In my own experience, I myself, not once, but over and over again, have seen all these symptoms unmistakably marked in those whose sole interest and aim in life seemed to be a constant attendance at séances. I have watched, in spite of every effort unable to check and dissuade, the fearfully rapid development of such characteristics in persons who have begun to dabble with Spiritism, at first no doubt in moods of levity and wanton curiosity, but soon with hectic anxiety and the most morbid absorption. Some fifteen years ago in a well-known English provincial town a circle was formed by a number of friends to experiment with table-turning, psychometry, the planchette, ouija-boards, crystal-gazing, and the like. They were, perhaps, a little tired of the usual round of social engagements, dances, concerts, bridge, the theatre, dinner parties, and all those mildly pleasurable businesses which go to make up life, or at least a great portion of life, for so many. They wanted some new excitement, something a little out of the ordinary. A lady, just returned home from a prolonged visit to London, had (it seems) been taken to some Spiritistic meeting, and she was full of the wonders both witnessed and heard there. The sense of the eerie, the unknown, lent a spice of adventure too. The earlier meetings were informal, first at one house, now at another. They began by being infrequent, almost casual, at fairly long intervals. Next a certain evening each week was fixed for these gatherings, which soon were fully attended by all concerned. No member would willingly miss a single reunion. Before long they met twice, three times, every evening in the week. Professional mediums were engaged who travelled down from London and other great cities, some at no small distance, to give strange exhibitions of their powers. I myself met two of these experts, a man and a woman, both of whose names I have since seen advertised in Spiritistic journals of a very recent date, and I am bound to say that I was most unfavourably impressed in each instance. Not that I for a moment think they were fraudulent, nor do I suspect any vulgar trickery or pose; they were undoubtedly honest, thoroughly convinced and sincere, which makes the matter ten times worse. And so from being mere idle triflers at a new game, incredulous and a little mocking, the whole company became besotted by their practices, fanatics whose thoughts were always and ever centred and concentrated upon their communion with spirits, who talked of nothing else, who seemed only to live for those evenings when they might meet and enter—as it were—another world. Argument, pleading, reproof, authority, official admonishment, all proved useless; one could only stand by and see the terrible thing doing its deadly work. The symptoms were exactly as above described. In two cases, men, the moral fibre was for a while apparently destroyed altogether; in another case, a woman, there was obsession, and persons