Part I

Transcriber’s Note: struck-through text is indicated ~like this~.

THE SEVEN PURPOSES

_The_

SEVEN PURPOSES

_An Experience in

Psychic Phenomena_

BY

MARGARET CAMERON

[Illustration]

_Harper & Brothers Publishers

New York and London_

THE SEVEN PURPOSES

Copyright, 1918, by Harper & Brothers

Printed in the United States of America

Published October, 1918

“_That is what we hope to establish as a recognized truth in your life

there; that a force as yet unknown to science is operating between the

planes, and can be developed and used in your life._”

“_A force compared to which electricity is spring water._”

“_Some day your scientists will discover and prove by experiment certain

laws now unrecognized._”

“_If you will only believe and know that I am not dead._”

“_Come, all ye who struggle and strive! Perceive once and forever the

purpose of life. Join now the forces of construction, and bring to all

men brotherhood._”

“_A great brotherhood is only possible when its component parts are

great._”

“_Forget the class and remember the man. Forget the price and remember

the pearl. Forget the labor and remember the fruit. Forget the temple and

remember God._”

INTRODUCTION

Twenty-five years or more ago my attention was attracted to the

entertaining possibilities of a planchette, and, like other young

persons, I played with one at intervals for several years. Like others,

also, I speculated concerning the source of the remarkable statements

sometimes obtained in this way, but the assumption that these statements

were dictated by disembodied personalities always seemed to me rather

absurd.

At no time has my interest in the matter been sufficient to lead me

to read anything describing or discussing psychic phenomena, with

the exception of an occasional magazine article. Neither have I read

philosophies to any extent. I have been always a busy person, taking

life at first hand, without much regard to what students have said about

it. Such faith as I have had in anything, human or divine, has been

based upon works, and, without convincing demonstration, it has been

impossible for me to be sure that individual life continued.

After the beginning of the war, however, when interest in the possible

survival of the individual was so suddenly and pathetically increased,

and one heard on every hand of attempts to establish communication with

those gone before, I resolved to experiment again with planchette; but

it was not until our friend V—— expressed a desire to try it with me,

sometime in 1917, that I really bought one. For almost a year it lay

untouched in its box, and when finally we found opportunity to test it we

had no success. It did not move from the spot where we placed it, and I

made no attempt to try it alone.

Several weeks later, two friends, Mrs. Wylie and Miss Gaylord, told me

that they had been making efforts, through some one near their home,

to get into touch with their brother Frederick, with results they

thought promising. A day or two later we tried planchette together, with

some success. It moved briskly, wrote “Frederick ... mother ... love

... happy ...” and other detached words. It also persisted in making

little circles, perhaps two inches in diameter, the pencil tracing the

circumference again and again. This was so often repeated that Mrs. Wylie

thought it might be a symbol, but could obtain no satisfactory reply to

questions about it.

My friends went home without renewing the experiment, and my interest was

not greatly stimulated. It seemed quite probable that the words written

had reflected the thoughts and desires of Frederick’s sisters, and

that the whole episode could be explained by the theory of unconscious

response by the muscles of the hand to the prompting of the subconscious

mind. I had dismissed the matter, as far as my own participation in it

was concerned, when a letter came from Mrs. Gaylord, saying that her

daughters had told her I had “mediumistic power,” and suggesting that I

might be able to help her.

I knew that the exceeding bitterness of her grief lay, not in the

separation from her only son, but in her inability to believe that his

identity and development continued, and that the assurance that he had

not “gone out, like a snuffed candle,” as she afterward expressed it,

would bring her the greatest—indeed, the only possible comfort. Therefore

I replied at once that while I had no reason to believe that I possessed

“mediumistic power” to the slightest degree, I would make further

experiments, at the same time warning her that the attempt would probably

prove fruitless.

The following pages contain a partial history of the result. It was soon

evident that certain of these revelations were of too great moment to

be withheld from public knowledge. In addition, while much of the more

intimate personal matter has been omitted, most of those to whom these

messages were given have felt impelled to share, in this tragic time, the

comfort and assurance of their conviction, and have voluntarily yielded

their privacy, hoping thereby to bring to those in sorrow an added faith

in the continuance of personality, with all that this implies.

To facilitate reference, and to avoid breaking the sequence of the twelve

impersonal communications forming the basis of the whole revelation,

this report has been arranged in three parts. First, the genesis and

rapid development of the individual message, brief at first, and purely

personal, but growing both in volume and in import with each day. Second,

the Lessons. Third, additional individual messages, no less personal in

their original application than the first, but more impressive in their

wider human appeal and significance, illuminating and emphasizing the

meaning of the Lessons.

For obvious reasons, the names and initials used have been substituted

for those of the persons involved, with three or four exceptions.

Part I

“_That is the eternal battle, between the purposes of progress and

building, and the purposes of disintegration. It goes on in your life,

and it goes on less bitterly in ours. Help me build as we began, toward

the great unity._”

“_This is the battle to which we call you and all who are for

progress._”

I

My first serious attempt to establish communication through planchette

with a person or persons in a life beyond ours was made Sunday morning,

March 3, 1918. Not so very serious an attempt, either, for I anticipated

no success, and was not without a humorous appreciation of my position,

sitting with my hand on a toy, inviting communication with celestial

powers. I remember laughing a little, as I pictured the sardonic glee

with which certain of my friends would be likely to regard such a

proceeding.

Perhaps this is as good a time as any to say that I was seeking a

stranger. I never saw Frederick. When our friendship with his parents

began they lived in one city, we in another, and he in a third and more

distant one, where he was first a reporter and later a political and

editorial writer on the staff of a leading newspaper. I knew that he was

young, successful, a bachelor, and singularly devoted to his family,

as they to him. But his habits of thought and speech had never been

described to me, at first because it was expected that we would meet, and

in the much closer intimacy of our later acquaintance, because the pain

of his loss was so poignant that no member of the family could speak of

him with composure. I had never seen a photograph of him, even.

After perhaps twenty minutes, during which planchette did not move, I

left the paper—a roll of blank wall-paper, called lining-paper, which I

found years ago to offer the most continuous and satisfactory surface for

use with planchette—spread over the table, and went into another room,

intending to return later. But I forgot it, and only when I was putting

things in order for the night did I re-enter that room and remember my

promise to Mrs. Gaylord. I decided to make one more attempt, that I might

be able to tell her positively that I had been unsuccessful. All other

members of the household were away—Cass at Atlantic City, recuperating

from an illness—and I was entirely alone in the apartment.

For some minutes planchette was motionless, but almost immediately I

felt the curious sense of vitality, very difficult to describe, that

precedes movement. It is like touching something alive and feeling its

latent power. Presently it began to move. Unfortunately no exact record

of those first messages was kept, and this report of them is taken from

my letters to Cass, written immediately after each interview, and from

the typewritten record begun a week or ten days afterward, in which was

included what I could remember of details not written to him. At first

there was little capitalization, but within a few days capitals were used

freely. The punctuation throughout has been added, except in cases noted.

_From a letter dated Monday morning, March 4th_:

... Instead of doing the usual loop sort of thing, it made straight runs

across the table. I asked, “Are you ready to write?” “Yes.” Then, as

nearly as I can remember, it went like this:

“Are you Frederick?” “No.”

“Are you Mary Kendal?” “No.”

“Are you Anne Lowe?”[1] “No.”

“Did I know you in life here?” “Yes.”

“Recently?” “No.”

“Are you my father?” At this it ran sharply toward me, point first, but

for some time did not reply, perhaps because I so hoped it would write

“yes.” Eventually, however, it wrote a very clear and uncompromising

“No.”

“Can you tell me who you are?” “Yes. Mary.”

“Mary Kendal?” “No.”

“Which Mary? What Mary?” “Mary ...” followed by a character that might

have been either K or H, but looked more like K.

“Mary Kendal?” “No.”

“Tell me again.” “Mary K.”

“Mary _K._?” “Yes.” Planchette was down at the lower right-hand corner

of the table when I asked the last question, and it swung to the center,

writing that “yes” very quickly and firmly.

“_My_ Mary K.?” “Yes ... yes ... yes.”

Her name was Mary Katherine M——, but I always called her Mary K. She has

been dead sixteen years or more. Over and over she insisted that she was

Mary K. Sometimes, in pauses, with the casters hardly moving at all, the

thing would write “Mary,” in tiny script, but round and clear.

I asked if there were any message, and it wrote, “Mon ...,” trailing off

into a series of waves, a good many times. I guessed Monday ... money

... Mons ..., but always the answer was, “No.” Finally it wrote “man”

very clearly. I could not get more for quite a while. Finally came, “Many

thanks.”

“Thanks for what?” “For knowing.”

I asked if Frederick or Anne were there. “No.”

“Any message?” “Yes.”

“For whom?” “Broth ...,” trailing off again. This several times.

“Brother?” “Yes.”

“Where?” “Albany.”

“His name?” “James.”

“James M——?” “No.” This was confusing.

“Where?” Beginning apparently with U, the writing trailed off. Finally

made out “United ...,” but no more. Then I remembered that Mary K.’s only

brother was killed in an accident, years before she went over herself. I

said so, and the thing began making loops. That used to be planchette’s

way of laughing at me.

“Why did you say that?” “Joke.” This was not at all like Mary K. She had

a fine mind and was not given to buffoonery. I have since thought that

she might have been trying to get over a message to some other person’s

brother.[2]

“... Can you get word from Frederick Gaylord?” “Yes.”[3]

“Will you come again?” “Yes.”

“Have you been trying all these years to get into touch with me?” “No.”

“Will you help me make a bridge between those on your side and those

here?” “No.” Then immediately it went back and wrote, “Yes,” over the

“No.” Very curious.

After a long pause, I said I would go to bed, if there were nothing more,

and it wrote, quickly, “Go.” I said, “Good night.” “Good night. God bless

you.” I asked again if this were Mary K., and got the same quick “Yes.”

Then I put planchette away and came out to my room. It was one o’clock.

Three before I went to sleep. Can you imagine anything more weird than

my sitting here alone in the middle of the night, with that thing fairly

racing under my fingers part of the time, insisting it was nobody I

expected? Claiming to be a very dear old friend, but the last I should

expect under the circumstances. It was certainly queer, but I am very

sure something outside of myself was doing it. I shall try again to-night.

_From a letter dated Monday evening, March 4th_:

I have just had another amazing try at planchette. This time it was Mary

Kendal, writing one word at a time. “Let ... Manse[4] ... know ... I ...

am ... here....” She gave me several intimate messages for him, and when

I finally said I would write and ask him to come, so she could tell him

herself, she wrote, “Yes ... yes ... yes,” very quickly.

What do you make of this? Isn’t it the queerest thing you ever heard

of? In the midst of her talk, another hand took hold, very brisk and

energetic.

“Not Mary?” “No.”

“Perhaps Frederick?” “Yes.”

“Message?” “Yes. Mother.”

“Anything more?” “Happy.”

“More yet?” “Only love.”

Then he was gone, and Mary came again, writing “Miss A——, messenger,”

many times. Later, Frederick interrupted to write one word, “family.”[5]

Then another hand began writing “Annie Manning,” over and over, and,

“tell Manning.” I said that I knew no Manning. How find him? Answer,

“Question.” I did not know what that meant.... There was a lot more, but

I am too tired to write it to-night.

