Seen and Unseen | Page 3

curious crowd anxious to get "messages" or "hear raps," or to see any other little psychic parlour tricks which we may be induced to play for their benefit. At first one feels it is almost a sacred duty to satisfy, or attempt to satisfy, these psychic cormorants; but later, wisdom comes with experience.
At one time I felt bound to collect my friends and acquaintances round me and tell them all I knew upon these subjects, and doubtless it was right to do so whilst I "felt that way," to quote an expressive Americanism.
But the inevitable day came when I realised that I had spent my strength and my muffins in vain; for these gatherings generally took the form of tea-parties, not too large to cope with single-handed--say from ten to twenty people. They came at 4.30 P.M. and stayed till 8 P.M., when most of them remembered they ought to have dined at 7.45 P.M., and went away saying "How immensely they had enjoyed themselves," and "How interesting it all was."
And so far as any permanent good came of it, there the matter ended.
Believe me, when people are prepared for this development of their finer senses they will come to you. There is no need to go into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in. If they do come they won't stay--why should they? They have not got there yet, to use a thoroughly hateful and ungrammatical but absolutely accurate sentence.
If you try to carry them on the back of your own knowledge and experiences, you can do so for a time, but eventually they will struggle down, or you will put them down from sheer fatigue, and then they will run back to the spot where you found them, and thence work out their own psychic evolution either in this or in some future term of existence.
When their interest is exhausted--to say nothing of your patience--you will hear that they have called you a crank and lamented your "wasting your time over such nonsense." That will be your share of the transaction.
I know this because I have been there--moi qui vous parle.
"Let every man be persuaded in his own mind," but don't try to persuade anyone else. When the right time comes he will ask your help and counsel without any persuasion.
Of course, I am speaking only of private work. Lectures and congresses are of the greatest possible value; for no one knows whom he may be addressing on these occasions, and the seed may be falling into soil prepared, but often unconsciously prepared, for its reception.
To sum up the whole matter:
1. Be strong in the conviction that eventually good must always conquer evil, but remember also that you individually may have a very bad time meanwhile if you go amongst mixed influences and evoke that which at present you are not strong enough to withstand.
2. Know when to speak and when to be silent.
3. Receive what comes to you spontaneously, but never allow yourself to be cajoled or persuaded into developing your mediumship to gratify curiosity; not even on the plea of scientific duty, unless you are fully conscious in your own mind that this is the special work which is laid upon you.
And bearing these three simple rules in mind, we may go forward with brave hearts and level heads on the Quest which has been so plainly opened out to us in this twentieth century. E. KATHARINE BATES.

SEEN AND UNSEEN
CHAPTER I
EARLY RECOLLECTIONS
Having set myself to write a personal record of psychic experiences, I must "begin at the beginning," as the children say.
When only nine years old I lost my father--the Rev. John Ellison Bates of Christ Church, Dover--and my earliest childish experience of anything supernormal was connected with him. He had been an invalid all my short life, and I was quite accustomed to spending days at a time without seeing him. His last illness, which lasted about a fortnight, had therefore no special significance for me, and my nurse, elder brother, and godmother, who were the only three people in the house at the time, gave strict orders that none of the servants should give me a hint of his being dangerously ill. These instructions were carefully carried out, and yet I dreamed three nights running--the three nights preceding his decease--that he was dead. I was entirely devoted to my father, who had been father and mother to me in one, and these dreams no doubt broke the terrible shock of his death to me. How well I remember, that cold, dreary February morning, being hastily dressed by candle-light by strange hands, and then my dear old nurse (who had been by his bedside all night) coming in and telling me the sad news with tears streaming down her cheeks. It seemed