ty, I have concluded to take the
consequences of publishing my own recent experience. A word of
personal explanation may here be necessary. A sincere believer in
Orthodox Christianity until my twentieth year, I have been led by
careful study and unfaltering love of truth to give up my belief in
Christian dogmas, and have for some years known no other name by which
to designate my state of mind in regard to religious belief than that
misunderstood and often misapplied term, agnostic. But at no stage in
my mental progress have I ever felt sure that I had reached any
conclusion which was final, and at no time have I been a believer in
spiritualism, or been convinced that we survive the present state of
being; while always I have felt an interest in every undecided
question in science and religion, and earlier have had some
"intimations of immortality," which have caused me to think seriously
on the subject and to long for more light. I have decided to lay the
simple facts of my most recent experience before the readers of THE
ARENA, and allow them to draw what conclusions they will without
offering any theory of my own. More than a year ago my interest in
psychic phenomena was awakened by reading the reports of the Society
for Psychical Research, but it has been my own personal experience
which has created a profound impression on my mind. If any one who
reads this will try to imagine in what spirit he would greet an entire
stranger or group of strangers, who through the telephone, for
instance, should send him genial messages full of commonsense,
philosophy, humor, and friendliness, giving him interesting details of
a strange land, he can partially understand the state of mind in
which, after many months of such intercourse, I find myself. Except on
two or three occasions no one has been present but my husband, B. F.
Underwood, and myself.

The _modus operandi_ is the simplest possible. As I remembered that
Mr. U. was rather averse to the planchette experiments of former
years, thinking them unwholesome and deteriorating in their tendency,
I at first said nothing to him of my new psychical experiments, though
these were made oftenest in his presence in the evening when we both
sat at one writing table, near each other, busied with our individual
literary work. As I experimented in his absence as well as in his
presence, I soon found that I got the most coherent writings when he
was present. Indeed I could get nothing coh