EXTRA-MUNDANE COMMUNICATIONS 275 



" One of the nuns saw me," the Table had told, and 

 luul not been wrong in telling it. 



Of my mother and her group of inquirers I ean now 

 recall but one instance of prowess which did indeed 

 make a convert, but in itself, I fear, indicates the 

 frivolity with which these light-hearted investigators 

 approached their subject. A brother, just returned 

 from London to far-western Cork, joined the circle, 

 full of an intention — not uncommon in brothers — of 

 proving his sisters in the wrong. 



" I'll believe in it," he said, " if your spirits will tell 

 me where I bought this pair of boots ! " 



" Stafford ! " rapped out the Table, rocking in high 

 excitement on its claw. 



It had happened that the mail train to Holyhead had 

 broken down at Stafford, and my uncle, souvenir- 

 hunting we may presume, as well as killing time, had 

 selected this eminently practical memento of the 

 incident. Telepathy was not then the chosen shield 

 and buckler of the disbeliever, and this scoffer of the 

 eighteen-sixties jumped, Stafford boots and all, into 

 the fold of Spiritualism, and remained there for the 

 rest of his life, becoming, later, a member of the 

 S.P.R., and seeing and hearing stronger and stranger 

 confirmations of intercourse with another sphere 

 than had been bestowed by the information as to the 

 souvenirs from Stafford. 



My mother had, I must acknowledge, a special flair 

 for the occult. 



" I am the most curious person in the world," she 

 has declared, using the adjective in the sense of in- 

 dicating a thirst for knowledge, and ignoring its other 

 application. Nothing was less to her taste, or more 

 serenely disregarded by her, than the orthodox dis- 

 approval of such practices that was more common 

 then than now. 



