, which was perfectly visible
+to my spiritual perceptions, the material body manifested, to the outer
+vision of observing individuals in the room, many symptoms of uneasiness
+and pain; but the indications were totally deceptive; they were wholly
+caused by the departure of the vital or spiritual forces from the
+extremities and viscera into the brain, and thence into the ascending
+organism.
+
+The spirit arose at right angles over the head or brain of the deserted
+body. But immediately previous to the final dissolution of the
+relationship which had for so many years subsisted between the two, the
+spiritual and material bodies, I saw--playing energetically between the
+feet of the elevated spiritual body and the head of the prostrate
+physical body--a bright stream or current of vital electricity. And here
+I perceived what I had never before obtained a knowledge of, that a
+small portion of this vital electrical element returned to the deserted
+body immediately subsequent to the separation of the umbilical thread;
+and that that portion of this element which passed back into the earthly
+organism instantly diffused itself through the entire structure, and
+thus prevented immediate decomposition.
+
+As soon as the spirit, whose departing hour I thus watched, was wholly
+disengaged from the tenacious physical body, I directed my attention to
+the movements and emotions of the former; and I saw her begin to
+breathe the most interior or spiritual portions of the surrounding
+terrestrial atmosphere. At first it seemed with difficulty that she
+could breathe the new medium; but in a few seconds she inhaled and
+exhaled the spiritual elements of nature with the greatest possible ease
+and delight. And now I saw that she was in possession of exterior and
+physical proportions, which were identical, in every possible
+particular--improved and beautified--with those proportions which
+characterized her earthly organization. Indeed, so much like her former
+self was she that, had her friends beheld her as I did, they certainly
+would have exclaimed--as we often do upon the sudden return of a
+long-absent friend, who leaves us and returns in health--'Why, how well
+you look! How improved you are!' Such was the nature--most beautifying
+in their extent--of the improvements that were wrought upon her.
+
+I saw her continue to conform and accustom herself to the new elements
+and elevating sensations which belong to the inner life. I did not
+particularly notice the workings and emotions of her newly-awakening and
+fast-unfolding spirit, except that I was careful to remark her
+philosophical tranquillity throughout the entire process, and her
+non-participation with the different members of her family in their
+unrestrained bewailing of her departure from the earth, to unfold in
+Love and Wisdom throughout eternal spheres. She understood at a glance
+that they could only gaze upon the cold and lifeless form, which she had
+but just deserted; and she readily comprehended the fact that it was
+owing to a want of true knowledge upon their parts that they thus
+vehemently regretted her merely physical death.
+
+The period required to accomplish the entire change which I saw was not
+far from two hours and a half; but this furnished no rule as to the time
+required for every spirit to elevate and reorganize itself above the
+head of the outer form. Without changing my position or spiritual
+perceptions I continued to observe the movements of her new-born spirit.
+As soon as she became accustomed to her new elements which surrounded
+her, she descended from her elevated position, which was immediately
+over the body, by an effort of the will-power, and directly passed out
+of the door of the bedroom in which she had lain, in the material form,
+prostrated with disease for several weeks. It being in a summer month,
+the doors were all open, and her egress from the house was attended with
+no obstruction. I saw her pass through the adjoining room, out of the
+door, and step from the house into the atmosphere! I was overwhelmed
+with delight and astonishment when, for the first time, I realized the
+universal truth that the spiritual organization can tread the
+atmosphere, which is impossible while in the coarser earthly form--so
+much more refined is man's spiritual constitution. She walked in the
+atmosphere as easily, and in the same manner, as we tread the earth and
+ascend an eminence. Immediately upon her emergement from the house, she
+was joined by two friendly spirits from the spiritual country, and after
+tenderly recognizing and communing with each other, the three, in the
+most graceful manner, began ascending obliquely through the ethereal
+envelopment of her globe. They walked so naturally and fraternally
+together that I could scarcely realize the fact that they trod the
+air--they seemed to be walking upon the side of a glorious but familiar
+mountain. I continued to gaze upon them until the distance shut them
+from my view,--whereupon I returned to my external and ordinary
+condition.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This account of the facts--of what actually happened at death--is
+confirmed by numerous other witnesses, who agree as to the main
+details.
+
+
+
+
+THE SUPERNORMAL: EXPERIENCES
+
+BY ST. JOHN B. SEYMOUR
+
+
+When Mrs. Seymour was a little girl she resided in Dublin; amongst the
+members of the family was her paternal grandmother. This old lady was
+not as kind as she might have been to her granddaughter, and
+consequently the latter was somewhat afraid of her. In process of time
+the grandmother died. Mrs. Seymour, who was then about eight years of
+age, had to pass the door of the room where the death occurred in order
+to reach her own bedroom, which was a flight higher up. Past this door
+the child used to fly in terror with all possible speed. On one
+occasion, however, as she was preparing to make the usual rush past, she
+distinctly felt a hand placed on her shoulder, and became conscious of a
+voice saying, "Don't be afraid, Mary!" From that day on the child never
+had the least feeling of fear, and always walked quietly past the door.
+
+The Rev. D. B. Knox sends a curious personal experience, which was
+shared by him with three other people. He writes as follows: "Not very
+long ago my wife and I were preparing to retire for the night. A niece,
+who was in the house, was in her bedroom and the door was open. The maid
+had just gone to her room. All four of us distinctly heard the heavy
+step of a man walking along the corridor, apparently in the direction of
+the bathroom. We searched the whole house immediately, but no one was
+discovered. Nothing untoward happened except the death of the maid's
+mother about a fortnight later. It was a detached house, so that the
+noise could not have been made by the neighbors."
+
+In the following tale the "double" or "wraith" of a living man was seen
+by three different people, one of whom, our correspondent, saw it
+through a telescope. She writes: "In May, 1883, the parish of A-- was
+vacant, so Mr. D--, the Diocesan Curate, used to come out to take
+service on Sundays. One day there were two funerals to be taken, the one
+at a graveyard some distance off, the other at A-- churchyard. My
+brother was at both, the far-off one being taken the first. The house we
+then lived in looked down towards A--churchyard, which was about a
+quarter of a mile away. From an upper window my sister and I saw _two_
+surpliced figures going out to meet the coffin, and said, 'Why, there
+are two clergy!' having supposed that there would be only Mr. D--. I,
+being short-sighted, used a telescope, and saw the two surplices showing
+between the people. But when my brother returned he said: 'A strange
+thing has happened. Mr. D-- and Mr. W-- (curate of a neighboring parish)
+took the far-off funeral. I saw them both again at A--, but when I went
+into the vestry I only saw Mr. W--. I asked where Mr. D-- was, and he
+replied that he had left immediately after the first funeral, as he had
+to go to Kilkenny, and that he (Mr. W--) had come on _alone_ to take the
+funeral at A--.'"
+
+Here is a curious tale from the city of Limerick of a lady's "double"
+being seen, with no consequent results. It is sent by Mr. Richard Hogan
+as the personal experience of his sister, Mrs. Mary Murnane. On
+Saturday, October 25, 1913, at half-past four o'clock in the afternoon,
+Mr. Hogan left the house in order to purchase some cigarettes. A quarter
+of an hour afterwards Mrs. Murnane went down the town to do some
+business. As she was walking down George Street she saw a group of four
+persons standing on the pavement engaged in conversation. They were her
+brother, a Mr. O'S--, and two ladies, a Miss P. O'D--, and her sister,
+Miss M. O'D--. She recognized the latter, as her face was partly turned
+towards her, and noted that she was dressed in a knitted coat, and light
+blue hat, while in her left hand she held a bag or purse; the other
+lady's back was turned towards her. As Mrs. Murnane was in a hurry to
+get her business done she determined to pass them by without being
+noticed, but a number of people coming in the opposite direction blocked
+the way, and compelled her to walk quite close to the group of four, but
+they were so intent on listening to what one lady was saying that they
+took no notice of her. The speaker appeared to be Miss M. O'D--, and
+though Mrs. Murnane did not actually hear her _speak_ as she passed her,
+yet from their attitudes the other three seemed to be listening to what
+she was saying, and she heard her _laugh_ when right behind her--not the
+laugh of her sister P--and the laugh was repeated after she had left the
+group a little behind.
+
+So far there is nothing out of the common. When Mrs. Murnane returned to
+her house about an hour later she found her brother Richard there
+before her. She casually mentioned to him how she had passed him and his
+three companions on the pavement. To which he replied that she was quite
+correct except in one point, namely that there were only _three_ in the
+group, as M. O'D-- _was not present_, as she had not come to Limerick at
+all that day. She then described to him the exact position each one of
+the four occupied, and the clothes worn by them, to all of which facts
+he assented, except as to the presence of Miss M. O'D--. Mrs. Murnane
+adds, "That is all I can say in the matter, but most certainly the
+fourth person was in the group, as I both saw and heard her. She wore
+the same clothes I had seen on her previously, with the exception of the
+hat; but the following Saturday she had on the same colored hat I had
+seen on her the previous Saturday. When I told her about it she was as
+much mystified as I was and am. My brother stated that there was no
+laugh from any of the three present."
+
+Mrs. G. Kelly sends an experience of a "wraith" which seems in some
+mysterious way to have been conjured up in her mind by the description
+she had heard, and then externalized. She writes: "About four years ago
+a musical friend of ours was staying in the house. He and my husband
+were playing and singing Dvorak's 'Spectre's Bride,' a work which he had
+studied with the composer himself. This music appealed very much to
+both, and they were excited and enthusiastic over it. Our friend was
+giving many personal reminiscences of Dvorak, and his method of
+explaining the way he wanted his work done. I was sitting by, an
+interested listener, for some time. On getting up at last, and going
+into the drawing-room, I was startled and somewhat frightened to find a
+man standing there in a shadowy part of the room. I saw him distinctly,
+and could describe his appearance accurately. I called out, and the two
+men ran in, but as the apparition only lasted for a second, they were
+too late. I described the man whom I had seen, whereupon our friend
+exclaimed, 'Why, that was Dvorak himself!' At that time I had never seen
+a picture of Dvorak, but when our friend returned to London he sent me
+one which I recognized as the likeness of the man whom I had seen in our
+drawing-room."
+
+A curious vision, a case of second sight, in which a quite unimportant
+event, previously unknown, was revealed, is sent by the percipient, who
+is a lady well known to both the compilers, and a life-long friend of
+one of them. She says: "Last summer I sent a cow to the fair of
+Limerick, a distance of about thirteen miles, and the men who took her
+there the day before the fair left her in a paddock for the night close
+to Limerick city. I awoke up very early next morning, and was fully
+awake when I saw (not with my ordinary eyesight, but apparently _inside_
+my head) a light, an intensely brilliant light, and in it I saw the back
+gate being opened by a red-haired woman and the cow I had supposed in
+the fair walking through the gate. I then knew that the cow must be
+home, and going to the yard later on I was met by the wife of the man
+who was in charge in a great state of excitement. 'Oh law! Miss,' she
+exclaimed, 'you'll be mad! Didn't Julia [a red-haired woman] find the
+cow outside the lodge gate as she was going out at 4 o'clock to the
+milking!' That's my tale--perfectly true, and I would give a good deal
+to be able to control that light, and see more if I could."
+
+Another curious vision was seen by a lady who is also a friend of both
+the compilers. One night she was kneeling at her bedside saying her
+prayers (hers was the only bed in the room), when suddenly she felt a
+distinct touch on her shoulder. She turned round in the direction of the
+touch and saw at the end of the room a bed, with a pale,
+indistinguishable figure laid therein, and what appeared to be a
+clergyman standing over it. About a week later she fell into a long and
+dangerous illness.
+
+An account of a dream which implied an extraordinary coincidence, if
+coincidence it be and nothing more, was sent as follows by a
+correspondent, who requested that no names be published. "That which I
+am about to relate has a peculiar interest for me, inasmuch as the
+central figure in it was my own grand-aunt, and moreover the principal
+witness (if I may use such a term) was my father. At the period during
+which this strange incident occurred my father was living with his aunt
+and some other relatives.
+
+"One morning at the breakfast-table, my grand-aunt announced that she
+had had a most peculiar dream during the previous night. My father, who
+was always very interested in that kind of thing, took down in his
+notebook all the particulars concerning it. They were as follows:
+
+"My grand-aunt dreamt that she was in a cemetery, which she recognized
+as Glasnevin, and as she gazed at the memorials of the dead which lay so
+thick around, one stood out most conspicuously, and caught her eye,
+for she saw clearly cut on the cold white stone _an inscription bearing
+her own name_:
+
+            CLARE.S.D--
+      Died 14th of March, 1873
+    Dearly loved and ever mourned
+              R.I.P.
+
+while, to add to the peculiarity of it, the date on the stone as given
+above was, from the day of her dream, exactly a year in advance.
+
+"My grand-aunt was not very nervous, and soon the dream faded from her
+mind. Months rolled by, and one morning at breakfast it was noticed that
+my grand-aunt had not appeared, but as she was a very religious woman it
+was thought that she had gone out to church. However, as she did not
+appear my father sent someone to her room to see if she were there, and
+as no answer was given to repeated knocking the door was opened, and my
+grand-aunt was found kneeling at her bedside, dead. The day of her death
+was March 14, 1873, corresponding exactly with the date seen in her
+dream a twelvemonth before. My grand-aunt was buried in Glasnevin, and
+on her tombstone (a white marble slab) was placed the inscription which
+she had read in her dream." Our correspondent sent us a photograph of
+the stone and its inscription.
+
+The present Archdeacon of Limerick, Ven. J. A. Haydn, LL.D., sends the
+following experience: "In the year 1870 I was rector of the little rural
+parish of Chapel Russell. One autumn day the rain fell with a quiet,
+steady, and hopeless persistence from morning to night. Wearied at
+length from the gloom, and tired of reading and writing, I determined
+to walk to the church about half a mile away, and pass a half-hour
+playing the harmonium, returning for the lamp-light and tea.
+
+"I wrapped up, put the key of the church in my pocket, and started.
+Arriving at the church, I walked up the straight avenue, bordered with
+graves and tombs on either side, while the soft, steady rain quietly
+pattered on the trees. When I reached the church door, before putting
+the key in the lock, moved by some indefinable impulse I stood on the
+doorstep, turned round, and looked back upon the path I had just
+trodden. My amazement may be imagined when I saw, seated on a low,
+tabular tombstone close to the avenue, a lady with her back towards me.
+She was wearing a black velvet jacket or short cape, with a narrow
+border of vivid white; her head and luxuriant jet-black hair were
+surmounted by a hat of the shape and make that I think used to be called
+at that time a 'turban'; it was also of black velvet, with a snow-white
+wing or feather at the right-hand side of it. It may be seen how
+deliberately and minutely I observed the appearance, when I can thus
+recall it after more than forty years.
+
+"Actuated by a desire to attract the attention of the lady, and induce
+her to look towards me, I noisily inserted the key in the door, and
+suddenly opened it with a rusty crack. Turning around to see the effect
+of my policy--the lady was gone!--vanished. Not yet daunted, I hurried
+to the place, which was not ten paces away, and closely searched the
+stone and the space all around it, but utterly in vain; there were
+absolutely no traces of the late presence of a human being! I may add
+that nothing particular or remarkable followed the singular apparition,
+and that I never heard anything calculated to throw any light on the
+mystery."
+
+Here is a story of a ghost who knew what it wanted--and got it! "In the
+part of County Wicklow from which my people come," writes a Miss D--,
+"there was a family who were not exactly related, but of course of the
+clan. Many years ago a young daughter, aged about twenty, died. Before
+her death she had directed her parents to bury her in a certain
+graveyard. But for some reason they did not do so, and from that hour
+she gave them no peace. She appeared to them at all hours, especially
+when they went to the well for water. So distracted were they, that at
+length they got permission to exhume the remains and have them
+reinterred in the desired graveyard. This they did by torchlight--a
+weird scene truly! I can vouch for the truth of this latter portion, at
+all events, as some of my own relatives were present."
+
+Mr. T. J. Westropp contributes a tale of a ghost of an unusual type,
+i.e. one which actually did communicate matters of importance to his
+family. "A lady who related many ghost stories to me, also told me how,
+after her father's death, the family could not find some papers or
+receipts of value. One night she awoke, and heard a sound which she at
+once recognized as the footsteps of her father, who was lame. The door
+creaked, and she prayed that she might be able to see him. Her prayer
+was granted: she saw him distinctly holding a yellow parchment book tied
+with tape. 'F--, child,' said he, 'this is the book your mother is
+looking for. It is in the third drawer of the cabinet near the
+cross-door; tell your mother to be more careful in future about
+business papers.' Incontinently he vanished, and she at once awoke her
+mother, in whose room she was sleeping, who was very angry and ridiculed
+the story, but the girl's earnestness at length impressed her. She got
+up, went to the old cabinet, and at once found the missing book in the
+third drawer."
+
+Here is another tale of an equally useful and obliging ghost. "A
+gentleman, a relative of my own," writes a lady, "often received
+warnings from his dead father of things that were about to happen.
+Besides the farm on which he lived, he had another some miles away which
+adjoined a large demesne. Once in a great storm a fir-tree was blown
+down in the demesne, and fell into his field. The woodranger came to him
+and told him he might as well cut up the tree, and take it away.
