rt, ever been incarnated. He was what
the Spiritualists and Theosophists, and so on, call an "Elemental."
And to him, I represented the future state. I was, so to speak,
the communicating spirit and he the psychical researcher. He was, I
inferred, very far advanced on his own plane and expecting very shortly
to "pass over," as he put it. Also, I gathered that he was in his
own world by way of being an intellectual; keenly interested in the
future--that is, in our present state; and that the Slipperton phenomena
were entirely due to the experiments he had been carrying out ("on
strictly scientific lines," he assured me) to try and ascertain the
conditions of life on this plane.

Perhaps I can, now, illustrate his attitude by a few quotations from our
conversation. For example:

Spirit. "Are you happy where you are?"

Myself. "Moderately. At times. Some of us are."

Spirit. "Are you yourself happy?"

Myself. "I may say so. Yes."

Spirit. "What do you do? Try and give me some idea of life on your
plane."

Myself. "It varies so immensely with the individual and the set in
which one lives. But we--oh! we have a great variety of what we call
'interests' and occupations, and most of us, of course, have to work for
our livings."

Spirit. "I don't understand that. What are your livings, and how do you
work for them?"

Myself. "We can't live without food, you see. We have to eat and drink
and sleep; protect ourselves against heat and cold and the weather
generally, which means clothes and shelter--garments to wear and houses
to live in, that is."

Spirit. "I have inferred something of this very vaguely from my
experiments. For instance, I gather that you put on hair in the daytime,
and take it off when you are--where _you_ are at the present time. Also,
I have noticed that when the coverings which at present conceal you are
pulled away, you invariably replace them. Am I to deduce from that that
you try to keep your bodies warm and your heads cool at night?"

Myself. "Well, that's a trifle complicated. About the hair, you
understand, some of us lose our hair--it comes out, we don't know
why--in middle life, as mine has, and women and some men are rather
ashamed of this and wear--er--other people's hair in the daytime to hide
the defect."

Spirit. "Why?"

Myself. "Oh, vanity. We want to appear younger than we really are."

Spirit. "Why?"

The Researcher bent a little lower over his notebook as he said:

I see