Autobiography of W. J. Colville

If I am to relate faithfully, even in barest outline, my experiences with "unseen helpers," I must go back to my very early childhood, when my "mediumship" originally declared itself. I was practically an orphan from birth. My mother passed to spirit life in my infancy and my father was called by important business to travel in lands remote from England, where I was left in charge of a guardian. My childhood was singularly unchildlike, as I was separated from children altogether, and compelled to associate exclusively with persons of thoroughly mature age.

How I first came to see my mother clairvoyantly I do not know, but I distinctly remember becoming vividly conscious at frequent intervals of the gentle, loving presence of a beautiful young woman, who invariably appeared to my vision gracefully attired in light garments of singular beauty. The head of this charming lady was adorned with golden ringlets; her eyes were intensely blue; she was tall and of rather slender build, and manifested many attributes of almost ideal womanhood. I cannot recall to mind any occasion when this lady spoke to me as one ordinary human being on earth converses with another, but I distinctly recollect that when I saw her most plainly and felt her presence most distinctly, I was intensely conscious of information flowing into me. I can only liken my experience to some memorable statements of Swedenborg concerning influx of knowledge into the interiors of human understanding.

I should probably never in those early days have thought of such a problem as clairvoyance, had it not been for the surprising fact that what I saw perfectly other people did not see at all. I was first led to realize the unusual character of my vision when I mentioned the presence of the “beautiful lady in white” to two persons who were with me when I saw her very distinctly, and they declared that we three were the only occupants of the apartment. The mystery of the fourth inmate was for me greatly intensified when it appeared to me that the other two persons, besides her and myself, could pass through her and she through them, while they appeared completely unconscious of each other’s presence. An elderly lady, with whom I was living, who was a devoted Churchwoman, summed up all my singular visions, when I related them to her, in the following words: “Well, I can’t account for it, but it must be the work of either God or Satan.” Though not many months over five years of age at the time to which I am now referring, I had already heard Satan called the “father of lies” and had also been taught that truth belonged to God and came from heaven; so my youthful intellect was not perturbed with dread of any power of darkness, as I found that all the information which flowed into me when this beautiful spiritual being manifested to me was correct in every particular. I was, therefore, quite content to believe, with simple faith supported by reasoning, that my dear mother was watching over me as a guardian spirit.

I often heard of guardian angels, and I was sometimes taken to a children’s service in a church where a favorite hymn before the catechising began with the following invocation:

“ Dear angel ever at my side!
How loving must thou be
To leave thy home in heaven to guard
A little child like me.”

Instead of conjecturing angels as well-nigh incomprehensible beings belonging to an order in the creation entirely different from ourselves, I rested satisfied with the simple, reasonable conviction that the messenger from unseen spheres who watched over me most intimately, was the dear mother whose physical presence had been withdrawn from earth long before I had reached an age when I could have consciously appreciated it. I do not forget the strange shock I felt when some one said to me: “ It is impossible that you should see your mother; you have no mother; she is dead.” Such vulgar, brutal words made no other impression on me than to set me thinking along psychic lines, far more often pursued by little children than adults generally suppose.

