EXTRA-MUNDANE COMMUNICATIONS 273 



truth, whose only excuse is the wish to acknowledge 

 a faith and to express gratitude for a privilege. 



I have personally been familiar with the amateur 

 practice of Extra-mundane Communication since that 

 now, alas ! distant period wlien, my years being con- 

 sidered too tender for participation in such mysteries, 

 I was summarily ejected from the room in which my 

 mother and her brothers and sisters proposed to 

 operate the Table. As far as I know, it was in this 

 primitive manner only that they prosecuted their 

 eager inquiries into the unknown. The table exists 

 still, a light and graceful intermediary, with a single 

 slender limb, finished with a species of elongated claw 

 on which it twirled and spun. It was accustomed to 

 follow — so I have been credibly assured — unaided, 

 and with every token of affection that a table is able 

 to exhibit, the cousin from whom the psychic power 

 emanated ; neither did it conceal its disapproval of 

 those with whom it felt itself to be out of sympathy, 

 and it would order their departure from the circle 

 without compunction or hesitation. A very dicta- 

 torial little table, in fact, that ruled its gathering of 

 liighly self-assertive and argumentative persons with 

 unvarying firmness. I believe that some statements, 

 such as are now spoken of as " veridical " or " evi- 

 dential," were received by this early group of in- 

 quirers, but I imagine that their methods lacked the 

 sealing-wax and red-tape severity that would in these 

 later days be exacted to compel credence for their 

 successes. 



Another group of my relations were also, at about 

 this time, or a little later, occupied with similar 

 experiments. I have often heard the story of one 

 occurrence in connection with their circle that it is 

 liard to explain on any hypothesis other than that 

 which was accepted by those who were concerned with 



