what sort of place it
was, what would happen? Some naughty boy would probably say something
rude. Anyhow, he would see nothing of the wisdom or greatness of the
world. He would draw his head in thinking it was a very poor place.
That is just what you have done. In a mixed seance, with no definite
aim, you have thrust your head into the next world and you have met
some naughty boys. Go forward and try to reach something better."
That was General Drayson's explanation, and though it did not satisfy
me at the time, I think now that it was a rough approximation to the
truth. These were my first steps in Spiritualism. I was still a
sceptic, but at least I was an inquirer, and when I heard some
old-fashioned critic saying that there was nothing to explain, and that
it was all fraud, or that a conjuror was needed to show it up, I knew
at least that that was all nonsense. It is true that my own evidence
up to then was not enough to convince me, but my reading, which was
continuous, showed me how deeply other men had gone into it, and I
recognised that the testimony was so strong that no other religious
movement in the world could put forward anything to compare with it.
That did not prove it to be true, but at least it proved that it must
be treated with respect and could not be brushed aside. Take a single
incident of what Wallace has truly called a modern miracle. I choose
it because it is the most incredible. I allude to the assertion that
D. D. Home--who, by the way, was not, as is usually supposed, a paid
adventurer, but was the nephew of the Earl of Home--the assertion, I
say, that he floated out of one window and into another at the height
of seventy feet above the ground. I could not believe it. And yet,
when I knew that the fact was attested by three eye-witnesses, who were
Lord Dunraven, Lord Lindsay, and Captain Wynne, all men of honour and
repute, who were willing afterwards to take their oath upon it, I could
not but admit that the evidence for this was more direct than for any
of those far-off events which the whole world has agreed to accept as
true.

I still continued during these years to hold table seances, which
sometimes gave no results, sometimes trivial ones, and sometimes rather
surprising ones. I have still the notes of these sittings, and I
extract here the results of one which were definite, and which were so
unlike any conceptions which I held of life beyond the grave that they
amused