appreciate its weight; and I did not notice this aspect of the force of it until December, 1916, when I was reperusing the record a year and more afterwards; whereupon I mentioned it to my secretary to whom I was dictating this paper.

After thus describing the accident itself, George Pelham referred back to the previous sitting, at which my nephew purported to communicate himself in person, and Pelham explained that the reason why my nephew at that sitting began by writing backwards, and throughout the sitting exhibited such signs of confusion, was because his recollection of the event disturbed him.

Now to me the striking thing in all this was that I myself did not know the particulars of the accident, nor the hour nor the fact that he wore a watch which stopped at the moment of the accident; and as I did not know these facts at all, so also neither did Dr. Hyslop nor the sensitive know them, nor could they have got them by telepathy from my mind. As yet this evidence of the watch carried no weight even with me, until on my return from Boston to New York two or three days later I found that a sister of my dead nephew happened to have arrived in my home for a little visit. Thereupon without her knowing that I was having sittings in Boston at all, and without my telling her why I wished the information, I asked her whether she knew at what day and hour my nephew was killed, and what other circumstances about it she was aware of; whether he had a watch on, and whether it was stopped by the concussion, etc. She replied that she could only tell me at that moment that he died on a certain Saturday afternoon, and that his older brother was with him, and that he certainly carried a watch. But in a few days my niece returned to her home, and ascertained that the watch was found stopped at the very hour mentioned by G. P. When I requested my niece to obtain this information for me exactly, if she could, I not only did not reveal to her why I wanted the information, but I charged her not to tell anyone that it was I who was seeking to obtain it; so that none of the other living members of our family were aware why it was asked for, and only my niece knew that I asked for it.

So much by way of explaining how it was that, after taking every scientific precaution, I received this circumstantial evidence. After I had thus verified it, it was declared by Dr. Hyslop to be scientifically credible. Of course this single bit of decisive evidence imparted credibility to the evidence throughout the sittings which tended cumulatively to identify to me, who had

known them in the flesh, the other personalities who purported to communicate with me in these sittings.

But perhaps unfortunately for our friend's confidence, knowledge of the time when the watch stopped was in the mind of its owner's brother and probably in other incarnate intelligences, and those who refuse to accept the spiritistic hypothesis for these phenomena find it easier to believe that such knowledge comes to mediums by teloteropathy (the conveyance of psychic experience from a remote or unknown source) from an incarnate intelligence rather than from a postcarnate one. And it seems strange that Dr. Hyslop should have taken no note of this fact. If the watch had disappeared, say, down a man-hole, and been found after the medium's communication, to have stopped at twenty minutes past four, the case would have had the quality ascribed to it. But we cannot recall any such case, though there may be some. And yet in saying this, we are not asserting that to us, it is easier to attribute the immense mass of accurate knowledge received through mediums, to teloteropathy from incarnate intelligence than from postcarnate ones. In the former alternative, all the dramatic power that enacts the professed postcarnate communicator that has through various mediums enacted hundreds, often with a fidelity and vividness worthy of the highest histrionic genius all this has to be accounted for. Is it easier to accept the teloteropathic solution burdened with the necessity of accounting for this, or to accept the spiritistic solution with this accounted for? The answer, we suspect, depends mainly on temperament. But, as there is constant occasion to remark, such communications cannot, at the present stage of our faculties, be verified unless knowledge of the facts is in possession of some incarnate intelligence, and therefore the knowledge may be conveyed by teloteropathy. Veritable cases of such pathy exist without serious question, while all cases of

alleged postcarnate communication through mediums are still widely questioned.

It may be remarked in passing, that the superusual knowledge coming through the mediums does not, so far as we know, include cases of prophecy that have been so clear-cut, so unmistakably fulfilled, and so far beyond any reasonable interpretation by coincidence, as to satisfy average intelligence. In short, while there is very strong reason to hope that our facilities of interchanging what knowledge we have, are undergoing rapid enlargement, there is little indication that the knowledge itself is to be increased by any agency but the old educating and developing one of the sweat of our brows.

As to the backward or "mirror" writing, we have never seen it accounted for. It is not infrequent with mediums and, we believe, with secondary personalities developed by injury or disease. We do not remember ever before seeing it attributed to emotion or confusion on the part of a control.