It must be borne in mind that I was an isolated and often a lonely child, thrown very largely upon my resources for amusement and enjoyment. This circumstance may suffice to suggest instructive thoughts regarding conditions singularly favorable to mediumistic development. Is mediumship a gift or a natural endowment? is a query often raised. To answer this inquiry it is surely necessary to recall the two distinct senses in which the word “ gift ” is commonly employed. We speak of natural gifts, of the universal gifts of God to humanity, as well as of particular bestowments vouchsafed to those who are sometimes segregated in our philosophy from the “common herd,” and designated a “chosen few.” Having used the term “clairvoyance” in connection with my own earliest spiritual experiences, I wish to define it in my own case as applying to extended vision of three distinctly different, though closely allied, varieties. The first evidence of my own clear vision, which came to me so spontaneously and unexpectedly that for a considerable season it caused me no astonishment whatever, related to beholding a form of real, consistent substantiality, existing on another plane of being than the one usually termed terrestrial. This form was completely and symmetrically human in every detail of outline, and was attired in artistic dress, not foreign to ordinary worldly convention, but vastly more beautiful and graceful than the customary mortal dress fashionable in the sixties of the nineteenth century, which included the crinoline and the chignon. The second evidence of clairvoyance did not refer to sight, even on the psychic or astral plane, as sight is ordinarily understood, but to mental enlightenment or intellectual illumination, and this, not only of a general but also of a particular character, as the knowledge which entered into my understanding related not only to topics of usual information, but went deeply and precisely into manifold details of private family history, and included many revelations which brought great consternation to the hearers when I reported my experiences, seeing that the people among whom I was being reared were very desirous of hiding from me many facts connected with my parents of which my spirit mother undoubtedly wished me to become aware. The third feature in my clairvoyance was the actual predicting of coming events, and I use the term “coming” in the precisest possible manner for the very events I was led to foretell had, in many instances, actually occurred in one sense, and were on their way to occurring in yet another. A single example will illustrate.

My grandmother's sister in Lincolnshire had decided to visit Sussex, but had not communicated her intention to any one, though her mind was fully made up. Though I had never seen my great-aunt, and had rarely heard her mentioned, I distinctly saw her in the house where I was then living, and accurately described her appearance, even to the strings of the cap which she actually wore a few weeks later when paying her sister a visit. Two questions naturally arise at this point: First, how is it that we can see people who may be thinking of us, or perhaps only of a place we are inhabiting, when they are not consciously or deliberately projecting their thought, or an astral likeness of themselves, to us? Second, how is it that we see articles of wearing apparel which those persons may not be actually wearing at the time when we behold them? The following reply may serve to elucidate, at least in part, the foregoing mystery. When Herbert Spencer many years ago criticised somewhat adversely the notion of clothing as pertaining to the spirit world, he evidently overlooked a very important consideration, to the effect that our clothing is all mentally designed before it can be physically confected. A new fashion in dress is impossible except as an outcome of a new mental concept of apparel. Not only Swedenborg, but Shakespeare also, clearly illustrates the close connection which must ever logically exist between the wearer and the garment worn; and in no case do we find the suggestive doctrine more clearly taught by inference than in the play of "Hamlet," where the father of the Prince of Denmark appears in spirit, clad in armor, at the very time when he is seeking to inspire his son to make war against an uncle who has incurred the fierce displeasure of the discarnate king. Not only do we clothe ourselves physically in such raiment as becomes our immediate mental state, but we often unconsciously supply, gratuitously, portraits of ourselves doing things we intend to do, things, indeed, which we have spiritually already done, and which we shall certainly ultimate materially unless our plans are unexpectedly frustrated. It generally simplifies the mystery of prognostication if we do but consider that seership is a faculty which enables a seer or seeress to actually behold what exists on a plane of ultimation prior to the physical.

As I grew from childhood to rather riper age, and in the meantime attended schools and became interested in many external pursuits and objects, my singularly spontaneous mediumship became less prominent, and with the exception of an occasional prophetic dream of rare lucidity, which always came as a needed warning, I gradually drifted into a more prosaic state of life, from which I was suddenly aroused by the presence of the world-renowned Cora L. V. Richmond (then Mrs. Tappan) in England during the seventies of the last century. When I was nearly fourteen years of age, and a member of a church choir, Mrs. Tappan greatly excited the population of Brighton, where I was then residing, by her marvelous discourses and poems, and singularly erudite replies to all kinds of questions, which she claimed were not due to her own erudition, of which she made no boast and to which she laid no claim, but to the action through her instrumentality of a band of guides who were ready to speak through her whenever their services were in demand. May 24th, 1874, was, indeed, an eventful day in my history, for though my public career as a lecturer and globe-trotter did not begin till nearly three years later, it was on the evening of that beautiful Whit-Sunday that I experienced the first thrill of consciousness that it was my principal lifework to travel nearly all over the earth, guided by unseen but not unknown inspirers, who would carry me safely over all tempestuous oceans and protect me from all dangers by land if I would but be faithful to the mission entrusted to me by wise and kindly helpers. I have always greatly disliked the word “control,” and I dislike it still, for in my ears it savors of coercion, and I have never been coerced by my inspirers, who have ever proved themselves faithful teachers, counselors, and guides—veritable “invisible helpers,” to use Leadbeater’s felicitous expression, a title we may well apply to those numberless assistants who render multifold services to us of which we are often quite unconscious, but from which we derive inestimable benefit.