B—— Gaylord telephoned to-night. She is either coming to New York

Thursday or going to Atlantic City, if I am there.... This is the most

amazing thing that ever happened to me! To-night it was as if several

were trying to talk at once. I am almost afraid to have B. G. come,

yet it was for her sake that I began this. It seems too indefinite

and unsatisfactory. But at least she can be sure I am not faking it.

Something outside of me does it.

* * * * *

That same evening I wrote to Mansfield Kendal, though what his attitude

toward this situation would be I could not even guess. We had known

him well for several years, but our numerous discussions had never

touched questions of religious faith and a future life. A man of

extensive reading and of wide interests, supplemented by long residence

abroad, he has been engaged for years in the executive conduct of large

engineering and agricultural enterprises. I knew him to be intellectually

open-minded. But I also knew him to be a devoted adherent of the orthodox

Church, giving much time and thought to its support, and I was afraid

that an assumption on my part of ability to communicate with the departed

might offend some deep and reverent sense in him. Therefore, while I

wrote him fully of my surprising experience, giving him Mary’s messages,

I promised at the same time never to force the subject in conversation,

should he prefer not to discuss it. Subsequently, impelled by Mary’s

continued insistence, I wrote several other letters to him, which, like

the first, were sent to his club in New York City, as I knew him to

be traveling in the Middle West and thought they would reach him more

quickly in this way than if sent to his business headquarters in the

South.

Thus, curiously, I found myself vicariously engaged in a double search

for a mother on this plane seeking her son on the next, and for a wife on

the next plane seeking her husband here, and it is significant that, of

the two, Mary Kendal was the more insistent. As she said, later, “We know

how much it means.”

_From a letter to Cass, dated Tuesday morning, March 5th_:

Another evening with Mary! H. dined with me. I told her something about

planchette, and she wanted to see it work.... This time it wrote, “Mary

Kendal,” at once, and, “Tell Manse I love him.... Tell him Miss A——

is messenger from some one he knows.... Mentally beautiful people are

fearless.... Faith is fearlessness.... Mannerisms are essential to

recognition.” Some of these took a long time to work out.

H. asked, “Do you mind my being here?” “Excellent portent.”

I asked why. “Intellectual interest.”

H. said, “You mean that you are glad to have intelligent people

interested?” “Yes.”

When we were talking about H.’s interest, it wrote, “Tell others.” This

was repeated several times. “I am a missionary,” came as clearly as I

have written it here. We asked if she meant a missionary from that life

to this. “Yes.” At the end she again urged H. to tell others. I laughed,

saying, “Tell as many others as you like about the experience, but don’t

tell too many that it came through me.” “Sorry.”

“Sorry that I am unwilling to be overwhelmed by a flood of curiosity and

hysteria?” “Sorrow.” I said I would be glad to help people in sorrow.

“Sorrowful people suffer.” Isn’t that like Mary Kendal?

When H. was leaving, it wrote: “Good night. Tell others.”

After she had gone I went back, and got another movement entirely.

“Frederick?” “Yes.” He seems to have more difficulty in writing than she

does. Is very clear at first, but becomes illegible sooner.

“Do you know that your mother is coming?” “Yes.... Wish to make her at

peace.” I said I wished to make her at peace, too, and would do all I

could, and he wrote, “Thank you.”

* * * * *

As has been said, Cass had been ill, and his improvement after going to

Atlantic City had not been as rapid as we had hoped it might be. A letter

received from him on Tuesday reported a slight relapse, and promised a

telegram on Wednesday. It had been arranged that I should join him if he

needed me.

_From a letter dated Wednesday evening, March 6th:_

Your letter and wire both came after four, though the letters usually

arrive with the first mail in the morning. I was getting a little

anxious. Went to planchette and asked Mary Kendal whether she knew

anything about you. She said you were better to-day and that a letter was

coming, but that I must go to Atlantic City.[6]

Frederick also came, seeming very anxious lest the meeting with his

mother fail. Wrote “message” several times, and by dint of some

questioning I found it was not a message he wished to send, but one he

wished me to send to her about coming at once. Wrote of her “mental

anguish,” an expression I never should have used myself, and wanted her

to join me at Atlantic City. Knew nothing about you, but was keen to meet

her.

Later, he seemed to go, and Mary Kendal wrote a little. Then came

something very hard to get. Over and over we tried. “Com ... come ...

comf ... comp....” I suggested various words. Always the answer was “No.”

Finally, very clearly and slowly, “Comfort dear Mother.” After the M of

the last word I expected Manse, as I thought Mary was still writing. When

it proved to be “Mother,” I said, “Is this Frederick?” “Yes.” I promised

again to do all I could. He wrote, “Thank you,” and went.

It is an amazing experience!... To sit all alone here and have that

foolish toy move firmly and definitely under my hands, write things I

have to puzzle out, sign names of persons who are what we call “dead,”

and beg me to send messages to those they love—all this is startling and

deeply impressive. Deeply moving.

* * * * *

The next day I joined Cass at Atlantic City. He had never seen a

planchette used, and was much interested in the whole matter. In the

evening we experimented, and “Mary Kendal” was written at once.

He exclaimed, “God bless you, Mary Kendal!”

“God bless you, too. Tell Manse I love him. Don’t fail to tell him

that.” During all the preceding days this had been her constant plea.

Repeatedly I assured her that I had told him, and as often she urged,

“Tell him again.”

Then came a strong, brisk movement, to and fro, for a space of about

five inches. I asked if this were Frederick, and received an affirmative

answer, after which planchette ran about, as if in uncontrollable

excitement, presently pausing to write:

“You are a trump!” We laughed, and he added, “You bet!”

As we had never known Frederick, and were unaware at that time of the

continuance of what some one familiar with this experience has defined

as “the subtleties of personality,” this enthusiastic use of slang was

startling.

When I asked if he had thought I would fail him, he replied, “No, but I

was afraid Mother would not come.”

[The next day Mrs. Gaylord told me that when Frederick begged me, on

Wednesday, to send her a message about coming at once, she had almost

decided to postpone her visit until after our return to New York.]

More running about followed, during which Cass said that it was a pity to

obliterate the earlier messages in that way. Planchette then swung back

to a clear space and wrote clearly, “Mother is coming!” Beneath this, the

bow-knot flourish we have since learned to associate with Frederick.

“You are a brick!” was a later comment. When Cass said he had thought the

last word would be friend, Frederick concluded: “Friend, too. Thank you a

million times.”

* * * * *

An interesting, but rather confusing, feature of these earlier

communications was the constant interruption by Annie Manning. On all

occasions, frequently even breaking into messages from some other person,

she wrote her name and her one request,“Tell Manning.” During this

period, also, I repeatedly asked Frederick to give me a message for his

father, and was unable to account for his invariable refusal.

Once, I asked Mary Kendal if she had no message for me, personally, and

she returned, “Yes, believe,” which seemed, at the moment, somewhat

cryptic, though the relation of my faith to the full development of this

intercourse was afterward explained.

Thursday night, at the end of the fifth day, I was fairly certain that

I had established communication with three definite and recognizable

personalities on the next plane, but I dreaded Mrs. Gaylord’s arrival the

following day, lest these fragmentary messages fail either to convince or

to comfort her.

II

The next morning, Friday, March 8th, before giving Frederick an

opportunity to communicate with his mother, I read her my letters to

Cass, wishing her to know just what had occurred and my attitude toward

it. Then we turned to planchette.

From this point, the account is taken from the original manuscript. At

first we did not realize the importance of writing in our questions, some

of which we were unable to remember later. During those first days, also,

the messages were sometimes confused by other messages written over them,

or by lines and circles done in apparent excitement and joy, and were

impossible to decipher afterward.

Frederick’s writing, from the first moment with his mother, was quick and

firm—at that time the most rapid and consecutive I had ever seen done

through planchette, although in comparison with later communications

these were slow and fragmentary.

“Mother dearest,” he began, immediately, without question or comment

from either of us.

She told me that this had been his name for her, which I had not known.

He went on, writing eagerly, with brief pauses between phrases.

“I am here, dearest.... Just believe.... Mother, you do believe, don’t

you?... Tell me you do.”

After replying to some questions, he began making the small circles first

noticed during the preliminary episode when his sisters were in New York.

I asked what they meant.

“Joy.... Don’t fail to make her believe.” I reminded him that this was

his responsibility, and he added, “You and I.”

A question of which there is no record drew this reply: “Yes, busy every

minute.... Work is so interesting.... I love you just the same.... Go

home when I can.... Tell Dad I am with him ... helping all I can ... I

am so glad you came.... I was afraid you would not.... Go home in peace,

Mother dearest. I am alive and happy and busy and well.”

She said it was like him to sum it all up that way.

“Of course it is like me. It is ‘me.’”

Some personal comment concerning members of the family followed, in

the midst of which Annie Manning interrupted with her invariable, “Tell

Manning.” Asked if she had any connection with the Gaylord family, she

said, “No, good-by,” and Frederick resumed his sentence where it had been

broken off.

Throughout this and subsequent interviews Mrs. Gaylord and I kept up a

running conversation, impossible to reproduce here—my hand still resting

on planchette—to which Frederick frequently contributed a remark,

precisely as if he had been present in the flesh. Again, he would break

a pause by addressing some characteristic statement or appeal to his

mother, sometimes, she told me afterward, answering her unspoken thought.

Over and over he begged her to say that she was convinced of his presence

and identity, and at last she gave him this assurance.

“Oh, thank God!” He made strong circles, before running up to a clear

space some inches above, to add, “Tell Dad.”

For the first time, a possible explanation of his inexorable refusal to

give me a message for his father occurred to me, and when I asked, he

said, “Yes, I want to reach them through her.”

He told her not to think of him as he had been during the months of his

last illness, saying: “Forget all that. It is over, and I am well and

strong, and happier than ever—now.” When we wondered whether it had

distressed him to be unable to communicate with his family, he said,

“Yes, I needed that.”

“Will you talk every day, you and she?” he asked, presently. “Thank you.”

“Mrs. Gaylord, Frederick is a fine force,” followed immediately, in a

more running script, and when I said this must be Mary Kendal, the answer

was: “Yes. Tell Manse I love him.... Tell him again.”

“He doesn’t need to be told that,” I assured her, as I had so many times

before.

And again she returned: “Yes, he does. There are reasons. Tell him.” I

promised to write to him once more, and she continued: “Mrs. Gaylord,

Frederick wants you to be sure that he is doing more here than he could

there. You should not grieve for that, should you? You have a fearless

mind in other things. Trust for that. Good-by.”

“Mother dearest, that was Mrs. Kendal,” Frederick resumed, with his more

vigorous movement. “She is a missionary, and a fine force.”

Noticing the repetition of this word, I asked, “You say force, not

spirit?”

“No, force is what moves things.”

To his mother’s inquiry about a friend, he replied: “He is here with

me, working. Bob’s little girl is here, too.” She told me that a medium

visited by his sisters had described him with a little girl, saying that

he wanted them to “tell Bob.” [I had heard this from them, also, and the

subject recurred later.]