+Accordingly one day he set out for this purpose, taking with him two men
+and a cart. He got into the fields by a stile, while his men went on to
+a gate. As he approached a gap between two fields he saw his father
+standing in it, as plainly as he ever saw him in life, and beckoning him
+back warningly. Unable to understand this, he still advanced, whereupon
+his father looked very angry, and his gestures became imperious. This
+induced him to turn away, so he sent his men home, and left the tree
+uncut. He subsequently discovered that a plot had been laid by the
+woodranger, who coveted his farm, and who hoped to have him dispossessed
+by accusing him of stealing the tree."
+
+A clergyman in the diocese of Clogher gave a personal experience of
+table-turning to the present Dean of St. Patrick's, who kindly sent the
+same to the writer. He said: "When I was a young man, I met some
+friends one evening, and we decided to amuse ourselves with
+table-turning. The local dispensary was vacant at the time, so we said
+that if the table would work we should ask who would be appointed as
+medical officer. As we sat round it touching it with our hands it began
+to knock. We said:
+
+"'Who are you?'
+
+"The table spelt out the name of a bishop of the Church of Ireland. We
+asked, thinking that the answer was absurd, as we knew him to be alive
+and well:
+
+"'Are you dead?'
+
+"The table answered 'Yes.'
+
+"We laughed at this and asked:
+
+"'Who will be appointed to the dispensary!'
+
+"The table spelt out the name of a stranger, who was not one of the
+candidates, whereupon we left off, thinking that the whole thing was
+nonsense.
+
+"The next morning I saw in the papers that the bishop in question had
+died that afternoon about two hours before our meeting, and a few days
+afterwards I saw the name of the stranger as the new dispensary doctor.
+I got such a shock that I determined never to have anything to do with
+table-turning again."
+
+The following extraordinary personal experience is sent by a lady,
+well-known to the present writer, but who requests that all names be
+omitted. Whatever explanation we may give of it, the good faith of the
+tale is beyond doubt.
+
+"Two or three months after my father-in-law's death, my husband, myself,
+and three small sons lived in the west of Ireland. As my husband was a
+young barrister, he had to be absent from home a good deal. My three
+boys slept in my bedroom, the eldest being about four, the youngest some
+months. A fire was kept up every night, and with a young child to look
+after, I was naturally awake more than once during the night. For many
+nights I believed I distinctly saw my father-in-law sitting by the
+fireside. This happened, not once or twice, but many times. He was
+passionately fond of his eldest grandson, who lay sleeping calmly in his
+cot. Being so much alone probably made me restless and uneasy, though I
+never felt afraid. I mentioned this strange thing to a friend who had
+known and liked my father-in-law, and she advised me to 'have his soul
+laid,' as she termed it. Though I was a Protestant and she was a Roman
+Catholic (as had also been my father-in-law), yet I fell in with her
+suggestion. She told me to give a coin to the next beggar that came to
+the house, telling him (or her) to pray for the rest of Mr. So-and-so's
+soul. A few days later a beggar-woman and her children came to the door,
+to whom I gave a coin and stated my desire. To my great surprise I
+learned from her manner that such requests were not unusual. Well, she
+went down on her knees on the steps, and prayed with apparent
+earnestness and devotion that his soul might find repose. Once again he
+appeared, and seemed to say to me, 'Why did you do that, E----? To come
+and sit here was the only comfort I had.' Never again did he appear, and
+strange to say, after a lapse of more than thirty years I have felt
+regret at my selfishness in interfering.
+
+"After his death, as he lay in the house awaiting burial, and I was in a
+house some ten miles away, I thought that he came and told me that I
+would have a hard life, which turned out only too truly. I was then
+young, and full of life, with every hope of a prosperous future."
+
+Of all the strange beliefs to be found in Ireland that in the Black Dog
+is the most widespread. There is hardly a parish in the country but
+could contribute some tale relative to this specter, though the majority
+of these are short, and devoid of interest. There is said to be such a
+dog just outside the avenue gate of Donohill Rectory, but neither of the
+compilers have had the good luck to see it. It may be, as some hold,
+that this animal was originally a cloud or nature-myth; at all events,
+it has now descended to the level of an ordinary haunting. The most
+circumstantial story that we have met with relative to the Black Dog is
+that related as follows by a clergyman of the Church of Ireland, who
+requests us to refrain from publishing his name.
+
+"In my childhood I lived in the country. My father, in addition to his
+professional duties, sometimes did a little farming in an amateurish
+sort of way. He did not keep a regular staff of laborers, and
+consequently when anything extra had to be done, such as hay-cutting or
+harvesting, he used to employ day-laborers to help with the work. At
+such times I used to enjoy being in the fields with the men, listening
+to their conversation. On one occasion I heard a laborer remark that he
+had once seen the devil! Of course I was interested and asked him to
+give me his experience. He said he was walking along a certain road, and
+when he came to a point where there was an entrance to a private place
+(the spot was well known to me), he saw a black dog sitting on the
+roadside. At the time he paid no attention to it, thinking it was an
+ordinary retriever, but after he had passed on about two or three
+hundred yards he found the dog was beside him, and then he noticed that
+its eyes were blood-red. He stooped down, and picked up some stones in
+order to frighten it away, but though he threw the stones at it they did
+not injure it, nor indeed did they seem to have any effect. Suddenly,
+after a few moments, the dog vanished from his sight.
+
+"Such was the laborer's tale. After some years, during which time I had
+forgotten altogether about the man's story, some friends of my own
+bought the place at the entrance to which the apparition had been seen.
+When my friends went to reside there I was a constant visitor at their
+house. Soon after their arrival they began to be troubled by the
+appearance of a black dog. Though I never saw it myself, it appeared to
+many members of the family. The avenue leading to the house was a long
+one, and it was customary for the dog to appear and accompany people for
+the greater portion of the way. Such an effect had this on my friends
+that they soon gave up the house, and went to live elsewhere. This was a
+curious corroboration of the laborer's tale."
+
+A distinction must be drawn between the so-called _Headless_ Coach,
+which portends death, and the _Phantom_ Coach, which appears to be a
+harmless sort of vehicle. With regard to the latter we give two tales
+below, the first of which was sent by a lady whose father was a
+clergyman, and a gold medalist of Trinity College, Dublin.
+
+"Some years ago my family lived in County Down. Our house was some way
+out of a fair-sized manufacturing town, and had a short avenue which
+ended in a gravel sweep in front of the hall door. One winter's evening,
+when my father was returning from a sick call, a carriage going at a
+sharp pace passed him on the avenue. He hurried on, thinking it was some
+particular friends, but when he reached the door no carriage was to be
+seen, so he concluded it must have gone round to the stables. The
+servant who answered his ring said that no visitors had been there, and
+he, feeling certain that the girl had made some mistake, or that some
+one else had answered the door, came into the drawing-room to make
+further inquiries. No visitors had come, however, though those sitting
+in the drawing-room had also heard the carriage drive up.
+
+"My father was most positive as to what he had seen, viz. a closed
+carriage with lamps lit; and let me say at once that he was a clergyman
+who was known throughout the whole of the north of Ireland as a most
+level-headed man, and yet to the day of his death he would insist that
+he met that carriage on our avenue.
+
+"One day in July one of our servants was given leave to go home for the
+day, but was told she must return by a certain train. For some reason
+she did not come by it, but by a much later one, and rushed into the
+kitchen in a most penitent frame of mind. 'I am so sorry to be late,'
+she told the cook, 'especially as there were visitors. I suppose they
+stayed to supper, as they were so late going away, for I met the
+carriage on the avenue.' The cook thereupon told her that no one had
+been at the house, and hinted that she must have seen the
+ghost-carriage, a statement that alarmed her very much, as the story was
+well known in the town, and car-drivers used to whip up their horses as
+they passed our gate, while pedestrians refused to go at all except in
+numbers. We have often heard the carriage, but these are the only two
+occasions on which I can positively assert that it was seen."
+
+The following personal experience of the phantom coach was given to the
+present writer by Mr. Matthias Fitzgerald, coachman to Miss Cooke, of
+Cappagh House, County Limerick. He stated that one moonlight night he
+was driving along the road from Askeaton to Limerick when he heard
+coming up behind him the roll of wheels, the clatter of horses' hoofs,
+and the jingling of the bits. He drew over to his own side to let this
+carriage pass, but nothing passed. He then looked back, but could see
+nothing, the road was perfectly bare and empty, though the sounds were
+perfectly audible. This continued for about a quarter of an hour or so,
+until he came to a cross-road, down one arm of which he had to turn. As
+he turned off he heard the phantom carriage dash by rapidly along the
+straight road. He stated that other persons had had similar experiences
+on the same road.
+
+
+
+
+NATURE-SPIRITS OR ELEMENTALS[18]
+
+BY NIZIDA
+
+[Footnote 18: From Journal of Proceedings of Theosophical Society.]
+
+     "Life is one all-pervading principle, and even the thing that
+     seems to die and putrefy but engenders new life and changes to
+     new forms of matter. Reasoning, then, by analogy--if not a
+     leaf, if not a drop of water, but is, no less than yonder star,
+     a habitable and breathing world, common sense would suffice to
+     teach that the circumfluent Infinite, which you call space--the
+     boundless Impalpable which divides the earth from the moon and
+     stars--is filled also with its correspondent and appropriate
+     life."--ZANONI.
+
+
+Within the last fifty years the human mind has been awakening slowly to
+the fact that there is a world, invisible to ordinary powers of vision,
+existing in close juxtaposition to the world cognized by our material
+senses. This world, or condition of existence for more ethereal beings,
+has been variously called Spirit-world, Summer-land, Astral-world,
+Hades, Kama-loca, or Desire-world, etc. Slowly and with difficulty do
+ideas upon the nature and characteristics of this world dawn upon the
+modern mind. The imagination, swayed by pictures of sensuous life,
+revels in the fantastic imagery it attributes to this unknown and dimly
+conceived state of existence, more often picturing what is false than
+what is true. Generally speaking, the most crude conceptions are
+entertained; these embrace but two conditions of life, the embodied and
+disembodied, for which there are only the earth and heaven, or hell,
+with that intermediate state accepted by Roman Catholics, called
+purgatory. There is, therefore, for such minds, only two orders of
+beings, _i.e._, mankind, and angels or devils, categorically termed
+_spirits_; but what would be the mode of life of those spirits, is a
+subject upon which ordinary intellects can throw no light at all. Their
+ideas are walled in by an impenetrable darkness, and not a ray of light
+glimmers across the unfathomable gulf lying beyond the grave; that
+portal of death which, for them, opens upon unknown darkness, and closes
+upon the light, vivacity, and gaiety of the earth.
+
+The idea that the beings we would term _disembodied_ do actually inhabit
+bodies of an aerial substance, invisible to our grosser senses, in a
+world exactly suited to their needs, surpasses the comprehension of an
+ordinary understanding, which can conceive only of gross matter, visible
+and tangible. Yet science begins to talk of _mind-stuff_, or
+_soul-substance_, in reality that ethereal substance which ranks next to
+dense matter, and which it wears as an external, more hardened shell.
+For there is space within space. Once realizing the existence of an
+_inner world_, we shall find that all our ideas concerning space, time,
+and every particular of our existence, and the world we live in must
+become entirely revolutionized.
+
+The principal source of knowledge which has been opened in modern times
+concerning the next state of existence has revealed itself in a manner
+homogeneous to itself. It has come by an interior method--a revelation
+from within acting upon the without. The inner world, although always
+acting upon and through its external covering, in a hidden or veiled
+way, as from an inscrutable cause, has manifested itself in a manner
+more overt and cognizable by the bodily senses of man. At least that
+which has usually been termed, with more or less awe, the
+_supernatural_, the _ghostly_, has impinged upon the mental incrassation
+of sensual man as a thing to be reckoned with in daily life; no longer
+to be relegated to the region of vague darkness _d'outre tombe_. Hence
+the human mind is being awakened to study and dive into the depths of
+that life within life, wherein dwell the disembodied, the so-called
+_dead_, the angels, and, _per contra_, the devils. Those hidden aerial
+and ethereal regions, wherein the _souls_ of things, and beings, draw
+life from the bosom of nature; wherein they find their _active_ habitat;
+wherein nature keeps a store of objects more wonderful, and infinitely
+more varied, than serve for her regions of dense matter; wherein man can
+discern the occult causes and beginnings of all things, even of his own
+thoughts; and whereupon he learns, at length, that he possesses the
+power of projecting by thought-creation forms more or less endued with
+life and intelligence, which compose his mental world, and with which
+he, as it were, "peoples space." He finds the sphere of his
+responsibilities immensely enlarged by this new knowledge, of which he
+is taking the first honeyed sips, delighted with the self-importance
+which the heretofore unsuspected power of diving into the unseen seems
+to bestow. If hitherto he has had to hold himself responsible for the
+consequences of his external actions, that they should not militate
+against the order of society as regards the laws of morality and virtue,
+he has at least acted upon the impression that his _secret thoughts_
+were his own, and remained with him, affecting no one but himself; were
+incognizable in their veiled chambers, and of which it was not necessary
+to take any notice; the transitory, evanescent, spontaneous workings of
+mind, unknown and inscrutable, which begin and end like the flight of a
+bird, whence coming and where going it is impossible to know.
+
+By the first faint gleams of the light of hidden wisdom, which are
+beginning to dawn upon his mind, he now perceives that responsibility
+does not end upon the plane of earth, but extends into the aerial
+regions of that inner world where his thoughts are no longer secret, and
+where they affect the astral currents, acting for the good or detriment
+of others to almost infinite extent; that he may act upon the ambient
+atmospheres, not only of the outer but inner planes of life, like a
+plant of poisonous exhalations, if his thoughts be not pure and good;
+peopling _unseen_ space with the outcome of a debased mind, in the shape
+of hideous and maleficent creatures. He becomes responsible, therefore,
+for the consequences of his mental actions and thought-life, as well as
+those actions carefully prepared to pass unchallenged before this
+world's gaze.
+
+Diving into the unseen by the light of the new spiritual knowledge now
+radiating into all minds, we learn that there are three degrees of life
+in man, the material, the aerial, and the ethereal, corresponding to
+body, soul, and spirit; and that there are three corresponding planes of
+existence inhabited by beings suited to them.
+
+The subject of our paper will limit us at present to the aerial, or
+soul-plane--the next contiguous, or astral world. The beings that more
+especially live in this realm of the soul, have by common consent been
+termed _elementals_. Nature in illimitable space teems with life in
+forms ethereal, evanescent as thought itself, or more objectively
+condensed and solidified, according to the inherent attraction which
+holds them together; enduring according to the force, energy, or power
+which gave them birth; intelligent, or non-intelligent, from the same
+source, which is mental. These spirits of the soul-world are possessed
+of aerial bodies, and their world has its own firmament, its own
+atmosphere and conditions of existence, its own objects, scenes,
+habitations. Yet their world and the world of man intermingle,
+interpenetrate, and "throw their shadows upon each other," says
+Paracelsus. Again, he says: "As there are in our world water and fire,
+harmonies and contrasts, visible bodies and invisible essences, likewise
+these beings are varied in their constitution, and have their own
+peculiarities, for which human beings have no comprehension."
+
+Matter, as known to men in bodies, is seen and felt by means of the
+physical senses; but to beings not provided with such senses, the things
+of our world are as invisible and intangible as things of more ethereal
+substance are to our grosser senses. Elementals which find their habitat
+in the interior of the earth's shell, usually called _gnomes_, are not
+conscious of the density of the element of earth as we perceive it; but
+breathe in a free atmosphere, and behold objects of which we cannot form
+the remotest conception. In like manner exist the _undines_ in water,
+_sylphs_ in air, and _salamanders_ in fire. The elementals of the air,
+sylphs, are said to be friendly towards man; those of the water,
+undines, are malicious. The salamanders can, but rarely do, associate
+with man, "on account of the fiery nature of the element they inhabit."
+The pigmies (gnomes) are friendly; but as they are the guardians of
+treasure they usually oppose the approach of man, baffling by many
+mysterious arts the selfish greed of seekers for buried wealth. We,
+however, read of their alluring miners either by stroke of pick, or
+hammer, or by floating lights to the best mineral "leads." Paracelsus
+says of these subterranean elementals that they build houses, vaults,
+and strange-looking edifices of certain immaterial substances unknown to
+us. "They have some kind of alabaster, marble, cement, etc., but these
+substances are as different from ours as the web of a spider is
+different from our linen."
+
+These inhabitants of the elements, or "nature-spirits," may, or may not
+be, conscious of the existence of man; oftentimes feeling him merely as
+a force which propels, or arrests them; for by his will and by his
+thought, he acts upon the astral currents of the aerial world in which
+they live; and by the use of his hands he sways the material elements of
+earth, fire, and water wherein they are established. They perceive the
+soul-essence of man with its "currents and forms," and they also are
+capable of reading such thoughts as do not spiritually transcend their
+powers of discernment. They perceive the states of feeling and emotions
+of men by the "_colors_ and impressions produced in their auras," and
+may thus irresistibly be drawn into overt action upon man's plane of
+life. They are the invisible _stone-throwers_ we hear of so frequently,
+supposed to be _human_ spirits; the perpetrators of mischief, such as
+destruction of property in the habitations of men, noises, and
+mysterious nocturnal annoyances.
