Let me describe my first experience of a medium. Friends had told me of his gifts and had met my incredulity with 'How do you explain this?' followed by some story of supernatural revelation. I could not explain, but accepted an invitation to meet the miracle-worker and, perhaps, be converted. His method of demonstrating communication with the spirit world was to sit in a meditative attitude with one hand before his eyes, whilst watching between his slightly separated fingers the assembled believers so as to note the effect of his revelations, which were apparently presented to him by the spirits in two forms. Descriptions of the spirit world came through freely, one might call them fluent but incoherent, whilst revelations such as my friends had promised came in a halting and uncertain trickle. The enthusiastic accounts had not prepared me for such a poor show. I had pictured him saying something like--'Your grandmother's name was Georgina; she died at the age of seventy-two, after an illness lasting three days; she was a good horsewoman and disliked Mr. Gladstone'. Instead of this the procedure was: 'I hear a name, is it George? (No bite)--Georgina? (a look of intelligence)--you have a friend named Georgina--a young girl--no, not a young girl, she was older, a relative, yes, a relative'--and so on. Finally Georgina is discovered to be a grandmother of one of those present, and is described sufficiently well to be recognised as the grandmother on the father's side, though, curiously, Georgina was the name of the maternal grandmother. What could be more convincing? Of course spirit communication is difficult and such a mistake only proves the genuineness of the article; but the description of the grandmother was built up on certain characteristics of the father, who was present, and the source was obvious to any one not blinded by the desire to believe. One incident shows that the medium had received some education in the superficial signs of disease. An elderly lady with a rather puffy face, which had raised in me a suspicion of kidney disease, was told by him: 'It is strange, but I _must_ tell you for your own sake. You have trouble with your kidneys.' He was wrong and so was I, but if events had proved us right the credit would have been his.