The record of my original introduction to the work of inspirational speaking is now an oft-told tale; in brief, I may sum it up as follows: When I was walking home after greatly enjoying Mrs. Tappan’s wonderful eloquence, I registered a vow that if any good and wise intelligences in the unseen state would inspire me as they were wont to inspire the marvelous lady who styled herself their “instrument,” I would most gladly take service with them and go whithersoever their counsels led me. I earnestly desired and confidently expected that inspiration would come to me if it were genuine at all, and come it did that very evening and within an hour from the time when I invoked it. Had no obstacles been placed in my way, I should have darted forth meteorically as a speaker before my fourteenth birth anniversary, but my legal guardian refused to grant permission until I was at least two years older, though she did not prevent my occasionally appearing at private gatherings, nor was she able to deprive me of some wonderful experiences of mesmeric or hypnotic character, which opened my eyes in my early teens to many of the marvels of psychology which are now demanding and receiving attention from distinguished savants the wide world over.

Hypnotism and its dangers, like Spiritualism and its dangers, is now being discussed at every turn, and I am often greatly interested to hear discussions on these recondite themes, when the debaters are people of experience, but whose experiences have been largely unlike my own. I do not presume to settle any question for my neighbors, I merely speak in the first person singular when I declare that I was never hypnotized against or even without the full consent of my own will; and as spiritualistic literature abounds with references to the virtual identity of hypnotic influence with spirit control, I deem it advisable to bear personal testimony in this connection. Shortly after my discovery that I could speak inspirationally, and even be spoken through by an unseen intelligence, to whose words, uttered through my lips, I could attend as a quiet, interested listener, I made the acquaintance of a brilliant young nobleman who was both an operatic singer and a practicing psychologist. This young “star” was introduced to me as desiring to conduct some delicate mesmeric experiments for which he needed the services of a lucide, or natural clairvoyant; or failing to discover any one who would entirely answer to the above description, he considered it highly probable that his experimentation would be successful if he could meet a sensitive young person who was thoroughly willing to yield to his suggestive influence. My first ejaculation when the subject was broached to me that I might serve for the experiments, was “I should be delighted, and feel sure they will be successful.” Though all the experiments were conducted in strict privacy, so far as the general public were concerned, many distinguished persons high in the learned professions took active part in many of the most satisfactory of them. It is not usually supposed, at least by the uninitiated into psychic mysteries, that the words passive and negative are quite as correctly qualified by the terms wilfully and willingly as are positive and active. We are frequently told that mediumship is impossible without passivity, and such is doubtless the case, but voluntary rather than involuntary passivity or negativity conduces to the most reliable results. Operator and subject are terms of double import, but such terms as sender and receiver or transmitter and recipient are clearly not open to valid objection, seeing that they in no way imply enforced surrender of one individual to another. During the nearly three years which intervened between my first insight into my capabilities as an inspired lecturer and my debut before a London audience, I had many opportunities for witnessing extraordinary phenomena, as I became well acquainted with many prominent Spiritualists, who treated me with great kindness and consideration and placed many exceptional advantages at my disposal for witnessing manifestations of all varieties. Some of these appealed strongly to me, others did not. I had many opportunities for sitting in circles with Williams, Herne, Monck, Eglinton, and other extraordinary mediums, who, at about that time, were either in the inception or at the zenith of their fame. Though I was told repeatedly that I was a physical medium, and though I sat in many seances where tables moved and furniture in general behaved grotesquely, I never knowingly officiated as a physical medium, though planchette has worked for me repeatedly and automatic writing has been often with me quite an every-day occurrence. During the greater part of 1877–8, I was privileged to investigate the evidences of phenomenal Spiritualism all over England. The most private gatherings were open to me, and I was times without number privileged to sit with the most distinguished mediums under thoroughly satisfactory test conditions; but though I saw enough to convince me a thousand times over that some mysterious occult force was operating, and the spiritualistic hypothesis always seemed to me more reasonable than any other, I do not think, with my peculiar and naturally sceptical cast of mind, that I could ever have been completely convinced of the truth of spirit-communion had it not been for experiences of my own which absolutely forced me as a rational individual to accept the only sane conclusion.