+
+Of all writers upon occult subjects to whose works we have as yet gained
+access, Paracelsus throws the greatest light upon these tricky sprites
+celebrated in the realm of poesy, and inhabiting that disputed land
+popularly termed fairydom. From open vision, and that wonderful insight
+of the master or adept into the secrets of nature, Paracelsus is able to
+give us the most positive information concerning their bodily formation,
+the nature of their existence, and other extraordinary particulars,
+which proves that he has actually seen and observed them, and doubtless
+also employed them as the obedient servants of his purified will; a
+power into which the spiritual man ascends by a species of right, when
+he has thrown off, or conquered, the thraldom of matter in his own body,
+and stands open-eyed at "the portals of his deep within."
+
+We will quote certain extracts from the pages of this wonderful
+interpreter of nature. "There are two kinds of flesh. One that comes
+from Adam, and another that does not come from Adam. The former is gross
+material, visible and tangible for us; the other one is not tangible and
+not made from earth. If a man who is a descendant from Adam wants to
+pass through a wall, he will have first to make a hole through it; but a
+being who is not descended from Adam needs no hole nor door, but may
+pass through matter that appears solid to us without causing any damage
+to it. The beings not descended from Adam, as well as those descended
+from him, are organized and have substantial bodies; but there is as
+much difference between the substance composing their bodies as there is
+between matter and spirit. Yet the elementals are not spirits, because
+they have flesh, blood, and bones; they live and propagate offspring;
+they eat and talk, act and sleep, etc., and consequently they cannot be
+properly called spirits. They are beings occupying a place between man
+and spirits, resembling men and women in their organization and form,
+and resembling spirits in the rapidity of their locomotion. They are
+intermediary beings or composita, formed out of two parts joined into
+one; just as two colors mixed together will appear as one color,
+resembling neither one nor the other of the two original ones. The
+elementals have no higher principles; they are therefore not immortal,
+and when they die they perish like animals. Neither water nor fire can
+injure them, and they cannot be locked up in our material prisons. They
+are, however, subject to diseases. Their costumes, actions, forms, ways
+of speaking, etc., are not very unlike those of human beings; but there
+are a great many varieties. They have only animal intellects, and are
+incapable of spiritual development."
+
+In saying the elementals have "no higher principles," and "When they die
+they perish like animals," Paracelsus does not stop to explain that the
+higher principles in them are absolutely latent, as in plants; and that
+animals in "perishing" are not destroyed, but the psychical or soul-part
+of the animal passes, by the processes of evolution, into higher forms.
+
+"Each species moves only in the element to which it belongs, and neither
+of them can go out of its appropriate element, which is to them as the
+air is to us, or the water to fishes; and none of them can live in the
+element belonging to another class. To each elemental being the element
+in which it lives is transparent, invisible, and respirable, as the
+atmosphere is to ourselves."
+
+"As far as the personalities of the elementals are concerned, it may be
+said that those belonging to the element of water resemble human beings
+of either sex; those of the air are greater and stronger; the
+salamanders are long, lean, and dry; the pigmies (gnomes) are the length
+of about two spans, but they may extend or elongate their forms until
+they appear like giants.
+
+"Nymphs (undines, or naiads) have their residences and palaces in the
+element of water; sylphs and salamanders have no fixed dwellings.
+Salamanders have been seen in the shape of fiery balls, or tongues of
+fire running over the fields or appearing in houses;" or at psychical
+seances as starry lights, darting and dancing about.
+
+"There are certain localities where large numbers of elementals live
+together, and it has occurred that a man has been admitted into their
+communities and lived with them for a while, and that they have become
+visible and tangible to him."
+
+Poets, in their moments of exaltation, have an unconscious soul-vision
+before which nature's invisible worlds lie like an open volume, and they
+translate her secrets into language of mystic meanings whose harmonies
+are re-interpreted by sympathetic minds. The poet Hogg, in his _Rapture
+of Kilmeny_, would seem to have had a vision of some such visit as that
+described above, into the fairyland of pure, peaceful _elementals_.
+
+"Bonny Kilmeny gaed up the glen"--and is represented as having fallen
+asleep. During this sleep she is transported to "a far countrye," whose
+gentle, lovely inhabitants receive her with delight. The following
+lines reveal the poet's power of inner vision, as will be seen by the
+words italicized. They are in wonderful accord with the descriptions
+given by Paracelsus from the actual observation of a _conscious seer_:
+
+    "They lifted Kilmeny, they led her away,
+    And she walk'd _in the light of a sunless day_;
+    The sky was _a dome of crystal bright_,
+    The _fountain of vision and fountain of light_;
+    The emerald fields _were of dazzling glow_,
+    And the _flowers of everlasting blow_."
+
+It needs but a brushing away of the films of flesh, which occurs in
+moments of rapt inspiration, for the soul, escaping from its
+prison-house, to revel in the innocent, peaceful scenes of its own inner
+world, and give a true description of what it beholds. The inner
+meanings of things, the symbolical correspondences are revealed in a
+flash of light, and the poet-soul becomes revelator and prophet all in
+one. He sets it down to imagination and fancy, when he returns into his
+normal state, and it is what we call "a flight of genius"--the power of
+the soul to enter its own appropriate world. Certainly _les ames de
+boue_ have no such power. It is, however, a _proof that world exists_,
+if we will but understand it aright.
+
+There has never existed a poet with a truer conception of "elemental"
+life than Shakespeare. What more exquisite creation of the poet's fancy,
+which _might be every word of it true_, for in no particular does it
+surpass the truth, than that of _Ariel_, whom the "foul witch Sycorax,"
+"by help of her more potent ministers, and in her most unmitigable
+rage," did confine "into a cloven pine;" for Ariel, the good elemental,
+was "a spirit too delicate to act her earthly and abhorred commands."
+When Prospero, the Adept and White Magician, arrived upon the scene, by
+his superior art he liberated the delicate Ariel, who afterwards becomes
+his ministering servant for _good_, not for evil.
+
+In the _Midsummer Night's Dream_, Titania transports a human child into
+her elemental world, where she keeps him with so jealous a love as to
+refuse to yield him even to her "fairy lord," as Puck calls him. Puck
+himself is almost as exquisite a realization of elemental life as Ariel.
+As Shakespeare unfolds the lovely, innocent tale of the occupations,
+sports and pranks of this aerial people, he introduces us to the
+elementals of his own beautiful thought world; and, although indulging
+in the "sports of fancy," there is so broad a foundation of truth, that,
+being enlightened by the revelations of Paracelsus, we no longer think
+we are merely entertained by the poetical inventions of a master of his
+art, but may well believe we have been witnesses of a charming reality
+beheld through the "rift in the veil" of the poet's unconscious inner
+sight. Indeed, one of the tenets of occult science is that there is
+nothing on earth, nor that the mind of man can conceive, which is not
+already existent in the unseen world.
+
+We reflect in the translucence, or _diaphane_ of our mental world those
+concrete images of things which we attract by the irresistible magnetism
+of _desire_ working through the thought. It is a spontaneous,
+unconscious mental process with us; but there is no reason why it should
+not become a perfectly conscious process regulated by a divine wisdom
+to functions of harmony with nature's laws, and to productions of beauty
+and beneficence for the good of the whole world. As the world is the
+concreted emanation of divine thought, so it is by thought that man, the
+microcosm, _creates_ upon his petty, finite plane. Given the
+desire--even if it be only as the lightest breath of a summer zephyr
+upon the sleeping bosom of the ocean, scarcely ruffling its surface--it
+becomes a center of attraction for suitable molecules of
+thought-substance floating in space, which immediately "agglomerate
+round the idea proceeding to reveal itself," _by means_ of clothing
+itself in substance. By these silent processes in the invisible world
+wherein our souls draw the breath of life, we form our mental world, our
+personal character, even our very physical bodies. The _perisprit_, or
+astral body, the vehicle for _formless spirit_, is essentially builded
+up from the mental life, and grows by the accretion of those atoms or
+molecules of thought-substance which are assimilable by the mind. Hence
+a good man, a man of lofty aspirations, forms, as the _nearest_ external
+clothing of his inner spirit, a beautiful soul-body, which irradiates
+through and beautifies the physical body. The man of low and groveling
+mind will, on the contrary, attract the depraved and poisoned substances
+of the lower astral world; the malarial emanations thrown off by other
+equally depraved beings, by which his mind becomes embruted, his soul
+diseased, whilst his physical form presents in a concrete image the
+ugliness of his inner nature. Such a man never ascends above the dense,
+mephitic vapors of the sin-laden world, nor takes into his soul the
+slightest breath of pure, vitalizing air. He is diseased by invisible
+astral _microbes_, being most effectually self-inoculated with them by
+the operation of desires which never transcend the earth. Did we lift
+the veil which shrouds from mortal sight the elemental world of such a
+moral pervert, we should behold a world teeming with hideous forms, and
+as actively working as the _bacteria_ of fermentation revealed by a
+powerful microscope, elementals of destruction, death, and decay, which
+must pass out into other forms for the purification of the spiritual
+atmosphere; creatures produced by the man's own thoughts, living upon
+and in him, and reflecting, like mirrors, his hideousness back again to
+himself. It is from the presence of innumerable foci of evil of this
+kind that the world is befouled, and the moral atmosphere of our planet
+tainted. They emit poisoned astral currents, from which none are safe
+but those who are in the _positive_ condition of perfect moral health.
+
+From the fountain of life we draw in the materials of life, and become,
+upon our lower plane, other living fountains, which from liberty of
+choice, and freedom of will, have the power of so muddying the pure
+stream, that in its turbidness and foulness it becomes death
+instead of life, and produces hell instead of heaven. When we, by
+self-purification, and that constant mental discipline which trains us
+upwards, clinging to our highest ideal by the tendrils of faith, and
+love, and continual aspiration, as the vine would cling to a rock--have
+eliminated all that is impure in our thought world, we become fountains
+of life, and make our own heavens, wherein are reflected only images of
+divine beauty. The whole elemental world on our immediate astral plane
+becomes gradually transformed during the progress of our evolution into
+the higher spiritual grades of being. And as humanity _en masse_
+advances, throwing off the moral and spiritual deformity of the selfish,
+ignorant ego, the astral atmospheres belonging to our planet world
+become filled with elementals of a peaceful, loving character, of
+beautiful forms, and of beneficent influences. The currents of evil
+force which now act with a continually jarring effect upon those
+striving to maintain the equilibrium of harmony with nature upon the
+side of _good_, would cease. That depression, agitation, and distress
+which now, from inscrutable causes, assail minds otherwise rejoicing in
+an innocent happiness, forewarning them of some impending calamity, or
+of some evil presence it seems impossible to shake off, would become
+unknown. The horrible demons of war, with which humanity, in its sinful
+state of _separateness_, is continually threatening itself--as if the
+members of one body were self-opposed, and revolting from that state of
+agreement that can alone ensure the well-being of the whole--would no
+longer be held, like ravenous bloodhounds chafing against their leashes,
+ready to spring, at a word, upon their hellish work; but they will have
+passed away, like other hideous deformities of evil; and the serene
+astral atmospheres would no longer reflect ideas of cruel wrongs to
+fellow-beings, revenge, lust of power, injustice, and ruthless hatred.
+We are taught that around an "idea" agglomerate the suitable molecules
+of soul-substance--"Monads," as Leibnitz terms them, until a concrete
+form stands created, the production of a mind, or minds. All the hideous
+man-created beings, powers or forces, which now act like ravaging
+pestilences and storms in the astral atmospheres of our planet will
+have disappeared like the monstrous phantoms of a frightful dream, when
+the whole of humanity has progressed into a state of higher spiritual
+evolution. It is well to reflect that _each individual_, however humble
+and apparently insignificant his position in the great human family, can
+aid by his life, by the silent emanation of his pure and wise thoughts,
+as well as by his active labors for humanity, in bringing nearer this
+halcyon period of peace, harmony, and purity--that millennium, in short,
+we are all looking forward to, as a dream we can never hope to see
+realized.
+
+In _Man: Fragments of Forgotten History_, we read: "Violence was the
+most baneful manifestation of man's spiritual decadence, and it
+rebounded upon him from the elemental beings, whom it was his duty to
+develop"--those _sub-mundanes_, towards whom man is now learning that he
+incurs _responsibilities_ of which he is at present utterly unconscious,
+but of which he will indubitably become more and more aware as he
+ascends the ladder of spiritual evolution.
+
+To continue our extract from _Fragments_. "When this duty was ignored,
+and the separation of interests was accentuated, the natural man
+forcibly realized an antagonism with the elemental spirits. As violence
+increased in man, these spirits waxed strong in their way, and, true to
+their natures, which had been outraged by the neglect of those who were
+in a sense their guardians, they automatically responded with
+resentment. No longer could man rely upon the power of love or harmony
+to guide others, because he himself had ceased to be impelled solely by
+its influence; distrust had marred the symmetry of his inner self, and
+beings who could not perceive but only _receive impressions projected
+towards them_, quickly adapted themselves to the altered conditions."
+(Elementals as _forces_, respond to forces, or are swayed by them; man,
+as a superior force, acts upon them, therefore, injuriously, or
+beneficially, and they in their turn, poisoned by his baleful influence,
+when he is depraved, become injurious forces to him by the laws of
+reaction.) "At once nature itself took on the changed expression; and
+where all before was gladness and freshness there were now indications
+of sorrow and decay. Atmospheric influences hitherto unrecognized began
+to be noted; there was felt a chill in the morning, a dearth of magnetic
+heat at noon-tide, and a universal deadness at the approach of night,
+which began to be looked upon with alarm. For a change in the object
+must accompany every change in the subject. Until this point was reached
+there was nothing to make man afraid of himself and his surroundings.
+
+"And as he plunged deeper and deeper into matter, he lost his
+consciousness of the subtler forms of existence, and attributed all the
+antagonism he experienced to unknown causes. The conflict continued to
+wax stronger, and, in consequence of his ignorance, man fell a readier
+victim. There were exceptions among the race then, as there are now,
+whose finer perceptive faculties outgrew, or kept ahead, of the
+advancing materialization; and they alone, in course of events, could
+feel and recognize the influences of these earliest progeny of the
+earth.
+
+"Time came when an occasional appearance was viewed with alarm, and was
+thought to be an omen of evil. Recognizing this fear on the part of man,
+the elementals ultimately came to realize for him the dangers he
+apprehended, and they banded together to terrify him." (They reflected
+back to him his own fears in a concrete form, sufficiently intelligent,
+perhaps, to take some malicious pleasure in it, for man in propelling
+into space a force of any kind is met by a reactionary force, which
+seems to give exactly what his mind foreshadowed. In the negative
+coldness of fear, he lays himself open to infesting molecules or atoms
+which paralyze life, and he falls a victim to his own lack of faith,
+cheerful courage and hope.) "They found strong allies in an order of
+existence which was generated when physical death made its appearance"
+(_i.e._, elementaries, or shells); "and their combined forces began to
+manifest themselves at night, for which man had a dread as being the
+enemy of his protector, the sun.[19]
+
+[Footnote 19: _Fragments of Forgotten History._]
+
+"The elementaries galvanized into activity by the elemental beings began
+to appear to man under as many varieties of shape as his hopes and fears
+allowed. And as his ignorance of things spiritual became denser, these
+agencies brought in an influx of error, which accelerated his spiritual
+degeneration. Thus, it will be seen that man's neglect of his duty to
+the nature-spirits is the cause which has launched him into a sea of
+troubles, that has shipwrecked so many generations of his descendants.
+Famines, plagues, wars, and other catastrophes are not so disconnected
+with the agency of nature-spirits as it might appear to the sceptical
+mind."[20]
+
+[Footnote 20: _Fragments of Forgotten History._]
+
+It is therefore evident that the world of man exercises a controlling
+power over this invisible world of elementals. Even in the most remote
+and inaccessible haunts of nature, where we may imagine halcyon days of
+an innocent bliss elapsing in poetic peace and beauty for the more
+harmless of these irresponsible, evanescent offspring of nature's
+teeming bosom, they must inevitably, sooner or later, yield up their
+peaceful sovereignty to the greater monarch, man, who usually comes with
+a harsh and discordant influence, like the burning sirocco of the
+desert, like the overwhelming avalanche from the silent peaks of snow,
+or the earthquake, convulsing and tearing to atoms the beauty of
+gardens, palaces, cities. It is said that elementals _die_; it is
+presumable that at such times they die by myriads, when the whole
+surface of the earth becomes changed from the unavoidable passing away
+of nature's wildernesses, the peaceful homes of bird and beast, as the
+improving, commercial, money-grasping man--that contradiction of God,
+that industrious destroyer, who lives at war with beauty, peace, and
+goodness--appears upon the scene. These may be called poetical
+rhapsodies; yet poetry is, in a mysterious way, closely allied to that
+hidden truth which has its birth on the soul-plane, and the imagination
+of man is, according to Eliphas Levi, a clairvoyant and magical
+faculty--"the wand of the magician."
