ost all the so-called mediums. I have attended seances in
this country and abroad and have by turns been convinced that they were
genuine or frauds.

Up to the time when the events which I am about to narrate began to
occur, I had been unable to come to a definite decision, as far as my
own belief was concerned, as to whether or not the spirits of the dead
could communicate with the living. At one time I would be led to believe
they could, but then the exposure of some well-known medium as a
trickster would change my opinion and I would again find myself puzzling
vainly over the answer to this problem.

You doubtless remember the furore which was created in Spiritualistic
circles by the announcement of an English physician that, in accordance
with a compact, a friend had communicated with him after death.

This idea fascinated me. There is an old Japanese myth to the effect
that if a dying man resolves to do a certain act the body will, after
death, perform that act. It seemed to me that if a man could die and
return to earth in spirit it must be as the result of a resolution to
return made just before death and constituting the ruling passion at the
time of death itself. I determined that I would put this theory to the
test.

We of this materialistic world of barter and sale give little time to
the consideration of the Hereafter. There are occasions with most of us
when the unanswerable Why and Whence obtrudes itself on our vision, but
it is a fleeting impression which vanishes with the rising of the sun on
the day's work. The wonder and mystery of life may come home to us at
the birth of a child or the death of a loved one, but we soon cease to
marvel at the miracle of the former and a new joy banishes grief.

For, we say, what avails it, this search after the Land of the
Hereafter, if there be such a place? No one has ever come back to tell
us that there is; or what it is and where. It is all a matter of
conjecture in which we are following round the circle trod by man since
the world began.

One man believes that there is a Hereafter, a spirit land in which the
Soul, stripped of all evil, reaches a state of perfection and divine
happiness which justifies the stupendous feat of the Creation and the
travail of those who are bound to the treadmill of life.

Another believes, pointing for proof to the dead branches from which new
leaves spring, that life is endless, and that the soul, leaving the
worn-out shell,