"I do not know in which of these 'mansions of the blest' Frederick Robertson, of whom you ask, is now dwelling, but you must not think because his spiritual circle is far removed from mine that all communication and companionship are cut off between us. On the contrary, he is often, very often, here, and I have not seldom held soul-communion with him and felt his spirit near to me. This circle, however, is but the outer edge of the spirit-world--only one step, indeed, removed from the life of the earth and of the body--and I don't think we are capable yet of understanding the finer distinctions of spiritual companionship." And then her voice seemed to sound to me like the voice of one in the far distance, I felt the darkness closing in upon me on every side, and knew that my hour of punishment was again at hand. Upon the details of that punishment it would serve no good purpose again to dwell, and if in the next two or three chapters I make only a passing allusion to my subsequent sufferings in Hades, the reader must understand that it is not because those sufferings had in any way ceased to be, but because I wish to put more prominently forward the singular facts in regard to the condition of others, which came to my knowledge during the time of my sojourning in the spirit-world. That these facts were not without their own influence in bringing about the change in myself, hereafter to be described, will, I think, be apparent to all, but that change I shall not attempt to trace out, step by step, to its ultimate development. It is of what I saw and heard, rather than of what I endured, that I now come to speak, and although my recollections are all too disconnected and fragmentary I give those recollections just as they still linger in my memory, and without attempting to follow too closely the narrative of my own personal doings in Hades. [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER IX. _I SEE SOME STRANGE SIGHTS IN HELL, AND AM FAVOURED WITH SOMETHING IN THE NATURE OF A SERMON._ "They eat, and drink, and scheme, and plod, They go to church on Sunday; And many are afraid of God, And more of Mrs. Grundy." It is a long time ago since Religion first took to preaching at the World, and now at last the World has grown wearied of it, and has taken in her turn to preaching at Religion; and in this verse by Mr. Locker-Lampson she has a text which is sternly, trenchantly, grimly true in its satire. I know there are folk who affect to be scandalized at what they consider an irreverence, but I for one can recall no sermon in which the worldliness and the worthlessness of many so-called Christians have received as terrible a rebuke as they have in these lines by a writer of _vers de société_.