_Apropos_ of these still-born children, I had a curious experience with Mrs. Fitzgerald. I had had no idea until then that children so born possessed any souls, or lived again, but "Florence" undeceived me when she told me she had charge of her little brothers and sisters. She even professed to know the names by which they were known in the spirit world. When a still-born baby is launched upon the other side, she said it is delivered over to the nearest relative of its parent, to be called by what name he may choose. Thus my first girl was christened by Colonel Lean's mother "Gertrude," after a bosom friend of hers, and my second my father named "Joan," as he said it was his favorite female name. Upon subsequent inquiry, we found that Mrs. Lean _had_ a friend called "Gertrude," and that "Joan" was distinctly Captain Marryat's _beau ideal_ of a woman's name. However, that signified but little. I became very curious to see or speak with these unknown babies of mine, and used to worry "Florence" to bring them to me. She would expostulate with me after this fashion: "Dear mother, be reasonable. Remember what babies they are, and that this world is quite strange to them. When your earthly children were small you never allowed them to be brought down before strangers, for fear they should cry. 'Gertie' and 'Yonnie' would behave just the same if I brought them back to you now." However, I went on teasing her till she made the attempt, and "Gertie" returned through Mrs. Fitzgerald. It was a long time before we could coax her to remain with us, and when she overcame her first shyness, it was like talking to a little savage. "Gertie" didn't know the meaning of anything, or the names of anything. Her incessant questions of "What's a father?" "What a mother?" "What's a dog?" were very difficult to answer; but she would chatter about the spirit-world, and what she did there, as glibly as possible. She told us that she knew her brother Francis (the lad who was drowned at sea) very well, and she "ran races, and Francis 'chivied' her; and when he caught her, he held her under the fountain, and the spray wetted her frock, and made it look like silver." The word "_chivied_" sounding to me very much of a mundane character, I asked "Gertie" where she learned it; and she said, "Francis says 'chivy,' so _I_ may," and it was indeed a common expression with him. "Gertie" took, after a while, such a keen interest in my ornaments and china, rather to their endangerment, that I bought a doll to see if she would play with it. At first she was vastly delighted with the "little spirit," as she called it, and nursed it just as a mortal child would have done. But when she began to question me as to the reason the doll did not look at her, or answer her, or move about, and I said it was because it was not alive, she was dreadfully disappointed. "_Not alive!_" she echoed; "didn't God make it?" and when I replied in the negative, she threw it