“Yes,” he acquiesced. “Same child.”

When she expressed her belief that he was still alive and growing,

promising that she would be happier in future, he said: “Thank you,

Mother dearest. That is all I need. Tell Dad to be happy, too. I am with

him. He has not lost a son. I am better and bigger and more useful than I

ever could have been there, but I have been sorry you suffered so much.”

“Have you been trying recently to let us know you were with us?” she

inquired.

“Yes, for months. At first I could not.”

He said that Mary Kendal had found him for us, and when I mentioned that

Mary K. had come first to me, he explained: “Yes, she is more used to it.

She found Mrs. Kendal, and she told me.”

“You had better get your lunch,” he suggested, after a pause, rousing us

from our complete absorption to a consciousness that it was late. Mrs.

Gaylord denied being hungry, but he warned her—characteristically, I

learned afterward, “You will have a headache, Mother dearest, if you

don’t.”

After luncheon we went out for a walk, and then to our respective rooms

to rest, the morning having been fatiguing in its emotional strain.

Planchette and paper had been left in Mrs. Gaylord’s room, and in the

afternoon, while Cass and I were still alone, I picked up a lead-pencil

and placed its point on a sheet of letter-paper, expecting no response.

To my great surprise, I was conscious almost instantly of its vitality.

The sensation is comparable to that of holding a quiet, live bird,

wrapped in a handkerchief, its energy muffled but palpable. Sometimes

this sensation of a current from without is communicated to the hand and

arm, sometimes only to the fingers.

In a short time the pencil moved, writing, “Mary Kendal,” followed by the

usual messages for Manse.

Cass asked whether it annoyed them to be questioned, or interfered with

things they might wish to tell us.

“No, it does not interfere. We are here to tell you what we can, but we

cannot tell everything.... You have the right to know what we can tell

you.... You are getting nearer the big things every day.” This made Cass

wonder whether “the big things” would come to us in this life or the

next, and she added: “Both. You begin there and keep on growing. As soon

as you are ready, big truths are shown to you.”

Addressing me, he made some allusion to what “she” had said, suggesting

that it seemed to support a theory he had once held, that this world is

one of elimination.

“No, it is one of growth,” was her answer. “And ‘she’ is trying to tell

you that growth begins there and does not stop. It goes on and on, as

long as you are worthy.”

“Then unworthiness kills?”

“It does not kill. It defers.”

Weeks afterward, it was interesting to turn back to these early pages

of the record and find how much of the wide significance of later

revelations had been foreshadowed from the first.

“Are you as eager for this communication as we are?”

“We are more eager, because we know how much it means. We know that more

truth can be taught this way than any other.”

Cass turned to Mrs. Gaylord, who had rejoined us, saying that this seemed

to imply that they were our superiors.

“No, we are your elders,” said Mary Kendal.

As has generally been the case during these interviews, we were talking

among ourselves, frequently going on with our conversation while the

pencil wrote. Some one wondered how or why they had time or desire to

leave their presumably more important work to talk to us.

“Because we are all humans, after all,” Mary responded, “and it is our

work to help, just as it is yours. Many people do not want to help, here

or there.... This life is just a continuation of yours under happier

conditions.”

“Are you happier there than you were here, Mary?”

“Yes, except for Manse.”

Mrs. Gaylord asked whether a man who had loved books, and had always kept

himself surrounded by them in this life, would find that interest there.

“No,” Mary said, “but we have its equivalent interest.”

Mrs. Gaylord then explained that the medium already mentioned had

described Frederick to his sisters as surrounded by books.

“He told her that to identify himself, as characteristic.”

[In this connection, an incident occurring three months later is

interesting.

[One night, about the middle of June, a group of us had been talking for

some time, through my pencil, with friends on the next plane, when one

of the women announced that she could see distinctly a large man’s hand

resting upon the hand of a man present.

[The person in question—a hard-headed, practical business man,

successfully conducting large affairs—looked startled, saying that he had

noticed a peculiar sensation in that hand, and asked whether a friend,

whom he named, was actually present.

[“Yes,” was the reply through the pencil. “R—— saw. I manifested physical

attributes for a minute. I have no hands, but I can imagine them and

project them in your minds, occasionally.”

[No one else saw the hand, and at no other time in my experience has

anything of this kind occurred.]

I asked Mary Kendal whether they preferred planchette or pencil, and she

said, “It is easier for us this way.” Therefore, except on one memorable

occasion, all later writing has been done with a pencil.

For the information of persons interested in physical details, it may

be explained that I generally use a long pencil, which is held erect,

almost at right angles to the paper, the fingers clasping it lightly two

or three inches from its point, the hand and arm entirely unsupported.

In the very rapid writing that has sometimes been done, and occasionally

in moments of great eagerness or emotion, the force propelling the

pencil—which seems to be applied sometimes above, sometimes below my

hand—has forced it to a sharply acute angle in relation to the surface of

the paper. From the first, I have used right and left hands alternately,

and the writing, with exceptions so few as to be negligible, has been

done in rather large script on wall-paper, many rolls of which have been

covered.

One of the exceptions to the use of wall-paper was this first experiment

with a pencil, when loose sheets of letter-paper were used, and as many

of them were missing when I tried to assemble them the next day, much of

this interview has been lost.

“Frederick, shall we ever have our holidays again?” Mrs. Gaylord asked,

in the evening.

“Just as many holidays as you will take,” he replied. “I am always there

on high days and holidays. Why leave me out?” This was the first time

he made an interrogation point. It was traced slowly and with great

precision, as if to emphasize his inquiry.

His mother then explained to us that the celebration of certain

festivals, which had always been days of family reunion, notably

Christmas and Easter, had been impossible to them since his death.

Shortly afterward he expanded this theme.

That night Mrs. Gaylord telegraphed to her husband that she had received

messages for him and for the family. She said, as other members of the

family have said since, that there was in everything Frederick had

written a familiar and convincing sense of his personality, a quality

which we were unable to recognize, never having known him.

The next day he announced, buoyantly: “Mother dearest, I am here. Thank

you for wiring Dad. Made him happier.”

Greatly comforted by the conviction of her son’s continued life and

development and devotion, Mrs. Gaylord’s thought was already turning to

other bereaved and suffering mothers, and more than once she expressed

her desire to share with them her new knowledge, urging me to make

preparations for the publication of the messages she was sure Frederick

would give us, to which, for personal reasons, I demurred. We asked

Frederick whether he thought it should be published, and he replied in

the affirmative. After some discussion, leaving me still unconvinced, he

resumed his appeal to his mother.

“You will be happy now, won’t you? You can’t be sorry I am so much

better off and more useful. I get your thoughts and you get mine, only

you don’t recognize them always as mine. You will now.”

“Is there any way I can know when you are with me?” she asked.

“You will learn, now you know I am there. I can’t tell you how, but you

will learn. That is part of this big knowledge, dearest. You are both

just beginning, but, like other knowledge, growth is rapid, once begun.

You will meet skeptics, who will laugh, but don’t be disturbed. This is

the next big revelation, and you are with the first over the top.”

“Are you still interested in the war?” she asked, and the reply came with

great vigor.

“Yes. How can anybody help that? It is great and hideous and wonderful,

and the salvation of the civilized world. Something had to wake the souls

of most men. They have been quiet too long. Growth is always struggle.

It is hard struggle there, because you don’t see far ahead. We see

farther—much farther—and it is easier to climb.”

“Was the war the fault of the Germans, or the result of world conditions?”

“Both. The Germans had long been obsessed by a lust of power, and the

rest of the world by a lust of ease and money, and individual interests.

There has been real unity of purpose only in Germany.” When she said that

this thought of Germany’s unity had been much in her mind of late, he

added, quickly, “That was I, Mother dearest, trying to tell you what I

could of what I know.”

A long talk on personal topics followed, during which he referred to me

as a “messenger,” explaining Mary Kendal’s previous use of the word. By

this time, many of the messages were conveyed to my consciousness before

the pencil wrote them. Sometimes I had no previous impression of them;

sometimes only the meaning reached me, being expressed by the pencil in

other phrases; sometimes I knew what the words would be. I mentioned

this, with some misgiving, and Frederick dryly remarked: “You are very

sensitive for so obstinate a person.”

Referring to his earlier statement about Germany, Cass asked: “What would

national unity of purpose lead to? Hasn’t it elements of great danger?”

“Many men feel that unity of purpose is dangerous, but it is up to men

... to guide the purpose to sane and right ends. It must come through the

awakening of the souls of the people everywhere. We work for that here,

because the growth of the part is the growth of the whole. You can help

us and all life by working for that unity with us.”

This was the first intimation, apparently personal and casual, of that

gospel of unity and co-operation so fully developed later.

“Mother dearest, you are normally a builder,” he went on, after a

little. “Now clear away the débris of things outlived, and begin the new

structure with me.”

She replied that she had been feeling for some time that she must free

her life of many small, insistent demands, and have time to think.

“Not only that, dearest. You must get out of shadow into light. Out of

mourning into building. Out of black into color and life. Out of grieving

into joy with me in our work together. It is not that I object to black,”

he continued, when she expressed her unwillingness to lay aside her black

dress, “but to a symbol of mourning. Sorrow is not constructive, after

it has done its first big work. Leave it behind and go on. Can’t you do

that? Won’t you please try?... As for me, this is a great time to be

here. Think what this war means here. We are busier than you are. There,

I should be in the army, I suppose. I am doing bigger work than that

here. Just now, I am on a sort of furlough, to visit with you. That is

permitted. But when I go back to work I can’t be with you all the time,

this way.”

“Can you get into touch with my father, who died years ago?” Cass asked.

“And do the young stay young, and the old, old?”

“I will try to find your father. Some of us go on into remoter places to

work, but almost all of us come back, at intervals. We are tremendously

interested in life there, for it is the root and beginning of all our

work. When things improve there, they are just that much better here....

Age is a matter of experience here, not of time.”

“Does your work affect us in this world, or only those joining you?”

“We try constantly to help you with our greater knowledge, but some of

you are easier to help than others.” This led to a question as to whether

all our knowledge here is given to us from his plane, and he went on:

“Not all. We help develop what you are willing to work for, if you are

really sincere in wanting it. Sincerity is the crowning virtue.”

We talked this over, and in the midst of our discussion he interrupted

with a question of his own:

“Mother dearest, are you getting tired?” She denied it, but he said, “She

is tired,” and we talked no more that afternoon.

III

Shortly before dinner that night I picked up a pencil again, and “Mary

Kendal” was immediately written. It had become customary for her to write

her name both at the beginning and at the end of her communication,

probably to avoid confusion with Frederick.

“Manse is in New York,” she told us, repeating it several times. For some

reason I questioned this, and she said: “You must not doubt. He is coming

to-night.”

“Are you happy, Mary?” Cass asked.

“Very, especially now, since I am with you. You can reach Manzie.”

Keenly sympathizing with her eagerness to reach her husband, from whom

no word had come, he suggested telephoning to Mansfield at his club, but

I demurred, feeling that, if he were there, he would receive my letters

and communicate with us, unless, as I began to fear, he preferred not

to approach the subject in any way. Repeatedly, however, Mary insisted

“Call him up,” and Cass put in the long-distance call accordingly.