When I first took the platform I felt very much as I had often felt in more private places when voluntarily obeying the silently expressed dictation of the talented psychologist who could transmit to and through me any information he desired to convey when I was in a susceptible condition; but though he declared that I was perfectly his “subject,” and I was quite willing to be such, I could not be induced by any professional mesmerist, or practicing physician, who was engaged in the conduct of hypnotic experiments, to receive or transmit anything, simply because I did not choose to make myself passive or susceptible. I remember well sitting on the platform in old Doughty Hall (a Masonic edifice no longer in existence) on Sunday evening, March 4th, 1877, and gazing out upon a large concourse of people gathered to hear the "kitten orator," as I had been called because of my youth, discourse on a subject to be selected by their own vote. A hymn was sung to open a semi-religious service, and then I rose and offered a prayer, the words of which formed themselves in my mouth without forethought or conscious volition of my own. After a second hymn the presiding officer—the long celebrated James Burns, editor of the Medium and Daybreak—announced in my hearing that the youthful occupant of the platform was prepared to discourse under inspiration on any theme the audience might think proper to select. I heard this without the slightest internal trepidation. I had become tense, callous, self-assured, but completely confident that an intelligence beyond my normal own would certainly render me entirely equal to the occasion. A subject was quickly decided upon by show of hands, and I rose to lecture. I spoke unfalteringly for fully an hour, and resumed my seat unexcited and unfatigued. A third hymn was sung, and then Mr. Burns called upon the audience to mention topics for an impromptu poem. Three or four subjects were given, and no sooner was a decision reached by the chairman as to which topic had received the greatest show of hands, than I rose for the third and last time that evening, and heard myself reel off a number of verses as easily and fluently as though I had them well committed to memory, though I am certain they were nowhere in print, and I was listening to them for the first time. The report of that memorable meeting created a great sensation those many years ago; but events crowd thickly upon each other in these days, and a new generation has risen since I was a “youthful prodigy,” “one of the marvels of the nineteenth century,” and much else, according to the newspapers, which I have long since forgotten.

Immediately after my appearance in London I was called to all parts of England. I went as an inexperienced child to places rough and smooth, aristocratic and uncouth, clean and dirty, refined and vulgar, religious and atheistic; and wherever I went I found my unseen prompters ready to help me in all emergencies and to pilot me safely over many difficult and unpleasant places from which I should certainly have shrunk had I seen beforehand what awaited me. During the nineteen months of my touring as a lecturer in England, between March, 1877, and October, 1878, I certainly saw the world in a large number of its varied phases, and though many episodes in my career during that eventful period were extremely enjoyable, as I met kind and true friends almost everywhere, I could, without the slightest difficulty or exaggeration, unfold many a tale which might amuse or startle more than it would edify the listeners. My constitution was not considered naturally robust and I had to encounter many hardships from which many a stronger person would have fled in dismay, but though I cannot say that I quite enjoyed all the harsher features of my travels in all weathers to all sorts of places, instead of succumbing I grew steadily stronger physically as well as mentally, so that when I left England for America near the close of October, 1878, my constitution was quite equal to endure the strain of a singularly tempestuous, though not dangerous, ocean passage and the rigors of a New England winter, to the severity of which the fickle climate of Albion had never subjected me. I well remember my departure from Liverpool for unknown Boston across the wide Atlantic, whither I was journeying entirely alone save for the clearly distinguished presence of those faithful unseen helpers who never deserted me.