+
+To speak of elementals _dying_, is to use a word which expresses for us
+_change of condition_; the passing from one sphere of life to another,
+or from one plane of consciousness to another. This to the sensual man
+is "death." But there is _no_ death--it is merely a passing from one
+phase of existence to another. Hence the elementals lose the forms they
+once held, changing their plane of consciousness, and appearing in other
+forms.
+
+We have shown somewhat of the mysterious way in which man acts upon
+these invisible denizens of his soul-world, and by which he incurs a
+certain responsibility. By the dynamic power of thought and will it is
+done--as everything is done. The elementals pushed by man, as by a
+superior force, off that equilibrium of harmony with pure, innocent
+nature, which they originally maintained when our planet was young, have
+been transformed into powers of evil, which man brings upon himself as
+retribution--the reaction of that force he ignorantly sets in motion
+when he breaks the beneficent laws of nature. Originally dependent upon
+him, and capable of aiding him in a thousand ways when he is wise and
+good, they have become his enemies, who thwart him at every turn, and
+guard the secrets of their abodes with none the less implacable
+sternness because they are probably only semi-conscious of the functions
+they perform. It is nature acting through them--the great cosmic
+consciousness, which forbids that desecrating footsteps shall invade the
+holy precincts of her stupendous life-secrets. But to the spiritual
+man--the god--these secrets open of themselves, like a hand laden with
+gifts, readily unclosing to a favorite and deserving child.
+
+Giving forth a current of evil, and sinking therefrom into a state of
+bestial ignorance, man has enveloped himself in clouds of darkness which
+assume monstrous shapes threatening to overwhelm him. A wicked man is
+generally a coward because he lives in a state of perpetual dread of the
+reactionary effect of the evil forces he has set in motion. These are
+volumes of elemental forms banded together, and swaying like the
+thunder-clouds of a gathering storm.
+
+To disperse these, his own spiritual mind must ray forth the light
+reflected from the source of light--omniscience. In the astral
+atmospheres of the spiritual man, there are no clouds, and fear is
+unknown. In the mental world of the innocent and pure, those are only
+forms of gracious beauty, as lovely as the shapes of nature's innocent
+embryons, which reveal themselves in the forests, the running streams,
+the floating breeze, and in company with the birds and flowers, to the
+clairvoyant sight of those nature-lovers before whom she withdraws her
+veils, communing with their souls by an intuitional speech which fills
+them with rapturous admiration. It is not only the learned scientist who
+may read nature's marvelous revelations; for she whispers them with
+maternal tenderness into the open ears of babes, where they remain ever
+safe from desecration, and are cherished as the soul's innocent delights
+in hours of isolation from the busy, jarring world.
+
+The spiritual soul is ever looking beneath nature's material veils for
+_correspondences_. Every natural object _means_ something else to such
+penetrating vision--a vision which begins to be spontaneously exercised
+by the soul when it has fairly reached that stage of spiritual
+evolution; and to this silent exploration many a secret meaning reveals
+itself by object-pictures, which awaken reflection and inquiry as to the
+why and wherefore. Thus the spiritual man drinks, as it were, from
+nature's own hand the pure waters of an inexhaustible spring--that
+occult knowledge which feeds his soul, and aids in forming for him a
+beautiful and powerful astral body. And nature becomes invested to his
+penetrating sight with a beauty she never wore before, and which the
+clay-blinded eyes of animal man can never behold. Such a man would enter
+the isolated haunts of the purer nature-spirits with gentle footsteps,
+and loving thoughts. To him the breeze is wafted wooingly, the streams
+whisper music, and everything wears an aspect of loving joyousness, and
+inviting confidence. Beside the rigid material forms, he sees their
+_aromal counter-parts_; everything is life; the very stones live, and
+have a consciousness suited to their state; and he feels as if every
+atom of his own body vibrated in unison with the living things about
+him--as if _all were one flesh_. To injure a single thing would be
+impossible to him. Such is the soul-condition of the perfect man, to
+whom evil has become impossible.
+
+An adept has written--"Every thought of man upon being evolved passes
+into another world and becomes an active entity by associating
+itself--coalescing, we might term it--with an elemental; that is to say,
+with one of the semi-intelligent forces of the kingdoms. It survives as
+an active intelligence--a creature of the mind's begetting--for a longer
+or shorter period, proportionate with the original intensity of the
+cerebral action which generated it. Thus, a good thought is perpetuated
+as an active, beneficent power, an evil one as a maleficent demon. And
+so man is continually peopling his current in space with the offspring
+of his fancies, desires, impulses, and passions; a current which
+re-acts upon any sensitive or nervous organization which comes in
+contact with it, in proportion to its dynamic intensity. The adept
+evolves these shapes consciously, other men throw them off
+unconsciously."
+
+Therefore, man must be held responsible not only for his outward
+actions, but his secret thoughts, by which he puts into existence
+irresponsible entities of more or less maleficent power, if his thoughts
+be of an evil nature. These are revelations of a deep and abstruse
+character; but would they have come at all if man had not reached that
+stage of evolution when it is necessary he should step up into his
+spiritual kingdom, and rule as a master over his lower self, and as a
+beneficent god over every department of unintelligent nature?
+
+We note the closing words of the adept's letter: "The adept evolves
+these shapes consciously, other men throw them off unconsciously." In
+the adept's soul-world then--the man who has ascended, by self-conquest
+primarily, into his spiritual kingdom, and who has graduated through
+years of probation and study in spiritual or occult science--_i.e._, the
+White Magician, the Son of God, the inheritor by spiritual evolution, of
+divinity--there would reign peace, happiness, beauty, order, absolute
+harmony with nature on the side of good. No discordant note, no deformed
+astral production to embarrass or obstruct the current of divine
+magnetism he emanates into space--the delicious, soul-purifying,
+healing, and uplifting aura which radiates from him as from a center of
+beneficence to the lower world of struggling humanity. The
+semi-intelligent forces of nature, the innocent nature spirits would in
+such a soul-world, find an appropriate and harmonious habitat,
+clustering in waiting obedience upon the behests of a master whose every
+thought-breath would be as an uplifting life.
+
+To such a state and condition of complete harmony with God and nature
+must the truly perfect spiritual man ascend by evolution.
+
+
+THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ELEMENTALS AND ELEMENTARIES
+
+From the similarity of the terms used to designate two classes of astral
+beings who are able to communicate with man, a certain confusion has
+arisen in the public mind, which it would be as well, perhaps, to aid in
+removing.
+
+_Elementals_ is a term applied to the nature spirits, the living
+existences which belong peculiarly to the elements they inhabit; "beings
+of the _mysteria specialia_," according to Paracelsus, "soul-forms,
+which will return into their chaos, and who are not capable of
+manifesting any higher spiritual activity because they do not possess
+the necessary kind of constitution in which an activity of a spiritual
+character can manifest itself.... Matter is connected with spirit by an
+intermediate principle which it receives from this spirit. This
+intermediate link between matter and spirit belongs to all the three
+kingdoms of nature. In the mineral kingdom it is called Stannar, or
+Trughat; in the vegetable kingdom, Jaffas; and it forms in connection
+with the vital force of the vegetable kingdom, the Primum Ens, which
+possesses the highest medicinal properties.... In the animal kingdom,
+this semi-material body is called Evestrum, and in human beings it is
+called the Sidereal Man. Each living being is connected with the
+Macrocosmos and Microcosmos by means of this intermediate element of
+soul, belonging to the Mysterium Magnum from whence it has been
+received, and whose form and qualities are determined by the quality and
+quantity of the spiritual and material elements." From this we may infer
+that the _Elementals_, properly speaking, are the _Soul-forms_ of the
+elements they inhabit--the activities and energies of the _world-soul_
+differentiated into forms, endowed with more or less consciousness and
+capacities for feeling, and hours of enjoyment, or pain. But these,
+never or rarely, entering any more deeply into dense matter than enabled
+so to do by their aerial invisible bodies, do not appear upon our gross
+physical plane otherwise than as forces, energies, or influences. Their
+soul-forms are the intermediate link between matter and spirit,
+resembling the soul-forms of animals and men, which also form this
+intermediate link, the difference being that the souls of animals and
+men have enveloped themselves in a casing of dense matter for the
+purposes of existence upon the more external planes of life.
+Consequently, after the death of the external bodies of men and animals,
+there remain astral remnants which undergo gradual disintegration in the
+astral atmospheres. These have been termed _elementaries_; _i.e._, "the
+astral corpses of the dead; the ethereal counterpart of the once living
+person, which will sooner or later be decomposed into its astral
+elements, as the physical body is dissolved into the elements to which
+it belongs. The elementaries of good people have little cohesion and
+evaporate soon; those of wicked people may exist a long time; those of
+suicides, etc., have a life and consciousness of their own as long as a
+division of principles has not taken place. These are the most
+dangerous."
+
+In the introduction to _Isis Unveiled_, we find the following definition
+of elemental spirits:
+
+"The creatures evolved in the four kingdoms of earth, air, fire, and
+water, and called by the Kabalists gnomes, sylphs, salamanders, and
+undines. They may be termed the forces of nature, and will either
+operate effects as the servile agents of general law, or may be employed
+by the disembodied spirits--whether pure or impure--and by living adepts
+of magic and sorcery, to produce desired phenomenal results. _Such_
+beings never become men." (But there are classes of elemental spirits
+who do become men, as we shall see further on.)
+
+"Under the general designation of fairies and fays, these spirits of the
+elements appear in the myth, fable, tradition, and poetry of all
+nations, ancient and modern. Their names are legion--peris, devs, djins,
+sylvans, satyrs, fawns, elves, dwarfs, trolls, kobolds, brownies,
+stromkarls, undines, nixies, salamanders, goblins, banshees, kelpies,
+prixies, moss people, good people, good neighbors, wild women, men of
+peace, white ladies, and many more. They have been seen, feared,
+blessed, banned, and invoked in every quarter of the globe and in every
+age. These elementals are the principal agents of disembodied but never
+visible spirits at seances, and the producers of all the phenomena
+except the 'subjective.'"--(Preface xxix, vol. I.)
+
+"In the Jewish Kabala the nature spirits were known under the general
+name of _Shedim_, and divided into four classes. The Persians called
+them _devs_; the Greeks indistinctly designated them as _demons_; the
+Egyptians knew them as _afrites_. The ancient Mexicans, says Kaiser,
+believed in numerous spirit-abodes, into one of which the shades of
+innocent children were placed until final disposal; into another,
+situated in the sun, ascended the valiant souls of heroes; while the
+hideous specters of incorrigible sinners were sentenced to wander and
+despair in subterranean caves, held in the bonds of the
+earth-atmosphere, unwilling and unable to liberate themselves. They
+passed their time in communicating with mortals, and frightening those
+who could see them. Some of the African tribes know them as
+Yowahoos."--(P. 313, vol. I.)
+
+Of the ideas of Proclus on this subject it is said in _Isis Unveiled_:
+
+"He held that the four elements are all filled with demons, maintaining
+with Aristotle that the universe is full, and that there is no void in
+nature. The demons of earth, air, fire, and water, are of an elastic,
+ethereal, semi-corporeal essence. It is these classes which officiate as
+intermediate agents between the gods and men. Although lower in
+intelligence than the sixth order of the higher demons, these beings
+preside directly over the elements and organic life. They direct the
+growth, the inflorescence, the properties, and various changes of
+plants. They are the personified ideas or virtues shed from the heavenly
+_ule_ into the inorganic matter; and, as the vegetable kingdom is one
+remove higher than the mineral, these emanations from the celestial gods
+take form in the plant, and become _its soul_. It is that which
+Aristotle's doctrine terms the _form_ in the three principles of natural
+bodies, classified by him as _privation_, matter, and form. His
+philosophy teaches that besides the original matter, another principle
+is necessary to complete the triune nature of every particle, and this
+is _form_; an invisible, but still, in an ontological sense of the word,
+a substantial being, really distinct from matter proper. Thus, in an
+animal or a plant, besides the bones, the flesh, the nerves, the brains,
+and the blood in the former; and besides the pulpy matter, tissues,
+fibers, and juice in the latter, which blood and juice by circulating
+through the veins and fibers nourish all parts of both animal and plant;
+and besides the animal spirits which are the principles of motion, and
+the chemical energy which is transformed into vital force in the green
+leaf, there must be a substantial form, which Aristotle called in the
+horse, the _horse's soul_; and Proclus, the _demon_ of every mineral,
+plant, or animal, and the medieval philosophers, the _elementary
+spirits_ of the four kingdoms."--(P. 312, vol. I.)
+
+"According to the ancient doctrines, the soulless elemental spirits were
+evolved by the ceaseless motion inherent in the astral light. Light is
+force, and the latter is produced by _will_. As this will proceeds from
+an intelligence which cannot err, for it has nothing of the material
+organs of human thought in it, being the super-fine pure emanation of
+the highest divinity itself--(Plato's _Father_)--it proceeds from the
+beginning of time, according to immutable laws, to evolve the
+elementary fabric requisite for subsequent generations of what we term
+human races. All of the latter, whether belonging to this planet or to
+some other of the myriads in space, have their earthly bodies evolved in
+the matrix out of the bodies of a certain class of these elemental
+beings which have passed away in the invisible worlds." (P. 285, vol.
+I.)
+
+Speaking of Pythagoras, Iamblichus, and other Greek philosophers, _Isis_
+says:
+
+"The universal ether was not, in their eyes, simply a something
+stretching, tenantless, throughout the expanse of heaven; it was a
+boundless ocean peopled, like our familiar seas, with monstrous and
+minor creatures, and having in its every molecule the germs of life.
+Like the finny tribes which swarm in our oceans and smaller bodies of
+water, each kind having its 'habitat' in some spot to which it is
+curiously adapted; some friendly and some inimical to man; some pleasant
+and some frightful to behold; some seeking the refuge of quiet nooks and
+land-locked harbors, and some traversing great areas of water, the
+various races of the elemental spirits were believed by them to inhabit
+the different portions of the great ethereal ocean, and to be exactly
+adapted to their respective conditions." (P. 284, vol. I.)
+
+"Lowest in the scale of being are those invisible creatures called by
+the Kabalists the _elementary_. There are three distinct classes of
+these. The highest, in intelligence and cunning, are the so-called
+terrestrial spirits, the _larvae_, or shadows of those who have lived on
+earth, have refused all spiritual light, remained and died deeply
+immersed in the mire of matter, and from whose sinful souls the
+immortal spirit has gradually separated. The second class is composed of
+invisible antitypes of men _to be_ born. No form can come into objective
+existence, from the highest to the lowest, before the abstract idea of
+this form, or as Aristotle would call it, the privation of this form is
+called forth.... These models, as yet devoid of immortal spirits, are
+elementals properly speaking, _psychic embryos_--which when their time
+arrives, die out of the invisible world, and are borne into this visible
+one as human infants, receiving _in transitu_ that divine breath called
+spirit which completes the perfect man. This class cannot communicate
+objectively with man.
+
+"The third class of elementals proper never evolve into human beings,
+but occupy, as it were, a specific step of the ladder of being, and, by
+comparison with the others, may properly be called nature-spirits, or
+cosmic agents of nature, each being confined to its own element, and
+never transgressing the bounds of others. These are what Tertullian
+called 'the princes of the powers of the air.'
+
+"This class is believed to possess but one of the three attributes of
+man. They have neither immortal souls nor tangible bodies; only astral
+forms, which partake, in a distinguishing degree, of the element to
+which they belong, and also of the ether. They are a combination of
+sublimated matter and a rudimental mind. Some are changeless, but still
+have no separate individuality, acting collectively so to say. Others,
+of certain elements and species, change form under a fixed law which
+Kabalists explain. The most solid of their bodies is ordinarily just
+immaterial enough to escape perception by our physical eyesight, but
+not so unsubstantial but that they can be perfectly recognized by the
+inner or clairvoyant vision. They not only exist, and can all live in
+ether, but can handle and direct it for the production of physical
+effects, as readily as we can compress air or water for the same purpose
+by pneumatic or hydraulic apparatus; in which occupation they are
+readily helped by the 'human elementary.' More than this; they can so
+condense it as to make to themselves tangible bodies, which by their
+protean powers they can cause to assume such likenesses as they choose,
+by taking as their models the portraits they find stamped in the memory
+of the persons present. It is not necessary that the sitter should be
+thinking at the moment of the one represented. His image may have faded
+away years before. The mind receives indelible impression even from
+chance acquaintance, or persons encountered but once." (Pp. 310, 311,
+vol. I.)
+
+"If spiritualists are anxious to keep strictly dogmatic in their notions
+of the spirit-world, they must not set _scientists_ to investigate their
+phenomena in the true experimental spirit. The attempt would most surely
+result in a partial re-discovery of the magic of old--that of Moses and
+Paracelsus. Under the deceptive beauty of some of their apparitions,
+they might find some day the sylphs and fair undines of the Rosicrucians
+playing in the currents of _psychic_ and _odic_ force.
+
+"Already Mr. Crookes, who fully credits the _being_, feels that under
+the fair skin of Katie, covering a simulacrum of heart borrowed
+partially from the medium and the circle, there is no soul! And the
+learned authors of the _Unseen Universe_, abandoning their
+"electro-biological" theory, begin to perceive in the universal ether
+the _possibility_ that it is a photographic album of _En-Soph_ the
+Boundless.--(P. 67, vol. I.)
