was afterwards an improvement,
but he could never walk without a stick. In 1876 he had a slight attack
of apoplexy, which affected his hearing, one ear being quite deaf. Three
years before his death he further had the misfortune to lose his voice,
probably from paralysis of the larynx. A year before his death a fresh
affliction was added to all the others; he thought it was catarrh, but
it was probably cancer of the larynx; and it was accompanied by frequent
spasms which threatened his life.

In short, for thirty-five years at least, Mr Robert

Hyslop was an invalid. His life was by necessity passed indoors, or at
least on his farm. This life was necessarily without events calculated
to attract a stranger's notice. There was consequently very little
possibility that the medium could obtain information about him by normal
means. But when an obscure man like Mr Robert Hyslop returns from the
Beyond to establish his identity by relating a number of small facts,
too slight and unimportant to have been observed outside his intimate
circle, such a man furnishes us with a much stronger presumption in
favour of a future life than a personage in public life could do. Even
if the latter only reported incidents of his private life, it would be
easier to suppose that the medium had been able to procure them. During
nearly all his life, but principally during the last twenty years, the
thoughts of Mr Robert Hyslop turned on a small number of subjects--his
solicitude for his family; the administration of his farm, which gave
him much care; the fulfilment of his religious duties, in which he never
failed; and lastly, political events, which much interested him, because
they naturally reacted upon his private affairs. Consequently the
greater part of the facts I shall quote belonged to one or other of
these four categories of his preoccupations.

But, to begin with, it will be useful to speak of a point which
characterises an individual as clearly as his features do--I mean his
speech. Each of us has his own language, his familiar expressions; each
of us expresses himself in his own way under given circumstances. When
Buffon said "the style is the man," he expressed an absolute truth. When
somebody talks to us by telephone, without giving his name, we say,
without a shade of hesitation, "It is So-and-so. I know him by his
style." I repeat that everybody has this individuality of expression; it
is, however, less marked in educated pe