“He is there.... He will answer,” she reiterated again and again, while

we waited.

It is impossible to make a fully accurate report of this interview. The

messages were confused and broken, and there were many monosyllabic

replies to questions not recorded.

At one time we asked about Anne Lowe, and Mary said: “Anne is not here.

She is a lovely character. She works for children.... Manse is not

there.... Manse is out.... He will answer.... He is not there.”

Eventually the long-distance operator reported that Mr. Kendal was not at

his club and was not expected.

I asked Mary why she had said that he was there, telling her that this

was making me doubt my powers of correct transmission, to which she

replied that this was better than too much credulity, adding: “Manse is

there.... He is out of the club.... He must be there.”

We called up the —— Club a second time and I talked to the clerk,

who said Mansfield Kendal was not registered there, nor had they

been notified that he was coming. Long afterward we learned that he

had expected to be there at that time, but had been detained in the

Northwest by business.

Meanwhile, there was much confused writing from Mary. “Manse is in the

club.... He is not there.... He must be there.... He is out.” Effort to

write the name of a city was followed by, “Minneapolis recently.... Manse

will be there soon.”

It was Mansfield Kendal himself who ultimately arrived at a possible

explanation of some of these apparent inaccuracies, Mary having explained

others meanwhile. But at the time it was all very contradictory and

confusing, and after dinner Cass demanded an explanation.

Mary Kendal came at once, admitting that she had been wrong in saying

that Mansfield was at the club, and asserting that she “thought he would

be.”

“Didn’t you know?”

“No.”

Again the messages are confused and fragmentary. “You must not doubt....

He will be there soon ...” are among those now decipherable, each many

times repeated. She seemed profoundly distressed.

To ease the tension, Cass made a little joke, eliciting no response from

her, whereupon he asked whether they retained a sense of humor over

there.

“Yes, but this is no time for humor.... I am so afraid of missing Manse.”

Again she urged me to write to him, but I refused, reminding her that I

had made every possible advance until some reply to my letters should be

received.

“Yes, I know, but it means so much! You will help, won’t you?”

Knowing nothing then of the tremendous forces of attraction and repulsion

unconsciously put into operation by persons ignorant of their existence,

and assuming—not unnaturally—that she must be able to learn at least

as much about Mansfield’s whereabouts and condition as both she and

Frederick evidently knew about ours, I was unable to understand, even

dimly, the contradictions of the present situation, and the cloud of it

hung over me all that evening and the next day. I was oppressed by a

sense of my responsibility in conveying messages from sources seeming

suddenly so uncertain.

Following Mary, Frederick came again, his buoyancy undiminished.

“Mother dearest,” he began, without question, “Mrs. Kendal is true. She

is a fine force.” I rather held back on this, and the writing was angular

and unyielding. “There are things we cannot explain.”

“You have too little faith. Mary Kendal.”

This statement was made without preliminary comment, and until she signed

her name I thought Frederick was writing. I reminded her that she had

made it impossible for me to trust her wholly.

“I am sorry I shook your faith,” she said. “I welcome you to this

relation, and want you to believe.”

“Mother dearest, you know I am here, don’t you?” Again Frederick made his

own interrogation point. “Because I am, and you will feel my presence

more and more clearly as time goes on.”

“Do you know all that we want to know?” Cass inquired.

“Not all you want to know. We know more than you do, and will tell you

all we can, as soon as you are ready for it.” We were uncertain whether

this meant mentally and spiritually ready, or that we must learn the

conditions through which they can best reach us, and he explained. “We

can tell you anything you are prepared to understand, and the more you

learn there the better you will do your work here.”

“Are you still interested in politics here?” he was asked, a little later.

“Oh yes. But they are in a state of transition that is fearfully

difficult to understand or to influence now. The seed has been sown, but

the harvest is not yet garnered. Nobody knows what will come of it in

this country.”

“Are you conscious there of what people here call God?” his mother asked.

“We are conscious of a great purpose. Some of us call it God. I see it as

light in dark places. Others see it as power. Others as love. But we all

recognize it as a purpose.”

At luncheon that day we had spoken of Prof. William James and Sir

Frederick Myers, and later in the evening Mrs. Gaylord asked Frederick

whether he knew Professor James.

“I know him, but I am not sure he knows me. He is a great force, and many

of us go to him for help and instruction. Only one other man has the same

sort of power. That is Sir Frederick.”

“Are you with people from this world only?” some one asked. “And does

everybody go there, or only a certain element?”

“There are people from this world only, but it is as with you, not all

people are equally prepared. Growth is easier here if one has earned it

there. But not all have earned it, and the penalty for laziness is long

struggle.... Purgatory is not a bad definition of it. The right to do

big work must be earned. Some people have a terrible struggle of it.

[Their?] Moral muscles are flabby.”

“Do you agree with Mary Kendal that there is humor there, but that this

is no time for it?”

“Oh, she didn’t mean that! She meant that this particular crisis is not

humorous to her. She is deeply concerned to get into touch with him....

Good night, Mother dearest. I’ll be with you all night.”

“Good night,” said Mary Kendal. “I’m sorry I upset you.”

IV

The more I thought about the Kendal affair the more perplexing it seemed,

and since I could neither question that Mary Kendal and Frederick had

actually communicated through me nor believe that she would wilfully

deceive me, there seemed no possible explanation of the episode Saturday

night, except some unconscious influence of my own mind. By the next

afternoon I had almost persuaded myself that the repeated erroneous

statements about Mr. Kendal had been induced, in some way not traceable,

by my increasing anxiety concerning his reception of the letters I had

sent to his club.

After luncheon, we took up the communication again, and immediately,

without interrogation, the pencil wrote, “You are a good messenger.”

“Who is writing?” I asked.

“Frederick.”

“How much of this do I do, and how much is yours?”

“You do very little. Mostly, you lend a hand.” This is so literally

what I do that we laughed. “You are by nature skeptical,” he continued.

“Mother dearest, you must not let her make you doubt that I have said all

these things.”

“It unsettles me when I know what the message is to be before it is

written,” I persisted. “Do you suggest it to me, or I to you?”

“Sometimes you suggest things to me and I say them,” he returned.

“Sometimes I don’t.” This reassured me somewhat, for I had frequently

noticed that a thought strongly in my mind seemed to delay the pencil,

yet was not written.

Returning for a moment to the discussion of politics, Cass asked: “By

reason of our different environment, am I not more interested in large

details, and you in large movements?”

“There can be no real movement without a mass of detail. Here we are

interested equally in both. They are inseparable.”

“You said yesterday that the seed had been sown and the harvest not yet

garnered. Has the seed generally been good seed?”

“There is no telling how much of it will come up. There has been seed,

good, bad, and indifferent, sown in all sorts of soil. The crop is not

foreordained. We work and hope.”

“Is there anything in this life to any degree a counterpart of what you

have there?” his mother inquired. “Or is it something so wholly new that

we can’t even imagine it?”

“It is so much more expansive, so much more beautiful and free, that we

can give you no conception of it.”

“Perhaps it’s better that we shouldn’t know,” it was suggested; and

Frederick’s reply seems to hold a hint of humor.

“It might make you envious.”

When I wondered what became of suicides, Cass said, “They probably get

the purgatory he mentioned yesterday.”

“That’s what they get; and it’s a long, hard road back to mental....” The

pencil hesitated. After some efforts to write a word beginning with p or

f—we were uncertain which—Mrs. Gaylord suggested, “Poise?”

“... poise. Yes.”

“Is there unconsciousness at first, when you go over?” she asked.

“It depends on circumstances and persons. Sometimes there is a period of

unconsciousness. I was conscious from the first moment, and so happy to

be here.” When Cass interpreted this to mean that he greatly preferred

being there, he corrected: “No, to be free. But for the first weeks I was

dazed by the bigness of it.”

Later in the afternoon Frederick discussed with his mother various

personal matters, with a good deal of humor. Afterward, more seriously,

he continued: “You’ll do better work, and be more open to suggestion from

me, if you don’t dull yourself by too constant harping on one chord. Play

a little, you and Dad.”

She told him they had not been happy enough to play.

“You will be happier now. Tell Dad few men are as near their sons as he

is to me. He and all of you have only to learn to recognize me, when I am

trying to tell you I am there.”

We spoke of her desire to receive his communications through her own

pencil and he said that if she would “keep on trying and believing,” he

could talk directly to her before long, as he has since demonstrated.

“It is difficult for us to overcome doubt in a messenger,” he said.

“Faith is a positive force. It helps us reach you. Doubt, being negative,

hampers us.”

This reminded me of Mary Kendal’s first personal message to me,

“Believe.”

“Are you hampered by my doubt to-day?” I asked.

“No. That is not doubt of us, but of yourself. It is a safeguard.”

At this point we went to dinner. Later in the evening, when we had

returned to the pencil, Cass said:

“You were facetious last night, Frederick, so perhaps I may ask if you

have dined?”

“I’ve had a feast of reason, thank you,” was the instant retort.

Asked whether the different races were represented where he was, he

replied: “We have groups. People naturally divide themselves. But not

actual race distinction.” When Cass explained that he had wondered

whether peoples of widely differing religious beliefs, Christians,

Confucians, Mohammedans, and so on, would be together there, Frederick

continued: “Certainly. Each group does its work more or less in its own

way, but all to the same purpose.” Here again is a clear reference to

conditions and forces of which we had then no knowledge and concerning

which, apparently, he had at that time no authority to speak in detail.

Mrs. Gaylord was sitting in silence, at a little distance from the table.

After a pause, Frederick began again, as if in answer to some unspoken

thought:

“Mother dearest, you will get what you are asking from me when we are all

more accustomed. Margaret is afraid to let me handle her.” I said that

the Kendal episode the night before had disturbed me, and that I had been

careful all day not to yield to any impulse in the pencil unless it were

very definite, to which he returned: “That’s all right. You be as careful

as you like, as long as you don’t deny us.”

Cass asked whether he could put us in touch with a friend on his plane,

one David Bruce.

“Mary Kendal can. That is part of her work. Mother dearest, you won’t

backslide?”

Mrs. Gaylord turned astonished eyes on me, asking: “Is ‘backslide’ a part

of your ordinary vocabulary?” When I assured her that it was not, she

laughed, saying that it was “a Gaylord word.” “I’m not sure that I won’t

backslide when I get home again, away from these daily messages,” she

said.

“Then you come to us—Margaret and me. We’ll fix you!” He drew a circle

around this, as if to emphasize it. When she wondered whether she might

not find a messenger nearer home to give her occasional help, he added:

“You can get help, but you can’t trust everybody.”

The pencil was moving slowly, with many false starts and delays. I asked

whether he would prefer planchette, and he said he would, so his mother

went to her room to get it, while Mary Kendal talked to us about Manse.

As soon as planchette was placed on the table, however, Frederick took

possession again, moving it briskly back and forth, in a space of about

six inches, as if warming it up. Mrs. Gaylord was then sitting opposite

me, and Cass to the right, some distance away.

