problem more or less difficult of
solution. But all difficulty vanishes as soon as 'the river is crossed.'
I derived no little comfort and much light from a Materializing Seance
which I attended shortly afterwards in Boston, where both Marie St.
Clair and Sister Belle appeared together, at the same time, and greeted
me with affectionate warmth. To my inexpressible relief they were each
well provided with skulls. They were more mature and matronly, I
confess, than my ardent fancy had painted them, and Sister Belle's
'golden curls one yard long' were changed to very straight black hair;
the golden hue which Sister Belle had herself ascribed to them must have
been due to the light in which she saw them, 'the light that never was
on sea or land.'

I was pleased to find that Marie's English was excellent, without a
trace of foreign accent. But this, and the matronly appearance, I
learned subsequently were presumably due to the age, shape and nativity
of the Medium through whom she materialized. For when Marie afterwards
appeared to me, as she did many times at another Medium's seances, her
appearance was quite youthful, with clustering brown curls low down on
her forehead, which when I once attempted to stroke I found to be full
of sharp pins; and to my expressions of gratitude that she should so
kindly appear to me, she lisped in broken English: 'I am viz you
olvays.' The present of an amber necklace, with the name 'Marie'
engraved on the silver clasp, obtained for me from her the written
expression of her pleasure that I had carefully preserved what I assured
her was 'the last thing on her neck before she passed over.' Need I say
that this document, in Marie's own handwriting, invests the skull with
even added interest?

HORACE HOWARD FURNESS.

* * * * *

MATERIALIZATION.

I think it would be difficult to find a psychological study more
interesting than that which is afforded by a Materializing seance. I
have never attended one that did not yield abundant food for reflection,
and present one problem, at least, too deep for any solution I can
devise. Although, perhaps, our first experience in such seances makes
the deepest impression, yet the novelty never wears off, nor can custom
stale its variety. The audiences are never wholly the same, and every
Medium has her own peculiar method.

In the cities where the Mediums reside, and where they hold their
seances on regular days throughou