fashioned creepy, crawly, shivery, look over your shoulder ghost about this perfectly composed old woman. Here was a contemporary ghost who one could imagine looking with cold disdain upon the eighteenth and nineteenth century apparition carrying its own head, or the lachrymose lady wrapped in a winding sheet who wailed adown the draughty corridors at full moon.

My old lady ghost inspired no physical fear, and I began a long and leisurely study of her appearance. White hair parted above a wrinkled brow. A small shawl thrown over the back of her head, as a protection against draught, I concluded. Thin hands with gnarled fingers, clasped on a black stuff dress. Insignificant features and a pale, sallow skin. Could anyone look more uninteresting, and yet simply because she had passed through a door which Í, in common with all humanity, must also enter sooner or later. I was thrilling with interest about her.

I wondered if she was conscious of my presence, and I coughed rather loudly to attract her attention. There was no response. She sat on, quite quietly meditating by the fire. She was so obviously thinking that I began to speculate upon the subject of her thoughts. Then it came to me that she had died very lately in this room, probably in this very bed upon which I lay, and she had not yet realised that she had passed over. She was resentful over something, possibly my presence in her bed, possibly because her own people had left her.

I often think it is rather hard upon those who have passed over to be treated as if they had vanished for all eternity to another world. Why not accept

what has been practically proved, and what is preached by the Bishop of London, and many others that the real man has only cast off his old coat and is as vitally alive as ever, and even more so; having been relieved of the physical body; and that he probably remains for long in, or in the vicinity of his old home.

But to return to my old lady ghost. As I lay contemplating her a great longing came over me to touch her. It would be so satisfactory to touch as well as see a ghost. Here was an excellent opportunity of making all sorts of tests, for this ghost was in no hurry, and the most pronounced sceptic would have scoffed at anyone so obvious being called an optical delusion. If she resented my familiarity I could apologise. In vain I told myself that it was out of the question to treat a total stranger in so unceremonious a manner, the longing became too strong for me, and I found myself slipping softly out of bed. I approached her very diffidently, creeping towards her on bare feet. I gained her side, and just as I was about to stretch out my hand to lay it on her shoulder she disappeared. The chair was empty. Then I did wonder for a moment if I had been the victim of an optical delusion, and I stalked back to bed feeling distinctly annoyed. But no sooner did I survey again the chair by the fire than I saw quite plainly that its former occupant had returned. Her position was slightly different, but there she sat as large as life and as plain as a pike staff. Sly old ghost! No tests were to be obtained through her.

I suppose that for over an hour I tried to fix my attention on my book, but I failed. The fire was

beginning to die down, and I began to feel sleepy, so finally, with a long, last scrutinizing stare I settled down on the pillows and switched off the lights. One last peep. In the dying, fitful firelight she was almost invisible. Only her face and hands shone pale against the surrounding darkness.

I looked for her again the following night, but she never returned whilst I occupied the room. I learned that she had passed over ten days previously seated in her chair.

A ghost of this sort would provide no evidence worth having for the general public, even had a dozen accredited psychical researchers gazed upon her for an hour. Of course, I am quite aware how many of the greatest intellectuals now give testimony to the truth of psychic phenomena. Were I a disbeliever I should be profoundly impressed by the results of their investigations. I would be aware that they are the last men to be deluded, but the general public is not scientific, and knows little or nothing of scientific discovery, therefore I am certain personal experience is worth more than all else as a means to conviction. The whole trouble is that the ghost invariably commands the situation. No number of scientists could have hauled my old lady ghost before the club committee as evidence of survival after death. She would have slipped through their fingers as she slipped from under my hand. A ghost is a free spirit, free, certainly under very wide restrictions. A ghost laughs at locksmiths, and is at liberty to roam the King's palace or the wind-swept street at will.

Knowledge which seeks to penetrate beyond the limits of normal consciousness can only hope to add

to its store by what may be termed Revelation. Such revelation is of no value whatever to anyone but the recipient. Not only because he has no evidence to adduce but his own, but because there is no language as yet which is in any way descriptive of the finer and higher experiences of super normal

consciousness.

Lord Herschell said, "The perfect observer will have his eyes, as it were, opened that they may be struck at once with any occurrence which, according to received theories, ought not to happen, for those are the facts which serve as clues to new discoveries."

The last fifteen years has brought about a tremendous change in the outlook of empirical science. That which was once rejected and despised as unworthy of serious consideration is now quietly accepted. Science has crossed the border and entered the world of spirit. It has been forced over by its discoveries, and is now in such a position that it must (to be logical), doubt the existence of ether, atoms, electrical energy and stay doubting, or it must accept the existence of transcendental or super-sensible realities.

The other day I had an interesting experience during sleep. I found myself on the other side discussing the structure of the atom with a short, dark young man. In the course of conversation he remarked: "I was the only chap on earth who ever counted the electrons of an atom."

I expressed the honour I felt at coming across so eminent a personage, and soon after woke up in bed. I remembered with great vividness my interview, I also remembered that I had known

previously that the electrons of the atom had been counted just before the war by a young man who fell in Gallipoli. So great a genius was far too precious to be risked in war, and the Royal Society moved to get him back, but too late-a Turkish bullet had laid him low.

Such experiences are far too fragmentary to be of any value. The connection or bridge between the two planes is wanting. Atoms have to be taken by us on trust. It is an underestimate to say there are as many atoms in a tumblerful of water as there are tumblerfuls of water in the Atlantic. Even smaller than the atom is the electron, which, as compared in size to the atom is as an inch to the mile, yet they have been counted by a man who thought it incumbent upon him to fight for his country. Such an achievement as this scientific discovery makes trivial all psychic phenomena we know of.

Scientists have been driven to the certainty that in the psychic phenomena brought under their notice there is something to be explained and investigated.

The attitude now adopted by those who are keen to disprove survival is to attribute to the human being powers so stupendous that they stagger the most vivid imagination and stretch credulity to breaking point.

Some psychologists tell us that all the evidence there is for survival is due to powers contained in the living. Upon the source of those powers, or the why or wherefore of those powers, science is dumb. It is unaware, or purposely blind to the fact that it has succumbed to the power of the