II.

I will now leave the illustration and address myself directly to an explanation of the evidence which has convinced me of the reality of the persistence of personality after death.

I may make the prefatory remark that I have what is called the gift of automatic handwriting. By that I mean that I can, after making my mind passive, place my pen on paper, and my hand will write messages from friends at a distance; whether they are in the body or whether they have experienced the change called death makes no difference.

The advantage of obtaining such automatic messages from a friend who is still on this side the grave is that it is possible to verify their accuracy by referring to the person from whom the message comes. I may say, in order to avoid misapprehension, that in my case the transmitter of the message is seldom conscious of having transmitted it, and is sometimes surprised and annoyed to find that his unconscious mind had sent the message. As an illustration of this I will describe one such experience that occurred almost at the beginning of my experiments.

A lady friend of mine, who can write with my hand at any distance with even more freedom than she can write with her own, had been spending the week-end at Haslemere, a village about thirty miles from London. She had promised to luncn with me on Wednesday if she returned to town. Late on Monday afternoon I wished to know if she had left the country, and placing my pen on the paper I mentally asked if she had returned to London. My hand wrote as follows:—

"I am very sorry to tell you I have had a very painful experience, of which I am almost ashamed to speak. I left Haslemere at 2.27 p.m. in a second-class carriage, in which there were two ladies and one gentleman. When the train stopped at Godalming the ladies got out, and I was left alone with the man. After the train started he left his seat and came close to me. I was alarmed and repelled him. He refused to go away, and tried to kiss me. I was furious. We had a struggle. I seized his umbrella and struck him, but it broke, and I was beginning to fear that he would master me. when the train began to slow up before arriving at Guildford Station. He got frightened, let go of me, and before the train reached the platform he jumped out and ran away. I was very much upset. But I have the umbrella."

I sent my secretary up with a note saying merely I was very sorry to hear what had happened, and added, "Be sure and bring the man's umbrella on Wednesday." She wrote in reply, am very sorry you know anything about it. I had made up my mind to tell nobody. I will bring the broken umbrella, but it was my umbrella, not his."

When she came to lunch on Wednesday she confirmed the story in every particular, and produced the broken umbrella, which was hers, not his. How that mistake occurred in the transmission of the message I do not know. Perhaps by the solitary inaccuracy to emphasise the correctness of the rest of the narrative. I may say that I had no idea as to the train she was travelling by, and had not the slightest suspicion that she had experienced so awkward an adventure.

I may say that since then, for a period of fifteen years, I have been, and am still, in the habit of receiving similar automatic messages from many of my friends. In some the percentage of error is larger, but as a rule the messages are astonishingly correct. This system of automatic telepathy from friends who are still in their bodies and who are in sympathy with me is for me as well established as the existence of electric telegraphy, or any other fact capable of verification every day.

The next question is whether this system of automatic telepathy between the living—which corresponds to wireless telegraphy on land—can be extended to those who have crossed the river of death—an extension which corresponds to the transmission of Mareonigrams across the Atlantic.

Upon this point I will again relate my own experience. I had two friends, who were as devoted to each other as sisters. As is not unusual, they had promised each other that whichever died first would return to show herself to the other in order to afford ocular demonstration of the reality of the world beyond the grave. One of them, whose Christian name was Julia, died in Boston shortly after the pledge was given. Within a few weeks she aroused her friend from her sleep in Chicago and showed herself by her bedside looking radiantly happy. After remaining silent for a few minutes she slowly dissolved into a light mist, which remained in the roof for half an hour. Some months after the friend in question came to England she and I were staying at Eastnor Castle, in the West of England, when Julia came back a second time. Her friend had not gone to sleep. She was wide awake, and again she saw Julia as distinct and as real as in life. Again she could not speak, and again the apparition faded away.

Her friend told me about the second visit, and asked me if I could get a message from Julia, I offered to try, a next morning, before breakfast, in my own room my has wrote a very sensible message, brief, but to the point, asked for evidence as to the identity of the transmitted My hand wrote "Tell her to remember what I said what last we came to Minerva." I protested that the message was absurd. My hand persisted and said that her frier would understand it. I felt so chagrined at the absurdist of the message that for a long time I refused to deliver When at last I did so her friend exclaimed, "Did s actually write that? Then it is Julia herself, and no man take." "How," I asked, bewildered, "could you come Minerva ?" "Oh," she replied, "of course, you don't know anything about that. Julia shortly before her death ha bestowed the pet name of Minerva upon Miss Willard, the founder of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, an had given her a brooch with a cameo of Minerva. She never afterwards called her anything but Minerva, an the message which she wrote with your hand was sub stantially the same that she gave to me on the last time when Minerva and I came to bid her good-bye on her death bed.

Here again there was a slight mistake. Minerva ha come to her instead of Julia going to Minerva, but other wise the message was correct.

I then proposed that I should try for more messages. My friend sat at one end of a long table, I sat at the other. After my hand had written answers to various questions, I asked Julia, as another test of her identity, if she could use my hand to call to her friend's memory some incident in their mutual lives of which I knew nothing. No sooner said than done.

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My hand wrote: "Ask her if she can remember when we were going home together when she fell and hurt her pine." "That fills the bill," I remarked, as I read out the message, "for I never knew that you had met with such an accident." Looking across the table, I saw that my friend was utterly bewildered. "But, Julia," she objected, "I never hurt my spine in my life." "There," said I, addressing my hand reproachfully, "a nice mess you have made of it! I only asked you for one out of the thousand little incidents you both must have been through together, and you have gone and written what never happened."

Imperturbably my hand wrote, "I am guite right; she has forgotten." "Anybody can say that," I retorted; "can you bring it back to her memory?" "Yes," was the reply. "Go ahead," I answered; "when was it?" Answer: Seven years ago." "Where was it?" "At Streator, in Illinois." "How did it happen?" "She and I were going home from the office one Saturday afternoon. There was snow on the ground. When we came opposite Mrs. Buell's house she slipped her foot on the kerbstone and fell and hurt her back." When I read these messages aloud her friend exclaimed, "Oh, that's what you mean, Julia! I remember that quite well. I was in bed for two or three days with a bad back; but I never knew it was my spine that was hurt."

I need not multiply similar instances. The communication thus begun has been kept up for over fifteen years. I have no more doubt of the existence and the identity of Julia than I have of the existence of my wife or of my sister.

Here we had the appearance of the deceased in bodily form twice repeated on fulfilment of a promise made before death. This is followed up by the writing of messages, attested first by an allusion to a pet name that seemed to reduce the message to nonsense, and, secondly, by recalling to the memory of her friend with the utmost particularity of detail an incident which that friend had forgotten. No other medium was concerned in the receipt of these messages but myself. I had no motive to misrepresent or invent anything. As my narrative proves, I was sceptical rather than credulous. But things happened just as I have put them down. Can you be surprised if I felt I was really getting into communication with the Beyond?