Beneath the light, on a reclining-chair, lay a woman with closed eyes
and folded hands. Beside this figure stood Clarke in the midst of an
address, every word of which was made dramatically effective by a
forced calmness, an elocutionary trick.

"Some of you, my friends, may never have seen any of these mysterious
things. So many people say to me, 'Nothing supernatural ever happens
where I am.' To you I repeat my answer to them. Have you ever tried
to enter the right conditions? Here is a caravan of Arabs on the
desert. The road, hard-beaten, is wide and dusty, the necks of the
camels sway, the drivers shout, there is the smell of sweat, of
leather, of oil. The alkaline dust blinds and blisters. Physical
weariness and suffering shut out all else. This is no place to look
for heavenly visitors. You would be a fool to expect a demonstration
there. But at night when the beasts are at rest, when the cool, starry
sky bends close, when the tent-flaps are closed, then the old men sit
about and commune with their dead--as all primitive, natural peoples
do.

"So with you. You say to me, 'I have no heavenly visions in my life.'
I answer: Do you expect them on Broadway or in your business office?
You are on the dusty, weedy, noisy high-road, my friends, and you will
never hear a spirit voice or catch the flutter of a hand till you
retire to the dusk and the quiet. Enter the land of meditation.
Manifest a willingness to meet the angel visitors half-way, and then
the wings of the unseen will rustle about you, the cool and scented
winds of the invisible universe will kiss your cheeks. Shadowy voices
will be wafted from the dark. Song will break from the silences to
comfort and heal you.

"We see only what we _will_ to see--that is a known law of psychology.
Electricity was a force in the world six thousand years before man
really saw it. Now we hear it crackle in our hair and stir in our
garments. By studying the conditions of its manifestation we are able
to call it forth in giant power. So of these invisible ones--they are
all about us, eager to bless, to prove their presence. They are here
now. Around each one of you there are throngs hovering to manifest
their love; they will do so, by the aid of this wonderful psychic who
has consented to sit for us to-night. Let me repeat that she does this
because the dead demand and the living beseech her to act as their
intermediary." With abrupt, almost ludicrous change to a
matter-of