At the risk of being laughed at, I cannot refrain, in the course of this narrative of my spiritualistic experiences, from saying a few words about what is called "laying the cards." "Imagine!" I fancy I hear some dear creature with nose "tip-tilted like a flower" exclaim, "any sensible woman believing in cards." And yet Napoleon believed in them, and regulated the fate of nations by them; and the only times he neglected their admonitions were followed by the retreat from Moscow and the defeat at Waterloo. Still I did not believe in card-telling till the belief was forced upon me. I always thought it rather cruel to give imprisonment and hard labor to old women who laid the cards for servant girls. Who can tell whether or no it is obtaining money upon false pretences; and if it is, why not inflict the same penalty on every cheating tradesman who sells inferior articles or gives short weight? Women would be told they should look after their own interests in the one case--so why not in the other? But all the difference lies in _who_ lays the cards. Very few people can do it successfully, and my belief is that it must be done by a person with mediumistic power, which, in some mysterious manner, influences the disposition of the pack. I have seen cards shuffled and cut twenty times in the hope of getting rid of some number antagonistic to the inquirer's good fortune, and yet each time the same card would turn up in the juxtaposition least to be desired. However, to narrate my own experience. When I was living in Brussels, years before I heard of modern Spiritualism, I made the acquaintance of an Irish lady called Mrs. Thorpe, a widow who was engaged as a _châperon_ for some young Belgian ladies of high birth, who had lost their mother. We lived near each other, and she often came in to have a chat with me. After a while I heard through some other friends that Mrs. Thorpe was a famous hand at "laying the cards;" and one day, when we were alone, I asked her to tell me my fortune. I didn't in the least believe in it, but I wanted to be amused. Mrs. Thorpe begged to be excused at once. She told me her predictions had proved so true, she was afraid to look into futurity any more. She had seen a son and heir for a couple who had been married twenty years without having any children, and death for a girl just about to become a bride--and both had come true; and, in fact, her employer, the Baron, had strictly forbidden her doing it any more whilst in his house. However, this only fired my curiosity, and I teased her until, on my promising to preserve the strictest secrecy, she complied with my request. She predicted several things in which I had little faith, but which I religiously wrote down in case they came true--the three most important being that my husband, Colonel Ross-Church (who was then most seriously ill in India), would not die, but that his brother, Edward Church, would; that I should have