ular impression of voracious hunger. Her presence was
often announced to me by a chill shudder, before I saw her. Centuries
ago one of her ancestors must have been a ghoul or vampire. The trance
of possession seemed, with her, to be a form of dissipation, in which
she indulged as she might have catered for a baser appetite. The new
religion was nothing to her; I believe she valued it only on account of
the importance she obtained among its followers. Her father, a vain,
weak-minded man, who kept a grocery in the town, was himself a convert.

Stilton had an answer for every doubt. No matter how tangled a labyrinth
might be exhibited to him, he walked straight through it.

"How is it," I asked him, "that so many of my fellow-mediums inspire me
with an instinctive dislike and mistrust?"

"By mistrust you mean dislike," he answered; "since you know of no
reason to doubt their characters. The elements of soul-matter are
differently combined in different individuals, and there are affinities
and repulsions, just as there are in the chemical elements. Your feeling
is chemical, not moral. A want of affinity does not necessarily imply an
existing evil in the other party. In the present ignorance of the world,
our true affinities can only he imperfectly felt and indulged; and the
entire freedom which we shall obtain in this respect is the greatest
happiness of the spirit-life."

Another time I asked,--

"How is it that the spirits of great authors speak so tamely to us?
Shakspeare, last night, wrote a passage which he would have been
heartily ashamed of, as a living man. We know that a spirit spoke,
calling himself Shakspeare; but, judging from his communication, it
could not have been he."

"It probably was not," said Mr. Stilton. "I am convinced that all
malicious spirits are at work to interrupt the communications from the
higher spheres. We were thus deceived by one professing to be Benjamin
Franklin, who drew for us the plan of a machine for splitting shingles,
which we had fabricated and patented at considerable expense. On trial,
however, it proved to be a miserable failure, a complete mockery. When
the spirit was again summoned, he refused to speak, but shook the table
to express his malicious laughter, went off, and has never since
returned. My friend, we know but the alphabet of Spiritualism, the mere
A B C; we can no more expect to master the immortal language in a day
than a child to read Plato after learning hi