allowed eagerly the heady liquor, and felt a little more like myself.

"You were complaining," I remarked, "of something like aphasia?"

"I was," he replied. "You know what aphasia is in the human subject? A
paralysis of certain nervous centres, which prevents the patient, though
perfectly sane, from getting at the words which he intends to use, and
forces others upon him. He may wish to observe that it is a fine
morning, and may discover that his idea has taken the form of an
observation about the Roman Calendar under the Emperor Justinian. That
is aphasia, and we suffer from what, I presume, is a spiritual
modification of that disorder."

"Yet to-night," I responded, "you are speaking like a printed book."

"To-night," said the spectre, acknowledging the compliment with a bow,
"the conditions are peculiarly favourable."

"Not to _me_," I thought, with a sigh.

"And I am able to manifest myself with unusual clearness."

"Then you are not always in such form as I am privileged to find you in?"
I inquired.

"By no means," replied the spectre. "Sometimes I cannot appear worth a
cent. Often I am invisible to the naked eye, and even quite
indiscernible by any of the senses. Sometimes I can only rap on the
table, or send a cold wind over a visitor's face, or at most pull off his
bedclothes (like the spirit which appeared to Caligula, and is mentioned
by Suetonius) and utter hollow groans."

"That's exactly what you _did_," I said, "when you wakened me. I thought
I should have died."

"I can't say how distressed I am," answered the spectre. "It is just an
instance of what I was trying to explain. We don't know how we are going
to manifest ourselves."

"Don't apologize," I replied, "for a constitutional peculiarity. To what
do you attribute your success to night?"

"Partly to your extremely receptive condition, partly to the whisky you
took in the smoking-room, but chiefly to the magnetic environment."

"Then you do not suffer at all from aphasia just now?"

"Not a touch of it at this moment, thank you; but, as a rule, we all _do_
suffer horribly. This accounts for everything that you embodied spirits
find remarkable and enigmatic in our conduct. We _mean_ something,
straight enough; but our failure is in expression. Just think how often
you go wrong yourselves, though _your_ spirits have a brain to play on,
like the musician with a piano. Now _we_ have to do as well as we can
without any such me