“Are you still interested in politics here?” he was asked, a little later. “Oh yes. But they are in a state of transition that is fearfully difficult to understand or to influence now. The seed has been sown, but the harvest is not yet garnered. Nobody knows what will come of it in this country.” “Are you conscious there of what people here call God?” his mother asked. “We are conscious of a great purpose. Some of us call it God. I see it as light in dark places. Others see it as power. Others as love. But we all recognize it as a purpose.” At luncheon that day we had spoken of Prof. William James and Sir Frederick Myers, and later in the evening Mrs. Gaylord asked Frederick whether he knew Professor James. “I know him, but I am not sure he knows me. He is a great force, and many of us go to him for help and instruction. Only one other man has the same sort of power. That is Sir Frederick.” “Are you with people from this world only?” some one asked. “And does everybody go there, or only a certain element?” “There are people from this world only, but it is as with you, not all people are equally prepared. Growth is easier here if one has earned it there. But not all have earned it, and the penalty for laziness is long struggle.... Purgatory is not a bad definition of it. The right to do big work must be earned. Some people have a terrible struggle of it. [Their?] Moral muscles are flabby.” “Do you agree with Mary Kendal that there is humor there, but that this is no time for it?” “Oh, she didn’t mean that! She meant that this particular crisis is not humorous to her. She is deeply concerned to get into touch with him.... Good night, Mother dearest. I’ll be with you all night.” “Good night,” said Mary Kendal. “I’m sorry I upset you.” IV The more I thought about the Kendal affair the more perplexing it seemed, and since I could neither question that Mary Kendal and Frederick had actually communicated through me nor believe that she would wilfully deceive me, there seemed no possible explanation of the episode Saturday night, except some unconscious influence of my own mind. By the next afternoon I had almost persuaded myself that the repeated erroneous statements about Mr. Kendal had been induced, in some way not traceable, by my increasing anxiety concerning his reception of the letters I had sent to his club. After luncheon, we took up the communication again, and immediately, without interrogation, the pencil wrote, “You are a good messenger.” “Who is writing?” I asked. “Frederick.” “How much of this do I do, and how much is yours?” “You do very little. Mostly, you lend a hand.” This is so literally what I do that we laughed. “You are by nature skeptical,” he continued. “Mother dearest, you must not let her make you doubt that I have said all these things.” “It unsettles me when I know what the message is to be before it is written,” I persisted. “Do you suggest it to me, or I to you?”