ink we
should have seen them, and I am sure I should have felt ropes round Mr.
Home's body. Chairs went from one end of the room to the other _in full
light_; and nobody had previously tumbled over strings and wires, so
that I don't think there could have been any there.

I fancy, as far as any order is traceable in the somewhat erratic course
of spiritualistic experiences, that most people arrive at spiritualism
via mesmerism. It so happened that this order was exactly inverted in
my case. It was not until 1866 that I found I possessed the power of
magnetism, and moreover, had in my house a subject whom Alphonse Didier
(with whom I afterwards put myself in communication) declared to be "one
in a thousand." Some of the details of this lady's case are very
curious, but this is scarcely the place to dilate upon them further than
as they affected my spiritualistic studies. She passed with
extraordinary ease into the condition of lucidity, when she was
conscious only of basking in light, anxious to be magnetized more deeply
so as to get more thoroughly into the light, and, moreover, aware only
of the existence of those who had passed away from earth. She knew they
were with her: said I _must_ know it, as I was there too, and that it
was I only who would not "let her" see them. The fact that "our life is
twofold" was to me most marvellously brought out by my magnetic
treatment of this lady; and, moreover, the power of influencing action
could not fail to be suggestive of the truth of one of the cardinal
doctrines of spiritualism--that we are thus influenced by disembodied
spirits, as I, an embodied spirit, could influence another spirit in the
body. Some of the likes and dislikes which I, so to say, produced then
in 1866 have remained to the present hour. For instance, one particular
article of food (I will not mention what, or it would be fatal to my
reader's gravity), for which she previously had a penchant, I rendered
so distasteful to her that the very smell of it now makes her
uncomfortable. I must plead guilty to having experimented somewhat in
this way; but what a wonderful light it sheds upon the great problem of
the motives of human action! By the simple exercise of my will I could
make my patient perform actions the most abhorrent to her. For
instance--the ladies will appreciate this power--at a time when
crinolines were extensive, I made that poor creature draggle about in a
costume conspicuous by the absence of c