m for "no evidence at all," and then
observes most sapiently that if it was only a dream, "the coincidence
of its occurrence at the crisis in her illness is remarkable"--which is
precisely what it is not.

Mrs. Booth-Tucker was very ill on board a steamer when she saw her
mother, fresh from "the beautiful land above." "Those with me," she
says, "thought I was dying, and I thought so too." When a person is in
that state, after a wasting illness, the brain is necessarily weak. But
this was not all. "I had not slept," the lady says, "for some days, at
any rate not for many minutes together." Her brain, therefore, was
not only weak, but overwrought; and in ingenuously stating this at the
outset the lady gives herself away. Given a wasted body, weakness "unto
death," a brain ill supplied with blood and ravaged with sleeplessness;
does it, we ask, require a "rank materialist" to explain the presence of
"visions" without the aid of supernaturalism?

"Suddenly," Mrs. Booth-Tucker says, "I saw her coming to me." But how
"coming"? The lady tells us she was lying in "a small sea cabin." This
does not leave much room for the "coming" of the ghost. We should also
like to know why a lady thought to be dying was _left alone_. It is
certainly a very unusual circumstance.

Mrs. Booth's ghost, after as much "coming" as could be accomplished in
"a small cabin," at last "sat beside" her sick daughter "on the narrow
bunk." No doubt the seat was rather incommodious, but why should a
ghost sit at all? It really seems to have been a mixed sort of ghost.
Apparently it came through the ship's side, or the deck, or the
cabin-door, or the key-hole; yet it was solid enough to touch Mrs.
Booth-Tucker's hand and kiss her? Nay, it was solid enough to carry on
a long conversation, which does not seem possible without lungs and
larynx.

Mrs. Booth's ghost said a great deal. "_Wonderful words_ they were,"
says Mrs. Booth-Tucker. This whets our curiosity. We are always
listening for "wonderful words." But, alas, we are doomed to
disappointment. The lady knows her mother's words were "wonderful," but
she cannot reproduce them. Here memory is defective. "I can remember
so few of the actual words," she says. Nevertheless, she gives us a few
samples, and they do not seem _very_ "wonderful." Here are two of the
said samples: "Live, live, live, remembering that night comes always
_quickly_, and all is nothingness that dies with death!" "Fight the
fight, da