ritualism. In a
biography of my father and mother, which I published in 1884, I alluded
to this latter circumstance, and some time afterwards I received from
his wife a letter which I take this opportunity to print:

"4 FINCHLEY ROAD, N. W., June 19, 1885.

"DEAR SIR,--May I beg of you in any future edition of the Life of your
father to leave out your passage upon my husband and spiritualism? He
is utterly opposed to it now. On Mr. Home's first appearance in England
very remarkable things did occur; but from the first I was a most
decided opponent, and by my firmness I have kept all I know and love
from having anything to do with it for at least thirty-five years. You
may imagine, therefore, I feel hurt at seeing so spiritually minded
a man as my husband really is to be mixed up with so evil a thing as
spiritism. You will pardon a faithful wife her just appreciation of
his character. One other author took the liberty of using his name in a
similar way, and I wrote to him also. Believe me,

"Yours faithfully,

"E. A. WILKINSON."

The good doctor and his wife are now, I believe, both of them in the
world where good spirits go, and no doubt they have long ere this found
out all about the rights and wrongs of spiritism and other matters, but
there is no doubt that at the time of my father's acquaintance with him
the doctor was a very earnest supporter of the cult. He was a man of
mark and of brains and of most lovable personal quality; he wrote books
well worth deep study; Emerson speaks of "the long Atlantic roll" of
their style. Henry James named his third son after him--the gentle and
brave "Wilkie" James, who was my school-mate at Sanborn's school in
Concord after our return to America, and who was wounded in the fight at
Fort Fisher while leading his negro soldiers to the assault. But for the
present, Dr. Wilkinson, so far as we children knew him, was a delightful
and impressive physician, who helped us through our measles in masterly
style, under all the disadvantages of a foggy London winter.

On the 5th of January, 1858--we were ready to start the next
day--Bennoch came to take tea with us and bid us farewell. "He keeps up
a manly front," writes my father, "and an aspect of cheerfulness, though
it is easy to see that he is a very different man from the joyous one
whom I knew a few months since; and whatever may be his future
fortune, he will never get all the sunshine back again. There is a
more determinate s