ht in weight, also my body ... my
thoughts began to clear when I observed I had departed from my material
body. Ever since then I have been trying to reach you, Dick. I saw a
light and many faces beckoning me on and trying to comfort me, showing
and assuring me I should soon be all right, and almost instantly I found
I was. Then I called for you and tried to tell you all about where and
how I was, and, with one exception, this is the only chance I have had.
Now you see I am taking advantage of the opportunity."

After the question of how a man passes into the next world, the most
interesting one to us is how he feels when he gets there. Generally
speaking, the reports are satisfactory. One of Professor Hyslop's
uncles, though he seems to have had a happy life here, says to his
nephew, among other things,[65] "I would not return for all I ever
owned--music, flowers, walks, drives, pleasures of all kinds, books and
everything." Another communicator, John Hart, the first sitter to whom
George Pelham appeared, said on his own first appearance, "Our world is
the abode of Peace and Plenty." If this is the case, what a pleasant
surprise awaits us, for in this world we have not much experience of
Peace and Plenty. But I fear that John Hart has exaggerated; every day
the Reaper's sickle casts from this world into the other such elements
of discord, not to reckon those who must long ago have been there, that
I wonder what means are taken to prevent their creating a disturbance.
However this may be, if when we leave this world we pass into another,
let us hope that the new world will be a better place than the old one,
or else we shall have every reason to regret that death is not
annihilation.

But George Pelham, in his turn, assures us that we do not lose by the
change. He died, it will be remembered, at the age of thirty-two. When
Dr Hodgson asked him whether he had not gone too soon, he replied with
emphasis, "No, Hodgson, no, not too soon."

If, however, spirits are happy, more or less happy, according to the
spiritualists, as they are more or less developed--and there seems
nothing inadmissible in this theory--we must suppose that their
happiness is not purely contemplative. One could soon have enough of
such happiness as that. They are active; they are, as we are, occupied,
though we cannot understand wherein their occupation consists. That this
is so is affirmed and reaffirmed in the sittings, and we might assume
it, ev