Persons, without being fully aware of it, find themselves more or less reflected in these seances. They reap what they sow. Their condition of mind prevents the forms from approaching them. I have known persons to visit seances many times without receiving any attention; and, on the other hand, I have seen entire strangers, coming from distant parts of the country, who had never before been in a seance-room, receive the most tender demonstrations of affection and recognition. Sometimes these forms have treated me to little jokes, that illustrated better than words the information I was seeking; enjoying heartily anything that for a moment seemed to disconcert me. What claimed to be my niece came to me in a very beautiful illuminated dress. I asked her to appear to me at the next seance dressed in the same way. I took a friend with me to that seance, expecting to astonish him with the wonderful illumination. But, instead of keeping her promise, she came out in a dark dress, such as I had never seen her wear. As my friend had gone up to the cabinet with me, I was greatly disappointed in the way she came, and said, "Bertha, why do you come in this dress?" Placing her right elbow in the palm of her left hand and her index finger on her lip, in a bashful, coquettish way, she said, "I'm in mourning." I said, "For what?" She replied, "I expect I have lost my friend." I said to my companion, "This is something new; I don't understand it." While we were both looking at her, instantly the dark dress disappeared, and she stood before us radiant in her beautiful garments. With a girlish laugh she threw her arms around my neck, kissed me and said, "It is all right now, uncle." The disappearance of the dark dress was quite as marvellous to my friend as the illumination. I have never been able to detect any fraud, or any indication of it, on the part of Mrs. Fay at these seances; and in the absence of any information which would lead to any other conclusion, I shall hereafter call these forms spirits. That they are not beings belonging to this side of life, I feel certain. What they are, each one must determine for himself. CHAPTER III. MATERIALIZATION AND DEMATERIALIZATION OF OBJECTS. The severest tests which I could apply to these manifestations convinced me that not only the forms which surrounded these spirits, but the garments which they wore were "materialized" (that is, made visible and tangible out of previously invisible substances) inside of the cabinet. How this is done we may not comprehend. Emerson says, "The whole world is the flux of matter over the wires of thought to the points or poles where it would build." We only know that here, as in Nature, there must be a germ or starting-point around which the particles aggregate. This is seen in the materialization of objects, which is important as being the only materializations outside the cabinet, and the only ones that we can study.