One of the clearest visions of my life attended me during the night prior to my departure from Liverpool. I fell asleep about 3 A. M., apparently as a result of fatigue following upon intense excitement, but my seership asserted itself triumphantly in a manner which I was soon able to verify, even to the minutest detail. I saw myself standing on a wide platform which was covered with thick red carpet, in a great hall, with high windows on either side. There was an organ in a choir gallery over the entrance to this audience room, and surmounting the rostrum on which I stood was a fine bust of the great New England preacher, the famous Theodore Parker. In that hall I saw a very fine audience numbering from 600 to 800 persons; and in the midst of the assembly the dignified figure of Dr. J. M. Peebles, whom I had met in London some months previously, loomed large before me. The vision impressed itself indelibly on the tablet of my memory; then I fell into a dreamless slumber, which continued until I was called to partake of my last breakfast in England for many a year to come. On reaching America I found that not only had my advent been heralded in the columns of the Banner of Light, the oldest spiritualistic paper in the world, but the friend who met me at the landing stage (Robert Cooper, of Eastbourne, England, who was then a prominent worker in America) informed me that Dr. Peebles had just completed a lecture engagement in Parker Memorial Hall, and that he had announced me as his successor, the committee having accepted me for that large and prominent position on the good doctor's kindly recommendation, though I was only eighteen years of age and entirely unknown to the directors of the Parker Hall lectureship. No sooner had I landed in America than I was quite at home on what was in no sense to me a foreign soil, for there I heard the same language spoken, and, with minor exceptions of no definite importance, soon discovered that England and America are at least first cousins, if not still nearer relatives. In Boston my work quickly grew apace; then I was called to New York, Philadelphia, and other mighty cities, not excepting Chicago, where I filled Mrs. Cora L. V. Richmond's platform for an extended period, while she was filling an engagement in Boston. Nearly five busy years had sped their course when, in 1883, I found myself again in England, taking up afresh the work which I never laid down, but only temporarily suspended when I was led to cross the ocean and become a prominent worker in America. In 1884 I returned to the United States, and in 1885 again revisited England. During those years I accomplished a large amount of literary work in addition to extensive traveling and constant lecturing. In 1886 I visited California for the first time, and spent five delightful months on the sunny Pacific slope, in which charming country I addressed daily audiences often numbering many hundred persons, and saw wonderful results from the practice of mental healing, of which I had by that time become, and of which I still am, an uncompromising, though I trust not a fanatical, advocate and exponent.

At the close of a lecture which I delivered on a camp ground bordering on Lake Merritt, adjacent to the city of Oakland, California, a lady who had long been a cripple handed her crutches to her husband, walked home, and did not resume the use of artificial support subsequently. This “miracle” of healing took place unconsciously to me, for I did not know there was a crippled woman in the assembly. I do not claim any part in the accomplishment of this marvel further than to declare that I was led to say before I concluded my exposition of the philosophy of healing, “You can use your limbs if you determine to use them, no matter how long they may have failed to serve you.” I had no idea that I was addressing anybody in particular, and no member of the audience was more greatly astonished than myself when the “miracle” occurred. My explanation of it is twofold; I firmly believe that there was an influence at work with that afflicted woman beyond my consciousness, and I feel also convinced that through her own auto-suggestive act she greatly facilitated her recovery. This case is thoroughly authenticated, and is now in print in the supplement to my old standard work, “The Spiritual Science of Health and Healing,” under the heading, “Testimony of Mrs. Lily Bothwell.”

