suggests that the speaker is playing with
us. George Pelham says to his friend James Howard at the first sitting
at which James Howard was present:[73] "Your voice, Jim, I can
distinguish with your accent and articulation, but it sounds like a big
brass drum. Mine would sound to you like the faintest whisper."

J. Howard.--"Our conversation, then, is something like telephoning?"

George Pelham.--"Yes."

J. Howard.--"By long-distance telephone."

George Pelham laughs.

Understand who may! Are these only analogies? One does not know what to
think. Another difficult thing to understand is the "weakness" which the
spirits complain that they feel, especially towards the end of the
sittings. George Pelham actually says that we must not demand from
spirits just what they have not got, namely, strength. If the spirits
mean that the medium's "light" grows weak and no longer provides them
with the unknown something that they require in order to communicate,
why do they not express themselves more clearly?

It will perhaps be thought that I have dwelt a little too long on what
I have called the philosophy of George Pelham. I have thought it best to
do so, and there is no harm done so long as I leave it to my readers to
believe as much as they like.

FOOTNOTES:

[63] _Proc. of S.P.R._, vol. xiii. p. 301.

[64] _Proc. of S.P.R._, vol. xiv. p. 18.

[65] _Proc. of S.P.R._, vol. xvi. p. 315.

[66] _Proc. of S.P.R._, vol. xiii. p. 301.

[67] _Proc. of S.P.R._, vol. xiv. p. 36.

[68] In another sitting W. S. Moses says that, as he held this view very
strongly in life, he felt sure that he had been told it by his
spirit-guides.

[69] _Proc. of S.P.R._, vol. xiii. pp. 305, 306.

[70] _Proc. of S.P.R._, vol. xiii. p. 362.

[71] _Proc. of S.P.R._, vol. xiii. pp. 362, 363.

[72] _Proc. of S.P.R._, vol. xiii. p. 434.

[73] _Proc. of S.P.R._, vol. xiii. p. 301.

CHAPTER XII

William Stainton Moses--What George Pelham thinks of him--How Imperator
and his assistants have replaced Phinuit.

For those of my readers who are unacquainted with spiritualist
literature, and in order to facilitate the understanding of what
follows, I must give a short sketch of the life of the English medium,
William Stainton Moses. He was born in 1839, and died in 1892. He
studied at Oxford, and was then curate at Maughold, near Ramsey, in the
Isle of Man. His great kindness made him beloved by all his parishioners
there. When an epi