family however, and I learn from his aunt that he had actually been in the Trossachs. If he was there he must have stayed at this, the only hotel. Now I claim that to put such a case as this down to the subconscious is not logical or honest. Even if the extended personalities of my wife and self could know that which we had no means of knowing, how can one suppose that one's unconscious self would proceed to dramatise itself as someone else and tell a series of thundering lies, mixed up with communications which, if not true, were to the last degree blasphemous. Such a supposition is opposed to all reason, while the spiritual explanation flows quite easily into the general stream of psychic evidence.

Mrs. Tweedale's remarkable book will of course receive the usual scornful denials from those who have never troubled to acquaint themselves with the facts. To all such she can answer with the retort of Schopenhauer : "Your denial does not argue that you have superior intelligence. It simply proves you to be ignorant of the latest acquisitions of knowledge." Year by year, however, this knowledge is permeating the various strata of society, and as the old obdurate materialists of the bad old Nineteenth Century type die away the new psychic teaching finds a less prejudiced audience among the younger generation. I am glad to note the severity. with which Mrs. Tweedale speaks of the aristocratic portion of our population. Their record in spiritual matters has been deplorable and they will assuredly get their reward. Save the ladies whom she has mentioned, and the wholehearted work of Lord and Lady Molesworth, one can hardly recall any who have aided the great psychic movement. The case of our rich men is even worse. We are straitened on every side for want of funds for propaganda, and the same small group of men and women are at the present moment finding all the money and doing all the work. When I find our poor workers mortgaging their houses to build a corrugated iron meeting house, and our old mediums starving on the dole, I read with some indignation of the luxuries and extravagances in the empty lives of those who misuse the power of wealth. There is need of some great readjustment-and it will come.

Crowborough, July 7th.

ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

PHANTOMS OF THE DAWN

CHAPTER I

THE SUPREME ADVENTURE

Before the last of them

"STILL the years roll by. in this phase of endless life is unrolled and we pass 'to where beyond these voices there is peace,' we seem to hear, if we do not heed, a voice that cries:

'Hearest thou this great voice that shakes the world And beats upon the faces of the dead?'-TENNYSON.

"The voice that beats upon the faces of the dead' triumphs all along the line in the beating down of obstacles and in the winning of acceptance for that which has been rejected and despised.”—M. A. Oxon.

As the year 1923 dawns I feel the urge to begin another ghost book, and as I take up my pencil I am conscious that my ghosts of to-day and tomorrow will be different from those with which I formerly dealt.* They are more elusive. The psychic phenomena of to-day requires a language which psychologists are but slowly coining.

I am inspired to deal with the queer things that happen to me as reverently as with the soft

*Ghosts I have seen."-Herbert Jenkins.

shadows that drift about me. The shadows we still call ghosts.

A friend said to me lately: "I am not so interested in seeing things. What interests me much more are the queer things that happen to me. What do they mean?"

The words set me thinking, and the conclusion I have come to is that those queer things are the things that really matter in life. They are milestones marking our spiritual development. They do more than hint of a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will.

But we treat those queer things that happen to us with such thoughtless indifference in place of carefully recording and thinking them out. Yet in spite of the aimless drifting existence we lead, we do cherish the conviction of their reality. At moments we get glimpses of solar systems of mind, matching the sublime constellations of the heavens. How numerous are the considerations that suggest hidden, transcendent realms of being!

Incredulity, involving great loss of valuable information is still rampant, but luckily it is mainly confined to the old. Youth is ready for the new revelation. Everywhere it is on the watch.

Lately, in talking over with a well-known dignitary of the Church some of the queer things that happen to one in life, he told me the following story. He vouches for the truth, but desires his name to be suppressed as he has no time for the correspondence its disclosure would entail.

66

My old mother and I walked straight out towards the sunset, which was painting the heavens with a glorious blazonry of gold, and ruby, and

orange. We left our little bungalow nestling in the sand dunes, and its tiny, sandy garden fragrant with the bitter sweet herbs that flourish under the salt spray, and stepped out on the firm golden sands that the receding tide had left in exquisite purity.

"It was a lonely spot, that wide estuary through which the leaping tides rushed in and out with equal rapidity. Dangerous for those who took no thought for natural phenomena, but safe enough for those who knew the land and wisely chose their time.

"For several miles on either side of us lay the vast expanse of level golden shore, without stain or blemish-a glorious stretch of yellow sands, pure and untrodden by human foot.

"So far as the eye could reach no human being was in sight. Before us lay a firm mile or more of hard sand, at the extreme edge of which shone a tranquil ocean, no breath stirring its surface that warm summer evening.

"We walked on briskly towards the sea, not talking much, but both enjoying the quiet peace of the scene, which was only broken at intervals by the cry of a gull. Perhaps we were somewhat awed by the glory of the heavens, as moment by moment fresh banners of flaming colour were unrolled upon sky and land and sea.

"The place had a great fascination for me. There is something entrancing in walking upon virgin soil, in standing on a spot untrodden by the foot of man or beast. Though that walk towards the sunset was one I often took during my holiday, it never lost its charm, or the sensation of primeval loneliness. I never failed instinctively to note