uld die and become spirits.

Nor would I now place these disclosures before the public eyes were if
not that I think that in the present crisis they will prove of value to
the Allied cause.

But let me begin at the beginning. My own conversion to spiritualism
came about, like that of so many others, through the more or less casual
remark of a Friend.

Noticing me one day gloomy and depressed, this Friend remarked to me:

"Have you any belief in Spiritualism?"

Had it come from anyone else, I should have turned the question aside
with a sneer. But it so happens that I owe a great deal of gratitude to
this particular Friend. It was he who, at a time when I was so afflicted
with rheumatism that I could scarcely leap five feet into the air
without pain, said to me one day quite casually: "Have you ever tried
pyro for your rheumatism?" One month later I could leap ten feet in the
air--had I been able to--without the slightest malaise. The same man,
I may add, hearing me one day exclaiming to myself: "Oh, if there were
anything that would remove the stains from my clothes!" said to me very
simply and quietly: "Have you ever washed them in luxo?" It was he, too,
who, noticing a haggard look on my face after breakfast one morning,
inquired immediately what I had been eating for breakfast; after which,
with a simplicity and directness which I shall never forget, he said:
"Why not eat humpo?"

Nor can I ever forget my feeling on another occasion when, hearing me
exclaim aloud: "Oh, if there were only something invented for removing
the proteins and amygdaloids from a carbonized diet and leaving only the
pure nitrogenous life-giving elements!" seized my hand in his, and said
in a voice thrilled with emotion: "There is! It has!"

The reader will understand, therefore, that a question, or query,
from such a Friend was not to be put lightly aside. When he asked if I
believed in Spiritualism I answered with perfect courtesy:

"To be quite frank, I do not."

There was silence between us for a time, and then my Friend said:

"Have you ever given it a trial?"

I paused a moment, as the idea was a novel one.

"No," I answered, "to be quite candid, I have not."

Neither of us spoke for perhaps twenty minutes after this, when my
Friend said:

"Have you anything against it?"

I thought awhile and then I said:

"Yes, I have."

My Friend remained silent for perhaps half an hour. Then he asked:

"What?"

I meditated for