27G STRAY-AWAYS 



Thus it was that the idea of an indisputable force, 

 unaccountable yet actual, grew up with me and my 

 brothers, and any of those preliminary emotions of 

 surprise, incredulity, or alarm that the practice of 

 Spiritualism arouses in many did not come into the 

 question with us. There came a time, when we were 

 considered to have attained to years of discretion, 

 when the family's interest in the subject was re- 

 awakened by the enthusiasm of one of my uncles, 

 a soldier of many battles, and one of the foremost 

 of the fighters of the Indian Mutiny. It was dis- 

 covered that one of my brothers and I possessed, 

 jointly, the power of transmitting replies from the 

 UnknoAvn, in writing, to the questions which my uncle 

 showered upon us. 



I may admit that we were very unenthusiastic 

 mediums. When one has but recently escaped from 

 the trammels of the schoolroom, interest in problems 

 touching the next world is negligible. My brother and 

 I accepted the role suddenly thrust upon us of mouth- 

 piece, or rather private secretaries, of the Oracle, 

 with more reluctance than we ventured to exhibit. 

 But at that period the young did, more or less, as 

 they were bid. By means of our hands, messages 

 and theories in response to my uncle's questions 

 flowed in an abundant and fairly legible stream over 

 sheet after sheet of foolscap paper, while the minds 

 and tongues of the " mediums " were occupied with 

 their own affairs, and took little heed of the out- 

 pourings of an intelligence that announced itself as 

 an ancestress, one Ehzabeth Cockhill. Ehzabeth 

 claimed to have lived an earthly life in the Dublin of 

 the seventeenth century, and soon became irreverently 

 known to her descendants as Old Cocktail. I can 

 now remember no very startling achievement on her 

 part, but I can vouch for the fact that, whatever the 