+
+"We are far from believing that all the spirits that communicate at
+circles are of the classes called 'elemental' and 'elementary.'" Many,
+especially among those who control the medium subjectively to speak,
+write, and otherwise act in various ways, are human, disembodied
+spirits. Whether the majority of such spirits are good or _bad_, largely
+depends on the private morality of the medium, much on the circle
+present, and a great deal on the intensity and object of their
+purpose.... But in any case, human spirits can _never_ materialize
+themselves in _propria persona_.[21]--(P. 67, vol. I.)
+
+[Footnote 21: By which it is doubtless meant that the _full_
+individuality is not present; the higher principles, the _true_ spirit,
+having ascended to its appropriate house, from which there is no
+attraction to earth. That which materializes would be an elemental, or
+elementals molding their fluidic forms in the likeness of the departed
+human being; or, on the other hand, considering and revivifying the
+atomic remnants of the sidereal encasement, or astral body, still left
+undissipated in the soul-world.]
+
+In _Art Magic_ we find the following pertinent remarks, p. 322. "There
+are some features of mediumship, especially amongst those persons known
+as _physical force mediums_, which long since should have awakened the
+attention of philosophical spiritualists to the fact that there were
+influences kindred only with animal natures at work somewhere, and
+unless the agency of certain classes of elemental spirits was admitted
+into the category of occasional control, humanity has at times assumed
+darker shades than we should be willing to assign to it. Unfortunately
+in discussing these subjects, there are many barriers to the attainment
+of truth on this subject. Courtesy and compassion alike protest against
+pointing to illustrations in our own time, whilst prejudice and
+ignorance intervene to stifle inquiry respecting phenomena, which a long
+lapse of time has left us free to investigate.
+
+"The judges whose ignorance and superstition disgraced the witchcraft
+trials of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, found a solvent for
+all occult, or even suspicious circumstances, in the control of 'Satan
+and his imps.' The modern spiritualists, with few exceptions, are
+equally stubborn in attributing everything that transpires in
+spiritualistic circles, even to the wilful _cunningly contrived
+preparations for deception_ on the part of pretended media, to the
+influence of disembodied human spirits--good, bad, or indifferent; but
+the author's own experience, confirmed by the assurances of
+wise-teaching spirits, impels him to assert that the tendencies to
+exhibit animal proclivities, whether mental, passional, or phenomenal,
+are most generally produced by elementals.
+
+"The rapport with this realm of beings is generally due to certain
+proclivities in the individual; or, when whole communities are affected,
+the cause proceeds from revolutionary movements in the realms of astral
+fluid; these continually affect the elementals, who, in combination with
+low undeveloped spirits of humanity (elementaries), avail themselves of
+magnetic epidemics to obsess susceptible individuals, and
+sympathetically affect communities."
+
+In the introduction to _Isis Unveiled_, we find the following definition
+of elementary spirits:
+
+"Properly, the disembodied _souls_ of the depraved; these souls, having
+at some time prior to death, separated from themselves their divine
+spirits, and so lost their chance of immortality. Eliphas Levi and some
+other Kabalists make little distinction between elementary spirits, who
+have been men, and those beings which people the elements and are the
+blind forces of nature. Once divorced from their bodies, these souls
+(also called astral bodies) of purely materialistic persons, are
+irresistibly attracted to the earth, where they live a temporary and
+finite life amid elements congenial to their gross natures. From having
+never, during their natural lives, cultivated this spirituality, but
+subordinated it to the material and gross, they are now unfitted for the
+lofty career of the pure, disembodied being, for whom the atmosphere of
+earth is stifling and mephitic, and whose attractions are all away from
+it. After a more or less prolonged period of time these material souls
+will begin to disintegrate, and finally, like a column of mist, be
+dissolved, atom by atom, in the surrounding elements.--(Preface xxx.,
+vol. I.)
+
+"After the death of the depraved and the wicked, arrives the critical
+moment. If during life the ultimate and desperate effort of the
+inner-self to reunite itself with the faintly-glimmering ray of its
+divine parent is neglected; if this ray is allowed to be more and more
+shut out by the thickening crust of matter, the soul, once freed from
+the body, follows its earthly attractions, and is magnetically drawn
+into and held within the dense fogs of the material atmosphere. Then it
+begins to sink lower and lower, until it finds itself, when returned to
+consciousness, in what the ancients termed Hades. The annihilation of
+such a soul is never instantaneous; it may last centuries perhaps; for
+nature never proceeds by jumps and starts, and the astral soul, being
+formed of elements, the law of evolution must bide its time. Then begins
+the fearful law of compensation, the _Yin-Youan_ of the Buddhists. This
+class of spirits is called the terrestrial, or _earthly_ elementary, in
+contradistinction to the other classes." (They frequent seance rooms,
+&c.)--(P. 319, vol. I.)
+
+Of the danger of meddling in occult matters before understanding the
+elementals and elementaries, _Isis_ says, in the case of a rash
+intruder:
+
+"The spirit of harmony and union will depart from the elements,
+disturbed by the imprudent hand; and the currents of blind forces will
+become immediately infested by numberless creatures of matter and
+instinct--the bad demons of the theurgists, the devils of theology; the
+gnomes, salamanders, sylphs, and undines will assail the rash performer
+under multifarious aerial forms. Unable to invent anything, they will
+search your memory to its very depths; hence the nervous exhaustion and
+mental oppression of certain sensitive natures at spiritual circles. The
+elementals will bring to light long-forgotten remembrances of the past;
+forms, images, sweet mementos, and familiar sentences, long since faded
+from our own remembrance, but vividly preserved in the inscrutable
+depths of our memory and on the astral tablets of the imperishable 'Book
+of Life.'"--(P. 343, vol. I.)
+
+Paracelsus speaks of _Xeni Nephidei_: "Elemental spirits that give men
+occult powers over visible matter, and then feed on their brains, often
+causing thereby insanity.
+
+"Man rules potentially over all lower existences than himself," says the
+author of _Art Magic_ (p. 333), "but woe to him, who by seeking aid,
+counsel, or assistance, from lower grades of being, binds himself to
+them; henceforth he may rest assured they will become his parasites and
+associates, and as their instincts--like those of the animal
+kingdom--are strong in the particular direction of their nature, they
+are powerful to disturb, annoy, prompt to evil, and avail themselves of
+the contact induced by man's invitation to drag him down to their own
+level. The legendary idea of evil compacts between man and the
+'Adversary' is not wholly mythical. Every wrong-doer signs that compact
+with spirits who have sympathy with his evil actions.
+
+"Except for the purposes of scientific investigation, or with a view to
+strengthening ourselves against the silent and mysterious promptings to
+evil that beset us on every side, we warn mere curiosity-seekers, or
+persons ambitious to attach the legions of an unknown world to their
+service, against any attempts to seek communion with elemental spirits,
+or beings of any grade lower than man. _Beings below mortality can grant
+nothing that mortality ought to ask._ They can only serve man in some
+embryonic department of nature, and man must stoop to their state before
+they can thus reach him.... Knowledge is only good for us when we can
+apply it judiciously. Those who investigate for the sake of science, or
+with a view to enlarging the narrow boundaries of man's egotistical
+opinions, may venture much further into the realms of the unknown than
+curiosity-seekers, or persons who desire to apply the secrets of being
+to selfish purposes. It may be as well also for man to remember that he
+and his planet are not _the all_ of being, and that, besides the
+revelations included in the stupendous outpouring called 'Modern
+Spiritualism,' there are many problems yet to be solved in human life
+and planetary existences, which spiritualism does not cover, nor
+ignorance and prejudice dream of.... Besides these considerations, we
+would warn man of the many subtle, though invisible, enemies which
+surround him, and, rather by the instinct of their embryonic natures
+than through _malice prepense_, seek to lay siege to the garrison of the
+human heart. We would advise him, moreover, that into that sacred
+entrenchment no power can enter, save by invitation of the soul itself.
+Angels may solicit, or demons may tempt, but none can compel the spirit
+within to action, unless it first surrenders the _will_ to the investing
+power."--(_Art Magic_, p. 335.)
+
+From the _Theosophist_ of July 1886, we make the following extract,
+bearing upon the subject of the loss of immortality by soul-death, and
+the dangers of Black Magic:
+
+"It is necessary to say a few words as regards the real nature of
+soul-death, and the ultimate fate of a black magician. The soul, as we
+have explained above, is an isolated drop in the ocean of cosmic life.
+This current of cosmic life is but the light and the aura of the Logos.
+Besides the Logos, there are innumerable other existences, both
+spiritual and astral, partaking of this life and living in it. These
+beings have special affinities with particular emotions of the human
+soul, and particular characteristics of the human mind. They have, of
+course, a definite individual existence of their own, which lasts up to
+the end of the Manwantara. There are three ways in which a soul may
+cease to retain its special individuality. Separated from its Logos,
+which is, as it were, its source, it may not acquire a strong and
+abiding individuality of its own, and may in course of time be
+reabsorbed into the current of universal life. This is real soul-death.
+It may also place itself _en rapport_ with a spiritual or elemental
+existence by evoking it, and concentrating its attention and regard upon
+it for purposes of black magic and Tantric worship. In such a case it
+transfers its individuality to such existence and is sucked up into it,
+as it were. In such a case the black magician lives in such a being, and
+as such a being he continues until the end of Manwantara."
+
+A good deal of highly interesting information on the subject of
+elementals and elementaries is to be found in numbers of _The Path_. A
+few of the points contained in these articles may be mentioned here, but
+the reader is strongly recommended to study these articles, entitled
+_Conversations on Occultism_, for himself. According to the writer:
+
+An elemental is a center of force, without intelligence, as we
+understand the word, without moral character or tendencies similar to
+ours, but capable of being directed in its movements by human thoughts,
+which may, consciously or not, give it any form, and endow it to a
+certain extent with what we call intelligence. We give them form by a
+species of thought which the mind does not register--involuntary and
+unconscious thought--"as, one person might shape an elemental so as to
+seem like an insect, and not be able to tell whether he had thought of
+such a thing or not." The elemental world interpenetrates this one, and
+elementals are constantly being attracted to, or repelled from, human
+beings, taking the prevailing color of their thoughts. Time and space,
+as we understand them, do not exist for elementals. They can be seen
+clairvoyantly in the shapes they assume under different influences, and
+they do many of the phenomena of the seance room. Light and the
+concentrated attention of any one make a disturbance in the magnetism of
+a room, interfering with their work in that respect. At seances
+elementaries also are present; these are shells, or half-dead human
+beings. The elementaries are not all bad, however, but the worst are the
+strongest, because the most attracted to material life. They are all
+helped and galvanized into action by elementals.
+
+Contact with these beings has a deteriorating effect in all cases.
+Clairvoyants see in the astral light surrounding a person the images of
+people or events that have made an impression on that person's mind, and
+they frequently mistake these echoes and reflections for astral
+realities; only the trained seer can distinguish. The whole astral world
+is full of illusions.
+
+Elementals have not got _being_ such as mortals have. There are
+different classes for the different planes of nature. Each class is
+confined to its own plane, and many can never be recognized by men. The
+elemental world is a strong factor in Karma. Formerly, when men were
+less selfish and more spiritual, the elementals were friendly. They have
+become unfriendly by reason of man's indifference to, and want of
+sympathy with the rest of creation. Man has also colored the astral
+world with his own selfish and brutal thoughts, and produced an
+atmosphere of evil which he himself breathes. When men shall cultivate
+feelings of brotherly affection for each other, and of sympathy with
+nature, the elementals will change their present hostile attitude for
+one of helpfulness.
+
+Elementals aid in the performance of phenomena produced by adepts. They
+also enter the sphere of unprotected persons, and especially of those
+who study occultism, thus precipitating the results of past Karma.
+
+The adepts are reluctant to speak of elementals for two reasons. Because
+it is useless, as people could not understand the subject in their
+present state of intellectual and spiritual development; and because, if
+any knowledge of them were given, some persons might be able to come
+into contact with them to their own detriment and that of the world. In
+the present state of universal selfishness and self-seeking, the
+elementals would be employed to work evil, as they are in themselves
+colorless, taking their character from those who employ them. The
+adepts, therefore, keep back or hide the knowledge of these beings from
+men of science, and from the world in general. By-and-by, however,
+material science will rediscover black magic, and then will come a war
+between the good and evil powers, and the evil powers will be overcome,
+as always happens in such cases. Eventually all about the elementals
+will be known to men--when they have developed intellectually, morally,
+and spiritually sufficiently to have that knowledge without danger.
+
+Elementals guard hidden treasures; they obey the adepts, however, who
+could command the use of untold wealth if they cared to draw upon these
+hidden deposits.
+
+     N. B.--Nizida has quoted from _Man: Fragments of Forgotten
+     History_. The S. P. S. desires to say that while some of the
+     statements contained in that work are correct, there is also in
+     it a large admixture of error. Therefore, the S. P. S. does not
+     recommend this work to the attention of students who have not
+     yet learned enough to be able to separate the grain from the
+     husk. The same may be said of _Art-Magic_.
+
+
+
+
+A WITCH'S DEN
+
+BY MME. HELENA BLAVATSKY
+
+
+Our kind host Sham Rao was very gay during the remaining hours of our
+visit. He did his best to entertain us, and would not hear of our
+leaving the neighborhood without having seen its greatest celebrity, its
+most interesting sight. A _jadu wala_--sorceress--well known in the
+district, was just at this time under the influence of seven
+sister-goddesses, who took possession of her by turns, and spoke their
+oracles through her lips. Sham Rao said we must not fail to see her, be
+it only in the interests of science.
+
+The evening closes in, and we once more get ready for an excursion. It
+is only five miles to the cavern of the Pythia of Hindostan; the road
+runs through a jungle, but it is level and smooth. Besides, the jungle
+and its ferocious inhabitants have ceased to frighten us. The timid
+elephants we had in the "dead city" are sent home, and we are to mount
+new behemoths belonging to a neighboring Raja. The pair that stand
+before the verandah like two dark hillocks are steady and trustworthy.
+Many a time these two have hunted the royal tiger, and no wild shrieking
+or thunderous roaring can frighten them. And so, let us start! The ruddy
+flames of the torches dazzle our eyes and increase the forest gloom.
+Our surroundings seem so dark, so mysterious. There is something
+indescribably fascinating, almost solemn, in these night-journeys in the
+out-of-the-way corners of India. Everything is silent and deserted
+around you, everything is dozing on the earth and overhead. Only the
+heavy, regular tread of the elephants breaks the stillness of the night,
+like the sound of falling hammers in the underground smithy of Vulcan.
+From time to time uncanny voices and murmurs are heard in the black
+forest.
+
+"The wind sings its strange song amongst the ruins," says one of us,
+"what a wonderful acoustic phenomenon!"
+
+"Bhuta, bhuta!" whisper the awestruck torch-bearers. They brandish their
+torches and swiftly spin on one leg, and snap their fingers to chase
+away the aggressive spirits.
+
+The plaintive murmur is lost in the distance. The forest is once more
+filled with the cadences of its invisible nocturnal life--the metallic
+whirr of the crickets, the feeble, monotonous croak of the tree-frog,
+the rustle of the leaves. From time to time all this suddenly stops
+short and then begins again, gradually increasing and increasing.
+
+Heavens! What teeming life, what stores of vital energy are hidden under
+the smallest leaf, the most imperceptible blades of grass, in this
+tropical forest! Myriads of stars shine in the dark blue of the sky, and
+myriads of fireflies twinkle at us from every bush, moving sparks, like
+a pale reflection of the far-away stars.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We left the thick forest behind us, and reached a deep glen, on three
+sides bordered with the thick forest, where even by day the shadows are
+as dark as by night. We were about two thousand feet above the foot of
+the Vindhya ridge, judging by the ruined wall of Mandu, straight above
+our heads.
+
+Suddenly a very chilly wind rose that nearly blew our torches out.
+Caught in the labyrinth of bushes and rocks, the wind angrily shook the
+branches of the blossoming syringas, then, shaking itself free, it
+turned back along the glen and flew down the valley, howling, whistling
+and shrieking, as if all the fiends of the forest together were joining
+in a funeral song.
+
+"Here we are," said Sham Rao, dismounting. "Here is the village; the
+elephants cannot go any further."
+
+"The village? Surely you are mistaken. I don't see anything but trees."
+
+"It is too dark to see the village. Besides, the huts are so small, and
+so hidden by the bushes, that even by daytime you could hardly find
+them. And there is no light in the houses, for fear of the spirits."
+
+"And where is your witch? Do you mean we are to watch her performance in
+complete darkness?"
+
+Sham Rao cast a furtive, timid look round him; and his voice, when he
+answered our questions, was somewhat tremulous.
+
+"I implore you not to call her a witch! She may hear you.... It is not
+far off, it is not more than half a mile. Do not allow this short
+distance to shake your decision. No elephant, and not even a horse,
+could make its way there. We must walk.... But we shall find plenty of
+light there...."
+
+This was unexpected, and far from agreeable. To walk in this gloomy
+Indian night; to scramble through thickets of cactuses; to venture in a
+dark forest, full of wild animals--this was too much for Miss X--. She
+declared that she would go no further. She would wait for us in the
+howdah on the elephant's back, and perhaps would go to sleep.
