XXVII. THE MAGIC RING 115 XXVIII. EXCEPT YE BE AS LITTLE CHILDREN 121 XXIX. AN UNEXPECTED WARNING 126 XXX. THE SYLPH AND THE MAGICIAN 131 XXXI. A PROBLEM IN CELESTIAL MATHEMATICS 139 XXXII. A CHANGE OF FOCUS 147 XXXIII. FIVE RESOLUTIONS 153 XXXIV. THE PASSING OF LIONEL 158 XXXV. THE BEAUTIFUL BEING 167 XXXVI. THE HOLLOW SPHERE 173 XXXVII. AN EMPTY CHINA CUP 179 XXXVIII. WHERE TIME IS NOT 187 XXXIX. THE DOCTRINE OF DEATH 195 XL. THE CELESTIAL HIERARCHY 205 XLI. THE DARLING OF THE UNSEEN 210 XLII. A VICTIM OF THE NON-EXISTENT 219 XLIII. A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 228 XLIV. THE KINGDOM WITHIN 235 XLV. THE GAME OF MAKE-BELIEVE 237 XLVI. HEIRS OF HERMES 241 XLVII. ONLY A SONG 247 XLVIII. INVISIBLE GIFTS AT YULETIDE 250 XLIX. THE GREATER DREAMLAND 258 L. A SERMON AND A PROMISE 265 LI. THE APRIL OF THE WORLD 273 LII. A HAPPY WIDOWER 276 LIII. THE ARCHIVES OF THE SOUL 284 LIV. A FORMULA FOR MASTERSHIP 288 INTRODUCTION ONE night last year in Paris I was strongly impelled to take up a pencil and write, though what I was to write about I had no idea. Yielding to the impulse, my hand was seized as if from the outside, and a remarkable message of a personal nature came, followed by the signature “X.” The purport of the message was clear, but the signature puzzled me. The following day I showed this writing to a friend, asking her if she had any idea who “X” was. “Why,” she replied, “don’t you know that that is what we always call Mr. ----?” I did not know. Now, Mr. ---- was six thousand miles from Paris, and, as we supposed, in the land of the living. But a day or two later a letter came to me from America, stating that Mr. ---- had died in the western part of the United States, a few days before I received in Paris the automatic message signed “X.”