only result that they had on my mind was that I
regarded these friends with some suspicion. They were
long messages very often, spelled out by tilts, and it
was quite impossible that they came by chance. Someone
then, was moving the table. I thought it was they.
They probably thought that I did it. I was puzzled and
worried over it, for they were not people whom I could
imagine as cheating--and yet I could not see how the
messages could come except by conscious pressure.

About this time--it would be in 1886--I came
across a book called The Reminiscences of Judge
Edmunds. He was a judge of the U.S. High Courts and a
man of high standing. The book gave an account of how
his wife had died, and how he had been able for many
years to keep in touch with her. All sorts of details
were given. I read the book with interest, and
absolute scepticism. It seemed to me an example of how
a hard practical man might have a weak side to his
brain, a sort of reaction, as it were, against those
plain facts of life with which he had to deal. Where
was this spirit of which he talked? Suppose a man had
an accident and cracked his skull; his whole character
would change, and a high nature might become a low one.
With alcohol or opium or many other drugs one could
apparently quite change a man's spirit. The spirit
then depended upon matter. These were the arguments
which I used in those days. I did not realise that it
was not the spirit that was changed in such cases, but
the body through which the spirit worked, just as it