Do they not come out of cabinets, wearing trailing robes and tin crowns, trying to palm themselves off as dead and gone kings and queens? Have they not an uncanny affinity for tables? And do they not talk through trumpets, ring bells and play other stupid pranks and lay the blame of it all on the defenceless dead? Had they not thrown discredit upon Noah Webster himself, accusing him of a written message which said, “It is tite times”? Truly their sins were as scarlet. Cartice admitted their iniquities without argument, and promised her friend that never, never, even in her most secret thoughts would she call her a medium, much less breathe the opprobrious epithet to others. They went patiently on with their investigation, devoting two evenings a week to Planchette and telling no one. It was by no means all fair weather work either. They soon found that the only thing they could be sure of was that they could depend on nothing; that with the intelligence which manipulated Planchette no contract could be made. They came, or they came not, just as it suited their good pleasure, and were obedient to no mandate or appeal. They were arbitrary always, and, as in most affairs of life, it was the unexpected that happened. From what the investigators could learn, it would seem, as Mr. W. T. Stead says, that although this world is queer the next appears to be queerer. As they went on, they held more and more to the belief that they were actually communicating with persons who had lived in flesh-and-blood bodies like our own, and who still lived, retaining the same characteristics that distinguished them here, but invisible to our eyes--inhabitants perhaps of the much discussed Fourth Dimension of Space. At least, one and all represented themselves as the persons whom we call dead, but who live--live in a freer, larger life. Occasionally they gave proofs of their identity so convincing that all doubt vanished. They made it clear that the spark of divinity we call individuality is a persistent, indestructible, deathless thing. Again, messages were written which were not only trifling and valueless, but also unsettling.