This is all the more remarkable because there is a most passionate desire amongst the living to find out what the inhabitants of the gloomy land are doing, and there is a class of women who get their living by professing to be able to penetrate the mystery and describe what is going on there. These persons resemble very much the Witch of Endor, who is recorded to have called forth the prophet Samuel from the invisible world to predict the calamity that was going to fall upon King Saul in the battle to take place on the morrow. These women are utterly illiterate, and belong to what may be called the lower middle class of society. They are shrewd and clever, and have a rough persuasive manner with them that commands the belief of the less intelligent women that resort to them to learn about the relatives and friends that have been removed by death. There is the most profound faith in their utterances, for though they do make mistakes and say things about the deceased that are contrary to fact, they so often hit upon real facts that the inquirer, astonished that they should know something that was supposed to be a family secret, at once jumps to the conclusion that they must certainly be inspired by the spirits. Some of the more famous of these witches are constantly being resorted to by sorrowing relatives, so that they make a very comfortable living, whilst a few lay by money and in time become quite wealthy. But I will here describe one or two cases that have come under my own knowledge as having actually occurred. A lady in respectable society had lost her daughter, who was eighteen years of age. Both the girl and her mother were devotedly attached to each other. The latter, anxious to know how the loved one was faring in the dark country where no sun or moon or stars ever shone, called in a witch that she might describe to her the condition of her daughter. The witch having seated herself, the ancestral tablet that was believed to contain the spirit of the dead maiden was placed upon a high table and several sticks of incense were burned in front of it. The mother then in a loud, clear voice called out the name of her daughter, her age, and the date on which she had died, and she entreated her to come and reply to the questions that the witch was now going to put to her. The woman, who had been sitting with a stern and stolid looking face as though wrapped in spiritual meditation, now addressed the girl who it was believed had obeyed the summons of the mother. "Is your name Pearl?" "Yes." "Did you die on such a date and were you eighteen years of age then?" These questions are asked in order to identify her, and to prevent her from being confused with any other vagrant spirit that might have wandered here in order to play a trick upon her.