n the upward progression of
the self," stammered Brierly, much disturbed.

Here again I interposed a quieting word: "I confess that it begins to
look as though the theosophist's theory of the astral (at which some of
us have smiled) were in a fair way to be scientifically demonstrated.
Since our last meeting I have been studying the bound volumes of _The
Annals of Psychic Science_, and I have found them full of comfort. They
sustain Mrs. Smiley at every point. To my mind, the most important event
in the history of spiritism is the entrance of Eusapia Paladino into the
clinical laboratory of Cesare Lombroso. Nothing since Crookes's
experiments has had such value for the scientist."

"We have heard of Lombroso, but who is Paladino?" asked Mrs. Quigg. "Is
she a psychic?"

"She is the most renowned now living. Though only an illiterate peasant
woman, she has been able for more than twenty years to baffle every
scientist who has studied her. Her organism remains the most potent
mystery on this earth."

"Tell us about her! Who is she? Where does she live?"

"She was born at Minerva-murge, a mountain village near Bari, in Italy.
According to Lombroso's daughter, who has written a sketch of her, she
is about fifty-three years of age. Her parents were peasants. She is
quite uneducated, but is intelligent and rather good-looking. Her hands
are pretty and her feet small--facts which are of value when studying
her manifestations, as you will see later on. Her mother died while
Eusapia was a babe, and her father 'passed over' when she was twelve,
leaving her at large in the world 'like a wild animal,' as she herself
says. A native family of her village took her to Naples, and her own
story is that she was adopted soon after by some foreigners 'who wished
to make me an educated and learned girl. They wanted me to take a bath
every day and comb my hair every day,' she explains, with some humor.

"She didn't like the life nor the people, and she soon ran away back to
her friends, the Apulians, and it was while she was in their house and
at the precise moment when they were planning to put her in a convent
that her occult powers were discovered. Some friends came in to spend
the evening, and, in default of anything better to do, formed a circle
to make a table tip. No sooner were they all seated, as she herself
relates, than 'the table began to rise, the chairs to dance, the
curtains to swell, and the glasses and bottles to walk a