During that marvelous summer of 1886, which was in some respects the most astounding in my whole career, I received pressing invitations to visit Australia, from which far-distant land cablegrams came to me in quick succession. Nine years previously, at the very outset of my public work, I had been assured by my unseen preceptors that there was a great work for me to accomplish at the Antipodes after I had crossed America, and I may here mention that I had daringly announced in a London paper, in 1885, that I was going to California in consequence of a communication to that effect having been written through my hand when I had no earthly prospect of pursuing my westward way further than New York and Boston. My disappointment was singularly keen when obstacles arose, mountain high, to forbid my leaving America on the completion of my first season in California. Duty called me back to Boston, and reluctantly I obeyed its call, with heavy heart and doubtful mind, for I was beginning to suspect that my unseen directors had been in some way thwarted in their plans for me, I having been solemnly assured by them that I had a mission to fulfil in Australasia; and now after a way had plainly opened, the door had been ruthlessly closed and by no voluntary act of mine. On the way back across the American continent, when I paused to lecture in St. Louis, a message came to me with unmistakable clearness, “You are going to Australia and New Zealand but not just yet! plans are ripening but not yet matured; have perfect confidence in your inspirers, for though there is a seeming delay there has been no hitch in the arrangements.” “But when shall I go?” I inquired eagerly. “We cannot tell you just now; you would think the time too long did you foreknow its duration; but rest content; you are going, and you will fill a large place while you reside there.” With that assurance I had to remain content, for I could receive nothing further concerning the Southern Hemisphere though many directions were given me concerning my continuous work in the Northern. For ten years I saw nothing of England, and it was through the joint instrumentality of Lady Caithness, Duchesse de Pomar, in Paris, and the special excursion of the World’s Women’s Christian Temperance Union from New York, in June, 1895, that I revisited Europe after ten years' unbroken residence in America. Those ten years had been very busy and highly eventful ones; my singular experiences during their highly checkered course would fill many a bulky volume. I had scoured America from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, and had met with warm receptions and enthusiastic audiences everywhere, though let no one imagine that a prominent public life means constant resting on a bed of roses; roses abound but thorns are often their intimate neighbors. I had produced a number of books, edited several periodicals, and contributed many hundreds of articles to magazines, besides having written thousands of letters to newspapers, in addition to musical work, before I again set foot in England after my departure in 1885.

What first led me to turn my attention back to Europe during the winter of 1894 was a psychic or telepathic incident well worth repeating, though it has been previously recorded. I well remember December 8th, 1894. On that day, between 2:30 fair and 3 P. M., I was seated at a desk in New York writing an article for a periodical which demanded copy at short notice. I was scribbling away at full speed, writing "against time" as literary hacks describe the process, when I was suddenly arrested by a vision of Lady Caithness, whom I had not seen for over nine years, seated at an escritoire in a sumptuously furnished boudoir, the most conspicuous feature of which was a magnificent painting covering nearly the whole of one side of the wall. This painting, which I saw distinctly in my vision, represented "Jacob's Ladder," and I remember being particularly impressed with the singular beauty of the faces of the angels. Lady Caithness was elaborately dressed, and engaged in writing to me; it seemed as though I could see ink falling from her pen on to the paper, while she informed me of many interesting events connected with the erection of her ducal palace, “Holyrood,” to which she had recently moved from the fine old house in an older quarter of Paris, where she had hospitably entertained me and where I had held several conferences during 1884-5. The letter she was then writing embodied the request that I should without delay contribute an article for a periodical she was then editing, and it also expressed a fervent hope that I should see my way clear to accept her offer of an engagement to deliver a course of lectures at “Holyrood” during the ensuing June. For nearly thirty minutes this vision continued with me, and then, before the letter appeared finished, it suddenly vanished, and I resumed my interrupted article. I went to Boston for Christmas, and while there, on December 24th, I received, among other letters from New York, the identical letter from Lady Caithness, dated “Paris, December 8th,” which I had beheld in my extremely vivid vision. In the course of the letter I learned that it was indited between 7:30 and 8:00 P. M., Paris time, which is five hours ahead of New York, and therefore the time coincidence was as nearly exact as it well could be.