Suddenly planchette swung sharply down to the lower right-hand corner of

the table, from my position, and addressing Mrs. Gaylord directly—that

is, writing from right to left and upside down from my viewpoint, so that

his mother sitting opposite me read it as it came—Frederick wrote rapidly

and strongly:

“Mother dearest, this is your boy, come back to stay.”

We were astounded. Given a fresh surface, planchette raced all over the

sheet, in energetic circles and flourishes. It ran toward me, point

first, as if it would leap off the table, paused, wheeled, crossed toward

Mrs. Gaylord, retreated, darted to where her hand lay on the papers,

followed as she moved it, and then resumed its apparently meaningless

tracing of angles and circles. When I said that I did not understand this

performance, the reply came with a whirl, followed by one of his big

flourishes.

“I am trying to show you that I am running this myself!” Then, very

rapidly, upside down again to me: “You can’t doubt this. Even Margaret

can’t doubt this.”

“I haven’t doubted that you were here, Frederick,” I said.

“No, but you’ve got to believe in me.”

Again I placed the instrument at my left, in readiness to write, as

usual, across the sheet, but he had not finished. Swinging down to the

right, and moving toward the left, once more reversed from my point of

view, he wrote: “Mother dearest.” Then he ran to the upper right-hand

corner and wrote along that edge of the table: “Now I’ll do it this way,

Mr. L——.” In circles and flourishes he crossed, to write along the left

edge: “Now I’ll do it this way.” Up then, to the edge opposite me. “Now

I’ll do it this way.”

By this time the paper was completely covered with interlacing lines and

words, except a narrow margin along the right edge. Sliding over to this,

he wrote, slowly, “Now are you convinced?”

We were amazed, breathless, and all somewhat moved by his determination

to demonstrate his presence.

Circling again to the center, already so covered with lines that we had

to watch the pencil-point to make out the message, he said: “Now get the

pencil.”

“Did I show you then who is running this?” he demanded, when I had

complied with his request. “Mother dearest, when you are inclined to

backslide, remember that little exhibition, and ask yourself how you can

doubt any manifestation of me that you perceive.”

Mrs. Gaylord said that it was peculiarly characteristic of Frederick to

insist upon making his point, and in one way or another to succeed.

“Dad won’t need to see that,” Frederick stated, when Cass wished that his

father might have witnessed this extraordinary performance, “but if he

does, I’ll do it for him with trimmings.... He has not lost a son in any

but the most superficial sense. Tell Sis I’ll do stunts for her, too, if

she’ll come where Margaret is, and Babe can have her own show, too.”

Again Mrs. Gaylord gasped, for he had used his own intimate names for his

sisters, neither of which I had ever heard before.

“Now were really getting down to business,” he remarked, presently. “I

had to convince Margaret before she would loosen up.” Cass began to

explain that it had not been necessary to convince me, but before he was

fairly started the pencil ran on: “Yes, it was. She didn’t quite believe

I was running this show. Now she’s nice and amenable.” Verily, all

resistance had been taken out of me! Thereafter he had his own way with

the pencil.

Cass began another question, but broke off, saying that it was not fair

to keep Frederick answering impersonal inquiries when he wanted to talk

to his mother.

“That’s what it’s all for,” was the candid admission. “The L——s are all

right, but it’s for Mother dearest and the Family that I’m here.... This

isn’t exactly what religious people call heaven, but it is life eternal

in the biggest sense. But I can’t be quite happy in it unless you whom

I love so much are happy, too. Don’t you backslide! Only let me have a

chance, and I’ll keep you convinced; but doubt is the hardest thing to

combat because it destroys the very proof we are trying to bring against

it. Believe every suggestion of me until it is proved false.”

One of us asked whether their greatest difficulties in communicating with

us were caused by doubt or by dishonest messengers.

“Both. It is hard to find a good messenger, but, having found one, doubt

is apt to destroy all his work.”

“All four points of the compass, Mother dearest.” This we took to be an

allusion to his writing along the four edges of the table, earlier in

the evening. “You see, we have not much time left, and you must go home

fortified and happy, and glad for yourself and me.... It will mean a lot

to Dad. He has thought I was in some remote and far-off heaven, and he

will like to know that we are working more nearly shoulder to shoulder

than ever before, as we are in some ways.... I want to talk to him

straight.” Long afterward one of his sisters told me that “shoulder to

shoulder” was a characteristic phrase of Frederick’s.

Again sliding over to the lower right-hand corner, he wrote quickly, in

big swinging script, upside down to me: “Mother dearest, don’t forget the

four points of the compass. I want you to remember that I am your boy

come back. Not lost at all. Please remember that.”

When a fresh surface offered and the pencil was placed at my left, as

usual, he said, “No,” and swung once more down to the right, writing

quickly and firmly toward the left and upside down to me.

“I am going to write a little letter to Dad and the girls. I love them

just as well as ever, and it hurts me to have them think I am not alive

and loving them, because I know they still love me.

“FREDERICK.”

Although the movement in this reversed writing is rapid and definite, as

if great energy were exerted to accomplish it, it is extremely difficult

to follow, perhaps because the muscles of the hand are accustomed to move

from left to right in writing, or because the mind instinctively resists

a movement it cannot readily understand.

V

The next day (Monday, March 11th) we all returned to New York together,

Mrs. Gaylord rejoining us in the evening, after dining with other friends.

Before her arrival, we talked a little to Mary Kendal, who was still

uneasy about the failure to reach her husband, from whom no word had

come. We asked if she knew David Bruce, and she replied: “No, but he is

here, and most of us know what he does. He is a sweet force.”

When Mrs. Gaylord came, we told her of this characterization, after some

personal talk with Frederick, and at once he took up the suggestion.

“Mother dearest, you are a sweet force, too. Help me build a structure of

strength, which is Dad, sweetness, which is you, and illumination, which

is my part.”

We remembered then his asking her to “clear away the débris of things

outlived and begin the new structure with me,” but not until greater

revelations followed did we understand fully what he meant.

A little later he said of his father: “He will discover that I am more

a force than ever, and then he will be as proud as men who have sons

‘over there.’ ... Should you prefer a son in the trenches or in the place

of accomplished peace?... I am nearer you now than I have ever been

before, but the price of that is apparent separation. Your life knows no

such companionship as ours can be now, but that is possible only at the

cost of apparent and visible contact. This is gain, not loss. You are

questioning that, but trust me. I know. You can’t even guess what this

means to all of us, Sis and Babe and Dad and you and

“FREDERICK.”

His name was dropped a line, like a signature.

It was coming slowly, with hesitations and false starts, and I asked:

“Are you tired, Frederick? Or am I?”

“Both,” he said. “This is not the simplest thing I ever did.... I am not

tired, as you understand weariness, but it is easier sometimes to get

things through than others.”

The next evening—the last we had with Frederick at that time—his first

messages were personal, expressing his desire to “talk straight” to other

members of the family.

“But there’s no hurry,” he went on. “We’ve all eternity together now....

Only one thing can separate us. If you doubt my existence, I shall still

exist, but your doubt will destroy the thread that links us like a

telegraph-wire, only more closely and warmly. So you must not backslide,

for my sake as well as your own.”

“Why don’t you stay on?” he asked presently. “I can reach you, but not

so definitely for a while to your sense, and actual speech with you is

keen joy. Tell ~Dad~ ...”—the erasure is his own—“... the family I want

to talk to them, too. Let’s have a reunion. One that won’t leave me out.

I want to _be in_.” Rapidly and strongly, he underlined the last words

three times.

His mother promised that the family festivals should be held again, in

the full consciousness that he was there with them.

“Thank you, Mother dearest. You don’t know how we hate being left out.”

When she explained that they were “left out” ignorantly, rather than

intentionally, he continued: “No, we know you don’t mean to leave us out.

But you—and we, too—would be so much happier if you knew we were there

and we could know you were not grieving. You see, we are really nearer

to you than you are to each other, and only memory tells us why you

grieve. There is no reason for grief in what you call death and we call

knowledge.”

“Why hasn’t all this been told to us before?” she demanded. “It was cruel

not to let us know it!”

“As I wrote you the other day, not everybody has been prepared for the

knowledge. It is known only to the few—those first over the top I spoke

of. But it will be the next great revelation. As well say it was cruel

not to have known chloroform in the Middle Ages, when it was sorely

needed, or wireless telegraphy in the Napoleonic wars. There is an

evolution of soul, as well as of biology and chemistry. Many fine souls

have still lacked this peculiar preparation.”

This started a little discussion between us. One said that many persons

had lost faith in the orthodox religions, thus making the need of a new

revelation great. Another spoke disparagingly of the modern theory of

a pervasive and impersonal energy, from which we come and to which we

return, losing individuality. At this point Frederick took the lead again.

“Don’t you let them fool you! There is no such thing as Bergson’s stream

of energy, unless every individual of us is a well-defined drop in the

stream. That is all a philosopher’s dream, coated with poetry and

tinctured with science.”

Mrs. Gaylord said she had never heard of Frederick’s reading Bergson,

and I mentioned that I had read nothing of his, except one article in a

review.

“I never read Bergson, either, but you could not live in the world, or

pick up a Sunday supplement, some years ago, without encountering that

stream of energy.”

“There speaks the newspaper man!” his mother said, laughing.

During all these talks with Frederick he had frequently made the little

retraced circle, which we had been told meant joy. He made it again now,

with vigor, and some one suggested that he seemed excited.

“Wouldn’t it excite you to get into actual touch with your family, after

long doubt and pain? I am no angel, you know, and thank God I am not

above being excited. When I am I _will_ be dead!” Again he underscored a

word.

Mrs. Gaylord spoke of her feeling of his presence, of his characteristic

personality, saying that he seemed “just the same.”

“Plus, Mother dear. You’d like me better now. I don’t mean that I am

perfect, you know. I’ve got more to learn than I ever knew existed, but I

can see ahead now. And you _would_ like me better.... I didn’t say love

me better,” he added.

We talked about the force moving the pencil, which on this occasion was

very strongly applied, though I was greatly fatigued by the efforts of

the past few days, and I asked Frederick whether he could move it without

my co-operation. But he said, “Only as you hold it.” To a suggestion that

he expressed himself not through the pencil, but through me, he replied,

“She is like the battery.”

From the first Mrs. Gaylord had been experimenting with planchette

and pencil, hoping to establish direct communication with Frederick.

While placing more emphasis on a possible communion of thought, without

material aid, he had encouraged these efforts. “Mother, you can do it,

I am sure,” he said once, “but don’t expect much fluency for some time.

I have not written except through Margaret yet, but they tell me she is

exceptionally sensitive as a messenger.”

Referring to this, he was asked whether others, not known to me

personally, had desired to communicate through me, and replied: “No, but

they have watched her, this last week.” Ten days later, when the most

amazing of all the communications began to come, we remembered this.

After enumerating some of the qualifications of a good messenger, he

said: “When that combination is found we are all interested, if we want

to reach our own people.”

“Are you over there especially interested in reaching your own families

and friends, or in reaching persons who might be interested in the

possibility of these communications?”

“Both. But if you have ever been unable to communicate with those you

love, for months and years, and have known they were suffering, then you

know which interest is keenest. The one is immediate and urgent, the

other more or less a matter of evolution.”

