g to the New Church.
It's a great comfort for a plain man like me, when he's weary and sick,
to be able to turn away from earthly things and hold converse daily with
the great and good who have left this here world. We have a circle in
Coates street. If it wa'n't for the consoling I get there, I'd of wished
myself dead many a time. I ain't got kith or kin on earth; but this
matters little, when one can just talk to them daily and know that they
are in the spheres above us."

"It must be a great comfort," I replied, "if only one could believe it."

"Believe!" he repeated. "How can you help it? Do you suppose anything
dies?"

"No," I said. "The soul does not, I am sure; and as to matter, it merely
changes form."

"But why, then," said he, "should not the dead soul talk to the living?
In space, no doubt, exist all forms of matter, merely in finer, more
ethereal being. You can't suppose a naked soul moving about without a
bodily garment--no creed teaches that; and if its new clothing be of
like substance to ours, only of ethereal fineness,--a more delicate
recrystallization about the eternal spiritual nucleus,--must it not then
possess powers as much more delicate and refined as is the new material
in which it is reclad?"

"Not very clear," I answered; "but, after all, the thing should be
susceptible of some form of proof to our present senses."

"And so it is," said he. "Come to-morrow with me, and you shall see and
hear for yourself."

"I will," said I, "if the doctor will lend me the ambulance."

It was so arranged, as the surgeon in charge was kind enough, as usual,
to oblige me with the loan of his wagon, and two orderlies to lift my
useless trunk.

On the day following I found myself, with my new comrade, in a house in
Coates street, where a "circle" was in the daily habit of meeting. So
soon as I had been comfortably deposited in an arm-chair, beside a large
pine table, the rest of those assembled seated themselves, and for some
time preserved an unbroken silence. During this pause I scrutinized
the persons present. Next to me, on my right, sat a flabby man, with
ill-marked, baggy features and injected eyes. He was, as I learned
afterwards, an eclectic doctor, who had tried his hand at medicine
and several of its quackish variations, finally settling down on
eclecticism, which I believe professes to be to scientific medicine what
vegetarianism is to common-sense, every-day dietetics. Next to him sat
a fem