I have been repeatedly asked to describe the difference between telepathic and spiritual messages, and I frankly confess that I have rarely been able to clearly distinguish between them. And this statement suffices to introduce a consideration which is in my opinion a matter of great importance. Take, for example, Thomson Jay Hudson's much-discussed theory of two minds and two memories. Hudson avers that the subjective mind is the sole seat of the telepathic faculty, and in his three celebrated books, “The Law of Psychic Phenomena,” “A Scientific Demonstration of the Future Life,” and “The Divine Pedigree of Man,” he industriously undertakes to prove that, though the objective mind with its memory may perish with the decease of the physical organism, the subjective mind with its memory continues to live on in the life of immortality. If this premiss is sound, then Hudson’s conclusion, as put forth in his curious article (February, 1902) in the Era, a well-known American monthly, is quite unwarranted; and it is the height of absurdity on his part to declare that Spiritualists are “fighting in the last ditch,” because recent experiments in the ample field of psychical discovery have abundantly proved the reliability of just such telepathy as Hudson and many others intelligently vouch for. My own experiences in numberless instances have completely satisfied me that in nine out of any average ten instances when psychic communion between friends can be clearly demonstrated, it is almost impossible to discriminate exactly between a message received from a communicant on earth and from one who has passed to the other side of existence. What, indeed, is that “other side” but the side to which telepathy is indigenous? And can we afford to be sure that when we are functioning telepathically we are not behaving just as we should continue to behave were we suddenly divested of our material envelopes? If the physical frame be but a sheath or vehicle of the abiding entity, which is the true individual, then all these fascinating evidences of thought transference, or mental telegraphy or telephony, accumulating everywhere, are but so many convincing proofs of the reality of our spiritual nature in the here and now, which will prove continuous in the hereafter and the future. Evidences of psychic presence and spiritual guidance having attended my steps from infancy, I cannot specialize any particular season when I have enjoyed the greatest number of distinct proofs of super-terrestrial guidance, but such have always been most distinct and multiple when the need for them has been greatest.

I will now select, almost at random, a few notably striking instances of warning, guidance, and simply interesting seership, which stand forth prominently in my recollection as my thoughts revert to days gone by.

Once in California, when I had arranged to lecture in a theatre in Los Angeles while I was yet in San Francisco, I purchased a ticket and secured a berth on a steamer leaving on a Thursday, and due at San Pedro, the port of Los Angeles, by noon next Saturday. It was summer weather and the coast steamers were almost invariably punctual to schedule time. Feeling perfectly sure that I should reach Los Angeles at least twenty-four hours before I needed to appear in the theatre, I felt no apprehension, after securing my tickets, as to fulfilling my engagement, and therefore I was greatly surprised when, while walking up Market Street, I heard a voice saying distinctly beside me, “Change your ticket; go by train: boat will not arrive till Monday.” At first I paid no attention to this strange admonition, and was simply perplexed to account for its origin; but after it had been twice repeated I resolved to run no risk of disregarding a valuable counsel, and I therefore returned to the office where I had secured my passage and changed my tickets from boat to rail, despite the positive declaration of the booking agent that the boats were always on time, and that I could rely on meeting my engagement if I adhered to my first intention.

Having procured a railway ticket in compliance with the urgent request of the unseen monitor, I mentally asked, "What will cause the delay?" to which I received an answer, clairaudiently, with great distinctness, "Accident to propeller; no danger, but vessel will have to return for repairs; it will arrive safely on Monday." On arrival in Los Angeles on the Saturday morning, friends remonstrated with me for having forfeited a pleasant water journey at a season when boats were far preferable to trains in that vicinity; but I insisted that as I was announced to deliver two lectures on the following day it was imperatively necessary for me to arrive before the steamer, which I was certain would be belated. Saturday and Sunday both passed and no steamer arrived. I addressed two great audiences before the boat finally got in on the Monday morning, telling a tale of broken propeller and return to port of departure for repairs.

