I do not write what follows with the expectation of convincing or
converting anybody. We Spiritualists, or Spiritists--we call ourselves
both, or either--never ask anybody to believe us. If they do, well and
good. If not, all right. Our attitude simply is that facts are facts.
There they are; believe them or not as you like. As I said the other
night, in conversation with Aristotle and John Bunyan and George
Washington and a few others, why should anybody believe us? Aristotle,
I recollect, said that all that he wished was that everybody should know
how happy he was; and Washington said that for his part, if people
only knew how bright and beautiful it all was where he was, they would
willingly, indeed gladly, pay the mere dollar--itself only a nominal
fee--that it cost to talk to him. Bunyan, I remember, added that he
himself was quite happy.
But, as I say, I never ask anybody to believe me; the more so as I was
once an absolute sceptic myself. As I see it now, I was prejudiced. The
mere fact that spiritual seances and the services of a medium involved
the payment of money condemned the whole thing in my eyes. I did not
realize, as I do now, that these _medii_, like anybody else, have got to
live; otherwise they would die and become spirits.
Nor would I now place these disclosures before the public eyes were if
not that I think that in the present crisis they will prove of value to
the Allied cause.
But let me begin at the beginning. My own conversion to spiritualism
came about, like that of so many others, through the more or less casual
remark of a Friend.
Noticing me one day gloomy and depressed, this Friend remarked to me:
“Have you any belief in Spiritualism?”
Had it come from anyone else, I should have turned the question aside
with a sneer. But it so happens that I owe a great deal of gratitude to
this particular Friend. It was he who, at a time when I was so afflicted
with rheumatism that I could scarcely leap five feet into the air
without pain, said to me one day quite casually: “Have you ever tried
pyro for your rheumatism?” One month later I could leap ten feet in the
air--had I been able to--without the slightest malaise. The same man,
I may add, hearing me one day exclaiming to myself: “Oh, if there were
anything that would remove the stains from my clothes!” said to me very
simply and quietly: “Have you ever washed them in luxo?” It was he, too,
who, noticing a haggard look on my face after breakfast one morning,
inquired immediately what I had been eating for breakfast; after which,
with a simplicity and directness which I shall never forget, he said:
“Why not eat humpo?”
Nor can I ever forget my feeling on another occasion when, hearing me
exclaim aloud: “Oh, if there were only something invented for removing
the proteins and amygdaloids from a carbonized diet and leaving only the
pure nitrogenous life-giving elements!” seized my hand in his, and said
in a voice thrilled with emotion: “There is! It has!”
The reader will understand, therefore, that a question, or query,
from such a Friend was not to be put lightly aside. When he asked if I
believed in Spiritualism I answered with perfect courtesy:
“To be quite frank, I do not.”
There was silence between us for a time, and then my Friend said:
“Have you ever given it a trial?”