on" for many prosperous years.

As a matter of fact, throughout the period of his mediumship, that is to
say, from 1851 to 1886, the year of his death, he experienced only one
serious reverse, and this did not involve any exposure of the falsity of
his claims. But it was serious enough, in all conscience, and calls for
mention both because it emphasizes the contrast between his earlier and
his later life, and because it throws a luminous sidelight on the
methods by which he achieved his unparalleled success. When he was in
London in 1867 he made the acquaintance of an elderly, impressionable
English-woman named Lyon, who immediately conceived a warm attachment
for him and stated her intention of adopting him as her son. Carrying
out this plan, she settled on him the snug little fortune of one hundred
and twenty thousand dollars, which she subsequently increased until it
amounted to no less than three hundred thousand dollars. Home at the
time was a widower, and it was his belief, as he afterward stated in
court, that the woman desired him to marry her.

In any event her affection cooled as rapidly as it had begun, and the
next thing he knew he was being sued for the recovery of the three
hundred thousand dollars. The trial was a celebrated case in English
law. Lord Dunraven, Lord Crawford, and other of Home's titled and
influential friends hurried to his assistance, and many were the
affidavits forthcoming to combat the contentions of Mrs. Lyon, who swore
that she had been influenced to adopt Home by communications alleged to
come through him from her dead husband. Home himself denied that there
were any manifestations whatever relating to Mrs. Lyon, whose story, in
fact, was so discredited on cross-examination that the presiding judge,
the vice-chancellor, caustically declared that her testimony was quite
unworthy of belief. Notwithstanding which, he did not hesitate to give
judgment in her favor, on the ground that, however worthless her
evidence, it had not been satisfactorily shown that her gifts to Home
were "acts of pure volition," the presumption being that no reasonable
man or woman would have pursued the course she did unless under the
pressure of undue influence by the party to be benefited.

* * * * *

If for "undue influence" we read "hypnotism," we shall have a
sufficient, and what seems to me the only satisfactory, explanation of
the Lyon episode and of the most baffling o