“Shall I try to talk to some of you occasionally?” I asked. “Or shall I

wait for a call?”

“You are over the top. We shall be glad to come.”

“Can you let me know, if you have something to say through me?”

“Not always. Sometimes we can suggest the thought to you.”

Since that time, however, a more perfect connection has been established

and I am often conscious of a definite summons. On these occasions the

pencil starts at once, generally with great vigor, and almost always

writes some message not conveyed to my consciousness except as I spell it

out after the pencil.

Toward the end of the evening, when Mrs. Gaylord had suggested going back

to her hotel, the pencil made a little circle and some apparently aimless

marks inside it.

“Is this Frederick?” I asked, wondering at indecision from him.

“Yes. I want to do something Mother can’t forget.... You don’t need any

more fancy stunts, do you?”

She said she did not, but that she was very tired and could stay no

longer.

“Oh, don’t go!” he begged. “I’ll go with you, but I like gassing this

way.” Another characteristic phrase, she said.

After some further assurances of his frequent presence and constant

watchfulness, she said she really must go. Frederick then moved the

pencil down to the right corner again, and wrote, very clearly and

carefully, one more “upside-down” message—a touching little message of

love to “dear Dad and the girls,” which he signed, “Your boy, Frederick.”

The next day Mrs. Gaylord went home, where she immediately destroyed all

her black-bordered cards and stationery and similar symbols of mourning.

She wrote me that she felt it was false and wicked to mourn for a son as

vitally alive and happy as she now knew Frederick to be.

VI

One of my letters to Mr. Kendal had been marked “Urgent.” On the day

of Mrs. Gaylord’s departure a telegram came from him, asking that a

duplicate of this letter be sent to him at Chicago. It developed later

that all my missives, after some delay, had been forwarded from his club

to his business address in the South, where, owing to the uncertainty of

his plans, his secretary had held them, notifying him by wire of the one

evidently demanding immediate attention.

After some hesitation—reluctant to shock him by a bald and startling

announcement unaccompanied by any explanation of a situation concerning

which I was convinced he would be skeptical, if not wholly unsympathetic,

and yet impelled by his wife’s distressed insistence to reach him before

he should go South again—I telegraphed him that I had reason to believe I

had been in direct communication for several days with Mary and others,

and asked him to return _via_ New York, if possible.

Early that evening I took up a pencil, which moved at once.

“Manzie has your message.”

This could be no one but Mary Kendal. To my inquiry concerning his

reception of my telegram she replied: “He is startled. He is wiring you.”

An expression of her happiness followed, concluding, “He is thinking of

me ... and I can help him.”

“Can’t you help him unless he is thinking of you?”

Apparently this presented difficulties, but after long effort and many

false starts she achieved what I felt to be only a part of the answer she

had intended. “On power I can.”

“You mean that you can influence his work? His strength, or

accomplishment?”

“Yes, but not his heart and soul.” After assurances that he would come

soon, she thanked me touchingly.

Later in the evening she said, “Manzie is so amazed!” When I asked

whether he believed it, she returned: “He does now. He has thought....”

Details personal to him followed.

Still later I asked whether Mr. Kendal had telegraphed me, and she said

that he had not, though he had intended to do so. As a matter of fact,

he had not at that time received my telegram, but he afterward told

me that when it reached him, twelve hours later, his reactions were

exactly as she had described them. Also, his intention of telegraphing me

immediately was delayed several hours by business necessities. This is

one of several instances when a difference of plane has seemed to enable

them to look ahead for a limited space and foretell events.

The next morning, for the first time in ten days, the pencil was merely a

piece of dead wood between my fingers, without impulse. After long delay

it moved slowly, making light circles, but no words came.

I knew that Mrs. Gaylord had intended to make an effort that day to get

into touch with Frederick through a semi-professional medium in her

vicinity, and in the evening I took up a pencil, wondering whether we

could learn what success had attended the attempt.

“Mary.”

Supposing this to be Mary Kendal, I made some allusion to Mansfield, and

was immediately corrected.

“No. Mary K.”

This was surprising, as it was the first time she had responded since

my initial effort to establish this intercourse. She said that Mary

Kendal was not present, and that Frederick had met his mother at Mrs.

Z——’s, with results only partially satisfactory—which letters from the

Gaylord family afterward verified. We suggested that this might have been

discouraging, and she replied: “Discouragement is not for Frederick.”

“How do you know so much about Frederick now?” I asked. “Ten days ago you

said you did not know him.”

“Mrs. Kendal interested me in him. He is for justice, light, and

progress. My work, too.”

To my expressed hope that she found life happier there than it had been

for her here she returned, “Yes, I was glad to come,” following the

statement with the little circle so often used by the others. She, too,

said that it meant joy. We have since learned that it means much more,

but apparently they were educating us by degrees. In this case the joy

was not hers alone, for the renewed communion with her brought me great

gladness.

Our friendship began long ago, in a Western city, whither she had come

in search of health. Both were young, she a few years the elder. She was

alone. I never saw any member of her family, and we had few friends in

common, but between us, from the day we met, there was a strong bond of

sympathy, which grew to deep affection, notwithstanding many differences

between us. She was more widely read than I; I more actively in touch

with life than she. She was a church woman; I was not. Her point of view

was Eastern, mine at that time entirely Western. Our many disagreements

were argued warmly and at length, but at bottom each knew that she could

draw at will upon whatever strength or resource the other possessed, and

the debt in the end was mine, when her death left a blank to which I

could never be quite reconciled.

Her brief career seemed to contradict the law of compensation, upon

which, until recently, my philosophy of life has been based. Meticulously

truthful, scrupulous in all things, strong of purpose, giving of her best

to life, life passed her by with a shrug. Keenly sensitive to beauty,

whether spiritual, intellectual, or material, she was hampered in its

pursuit by limited health and limited means. For years she struggled with

uncongenial employment of one sort or another, denying herself the loaf

she needed to procure the hyacinth she needed more. Longing for life

at its fullest and richest, she scarcely touched its margin. Yearning

for high peaks and wide outlook, she lived always on the plain. When,

finally, the path seemed to be opening before her and she was pleasantly

established, doing a healing and constructive work for which she was

fitted, she died suddenly, still baffled, having given the last proof of

her love for humanity by yielding her life for it, worn out by hard work,

combating an epidemic in a college town.

Rejoiced to learn that at last she was happy, I asked whether she could

tell us of her work, and she began, easily: “Yes, on the ... on ... on

the....” After long difficulty she accomplished it. “On the perpetual

tour.”

When she had verified this astonishing statement as correct, I suggested,

“‘Off ag’in, on ag’in, gone ag’in’?”

“That’s it.” For an eager spirit like Mary K.’s no happier heaven could

be imagined.

Replying to further questions, she said that it was not just luck that

I had caught her that first night. No, neither had she come to me from

the other side of the world. “I’ve been working on you for a month,” she

said. “Ever since V—— was here.” It was considerably more than a month,

but time and place seem to have little significance to those on her plane.

Shortly after this Annie Manning interrupted again. It was said that

Mary K. knew Annie Manning and wished me to find her brother. Inquiry

developed the fact that he was the brother mentioned the first night I

used planchette. His name was given as James Manning, and his address,

Albany, New York. “United States Ho....” We could not get beyond that. At

one time the word seemed to be “Hotel.” Unable to find any United States

Hotel listed in Albany, I suggested Saratoga, but this was not accepted.

Repeatedly asked to write to him, I could obtain no address.

Afterward the address was given as Albany, but not New York. Long efforts

to write the name of the state resulted in “I ...,” ending in wavy lines.

Suggestions of Illinois and Iowa brought negatives, but the mention of

Indiana was greeted with a quick, “Yes.” Vain and fatiguing efforts to

get the rest of the address resulted in the indefinite “United States Ho

...” and at last I gave it up, disappointed.

An hour later Annie Manning came again, but I asked her to let me talk to

Mary K.

“Here! Mary K.,” was the prompt response. “Do you remember all the good

times?” I told her I did, and thought of them often. “All the many ae

... an....” There I lost it. She began it many times, in many ways,

apparently trying to get a momentum that would carry her through. “All

the many am ... I mean ae ... I meant to say anm....” Too tired to

continue, again I abandoned the attempt.

Annie Manning came once more, making futile efforts to give me her

brother’s address. She finally said it was “just United States Home.”

Once she wrote, “just Home.” And once, “Honest, that’s all.”

I have never learned the whole truth about Annie Manning, who ceased,

after the first fortnight, to manifest herself; whether because she

lacked perseverance or because other influences were already at work, I

do not know.

The next day I took up the pencil, expecting Mary Kendal, with news

of her husband, but Mary K.’s strong, underlined signature greeted

me instead. She said that Mr. Kendal was coming, adding: “On cen ...

cent....”

“Century?” I suggested. “Twentieth Century Limited?”

“No ... cen ... ce ... cent....” Finally, she agreed to

Century—compromised on it, I learned later. Within five minutes a

telegram came from Mr. Kendall—the first word I had received from

him—saying that he would arrive in New York Sunday or Monday.

When I told him of this experience he exclaimed: “Central! New York

Central!” Which, for some reason, had not occurred to me. At the hour

when Mary K. gave me this information he had ordered, at his club in

Chicago, a ticket for the Lake Shore Limited—like the Twentieth Century,

a New York Central train. Later, having the ticket actually in his

possession, he telegraphed me that he would come by that train, reaching

New York Sunday evening, but afterward changed to another road.

This second message arrived Saturday afternoon, and I at once inquired of

Mary K. why she had said “Century.” Instead of her familiar signature,

however, “Frederick” was written.

Having ascertained that this was Frederick himself, and not a message

about him, I asked him to go on.

“The Family are happy.” At no time during this brief interview had I the

slightest inkling of what was coming. As he had been always so courteous

in acknowledgment, the first letters led me to think he was beginning his

customary “Thank you.” Saying that their happiness added greatly to my

own, I asked if he had anything else to say.

“Yes. At your service.... At the next large family reunion you both will

be present, won’t you?”

I said we would try to be, and again he wrote his name, indicating that

he had nothing more to say, whereupon I called Mary K., reproached her

for inaccuracy, and asked why she had said Mansfield Kendal would come by

the Century.

Apparently despairing of penetrating such density, she replied, merely:

“He wanted to leave to-day.” Later in the afternoon she said, “He will be

perfectly ready to believe,” which seemed to me highly improbable.

Some things written that afternoon came to my mind before they did to my

fingers, and I asked whether she could not write the messages without

first telling me what they were to be.

“Yes,” she returned, “but it is harder for us and more exhausting for

you.” Weeks afterward, when this separate control of mind and pencil had

been more fully demonstrated, it was more fully explained.

Remembering her statement that her work took her “on perpetual tour,” I

asked how long she would be here.

“I shall be near you for months,” she said, and then began again her

never wholly relinquished effort to write the message first attempted two

days before. “Ao ... an ... aon ... aem ... aeons ago ...”—here she made

a frantic little joy circle—“... we were lovers.”

