member of the New Occult Society, I believed it possible by
concentrating all the mental activities in one channel, so to overcome
the barriers which prevent the soul visiting scenes of the ethereal
world, as to pass materialized to the spot upon which the ideas are
fixed. But although I had essayed--how many times I do not like to
confess--to gain that amount of concentration necessary for the
separation of the soul from the body, up to the present all my attempts
had been fruitless. Doubtless there had been a something--too minute
even for definition--that had interrupted my self-abstraction--a
something that had wrecked my venture, just when I felt it to be on the
verge of completion. And was it likely that now, when my ideas were
misty and vague, I should be more successful? I wanted to quit the cruel
bonds of nature and be free--free to roam and ramble. But where?

"At length, as I gazed into the moonlight, I lost all cognizance of the
objects around me, and my eyes became fixed on the mountains of the
moon, which I discovered, with a start, were no longer specks. I found,
to my amazement, I had left my body and was careering swiftly through
space--infinite space. The range opened up in front of me, spreading out
far and wide, winding, black and awful--their solemn grandeur lost in
that terrible desolation which makes the moon appear like a hideous
nightmare. I could see with amazing clearness the sides of the
mountains; there were enormous black fissures, some of them hundreds of
feet in width--and the more I gazed the more impressed I grew with the
silence. There was no life. There were no seas, no lakes, no trees, no
grass, no sighing nor moaning of the wind, nothing to remind me of the
earth I now found to my terror I had actually quitted. Everything around
me was black--the sky, the mountains, the vast pits, the dried-up mouths
of which gaped dismally.

"With the movements of a man in a fit, I essayed to hinder the finis of
my mad plunge. I waved my limbs violently, kicking out and shrieking in
the agonies of fear. I cursed and prayed, wept and laughed alternately,
did everything, yet nothing, that could save me from contact with the
lone desert so horribly close. Nearer and nearer I approached, until at
last my feet rested on the hard caked soil. For the first few minutes
after my arrival I was too overwhelmed with fear to do other than remain
stationary. The ground beneath my feet swarmed with myriads of fo