Some few months ago, my wife and I were sitting, and a communication came ostensibly from our child. It was quite unexpected; and I said, "I thought you could not communicate." "I could not before," was the reply. "But you have not tried me for two years." This we found was true; but we actually had to look into dates to ascertain it. He added, that he always was present at seances where I went, and especially at Mrs. B----'s. It will, I daresay, sound strange to non-spiritualists, but the initiated can understand the conversational tone we adopt. I said, "But, Johnny, that was not your hand that touched me at Mrs. B----'s. It was too large." The answer was, "No! it was Charlie's turn." I said, "What _do_ you mean by Charlie's turn?" The word was rewritten with almost petulant haste and remarkable plainness, "Charlie's _twin_." Charlie is my eldest boy, and his twin-brother was still-born. He would be between thirteen and fourteen years of age, and that was precisely the sized hand I felt. This was curious; as the event had occurred a year before, and such an explanation had never even crossed my mind. I was promised that, if I would go to Mrs. B----'s again, each of the children would come and place a hand in mine. I went to the ordinary seance some time before Christmas, and was then told that the test I wished--which I had not then specified--should be given to me at a private seance. We had the private seance, but nothing occurred. Such is my case. To one section of my readers I shall appear credulous, to another hard of belief. I believe that I represent the candid inquirer. As for being scared off from the inquiry by those who call it unorthodox, or cry out "fire and brimstone," I should as little think of heeding them as the omniscient apothecaries who smile at my believing in mesmerism. If a man's opinions are worth anything--if he has fought his way to those opinions at the bayonet's point--he will not be scared off from them by the whole bench of Bishops on the one side, or the College of Surgeons on the other. Not that I for one moment plead guilty to heterodoxy, either scientific or theological. I am not, as I have said several times, a philosopher, but I believe it is scientific to hold as established what you can prove by experiment. I don't think my creed contains a jot or tittle beyond this. And as for theological orthodoxy, I simply take my stand upon the Canons of the Church of England. If all this spiritual business is delusion, how comes it that No. 72 of the Constitutions and Canons Ecclesiastical says: "Neither shall any minister, not licensed, attempt, upon any pretence whatever, either of possession or obsession, by fasting or prayer, to cast out any devil or devils?"