This surprised me, for it seemed unlike her and was absolutely foreign

to my thought, but when she had verified it, I asked: “Is reincarnation

true, then?”

“No. Aeons ago ... I was a friend of yours in ——.” She mentioned a

person whom I have known all my life. Again this seemed utter nonsense,

but again she verified it. “We were concerned in being more and more

curiously limited ... more and more animal.” Some of this came readily,

some with halting and false starts, which—like Frederick—she crossed out

herself.

At first this, too, seemed devoid of meaning, but after a little thought

I asked whether she meant that we had been associated in some way as pure

spirit.

“Everybody was pure spirit once, and will be again,” was the rapid reply.

“Is this life a punishment, then?”

“No, a beginning of individuality.”

“Does the individual continue to exist forever?”

“Yes.”

“As pure spirit?”

“Yes.”

“Then how were we associated as pure spirit?”

“We were the same purpose.”

Completely puzzled, I asked, “Why do you say we were friends in ——?”

“He was the larger purpose, of which we were a part.”

“The original purpose is not all the same, then?”

“No, there are many purposes in the beginning, but only one in the end.”

“Does Frederick know all this?”

“All of it.”

When she said good night, she added, “God bless you,” and I asked: “Mary

K., how do you see God? Frederick sees Him as light in dark places.”

“Justice, light, progress.”

“Is that God, or God’s work?”

“Tested.”

“You mean that you have tested it?”

“Yes.”

The next day, Sunday—two weeks from the day she had first talked to

me through planchette—she returned to this theme, which still seemed

somewhat fantastic to my practical and pragmatical mind, with further

allusions to our long association.

During the days of confusion and uncertainty before Mr. Kendal replied

to my telegram, when his wife constantly implored me to write to him

again, and I as constantly refused, insisting that she first show cause

why she had misled me about his movements and whereabouts, I wrung from

her an admission that in some way he had put her so far from him that she

neither knew nor could learn anything about him, except that he suffered

and needed her, which both Mary K. and Frederick verified. I said once

to Mary K. that it was incredible that this could be, to which she

laconically returned, “It can.” After his actual receipt of my telegram,

Mary Kendal never returned to me until she came with him, and the

character of her earlier banishment, and consequent inability to perceive

his movements, was still unexplained.

As the hour of his arrival approached I grew uneasy, and asked Mary K.

whether he came happily or in dread.

“Certainly with o”—the joy circle, and as we have since learned, the

circle of completion.

When I asked her to write it out in full to reassure me, the pencil ran

back, underscoring “certainly.” She said further that Mary Kendal was

with him, and very happy.

“Has Mary Kendal been very unhappy?” I asked.

“No. Aeons ago they were one purpose.”

“What has that to do with it?”

“She knew that he must answer if she could reach him.”

“Does that hold good of evil purpose, too?”

“Yes.”

VII

It seemed to me that if Mr. Kendal had not received my letters, and was

in possession only of the meager information contained in my telegram,

it was best that he should read the record of the earlier interviews

with his wife before coming to communicate with her, and to that end the

book containing the whole story was to be sent to his club before his

arrival. Having decided this, it occurred to me to consult Mary K., who

emphatically negatived the plan.

“No. Mary Kendal is most anxious to tell him herself now.” She told us to

make brief explanations, adding: “All he needs now is Mary Kendal.”

Shortly afterward Mary K.’s now familiar summons—an indescribable

sensation in the arm or hand—recalled me to the pencil, and she wrote,

quickly and firmly: “Mary Kendal wants you to change your record.”

Surprised, I asked what change she wished, and was told to take out

everything relating to her banishment from Mansfield’s life, because she

preferred to tell him that in her own way.

“Shall I show him the record at all?” I asked.

“Yes, but take that out first.” Fortunately, the record is kept in a

loose-leaf, typewritten book, so this was not difficult.

As the day wore on I grew more and more nervous. Suppose he should be

more hurt than helped? Suppose we should fail? Rarely in my life have I

dreaded anything so much, or felt so little confidence in anything I had

deliberately undertaken to do. By nine o’clock I was in a nervous chill.

Meanwhile Mr. Kendal telephoned that he had found my letters, which had

been returned to his club, and that he would join us presently.

Upon his arrival he told us that he had been one of the early members

of the Society for Psychical Research in this country, and had spent

several years investigating phenomena of this nature, together with

various other young men, under the general supervision of Prof. William

James, Dr. Minot Savage, and others of that group. He mentioned some

of the frauds and self-deceptions uncovered at that time, but said he

believed the ultimate conclusion to have been that there were certain

well-authenticated phenomena for which no logical or scientific

explanation had been found.

Nothing that he said, however, indicated to the slightest degree his

attitude toward the question in hand, and I received an impression that

his mood was critical, which steadied me. The disappointment, should we

fail, would be less hideous. In the end, he suggested a trial, and after

preparing the table, Cass left us alone.

The pencil started almost immediately, with a strange, jerkily rhythmical

movement—due possibly to Mary’s agitation, possibly to mine, but wrote

very distinctly, without pause or faltering. It was evident at once that

the message conveyed more to him than its words suggested.

Much later in the evening he told me that for some time after Mary left

him he had believed that if she still existed anywhere in the universe

she would contrive somehow to let him know; but as months had passed

into years, with no sign from her, while never entirely losing faith

in the continued integrity of the individual after death, his despair

had deepened with his growing conviction that “the drop that was Mary”

had been swept on in the stream and forever lost to him. Widely read in

philosophies and unable to forget them, steeped—despite his practical

occupation—in scientific and intellectual theory, he had feared to rely

upon a reunion in a future of which no proof had been given him, lest he

be grounding his faith in the sands of his own hope.

It was to this unhappy conviction—a conviction so strong in its negation

that for a time she had been unable to penetrate in any way the psychic

atmosphere it created—that she addressed herself in those first written

lines. She used, also, her intimate name for him, which I had never

heard, and his for her, which I knew, although I supposed the peculiar

spelling used on this occasion to be an error, until he told me otherwise.

He asked one or two questions about personal matters, which I assumed to

be in the nature of tests, which she answered briefly, though not very

specifically, concluding: “I cannot tell you anything to-night, except

that I am so happy. I had lost you, and you are found again. Let me talk

to you to-morrow.”

Some time later he wanted to know why he could not read her mind direct,

and she replied: “You can, in time, if you will let me in, and learn.

We can have such communion as we never had before, because one veil is

now removed. But that will take time to learn. It is true. It can be....

Take me into your heart and soul joyfully, without resentment or grief,

and you will soon learn to read my thoughts as I have read yours since I

seemed to leave you.

“Then I can tell you things that I cannot say through any messenger....

You can learn.... All I want now is to convince you that I am alive and

longing to be with you and to have communication directly with you. It is

impossible for me to do that alone. But I had to reach you somehow, and

Margaret was the first way I found.”

We talked a little of the possibility of his establishing direct

communication with her. I asked whether he could use a pencil in this

way, and she returned: “Yes, if he will try every day, he could in time,

I think. There is always a way for us to reach our dearest ones, if they

only persevere.”

During a pause, with the pencil-point still resting on the paper, I told

him of Mary K.’s assertion that eons ago some of us had been one and that

we still continue one in purpose. Mary Kendal took it up immediately.

“Manzie, you and I are the same purpose. That is the reason that, once

reunited, we cannot be separated, except by our deliberate yielding

to a different and disintegrating purpose. That is the eternal

battle—between the purposes of progress and building and the purposes

of disintegration. It goes on in your life, and it goes on less bitterly

in ours. Help me build, as we began, toward the great unity.... All of

us here are working against those forces of disintegration so rife in

your life now, and every bit of retention of unity that is for upbuilding

helps us and helps the great purpose for which we work.... You and I

began working for that long ago, and each of us will always continue to

work for it. But we shall be happier if we do it consciously together....

Don’t think of me as far away.... We will welcome to our unity anything

or anybody who strengthens the purpose, but let us always hold fast to

each other.”

Here was the first actual statement, however brief and incomplete, of

that theory of life which seems—to us who received it first, at least—so

rational, and so full of inspiration and hope.

Referring to her phrase, “all of us here,” he asked: “Is ‘here’ a place,

or a state, or both?”

“Both,” she answered, quickly. “It is the beginning of eternal life.”

After a moment, she added: “The state is fluid; the place is ephemeral.”

“I believe it!” he exclaimed. “That’s more nearly an explanation than

anything I ever heard before.”

“This is more nearly the truth than anything you ever heard before.

That’s why.... Truth in your life is comparative. Here it is absolute,

but not dogmatic.”

He said that she had not been given to the use of a philosophic

vocabulary in this life, and must have acquired it there, to which, at

the moment, she made no response.

Some time after Cass rejoined us Mr. Kendal asked how much farther, or

how much more clearly, they could see about purely business or political

matters than we.

“We can see much farther, but we are not permitted to tell you, except by

ethical suggestion. Part of your development comes through your struggle

to decide, and while we see your struggle, we can help only by giving

you as much of our strength and light as you can take. It _is_ a moral

universe, Manzie.” The underscoring is hers.

Out of his wide experience with psychic phenomena, he gave me much

comfort regarding the inaccuracies and misleading statements that had so

greatly disquieted me. He argued that these discrepancies might easily

be caused by some factor or factors unknown to us, operating on another

plane, and was entirely untroubled by them. In this connection, Mary

K. said to me the next day: “We regard things successfully started as

accomplished.”

[Some weeks later Mr. Kendal suggested another possible reason for these

apparent inaccuracies, using as a comparison a familiar experiment in

physics. He reminded us that if a rod be projected in a straight line

between the eye and a coin at the bottom of a bowl of water, its tip

will miss the coin by a distance varying with the angle of vision and

the depth of the water. Assuming that the difference between this plane

and the next must be vastly greater than that between air and water,

he argued that there might be a factor comparable to this deflection

of ray influencing their perception of material, specific details of

this plane—a simile which Mary K. subsequently characterized as “almost

perfect.”]

It was three o’clock in the morning when Mr. Kendal left us to return

to his club—but he went convinced. Like Mrs. Gaylord, his confidence

was inspired not only by the temper and tenor of the messages he

had received, but by the accompanying consciousness of a familiar

personality, akin to the certainty of identity one feels in talking to a

friend by telephone or in reading a characteristic letter. Like her, too,

he said that in several instances his unspoken thought had been directly

answered.

The next day we resumed our conversation—for it amounted to that—with

Mary.

“There will be hours, and sometimes days, when you cannot feel me, just

at first,” she warned him. “But I beg of you, do not let the doubts

prevail. I shall be there, unless that disintegrating force drives me

away. That’s a power we here cannot fight alone. Faith is not the desire

to believe, as some men have said. It is the thread that connects your

life and ours, and when it is broken we are powerless to reach you.”

We spoke again of inaccuracies concerning mundane activities, and he

elaborated somewhat his theory that it is unwise to ask and unsafe to

rely upon answers about concrete, specific things, because in translating

them into terms of our plane we are apt to overlook some transforming,

unknown factor, and so go wrong.

“Besides that,” Mary took up the discussion, “you must work out your

problem yourself. We can only help you definitely and directly in the

larger things that pertain to the life of our purpose. Your present

problem may be solved in any of several ways, and will perhaps affect the

ephemeral part of your life. Your greater concern, and my only concern,

is with the fluid part, which we shall share together always, now.”

