from my dead wife, and when she attempts to recall the most
tender memories of our life together, I cannot,"--he paused and turned
his face a little away,--"it would be pleasant to think I had a word
from Mary, but I cannot think she is there. I don't believe good spirits
concern themselves with this thing. It has in its fair developments too
much nonsense and too much positive sin; read a few numbers of the
'Banner,' or attend a convention or two, if you want to be convinced of
that. If they 're not good spirits they're bad ones, that's all. I 've
dipped into the subject in various ways since I have been here;
consulted the mediums, talked with the prophets; I'm convinced that
there is no dependence to be placed on the thing. You never learn
anything from it that it is worth while to learn; above all, you never
can trust its _prophecies_. It is evil,--_evil_ at the root; and except
by physicians and scientific men it had better be let alone. They may
yet throw light on it; you and I cannot. I propose for myself to drop it
henceforth. In fact, it looks too much toward putting one's self on
terms of intimacy with the Prince of the Powers of the Air to please
me."

"You're rather positive, considering the difficulty of the subject," I
said.

The truth is, and it may be about time to own to it, that the three
months' siege against the mystery, which I had held so pertinaciously
that winter, had driven me to broad terms of capitulation. I assented to
most of my friend's conclusions, but where he stopped I began a race for
further light. I understood then, for the first time, the peculiar charm
which I had often seen work so fatally with dabblers in Spiritualism.
The fascination of the thing was upon me. I ransacked the papers for
advertisements of mediums. I went from city to city at their mysterious
calls. I held _seances_ in my parlor, and frightened my wife with
messages--some of them ghastly enough--from her dead relatives, I ran
the usual gauntlet of strange seers in strange places, who told me my
name, the names of all my friends, dead or alive, my secret aspirations
and peculiar characteristics, my past history and future prospects.

For a long time they never made a failure. Absolute strangers told me
facts about myself which not even my own wife knew: whether they spoke
with the tongues of devils, or whether, by some unknown laws of
magnetism, they simply _read my thoughts_, I am not even now prepared to
say. I