“Ever since my boyhood I have been interested in the subject of spiritualism. For many years I have asked myself the question: ’_Can_ the dead come back?’... One morning, after a late rehearsal, I reached home at three o’clock, completely fagged out. No sooner had I fallen asleep than I seemed to waken, and there stood my mother beside my bed. ’Davie, Davie, Davie,’ she said three times, smiled, and bending over kissed me good-bye. She said other things--told me she was happy--not to grieve. I could not stir, but kept my eyes fixed upon her as she moved towards the door and disappeared. How long I lay staring into the darkness I do not know, but at last I managed to collect myself, put on my dressing-gown, and, still dazed, went downstairs to a little sitting-room. My family heard me. ’What are you doing downstairs?’ my youngest child, Augusta, asked, and she tried to coax me back to bed. I went to my room, but I could not sleep. When I told my family of my vision, and that I believed my mother was dead, they suggested that I was overwrought and tired and had seen my mother in a dream. “I went to rehearsal the next morning, and during an interval had luncheon at Churchill’s--then a small coffeehouse--with a member of the theatre staff. I sat there, much troubled, thinking of the figure of my mother as she appeared in the dawn. My companion noticed my silence, and, when I told him of my experience, tried to reassure me. As we rose to go he handed me some letters and telegrams he had found in the box-office. Among the telegrams was one telling me the sad news of my mother’s death. Later I found that she died at the exact time she appeared at my bedside. At the very moment I saw her she was passing out of the world. Several years after, when I paid a visit to San Francisco, my brothers and sisters told me my mother smiled and murmured my name three times before she died.... I do not know that the dead _do_ come back. I _do_ know that at the time of passing the spirit sends a thought through space, and this thought is so powerful that the receiver can see the sender. This was proved by my dear mother. She came to me no more, however.”