The very next spirit that appeared was my rough friend's mother, and his astonishment and emotion at seeing her were very unmistakeable. When first he went up to the cabinet and saw her his head drooped, and his shoulders shook with the sobs he could not repress. After a while he became calmer, and talked to her, and then I saw him also bringing her up to me. "I must bring my mother to you," he said, "that you may see she has really come back to me." I rose, and the old lady shook hands with me. She must have been, at the least, seventy years old, and was a most perfect specimen of old age. Her face was like wax, and her hair like silver; but every wrinkle was distinct, and her hands were lined with blue veins. She had lost her teeth, and mumbled somewhat in speaking, and her son said, "She is afraid you will not understand what she says; but she wants you to know that she will be quite happy if her return will make me believe in a future existence." "And will it?" I asked. He looked at his mother. "I don't understand it," he replied. "It seems too marvellous to be true; but how _can_ I disbelieve it, when _here she is_?" And his words were so much the echo of my own grounds for belief, that I quite sympathized with them. "John Powles," and "Ted," and "Florence," all came to see me that evening; and when I bid "Florence" "good-bye" she said, "Oh, it isn't 'good-bye' yet, mother! I'm coming again, before you go." Presently something that was the very farthest thing from my mind--that had, indeed, never entered it--happened to me. I was told that a young lady wanted to speak to me, and on going up to the cabinet I recognized a girl whom _I knew by sight, but had never spoken to_--one of a large family of children, living in the same terrace in London as myself, and who had died of malignant scarlet fever about a year before. "Mrs. Lean," she said, hurriedly, noting my surprise, "don't you know me? I am May ----." "Yes, I do recognize you, my dear child," I replied; "but what makes you come to me?" "Minnie and Katie are so unhappy about me," she said. "They do not understand. They think I have gone away. They do not know what death is--that it is only like going into the next room, and shutting the door." "And what can I do, May?" I asked her. "Tell them you have seen me, Mrs. Lean. Say I am alive--more alive than they are; that if they sit for me, I will come to them and tell them so much they know nothing of now." "But where are your sisters?" I said. She looked puzzled. "I don't know. I can't say the place; but you will meet them soon, and you will tell them." "If I meet them, I certainly will tell them," I said; but I had not the least idea at that moment where the other girls might be. Four months later, however, when I was staying in London, Ontario, they burst unexpectedly into my hotel room, having driven over (I forget how many miles) to see me play. Naturally I kept my promise; but though they cried when "May" was alluded to, they