Another incident of quite a different character, but none the less phenomenal, even though less practically useful, concerned an acquaintance I formed in London in 1897, during a course of private midnight seances I was privileged to attend at which conditions were exceptionally fine. To accommodate the several professionals who were members of the circle, we assembled twice a week at midnight and continued our sittings till from 2 to 3 A. M. Our chief focus of attraction was a huge crystal placed in the centre of a large library table. The crystal was as large as an ordinary globe for containing goldfish, and into this brilliant object we all quietly but intently gazed, with a view to increasing concentratedness of thought and vision. After we had become susceptible to psychic vision we let our eyes close if they seemed so disposed, and we described whatever came before us. Among a multiplicity of telling incidents connected with that circle, I remember describing accurately scenes then being enacted in a house in Brighton occupied by the parents and other relatives of a young army officer whose regiment was soon afterwards ordered to India. Some months later, when this gentleman was in Calcutta and I in New York; I saw him as plainly as though he were physically beside me, and on the occasion of his birthday, when some friends presented him with a handsome pair of ivory-backed military hair brushes on which his monogram was richly chased in blue and gold, I saw those articles as plainly as though he and I had been actually in a room together, inspecting the birthday presents. A letter which came to me from him a few weeks later described those brushes precisely and contained the words, “I am sure you are receiving a telepathic despatch from me at this instant.”

Though I have narratives to relate which would fill many a volume, all illustrative of the great question of psychic intercourse between friends yet on earth and those who have “passed over,” as well as manifold descriptions of most convincing telepathy where both parties have been incarnate, I must reserve for future opportunities the narration of other striking incidents. But now that I have rounded out nearly thirty years of public service, I feel it a solemn duty as well as a high privilege to bear unequivocal testimony to the always beneficial effect which mediumship such as I have developed has had on me from all standpoints. Mentally and physically I owe immensely much to those very endowments and experiences which mistaken people imagine are weakening to mind and body. That there are dangers and drawbacks I do not deny, but through all my varied and protracted experiences on and off the platform, for more than a quarter of a century, I have invariably found that the directions given me from unseen helpers have been sound, elevating, and truthful to the letter in all particulars; while the telepathic incidents, at which I have scarcely more than hinted, have been always interesting, never mischievous, and invariably calculated to throw bright light on many a mystic problem. During the nearly two years which I spent south of the Equator, I still pursued my way unflaggingly and untiringly in all varieties of climate and in a great variety of surroundings. I owe a deep debt of gratitude to friends, seen and unseen, for the many tokens of their care and kindness which have brightened all my journeyings and rendered possible of accomplishment the widely extended mission which took me to the Southern Hemisphere. Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Newcastle, and many smaller places in great Australia, I shall ever feel united with as centres of work which I know has already borne good fruit in numerous ways. Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch in picturesque New Zealand will always remain equally sacred in my memory. During all my Antipodean wanderings I found my psychic faculties fully as clear and as much in evidence as in other lands where the Southern Cross is an unseen constellation. I am now assured that my traveling days are not yet over, and that I still have oceans to cross, and continents to traverse, before I can honorably retire from active service, if such retirement shall ever be my portion. The dangers of Spiritualism are in my judgment greatly overrated, while its blessings are often minimized; for though I have been since 1890 a member of the Theosophical Society, and my acquaintance and connection with the Mental Science movement is a matter of public knowledge, I wish publicly, emphatically, and irrevocably to bear my testimony to the irrefutable truth of spirit communion. With the peculiar theories advocated by some Spiritualists I have no sympathy; and I dare say there are tricksy spirits, as well as unreliable people on this side the mystic border; but though I must remain the “free lance” I have ever been, and work wherever I am called to operate, and therefore cannot pose as exclusively a Spiritualist, inclusively I am as thoroughgoing an advocate of Spiritualism as any of its most enthusiastic representatives. I owe nothing to developing circles, and comparatively little to spiritualistic literature, or to phenomenal mediumship of an objective type; therefore my assurance of Spiritualism’s central claim can never be weakened by any controversy which may rage concerning dubious phenomena. I have seen the unmistakably genuine, the ambiguous, and the fraudulent, and having seen so much I am prepared to testify to this effect, irrevocably—that Spiritualism is based on truth, and no matter how many barnacles may have to be swept from such institutions as are devoted to its special advocacy, the twentieth century must and will witness a spiritual revealing for which all the wonders of the nineteenth, stupendous though they have been, have only paved the way.