He asked, after some further talk, whether there was danger of my being

exploited or employed by malign influences—a suggestion entirely new to

me—to which she replied in the negative, adding: “Trust us for that.

Her own purpose is definite, and with that foundation, we can protect

her fully.” Apparently she underestimated the strength of the enemy,

or perhaps she merely disregarded the temporary confusion created by

occasional sorties.

Thinking that he might know something about New Albany, Indiana, I

told him of the Annie Manning episode and my failure to ascertain her

brother’s address. Our conversation was interrupted by an unsigned

statement that the brother was not in New Albany, Indiana, but in Albany,

New Hampshire, flatly contradicting a previous statement. My impatient

comment was answered by an assurance that Annie Manning had recently

passed to the next plane and was confused. A suggestion that possibly

Annie Manning was one of the malign forces mentioned brought no response,

unless Mary Kendal’s next words constituted an indirect reply.

“Manzie dear, ... you will have entirely different forces working against

you, from those trying to control Margaret, but we will truly and surely

protect you both.”

Again, following a period of silence, she wrote a brisk reply to his

unspoken thought, adding, when he commented upon it: “You see, I do know

what is in your mind, and the time may not be far away when you can read

mine as clearly. I don’t always answer your thought, because Margaret has

still some fear of being deceived in her reception of my message, and it

is hard, but as she works with us she will learn unconsciously to yield,

just as you will learn to detect my presence.”

“Is there anything I can do to help you or your work?” he asked. “Or must

it be all take and no give with us?”

I have no record of her reply. She began by saying that any actively

constructive effort here helped them there, because it helped the great

purpose. This was followed by a message so intimately and exquisitely

his that I felt it almost a desecration to be the messenger through whom

it necessarily came. He took that part of the roll away with him, and I

am glad to say that twenty-four hours later no word of it remained in my

memory. It was truly his.

The next night he came again, very happily. She, too, was in a lightsome

mood, and while there was some serious talk, most of it was pure

effervescence, frequently witty, sometimes brilliant. Unfortunately,

little of this may be quoted, either because of its too personal

character or because, like much amusing conversation, it was too

essentially of the mood and the moment to bear translation into type.

Constantly he exclaimed at the characteristic quality of her repartee, to

my great surprise. I said that I had never seen this merry side of her,

and had not dreamed that it existed, to which she replied: “You never saw

us when we were not in trouble—before.”

“Let me in and don’t chafe,” she told him, in one of her more serious

moments, “and I can tell you much of what I see ahead. Grief, resentment,

bitterness and doubt are our highest barriers. There is no cause for

grief in a relation closer than your life there knows. There is no ground

for resentment in the price we pay. There can be no bitterness in growth

and development together—quicker growth, fuller development, than could

be possible if one of us were not here. It is largely in the point of

view, this thing that is called grief.”

In the course of their drifting talk he asked her how to go about

starting persons who have no starting-point—“no peg to hang things on.”

“Sometimes a bomb is effective. But the fragments are not always

efficient.” We laughed, and she added: “They just have to wait and

grow up, Manzie dear. We learn here that our frantic haste there has

been foolish. Growth must take its own time.... No, I didn’t!” I had

called attention to her failure to cross a t, and she returned to it

with a flourish. Several times thereafter she made a little joke by

conspicuously dotting her i’s.

In the midst of one ecstatic whirl she paused to inquire: “Who ever

started the foolish notion that there was no life beyond that one?

Was he a philosopher, or a dyspeptic, or both?” And again, following

some amusing nonsense, “You don’t think this would sound trivial to a

scientific investigator, do you?”

“What’s the matter with the scientific type of mind?” he asked.

“Mostly it’s pure intellect—and life isn’t.”

During another moment of jesting he said: “I don’t think I’ll bother to

walk home. I’ll just float.”

“Come on! We’ll float together,” she retorted. “Do you raise that, or

call?”

Laughing, he returned: “I’ll pass the buck to Saint Peter,” whereupon she

intimated that Saint Peter was not immediately available.

“Who hold the keys?”

“You hold your own—not transferable.”

“You are mostly pure idealist,” was another comment, a little later,

replying to something he said about his own attitude toward life, “and

got lost for a while in the dark.” He began to say that he should hardly

have called himself an idealist, but already she was answering. “A true

idealist is not a man who limits life to ideas, but a man who puts his

ideals into life.”

One otherwise serious statement, concerning the influence of

“hard-headed, intelligent men who are not afraid to testify to their

faith” in these revelations, was given a humorous touch by the signature,

“Missionary Mary.”

“Do you want me to go forth and testify, also?” I asked.

“No, you do it, and that involves too much,” she replied. “Let your

converts testify. You go on playing hermit.”

“Have you seen William James?” he asked.

“He is instructing many of us. Some of my newly acquired vocabulary he

taught me. He is more certain and less philosophical than he was. The

will to believe has given way to the duty of faith. He has learned more

quickly than most do, because he is truly sincere and had cultivated his

ground well. Now he is still a leader of thought and accomplishment, but

his instruction is dynamic.... He is a very fine force, Manzie, and is

doing magnificent work here, but he no longer smothers it in language.”

Much of this parting interview must be omitted.

At nine o’clock Sunday night Mr. Kendal had approached this experience in

a state of high nervous tension. At midnight on Tuesday, fifty-one hours

later, he left us to return home, imbued, like Mrs. Gaylord, with the

vitalizing quality of this touch with the unseen and carrying with him

the happy conviction that he did not go alone.

VIII

Up to this time the messages, while frequently impersonal in tenor,

had seemed entirely personal in direction. It happened, fortunately,

that both Mrs. Gaylord and Mr. Kendal were more interested in the wide

meaning and purpose of life than in the narrow, individual details of

its conduct, and to that interest chiefly those nearest them on the

next plane had addressed themselves. The rapidity with which these

communications came, and their surprising volume, was attributed to the

fact that in both cases the time in which they could be given through me

was limited.

Aside from the attendant nervous strain—which has been less, on the

whole, than one would expect, probably because these efforts have been

followed by such sound and refreshing sleep as I had not known before in

years—the manual labor involved in taking these long messages, and in

typewriting them afterward, has been excessive. Assuming, however, that

this flood of disclosure would be diminished when the necessity for

immediate expression passed, I looked forward to leisure and opportunity

for some long talks with Mary K., which should be more detailed and

personal than our somewhat fragmentary intercourse thus far had been.

This was briefly delayed by requests to establish interplane

communication for one or two other friends, whose need was more

imperative than my own, when significant and beautiful messages—not to

be quoted here—were obtained. One of these slightly elaborated the now

familiar idea of the close and intimate relation of certain persons to

one another, because of their union in a common and eternal purpose. In a

letter to Mr. Kendal I mentioned this, adding: “It begins to look like a

gospel, doesn’t it?”

Finally, however, my own opportunity came, on Thursday, March 21st, but

instead of permitting me to propound any of the many questions I had in

mind, Mary K. delivered a detailed message of instruction that left me

astounded and incredulous. Most of this is too personal to repeat, but

some of it must be quoted, in view of what followed.

“...We have much to tell, and few through whom to tell it. You have the

sensitiveness to receive and the power to convince. When you have fully

grasped the meaning of what we have to tell, you must make it known, but

not before we give you the whole of it. You will get the truth slowly,

through helping many people, but keep the full knowledge frankly back

until it is all told.... Let them know you are withholding it, but do not

let them have it in fragments.”

“You mean they are not to be told of the division of original purpose

into individual life?”

“No, they must have that to build on. But there will be more given to

you in fragments. Piece it together for yourself, but do not give it to

any one as long as you are still receiving it.... The light is breaking,

and you are the ~aces~ ... accustomed ...”—later she returned, to write

“accredited” over this word. I think neither was what she tried for.

Perhaps accessible?—“... force to make the meaning clear.... It is what

we have long sought and just found. That is the reason we are giving you

things never told before. You are to pass them on when the time comes....

This is your work, your contribution to the great purpose, which will be

revealed to you little by little. Keep clear of disturbing contacts, as

you have done, and keep your purpose true. You have already recognized

this as a gospel. It is more. It is a faith. Be true to it and it will

save many from suffering. That is the reason I am here now and shall

remain. I am the force used by greater forces to reach the world through

you. We have always been the same purpose, and I can reach you freely.”

After an allusion to mental purpose, she defined it thus: “Mental purpose

is the force that convinces men. Moral purpose is that which persuades

them. We prefer conviction. It lasts, where persuasion fades. Nothing

more now, but this is only the beginning. Mary K.”

After the first phrase, save for one or two brief pauses, this long

communication was so rapidly written that I could not follow it with

my left hand, though I made several attempts, as my right arm became

greatly fatigued. At no time had I the slightest impression of what was

to be said, and during most of it I was too bewildered to think clearly,

my mind being filled with blank wonder and vague questioning, scarcely

formulated, yet immediately answered.

The next day she resumed her exhortation.

“... This is war work. It is going to make the war seem what it is,

a reawakening of the souls of men. There is no higher duty than to

make a man know his own soul and the souls of his fellows. The war

will be justified only if this result is obtained. We work for that

here, and we ask you to help us. There can be no victory unless this is

accomplished.... Be true to your purpose and ours, and help us build for

light and progress, against the forces of doubt and disintegration.”

To an inquiry about Germany, apropos of her mention of the war, she

replied: “Germany is the united purpose of fear. It is her weapon and

her weakness, and it is to defeat the force she symbolizes that we all

work.... There you have the real war, the battle that has gone on from

the beginning. This is one of the crises of eternity.”

Here I thought of certain past wars, when the victorious barbarians set

civilization back.

“Sometimes the forces of disintegration have won, sometimes we. But

their victory is never permanent, because they are negative and we are

positive. They delay us, but we live and work. We shall win in the end,

but that is far away. We call you to fight with the forces of life and

light. You can do more with us than you can alone.”

The following day found me still incredulous, and she said:

“... Tell them that you are doing the people’s work, under secret

orders, and that they will perhaps know presently what it is. They

will all recognize it when it is given to them, except those souls not

mentally free from fear.”

From this she passed immediately into the first of that remarkable series

of communications which she has called Lessons. Again the writing was so

rapid that my arm ached to the shoulder, long before she had finished,

from the incessant movement to and fro across the table, and again my

mind was filled with blank amazement.

Perhaps it should be stated that, although I have written more or less

light fiction during the past fifteen years, literary composition is to

me a slow and laborious exercise. Especially is this true of opening

paragraphs, which generally require many hours of work. Unfortunately,

the time consumed in writing one of these Lessons was never noted, but

with one or two exceptions, when I was too tired to receive readily, they

were done without hesitation and with extraordinary rapidity. Also, while

in personal messages the mental impression is sometimes given to me a

little before the physical movement occurs, never during the writing of

the Lessons had I the slightest inkling of what was to follow. One by

one the words were revealed by the moving pencil, my principal sensations

being wonder and incredulity. Until frequent repetition had accustomed me

to this experience, I felt as if I must be dreaming.