Seen and Unseen | Page 7

active duty to his country.
Yet it was just at this juncture--when, humanly speaking, there was no

cause for any special anxiety--that I woke up one morning with the
gloomiest and most miserable forebodings about this special brother.
Nothing of the kind had ever occurred to me before, though he had
been through many campaigns in India, China, Abyssinia, and
elsewhere.
It was an overwhelming conviction of some great and definite disaster
to him, and my friends in vain tried to argue me out of such an
unreasonable terror by pointing out, truly enough, that he could not
possibly be within the zone of danger at that time. I could only repeat:
"I know that something terrible has happened to him, wherever he is. It
may not be death, but it is some terrible calamity."
I spent the day in tears and in absolute despair, and wrote to tell him of
my conviction. Allowing for difference of time between Quetta and
Oxford, my mental telegram reached me in the same hour that my
brother, whilst on the march, and only thirty miles beyond Quetta, was
suddenly struck down in his tent by the paralysis which kept him
confined to his chair--a helpless sufferer--for twenty-eight years.
Perhaps, now that I know so much more of mental currents, I might
have received a more definite message as regards the true nature of the
calamity. It could not have been more marked, nor more definite as
regards the fact of it.
My condition of hopeless misery obliged me to put off all engagements
that day, and I did nothing but fret and lament over him, with the
exception of writing the one letter mentioned, in which I told him of
my strange and sad experience.
In time, of course, the first sharp impression passed, and soon a cheery
letter arrived from him, written, of course, before the fatal day. My
experience in Oxford occurred on the morning of 4th December 1878.
It was well on in January 1879 before the corroboration arrived, in a
letter written to us by a stranger. Communication was delayed not only
by the war, but also by the fact that my poor brother was lying at the
time deprived of both movement and speech, and could only spell out
later, by the alphabet, the address of his people at home.

CHAPTER II
INVESTIGATIONS IN AMERICA, 1885-1886
An interval of seven years occurs between the events recorded in the
last chapter and my first visit to America, which took place in the
autumn of 1885.
During these years no abnormal experiences came to me, nor had I the
smallest wish for any.
The table turnings with Morton Freer were a thing of the past, and were
looked back upon by me in the light of a childish amusement rather
than anything else. Quite other interests had come into my life,
specially as regards literature and music; and I never gave a thought to
spooks or spiritualism, nor did I really know anything about the latter
subject. It is true that on one occasion a curate at Great Marlow had
spoken to me about Mr S. C. Hall and his researches, and I think he
must have given me an introduction to the dear old man, for I
remember going to see him "with a lady friend" (he made a great point
of this, somewhat to my amusement), and finding a charming old man
with silver locks, a fine head, and a nice white frilly shirt.
He spoke of his dear friend "Mrs Jencken," whom he considered the
only reliable medium, and showed us some sheets full of hieroglyphics,
which he said were messages obtained through her influence from "his
dear wife."
It was all so much Greek to me in those days, and only true sympathy
with the poor old man's evident loneliness and adoration of his wife's
memory prevented my making merry over the extraordinary delusions
of the old gentleman, when my companion and I had left his rooms in
Sussex villas.
Later, I lived during two years with Mrs Lankester and her daughters
whilst looking after an invalid brother in London; and I need scarcely
point out that constant intercourse with Professor Ray Lankester in his
mother's house was not calculated to encourage any psychic proclivities,

even had these latter not been entirely latent with me at that time.
I heard a great deal about the "Slade exposure," both from Professor
Lankester and his friend Dr Donkin, who often came to us with him.
When arranging my American tour in 1885, Mrs Lankester kindly gave
me an introduction to Mrs Edna Hall, an old friend of theirs, who had
been living in their house during the whole period of the Slade trial.
This lady--an American--lived permanently in Boston, and curiously