As has been said, our invisible friends have seemed somewhat hazy in
their perceptions of time and place and of mundane details generally, and
they have shown no inclination to concern themselves with our trivial
personal affairs. When pressed for specific statements about small
details, their replies have been sometimes in exact accordance with
the fact as we have perceived it, sometimes not, but they have rarely
diverged widely from the truth. In the larger matters directly related
to spiritual unity and growth they have been correct, as when Mary K.
explicitly stated, March 23d (already quoted), that the German offensive
then in progress and up to that time successful would ultimately fail.
On one occasion, apropos of certain questions her husband had asked, Mary
Kendal said: “We are not here to satisfy intellectual or any other kind
of curiosity. If we were not sure you would use this information for
construction, we wouldn’t fuss about it—except you and I, Manzie.”
Several times during March and April, however, Mary K. gave me correct
and specific information about various minor affairs, and these incidents
are mentioned here because I have been asked repeatedly whether such
statements had been made and verified, rather than because undue
importance is attached to them.
For example, hastening to an appointment one morning (March 29th), I
carelessly left my muff in a taxicab. Discovering the loss an hour later,
I telephoned to the cab company, to be told that no report had been
received from the cabman, but that they would try to locate him at one of
their various stands. It was arranged that I should call at their office
for it late in the afternoon, had it been found.
During luncheon, which I took at a restaurant, Mary K. indicated that she
had something to say, and on the back of an envelop wrote: “Your muff is
found for you.” Two hours later, when I reached home, the muff had been
returned by the cabman.
Another incident, less accurate in detail, but substantially correct,
concerned Mr. Kendal and my record-book. Having had, during his brief
stay in New York, no leisure in which to read the record—which then
contained only the genesis of this experience, Frederick’s first
interviews with his mother, and some messages from Mary Kendal not
included in my letters to her husband—he had taken the book away with
him (March 20th), and three or four days later I began looking for its
return. When, on the 29th or 30th (exact date not noted), it had not
arrived, I asked Mary K. whether she knew anything about it, and she
replied that it had been sent and would probably reach me that day. At
that time the record, wrapped and addressed, lay on his desk, where he
had left it with instructions that it be mailed when he left home for the
Easter week-end. It had been overlooked, and he found it there when he
returned on the following Monday. Apparently Mary K. perceived only his
intention and belief that it was on its way to me.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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