over a number of
years. We are apt to view the subject from our present standpoint; and I
shall try to avoid this by quoting, whenever I can, what I published, or
committed to writing in the course of my investigations. I shall not
cull from others, because I want to make this purely a personal
narrative.

Let me add, too, I do not in the least expect persons to believe what I
say. Some, I think, will regard me as a harmless (_if_ a harmless)
lunatic, on account of certain statements I may have to make. Others
will consider the whole thing as decidedly unorthodox and "wrong." For
each of these issues I am prepared. I would not have believed any one
else if they had, prior to my experience, told me what I am going to
tell them here; and therefore I do not expect them to believe me. All I
hope to do is to interest persons sufficiently in the subject to induce
them to look into the matter on their own account; for verily I believe,
as a distinguished spiritualist once said to me, that this thing is
either an important truth or else one of the biggest swindles ever
palmed off upon humanity.

One word more, and I proceed to my narrative. Of the three aspects under
which it is possible to view spiritualism, the scientific, the
theological, and the social, I shall not touch at all on the first since
I am not a scientific man; shall only glance at the second, because this
is not the place for a theological discussion. I shall confine myself to
the third, therefore, which I call the social aspect; looking at the
subject as a question of the day, the truth about which we are as much
interested in solving as any other political or social question, but the
investigation of which need not make us get excited and angry and call
one another bad names. I venture to hope that by these means I may
manage to compile a not unedifying or uninteresting narrative, though
our subject be withal somewhat a ponderous one.

In order then to cover the preliminary part of my narrative, and to let
my readers somewhat into the state of my own mind, when I had looked at
the subject for several years, I will quote some extracts from a paper
I read before a society of spiritualists at the Beethoven Rooms a few
years ago under the title "Am I a Spiritualist?" I may mention that the
assembly was divided, and never decided whether I was or not, and what
is more, I do not think they are quite decided to the present day. I am
a patient investigator still;