way
of putting it. Would any sane man play such tricks as the spiritualists
attribute to our dead? It shatters every thought of the majesty of
death. Would a sane _live_ man walk into my house and announce his
presence to me by rapping on a wall or tipping a table or scrawling
idiotic messages on a slate or talking to me through some half-educated
'medium'? Would he----?"

"Yes, he would!" asserted the doctor. "He'd do all those things and
more, if he couldn't make you see him or hear him in any other way. As
to mediums,--why doesn't a telegram travel through the air as well as on
a wire? Your friends could come back to you in the old way if you could
but put yourself in a receptive condition. But you can't. So you must
depend on a non-professional medium,--a 'sensitive'----"

"See, Katje," interpolated Grimm, "he has names for them all. All neatly
classified like so many germs in a bottle. Well, Andrew, how many ghosts
did you see last night? He has only to shut his eyes, Katje, and along
comes the parade. Spooks! Spooks! Spooks! Nice, grisly, shivering,
spooky spooks! And now he wants me to put my house in order and settle
up my affairs and join the parade."

"Settle your affairs?" asked Kathrien puzzled.

"Oh, it's just his nonsense," Grimm hastened to assure her.
"Andrew,"--he hurried on to turn the subject from dangerous
personalities,--"you've seen a whole lot of people pass over to the
Other Side. In fact, your patients seem to have quite a habit of doing
that. Tell me: did you ever see one out of all that number come back
again? Just _one_?"

"No," answered McPherson reluctantly. "I never did, but----"

"No," cried Grimm in triumph, "and what's more, you never will. Yet
you----"

"There was not perhaps the intimate bond between doctor and patients to
bring them back to me. But in my own family, I've known of a 'return'
such as you speak of. A distant cousin of mine died in London. And at
almost that very instant, she was seen in New York."

"Rubbish!"

"Rubbish? Why? A century ago, if any one had tried to describe the
telephone, people of your sort would have grunted 'Rubbish!' But if my
voice can carry thousands of miles over the telephone, why cannot a
soul, with God-given force behind it, dart over the entire universe? Is
Thomas Edison greater than God?"

"Oh, Doctor," gasped the horrified Kathrien.

"And what's more," rushed on McPherson, unheeding, "they can't lay it
all to telepathy. In the