e quite unnecessary anxiety that the puppets of fiction always consider
it their duty to display. In the case of Mr. Stuart Cumberland's novel,
The Vasty Deep, as he calls it, the last page is certainly thrilling and
makes us curious to know more about 'Brown, the medium.'

Scene, a padded room in a mad-house in the United States.

A gibbering lunatic discovered dashing wildly about the chamber as if in
the act of chasing invisible forms.

'This is our worst case,' says a doctor opening the cell to one of the
visitors in lunacy. 'He was a spirit medium and he is hourly haunted by
the creations of his fancy. We have to carefully watch him, for he has
developed suicidal tendencies.'

The lunatic makes a dash at the retreating form of his visitors, and, as
the door closes upon him, sinks with a yell upon the floor.

A week later the lifeless body of Brown, the medium, is found suspended
from the gas bracket in his cell.

How clearly one sees it all! How forcible and direct the style is! And
what a thrilling touch of actuality the simple mention of the 'gas
bracket' gives us! Certainly The Vasty Deep is a book to be read.

And we have read it; read it with great care. Though it is largely
autobiographical, it is none the less a work of fiction and, though some
of us may think that there is very little use in exposing what is already
exposed and revealing the secrets of Polichinelle, no doubt there are
many who will be interested to hear of the tricks and deceptions of
crafty mediums, of their gauze masks, telescopic rods and invisible silk
threads, and of the marvellous raps they can produce simply by displacing
the peroneus longus muscle! The book opens with a description of the
scene by the death-bed of Alderman Parkinson. Dr. Josiah Brown, the
eminent medium, is in attendance and tries to comfort the honest merchant
by producing noises on the bedpost. Mr. Parkinson, however, being
extremely anxious to revisit Mrs. Parkinson, in a materialised form after
death, will not be satisfied till he has received from his wife a solemn
promise that she will not marry again, such a marriage being, in his
eyes, nothing more nor less than bigamy. Having received an assurance to
this effect from her, Mr. Parkinson dies, his soul, according to the
medium, being escorted to the spheres by 'a band of white-robed spirits.'
This is the prologue. The next chapter is entitled 'Five Years After.'
Violet Parkinson, the Alderma