+
+Narayan was against this _parti de plaisir_ from the very beginning, and
+now, without explaining his reasons, he said she was the only sensible
+one among us.
+
+"You won't lose anything," he remarked, "by staying where you are. And I
+only wish every one would follow your example."
+
+"What ground have you for saying so, I wonder?" remonstrated Sham Rao,
+and a slight note of disappointment rang in his voice, when he saw that
+the excursion, proposed and organized by himself, threatened to come to
+nothing. "What harm could be done by it? I won't insist any more that
+the 'incarnation of gods' is a rare sight, and that the Europeans hardly
+ever have an opportunity of witnessing it; but, besides, the Kangalim in
+question is no ordinary woman. She leads a holy life; she is a
+prophetess, and her blessing could not prove harmful to any one. I
+insisted on this excursion out of pure patriotism."
+
+"Sahib, if your patriotism consists in displaying before foreigners the
+worst of our plagues, then why did you not order all the lepers of your
+district to assemble and parade before the eyes of our guests? You are a
+_patel_, you have the power to do it."
+
+How bitterly Narayan's voice sounded to our unaccustomed ears. Usually
+he was so even-tempered, so indifferent to everything belonging to the
+exterior world.
+
+Fearing a quarrel between the Hindus, the colonel remarked, in a
+conciliatory tone, that it was too late for us to reconsider our
+expedition. Besides, without being a believer in the "incarnation of
+gods," he was personally firmly convinced that demoniacs existed even in
+the West. He was eager to study every psychological phenomenon, wherever
+he met with it, and whatever shape it might assume.
+
+It would have been a striking sight for our European and American
+friends if they had beheld our procession on that dark night. Our way
+lay along a narrow winding path up the mountain. Not more than two
+people could walk together--and we were thirty, including the
+torch-bearers. Surely some reminiscence of night sallies against the
+Confederate Southerners had revived in the colonel's breast, judging by
+the readiness with which he took upon himself the leadership of our
+small expedition. He ordered all the rifles and revolvers to be loaded,
+despatched three torch-bearers to march ahead of us, and arranged us in
+pairs. Under such a skilled chieftain we had nothing to fear from
+tigers; and so our procession started, and slowly crawled up the winding
+path.
+
+It cannot be said that the inquisitive travelers, who appeared later on,
+in the den of the prophetess of Mandu, shone through the freshness and
+elegance of their costumes. My gown, as well as the traveling suits of
+the colonel and of Mr. Y-- were nearly torn to pieces. The cactuses
+gathered from us whatever tribute they could, and the Babu's disheveled
+hair swarmed with a whole colony of grasshoppers and fireflies, which
+probably, were attracted thither by the smell of cocoanut oil. The stout
+Sham Rao panted like a steam engine. Narayan alone was like his usual
+self--that is to say, like a bronze Hercules, armed with a club. At the
+last abrupt turn of the path, after having surmounted the difficulty of
+climbing over huge, scattered stones, we suddenly found ourselves on a
+perfectly smooth place; our eyes, in spite of our many torches, were
+dazzled with light, and our ears were struck by a medley of unusual
+sounds.
+
+A new glen opened before us, the entrance of which, from the valley, was
+well masked by thick trees. We understood how easily we might have
+wandered round it, without ever suspecting its existence. At the bottom
+of the glen we discovered the abode of the celebrated Kangalim.
+
+The den, as it turned out, was situated in the ruin of an old Hindu
+temple in tolerably good preservation. In all probability it was built
+long before the "Dead City," because during the epoch of the latter, the
+heathen were not allowed to have their own places of worship; and the
+temple stood quite close to the wall of the town, in fact, right under
+it. The cupolas of the two smaller lateral pagodas had fallen long ago,
+and huge bushes grew out of their altars. This evening their branches
+were hidden under a mass of bright-colored rags, bits of ribbon, little
+pots, and various other talismans, because, even in them, popular
+superstition sees something sacred.
+
+"And are not these poor people right? Did not these bushes grow on
+sacred ground? Is not their sap impregnated with the incense of
+offerings, and the exhalations of holy anchorites, who once lived and
+breathed here?"
+
+The learned but superstitious Sham Rao would only answer our questions
+by new questions.
+
+But the central temple, built of red granite, stood unharmed by time,
+and, as we learned afterwards, a deep tunnel opened just behind its
+closely-shut door. What was beyond it no one knew. Sham Rao assured us
+that no man of the last three generations had ever stepped over the
+threshold of this thick iron door; no one had seen the subterranean
+passage for many years. Kangalim lived there in perfect isolation, and,
+according to the oldest people in the neighborhood, she had always lived
+there. Some people said she was three hundred years old; others alleged
+that a certain old man on his death-bed had revealed to his son that
+this old woman was no one else than _his own uncle_. This fabulous uncle
+had settled in the cave in the times when the "Dead City" still counted
+several hundreds of inhabitants. The hermit, busy paving his road to
+Moksha, had no intercourse with the rest of the world, and nobody knew
+how he lived and what he ate. But a good while ago, in the days when the
+Bellati (foreigners) had not yet taken possession of this mountain, the
+old hermit suddenly was transformed into a hermitess. She continues his
+pursuits and speaks with his voice, and often in his name; but she
+receives worshippers, which was not the practice of her predecessor.
+
+We had come too early, and the Pythia did not at first appear. But the
+square before the temple was full of people, and a wild though
+picturesque scene it was. An enormous bonfire blazed in the center, and
+round it crowded the naked savages like so many black gnomes, adding
+whole branches of trees sacred to the seven sister-goddesses. Slowly and
+evenly they all jumped from one leg to another to a tune of a single
+monotonous musical phrase, which they repeated in chorus, accompanied by
+several local drums and tambourines. The hushed trill of the latter
+mingled with the forest echoes and the hysterical moans of two little
+girls, who lay under a heap of leaves by the fire. The poor children
+were brought here by their mothers, in the hope that the goddesses would
+take pity upon them and banish the two evil spirits under whose
+obsession they were. Both mothers were quite young, and sat on their
+heels blankly and sadly staring at the flames. No one paid us the
+slightest attention when we appeared, and afterwards during all our stay
+these people acted as if we were invisible. Had we worn a cap of
+darkness they could not have behaved more strangely.
+
+"They feel the approach of the gods! The atmosphere is full of their
+sacred emanations!" mysteriously explained Sham Rao, contemplating with
+reverence the natives, whom his beloved Haeckel might have easily
+mistaken for his "missing link," the brood of his _Bathybius Haeckelii_.
+
+"They are simply under the influence of toddy and opium!" retorted the
+irreverent Babu.
+
+The lookers-on moved as in a dream, as if they all were only
+half-awakened somnambulists, but the actors were simply victims of St.
+Vitus's dance. One of them, a tall old man, a mere skeleton with a long
+white beard, left the ring and begun whirling vertiginously, with his
+arms spread like wings, and loudly grinding his long, wolf-like teeth.
+He was painful and disgusting to look at. He soon fell down, and was
+carelessly, almost mechanically pushed aside by the feet of the others
+still engaged in their demoniac performance.
+
+All this was frightful enough, but many more horrors were in store for
+us.
+
+Waiting for the appearance of the _prima donna_ of this forest opera
+company, we sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree, ready to ask
+innumerable questions of our condescending host. But I was hardly seated
+when a feeling of indescribable astonishment and horror made me shrink
+back.
+
+I beheld the skull of a monstrous animal, the like of which I could not
+find in my zoological reminiscences.
+
+This head was much larger than the head of an elephant skeleton. And
+still it could not be anything but an elephant, judging by the skilfully
+restored trunk, which wound down to my feet like a gigantic black leech.
+But an elephant has no horns, whereas this one had four of them! The
+front pair stuck from the flat forehead slightly bending forward and
+then spreading out; and the others had a wide base, like the root of a
+deer's horn, that gradually decreased almost up to the middle, and bore
+long branches enough to decorate a dozen ordinary elks. Pieces of the
+transparent amber-yellow rhinoceros skin were strained over the empty
+eye-holes of the skull, and small lamps burning behind them only added
+to the horror, the devilish appearance of this head.
+
+"What can this be?" was our unanimous question. None of us had ever met
+anything like it, and even the colonel looked aghast.
+
+"It is a Sivatherium," said Narayan. "Is it possible you never came
+across these fossils in European museums? Their remains are common
+enough in the Himalayas, though, of course, in fragments. They were
+called after Shiva."
+
+"If the collector of this district ever hears that this antediluvian
+relic adorns the den of your--ahem!--witch," remarked the Babu, "it
+won't adorn it many days longer."
+
+All around the skull and on the floor of the portico there were heaps of
+white flowers, which, though not quite antediluvian, were totally
+unknown to us. They were as large as a big rose, and their white petals
+were covered with a red powder, the inevitable concomitant of every
+Indian religious ceremony. Further on there were groups of cocoanuts,
+and large brass dishes filled with rice, each adorned with a red or
+green taper. In the center of the portico there stood a queer-shaped
+censer, surrounded with chandeliers. A little boy, dressed from head to
+foot in white, threw into it handfuls of aromatic powders.
+
+"These people, who assemble here to worship Kangalim," said Sham Rao,
+"do not actually belong either to her sect or to any other. They are
+devil-worshippers. They do not believe in Hindu gods; they live in small
+communities; they belong to one of the many Indian races which usually
+are called the hill-tribes. Unlike the Shanars of Southern Travancore,
+they do not use the blood of sacrificial animals; they do not build
+separate temples to their bhutas. But they are possessed by the strange
+fancy that the goddess Kali, the wife of Shiva, from time immemorial has
+had a grudge against them, and sends her favorite evil spirits to
+torture them. Save this little difference, they have the same beliefs
+as the Shanars. God does not exist for them; and even Shiva is
+considered by them as an ordinary spirit. Their chief worship is offered
+to the souls of the dead. These souls, however righteous and kind they
+may be in their lifetime, become after death as wicked as can be; they
+are happy only when they are torturing living men and cattle. As the
+opportunities of doing so are the only reward for the virtues they
+possessed when incarnated, a very wicked man is punished by becoming
+after his death a very soft-hearted ghost; he loathes his loss of
+daring, and is altogether miserable. The results of this strange logic
+are not bad, nevertheless. These savages and devil-worshippers are the
+kindest and the most truth-loving of all the hill-tribes. They do
+whatever they can to be worthy of their ultimate reward; because, don't
+you see, they all long to become the wickedest of devils!"
+
+And put in good humor by his own wittiness, Sham Rao laughed till his
+hilarity became offensive, considering the sacredness of the place.
+
+"A year ago some business matters sent me to Tinevelli," continued he.
+"Staying with a friend of mine, who is a Shanar, I was allowed to be
+present at one of the ceremonies in the honor of devils. No European has
+as yet witnessed this worship, whatever the missionaries may say; but
+there are many converts amongst the Shanars, who willingly describe them
+to the _padres_. My friend is a wealthy man, which is probably the
+reason why the devils are especially vicious to him. They poison his
+cattle, spoil his crops and his coffee plants, and persecute his
+numerous relations, sending them sunstrokes, madness and epilepsy, over
+which illnesses they especially preside. These wicked demons have
+settled in every corner of his spacious landed property--in the woods,
+the ruins, and even in his stables. To avert all this, my friend covered
+his land with stucco pyramids, and prayed humbly, asking the demons to
+draw their portraits on each of them, so that he may recognize them and
+worship each of them separately, as the rightful owner of this, or that,
+particular pyramid. And what do you think?... Next morning all the
+pyramids were found covered with drawings. Each of them bore an
+incredibly good likeness of the dead of the neighborhood. My friend had
+known personally almost all of them. He found also a portrait of his own
+late father amongst the lot."
+
+"Well? And was he satisfied?"
+
+"Oh, he was very glad, very satisfied. It enabled him to choose the
+right thing to gratify the personal tastes of each demon, don't you see?
+He was not vexed at finding his father's portrait. His father was
+somewhat irascible; once he nearly broke both his son's legs,
+administering to him fatherly punishment with an iron bar, so that he
+could not possibly be very dangerous after his death. But another
+portrait, found on the best and the prettiest of the pyramids, amazed my
+friend a good deal, and put him in a blue funk. The whole district
+recognized an English officer, a certain Captain Pole, who in his
+lifetime was as kind a gentleman as ever lived."
+
+"Indeed? But do you mean to say that this strange people worshipped
+Captain Pole also?"
+
+"Of course they did! Captain Pole was such a worthy man, such an honest
+officer, that, after his death, he could not help being promoted to the
+highest rank of Shanar devils. The Pe-Kovil, demon's-house, sacred to
+his memory, stands side by side with the Pe-Kovil Bhadrakali, which was
+recently conferred on the wife of a certain German missionary, who also
+was a most charitable lady and so is very dangerous now."
+
+"But what are their ceremonies? Tell us something about their rites."
+
+"Their rites consist chiefly of dancing, singing, and killing
+sacrificial animals. The Shanars have no castes, and eat all kinds of
+meat. The crowd assembles about the Pe-Kovil, previously designated by
+the priest; there is a general beating of drums, and slaughtering of
+fowls, sheep and goats. When Captain Pole's turn came an ox was killed,
+as a thoughtful attention to the peculiar tastes of his nation. The
+priest appeared, covered with bangles, and holding a wand on which
+tinkled numberless little bells, and wearing garlands of red and white
+flowers round his neck, and a black mantle, on which were embroidered
+the ugliest fiends you can imagine. Horns were blown and drums rolled
+incessantly. And oh, I forgot to tell you there was also a kind of
+fiddle, the secret of which is known only to the Shanar priesthood. Its
+bow is ordinary enough, made of bamboo; but it is whispered that the
+strings are human veins.... When Captain Pole took possession of the
+priest's body, the priest leaped high in the air, and then rushed on the
+ox and killed him. He drank off the hot blood, and then began his dance.
+But what a fright he was when dancing! You know, I am not
+superstitious.... Am I?..."
+
+Sham Rao looked at us inquiringly, and I, for one, was glad at this
+moment that Miss X-- was half a mile off, asleep in the howdah.
+
+"He turned, and turned, as if possessed by all the demons of Naraka. The
+enraged crowd hooted and howled when the priest begun to inflict deep
+wounds all over his body with the bloody sacrificial knife. To see him,
+with his hair waving in the wind and his mouth covered with foam; to see
+him bathing in the blood of the sacrificed animal, mixing it with his
+own, was more than I could bear. I felt as if hallucinated, I fancied I
+also was spinning round...."
+
+Sham Rao stopped abruptly, struck dumb. Kangalim stood before us!
+
+Her appearance was so unexpected that we all felt embarrassed. Carried
+away by Sham Rao's description, we had noticed neither how nor whence
+she came. Had she appeared from beneath the earth we could not have been
+more astonished. Narayan stared at her, opening wide his big jet-black
+eyes; the Babu clicked his tongue in utter confusion.
+
+Imagine a skeleton seven feet high, covered with brown leather, with a
+dead child's tiny head stuck on its bony shoulders; the eyes set so deep
+and at the same time flashing such fiendish flames all through your body
+that you begin to feel your brain stop working, your thoughts become
+entangled and your blood freeze in your veins.
+
+I describe my personal impressions, and no words of mine can do them
+justice. My description is too weak. Mr. Y-- and the colonel both grew
+pale under her stare and Mr. Y-- made a movement as if about to rise.
+
+Needless to say that such an impression could not last. As soon as the
+witch had turned her gleaming eyes to the kneeling crowd, it vanished as
+swiftly as it had come. But still all our attention was fixed on this
+remarkable creature.
+
+Three hundred years old! Who can tell? Judging by her appearance, we
+might as well conjecture her to be a thousand. We beheld a genuine
+living mummy, or rather a mummy endowed with motion. She seemed to have
+been withering since the creation. Neither time, nor the ills of life,
+nor the elements could ever affect this living statue of death. The
+all-destroying hand of time had touched her and stopped short. Time
+could do no more, and so had left her. And with all this, not a single
+gray hair. Her long black locks shone with a greenish sheen, and fell in
+heavy masses down to her knees.
+
+To my great shame, I must confess that a disgusting reminiscence flashed
+into my memory. I thought about the hair and the nails of corpses
+growing in the graves, and tried to examine the nails of the old woman.
+
+Meanwhile, she stood motionless as if suddenly transformed into an ugly
+idol. In one hand she held a dish with a piece of burning camphor, in
+the other a handful of rice, and she never removed her burning eyes from
+the crowd. The pale yellow flame of the camphor flickered in the wind,
+and lit up her death-like head, almost touching her chin; but she paid
+no heed to it. Her neck, as wrinkled as a mushroom, as thin as a stick,
+was surrounded by three rows of golden medallions. Her head was adorned
+with a golden snake. Her grotesque, hardly human body was covered by a
+piece of saffron-yellow muslin.
+
+The demoniac little girls raised their heads from beneath the leaves,
+and set up a prolonged animal-like howl. Their example was followed by
+the old man, who lay exhausted by his frantic dance.
+
+The witch tossed her head convulsively, and began her invocations,
+rising on tiptoe, as if moved by some external force.
+
+"The goddess, one of the seven sisters, begins to take possession of
+her," whispered Sham Rao, not even thinking of wiping away the big drops
+of sweat that streamed from his brow. "Look, look at her!"
