ion that they all,
even the most untrustworthy of them, start with at least some small
basis of abnormal power. Is it not rather suggestive that the number of
practising mediums does not materially increase? If it were a mere
matter of deception, would there not be thousands at the trade? As a
matter of fact, there are not fifty advertising mediums in New York at
this moment, though of course the number is kept down by the feeling
that it is a bit disreputable to have these powers."

"You're too easy on them," said Howard. "I never saw one that wasn't a
cheap skate."

Again I protested. "Don't be hasty. There are nice ones. My own mother
had this power in her youth, so my father tells me. Her people were
living in Wisconsin at the time when this psychic force developed in
her, and the settlers from many miles around came to see her 'perform.'
An uncle, when a boy of four, did automatic writing, and one of my aunts
recently wrote to me, in relation to my book _The Tyranny of the Dark_,
that for two years (beginning when she was about seventeen) these powers
of darkness made her life a hell. It won't do to be hasty in condemning
the mediums wholesale. There are many decent people who are possessed by
strange forces, but are shy of confessing their abnormalities. Ask your
family physician. He will tell you that he always has at least one
patient who is troubled by occult powers."

"Medical men call it 'hysteria,'" said Harris.

"Which doesn't explain anything," I answered. "Many apparently healthy
people possess the more elementary of these powers--often without
knowing it."

"We are all telepathic in some degree," declared Brierly.

"Perhaps all the so-called messages from the dead come from living
minds," I suggested--"I mean the minds of those about us. Dr. Reed, a
friend of mine, once arranged to go with a patient to have a test
sitting with a very celebrated psychic who claimed to be able to read
sealed letters. Just before the appointed day, Reed's patient died
suddenly of heart-disease, leaving a sealed letter on his desk. The
doctor, fully alive to the singular opportunity, put the letter in his
pocket and hastened to the medium. The magician took it in his hand and
pondered. At last he said: 'This was written by a man now in the spirit
world. I cannot sense it. There isn't a medium in the world who can read
it, but if you will send it to any person anywhere on the planet and
have it read and resealed, I wil