We feel that we ought to throw in the fact, as bearing on the alleged spirit world, that some years before the experiences recounted in the foregoing communication, G. P., through Mrs. Piper, Imperator and his gang assisting, had with quite elaborate leave-takings to those with whom he had been habitually communicating here, and with a first class diploma from Imperator, started off for a "higher stage," whence he would communicate no more. He having been in life a friend of ours, we were quite sorry at the prospect of no more of his alleged utterances, and pleasantly surprised to learn that he had come back except that his doing so, after the elaborate departure that seemed to profess to be final, added one more to the puzzles of this bewildering subject.

CORRESPONDENCE

Ourselves as Others See Us

THIS letter puzzles us: it seems in so many respects to come from a vessel open to the outpouring of the true spirit:

To be perfectly frank with you, I am afraid I am not sufficiently intellectual, or as you please to call it, hibrow, to appreciate the REVIEW. One or two of the articles in the past year have seemed to me to be really serious, but the rest seem to be a weak attempt at something akin to humor or occasionally psychological introspection. Probably you don't know what this means. I am not sure I do myself. Boiled down to a fine point, the little verse about Dr. Fell stands strongly out. don't like it and I am sorry, because as the Irishman remarked, "There's one thing I don't like and that's radishes, and I'm glad I don't, because if I liked 'em I'd ate them, and I hate them."

But perhaps this one helps resolve the puzzle, the answer being that it takes all sorts of people (and periodicals) to make a world.

My interest in reading had been on the decline during the last two months, perhaps owing to overwork and various anxieties. The last few weeks I had not even been reading The Nation with the same relish as I had been wont. The last number of the Atlantic lay almost untouched. It was a state of affairs almost unprecedented in my past life, and I began to think seriously over the matter. Then along came the UNPOP. By sheer force of habit I dived into the Casserole, but even that did not taste right. Then I went to work, urged by a sense of duty, at the 75mm and 42cm articles. And behold! after I had read only a few paragraphs my erstwhile avidity for reading had regained its full hold on me. Then I made a clean-up, not only with the UNPOP, but with the Atlantic and several numbers of the Nation and even a few books besides. I feel sound and healthy again. Thanks!

The first of these critics is a lawyer; the editor was trained to the law, and the lawyer does not like the RE

VIEW. The other critic is a clergyman; the editor had grave doubts of the REVIEW being approved by that profession, and the clergyman likes it; and, stranger still, that profession has all along been among its best friends.

Yet more remarkable, this particular clergyman is racially a German, and pastor in Brazil of a colony "of about a thousand families of German Russians who emigrated from Volhynia and Poland just in the nick of time to escape the present terrible fate of the relatives they left behind."

We printed a letter from him in No. 12, and the Atlantic printed one in a recent number. The scrap quoted in this number's Casserole regarding The "Nation of Sharpers" is by him.

Some Human Documents

The "letter-head" of the following communication was so abominably printed that it was very difficult to decipher. Here it is:

TO THE PERSON RECEIVING THIS LETTER:

DO NOT COME TO VISIT PRISONERS EXCEPT ON FRIDAY. YOU WILL NOT BE ADMITTED.

Persons corresponding with prisoners must observe the following rules, viz.: Write plainly. Confine yourselves strictly to business and family matters. In directing letters, put the prisoner's name plainly on envelope, care

Nothing sent to prisoners will be admitted, except letters and photographs. Money sent to prisoners will be placed to their credit, and such articles as are allowed will be bought for them. No newspapers or periodicals will be received unless sent direct from publishers. There is no limit to the number of letters prisoners are allowed to receive. They are allowed to write one letter a week, and can see their friends not oftener than once a week. TO THE PRISONER: Do not interline. Put one line on each ruled line. Letters addressed "General Delivery" in large cities will not be mailed.

May 21, 1917.

Dear Sir: To a few hours of complete mental absorption in a copy of your splendidly sane publication, the UNPOPULAR REVIEW, may be ascribed the inspiration for this letter. It is a long call from the neighborhood of Fifth Ave. and Thirtysecond St. to the wrong side of these gray walls in the snowcapped Rockies, but no further than a fool will travel to learn that which has been under his nose since the birth of reason.