THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST 



the affirmative side and was answered by Bryan Donkin and 

 E. J. Dingwell. I have not read the seriously intended writings 

 of Sir Oliver Lodge, Mr. Alfred Russell Wallace, or Sir Arthur 

 Conan Doyle, nor was I at all impressed by the much earlier 

 writings on this subject by my friend, Hamlin Garland. One 

 reason for my indifference arose from a personal experience with 

 Alfred Russell Wallace in Washington in 1892 or 1893. That 

 experience prepared me to believe in a general way that when- 

 ever a sound scientific man reaches a certain age and begins to 

 think much of the possible hereafter, he is likely to lose his 

 scientific acumen and is almost as easily deceived as are people 

 of no scientific training. 



Wallace was in Washington in the springtime of one of those 

 years. I had met him at the Cosmos Club and at the Biological 

 Society, where he was good enough to speak appreciatively of a 

 paper I had read. He was a friend of my Chief, C. V. Riley, 

 and he asked the two of us to attend with him a Spiritualistic 

 seance given by a man named Keeler, at a house on loth or nth 

 Street, just above Pennsylvania Avenue. Old General Francis 

 J. Lippett, a confirmed spiritualist, went with us. 



About thirty people were present. We paid fifty cents each. 

 All except Wallace, Riley and myself were evidently habitues, 

 and Wallace was known as a believer. A corner of the room was 

 curtained o£E to a height of about seven feet. Behind this curtain 

 was a table on which were a tambourine and other things. In 

 front of this curtain were seven armless chairs in a row. What 

 Keeler called a "battery" consisted of seven people seated in these 

 chairs, with a curtain drawn in front of them so that all but 

 their heads was obscured. Each person in the row held the wrist 

 of the person next to him or her, Keeler himself forming one of 

 the group, being seated the third from the right. At first the 

 battery was composed only of believers. General Lippett turned 



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