+
+This advice was quite superfluous. We _were_ looking at her, and at
+nothing else.
+
+At first, the movements of the witch were slow, unequal, somewhat
+convulsive; then, gradually, they became less angular; at last, as if
+catching the cadence of the drums, leaning all her long body forward,
+and writhing like an eel, she rushed round and round the blazing
+bonfire. A dry leaf caught in a hurricane could not fly swifter. Her
+bare bony feet trod noiselessly on the rocky ground. The long locks of
+her hair flew round her like snakes, lashing the spectators, who knelt,
+stretching their trembling arms towards her, and writhing as if they
+were alive. Whoever was touched by one of this Fury's black curls, fell
+down on the ground, overcome with happiness, shouting thanks to the
+goddess, and considering himself blessed forever. It was not human hair
+that touched the happy elect, it was the goddess herself, one of the
+seven.
+
+Swifter and swifter fly her decrepit legs; the young, vigorous hands of
+the drummer can hardly follow her. But she does not think of catching
+the measure of his music; she rushes, she flies forward. Staring with
+her expressionless, motionless orbs at something before her, at
+something that is not visible to our mortal eyes, she hardly glances at
+her worshippers; then her look becomes full of fire, and whoever she
+looks at feels burned through to the marrow of his bones. At every
+glance she throws a few grains of rice. The small handful seems
+inexhaustible, as if the wrinkled palm contained the bottomless bag of
+Prince Fortunatus.
+
+Suddenly she stops as if thunderstruck.
+
+The mad race round the bonfire had lasted twelve minutes, but we looked
+in vain for a trace of fatigue on the death-like face of the witch. She
+stopped only for a moment, just the necessary time for the goddess to
+release her. As soon as she felt free, by a single effort she jumped
+over the fire and plunged into the deep tank by the portico. This time
+she plunged only once, and whilst she stayed under the water the second
+sister-goddess entered her body. The little boy in white produced
+another dish, with a new piece of burning camphor, just in time for the
+witch to take it up, and to rush again on her headlong way.
+
+The colonel sat with his watch in his hand. During the second obsession
+the witch ran, leaped, and raced for exactly fourteen minutes. After
+this, she plunged twice in the tank, in honor of the second sister; and
+with every new obsession the number of her plunges increased, till it
+became six.
+
+It was already an hour and a half since the race began. All this time
+the witch never rested, stopping only for a few seconds, to disappear
+under the water.
+
+"She is a fiend, she cannot be a woman!" exclaimed the colonel, seeing
+the head of the witch immersed for the sixth time in the water.
+
+"Hang me if I know!" grumbled Mr. Y--, nervously pulling his beard. "The
+only thing I know is that a grain of her cursed rice entered my throat,
+and I can't get it out!"
+
+"Hush, hush! Please, do be quiet!" implored Sham Rao. "By talking you
+will spoil the whole business!"
+
+I glanced at Narayan and lost myself in conjectures.
+
+His features, which usually were so calm and serene, were quite altered
+at this moment by a deep shadow of suffering. His lips trembled, and the
+pupils of his eyes were dilated, as if by a dose of belladonna. His eyes
+were lifted over the heads of the crowd, as if in his disgust he tried
+not to see what was before him, and at the same time could not see it,
+engaged in a deep reverie which carried him away from us and from the
+whole performance.
+
+"What is the matter with him?" was my thought, but I had no time to ask
+him, because the witch was again in full swing, chasing her own shadow.
+
+But with the seventh goddess the program was slightly changed. The
+running of the old woman changed to leaping. Sometimes bending down to
+the ground, like a black panther, she leaped up to some worshipper, and
+halting before him touched his forehead with her finger, while her long,
+thin body shook with inaudible laughter. Then, again, as if shrinking
+back playfully from her shadow, and chased by it, in some uncanny game,
+the witch appeared to us like a horrid caricature of Dinorah, dancing
+her mad dance. Suddenly she straightened herself to her full height,
+darted to the portico and crouched before the smoking censer, beating
+her forehead against the granite steps. Another jump, and she was quite
+close to us, before the head of the monstrous Sivatherium. She knelt
+down again and bowed her head to the ground several times, with the
+sound of an empty barrel knocked against something hard.
+
+We had hardly the time to spring to our feet and shrink back when she
+appeared on the top of the Sivatherium's head, standing there amongst
+the horns.
+
+Narayan alone did not stir, and fearlessly looked straight in the eyes
+of the frightful sorceress.
+
+But what was this? Who spoke in those deep manly tones? Her lips were
+moving, from her breast were issuing those quick, abrupt phrases, but
+the voice sounded hollow as if coming from beneath the ground.
+
+"Hush, hush!" whispered Sham Rao, his whole body trembling. "She is
+going to prophesy!..."
+
+"She?" incredulously inquired Mr. Y--. "This a woman's voice? I don't
+believe it for a moment. Someone's uncle must be stowed away somewhere
+about the place. Not the fabulous uncle she inherited from, but a real
+live one!..."
+
+Sham Rao winced under the irony of this supposition, and cast an
+imploring look at the speaker.
+
+"Woe to you! woe to you!" echoed the voice. "Woe to you, children of the
+impure Jaya and Vijaya! of the mocking, unbelieving lingerers round
+great Shiva's door! Ye, who are cursed by eighty thousand sages! Woe to
+you who believe not in the goddess Kali, and you who deny us, her seven
+divine sisters! Flesh-eating, yellow-legged vultures! friends of the
+oppressors of our land! dogs who are not ashamed to eat from the same
+trough with the Bellati!" (foreigners).
+
+"It seems to me that your prophetess only foretells the past," said Mr.
+Y--, philosophically putting his hands in his pockets. "I should say
+that she is hinting at you, my dear Sham Rao."
+
+"Yes! and at us also," murmured the colonel, who was evidently beginning
+to feel uneasy.
+
+As to the unlucky Sham Rao, he broke out in a cold sweat, and tried to
+assure us that we were mistaken, that we did not fully understand her
+language.
+
+"It is not about you, it is not about you! It is of me she speaks,
+because I am in Government service. Oh, she is inexorable!"
+
+"Rakshasas! Asuras!" thundered the voice. "How dare you appear before
+us? how dare you to stand on this holy ground in boots made of a cow's
+sacred skin? Be cursed for etern----"
+
+But her curse was not destined to be finished. In an instant the
+Hercules-like Narayan had fallen on the Sivatherium, and upset the whole
+pile, the skull, the horns and the demoniac Pythia included. A second
+more, and we thought we saw the witch flying in the air towards the
+portico. A confused vision of a stout, shaven Brahman, suddenly emerging
+from under the Sivatherium and instantly disappearing in the hollow
+beneath it, flashed before my dilated eyes.
+
+But, alas! after the third second had passed, we all came to the
+embarrassing conclusion that, judging from the loud clang of the door
+of the cave, the representative of the Seven Sisters had ignominiously
+fled. The moment she had disappeared from our inquisitive eyes to her
+subterranean domain, we all realized that the unearthly hollow voice we
+had heard had nothing supernatural about it and belonged to the Brahman
+hidden under the Sivatherium--to some one's live uncle, as Mr. Y-- had
+rightly supposed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Oh, Narayan! how carelessly, how disorderly the worlds rotate around us.
+I begin to seriously doubt their reality. From this moment I shall
+earnestly believe that all things in the universe are nothing but
+illusion, a mere Maya. I am becoming a Vedantin.... I doubt that in the
+whole universe there may be found anything more objective than a Hindu
+witch flying up the spout.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Miss X-- woke up, and asked what was the meaning of all this noise. The
+noise of many voices and the sounds of the many retreating footsteps,
+the general rush of the crowd, had frightened her. She listened to us
+with a condescending smile, and a few yawns, and went to sleep again.
+
+Next morning, at daybreak, we very reluctantly, it must be owned, bade
+good-by to the kind-hearted, good-natured Sham Rao. The confoundingly
+easy victory of Narayan hung heavily on his mind. His faith in the holy
+hermitess and the seven goddesses was a good deal shaken by the shameful
+capitulation of the sisters, who had surrendered at the first blow from
+a mere mortal. But during the dark hours of the night he had had time
+to think it over, and to shake off the uneasy feeling of having
+unwillingly misled and disappointed his European friends.
+
+Sham Rao still looked confused when he shook hands with us at parting,
+and expressed to us the best wishes of his family and himself.
+
+As to the heroes of this truthful narrative, they mounted their
+elephants once more, and directed their heavy steps towards the high
+road and Jubbulpore.
+
+
+
+
+REMARKABLE PSYCHIC EXPERIENCES OF FAMOUS PERSONS
+
+BY WALTER F. PRINCE, PH.D.,
+
+Official Investigator American Society for Psychical Research
+
+
+It does not necessarily give an occult incident more weight that it was
+experienced or related and credited by a person whose name is prominent
+for one reason or another. The great are nearly as likely to suffer
+illusions, pathological hallucinations, and aberrations as the humble
+remainder of mankind, or, according to Lombroso a good deal more so. Nor
+have famous persons a monopoly of veracity. Besides, a rare
+psychological incident is not more or less a problem, nor has it more or
+less significance in the experience of honest John Jones than in that of
+William Shakespeare.
+
+And yet it is natural and quite proper to look with somewhat enhanced
+interest upon the experiences or the testimonies of those whose names
+are in the cyclopedias and biographical dictionaries. It is legitimate
+to set these forth and to call attention to them. These persons at least
+we know something about. William Moggs of Waushegan, Wisconsin, may be a
+very excellent and trustworthy man but we don't know him, and it is
+tedious to be told that somebody else whom we may know as little knows
+and esteems him. How do we know that the avouching unknown could not
+have been sold a gold brick? But Henry M. Stanley, and General Fremont,
+and W. P. Frith, and Henry Clews are characters whom we do know
+something about, or at least whom we can easily look up for ourselves in
+biographical dictionaries and _Who's Whos_. They are names which have at
+the very outset a reputation which has impressed the world, which stand
+for assured ability, genius, achievement, forcefulness of one kind or
+another. Even though we have no particular data at hand regarding the
+veracity of a particular member of the shining circle, it is not easy to
+see why he, having an assured reputation, should dim it by telling
+spooky lies. It is easier to conceive of William Moggs, a quite obscure
+man, calling attention to himself by the device, though as a rule the
+William Moggs's do nothing of the kind. We spontaneously argue within
+ourselves, in some inchoate fashion, "That fellow made his mark in the
+world; he gained a big reputation by his superiority to the rank and
+file in some particular at least; it will be worth while to hear what he
+has to say."
+
+We present herewith a group of such testimonies either given out to the
+world by prominent persons as their own experiences or as the
+experiences of persons whom they knew and believed, or else as told by
+friends of the prominent persons whose experiences they were.
+
+It is not owing to any selective process that the material is mostly of
+the sort which favors supernormal hypotheses. We take what we can get.
+Whenever an experience is accompanied by a normal explanation, such will
+be included only a little more willingly than an experience which does
+not readily suggest a normal explanation. But, let it be noted, the
+groups which we propose will be composed of human _experiences_, and not
+opinions, except as the opinions accompany the experiences. And it
+cannot be expected that, after certain types of experiences as related
+by certain men have been given, we shall then proceed to name other men
+who haven't had any such experiences. True, against Paul du Chaillu's
+assertion that he had seen gorillas was once urged the fact that nobody
+else had ever seen gorillas. Nevertheless the sole assertion of the one
+man who had seen them proved to outweigh in value the lack of experience
+on the part of all other travelers up to that time.
+
+
+A PREMONITION OF SIR H. M. STANLEY
+
+This incident is related by the famous explorer, Sir Henry M. Stanley,
+in his autobiography edited by Dorothy Stanley (Houghton Mifflin Co.,
+1909), on pages 207-208.
+
+Stanley, then a private in the Confederate Army, was captured in the
+battle of Shiloh and sent to Camp Douglas near Chicago. It was while
+here that the incident in question occurred.
+
+"On the next day (April 16), after the morning duties had been
+performed, the rations divided, the cooks had departed contented, and
+the quarters swept, I proceeded to my nest and reclined alongside of my
+friend Wilkes in a posture that gave me a command of one half of the
+building. I made some remarks to him upon the card-playing groups
+opposite, when suddenly, I felt a gentle stroke on the back of my neck,
+and in an instant I was unconscious. The next moment I had a vivid view
+of the village of Tremeirchion and the grassy slopes of the hills of
+Hirradog, and I seemed to be hovering over the rook woods of Brynbella.
+I glided to the bed-chamber of my Aunt Mary. My aunt was in bed, and
+seemed sick unto death. I took a position by the side of the bed, and
+saw myself, with head bent down, listening to her parting words which
+sounded regretful, as though conscience smote her for not having been as
+kind as she might have been, or had wished to be. I heard the boy say,
+'I believe you, Aunt. It is neither your fault, nor mine. You were good
+and kind to me, and I knew you wished to be kinder; but things were so
+ordered that you had to be what you were. I also dearly wished to love
+you, but I was afraid to speak of it lest you would check me, or say
+something that would offend me. I feel our parting was in this spirit.
+There is no need of regrets. You have done your duty to me, and you had
+children of your own who required all your care. What has happened to me
+since, it was decreed should happen. Farewell.'
+
+"I put forth my hand and felt the clasp of the long thin hands of the
+sore-sick woman. I heard a murmur of farewell, and immediately I awoke.
+
+"It appeared to me that I had but closed my eyes. I was still in the
+same reclining attitude, the groups opposite me were still engaged in
+their card games, Wilkes was in the same position. Nothing had changed.
+
+"I asked, 'What has happened?'
+
+"'What could happen?' said he. 'What makes you ask? It is but a moment
+ago you were speaking to me.'
+
+"'Oh, I thought I had been asleep a long time.'
+
+"On the next day the 17th of April, 1862, my Aunt Mary died at Fynnon
+Beuno, in Wales!
+
+"I believe that the soul of every human being has its attendant
+spirit--a nimble, delicate essence, whose method of action is by a
+subtle suggestion which it contrives to insinuate into the mind, whether
+asleep or awake. We are too gross to be capable of understanding the
+signification of the dream, the vision, or the sudden presage, or of
+divining the source of the premonition or its import. We admit that we
+are liable to receive a fleeting picture of an act, or a figure at any
+moment, but, except being struck by certain strange coincidences which
+happen to most of us, we seldom make an effort to unravel the mystery.
+The swift, darting messenger stamps an image on the mind, and displays a
+vision to the sleeper; and if, as sometimes follows, among tricks and
+twists of the errant mind, by reflex acts of memory, it happens to be a
+true representation of what is to happen, we are left to grope
+hopelessly as to the manner and meaning of it, for there is nothing
+tangible to lay hold of.
+
+"There are many things relating to my existence which are inexplicable
+to me, and probably it is best so; this death-bed scene, projected on my
+mind's screen, across four thousand five hundred miles of space, is one
+of these mysteries."
+
+The precise meaning of the passage wherein Sir Henry speculates on the
+nature and meaning of such facts, is not entirely clear. Does he by the
+word _spirit_ mean what is usually meant by that term, or does he mean
+some part of the mind functioning upon the rest as its object, like
+Freud's _psychic censor_ though with a different purpose? And the
+affirmative employment of the terms "presage" and "premonition" do not
+seem to be consistent with the expression "it happens to be a true
+representation of what is to happen." It seems plain that the
+distinguished explorer did believe that the death-bed scene was
+"projected on" his "mind's screen, across four thousand five hundred
+miles of space." However, what Stanley thought about the facts is of
+much less importance than the facts themselves, as reported by one whose
+life was one long drill in observing, appraising and recording facts.
+
+
+COINCIDENT EXPERIENCES OF GENERAL FREMONT AND RELATIVES
+
+These are related on pages 69-72 of _Recollections of Elizabeth Benton
+Fremont, Daughter of the Pathfinder General John C. Fremont and Jessie
+Benton Fremont His Wife_.
+
+After describing a terrible experience of her father and his men in
+1853, while crossing the Wahsatch Mountains, and their rescue from
+starvation by reaching Parowan, Utah, Miss Benton goes on:
+
+"That night my father sat by his campfire until late in the night,
+dreaming of home and thinking of the great happiness of my mother. Could
+she but know that he was safe! Finally he returned to his quarters in
+the town only a few hundred yards away from the camp. The warm bright
+room, the white bed with all suggestion of shelter and relief from
+danger made the picture of home rise up like a real thing before him,
+and at half-past eleven at night he made an entry in his journal,
+putting there the thought that had possession of him and that my mother
+in far away Washington might know that all danger was past and that he
+was safe and comfortable.
+
+"All this is a prelude to a most uncommon experience which befell my
+mother in our Washington home on the night in question. We could not
+possibly hear from father at the earliest until midsummer. Though my
+mother went into society but little that year, there was no reason for
+gloomy forebodings. The younger members of the family kept her in close
+touch with the social side of life, while her father, whose confidant
+she always was, kept her informed as to the political events of the
+moment. Her life was busy and filled with her full share of its
+responsibilities. In midwinter, however, my mother became possessed with
+the conviction that my father was starving, and no amount of reasoning
+could calm her fears. The idea haunted her for two weeks or more, and
+finally began to leave its physical effects upon her. She could neither
+eat nor sleep; open-air exercise, plenty of company, the management of a
+household, all combined, could not wean her from the belief that father
+and his men were starving in the desert.
