Lady Lodge impressed me considerably with the genuine and deeply affecting character of the above episode of personal control. It was evidently difficult to get over for the rest of the day. I doubt if the bare record conveys much: though it may to people of like experience. CHAPTER XII GENERAL REMARKS ON CONVERSATIONAL REPORTS AND ON CROSS-CORRESPONDENCES It may be asked why I report so much of what may be called ordinary conversation, instead of abbreviating and concentrating on specific instances and definite statements of fact. I reply:-- 1. That a concentrated version is hard to read, while a fuller version is really less tedious in spite of its greater length. A record is always a poor substitute for actual experience; and too much abbreviation might destroy whatever relic of human interest the records possess. 2. That abbreviation runs the risk of garbling and amending; it is undesirable in reports of this kind to amend style at the expense of accuracy. 3. That the mannerisms and eccentricities of a 'control' (or secondary personality) are interesting, and may be instructive; at any rate they exhibit to a novice the kind of thing to be expected. 4. A number of inquiries want to know--and I think properly want to know--what a sitting is like, what kind of subjects are talked about, what the 'communicators'--_i.e._ the hypothetical personalities who send messages through the 'control'--have to say about their own feelings and interests and state of existence generally. Hence, however the record be interpreted, it seems better to quote some specimens fully. 5. I am aware that some of the records may appear absurd. Especially absurd will appear the free-and-easy statements, quoted later, about the nature of things 'on the other side,'--the kind of assertions which are not only unevidential but unverifiable, and which we usually either discourage or suppress. I have stated elsewhere my own reasons for occasionally encouraging statements of this kind and quoting them as they stand. (See beginning of Chapter XVI.) And though I admit that to publish them is probably indiscreet, I still think that the evidence, such as it is, ought to be presented as a whole. 6. The most evidential class of utterance, what we call cross-correspondence, is not overlooked; and while every now and then it occurs naturally and spontaneously, sometimes an effort is made to obtain it. NOTE ABOUT THE MEANING OF CROSS-CORRESPONDENCE It will be convenient to explain that by the term "Cross-correspondence" is meant the obtaining through two or more independent mediums, at about the same time, a message from a single communicator on any one definite subject.