ink the
impression would be deeper and more abiding. The filmy, vague outline of
the white figure thoroughly harmonizes with all established, orthodox
notions of ghosts, and if this were all of the apparition vouchsafed to
us, we might, perhaps, have a harder problem to deal with than when the
Spirit actually emerges from the Cabinet with outstretched arms of
greeting. A substantial, warm, breathing, flesh and blood ghost, whose
foot-falls jar the floor, is slightly heterodox and taxes our credulity;
if hereunto be added an unmistakable likeness to the Medium in form and
feature, many traces, I am afraid, of the supernatural and spiritual
vanish.

Mindful of our endeavour as a Commission, to have as many observers as
possible in cases demanding close observation, I never attended a
Materializing seance as a member of this Commission. Whenever I happened
to be personally known (and my ear-trumpet soon makes me a marked man),
that official capacity was unavoidably imputed to me, but I never
announced it nor claimed it. I was present merely as an observer on my
own account, with the intention of making arrangements, if practicable,
for seances with the rest of the Commission, if what I saw seemed to me
sufficiently remarkable to justify the expense, which experience, with
other Mediums in other lines, had taught me would be very considerable.
I therefore took no notes, and could at this late day only after much
difficulty furnish dates. Wherefore all that I propose in this
Memorandum is to give my own private conclusion, which is worth no more
than the conclusion of any other private individual, and to mention the
test to which I subjected all the Spirits whom I had the pleasure of
specially 'interviewing'; as this test can be applied by any one, at any
time, at any seance, it partakes of the nature of a general truth, which
does not need the support of dates, or names, or places to uphold it. I
suppose I have attended between twenty and thirty Materializing seances.

I do not hesitate to acknowledge that I have been throughout sincerely
and extremely anxious to become converted to Spiritualism. In whatever
direction my judgment is warped, it is warped in favor of that belief. I
cannot conceive of the texture of that mind which would not welcome such
an indisputable proof of immortality as Spiritualism professes to hold
out.

In general, then, let me say at once and emphatically that I have never
seen anything which, in