+
+"The weight of fear was lifted from her as suddenly as it came. Her
+young sister Susie and a party of relatives returned from a wedding at
+General Jessup's on the night of February 6, 1854, and came to mother to
+spend the night, in order not to awaken the older members of my
+grandmother's family. The girls doffed their party dresses, replaced
+them with comfortable woolen gowns, and, gathered before the open fire
+in mother's room, were gaily relating the experiences of the evening.
+The fire needed replenishing and mother went to an adjoining
+dressing-room to get more wood. The old-fashioned fire-place required
+long logs which were too large for her to handle, and as she half knelt,
+balancing the long sticks of wood on her left arm, she felt a hand rest
+lightly on her left shoulder, and she heard my father's laughing voice
+whisper her name, 'Jessie.'
+
+"There was no sound beyond the quick-whispered name, no presence, only
+the touch, but my mother knew as people know in dreams that my father
+was there, gay and happy, and intending to startle Susie, who when my
+mother was married was only a child of eight, and was always a pet
+playmate of my father's. Her shrill, prolonged scream was his delight,
+and he never lost an opportunity to startle her.
+
+"Mother came back to the girl's room, but before she could speak, Susie
+gave a great cry, fell in a heap upon the rug, and screamed again and
+again, until mother crushed her balldress over her head to keep the
+sound from the neighbors. Her cousin asked mother what she had seen, and
+she explained that she had seen nothing, but had heard my father tell
+her to keep still until he could scare Susie.
+
+"Peace came to my mother instantly, and on retiring she fell into a
+refreshing sleep from which she did not waken until ten the next
+morning; all fear for the safety of father had vanished from her mind;
+with sleep came strength, and she soon was her happy self again.
+
+"When my father returned home, we learned that it was at the time the
+party was starving that my mother had the premonition of evil having
+befallen them, and the entry in his journal showed that exactly the
+moment he had written it in Parowan, my mother had felt his presence,
+and in the wireless message from heart to heart knew that my father was
+safe and free from harm. The hour exactly tallied with the entry in his
+book, allowing for the difference in longitude."
+
+Further details would have been desirable, particularly just what was
+the immediate occasion of Susie's fright, for she screamed before Mrs.
+Fremont related what had befallen herself. The only escape from the
+conclusion that Susie had some separate peculiar experience is to
+suppose--which we may not unreasonably do--that the elder lady betrayed
+her own agitation before she spoke, perhaps by dropping the sticks,
+hurrying back, and looking strangely at Susie. We would have liked a
+sight of the General's journal, also, and to have been permitted to copy
+the entry exactly as it stands.
+
+Nevertheless, though we leave Susie and her screams quite out of
+account, we have a very pretty case remaining, however we explain it.
+Mrs. Fremont's depression might be explained by the very natural fears
+of a woman whose husband was engaged in a possibly dangerous expedition,
+though she picked out for her fears exactly the period of the expedition
+when there was an actual state of privation and danger. But why did the
+fear so afflicting to her health and spirits so suddenly leave her,
+while it was still winter in the mountains? And why did the hour and
+moment of the cessation of these fears coincide with the hour and moment
+when the explorer was occupied with thoughts of home and writing his
+wish that his wife might know that he was safe?
+
+Many a reader will be disposed to answer the question "why?" with the
+facile answer "telepathy," but that word is a key which does not turn in
+this lock with perfect ease. There are cases where one person thinks a
+particular thing under extraordinary circumstances, and precisely that
+thought, or a hallucination of precisely that nature, occurs to another
+person at a distance. But in this case General Fremont thinks a wish
+that his wife knew he was safe, and his wife seems to feel a hand upon
+her shoulder, seems to hear his voice pronounce her name, and somehow
+gets the impression that he proposes to play a trick on her sister
+Susie. If exact coincidence between the thought of the supposed "sender"
+and that of the supposed "recipient" is a support to the theory of
+telepathy as applied to one case, then wide discrepancy between the
+coincident thoughts of two persons in another case should be an argument
+against the theory of telepathy as applied to that. There should be some
+limit to the handicap which, by way of courtesy, the spiritistic
+hypothesis allows to the telepathic.
+
+If there are spirits, and if they have a certain access to human
+thoughts, and if the limitations of space are little felt by them, then
+the spiritistic theory would have an easier time than telepathy with the
+facts in this case. A friendly intermediary might convey the assurance
+that the Pathfinder wanted conveyed to his wife, and in doing so employ
+such devices as an intelligent personal agent could think up, and were
+within its grasp. The touch, the hallucination of a voice resembling
+that of the absent husband, the sense of gayety, and even the very
+characteristic trait of liking to startle Susie, might all be the result
+of the friendly messenger's attempts to implant in Mrs. Fremont's mind a
+fixed assurance that somebody was safe and happy, and that this somebody
+was in very truth her husband.
+
+
+INCIDENTS RELATED BY DEAN HOLE
+
+The Very Rev. Samuel Reynolds Hole, Dean of Rochester, England, was not
+only an effective preacher and popular lecturer, but likewise the author
+of fascinating books, composed of reminiscences and shrewd and witty
+comments upon men and affairs. He made two lecturing tours in America.
+
+His _The Memories of Dean Hole_ contains a remarkable dream of his own,
+and one of similar character told him by a trusted friend. They may be
+found on pages 200-201. After rehearsing the account of a dream and its
+tragic sequel told him many years before, he goes on:
+
+"Are these dreams coincidences only, imaginations, sudden recollections
+of events which had been long forgotten? They are marvelous, be this as
+it may. In a crisis of very severe anxiety, I required information which
+only one man could give me, and he was in his grave. I saw him
+distinctly in a vision of the night, and his answer to my question told
+me all I wanted to know; and when, having obtained the clearest proof
+that what I had heard was true, I communicated the incident and its
+results to my solicitor, he told me that he himself had experienced a
+similar manifestation. A claim was repeated after his father's death
+which had been resisted in his lifetime and retracted by the claimant,
+but the son was unable to find the letter in which the retraction was
+made. He dreamed that his father appeared and told him it was in the
+left hand drawer of a certain desk. Having business in London, he went
+up to the offices of his father, an eminent lawyer, but could not
+discover the desk, until one of the clerks suggested that it might be
+among some old lumber placed in a room upstairs. There he found the desk
+and the letter.
+
+"Then, as regards coincidence, are there not events in our lives which
+come to us with a strange mysterious significance, a prophetic
+intimation, sometimes of sorrow and sometimes of success? For example, I
+lived a hundred and fifty miles from Rochester. I went there for the
+first time to preach at the invitation of one who was then unknown to
+me, but is now a dear friend. After the sermon I was his guest in the
+Precincts. Dean Scott died in the night, almost at the time when he who
+was to succeed him arrived at the house which adjoins the Deanery. There
+was no expectation of his immediate decease, and no conjecture as to a
+future appointment, and yet when I heard the tolling of the cathedral
+bell, I had a presentiment that Dr. Scott was dead, and that I should be
+Dean of Rochester."
+
+Again, Dean Hole in his _Then and Now_, pp. 9-11, together with some
+opinions of his, sets down a seeming premonition and what he considers
+answers to prayer.
+
+"There is an immeasurable difference between ghosts and other
+apparitions--between that which witnesses declare they saw with their
+own eyes when they were wide awake--as Hamlet saw the ghost of his
+father, and Macbeth saw Banquo--and that which presents itself to us
+when we are asleep, or in that condition between waking and sleeping
+which makes the vision so like reality. I do not believe in the former,
+and I am fully persuaded in my own mind that the wonderful stories which
+we hear are to be accounted for either as exaggerations or as the result
+of natural causes which have been misstated or suppressed; but many of
+us have had experience of the latter--of those visions of the night
+which have seemed so real, and which in some instances have brought us
+information as to occurrences before unknown to us, but subsequently
+proved to be true.
+
+"George Benfield, a driver on the Midland Railway living at Derby, was
+standing on the footplate oiling his engine, the train being stationary,
+when he slipped and fell on the space between the lines. He heard the
+express coming on, and had only just time to lie full length on the
+'six-foot' when it rushed by, and he escaped unhurt. He returned to his
+home in the middle of the night, and as he was going up the stairs he
+heard one of his children, a girl about eight years old, crying and
+sobbing. 'Oh, Father!' she said, 'I thought somebody came and told me
+that you were going to be killed, and I got out of bed and prayed that
+God would not let you die.' Was it only a dream, a coincidence?"
+
+Dean Hole is the first person whom we remember to have held that a man's
+testimony respecting a given species of experience is more credible if
+he was asleep at the time that he claims to have had it, than if he was
+awake. He states that dreams "in some instances have brought us
+information as to occurrences before unknown to us, but subsequently
+proved to be true," but the same is asserted in respect to waking
+apparitional experiences on exactly as satisfactory evidence, in many
+cases. He accounts for the wonderful stories we hear in respect to
+waking apparitions, and discredits them on exactly the same grounds that
+others account for and discredit his dreams. The fact is that, with Dean
+Hole as with many others, the personal equation is operative. He
+believes in coincidental dreams because he himself has experienced them
+and knows that he is not guilty of exaggerations in recounting them, nor
+can he see how natural causes can explain them; he never has had a
+waking apparition, and therefore is inclined to conjure up guesses as to
+the inaccuracy and inveracity of those who have--guesses which he would
+resent if they were applied to himself.
+
+But the Dean's testimony is one matter, his opinions or prejudices
+another.
+
+
+INCIDENTS REPORTED BY SERJEANT BALLANTINE
+
+Serjeant William Ballantine (1812-1887) was one of the foremost lawyers
+in England, noted for his skill in cross-examination. He was counsel in
+the Tichborne claimant case, one of the most celebrated in the history
+of the English courts, and in the equally famed trial of the Gaekwar of
+Baroda. The incidents which impressed him are to be found in
+Ballantine's _Some Experiences of a Barrister's Life_, pp. 256-267.
+
+"I do not think it will be out of place whilst upon this subject to
+relate a story told of Sir Astley Cooper.[22] I am not certain that it
+has not been already in print, but I know that I have had frequent
+conversations about it with his nephew.
+
+[Footnote 22: Sir Astley Paston Cooper was perhaps the most famous and
+influential surgeon of his time in England.]
+
+"There had been a murder, and Sir Astley was upon the scene when a man
+suspected of it was apprehended. Sir Astley, being greatly interested,
+accompanied the officers with their prisoner to the gaol, and he and
+they and the accused were all in a cell, locked in together, when they
+noticed a little dog which kept biting at the skirt of the prisoner's
+coat. This led them to examine the garment, and they found upon it
+traces of blood which ultimately led to conviction of the man. When they
+looked around the dog had disappeared, although the door had never been
+opened. How it had got there or how it got away, of course nobody could
+tell. When Bransby Cooper spoke of this he always said that of course
+his uncle had made a mistake, and was convinced of this himself; Bransby
+used to add that no doubt if the matter had been investigated it would
+have been shown that there was a mode of accounting for it from natural
+causes. But I believe that neither Sir Astley nor his nephew in their
+hearts discarded entirely the supernatural."
+
+Mr. Ballantine added an incident which some may think is accounted for
+by a telepathic impression followed by auto-suggestion which lowered the
+mental alertness of the player.
+
+"There was a member of the club, a very harmless, inoffensive man of the
+name of Townend, for whom Lord Lytton [the novelist] entertained a
+mortal antipathy, and would never play whilst that gentleman was in the
+room. He firmly believed that he brought him bad luck. I was witness to
+what must be termed an odd coincidence. One afternoon, when Lord Lytton
+was playing and had enjoyed an uninterrupted run of luck, it suddenly
+turned, upon which he exclaimed, 'I am sure that Mr. Townend has come
+into the club.' Some three minutes after, just time enough to ascend the
+stairs, in walked that unlucky personage. Lord Lytton as soon as the
+rubber was over, left the table and did not renew the play."
+
+
+BEN JONSON'S PREMONITION BY APPARITION
+
+This eminent dramatist, contemporary of Shakespeare (1573?-1637),
+visited the Scottish poet, William Drummond, who took notes of his
+conversations which he afterwards published in the form of a book. One
+incident which Jonson related and Drummond recorded may be found in _The
+Library of the World's Best Literature_ under the title, _Ben Jonson_.
+
+"At that tyme the pest was in London; he being in the country--with old
+Cambden, he saw in a vision his eldest sone, then a child and at London,
+appear unto him with the mark of a bloodie crosse in his forehead, as if
+it had been cutted with a shord, at which amazed he prayed unto God,
+and in the morning he came to Mr. Cambden's chamber to tell him; who
+persuaded him it was but ane apprehension of his fantasie, at which he
+sould not be disjected; in the mean tyme comes then letters from his
+wife of the death of that boy in plague. He appeared to him (he said) of
+a manly shape, and of that grouth that he thinks he shall be at the
+resurrection."
+
+
+RUBINSTEIN'S DEATH COMPACT
+
+A pupil of Anton Rubinstein, the great pianist and composer (1829-1894),
+tells this story. It may be found in _Harper's Magazine_ for December,
+1912, under the title _A Girl's Recollections of Rubinstein_, by Lillian
+Nichia.
+
+"One wild, blustery night I found myself at dinner with Rubinstein, the
+weather being terrific even for St. Petersburg. The winds were howling
+round the house and Rubinstein, who liked to ask questions, inquired of
+me what they represented to my mind. I replied, 'The moaning of lost
+souls.' From this a theological discussion followed.
+
+"'There may be a future,' he said.
+
+"'There is a future,' I cried, 'a great and beautiful future. If I die
+first I shall come to you and prove this.'
+
+"He turned to me with great solemnity.
+
+"'Good, Liloscha, that is a bargain; and I will come to you.'
+
+"Six years later in Paris I woke one night with a cry of agony and
+despair ringing in my ears, such as I hope may never be duplicated in
+my lifetime. Rubinstein's face was close to mine, a countenance
+distorted by every phase of fear, despair, agony, remorse and anger. I
+started up, turned on all the lights, and stood for a moment shaking in
+every limb, till I put fear from me and decided it was merely a dream. I
+had for the moment completely forgotten our compact. News is always late
+in Paris, and it was in _Le Petit Journal_, published in the afternoon,
+that had the first account of his sudden death.
+
+"Four years later, Teresa Carreno, who had just come from Russia and was
+touring America--I had met her in St. Petersburg frequently at
+Rubinstein's dinner-table--told me that Rubinstein died with a cry of
+agony impossible of description. I knew then that even in death
+Rubinstein had kept, as he always did, his word."
+
+Here again, we are at liberty to accept the testimony regarding the
+remarkable and complex coincidence, and to disregard what is really an
+expression of opinion in the last sentence. Whether Rubinstein
+remembered his compact in his dying hour, or the impression produced
+upon his far-away pupil was automatically produced by some obscure
+telepathic process, the dying man having in his mind no conscious
+thought of his promise, or some intervening _tertium quid_ produced the
+impression, could never be determined by this incident alone.
+
+
+PREVISIONARY DREAM BY CHARLES DICKENS
+
+This incident in the experience of Charles Dickens (1812-1870) is to be
+found in the standard biography by Forster, III, pp. 484-5 (London,
+1874). On May 30, 1863, Dickens wrote:
+
+"Here is a curious case at first-hand. On Thursday night in last week,
+being at my office here, I dreamed that I saw a lady in a red shawl with
+her back toward me (whom I supposed to be E--). On her turning round I
+found that I didn't know her, and she said, 'I am Miss Napier.' All the
+time I was dressing next morning I thought 'What a preposterous thing to
+have so very distinct a dream about nothing!' and why Miss Napier?--for
+I never heard of any Miss Napier. That same Friday night I read. After
+the reading, came into my retiring-room, Mary Boyle and her brother, and
+the lady in the red shawl, whom they present as 'Miss Napier.' These are
+all the circumstances exactly told."
+
+I can imagine the late Professor Royce saying thirty years ago--for I
+much doubt if he would have said it twenty years later--"In certain
+people, under certain exciting circumstances, there occur what I shall
+henceforth call _Pseudo-presentiments_, _i.e._, more or less
+instantaneous hallucinations of memory, which make it seem to one that
+something which now excites or astonishes him has been prefigured in a
+recent dream, or in the form of some other warning, although this
+seeming is wholly unfounded, and although the supposed prophecy really
+succeeds its own fulfillment."
+
+Apply this curious theory (which has probably not been urged for many
+years) to the incident just cited, and see how loosely it fits. What was
+there about three persons, one a stranger coming to Dickens after he had
+finished a reading from his own works, to "excite" or "astonish" him,
+make his brain whirl and bring about a hallucination of memory, an
+illusion of having dreamed it all before? It was the most commonplace
+event to him. Besides, as in most such cases, he had the distinct
+recollection of his thoughts about the dream after waking, thoughts
+inextricably interwoven with the acts performed while dressing! Besides,
+a pseudo-presentiment should tally with the event as a reflection does
+with the object, but in the dream Miss Napier introduced herself, while
+in reality she was introduced by another.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Best Psychic Stories, by Various
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