Then I went on to describe the process of my automatic writing, adding: “No person who had had even a minute fraction of my occult experience could be more coldly critical of that experience than I am. I freely welcome every logical argument against the belief that these letters are what they purport to be; but placing those arguments in opposition to the evidence which I have of the genuineness of them, the affirmations outweigh the denials, and I accept them. This evidence is too complex and much of it too personal to be even outlined here.” The second volume, which dealt with the war from the hidden side of things, and predicted the victory of the Allies, aroused even more interest than the first one. The flood of letters continued. In 1916, at the kind insistence of Joyce Kilmer, I published another and different little book of automatic writings, “Songs of a Vagrom Angel,” the angel being the Beautiful Being described by “X” in the Living Dead Man books. The “Songs” were charmingly received by the critics. The whole book, with the exception of three of the songs, had been “written down” in twenty-two hours. In the summer of 1916 I went to California, and it was there, in February, 1917, that the writing of this third book began. But I was growing more and more restive at the swamping of my literary career by automatic writings, and my mountainous correspondence left me less and less time for original work. Finally, in February, 1918, the “inner conflict” culminated in a complete cessation of automatic writing. The artist in me had become exasperated. If the reader will permit the exaggeration of the simile, I felt as a man might feel who was caught between the jaws of a lion that was carrying him away into a trackless jungle. Before March, 1914, I had been known as a poet and a novelist; since 1914 my name had become known in more countries than I have counted as a “psychic,” a medium of communication between the visible and the invisible worlds. I was not sorry that I had published the books, because so many people had written me that I had saved them from despair and even suicide; but I shrank from the publicity they brought me. I have been nearly devoured by these books and the readers of these books. I felt, in February, 1918, that I had a right to say that the incident was closed. But that did not mean a cessation of correspondence. Suffering souls to whose letters the limitations of time and uncertain health (for I had not been well since 1915) made it impossible to respond by return of post, would write again reproaching me with indifference to their sufferings. The situation had become inconceivable. And if I went out somewhere for an hour or two of social “rest,” I was surrounded by people who wanted me to talk to them about the “X” books, about their own dead friends, and the possibilities of communication.