bulk of Dr. Hull's letter, which was quite a long one, consisted of
further quotations from Mrs. Legrand's communications.

She said that she had been welcomed by a great multitude of spirits, who
to her had owed the beginning of their recognition on earth, and that
their joy over this discovery, which should bring consolation to many
mournful mortals, as well as to themselves, was only equalled by their
wonder that it had not been made years before. It appeared that, since
intercourse between the two worlds had first begun, it had been the
constant effort of the spirits to teach this truth to men; but the stupid
refusal of the latter to comprehend had till now baffled every attempt.
How it had been possible that men who had reached the point of believing
in immortality at all should be content to rest in the inadequate and
preposterous conception that it only attached to the latest phase of the
individual, was the standing wonder of the spirit world.

It was as if one should throw away the contents of a cup of wine, and
carefully preserve the dregs in the bottom.

That so loose an association of personalities as the individual, and
those personalities so utterly diverse, no two of them even alive at the
same time, should have impressed even the most casual observer as a unit
of being--a single person--was accounted a marvel by the angels. If men
had believed all the members of a family to have but one soul among them,
their mistake would have been more excusable, for the members of a family
are, at least, alive at the same time, while the persons of an individual
are not even that.

Dr. Hull said that he had gathered from Mrs. Legrand's communications
that she had seen many things which would teach mortals not to grieve for
their departed friends, as for shades exiled to a world of strangers. To
such mourners she sent word that their own past selves, who have likewise
vanished from the earth, are keeping their dear dead company in heaven.
And far more congenial company to them are these past selves than their
present selves would be, who, through years and changes since their
separation, have often grown out of sympathy with the departed, as they
will find when they shall meet them. The aged husband, who has mourned
all his life the bride taken from him in girlhood, will find himself
well-nigh a stranger to her, and his mourning to have been superfluous;
for all these years his own former self, the husband of her you