Then he was gone, and Mary came again, writing “Miss A——, messenger,”
many times. Later, Frederick interrupted to write one word, “family.”[5]
Then another hand began writing “Annie Manning,” over and over, and,
“tell Manning.” I said that I knew no Manning. How find him? Answer,
“Question.” I did not know what that meant.... There was a lot more, but
I am too tired to write it to-night.
B—— Gaylord telephoned to-night. She is either coming to New York
Thursday or going to Atlantic City, if I am there.... This is the most
amazing thing that ever happened to me! To-night it was as if several
were trying to talk at once. I am almost afraid to have B. G. come,
yet it was for her sake that I began this. It seems too indefinite
and unsatisfactory. But at least she can be sure I am not faking it.
Something outside of me does it.
* * * * *
That same evening I wrote to Mansfield Kendal, though what his attitude
toward this situation would be I could not even guess. We had known
him well for several years, but our numerous discussions had never
touched questions of religious faith and a future life. A man of
extensive reading and of wide interests, supplemented by long residence
abroad, he has been engaged for years in the executive conduct of large
engineering and agricultural enterprises. I knew him to be intellectually
open-minded. But I also knew him to be a devoted adherent of the orthodox
Church, giving much time and thought to its support, and I was afraid
that an assumption on my part of ability to communicate with the departed
might offend some deep and reverent sense in him. Therefore, while I
wrote him fully of my surprising experience, giving him Mary’s messages,
I promised at the same time never to force the subject in conversation,
should he prefer not to discuss it. Subsequently, impelled by Mary’s
continued insistence, I wrote several other letters to him, which, like
the first, were sent to his club in New York City, as I knew him to
be traveling in the Middle West and thought they would reach him more
quickly in this way than if sent to his business headquarters in the
South.
Thus, curiously, I found myself vicariously engaged in a double search
for a mother on this plane seeking her son on the next, and for a wife on
the next plane seeking her husband here, and it is significant that, of
the two, Mary Kendal was the more insistent. As she said, later, “We know
how much it means.”
_From a letter to Cass, dated Tuesday morning, March 5th_:
Another evening with Mary! H. dined with me. I told her something about
planchette, and she wanted to see it work.... This time it wrote, “Mary
Kendal,” at once, and, “Tell Manse I love him.... Tell him Miss A——
is messenger from some one he knows.... Mentally beautiful people are
fearless.... Faith is fearlessness.... Mannerisms are essential to
recognition.” Some of these took a long time to work out.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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