he impulse to get up and go where I could breathe the outer air; to
find my wife and talk to her about marketing or some household affair,
to get away from this being--human or whatever he was--but this was
impossible. That interest which dawned upon me when I first perceived my
visitor now held me as if it had been a spell.

"Yes," he said, "I deceased in 1785, being then in my thirtieth year. I
was a citizen of Bixbury, on the Massachusetts coast, but I am not
unconnected with this place. Old Mr. Scott, of your town, is my
grandson."

I am obliged to chronicle the fact that my present part in this
conversation consisted entirely of ejaculations. "Old Mr. Scott your
grandson!" I said.

"Yes," he replied; "my daughter, who was but two years old when I left
her, married Lemuel Scott, of Bixbury, who moved to this town soon after
old Mr. Scott was born. It was, indeed, on account of this good old man
that I became materialized. He was present at the private seance of
which I have spoken, and being asked if he would like to see a person
from the other world, he replied that he should be pleased to behold his
grandfather. When the necessary influences were set to work I appeared.
The spiritualists, who, without much thought, had conceived the idea
that the grandfather of old Mr. Scott ought, in the ordinary nature of
things, to be a very venerable personage, were disappointed when they
saw me, and concluded I was one who, by some mistake, had been
wrongfully summoned. They, therefore, set me aside, as it were, and
occupied themselves with other matters. Old Mr. Scott went away
unsatisfied, and strengthened in his disbelief in the powers of the
spiritualists, while I, as I have before said, was left unnoticed under
the power of the materializing force, until I was made corporeal as I am
now. When the spiritualists discovered what had happened they were much
disturbed, and immediately set about to dematerialize me, for it is not
their purpose or desire to cause departed spirits to again become
inhabitants of this world. But all their efforts were of no avail. I
remained as much a man as anyone of themselves. They found me in full
health and vigor, for I had never had a day's sickness in my life,
having come to my death by drowning while foolishly swimming too far
from land in a strong ebb tide, and my body, being carried out to sea,
was never recovered. Being thus put to their wit's end, they determined
to keep the matter