ums: "I strongly advise all mediums to wait and serve out
their apprenticeship thoroughly before they undertake to sit for
sceptics or perform public work, either as test, impersonating,
speaking, seeing, or healing mediums; and the best place to secure the
necessary experience, training and unfolding is in the home circle.
After a certain stage has been reached, however, the medium who has been
used for impersonations will in all probability begin to display the
powers of clairvoyance and to receive vivid impressions. Then will come,
or they will be accompanied by, the efforts of the spirits to pass
beyond the purely personal and limited forms of expression associated
with the affectionate messages and greetings, to the consideration and
explanation of the conditions and experiences of life on the other side.
Spirits who can teach and give more sequential and sustained addresses
will in all likelihood assume control, and under such conditions it will
be found necessary to enlarge the circle and introduce fresh sitters.
The clairvoyant, or psychometrist, needs new subjects with whom to
experiment, and the speaking medium requires an audience to listen to
his discourses, so that the next step beyond the small private circle
may well be a semi-public one, or an 'after circle' such as is
frequently held at the close of the public Sunday services in many
towns, at which mediums who have reached this stage are afforded the
opportunities they need.

Home Circle Development.

"Around the family table, where those who are united in affection meet
to hold joyous communion with their spirit friends, where the blended
desire ascends to the spiritual plane, and becomes the potent magnetic
attraction, by which those friends can establish harmonious relations
with the sitters--in such a circle and under such conditions even a weak
degree of mediumistic responsiveness to the outpouring from the spirit
side will become intensified and exalted, until rhythmic vibrations are
established and thought and emotion will readily pass from one to
another, and all will be attuned. The best method of cultivation is to
regard the mediumistic sensitiveness as a natural and desirable quality,
to be evolved by training and experiments, under the direction of the
reason and the conscience. In this manner the tribunal which decides the
conduct of life is ever present, and no matter what influences are
brought to bear on the sensitive he remains stea